The Geography of You and Me

15

In Napa, Lucy went through the motions.

She made small talk with her relatives and admired her cousin’s dress. She smiled for photos and raised her glass whenever someone toasted. She ate her cake and humored her father with a dance and drank the champagne her brothers sneaked for her, happy to have their company again, even if it was only for a short time.

When they asked, she told everyone what she loved about Edinburgh and what she missed about New York, though in neither of those two conversations did she mention the two names that would have told the real story.

When she thought of Liam, she felt her heart wrench in one direction. And when she thought of Owen, it was tugged in the other.

On their last morning in Napa, after a week of celebrations, after the wedding and Christmas, the various tours of vineyards and the many meals with relatives, Lucy stood outside the house they’d rented and watched a flock of birds moving over the fields, flecks of pepper in a salt-white sky. Without warning, they shifted direction, all coordination and grace, a winged ballet. But there was one that kept missing the cues, a little slow to turn, a little low to fly, and that was the one that held her gaze.

All that day, through the drive back to San Francisco and the hours in the airport, the long plane ride—first to New York, then to London, and then finally up to Edinburgh—Lucy kept thinking of that one little bird.

Others must have seen it, too, a flock so big it colored the dishwater sky. They must have stopped what they were doing and tipped their heads back to marvel at it, astonished by the harmony of the group, the graceful turns and the wheeling circles, all those wings beating in time.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about the straggler, the missing beat, the odd one out. The single speck in the emptiest part of the sky.

She hoped that wherever he was, he’d be okay, that little bird.

16

In San Francisco, Owen walked.

Day after day, he crisscrossed the sprawling city. Dad stayed behind, scouring the papers and mining the Internet in search of a job, while Owen continued his odd trek, witnessing the backdrops to a thousand postcards, real or imagined. Not just the great red bridge, but other things, too: cable cars and twisty streets, Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and the Haight.

The only place he didn’t go—the one place he worked hard to avoid—was the little strip of grass along the marina, where a wooden bench sat looking out over the water, contemplating the possibilities with a single word: maybe.

If someone had asked him why all the walking, Owen wouldn’t have been able to answer. The reasons were too hard to articulate, too personal to explain. He wasn’t walking because there were things to see or because he had places to go. It was far simpler than that. He was walking because it was better than staying still, and because it seemed the best possible way to escape his thoughts, which crowded his head like the fog over the bay, thick as fleece and impossible to see around.

Whenever his mind drifted in Paisley’s direction, he was quick to shake it clear again. But that only left room for Lucy, who was somehow much harder to cast aside. He always allowed himself to linger there for a moment, lost in that one unlikely New York night, until the memory of their recent fight startled him alert again, and he’d blink fast, then grit his teeth and hurry on.

One evening, he paused at the top of a street on his way home. The sun was already halfway gone, the light a soft winter orange. For six straight days, he’d come to this intersection and turned left, where at the top of a hill, in a tiny apartment, his father would be waiting with dinner on the table.

But tonight, on the seventh day, he found himself moving in the direction of the marina instead. For better or worse, it was the last place he’d seen her. And that was reason enough for him.

17

In Edinburgh, Lucy slept.

At first, her parents chalked it up to jet lag. But as the days wore on, they began to worry. She slept late and went to bed early, her hours matching those of the elusive winter sun, and in between, she padded around the flat in her pajamas and slippers. Whenever she showed up downstairs, Mom insisted on laying a cool hand against her forehead, but it was obvious she didn’t have a fever.

“Let her sleep,” she heard Dad say when she left the kitchen one day. “She’s on her break. And it’s nice to know where she is for once.”

On New Year’s Eve, there were dangerously high winds, and the street party was canceled for fear that the rides would get blown away. So instead her parents made an enormous pot of chili, and the three of them spent the evening playing board games while the wind rattled the windows of the town house.

But Lucy couldn’t concentrate.

Liam would be getting back to Edinburgh the next day.

He’d e-mailed her several times over the past ten days—about his holiday in Ireland on his grandparents’ farm, but also about how he couldn’t wait to see her, how much he missed her, how he was thinking of her often—and she hadn’t written back once. It didn’t seem fair when she was suddenly so uncertain about everything.

She still had no idea what she was going to do when she saw him.

All morning, she’d been keeping an eye on her phone, assuming he’d text her when he was back in the city. But she was still in her pajamas when the doorbell rang.

From her bedroom, Lucy strained to listen to the voices downstairs, and after a moment, her father yelled up. “There’s a young man named Liam here to see you,” he said, raising his eyebrows as she appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Thanks,” she said, shuffling down in her polka-dot pajama pants and purple NYU hoodie. Liam was standing in the open doorway, the lingering Edinburgh night sprawled out behind him, inky and cold, and he looked impossibly rugged in a woolly sweater. When he smiled up at her, she nearly tripped.

At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped forward as if to kiss her, but she held up a hand, glancing back down the hallway toward the kitchen, where she was certain her parents were lurking, and then pulled him into the library instead, shutting the glass doors behind them.

“Aha,” he said, reaching for her. “Privacy.”

Lucy managed a nervous laugh. “You’re back.”

“I am,” he said, moving close so that their faces were only inches apart. “I missed you.”

When he kissed her, she felt momentarily woozy, all of her resolve floating away like champagne bubbles, light and fizzy, popping only when she finally managed to pull back. For a moment, they just stared at each other, and her stomach did a little flip. It would be so easy to continue this way, to lose herself to this guy with the chiseled jaw and the easy charm. They could just keep going as if nothing had happened in California. Because it was true; nothing had.

But if she was being really honest with herself, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. And she felt a sudden flash of anger, not toward Liam but toward Owen, who should have tried harder. He should have been the one to kiss her this time. He should have leaned forward when she leaned back, should have caught her instead of letting her go.

Standing in this room in Edinburgh, with the late-morning darkness still filling the windows, she hated Owen for being so far away, for not being here. And she realized that whatever else he’d done, he’d recalibrated her; because even though it had all gone horribly wrong, and even though she might never see him again, might never even speak to him, she understood something about wanting now. And here with Liam, she knew this wasn’t it.

And it wasn’t fair to him.

When she cleared her throat, the smile slipped from his face. There must have been something in her eyes, which were always giving her away.

“Liam,” she began, and his face darkened a shade.

Behind him, the sun was only just beginning to rise.

18

In Berkeley, Owen watched the sun disappear.

For a long time it sat tangled in the leafless branches of a tree, throbbing a brilliant orange, and he stared at it through the smudged window of the coffee shop. All around him, students were pecking away at their laptops, headphones jammed into their ears, empty coffee cups strewn all around them. It was the start of a new semester, and everywhere, people were hard at work.

Owen had sent in his Berkeley application months ago, and he let his eyes rove around the room now, trying it on for size. They had an undergraduate astronomy program that meant classes in astrophysics and planetary sciences, not to mention multiple cutting-edge labs and observatories, and for a moment, he could almost see himself in this very coffee shop with a pile of books spread before him. But then he thought again of his dad, and the image went blurry. There were still too many question marks. There were still too many things to worry about.

He fixed his gaze on the door, his foot jangling beneath the table as he waited. He’d skipped his last two classes this afternoon, taking a bus to one of the BART stations downtown, then switching once more in Oakland, before finally arriving in Berkeley just as the afternoon light was fading. It would have been far quicker to take the car, but that would have meant explaining the outing to his father, which would have meant endless questions for which Owen didn’t have any answers. So instead he’d told him he was playing basketball with some of his new classmates and would probably be home late. Dad, hunched over the classifieds section of the morning paper, had only waved a piece of toast at him in response.

When the bell above the door cut through the low hum of the computers and the whistle of the cappuccino maker, he looked up a bit reluctantly.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her. It was that he’d known even when he’d first gotten her e-mail a couple of weeks ago—on January 1, as if he were a resolution, a way to start the year off right—that he would feel this way when he saw her.

Standing there in the doorway in a red coat with her hair in two long braids, a light went on inside him, as he’d known it would. She was beautiful, startlingly so, and she stood out brightly against the background of the coffee shop, her smile broadening at the sight of him.

She was the one who’d asked to meet. After weeks of perfunctory voice mails and the occasional text, she’d e-mailed to say that she’d be in Berkeley for a few days. He assumed she was looking at the school, but it was impossible to know for sure with her. She could have just as easily been meeting friends or attending a protest or consulting a psychic. And even if she were here for him, it could have just as easily been to break up with him as propose to him. With Paisley, you just never really knew.

When she was near enough to the table, Owen half-stood, still unsure how to greet her. If there was an etiquette for seeing your not-quite-ex-girlfriend after six weeks of not-quite-avoiding-each-other, then he wasn’t sure what it was.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling out the chair across from him and reaching for his cup of coffee without asking. She smelled of cold air and cigarettes and pine trees, and she eyed him over the rim of the cup as she took a long sip.

“You too,” he said, the words a little stiff. “What’re you doing down here?”

“I’ve got a few different things going on,” she said, then shrugged. “And it’s been a while.”

“That’s true,” Owen said, trying to think of what might come after that, but she saved him by scraping back her chair and getting to her feet.

“Need another?” she asked, waving at the chalkboard menu.

He shook his head. “I’m okay.”

From across the crowded shop, he watched her laughing at something the guy behind the counter was saying, and he waited to feel a twitch of annoyance, but there was nothing, only a weariness that made him feel sleepy, in spite of all the caffeine.

He flicked his eyes back over the window, where the sun was nearly gone, the light cold and gray.

He wondered what time it was in Edinburgh.

When Paisley returned, she set down her mug and smiled at him, but rather than pick up speed, his heart seemed to slow down. And he knew then, for sure, that what he’d chalked up to distance was actually something deeper. Because even this—being so close to her—was no longer the same. That light he’d felt when he first saw her—he understood now that it was only a lightbulb. It was quick and easy, full of electricity, but there was something artificial about it.

What he wanted was fire: heat and spark and flame.

Across the table, Paisley was saying something about the trip down, but when Owen met her eyes, something in his expression made the words fall away. Her mouth formed an O—the start of a question—but before she could voice it, he leaned forward.

“Paisley,” he said quietly, and a look of surprise passed over her face.

Outside, it was just getting dark.

19

In Prague, Lucy walked.

This was her first trip to continental Europe. It was her first time at the opera and her first glimpse of the Charles Bridge. It was her first visit to the biggest castle in the world and her first parentally sanctioned taste of beer, served in a mug so big she had to hold it with two hands. It was her first proper puppet show, the dangling legs of the marionette dancing wildly as a street performer with kind eyes and wrinkled hands commanded it, and it was her first introduction to Kafka. They hadn’t even made it out of the airport when she asked Dad for enough korunas to buy an English-language copy of The Metamorphosis.

She was under no great illusion about why her parents had brought her along, for the first time ever, on one of their trips. Just over a week ago, they’d broken the news to her that they’d be moving again. This time, to London.

“That job,” Dad had said, examining his tie. “The one from before? The other guy didn’t work out, so it’s opened up again.…”

“And they offered it to you,” Lucy said flatly.

“And they offered it to me.”

“And you want to take it.”

He coughed. “I’ve already taken it, actually.”

She knew they expected her to be furious. Here they were, pulling her from a school only five months after they’d dropped her into it, yanking her away again less than half a year after they’d separated her from her home.

But Lucy simply couldn’t muster the expected anger. Her heart was still too heavy for arguments or fireworks; instead, she just sat there feeling resigned—thinking of Liam, who hadn’t been able to look at her since she’d broken up with him; of Arthur’s Seat, with its views of the city; and the town house with the red door, which sat on a street shaped like a croissant—and listening as her parents strung out a long chain of promises.

“We’ve found a mews house in Notting Hill,” Dad was saying. “Very nice little place.”

“And there’s a lovely school nearby,” Mom told her.

“And we’ll wait until spring break,” said Dad, “so it won’t be as disruptive.”

“And to make it up to you, we were thinking maybe a little holiday was in order,” Mom had said, her smile too bright. “What do you think about Prague?”

So the weekend was a three-day apology tour. But even so, this did nothing to squash Lucy’s enthusiasm for the great buzzing city with its sweeping plazas and oddly shaped buildings and swaying groups of drunken tourists.

As it turned out, Prague in February meant a low gray sky and fits of stinging rain, but Lucy didn’t mind that, either. All weekend, the three of them dashed from one museum or gallery to another, moving through squares filled with people and umbrellas. Her whole life, she’d been surrounded by this kind of art; she’d grown up within miles of not just the Met, but also the Guggenheim and the Whitney, the MoMA and the Frick. But they’d never gone together. Not once. Her parents’ lives had always seemed to run parallel to their children’s. They weren’t so much a constellation, the five of them, as a series of scattered stars. There had always been something far-flung about their family, even when they were all in the same place.

Yet here they were now, meandering through the National Gallery in Prague together, spread out along a marble corridor until one of them called for the others, and they all three huddled together before a framed canvas, murmuring their thoughts.

“What did you think?” Mom asked Lucy afterward, moving over to share her umbrella as they stepped outside into the silvery rain.

“I loved it,” she said, and then the words tumbled out before she had a chance to weigh them: “We should have done that more back home.”

“You used to go to the Met all the time,” Mom said, glancing over at her.

The rain beat on the umbrella, and Lucy spoke over the noise of it. “I meant together.”

Mom paused, just briefly, but enough to fall behind. When Lucy turned back, she could see the rain making maroon polka dots across the shoulders of her red coat. After a moment, she shook her head, as if clearing water from her ear, then stepped forward to duck underneath the umbrella again. Up ahead, Dad was already pushing through the crowd, his black coat disappearing.

“There are plenty of museums in London, too,” Mom said, looping an arm around Lucy’s waist, and then together, they hurried to catch up, the rain falling in sheets all around them.

20

In Portland, Owen dreamed.

The rain was loud against the thin roof of the motel, and he woke with a start, the memory of his mother still with him. He felt around for the alarm clock, spinning it so that the red numbers shone in his direction. It was 5:43 AM, and the light that leaked in around the brownish curtains was pale and new.

In the next bed, his father was still sleeping, his breathing soft. Owen propped himself up on his elbows, still rattled by the dream, where his mother had been pinning plastic stars to the roof of the red Honda, which flew off one by one as they drove away from her, scattering in the wind.

Now he swung his legs off the bed and rubbed his eyes. On the floor beside him, Bartleby rustled in his shoebox. Owen stood, slipped on a pair of sneakers, and grabbed a sweatshirt, then opened the door to the hallway, pressing it closed behind him with a quiet click. At the end of a hall lined with dozens of identical doors, there was a small terrace, which was littered with cigarette butts. Owen stepped outside and sat down on the edge of it, so that his head was shielded from the rain even as the toes of his sneakers quickly soaked through. He didn’t mind; the cool air felt nice, and the rain smelled like morning.

The terrace looked out over a huddled collection of blue trash cans, which were arranged haphazardly along the perimeter of the parking lot. But beyond that, over the tops of the trees, he could see the mountains. As the sky paled all around them, their outlines grew sharper, like a photo coming into focus. Owen leaned forward to pick at a loose thread on one of his shoes, letting out a sigh he’d been holding for what felt like days.

They hadn’t been here for very long. This time, they hadn’t rented an apartment. They hadn’t looked for schools, either. They knew the drill now. You didn’t arrive at a place and get attached. You didn’t give yourself time to picture a life there, to see a future. You didn’t develop routines. You didn’t get to know anyone too well.

You didn’t come to a full stop.

In the end, San Francisco had lasted a couple of weeks less than Tahoe. Just after New Year’s, Dad had found a temp job at an office supply company in Oakland, where he mostly transferred calls and input numbers into endless spreadsheets. But when that ended a month later, there was nothing else, and before long, it was time to move on again. So they were en route to rainy Seattle, where Dad had a tenuous lead on an actual building job. But they’d decided to spend three days in Portland on the way, just in case something turned up there. Because the thought of making it all the way up to Seattle only to have the job fall through was almost too much to bear.

Dad had insisted they wait for Owen’s spring break. That way, they’d have a whole week to figure things out without him missing too much school. Owen didn’t have the heart to tell him that every district had a different week off, which meant the dates might not line up as well for the next school wherever they landed. But it didn’t matter, anyway. They both knew he would graduate easily enough. That wasn’t the point. It was more an issue of finding an actual graduation to attend.

“I don’t care about that,” Owen said. “The whole cap and gown thing, the diploma. It’s not like it means anything.”

“It’s symbolic,” Dad insisted. “It’s a moment.”

What he didn’t say, but what they both knew, was that his mother would have loved it: the cap and gown, the walk across the stage, the rolled baton of a diploma, all of it. Owen knew she would have been in the first row. She would have been clapping the loudest.

And he had no interest in attending a ceremony that didn’t include her.

That much, he knew. The rest was a bit harder to figure out right now. How could he know what the next year might hold when he didn’t even know about the next week? At some point, they’d find a town, and in that town, they’d find a place to live, and near that place, they’d find a school. There would be one more round of making new friends that wouldn’t last, and going to classes where he already knew the answers, and it would all end with a graduation ceremony that he had no interest in attending.

But after that? It was hard to tell. Weeks from now, he’d have six answers to the six questions he’d sent out into the world in the form of college applications. An e-mail would arrive with a link to discover the news, and at the same time, six different envelopes would start to arrive at the house in Pennsylvania, which still sat snow-covered and empty, the For Sale sign in the front yard probably beginning to rust. One of their neighbors had been forwarding the mail whenever they landed somewhere long enough to receive it, and hopefully by then, they’d have an address that was a bit more permanent. But at the moment, Owen wasn’t so sure it mattered, anyway. His future wouldn’t be determined by the click of a mouse or whether the envelopes that arrived were fat or thin. It would depend on when his father got a job, and where they finally settled down; it would be decided not by things like class size and dorm rooms and cafeteria food, but by how many days passed without his dad pulling the last cigarette from the box, measured by the moment when he could listen to a particular song on the radio without his eyes going misty and his fingers going tight on the wheel.

Next year, Owen might be in Portland or Seattle, San Francisco or San Diego. He might be with his dad in some broken-down apartment or still on the road or in a college classroom somewhere. Right here in this parking lot, the rain coming down in sheets all around him, it was impossible to know for sure.

What he did know was this: Tomorrow, they would get back into the red Honda. They’d take turns choosing a radio station and stop for burgers when they got hungry, leaving the greasy bags strewn across the floor, though they both knew it would have driven her nuts; they reveled in her invisible annoyance, as if it were a sign that she was still with them. They’d arrive in Seattle in need of a shower and some sleep, and then they’d start the same weary search for jobs and schools and houses, all the various pieces that somehow added up to a life.

But for now, Owen left the rain-soaked mountains and the cold pavement behind, moving back through the silent hallway to their room. As he tiptoed past his sleeping father—the thatch of light hair the only thing visible beneath a pile of covers—he wasn’t thinking about tomorrow. He wasn’t thinking about college acceptance letters or graduation or even Seattle. For once, as he kicked off his soggy sneakers and pulled the rough sheets back over him, he was just relieved to be here and now, in this bleak, colorless motel room, with only his dad and his turtle for company, a strange and slow-moving trio, a passing version of home.

21

In Rome, Lucy read.

It was unseasonably warm for late March, and the sun was hot on her shoulders. Her parents had gone shopping, leaving her on the Spanish Steps with her book (Julius Caesar, because when in Rome…), and promised to be back in an hour. But Lucy was in no rush; she could have sat there all day.

When a shadow fell over her, she lifted her eyes to find a man with oily black hair smiling down at her, a basket of flowers in the crook of his arm.

“A rose for the bella signorina?” he asked with a heavy accent, trying to hand her one, but Lucy shook her head and returned to her book. He’d already tried to sell her the same rose earlier. In fact, in the six days they’d been in Italy—first Florence and Cinque Terre, then Siena and finally Rome, her whole spring break filled with beautiful art and astonishing architecture, staggering cliffs and seaside houses, pizza and pasta and even a little wine—she’d been offered flowers by at least two dozen people. They would leave them on your table at restaurants, try to slip them into your bag as you were walking, corner you in the piazzas, then demand a few euros. Her father had bought a couple for Lucy and her mother the very first day, and they’d tucked them in their hair, charmed by the novelty of it. But it wasn’t long before they discovered that the vendors were everywhere, completely impossible to avoid, hawking not just flowers but also sunglasses and wallets, flags and pins, even small bottles of olive oil. The streets of Italy were just one giant marketplace.

Now she turned back to her book. She’d read it in school last year, and though her classmates had found it boring, Lucy was riveted by the political drama, pulled right out of Roman history. But it was different, somehow, to be reading it here, where the actual events had taken place all those hundreds of thousands of years ago. That was the thing about books, she was realizing; they could take you somewhere else entirely, it was true. But it wasn’t the same thing as actually going there yourself.

A few minutes later, she was interrupted again, and she looked up, her face already set with annoyance. But she was surprised to find an old man this time, stooped and wrinkled, with a smile that revealed only a few remaining teeth.

“One for you, bellissima?” he said, opening a case full of simple white cards, each with a hand-sketched outline of a famous Roman site: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s Basilica. Even the very steps where Lucy now sat.

When she shook her head, the man frowned, shoving the case forward a bit more. “For your amore, perhaps?” he asked, raising his gray eyebrows, but Lucy only shook her head again.

“Sorry, grazie,” she mumbled, and with a shrug, he snapped the case shut and then shambled off to find the next potential customer.

For a long moment, Lucy just sat there, looking out over the busy square, the man’s drawings still etched in her mind. Then she flipped open her book again.

They were beautiful.

But she had nowhere to send them.

22

In Tacoma, Owen waited.

He’d been the one driving when the car had started making an awful thumping sound, metallic and insistent. His dad had drifted off to sleep about an hour earlier, but he bolted awake at the noise, looking around in bewilderment.

“Pull off,” he’d croaked, pointing to the side of the highway, where there was a short gravel drive with a lookout point where tourists could take photos of Mount Rainier, the hulking rock of a mountain that dominated the horizon.

Owen had turned the wheel and was aiming in that direction when the car let out one last dying groan, rolling to a stop with the back half still on the highway. They’d had to push it the rest of the way themselves, the other cars honking as they flew by.

Now they sat together on the hood as they waited for the tow truck, sharing a bag of pretzels and looking out at the purple mountain, which was crowned in snow.

“What happens if it’s no good anymore?” Owen asked, drumming his fingers against the red paint, which was covered in a layer of dirt and grime.

“It’ll be good for something.”

Owen laughed. “That’s optimistic of you.”

“It’s put in a lot of good miles,” Dad said with a smile. “If we have to scrap it, we’ll figure something out.”

“This would be a great time to get a call about the house.”

Now it was Dad’s turn to laugh. He felt the pocket of his jeans for the outline of his phone, then gave it a little pat. “I’m sure it’ll be any minute now.”

“Asking price at least.”

Dad nodded. “At least.”

“And then we’ll buy a huge place in Seattle,” Owen said. “Maybe something on the water.”

“Oh yeah,” Dad agreed. “With at least four bedrooms.”

“Bartleby can even have his own.”

Dad laughed. “He can have his own wing, if he wants.”

“He’d probably prefer not to,” Owen pointed out, and Dad gave a solemn nod. They were quiet for a little while. The wind rustled the trees, bringing with it the scent of pine, and a flock of birds wheeled overhead. Owen watched as they pumped their wings, moving as one, a constellation of black dots in an otherwise uninterrupted sky. As they shifted direction, he saw that one had fallen behind, and he tracked it with his eyes for a long time. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Dad spoke again.

“You know it’ll be okay, right?” he said, and Owen nodded, still watching the bird.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

23

In London, Lucy cried.

There was absolutely nothing to cry about—at least not yet. They’d only just arrived. She hadn’t seen the neighborhood or her school. She hadn’t even seen the inside of the house. But still, the moment the cab had pulled up to the bright yellow door of the little brick building, which was tucked away on a nearly hidden lane, she found herself blinking back tears.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked once the cab had pulled away, as the three of them stood on the doorstep with their suitcases. The rest of their things had been shipped down while they were in Italy and would be waiting for them inside.

“She misses Scotland,” Mom said, throwing him a look.

“We were barely there,” he said, fumbling with the keys. “If anything, she probably misses New York.”

“You can be homesick for two places at once,” Mom said, sounding exasperated, but then the key finally turned, and Dad shouldered open the yellow door, and the two of them hurried inside, half-giddy with the excitement of another new home and another new start in another new place. And not just any place, but London: which, to them, had always been home.

Lucy, however, lingered on the stoop for another minute, her eyes still damp, wondering which one was true. Maybe she was homesick for New York, or maybe it was Edinburgh. Possibly it was even both.

Or maybe—maybe—it wasn’t a place at all.

24

In Seattle, Owen laughed.

When he saw the place they’d soon be living, he couldn’t help it. It was a little house on the edge of the city, but it looked more like a garden shed or a small barn, with weathered red wood and sagging windows.

“It’s a fixer-upper,” Dad said, beaming at it. There was no way to tamp down his enthusiasm. He’d gotten the job he’d come here for; he’d be part of a crew that was renovating an enormous old warehouse building downtown, turning it into hundreds of apartments at affordable prices. After using the last of their cash to fix the car, they’d spent two nights using it as a bed, sleeping in the parking lot of a Starbucks with the seats reclined. But now he’d gotten an advance on his first paycheck, and it turned out one of the guys on the crew was looking to rent this place out, which meant they’d finally have a house again. Or at least something resembling one.

“It’ll be fun,” Dad said, thumping Owen on the back. “We’ll make it our own.”

There was a small patch of lawn and a few scattered trees, a back garden and a narrow front porch, all of it huddled around the tiny box of a house. As he stood gazing up at it, Owen had the distinct feeling that whether he realized it or not, this was exactly what his father had been looking for all this time. After so many months of flight, it felt like they’d finally landed.

“It’s better than the car, huh?” Dad said, looking at the house with unmistakable pride. “And a pretty far cry from that basement apartment.”

Owen nodded, wondering what the stars would be like out here, remembering the way they’d burned over the darkened city that night, when they’d stood high above the basement, away from everyone and everything.

He’d been holding the shoebox under his arm like a football since they’d gotten out of the car, but now he bent to set it on the ground, letting Bartleby skitter out onto the grass. They watched together as the little turtle made his way over to the porch steps. He had a tendency to bump into things, and sure enough, as soon as he came into contact with the wood, he set his little home down right there on the flagstone and everything disappeared, his head and all four little legs zipping inside his shell. Owen had watched him do this a thousand times, but it still struck him as amazing, to be protected like that, to always be able to escape into your own small pocket of the world.

“Must be kind of nice,” Dad said. “Always having your house handy like that.”

“Not so different from us, really,” Owen said, pointing at the car. “We’ve had our home with us this whole time, too.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Dad smiled a slow smile. “Not anymore,” he said, and with that, they headed inside.

25

In the house with the yellow door, Lucy opened a newspaper.

Her eyes went right to an article about San Francisco.

“Did you know there are eleven species of sharks in the San Francisco Bay?” she asked her mother, who raised her eyebrows.

“Fascinating,” she said.

26

In the little red house with the peeling paint, Owen flipped through a magazine.

His eyes got caught on the word Scotland, and he paused.

“Did you know that the river leading out of Edinburgh is called the Firth of Forth?” he asked his dad, who gave him an odd look.

“Interesting,” he said.

27

In line for the bus, Lucy daydreamed.

She was thinking of road trips and mountains and wide-open spaces.

But really, she was thinking of New York.

28

In a coffee shop, Owen’s mind wandered.

He was thinking of castles and hills and cups of tea.

But really, he was thinking of that elevator.

29

In school, Lucy sat quietly at her desk, which faced west.

30

In between classes, Owen paused for a moment, his toes pointing east.

31

In bed that night, Lucy breathed in.

32

In the car that afternoon, Owen breathed out.

33

In London, Lucy thought of Owen.

34

And far away in Seattle, Owen was thinking of her, too.