The Geography of You and Me(32)

“I heard there are only five or six hours of daylight in the winter,” Mom said, looking miserable. “They might as well be sending us to Siberia.”

“It won’t be as bad as all that,” Dad had told her, but Lucy could tell from the set of his mouth that he was only trying to make the best of it. She’d overheard them arguing after he lost out on the position in London. As a consolation prize, they’d offered him some big job in the Edinburgh office, and he’d accepted out of an odd sense of duty, as well as the hope that it might soon lead to better things.

“Scotland?” Mom kept repeating as if she couldn’t quite believe it, and Lucy tried hard not to laugh at her accent, which had grown softer after all these years in New York, but which was now suddenly as crisp and precise as if she were speaking to the Queen.

“I’ve heard it’s nice,” Dad said weakly, and Mom wrinkled her nose.

“I went once when I was Lucy’s age.”

“And?” he asked, looking hopeful.

“And the whole city smelled like stew.”

“Stew?”

“Stew,” Mom confirmed.

Now that they were here, Lucy could sort of see what she meant. There was definitely something heavy in the air, something vaguely soupy, but she only ever caught a whiff of it from time to time, when the winds shifted and the scent of the North Sea—full of salt and brine—drifted inland. She didn’t mind it, though. And she didn’t mind the darkness, either. Just as sunshine and clear skies suited beach towns, the constant rain and perpetual clouds suited Edinburgh, with its stone buildings and churches, its uneven cobblestone streets and the enormous castle that sat high above it all. There was something utterly romantic about it, as if you’d fallen straight into a fairy tale.

Once she reached Princes Street, Lucy waited for the bus beneath the gaze of the castle, a fortress of stone perched on a cliff above the gardens that separated the old section of the city from the new one. When the bus arrived, she was lucky to find a seat, shouldering in between two women in woolly jackets who proceeded to talk around her in nearly indecipherable accents. On her first day, Lucy had brought along her old copy of The Catcher in the Rye, clinging to that small piece of New York as she rode through the unfamiliar city. But halfway there, she lowered it to watch the buildings whip past the windows, and she’d hadn’t picked it up since. There was too much to see.

Her school was all the way across town, tucked just behind a huge rounded hill that rose between the city and the sea. The sun had climbed higher now, pushing through the fog so that the world had turned from gray to gold, and when the bus hissed to a stop across the street from the school, Lucy climbed off behind a cluster of younger students, all of them chattering away as they hurried through the gate.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting when she first arrived. She’d been kidding about the kilts and bagpipes in her e-mail to Owen, but there was still a little part of her that half-expected to be greeted by a bunch of red-bearded, plaid-wearing, whiskey-swigging classmates. As it turned out, though, Scottish schools weren’t all that different from American ones—at least not in any of the ways that were important. The uniforms were worse—knee-length skirts and boxy blazers—and the accents of her teachers forced her to pay close attention, straining to find something recognizable inside all those rolling r’s and twisted vowels. But the students were pretty much the same. The boys played rugby instead of football, and everyone talked about sneaking their parents’ whiskey instead of their parents’ beer on the weekends, but these were all small things.

The only real difference—the only big difference—was Lucy herself.

She realized it on the very first day, when she managed to get lost. The headmaster had walked her to registration and left her with a faint photocopy of a school map, which she’d promptly misplaced. So after the bell rang for first period and the halls emptied out with impossible speed, she was left standing there with no clue where to go and no one to ask for help. It wasn’t until she wandered around the corner that she found someone.

He was standing at his locker, leisurely reaching for his books, in no particular hurry despite the empty halls, and Lucy knew right away that she would have absolutely avoided someone like him back home. He was tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and an angular jaw, too handsome to seem approachable. But it was more than that. There was something completely effortless about him, a casual confidence that was unnerving, even from a distance, even without having met him yet.

He was the type of guy who couldn’t ever be invisible, even if he tried.

“Hey,” she said, walking up to him. “Can you help me find my math class?”

He turned to face her, his mouth twisted up at the corners. “Maths,” he said, drawing out the s.

“Math,” Lucy repeated with a frown. “It’s not my best subject, but I’m pretty sure I know the difference between one and two.”

This time, he laughed. “Here we call it maths,” he told her, reaching for the schedule in her hand and scanning the page. “And you’re on the wrong floor.”

“Ah,” she said, her cheeks burning. “Thanks.”

“No bother,” he said, clearly amused, then shut his locker door. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe in histories. Or sciences.”