Up Over Down Under (17 page)

Archiving.
As in, going through old press mentions and coverage of the EPA's activity under Ritter, and cataloging the material. Literally, filing it all away. And worse than the tediousness of the task (in fact, Billie wouldn't have minded so much if her whole job had to do with reading and researching the EPA) was the fact that they were dealing in hard copy.
Hard copy.
In the information age, no less. Whereas Billie truly would have thought that the EPA would opt for digital files—so much more green.

Then again, Ritter's wife did drive an SUV. So clearly Billie's instincts and impulses were 116 percent off base.

And if filing weren't soul crushing enough, there was the fact that when Billie had applied to the S.A.S.S. program, she hadn't bargained on feeling so…cooped up, spending all of her time in an office, bathed in artificial light. She wondered fleetingly how long it would take for a vitamin-D deficiency to kick in.

“We'd like to have all this filing taken care of by the end of the day,” Iris continued.

“What's the rush?” Parker chimed in. Billie bit her lip to keep from grinning at the question—really, it bordered on cheekiness. Despite what Heather had said about Parker's lingering funk of missing Eliza, he'd been letting little snatches of real personality shine through the thunder-clouds of late. It had been days since their visit to Adams Morgan, but Billie still felt wired, as though an entire carafe of coffee coursed through her veins and she was humming on a frequency only Parker could tune in to.

She wasn't sure what that meant, but she sure did like the feeling.

“The
rush
, as you say, Parker, is that we need to clear out space in our storage room. The EPA is hosting a dinner in two weeks, and we'll be assembling gift baskets and other things for the event; we'll need somewhere to put it all.” Iris raised a sharp eyebrow, as if daring Parker to retort.

“What's the dinner for?” Billie asked, almost without thinking.

“It's a fund-raiser,” Iris said, waving her hand as though she couldn't be bothered spending any more time on explanations. “Five hundred dollars a plate.”

Fiona-belle gasped at the figure, but Billie would have preferred to gag over it. She couldn't believe that Ritter's organization was going to throw a party and raise oodles of money that was then not going to be used for Proposition Seven. Not to mention the cost of the party itself, and the waste it would generate. If there was no money for Proposition Seven, wouldn't it make more sense to forgo the party and solicit donations to clean the Chesapeake Bay? Or were they all just drowning in a sticky web of red tape?

Since arriving in the United States, Billie had begun to rethink her attitude about the way that the government allocated funding for environmental issues. People paid a lot of lip service to ecological programming, but nothing ever
happened
, near as she could tell. Maybe she needed to start up a Proposition Seven newsletter, or a blog—something really to get her point across. Since that had worked so well at Fairlawn…

“Does anyone have any questions?” Iris asked. It could have been Billie's imagination, but it certainly felt as though Iris was boring down directly on her, daring her to have a question, comment, or issue with the whole situation.

Of course Billie had an issue with the situation. But she was too smart to say anything about it now.

She smiled sweetly at Iris. “Will the interns be attending the party?” She was sure that they wouldn't be, seeing as how the whole shebang was costing mucho bikkies.

Surprisingly, Iris raised her eyebrows and smiled at Billie. “Of course!” she trilled enthusiastically.

Billie's mouth opened into a little O of surprise. She quickly closed it, though she remained as gobsmacked as ever.

Iris grinned. “We'll need your help ushering the event.” She slapped her palm on the table for good measure, and turned and left the room.

That'd be right,
Billie thought. She sighed.
It's going to be a screamer of a bash.

As she sat in the taxi back to Jess's house from the formal, Eliza was grinning so widely her cheeks hurt. Her night could not have been better if she had scripted it herself. She had gone to a fabulous college party with a sweet, sexy bloke (it made her giggle to think of a guy as a “bloke”), and they had kissed under the moonlight. She didn't care if it was cheesy, romance-novel material. It was also perfect. Australia was shaping up to be better than she could have hoped. Way better.

One of the most surprising things about kissing Macca was how much she didn't think about Parker when the kissing was going on. In fact, if she was totally honest with herself, she hadn't been thinking much about Parker on this trip at all. Since their quick e-mail exchange a few weeks before, they'd mostly fallen out of contact, and Billie's note about hanging out with him was the closest she'd come to a proper update in a while. She was surprised that she felt a little guilty about this. In her heart of hearts, she knew that she and Parker had had different ideas about what “taking space” truly meant. But she couldn't help herself. Australia was her own personal buffet, and Macca was the dessert table.

Besides, Parker was cool, and independent, and not the kind of guy to pine away wistfully. His last e-mail was pretty upbeat, and obviously he and Billie were getting along. Maybe all he'd really needed was a new friend and a new focus for his energies in order to put their romance on hiatus the way she had…

Eliza had almost managed to convince herself of this fact as she got out of the taxi and headed for the back door that led to Jess's kitchen. Jess had said she would leave the door open so Eliza could sneak into the house and into Jess's room. The lights were on in the kitchen. She slid the door and blinds open, slipped inside…and let out a small yelp of surprise.

There, at the kitchen table, sat a very tired and anxious-looking Jess, her father, and Frank.

Perfect,
Eliza thought as she screwed up her face into an awkward smile, which she hoped conveyed the appropriate mixture of innocence and shame—something akin to a dog tucking its tail between its legs. It was clear immediately that it had little effect on her audience.

“Eliza, please come sit down,” Frank said sternly. Eliza slid into the empty fourth seat at the table. “You'll never guess what happened tonight.”

“Um…what?” Eliza didn't really want to know. She didn't like guessing games. Not one bit.

“Estelle and I were sitting down to dinner with the boys when we received a call. Do you know who that call might have been from?”

“No?” Eliza drummed her fingernails against the table, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. How could she possibly escape this situation? If only a trapdoor in the floor would hinge open and suck her down.

“It was Mr. Winstone. He was calling to say that if you couldn't work in the water because of your ankle injury, he could still use a hand cataloging the samples, and so you should come down anyway.” He cleared his throat. “That, of course, begged the question of what sort of ankle injury you had and why it was something bad enough to skip out on your internship but not so bad as to prevent you from hanging out with Jess for the evening.” He arched his eyebrows suspiciously.

“So Estelle and I were very concerned about your welfare, and we decided we should find out what happened, but you weren't answering your mobile. Naturally, we grew concerned, and I rushed to the place you told us you would be. After I got here and waited for you and Jess to return, how curious it was that only one of you came through the door.”

Eliza suddenly realized that she hadn't even thought about the fact that Mr. Winstone might call the house. Her excuse for the night was built on a very weak foundation, and someone had just kicked out one of her structure's legs. It was clear, based on Frank's expression, that he was not at all pleased with her, and that her entire life outside of class was about to change rather abruptly. A sense of impending doom crept up her spine, making her skin break out in goosebumps. But Frank wasn't finished.

“We are very disappointed in you, young lady.”

Somehow, being called “young lady” felt more scathing than being called “brat,” or maybe even a choice four-letter word. How was that even possible? Eliza wasn't the sort of girl who normally disappointed people. She was unhappy to learn that the experience left a hollow feeling at the base of her stomach.

“I think your parents would be most upset if they knew you had snuck out to a college party in the middle of the night. Furthermore, you have abused the trust and respect that Jess's father, Estelle, and I have extended to you. You have lied to us, and more importantly, you have let us down.”

Eliza felt a pang of genuine remorse. As much as she was different from the Echolses, with their 1950s
Ozzie and Harriet
sensibilities, she had grown to like them. She also wasn't used to going behind people's backs, or breaking rules. She realized that if word got back to anyone in D.C. about this, it could reflect poorly—very poorly—on her father.

Maybe if the Echolses knew what she'd snuck out for—how imperative it had been that she go to an Australian university formal—maybe then they'd be more sympathetic. They were kind, reasonable people. It could work.

“I'm sorry, I really am. I just got all caught up in everything. I really wanted to go to the formal, but I didn't know how to tell you about it. I just didn't want to miss out on such a culturally rich experience.” She risked a searching glance at her host father.

Alas, no one was buying her mea culpa. Jess was doing everything she could not to look anyone in the eye. Her dad had busied himself preparing another cup of coffee and was now leaning against the kitchen counter, stirring his mug and staring off at an undefined point in the distance.

Frank leaped in again. “You cannot, I repeat, cannot go off and do something like this without talking to us. We are responsible for looking after you on behalf of your parents and if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to you, how would we know? How would we feel? How would your parents feel? Some things are about more than you.”

Eliza flushed, guilt creeping up her spine like an actual, physical creature. She knew that some things were about more than her, of course, but couldn't this one thing—her semester abroad—be hers and only hers? Who was she really hurting, anyway, by going to a party with a boy whom she liked?

“I'm really sorry,” she repeated, having run out of other appropriate words for the occasion.

Frank frowned at her. “Well, ‘sorry' isn't going to cut it. Things are going to change now that you've shown you can't handle the level of personal responsibility we offered you. But for now, go gather your things, say good night to Jess, and apologize to her father. Then we'll be going.”

As Eliza grabbed her stuff from Jess's bedroom, Jess came in to help.

“Ouch, that was rough,” Jess said with a sympathetic smile.

“You're telling me.” Eliza shook her head in disbelief.

Jess laid a hand on Eliza's forearm. “Listen, just lay low a little bit and let them cool off. I'm sure things will work themselves out.”