Up to This Pointe (23 page)

Winfly is tomorrow. Beautiful, beautiful Winfly. Late August and the sun is creeping every day higher behind the mountaintops.

We've made it, Charlotte and Vivian and I and
Her.
Nearly. Practically. Maybe.

Charlotte's anxious all morning at work. Two hundred Main Body staff will arrive on this flight, along with the mail and fresh food.

We're busily working quietly, getting so close to finishing the analysis part of her thesis, and Charlotte says, “It's going to be so crowded in the dining hall now. I'll miss winter.”

“Oh, come on. You don't even go in there anymore.”

“I like it when it's just us. Winter people are a special breed. And this may be my last one.”

“Well. Now you'll have your own little Winter.”

“Oooh, name her Winter,” Vivian says. “That's way better than Nacreous.”

Aiden and I take our last Ob Hill winter climb before the crowds descend. All the way to the cross, so near the stars we could reach and touch them.

“I will never understand,” I say, my face to the sky, “How Shackleton navigated those tiny wooden boats across the ocean. Twice. In
storms
! How do you use celestial navigation with cloud cover?”

The stars are burning so bright tonight.

“He didn't.”

“Yes, he did. What else would he use?”

“First of all, Shackleton wasn't the one navigating. He was the expedition leader, smart enough to choose Frank Worsley as the captain; Worsley navigated. And I've no idea how he did, storms or not. Southern skies are impossible.”

“Why?”
Stars so densely piled in the black they make a person swoon—how could they not lead the way?

“I'm telling you, in the Northern Hemisphere, Polaris, the North Star, marks the position of the north celestial pole—which just means it's easy to orient yourself in the night sky, find True North. But the Southern Hemisphere has no Polaris.”

I feel a disorienting shift. “It
doesn't
?”

“The south celestial pole—the imaginary point in the sky directly above the South Pole—there's no especially bright, outshine-the-others star there. Or anywhere in the southern sky. So to celestially navigate, Worsley had to use constellations—Southern Cross, Centaurus—and measure them against one another's distance, account for rotation…”

No path in The Ice. No guidance in the stars.

Why did I come here?

“The southern sky is beautiful,” Aiden says quietly. “But it will keep you lost if you don't know your way around the stars.”

The ice and ocean and the night sky go on forever. I am lost. Still.

“Five weeks left,” Aiden says.

I nod.

“If you decide to go back to San Francisco, I'll miss you,” he says.

“I don't know where I'm going.”

“No?”

“No idea.”

“Well,” he says, “I was thinking. If you don't go home…would you want to go home with me?”

“Home…to Ireland?”

“No! Home. Just…the world. Wherever we want.”

My breath slows.

“Three months. See how it feels. Then I'm off to Ireland for winter semester at university and you'll…know more.”

This sky—these deceptive, aimless stars—will never be more beautiful than in this moment.

“Yes,” I say without thinking.

I move closer to Aiden, standing beside Scott's cross.

I have taken a step.

“Good morning, ladies!” I sing as I sail into the lab the next morning bearing toast and tea.

“Is it?” Vivian asks, deep in concentration with a sheet of data apparently confounding her.

“You look rested!” Charlotte says.

I smile. “I feel better. I feel good. There is lettuce in my future.”

“Oh, that's right—finally!”

The whole station is eager to watch the arrival of the cargo plane, but the clouds have moved in and it is snowing. Not enough to cancel the flight, but with the windchill where it is, none of us are going out.

At last, they arrive. The Winfly people. Cold blows in and reunions and laughter, and Charlotte is right—long lines for food. Aiden's swamped in the kitchen. He waves and smiles. For dinner they've unpacked the freshies, and Charlotte and Vivian and I feast on huge bowls of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms.

“I've never been happier in my life.” Charlotte smiles.

“I'll be happy when you're home and in a hospital,” I tell her. But secretly I'm already happy. Traveling the world, exploring with brave, adventurous Aiden, getting a time-out on San Francisco and Kate, and ballet and Owen and—Oh, see, I can't even think about it without getting nervous and confused, and so I stop and concentrate on my lettuce.

Vivian is working late on the confounding data, so I go to our room alone, turn on the laptop, and tell myself this is the last. One last date with Owen, then I'll write him and tell him…what? That I think of him night and day and miss him so much, but this cute Irish guy is offering me an easy way for me to be lazy and put off living my life for a few more months?

>>>
Dear Harper,

It is Past Romances Revealed date time. This, I assumed, would be the one that got me super jealous and made me hulk out.

Instead it made me feel like I'm a total creep.

Kate's been nice enough to meet me for lunch a lot. As it turns out, she knows more about you than almost anyone. She spends most of the time crying, but I come prepared with tissues and bullet points to keep her on track as I barrage her with questions about you.

Please tell me you're responding to her emails.

And there's where my involvement with that ends.

Back to our date.

Kate says, and I think I believe her, that you've never had a boyfriend. Not that every single person needs to date—it's no requirement and you're kind of busy every second of every day, but…Kate says you two agreed. For ballet. Again, I totally get it. But did you ever want to go out with someone and purposely not do it? Did you ever wish you could?

That's the part that makes me sad. It's just the Rogers/Winfrey in me that thinks you maybe would have had some fun at movies and beach parties and such. But I could be wrong, and if you never wanted to and didn't miss it, then I am definitely wrong.

So here's my deal. I dated in high school/college:

1.
Mia Li

2.
Midori Tong

Mia and I dated all of our junior and senior years. We went to prom twice. Then she went to school back east and never wrote once she got there. Harsh.

Midori and I dated on and off during my first year at college. She majored in acting and was smart and funny, but there was this whole “free love” thing going on in the drama department.

I'm making all this sound like it was them not me, but that's because I'm telling the story.

I dated the daughter of one of my dad's work friends. Her name was Vivian Tam. She was really kind and very pretty. Smart. You can see I have a type. She went to do Peace Corps work and never came back from rural China. My mom still thinks we're getting married.

And that brings us up to date.

You will notice all the surnames of past girlfriends are Chinese.

I wondered for a while if I was a soulless robot incapable of true passion, because while the end of each relationship left me sad, there was never crying or Ryan Gosling–level devastation.

I knew you for what, three months? Spent a total of maybe ten hours with you? I will go ahead and tell you what your jerk brother probably already has. There have been some Gosling moments—none involving standing in the middle of a street in the rain—but it hasn't been fun.

One piece of decent advice my mom did give me, and is maybe why I persist one-sided dating you, is this:

Find someone smarter than you. Also, braver and stronger and better looking.

Have I mentioned that I miss you?

Vivian's key in the door startles me.

“Hey,” I say, and shut down the laptop. “What's up?”

“You tell me,” she says, surveying my red-rimmed eyes and pile of wadded-up Ryan Gosling tissues on the desk.

“Get the numbers figured out?”

She nods. “I am a genius.” She climbs into her flannels, gets in her bed, puts her earbuds in. Then she takes them out. “The grants look really good.”

“Oh—they do?”

“You're a good writer. You use the stats really well. They're not overwhelming, and they make effective points. You should think about it.”

“What?”

“Grant writing.”

“For…?”

“Like a job. It's a skill. You can write grants for anything. Like funding teenagers to come to Antarctica.”

“Anything?”

She shrugs. “Corporations, people with money are just dying to fund things and write off the deduction. You're good at it.”

Anything.

“Thanks. Thank you.”

She puts her earbuds back in and lies down.

Anything?

“Vivian.”

“What?”

“Do you miss home? Is that why you listen to him?”

Long silence.

“It helps me sleep.”

“Vivian.”

“Harper.”

“I miss home, too.”

She pulls her headphone jack out, puts the iPod in the dock, and we listen to the stories and miss home, together.

Charlotte sleeps late, taking a rare day off work. Vivian and I, both worn out and ahead of schedule anyway, nonetheless work in the lab on our own. Also it's a nice place to hide, as we're not in the mood to deal with the two hundred new people just yet.

“Being pregnant makes you really tired, I guess?” I muse.

“The girls at my school seemed pretty drowsy,” Vivian says. “But most them were also always smoking weed, too, so maybe they were just high. Or bored.”

“Jeez!” I laugh. “Teen pregnancy and drug use—Garrison doesn't talk a lot about that happening in Lake Wobegon.”

“That's because he made Lake Wobegon up.” She sighs. “Don't talk about him in the daylight or I won't let you listen anymore.”

I smile.

Only hours till we're home free, the second the plane leaves, we can unburden our secret to the doctor, and Charlotte will be in the clear.

“Hey,” I say. “I'll go grab lunch. What do you want?”

“Really? Because I'd love more salad. Maybe mashed potatoes?”

“That is a brilliant combination. Be right back!” I rush down the hall until I reach the gridlock at the kitchen.

So many people. Too crowded.

I make my way to the stairs, and Beard sidles up behind me. “What's up, Scott?”

“Not a whole bunch. How are you?” I take Charlotte's lead in suffusing my words with cheer.

“Claustrophobic. But they're here to stay. Winfly left this morning.”

I turn to face him.

“Really? I thought it stays a day or two.”

“Too cold. Unloaded, refueled, took off right after.”

I'm smiling so hard my face hurts. Charlotte and Vivian will be thrilled; I already am. My toes wiggle inside my shoes. No more baby secret. She can see the doctor. I get in the horrendously long food line.

“What're you so giddy about?” Beard frowns.

“Just excited for salad!” I'm tempted to annoy the chef, go back into the kitchen, and grab Aiden for sheer happiness. I crane my neck to glimpse him, but still he's nowhere to be seen.

“Who're you looking for?”

Oh my gosh, Beard. You are so annoying.
“No one.”

“Not your boyfriend, I hope.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“Oh. Well. That's good. Considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Long distance never works.”

I turn to him, take the bait. “What?”