After Eden (17 page)

“I’m sorry I let you down,” I said. Usually the best way of handling Miranda was to fess up and apologize. Repeatedly.

“Let’s hear it,” she said.

“What?”

“Your account.”

“Ryan’s dad invited me to stay to dinner,” I said. “And then, since it was getting dark, Ryan offered to drive me home.”

“Let’s hear the rest of it.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s all there is to tell.”

Miranda shook her head. “So you didn’t spend the afternoon in Perran Park drinking vodka with your friends?”

“Oh,” I said flatly.

“Oh,” she repeated sarcastically. “Connor’s mother called me a couple of hours ago. Apparently Connor was really sick when he got home today. He confessed to his mother that he’d spent the afternoon in the park with you and your friends drinking vodka.”

“I didn’t drink vodka,” I said.

Miranda put a hand on one hip and looked me up and down. “I never thought you’d lie to me, Eden. I thought we were closer than that.”

“I had a raspberry-flavored drink. It might have had vodka in it. I only drank one.”

“According to Mrs. Penrose, Connor was concerned because he saw you staggering out of the park, barely able to walk, and he believed you were going to accept a lift home from Ryan.”

I was going to kill Connor.

“Why would you, of all people, get in a car with an underage driver who’s been drinking?”

“Ryan doesn’t drink.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

I nodded. “He doesn’t drink because he drives.”

She sighed dramatically. “Let’s talk about the car. Where did he get that from? Was it stolen?”

“It’s his dad’s. He borrowed it.”

“He borrowed it? Are you suggesting his father gave him permission to use his car?”

If I said no, Ryan had stolen it. If I said yes, Ben was irresponsible too. I couldn’t win.

“No,” I said eventually. “But he has his license back in the States.”

“Does he have his license here?”

“No. But it was just along the coast road from Perran to Penpol Cove.”

“Your parents
died
just driving along that same stretch of road. They nearly killed you too.”

I shut my eyes. We never talked about how my parents died. Or how close to dying I’d been.

“I’ve spent the last ten years trying to keep you safe from boys like him.”

I said nothing. The rest of the conversation remained unspoken, but the message was loud and clear. Miranda had tried to keep me safe. Miranda had taken care of me even though she was only twenty herself when my parents died. Miranda had abandoned her law degree and dream of
becoming a lawyer to take care of her six-year-old niece. Miranda had a string of failed relationships and no children of her own because she had sacrificed her own future so that she could take care of mine. And I had let her down.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

“I’m disappointed,” she said quietly. “I’m going to have to think about Saturday night.”

“What do you mean?” My voice shook.

“I’m not sure I can trust you to go to the ball with your friends. I’m not so old that I don’t remember what happens at the leavers’ ball. I know there’s alcohol and parties afterward.”

“I won’t drink anything,” I said. “And Megan’s parents are paying for a limo to drive us.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

I poured myself a large glass of water and went out the kitchen door into the backyard. The purple sky from earlier was now a deep, endless black, and the faint stars were turning on and slowly brightening, like a chain of fairy lights. I went over to the picnic table in the middle of the lawn and lay down on it so that the whole black canvas of night was stretched above me. Instinctively I scanned the sky for Cassiopeia, the reassuring
w
-shape that reminded me the universe was not an empty swirling mass of chaos. I scanned my eyes across the sky to Perseus and Algol, the winking star that was a sun—three suns—to Eden. Home. Ryan’s home. About to become the best-kept secret in the universe.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said a quiet voice.

Travis. I sat up on the table. He flicked open his lighter and held the flame to the end of his cigarette.

“Spectacular,” I said. “Do you know any of the constellations?”

“The Big Dipper,” he said, pointing up at the sky. “Everyone knows that one. And there’s Polaris, the North Star. That’s about it though. What about you?”

“I only know a couple. You see that
w
? That’s Cassiopeia. And that over there is Algol, the demon star.”

Travis chuckled. “Between us we know half the sky.”

“Did you know that Algol looks like one star, but actually it’s three?” I asked.

“How do you know that?” Travis inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

“Someone told me,” I said. I gazed at the sky. Sea mist was heading swiftly inland. In a few minutes the stars would be hidden from view. “I wonder if there’s anyone out there, lying in the yard and looking up at the stars and maybe looking at our sun, wondering if there’s anyone out there looking up at the sky and wondering …”

“How much did you drink?” Travis interrupted. “Or are you high?”

I giggled. “Stone-cold sober. Although from Miranda’s response you’d think I’d spent the afternoon turning tricks on Main Street so I could get my next fix.”

“Did she rip you a new one?” he asked.

I smiled. “You could say that.”

He perched himself on the seat. “She’ll calm down. She’ll let you go. I’ll speak to her.”

“I have to go. Ryan is leaving on Saturday night after the ball. He’s going home and this is my last chance to see him.”

“You really like this boy.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I like him more than I can put into words.” Somehow the darkness made it easier to say.

“He’s from New Hampshire, right?”

“Right.”

“The world is not so big, Eden. You’ll stay in touch.”

“No,” I said. “It’s complicated. I can’t explain why. But I know I’ll never see him again after Saturday.”

“Oh, Eden,” he said sadly. “I really am sorry to hear you say that.”

As I made my way down the lane to Ryan’s house with my hair caught in the branches of the sapling in my arms, I began to regret choosing a tree as my gift to Ryan. Earlier that morning it had seemed a perfect choice—something that would last as long as the distance between us. Now it just seemed designed to ensure that I looked a mess. My hair was tangled, my arms were covered in dirt, and I could feel a trickle of sweat run down my back.

“Wow, a walking forest!” Ryan laughed as I approached. “What’s this? Birnam wood approaching Dunsinane? Have you come to defeat me? To prove once and for all that you can’t escape your fate?”

“Umm, help?” I replied, attempting to untwist a length of hair from one of the branches.

The smell of lemons filled the air around me as Ryan gently untwisted my hair and took the tree from my arms.

“So what’s this all about?” he asked, a smile making his eyes twinkle.

“A gift,” I said. “The gardener at the nursery promised me that this tree will last over a hundred years and produce a healthy crop of juicy apples each year. I thought we could
plant it today and then when you get back home …” I swallowed as my words threatened to catch in my throat. “When you get home it will still be there, an old, crabby tree, full of apples. You can see what’s become of it.”

“Is it indigenous?” he said, placing the tree on the ground. He smiled up at me, a big, happy smile that contained none of the barely concealed grief behind my shaky smile.

“What do you think? Come on, let’s choose a spot.”

Now that I was no longer trapped in a splay of branches, I could see that the only car in the driveway was Ryan’s.

“They’re meeting with a lawyer in town,” he said, following my eyes. “They won’t be back for a while.”

He winked ironically, but I was used to his flirtations by now and knew they were entirely innocent.

Ryan carried the sapling over one shoulder as we strolled across their vast lawn.

“How was Miranda?” he asked.

“As expected. Disappointed in me.”

Ryan laughed.

“She didn’t have anything good to say about you either.”

“But she let you come and spend the day with me?”

“She’s at work. She doesn’t know I’m here.” I held up my phone. “And I’ve switched this off so she can’t reach me.”

Ryan got a shovel and began digging a deep hole in the middle of the lawn. His muscles bunched and lengthened as he effortlessly scooped out the earth and piled it to one side. He was just about to lower the roots of the apple tree into the hole, when I stopped him.

“Why don’t we bury something underneath the apple tree?”

“Like what? A body?”

“How about a time capsule?” I said.

“What do we put in a time capsule?”

“We did one at school once,” I said. “To celebrate one hundred years of Perran School. It’s supposed to be buried for another hundred years. We put all sorts of things in it. Headlines from newspapers, a photo of the school staff, another one of the student body. A school tie, the school newspaper.”

“So we could bury things about us,” he said. “What it’s like to be you and me in 2012.”

“A time-crossed friendship capsule,” I said. “Things that represent our friendship here in 2012.”

“Any ideas?”

“Do you have a printer?”

He nodded.

“Then let’s start with a photo.”

I held my phone at arm’s length, put my arm around Ryan’s shoulder and grinned into the camera.
Snap
.

In the kitchen, we printed out two copies of the photo—one for me to keep and one to bury in our time capsule. It was one of those lucky strikes, a quick snap in which we both looked good. My grin was crinkle-eyed and genuine, quite unlike the careful face I usually composed for a photo. Ryan was smiling at me, not the camera.

Ryan got a Tupperware container from the cupboard under the sink. “We can use this.”

I put one of the photos in it.

“What else?” he said.

I checked my jacket pocket. My fingers touched a letter I had written for Ryan the night before. I planned to give it to him the night he left.

“Have you got anything?” he asked.

I shook my head and then I felt a smaller piece of paper. “Train ticket to Plymouth.”

“Ah, the romantic train journey to Plymouth where I pulled you into the loo and showed you my credit cards.”

“Do you have anything?”

“My ticket to the Eden Project.”

“I think we should include a page from Connor’s autobiography,” I said. “If it wasn’t for that book, I wouldn’t know who you really are.”

“Too risky. We mustn’t include anything that’s from the future. How about I put in one of my sketches of you?”

He ran upstairs to get it.

My fingers closed again over the letter in my pocket. I took it out and reread it.

Dear Ryan
,

By the time you read this, I will be long dead. Although my life will be over, only a day or two will have passed for you. It’s strange to think of you out there, still young and handsome when I am dead and gone
.

Meeting you has changed my life. I hadn’t thought much about what I wanted to do, but now I know I want to do something good with my life, something that helps take care of the planet maybe
.

I wish I’d had the courage to tell you to your face how much you mean to me. But it’s so much easier to write your feelings than it is to say them. I wish you could have stayed. I know why you couldn’t. But I will never forget you
.

Thank you for three wonderful months
.

I love you
.

Eden

I wasn’t sure I would have the courage to give it to him. I’d never told anyone I loved them before. Not even in writing.

“I’m going to miss this picture of you,” Ryan was saying as he came back into the kitchen.

Impulsively I pushed the letter into the container, hiding it under the photo.

“It’s the first picture I drew of you,” he said. “Back before I knew you were the evil girl who broke poor Connor’s heart.”

I smacked him jokingly. “If you miss it that much, you can dig it up when you get back to your own time.”

We carried the container back outside.

Just as Ryan lowered the time capsule into the ground, a car came slowly up the drive. Ryan stood up straight and wiped his dirty hands on his jeans.

“That’s not Ben or Cassie,” he said squinting into the sunshine.

The car stopped and a man got out. Travis.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, strolling over to us. “Why aren’t you answering your phone, Eden?”

“I switched it off.”

“Miranda was worried about you. She asked me to go home and check you’re okay. I managed to persuade her to let you go to the ball tomorrow, but if you’re not careful she’s going to change her mind.”

“I’ll call her now.”

“You need to be more careful,” he said.

I knew he was right, but all I could think of right now was that Ryan and I had only a few hours left together.

“Um, Travis?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could tell her I’m at home? In the yard?”

“You want me to lie for you?”

“You know how she overreacts. And it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong.”

“What are you doing?” Travis peered into the hole.

“It’s a time capsule,” said Ryan.

“What’s in it?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Right. A time capsule with nothing in it.” He looked at us both. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

“So will you cover for me?”

Travis scratched his neck. “I haven’t seen you. Don’t get drunk. Don’t let him drive you anywhere. And don’t get caught.”

We waited until Travis had driven away before saying anything.

“Travis is cool,” said Ryan.

“He’s growing on me.”

Ryan covered the time capsule with dirt while I called Miranda.

She answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“In the yard.”

Technically that was true.