I sleep through my alarm, hitting snooze three times before it makes me so mad I toss my phone onto the empty bed, and then I have to get up to turn it off, and my feet are freezing even in both pairs of socks I’ve got on. The blue cinder block walls even look cold. I remember where I am.
It’s nearly six. Beard said six for dinner? Right? I never asked him where the dining hall is. I’m not hungry. But I pull on a few more layers and take my room key. Because I am here. So I should be here. Act like it.
Down the stairwell and through the empty lobby, I follow sounds of voices and find the dining hall, which looks a lot like SF State’s campus cafeteria: round tables and people holding plates before a buffet of metal food trays. Dreadlocked white guys are in the kitchen, pulling pans from ovens, opening giant cans of fruit. I pick up a plate and put some lettuce on it. Cottage cheese, carrots. Hard-boiled egg. I pour a cup of hot water for tea.
“Scott!” Beard is at a crowded table. He waves me over and makes room beside him. “Charlotte,” he calls across the table to a really beautiful woman talking to another shaggy guy. “This is your assistant, Scott!”
Charlotte rises from her chair to smile and reach her hand out to mine. She’s maybe in her late twenties. Her hair falls in ringlets around her face, held back with a clip. She’s the only woman at the table. The only black person in the room. “Harper, right? Ooh, like To Kill a—”
“No.”
“Harper Scott,” Beard Ben says, nodding.
“Yeah, Ben,” she says. “We get it. Harper, I’m so glad you made it! How was the trip? Is your mom okay?”
I nod. “She will be.”
“Have you called her?” I shake my head. “Come to my office after dinner. Call her so she doesn’t worry or she’ll never forgive me.”
“You know her mom?” Ben asks.
“Harper, this is everyone….” Charlotte railroads Ben as she introduces me to the five other guys at our table, mostly scientists, some support staff, all of whom Charlotte says I’ll only see at meals because “I’m going to keep you busy every minute—you okay with that?”
I nod.
“So, Harper, your mom is…?”
“Ben, I swear to God,” Charlotte huffs. “Ellen! Ellen Scott, San Francisco, my thesis advisor?”
“Okay, but Ellen’s never been here?”
Charlotte rolls her eyes. “No.”
“So you’re studying marine biology?” Ben asks through a maw of ice he’s chewing like a handful of peanuts.
“No, I’m just…” I look to Charlotte.
“Oh,” he says. “Micro, not marine?”
I stir my tea. I’m here now. The plane’s gone—they can’t make me leave for faking science credentials. I don’t think.
Charlotte squeezes a lemon wedge into a bowl of yogurt. “Harper is the third high school student. She’s my research grant assistant.”
“You already have an assistant.”
“Yes. And now I have two.” She gives him an it’s-none-of-your-business look.
I like Charlotte.
She leans toward me. “Vivian arrived on last week’s flight and immediately caught a wretched cold. You’ll meet her once she’s out of quarantine. She’s really smart. You’ll like her. Not sure who’s got the third—we’ll have to investigate so the three of you can commit all your rascally teen antics!”
“Okay.” Ben leans back. Eyeballs me. “So what was it, Scott? Someone die? Guy break up with you?”
“Ben.”
“What?”
Charlotte full-on glares at him.
“Whatever.” He shrugs. “You want to spend all winter babysitting, that’s your deal. Have fun.”
Charlotte hucks her lemon rind and clocks the side of Ben’s head.
“What the hell!” he chokes.
Charlotte turns to me. “Harper, you’ll need to learn to ignore Ben, and the other jealous members of his ilk.”
“My ilk? Listen, there is no jealousy,” Ben drawls. “I’m simply stating the fact that if a Scott, a kid not even studying science, is here in the capacity of a ‘research assistant’ when, like, hundreds of actual science students would kill for the opportunity, it is one hundred percent because you snuck in, and (a) you had some life-altering tragedy you think coming here will fix, or (b) some dude dumped you and you’re on an Eat, Pray, Love journey or some shit.”
The table is silent. There is a very strong whirlpool in my teacup. Charlotte reaches over and stops my stirring.
“Harper,” she says, “if you’ve had enough of people referring to you in the pronoun sense and projecting their own life failures onto you, would you like to finish up and come with me to call your mom?”
Charlotte stands. I do, too, and we push in our chairs.
“Gentlemen,” she says. “Ben.” I follow her to the tray drop and out of the dining hall.
“Sorry about that,” she sighs. She unlocks a door and holds it open for me. “Your plane was the last one. No more on or off The Ice until September. As of today, we’re completely cut off from the rest of the world, which Ben should be used to by now—this is his third winter.” She moves some papers off an office chair, sits me in it, switches a desk lamp on, and leans against her desk, which is piled with papers and files and a million ballpoint pens and highlighters. “Things close in; guys especially get territorial. It’s a sausage fest.”
I nod. “You really already have an assistant?”
“Harper. You’re a Scott. They’re going to be jealous, and they can screw off. You’ve got just as much right to be here as anyone. What I need your help with isn’t dependent on some intense science-based education. I’m writing grants, too. I need data entry, organizing, nuts and bolts. Without the grants, I can’t do the research. Okay?”
“You don’t feel stuck babysitting?”
“Seriously, don’t listen to a word that guy says.”
“But it’s true. I lied! I’m not into science—or research or anything!”
“People beg, borrow, and steal to get here; add lying to the pile. There were two legit science spots. You took nothing from anyone, and I need your help. Your stipend is less than theirs if that makes you feel any better.”
“Really?”
“Yes! By fifty cents an hour, so cheer up! I love your mom so much. I can’t believe she let you come.”
“She wasn’t thrilled.”
Charlotte nods. “Winter isn’t easy. Doesn’t matter. You’ll be brilliant. Might be just what you need.”
My heart jacks up. “What did she tell you? Because I’m fine!”
“No one said anything to anyone, I swear. It was last-minute and not about science, so a person may naturally be curious—especially a scientist.” She smiles. “But I’m telling you: all that matters is you’re here and I need your help. That’s all I want to know. This is the very last part of my thesis before I submit. I need you.”
I nod. “Thank you. So much.”
She’s got aqua-blue crystals dangling from her ears, delicate birds tattooed on her small, bare shoulders. She is San Francisco incarnate: batik blouse, jeans, silver rings on nearly every finger; the clip in her curls is beaded, one a person could find for sale on a serape-covered folding table on Market Street.
“Where in San Francisco are you from?” I’m going to get wild and guess the Mission. Or the Haight. The cool neighborhoods.
“Outer Sunset. Forty-Fifth and Judah.”
I smile, but my heart twists. I can see Forty-Fifth Avenue, the Sunset’s wide streets, rolling gentle hills leading straight into the ocean, so beautiful it inspires poetry.
At the end of our streets is sunset; At the end of our streets the stars.
“Your mom let me build my own degree. It’s taken me forever, but I’m nearly done—I’ll be the first master of science in eco-marine biology the school’s ever matriculated.”
“Wow.”
“Will you go to State? What do you think you’ll major in?”
“I have no idea.” Understatement of the century.
“Plenty of time for that. You’re in the perfect place to think about it.” She stands. “How do you feel about snowmobiles?”
“Um. Pretty neutral? I guess?”
“Because Vivian’s not going to be well enough yet, and I’ve got to get some data I’m missing before the ice shifts. We can reach the rookery in forty-five minutes, and it may be your last chance to see it, so I say we go. You in?”
“Rookery?”
“Penguins! Weather’s supposed to be gorgeous tomorrow, low thirties at least. Jet lag hates fresh air and sunshine, right? After your safety training, we’ll get your gear and be back before noon.”
She moves a phone to the center of her desk, writes the number for an outside international call on a Post-it, and moves to leave me alone in her tiny office.
“Charlotte?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s good I came here. Right?”
She smiles from the door. “You’ll know when winter’s over. But I can tell you right now yes. You’ll see.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell your mom I said hi. And try to stay up late-ish to get on a regular schedule….Ooh, wait, perfect! It’s movie night—did they tell you?”
I shake my head.
“Movie, in bed by ten, you’ll be raring to go tomorrow.” She glances at her watch. “Starts in half an hour. First floor, second room right after the kitchen. Follow the popcorn. It’s special, to celebrate Last Plane Out. We used to watch The Thing, except last winter one of the guys found a hundred thousand microbial fossils in the ice, which is basically the plot of that one, so…”
“So what are we watching instead?”
She closes the door nearly all the way and sticks her head through to whisper, “The Shining,” then shuts it quietly behind her.
I’m pretty sure she’s not kidding.
She wasn’t. The freaking Shining. These people are insane; they laughed all through it. So then I dreamed of creepy elevator twins and didn’t sleep. Jet lag is winning.
But I’m up at six, my bags are at my door (pajamas!), and I take a shower. The bathrooms are also dorm-like, rows of sinks and showers. I take my shampoo and loofah in a plastic caddy, and the first lesson I’m learning from The Ice is what a horrible water-waster I am. Antarctica is a geographic desert. McMurdo is a self-sustaining town alone in the world, so any water we’ve got is all we’ve got. My dearly beloved twenty-minute shower (Yes, shameful. Especially in drought-plagued California. Lesson #1: Learned. Antarctica is making me a better person already) has been reduced to five of bliss, which isn’t long enough to rinse the shampoo from my heavy hair, let alone shave my legs.
But who cares because I’m not wearing tights today. Anymore.
“Harper!” Charlotte’s cheerful voice and shave-and-a-haircut knock come through my dorm door.
She’s in her red parka, tall boots, ski pants. “Ready for an adventure?”
The small McMurdo winter population also means there’s no line for food. We just walk up and grab some toast and juice, and we’re headed to Ben, the glorified hall monitor.
“Hey,” Charlotte says to him. “Can you call fire and tell them we need a radio after safety?”
Ben is watching CNN on a tiny TV in his office by the building’s entry door. “Uh, I don’t know. Can you call them yourself?”
“Stop showing off for Harper. Tell them we’ll be there before lunch.” She turns to me. “Ready?”
Ben lazily dials some numbers. “And where am I to tell them you ladies will be off to?”
Charlotte pulls a ski mask over her head and helps me do the same. “Cape Royds.”
“What?”
“The rookery. Don’t have a hissy fit—can you just call, please?”
He sits there, seething, pissed at me. I have so much secret Antarctica Code to learn.
“Rookery, my ass.” He mumbles something into the phone and pushes his knit cap off his nearly bald head.
“Excuse me,” Charlotte says. “What was that?” Ben covers the receiver with his hand, overenunciates in a hoarse whisper.
“I said It. Is. Bullshit. This is my third winter. I haven’t been to Royds once, and you’re taking her? Pays to be royalty, I guess.”
Royalty? Huh.
Charlotte heaves a huge sigh. “You know what, Ben? It also pays to not be a douche bag.” She takes the receiver from his hand and hangs it up with a dramatic slam, way more satisfying than tapping the face of an iPhone. “I’ll go myself.” Then to me, “Ready, Your Highness?”
She leans her shoulder against the heavy door, and an icy blast of wind pours pain right back into my head. I will never get used to this.
She shouts, smiling into the cold, “You okay?”
I nod.
Charlotte is helping with this training, ten of us learning basic survival skills, should we become separated or lost on The Ice. Information I’m pretty certain I will never use, because I swear to God, I am never leaving the building again until September.
The sun is high and cold, casting short blue shadows on The Ice and mud between the corrugated metal of McMurdo’s buildings. The group is laughing, loud volleys of talk echoing in the incredibly clean air. I’m a little light-headed, partly from exhaustion but maybe also from each absolutely fresh, cold breath I draw. Even with tractors and trucks nearby and all these buildings, this air is so remarkably pure it hurts.
A guy instructor joins Charlotte, and the rest of us are schooled about not falling to our deaths in deep ice crevasses, paying attention to black flags and orange cones, and always getting a radio if we’re leaving the station. And then they blindfold us. We must learn to find home as if in an ice storm with no rope. Desert ice storms aren’t about snow falling from the sky; they are about insane winds whipping across the empty, endless white, pulling up ice and sending it, burning, into a person’s eyes. So with bandannas tied on our faces, one by one we flail our way to the small supply shed. Everyone makes it—except me. I am lost. Oh, the irony.
I can’t go with Charlotte until I succeed, though, and so I try a second and third time and at last I stumble into the corner of the shed, and they ring a brass bell, celebrating that I did not wander aimlessly to my frozen death. Charlotte is thrilled.
“Class dismissed!” she calls through her ski mask and hood. “Equipment back in storage, and, Harper, let’s go!”
I follow her back to the dining hall, where we grab carrot and cheese sticks and Charlotte eats a dinner roll. We drink black tea and jump around a little, warming our hands. She retrieves a backpack from her office, and, ignoring Ben’s glare, we march back out into the cold.
At the fire station, Charlotte collects a radio transmitter from a guy in charge, she signs me out, and we hike a few yards to an open shed housing a row of snowmobiles. “Hang on tight, and we’ll be there in no time,” she promises. “Ready?”
We speed along the ice and snow away from McMurdo, around black crevasse flags, toward the sun. I turn my head against the back of her red parka and see, for the first time, the full height of Observation Hill, a long-dead volcano that is black and tall in the pale sky behind the station buildings. We are flying straight into the white, the ocean beside us our only landmark. I close my eyes. My heart races. Simone would be so furious if she could see this happening.
You’ll break both legs! You’ll break your back! You’ll never dance again!
I open my eyes.
“You okay?” I barely hear Charlotte’s voice sail past me.
“Yes!” I yell.
“Want to piss Ben off?”
I nod vigorously against her shoulder.
She steers the snowmobile inland around a stony rise in the ice to the front of a wooden building.
Shackleton’s Hut. I know this because he’d wanted to use Scott’s Hut at McMurdo Sound for an expedition, but Scott wouldn’t let him. So Shackleton built his own here. Pissing match. In the snow. Dudes.
It’s got a peaked roof and a stovepipe, a couple of windows. Piled behind the hut are big crates of random stuff covered with waxed canvas. Charlotte slows to a stop. We dismount and I stand in numb silence for a moment while the snowmobile engine sound is swallowed by the ocean’s roar and freezing-cold stillness. My legs are cramping.
“This is my very favorite time of year.” Charlotte stretches her arms across her chest. “Tourists are gone. Sun’s still up. You did so great. Are you freezing?”
“Little bit.”
“Jump around. Keep your blood moving. You’ll love this.”
The door is closed but unlocked. Inside it is 1908.
Shelves of tinned meats. Stiff clothes hanging from rafters, beds and blankets, antique research equipment on a wooden table beneath a snow-grimy window. We step into the center of this time capsule, virtually unchanged since the last of Shackleton’s crew took refuge here, restocking their supplies to live long enough to make it off The Ice.
“Ben’s an Amundsen,” Charlotte says.
“He is?”
“Oh, sorry, no—not like you—he’s a Peter Pan living for himself with no responsibilities who spends his entire off-season life traveling. I meant that everyone on The Ice is either an Amundsen, a Scott, or a Shackleton. They align themselves—Amundsens are typically the jocks, nonscientists like Ben who act like idiots and jump naked into The Ice to prove…whatever frozen balls proves. They all whine about how unfair it is that Amundsen won; he got to the pole first, but Scott gets all the attention because he’s the martyr. And Shackleton didn’t even get to the pole and yet he’s the hero. Why do they get all the reward even though they lost? Like exploring Antarctica is a game. How is freezing to death a reward? It’s so stupid.”
Ballet is perfection of an art. It is not a competition.
Except when it is.
“All the scientists are Scotts, of course,” she says. “So people are jealous you’re an actual Scott. Ben’s jealous you’re here today because two summers and his third winter and he’s never been to any of the huts, none of the graves—not the pole. Which is where everyone wants to go. Right?”
I shrug.
“Well, Ben wants to. And here, too. Scott’s Hut is right behind the fire station—it’s like three hundred yards, and he won’t step into it. Idiot.”
“Why hasn’t he been anywhere?”
“Nobody wants to take him! Getting to the pole is something every scientist, every explorer on the planet wants to do, let alone some random jerk who just wants to ‘win.’ But unless you’ve got an assignment or a job at the South Pole Station, or you’re support staff and there’s a last-minute available spot and you’ve got a scientist willing to take you with—I mean, I could take him.”
“No chance?”
“None in hell. The day I met that guy three winters ago, within the hour I arrived, he told me how great it was that affirmative action had reached The Ice.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Yeah. The Ice is white.”
Ballet is, too. Most tights and leotards are made for white skin; people have to dye them to match darker skin tones. And those same nonwhite dancers are constantly rejected on the basis of “wrong body type.”
I am ashamed by proxy.
“What did—what do you say to shit like that?”
“Nothing. He said it right after I’d turned down his drunken offer to escort me to his room.”
“Classy.”
“He’ll never get to the pole. His own fault.”
“Have you been?”
She smiles. “Very best day of my life. True South.” She steps to a window, gazing love-struck toward the pole for a long while, then back to the hut. “Look at these blankets. Folded! I don’t think they’ve been touched. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Maybe it’s the jet lag or the cold, but in this moment, it really is. Beautiful. Sacred? Like being in a church. Like in the ballet studio before class…alone, waiting. The floors are wood—rough—but it’s such a big open space, except for Shackleton’s small bedroom. High ceilings. Push these beds and tables against the walls and it would be perfect for a balls-out series of grand jetés across the floor.
I shut my eyes.
“Scott was kind of mean to Shackleton,” Charlotte says quietly, studying a pair of laced leather boots. “They were on The Ice together once, Shack got sick, Scott kicked him off the crew, sent him home. He was jealous the men trusted Shack more. Natural leader…Why am I telling you? You know all this.”
Not all of it. The light through the windows bathes the hut, and its perfectly preserved hundred-year-old contents glow.
There are unlit lamps that are fed, Charlotte says, by a carbide acetylene generator above the door. I have no idea what that means. Except that Shackleton was clearly very smart.
“You’re a reluctant Scott? Right?” I say.
She tips her head to the beams in the peaked ceiling. No dust. No cobwebs. “Yeah,” she says. “In my heart of hearts…I like to think I’ve got some Shackleton in me. I think everyone wishes that. ‘For scientific research, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’ ”
She’s paraphrasing Sir Raymond Priestly, a geologist who narrowly escaped dying with my Scott.
I love the light in this room; it is quiet, electric, waiting alive-ness.
“All right!” Charlotte says, breaking the spell. “Penguins.”
We step out into the ice air, and the wind is carrying sounds, like floating to the surface of water, waves against the ice and rocks. Wind. Long, low voices and higher, shorter calls. Charlotte grabs her pack, and we walk toward the Ross Sea.
Thousands of smooth little black-and-white penguins. And their eyes—
“Blue eyes?” I whisper.
“Black,” Charlotte says quietly. “The white ring just makes them look blue.”
They’re maybe two feet tall and smaller, milling around, climbing rocks, and calling out to one another. Tuxedoed little kids playing in the snow.
“Adélies!” Charlotte sighs from inside her fur-lined hood.
I’ve never had any kind of affinity for penguins, despite Mom’s love of all things Antarctica. The walls of our San Francisco house are full of paintings and photographs of whales and seals and penguins. But now here, so close, there is a rising lump in my chest.
“This is the end of breeding season,” Charlotte whispers. “And tourist season, thank God, so I can get in there without a bunch of random people standing around, freaking them out. Those piles of little rocks…” She points to clusters of smooth gray stones among the black crags. “Nests. Two eggs at a time, parents take turns feeding in the water. The babies have nearly all finished their molts, but there may still be a few….”
Oh my God. There is a cluster of parents and babies, chicks in various stages of maturity, not twenty yards from us. Miniature white-chested, red-beaked babies hang with the grown-ups, and there is a tiny, fuzzy gray-flocked angel; its head is smooth, his body a pouf with legs. It waddle-runs to a parent, who bends its head to the baby’s, and they have a conversation about something.
There’s a makeshift wire wall contraption set up in the rocks, just a two-foot section with a gap in the middle. The penguins investigate it, walk through the space, and then ignore it.
“That’s a scale,” Charlotte murmurs as she unloads her pack. “It sends aggregate stats for the whole group back to the station. They don’t know we’re going to put them all on Atkins. Little fatties.” She’s got ziplock bags of test tubes, lidded petri dishes, tweezers, some superlong Q-tip things. She pulls off her mittens, snaps on a pair of latex gloves, unfolds a small blue tarp, and arranges it all in rows. “We’ve tagged a bunch of them. I need some samples of poop and maybe a feather or two if I can get them before my hands freeze. They’re very curious. Just stay still and quiet and wait; they may decide to investigate you.”
I forget to be cold, to be anything but still and quiet. You know those coffee table books of photography, and there are images of places on Earth and animals, and they don’t seem real, like it’s all Photoshopped marvelous? This is real. These breathing, moving…I am never this touchy-feely, but…souls? They live here; this is their home, these black rocks and white ice, this dark, undulating sea beneath the upturned bowl of intense blue sky.
I can barely breathe. My heart hurts more than my head.
Charlotte walks carefully toward, then into, the group. She turns and beckons me forward, but I can’t move. Her red parka and giant snow boots move carefully among the flightless birds. They regroup and follow her, ignore her and talk to her. They are not afraid.
She kneels in the midst of them all, holds one on her knees for a moment, looks at its tag, swabs its foot and its beak, and lets it scuttle away to shake its feathers and head, annoyed, but still it likes her being here—you can tell. Charlotte collects some poo, watches the babies run around and slip on the icy rocks. She scoops a bit of sand into a bag. Makes notes on a folded paper.
And then one of them leaves the group. He…she…who knows? He is walking toward me. I don’t blink. I don’t breathe.
He is an adult. His body is sleek and shines in reflected-snow light. The ring of white feathers around his seeming ice-blue eyes makes them brighter in his perfect black face. He stretches his neck to the sky, unfolds his wings, and levels his gaze at me. His family calls to him, someone in the group does, and he turns and runs to them. He stops and looks over his shoulder at me, then rushes back into the rookery’s warm embrace.
I exhale. My face burns. Tears are frozen there, and they hurt.
Charlotte makes her cautious way back to me as the colony separates and swims around her retreating form.
“What do you think?” She smiles, stashing the samples and notes in her pack. We stand and watch the Adélies together.
“They’re leaving in a few weeks,” she says, her face lit by the pulsing sun. “The babies will finish molting, winter comes, and they migrate all together.”
“Like emperors?” I can’t imagine these sweet birds, the dads huddled together in the freezing inland wind, balancing their egg-bound babies on their feet while the poor females make the icy trek to the ocean. I’ve seen March of the Penguins. Those guys are nuts.
“No, not at all,” she murmurs, still intent on the rookery antics. “Adélies follow the sun. When it sets for winter, the Ross Sea freezes, the continent size nearly doubles. They walk with the ice as it forms, hundreds of miles, to always be at the water to feed. They walk straight into the horizon, following the sun so they’ve always got this sliver of a glow in their sight. Then, when winter’s over and the sun rises, the pack ice melts and they stay on the shore and let the sun bring them right back to the rookery. It’s magical. I love them so much. Follow the sun and you’ll always be where you’re meant to be.”
She pulls her mittens back on. “You still okay?”
I nod.
“Harper, you need to live this place for all it’s worth. Do you understand? Every moment you’re here, you need to be a lover of life. You need to think like a scientist.”
“Like—think in questions?”
“Yes! Turn what you think you know over and over. See what’s underneath. Let yourself be surprised.”
“All I ever am is surprised.”
She puts her mittened hands on the sides of my hood. “Okay, then remember: ‘Science is nothing but perception’—that’s Plato. He was all about getting out of the cave, seeing life from a new angle, in a new light, letting things move all they want. The ice we’re standing on is shifting as we speak. We’re not where we were five minutes ago. Be here while you’re here. Understand?”
I imagine Earth in space, Antarctica at the very bottom of the axis. Gravity is holding us as we walk upside down, keeping the blood from rushing to our heads, the ocean safely at the shore. If there ever was a place to see things from a new perspective…
The Adélies are hushed, their faces turned up to the sun.
“I understand,” I tell Charlotte. “I do. I will.”
We return the snowmobile, give back our radios, and fight the wind to pull open the station door—dark and unfathomably cold. There’s another guy at Ben’s desk to sign us in to the dorm, thank God.
“I’m going to shower and hit the hay. You all right?” Charlotte says from inside her parka, already halfway up the stairs with her pack full of data. She calls over her shoulder, “See you at eight, bright and early! Meet me at my office then or at seven-thirty for breakfast. Sleep well!”
There are voices from the dining hall, and at once I’m hungrier than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life. I pull off my parka and mittens and grab a plate.
There are mashed potatoes. Dehydrated, probably, but still. Soup and corn bread and green beans, cheese and butter—it all looks amazing, and my stomach tightens. I fill my plate with salad. Splurge with Parmesan cheese. An apple for dessert.
It is late. Most of the tables are empty, and I fall into a chair by myself and destroy the food. I drink hot tea. My hands finally start to tingle and warm a little. I lay my head on my arms.
“Hey,” a voice says quietly near my ear.
“I’m up,” I mumble, half asleep.
A guy in an apron…half apron, tied around his waist like people on cooking shows wear them. T-shirt, jeans.
“Hey,” he says again, and smiles. “You need one.”
He offers me a tray of cinnamon rolls.
I can’t stay here six months. I miss home so badly I could cry—what is this guy doing with cinnamon rolls? He’s just standing here, holding the tray at my face.
“I thought there’s no milk or eggs in winter. What’s in these?”
“We’ll run out for certain, but your plane brought the last of the freshies. We freeze them or use them till they’re gone. Take one.”
He’s Irish. Scottish? I’m awful—it’s one or the other, one of those accents that give legitimacy to Hollywood movie spies and lean, muscular international criminals who go around committing treason and espionage with their strong jaws and dark curls and—Are his eyes really that green?
“Go on,” he says. “You must be starved, gone all day.”
The rolls look nothing like Dad’s, but they have lots of melting frosting and they’re warm. Straight from the oven.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh, and I am. “I’d love to, but…wait, how did you know I was out all day?”
“Watched you go this morning. Are you gluten intolerant?”
“No.”
“Diabetic?”
“No.”
“Allergic to perfection?”
The cinnamon and cream cheese are killing me, they smell so good. I swallow and shake my head. “Sorry.”
He puts his hand over his heart, dejected. “Really?”
“Thanks, though.”
He takes my cold left hand in his, shakes it. “You’re Harper. Scott, yes? High school grant student? I’m the third! Astronomy. I got stuck with a Beaker who never wanted an assistant but got assigned me anyway, so I’m sort of also work study in the kitchen. Aiden.” He pulls my fingertips closer to his eyes. “Your nails are blue. Should you go to the infirmary?”
I pull my hand back, stand, and pick up my plate. “They’re always blue. I think I just need sleep.”
He blatantly takes in my bony frame. “You’re sure, then? Not just one small bite?”
I want to eat them all. I shake my head once more.
“All right,” he says. “Coming to breakfast?”
I nod. He smiles.
“I’ll save one for you.”
I drop my plate in the dirty dish tub, climb the stairs to my room, get my shower caddy, and take a seven-minute shower. Because I’m frozen and tired, and the whole shower thing is on an honor system anyway. It’s not like they’ve got timers on the showerheads. I don’t think. I need to ask Charlotte.
I pull the blackout shades over the window. I should unpack. I should also call Mom and Dad again, but I can barely lift the blankets of the unmade bed to crawl in and finally close my eyes, let alone go find Charlotte and ask to use her office phone. They’ll live. This bed is so comfortable I can’t believe it; what am I lying on here, a million kittens?
In the dark, quiet hum of the heat rushing through the pipes, I close my eyes and hear the Adélies, their bossy, barking words. I hear the crashing waves and the snowmobile’s engine skimming the ice away beneath the sun, straight into the wind all the way from the rookery. Perfect penguin feet, sleek and fuzzy bodies so graceful. Elegant. Shackleton’s cabin, just as he left it. Blankets folded. Cream cheese. Cinnamon and powdered sugar. Home.
In a drawer, the unopened letter waits patiently to be read.