“Going rogue,” said Azra.
“Yes!” I hoped Dash didn’t drop out of Oxford. If I visited him there, I could hang out with Azra, too. Dash could learn to like her and her boyfriend. He didn’t even like Christmas when he met me. Now he’s practically obsessed with it.
Her phone buzzed with a text message. “It’s getting late and my parents want me to come home. Maybe I’ll see you at the next Daunt event?”
“For sure!” I said. “What’s your number?” She typed her phone number into my phone and called it, so we’d each have the other’s number on our phones.
“Do you think our boyfriends will like us being friends?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Probably not! They’re so competitive.”
“Should we, like, girl-power fist-bump or something now?”
“Absolutely not. See you again soon, I hope.”
Azra left. I sat alone in my pub chair by the fire, completely content. It wasn’t just that I’d made a new friend. It was that I’d had an adventure, in a foreign country, on my own, with none of my family present. If sometimes I worried that Dash was suffering from depression, I realized that what I was suffering from was suffocation. From my family. I thought I came to England to be with Dash, but maybe why I really came here was to be away from them. To find my own way.
I knew I’d better get home to Mark and Julia’s before he called Interpol to look for me, or to see how they were holding up with Morrissey. But I had one more Daunt task to complete.
I took out the Daunt notebook from my bag and wrote.
Dear Father Christmas,
Please let Dash be okay, wherever he is. Please let him know how much I love him.
Love and sticky toffee pudding,
Lily
PS—I’d also love a BritRail pass, and more time to explore England.
PPS—You seem slimmer and less jolly than American Santa. Perhaps you’re not getting enough cookies from the Eurokids?
I finished writing and then tossed the letter into the fire.
six
December 21st
Even if the voice was unfamiliar, when the figure emerged from the darkness, his face was at least semi-familiar. His hair was messy, his nose ring the kind that bulls in cartoons wore, creating a perverse gold smile beneath his nostrils.
When he saw me, he laughed. Then he exclaimed, “As I live and breathe, it’s Salinger! I’ve found Salinger!”
Now I knew why he looked at least semi-familiar: He was in my literature seminar. But I couldn’t remember him having ever said a word. Including his name.
He took my inability to respond in stride.
“Oi,” he said. “What a right idiot I am. Name’s Robbie. But since I acquired that name for all the wrong reasons, you can call me Sir Ian instead.”
It was already enough to have my solitary moment of extreme self-doubt paraded into. If he was only going to tease me, I would find another park within which to break down.
“Sir Ian? Seriously?” I spat out.
Sir Ian was unflapped. “Hardly. You should call me Sir Ian, but not out of seriousness. You’re the one dressed like a toff, so I feel I should at least have the benefit of a knighthood if we’re going to rail against life’s meaninglessness.”
I felt the need to clarify. “I wasn’t railing against life’s meaninglessness just now. I was railing against my own meaninglessness.”
“Noted. And if you note it as well, it will be duly noted.”
Again, I couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of me or showing me he was on my side. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m out for a walk, trying to reacquaint myself with unbastardized trees. Which you might have figured from the fact that I’m wearing the clothes that people of our generation usually wear when they go to take a walk. Yourself, however … ?”
I had to grant him the fact that my ensemble required some explanation. “I was at a literary scavenger hunt that started at Daunt,” I told him. “Our first stop was the Keats House. It ended up being my last stop as well.”
This got an approving look from Sir Ian. “Took your eyes off the prize, did you? Keep up that behavior and you’ll never be an Oxford don.”
“I think at this point Keats has a better chance of becoming a don. I didn’t just take my eyes off the prize—I jettisoned my team as well, which contained two people I love and one I would gladly leave to the hounds, had I the chance.”
Of course, the moment I invoked Mark, I imagined him smirking at my abrupt departure, telling Lily I was no match for a literary escapade and therefore had won her heart under the falsest of pretenses.
I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory—
“Let’s continue to walk.” Without waiting for a reply, Sir Ian plunged farther into the haphazard copses. I kept step, and he continued to ramble as we rambled. “Historically, when two men, at least one of them avowedly homosexual, meet in the moonlight within Hampstead Heath, it is not for a reasoned discussion of their failures. But I sense if anything’s going to speak its name between us, it’s precisely that. Am I mistaken?”
This was not the first time that my amiability to same-sex congress had been thus polled. Which was, at least, what I assumed was happening. To make sure, I said, “Translation—you’re gay, you thought this might turn into a hookup, but you’re realizing we’re instead going to dive together into the pit of despair?”
Sir Ian nodded. “Something along those lines. Although once I realized it was you, I sensed that carnal assemblage was not an endeavor we were going to pursue. Word of your girlfriend’s Advent calendar spread among the classes; mostly it was spoken of disparagingly, but I defended the act as sweet. Granted, this was largely because it reminded me of what my grandmother used to do for me and my sister when we were little, not something I’d want from a lover. But still, sweet.”
“She is sweet,” I said. “I fear I’m bringing the sour.”
Sir Ian patted me on the shoulder, as if he’d been around the block a few times whereas I had merely taken a few steps down my front staircase. “Sweet and sour are not antithetical,” he assured me. “I happen to think they complement each other nicely.”
“I get that,” I assured him back. “But I’m also no fun when I’m despairing.”
“I think that’s healthy.”
“You do?”
“Well, it’s far better than thinking you are fun when you’re despairing. Those are the people to watch out for. You can revel against despair, but you should try not to revel within it.”
“True,” I said.
We came to a bend in the path and veered leftward. Sir Ian seemed to know where he was going. After a minute or so of nighttime silence, he said, “May I ask how you’re feeling now?”
The walking was helping. I didn’t feel as closed in. And maybe talking to someone other than myself or the trees was helping as well.
“I’m more than marginally calmer,” I reported.
“Excellent.”
“And how are you feeling?”