Field Notes on Love(61)

He shakes his head, but one of his dimples has appeared, so she can tell he’s amused. “Which one was it? Alfie and I got up to a lot of trouble when we were little.”

“The story about you guys running away to London.”

“Right,” Hugo says, folding his arms across his chest. “That was Alfie’s idea.”

She was expecting him to laugh, but instead he looks somber.

“What?” she says, and he sighs.

“They rang me earlier, when you were doing interviews. Alfie told the others about the email from the university, and they were all planning to go plead my case tomorrow. Even George.”

“Wow,” she says, smiling at this. “That’s really cool of them.”

“I told them not to do it.”

She nods. “I figured.”

“I don’t want them to risk their own scholarships,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “And honestly, I can’t have them fight my battles. Not anymore.”

“I agree,” Mae says, looking at him carefully. “That’s why I think you should fight your own.”

“A letter won’t do anything,” he says in a tone impatient enough to signal he doesn’t want to argue with her. “I know you think this is a hangover, but it’s not. The truth is, I was drunk before. And now I’ve sobered up.”

    “Right, but—”

“It wouldn’t have worked.” He stands abruptly, leaving Mae alone in the seat. “I haven’t talked to my parents or done any research or even checked my bank account. And now the council thinks I don’t want to be there, and I’m worried Alfie and the others will still go and talk to them and screw up their own scholarships, and the whole thing is just—”

“Hugo.”

He presses his lips together, his eyes darting. “It was a stupid idea.”

“Sometimes those can be good for you,” Mae says, smiling as she thinks of Nana. But Hugo’s mouth is still a straight line. “So, what…you’re just gonna go home at the end of this?”

“Yes,” he says, sitting down again in the opposite chair. “I’m just going home at the end of this.”

They stare at each other, neither quite satisfied. A tense silence hangs between them until, finally, Hugo points to the camera.

“We’ve lost the plot a bit with this interview, haven’t we?” he asks, his voice full of effort. When she doesn’t say anything, he leans forward, drumming his hands on the little table. “Shall I ask you about something less controversial?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he says, cracking a grin. “Ex-boyfriends?”

Mae gives him a look.

“As assistant director, my job is to get the most thorough interview possible.”

“Wasn’t I supposed to be interviewing you?”

“Are you really not going to tell me?”

    “Honestly,” she says, “there’s not much to tell. I was dating someone over the summer, but it wasn’t anything serious. It wasn’t anything like—”

She stops, embarrassed. But Hugo’s face lights up so quickly and so brightly that she can’t help smiling too.

“There were a few others before that,” she continues, still distracted by the high beam of his gaze. “But none of them meant anything. I guess maybe they did at the time, but not anymore. They were just fun.”

He raises his eyebrows. “And this?”

“This is no fun at all,” she says. It’s intended as a joke, but Hugo gives her a pained look, and it takes a few seconds for the meaning to settle over Mae too.

This is no fun at all, she realizes, because it’s about to come to an end.





It was too dark to film the interview last night. By the time they finished talking, the sun had slipped behind the mountains completely, turning the square of window a deep purple.

“If I had even one proper light with me,” Mae muttered as she tried to find a good angle with the camera. But after a while, she gave up, and they spent the last hours before total darkness—as the train crawled through the barren Utah landscape—lying together in the bottom bunk and watching an Italian film called Cinema Paradiso on Mae’s phone.

“Is it sad or happy?” he asked as they settled in.

“Both,” she said, and she was right.

During the kissing montage, Hugo looked over to see that she was crying. “Are you okay?” he whispered, and she nodded.

“This is my grandmother’s favorite part.”

“Mine too,” he said, pulling her closer, and they fell asleep like that.

But now it’s morning, which means it’s time. They’ve already had breakfast, and their beds have been folded back into seats—the last time their compartment will perform this sort of magic trick—and they’re somewhere near the top of Nevada now. Everything out the window is a bright dusty-orange, a color Hugo has never seen before, with the occasional ridged mountain rising out of the dirt. The sun is still climbing, and the light—according to Mae—is now perfect.

    “Just a minute,” she says, and Hugo sits back, content to watch her work, thinking about what a lovely thing this is, to be interviewed by her. And how there will now be other, less joyful interviews ahead of him, where he’ll sit down with reporters ranging from the student newspaper to the Sunday Times and give them the uncomplicated version of himself, the one who is simply grateful for the scholarship and thrilled to be with his siblings and excited about all that’s ahead.