Chapter 3
Emma
It’s a two-hour flight from Frankfurt to Edinburgh, and half an hour before we land, I stand up to go to the toilet.
Maybe I’m obsessed, but just wiggling my toes up and down in my sneakers and jiggling my feet nervously isn’t enough.
I don’t normally have a problem with sitting still for hours at a time, but I don’t normally fly to Scotland to be the new girl at a posh boarding school.
I wonder if it’ll really be like the school’s incredibly fancy website.
Smiling girls and boys sitting on the lawn with their books or strolling across the grounds in uniform.
Super-high-tech equipment in the classrooms within ancient walls.
Community, not competition—no pressure to achieve.
Not that my old school was like that either.
Not many people cared enough about their lessons for that, but if Mum’s memories are anything to go by, Dunbridge is different.
“Dunbridge Obliges.” A weird motto, but somehow it fits my image of the school.
And Henry. He definitely seems very conscientious, but not in a teacher’s-pet kind of way.
Either way, as I walk down the plane’s central aisle, I’m planning to try to make the most of my time in Scotland.
The plane’s only aisle, in fact. On bigger planes and longer flights, you can sneak through the little galley kitchen to the other side of the seats and do a few laps. Here, there’s only the route to the toilet and back, but that’s better than nothing.
I close the door on the tiny cabin and stare at myself in the mirror while my head buzzes.
In the harsh light, my blond bobbed hair looks almost white.
I tuck a strand behind my ear and flush, even though I didn’t go.
Then I wash my hands, dry them on the stiff paper towels that reject the water rather than absorbing it, and rattle at the door.
It opens inwards with a complicated folding mechanism.
It fascinates me so much that I don’t spot Henry standing out there until it’s too late.
“Oh, hi,” he says, and his voice sounds kind of different over the noise of the plane. He’s smiling, but he looks tired, like he’s only just woken up, with slightly puffy eyes and messed-up hair peeking out under his hood.
“Sleep well?” I ask, instantly regretting it, because now he knows I was watching him.
Henry hesitates, then his smile changes.
He shrugs and steps to the side as another woman pushes past him.
I don’t understand what she says: Her English is unclear, and she’s speaking fast. When Henry answers, his English is even faster and less clear.
Suddenly, I remember again that I’m going to be living in a foreign country for the next ten months.
A foreign country that’s also kind of my home, but let’s be honest, I’ve never even been there.
You’re bilingual—your English is perfect.
Isi’s voice in my head makes my stomach lurch.
I have a British surname and a German accent because I haven’t spoken English regularly since I was a child.
When he left. I might always be top of the class in English in a German school, but any time anyone asks me why I’m so good, it’s like a punch in the guts.
“Didn’t you want to . . . ?” I ask to take my mind off my thoughts. I point to the toilet door, which the other passenger has just pulled shut.
Henry’s eyes come back to me. “No, I . . . I just want to stretch my legs a bit.”
“Oh, right.” I gulp.
“Are you nervous?”
He wants to chat, in this little kitchen at the back of a plane, and that’s fine by me. I’ve read that you have the best chance of surviving a plane crash if you’re sitting right at the back. Sitting . . . hmm. We’re standing. We’re not even strapped in. I have to stop thinking.
“No,” I say, meaning yes.
Henry nods like he knew that. “It’ll be fine,” he says. It’s unfair of him to smile like that. “Everyone’s really nice.” He turns aside slightly, hand over his mouth to cover a yawn. “Sorry . . .”
“Jetlag?” I ask, and Henry nods. Then he shakes his head.
“No, not really. There’s no major time difference.”
“Where have you been then?”
“Nairobi,” he replies. “It’s only three hours ahead. But it was a night flight.”
“Couldn’t you sleep?”
“The woman next to me had a baby in her arms, and well, it was a bit stressful.”
“What were you doing in Nairobi?” I ask, running my fingertips over the metal drawers beside me. They’re seriously cold. Henry’s eyes follow my hand, and I’m not sure if he heard my question or not. Then he tears his eyes away and looks at me again.
“Visiting my parents. They work for Médecins sans frontières.” He says it the way you say stuff you’ve said a hundred times before. Like the way I say I barely know my dad because he left when I was eleven.
“Oh, nice.”
Henry smiles. “What do your parents do?”
“My mum’s a lawyer,” I reply. Henry doesn’t ask about my dad. In the silence, I’m thanking him for that. He eyes me briefly, like he’s understood something that nobody ever gets.
“Didn’t you want her to come with you?” he asks instead.
“To the school? . . . Yeah,” I admit. “But she couldn’t. She’s in Nice for work, and the French ground crew are on strike.”
“Bummer,” he says.
“Not a problem.” I grin, but Henry’s watching me like he doesn’t believe me. “Well, maybe it’s a bit of a problem, but it can’t be helped.”
“It might be better that way—then you don’t have to say goodbye to anyone.” He leans his shoulders on the wall beside us.
“True.” I’ve never had to say that kind of goodbye to anyone.
Not even to Isi, who didn’t offer to come to the airport with me, which feels kind of weird because if she, my best friend, was going away for a year, I’d have done that for her.
But I didn’t want to get into an argument, and it was a very early flight.
“That was always the worst part for me,” Henry says. “When Mum and Dad used to drop us off at school and drive away again. The half-hour after that . . . not great. Till you move into your room and catch up with your friends and forget that you’re sad.”
I nod, even if I don’t have any friends there to meet up with. There’ll be nobody at Dunbridge Academy to meet me, and suddenly, the idea chokes me up. Maybe Henry reads my thoughts, because he goes on speaking.
“I’ll show you around when we get there. There are times when I wish I could be starting at the school all over again. Everything’s so exciting. It’s like coming home, even if you don’t know it yet.”
I have my doubts about that, and even if he’s right, I’m only staying a year. Maybe I ought to tell him so, but something inside me holds me back. Maybe I’m scared that he’d stop talking like we’re on the same team.
“I’ll show you everything,” Henry repeats.
I don’t have time to reply because one of the cabin crew comes toward us.
“Please take your seats. We’ll be coming in to land shortly.”
Henry nods. His gaze flits over me, and I follow him down the aisle back to our seats.
As the airplane descends, I start—slowly but surely—to feel the nerves. Once we touch down at the airport, I’ll be in a strange city. Then it’ll really be true. My new reality.
All the passengers are on their feet as soon as the plane parks.
People standing in the aisle cut off my view of Henry, and when I eventually get up and pull my rucksack out of the overhead locker, he’s gone.
Of course he is. What was I expecting? That he’d play babysitter and wait for me?
But then again, we’re going to the same school, and he did say he’d show me around, so it’s not unreasonable to expect him to hang about—or is it?
I walk through the plane to the front, making a mental to-do list. It’s super easy. Walk to the luggage carousel, then through passport control and out. Find the shuttle bus that meets Dunbridge pupils at the airport to take us to school.
Will Henry be on the bus? He’s sure to know where—
“Hey.” I jump as I spot him out in the passageway leading to the terminal building. He waited. “There you are.”
I feel my cheeks flush. “You waited! Thanks.”
“Of course.” He smiles, and my racing heart calms slightly.
As we walk through the airport, I learn that Henry’s been at the academy since he was twelve but started a year behind because of his messed-up education before that, and this year, he’s school captain. I don’t know much about him, but it seems to fit.
Chatting with him, I don’t feel as if we’ve only known each other two hours.
Most of which we spent apart. He’s very easy to like, and something about that makes me uneasy.
This could get dangerous if I don’t watch out.
Henry’s nice, sure, but that’s probably exactly why he’s school captain.
Don’t go reading too much into it. He’s probably just as friendly to everyone.
As we wait for our bags, I quickly message Mum to tell her I’ve landed.
I hesitate when I see my chat thread with Isi under hers.
But then I open it and send her the exact same words.
My best friend and I don’t message much, so it can sometimes feel like we’ve grown apart over the holidays.
Things are different when we see each other every day at school.
So I’d better not think about what that’ll mean for the year ahead.
Henry’s and my suitcases are some of the first off, probably because they were the last to be loaded into the hold. Henry seems almost surprised that his has made it after such a short transit time.
Once we’re through passport control, I realize I haven’t asked how he’s getting to the school. I’m about to do that when we reach the arrivals hall. Henry’s eyes scan the people waiting there, and a figure steps out of the crowd. Then it all just happens.
The girl is our age. There’s something fairylike and seriously elegant about her as she runs toward Henry. He drops his suitcase. A few seconds later, she’s in his arms.