I’M SURROUNDED BY shoes.
There are shiny oxfords and beige stilettos. Casual loafers and laced athletics. I guess the things you don’t have yourself are more noticeable when other folks do have them.
Passengers scramble to identify and collect their zippered clones. I wait for my own, a red Samsonite covered in sewn-on patches Pop brought me from his Walrus Gumboot world tour. It overflows with more thrifted clothes than I can wear in five weeks. And plenty of shoes, thank the stars.
I field a few disapproving glances as the crowd thins. My toes curl under, and I stare a hole through the curtain at the end of the conveyor. My phone blares Her Majesty from my back pocket and makes me jump. Heads turn as I scramble to answer it. All of my ringtones were chosen to showcase my status as Beatles Fan™. But as I stand here absorbing the side-eyes, I realize my credibility isn’t quite landing.
I answer the FaceTime call before it stops ringing. “Hey.”
Mama’s frantic face appears. If the antidepressants hadn’t dulled my ability to read auras, I’d bet hers has turned from pale pink to ink black. I concentrate for a moment. Squint my eyes. Stare hard just past her—but no. Still nothing. It’s been two days since my last dose. Might take a little longer.
“Josie Michelle Bryant!” she hollers. “You promised you’d call the minute you arrived! Flight tracker says you landed forty-six minutes ago!”
She’s louder than the ringtone. I rapid-fire the volume button down.
“Don’t have a fit, Mama. I had a slight technical difficulty.”
I pan the camera to my feet and back again. Her pencil-thin eyebrows make a V on her forehead. “Where’s your shoe?”
“Someone must’ve picked it up by accident.” I say this a little louder than necessary for the benefit of the gawkers. “I woke up on the plane and it was gone.”
I know better than to mention Foghorn Leghorn. She’ll go broke hiring a security detail to follow me if she thinks perverts are stealing my shoes.
“You’re walking around He-frow barefoot?” I hear our exchange student snicker in the background before his grinning face appears next to Mama on the screen. Though he’s standing in my country and I’m standing in his, Patrick’s accent jars me. Pop didn’t speak that way. You would’ve never known he was born in Liverpool except when he was drinking. Twenty-five years in the states all but erased it. “People are going to stare.”
I laugh. “They’re way ahead of you.”
Mom cuts in. “I find it interesting that you texted Dylan when you landed, but you couldn’t do the same for me.”
I roll my eyes so hard I see my brain. The only thing that irritates me more than Mama knowing things about me I didn’t tell her myself, is Dylan—boyfriend extraordinaire—being a suck-up.
“He called me the minute he heard from you.” Her smile borders on taunting.
Dylan likes to cover his bases. We’re both pretty sure the only reason Mama finally agreed to this trip is because she’s figured out we’ve been sleeping together, and she’s not ready to make me confess it to the church just yet. Putting an ocean between us is easier.
“I texted him but then had to look for my shoe…” I lose my train of thought as more bags disappear from the conveyor; there’s still no sign of mine. Another flight crowds in, and the carousel’s obscured. I stand on my tippy toes. “Then it took a while in customs,” I continue, searching, “and… Look, can I call you back?”
She huffs that okay-fine-whatever huff.
The background swirls and Patrick takes the phone.
“Wait, love.” I met Patrick all of twenty-four hours ago, but he already feels familiar in a way I can’t explain. “My brother is coming to meet you to ride the tube back. So you don’t get lost between stops.”
I haven’t even been gone a day, and Mama has already lost faith in me to take a train from point A to point C. I siphon a deep breath, filling my lungs with all the things I want to say. Like that I’m seventeen years old and will be off to college in a year. She can’t micromanage me then. But the jet lag is setting in. My will slips away like the empty conveyor belt. Where my luggage is supposed to be.
“Fine.” I exhale the unspoken words. “Where should I look for him?”
“I gave Henry your mobile number,” Patrick says. “He’ll text if he can’t locate you.”
I’ve only seen photos of Patrick’s bruvah, as he so eloquently pronounces it, on the Instagram page Dylan and I found. Most of Henry’s timeline was landscape photography with vague King Arthur references. Dylan settled down a little after we discovered this. The fact that the guy looked a little homeless in the one selfie on the account didn’t hurt either. Beanie, sunglasses, dingy white hoodie. Probable weirdo. Definite introvert. The antithesis of Dylan, who doesn’t own a shirt without a tiny whale on the breast pocket.
“And Jo,” Patrick adds, “he’s sort of a wanker. Keep conversation to a minimum and you’ll be just fine.” His blue eyes power up when he laughs. Lexie and Maddie, my neighbors back home, will be competing for his attention before I even leave the airport. They’ve been talking about the impending arrival of the English boy for a month.
“Wanker. Got it.” I chuckle as he hands Mama the phone. But she isn’t laughing.
Her hard expression makes her seem older than usual. I have her round face, honey blond hair, and brown eyes, but the similarity ends there. The sprigs of wrinkles beside her lashes have spiderwebbed and spread. The more she worries, the less her face cream works.
“Call me when you get to George’s.” And without ceremony, she ends the call. Before I can even say I love you.