Trying to salvage some degree of cool, I wipe at my tear-puffed eyes and say, “At least we get Internet on the island.”
That would have been a deal breaker.
No Internet, no Phoebe.
Cesca wipes at her own tears, usually only called upon when she had to convince her dad she needed something really expensive. “Then you have to e-mail every day.”
“Maybe,” Nola says, her face glowing as she embraces the raw emotion of her tears, “we can have a regular IM meet.”
“As if,” I say. “There’s a ten-hour time difference.”
“We’ll just have to work something out,” she persists.
Nola is nothing if not persistent.
“You’re right,” I manage, if only because I want to put on a brave face until they’re gone, when I can cry my eyes out on my strippedto-the-mattress bed.
“Okay, enough blubbering,” Cesca says. “Let’s get your junk packed so we can watch The Bold and the Beautiful before I have to head home.”
“Yeah,” I say, tossing the curtain panels into Box Four, “it’ll have to sustain me for the next year. You’d think we could at least get satellite on that stupid island.”
There’s not much to do on a ten-and-a-half-hour flight from L.A. to Paris while your mom is sleeping in the next row of a nearly empty plane. The movie selections were repulsive at best and the line at LAX security was so long I didn’t have time to buy the latest
Runner’s World.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a French-accented male voice announces, “we have begun our final descent into Charles de Gaulle airport and should be on the ground in approximately thirty minutes.”
That was another thing. Our flight to Athens routed through Paris, but did I get to hop out and see the city of lights? No. We have forty-five minutes to get to our connecting flight and I’ll be lucky if I have time to look out the window at the clouds over Paris.
“Madame.” A flight attendant gently shakes Mom awake. “We are landing, you must sit up.”
Mom stretches in a big yawn and manages a sleepy, “Merci.”
The flight attendant throws me a skeptical look—like I can help it if Mom sleeps like the dead—but moves on to wake the other sleeping passengers.
I go back to scanning the clouds below for a peek at the EiffelTower or the Louvre or something monumental. Even a beret would be acceptable at this point.
“Did you sleep, Phoebe?” Mom asks as she slips back into the seat next to mine.
No, I want to say, I didn’t sleep. How can I be expected to sleep when I’m crossing an ocean for the first time? Or starting at a new school for the first time since kindergarten? Or landing on foreign soil knowing it will be months, if not longer, before I get back to the land of shopping malls and French fries—and don’t even try to trick me with the whole there-are-McDonald’s-everywhere argument because I know it just won’t be the same. Not when I’m eating the fries alone and not splitting my large order with Nola and Cesca over a big pile of ketchup.
But, since fighting never got me a new pair of Air Pegasus Nikes, I’m more content to pout than fight. Pouting leads to guilt-induced presents—some of my best gear came from dedicated pouting sessions. I just shrug and keep my eyes on the clouds.
Maybe I shouldn’t be proud of manipulating Mom this way, but it’s not like she asked me if I wanted to move to the opposite side of the planet. I deserve a little questionable behavior.
“Look, Phoebola.”
Mom nudges my ribs and points to the other side of the plane.
I want to ignore her, but there is some serious excitement in her voice and I can’t help following the direction of her finger. Through the tiny oval Plexiglas I can see an expansive city divided by a meandering river.
Ignoring the illuminated FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign, I climb over Mom’s knees and slide into the window seat across the aisle.
The flight attendant walks up just as I land and gives me a serious frown. I make a big show of buckling my seat belt, pressing the tab into the slot just like she showed us before takeoff.
Appeased, she moves on to the next row.
I press my nose to the window, eyes following the meandering Seine. Even though we weren’t staying in Paris even an hour, I had studied a map in the Air France magazine just in case the miraculous happens and we miss our connection, forcing an overnight layover. Knowing Mom, she’d probably find us a train to Athens. Anyway, a short distance up the river I see it. Though it should be practically invisible from however many thousand feet and however many miles away, the lacy iron structure of the EiffelTower stands out against the sea of grassy, tree-filled parks and old stone buildings. In my dreams I imagine running the 1665 steps from ground level to the observation deck at the top, hitting the wall halfway up and pushing through, finding my second wind and bounding onto the third level like Rocky running up the steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I imagine I’m like Dad tucking the football into his elbow and leaping over a bunch of defensive backs to run forty yards to the end zone in the AFC playoffs.
“We’ll come back one day,” Mom whispers. “I promise.”
I hadn’t even noticed her take the seat next to me. Running fantasies almost always leave me oblivious. Especially ones that lead to thinking about Dad. The only time I’m less aware of the world around me is when I’m actually running.
I blink up at her, envying her beautiful green eyes that look so much more striking against our chestnut hair than my brown ones. Her eyes are glowing more than ever and I know it’s because of Damian.