Hugo
She’s breathing softly, whistling a little each time she inhales, and he disentangles himself carefully, reaching for his mobile, which he tucked beneath his pillow.
The glow of the screen brightens the room, and he turns on his side to keep from waking Mae.
It’s just before five a.m., which means it’s late morning back home.
He finds a text from his dad with a picture of the breakfast table.
In it, there are seven plates piled with bacon and eggs and toast, and one empty one in the middle. Come home soon, it says. We miss you.
A quote flashes into his head from a Samuel Beckett play he read in his literature class this year: I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
The words had chimed at something in him even then, but now they feel like a drumbeat, and he opens his mobile again to write to Alfie, a test balloon that sets his heart beating wildly.
Alfie: Ever??
Hugo: No, I was thinking more like a gap year.
Alfie: I can’t tell if you’re taking the piss.
Hugo: I’m not.
Alfie: Wow. That would be like the complete opposite of pulling a Hugo.
Hugo: Do you think Mum and Dad would kill me?
Alfie: Yes.
Hugo: But after that, they’d be okay with it?
Alfie: As long as you get your arse to uni at some point.
Hugo: George would never forgive me.
Alfie: You know how he is. He just likes to keep the flock together. But I’m sure he’d come around eventually.
Hugo: Maybe.
Alfie: Yeah, maybe.
Hugo: It’s a bit mad, isn’t it?
Alfie: I don’t know. It kind of makes sense. Your heart was never in it.
Hugo: It’s in this.
Alfie: So you’d give up the scholarship?
Hugo: Hopefully just defer it for a year.
Alfie: Better check to make sure we’re not a package deal. Five out of six isn’t bad, but you know they might not see it that way.
Hugo: I wouldn’t go ahead if it messed up anything up for the rest of you.
Alfie: But you really want it?
Hugo: I really, really want it.
Alfie: Then I hope they say yes.
Hugo rests the phone on his chest, watching it rise and fall in the gray light. He feels caught somewhere between asleep and awake. Before he can think better of it, he’s searching his contacts for a name: Nigel Griffith-Jones, Chair of Council, the University of Surrey.
When Hugo’s finished with the email, he thinks of the text from his dad again, the empty plate among all those fuller ones. Then he takes a deep breath and hits Send.
Hours later, when Mae begins to stir, Hugo is still awake.
He’s staring at the ceiling, feeling slightly frozen, paralyzed by what he’s done.
She twists to face him, her hair tangled but still smelling like lavender from the hotel shampoo, and rests her hand so casually on his chest that he relaxes again.
“Did I snore?” she asks, yawning.
“Only…a lot.”
She laughs. “You’re not so quiet yourself. How long have you been up?”
“A while,” he says, and there must be something odd in his voice, because she lifts her head to look at him. The edges of the curtains are laced with light, and her eyes still look sleepy and unfocused.
“What were you doing?”
“Some planning. Some worrying. Some thinking.”
“About?”
He wonders if she can feel his heart pounding underneath her hand. “About possibly taking a gap year.”
She stares at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he says, allowing himself a small smile. “I emailed someone on the university council to see if it’s possible to defer the scholarship. I want to be sure before I get my hopes too high.”
“Your hopes are already high,” she says, looking at him fondly. “Have you told your family yet?”
“Just Alfie. George will hate it. And my parents will think that I can’t manage on my own or that I’ll just be skiving off. But this wouldn’t be a lark. I’d obviously love to see some of the world. But it’s so much more than that.”
Mae rests her chin on his chest, listening.
“I want more time,” he says, and there’s a catch in his voice.
“It’s always been easier for the others somehow.
To be themselves and part of the group. But being here this week—it’s made me realize that I need space to sort that out for myself.
” He reaches over and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I know you’re not a detour person—”
Her forehead crinkles. “What do you mean?”
“Only that you know exactly what you want,” he says. “Which is a good thing. But I think maybe this can be too.” He traces a finger over the back of her hand, deep in thought. “Did I ever tell you my mum used to call me Paddington? Getting lost was my specialty.”
She smiles at him. “Maybe it still is.”
“I’ve spent my whole life trailing after them, and this is the first chance I’ve had to be on my own, and I suppose I’m just not ready for it to end yet.” He laughs. “Does this make any sense, or do I sound like someone having a midlife crisis?”
“It makes total sense.”
He nods. “I just hope the university lets me. Alfie thinks they might only be interested in a complete set.”
“A complete set of what?”
“Sextuplets,” he says, his voice flat. “That’s how it always works. For interviews and photos and ads; for anything, really. People always want the whole six-pack.”
Mae rolls her eyes. “You’re people, not cans of beer. Besides, it’s only a year, right? They’ll still get all six of you eventually.”
“I don’t know if they’ll see it that way. It would be one thing if I had a good reason….”
“You do.”
“That I want to skive off for a year and travel the world?”
“It’s not skiving,” she says. “You just said so yourself. And even if it was, who cares? It’s your dream.”
“As of five minutes ago.”
“No,” she says, looking at him seriously. “You’ve known for a long time that you want something different. It just took you a while to figure out what it was.”
“I can’t decide if you’re the cleverest girl I’ve ever met or you’re just as mad as I am.”
Mae’s eyes are shiny with laughter. “Why can’t it be both?” she says brightly.
Below, there’s a chorus of bings from her mobile as they return to an area with reception. “We should get up,” she says. “Breakfast probably ends soon.”
“Wait, what time is it?” he asks as Mae leans over him to open the curtain, and the light comes streaming in to reveal a flat, dusty landscape. “Did we miss our stop?”
“No, they would’ve woken us. We were stuck for a while last night.
You were half-asleep.” She’s already wriggling away from him, unhooking the safety net so she can swing her legs free and step next to the lower bunk.
When she hits the floor, it’s with a loud thud.
“There’s just no graceful way to do that, huh? Come on. I want pancakes. And bacon.”
Hugo closes his eyes for a second, thinking again of the text from his dad with a pang of guilt. When he opens them, Mae is unplugging her mobile from the charger. As she starts to scroll through a long series of texts, her face goes pale, and she grips the edge of his bunk to steady herself.
“What?” Hugo asks, his stomach knotted. Mae is always so unshakable; it’s alarming to see her like this.
She looks up as if she’s forgotten he’s there. “We lost service again.”
“We’ll get it back in Denver. Is everything—”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. She looks like she might cry. “My nana had a stroke.”
Hugo’s heart judders at the bluntness of the word. “I’m so sorry,” he says, though it sounds woefully insufficient. “Will she be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Mae says numbly. “I think so. My dads are on their way to the hospital now. The doctor told them it was a small one, so hopefully she’ll be fine, but…”
“But it’s still really frightening,” Hugo says, and she nods without looking at him, her head bowed over the screen.
He feels frozen with uncertainty, not sure if he should leap down and hug her or stay where he is.
This is big, what’s just happened, and in the grand scheme of things, they hardly know each other.
It’s been less than a week. But it doesn’t feel that way.
It doesn’t feel that way at all.
The train is slowing down now, and an announcement comes over the speaker.
“Fort Morgan, Colorado,” says the crackling voice.
“This is Fort Morgan. We’ve got fifteen minutes here, which is enough time for a cigarette or some air, but not enough time to leave the platform.
So feel free to step off, but keep your ears open for that whistle. ”
Mae grabs her hoodie from the hook near the door. “I’m just gonna…,” she says, but she doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she slides on her flip-flops, unchains the lock, and heads around the corner.
For a few seconds, Hugo stays where he is, feeling like a balloon with a pinhole, the air seeping out of him so slowly that it’s hard to tell if it’s even happening.
By the time he scrambles off the bed and tugs on a shirt and a pair of trousers, the train has stopped.
He takes a gulp of cool air as he steps down onto the platform.
There’s nothing much here, just a small depot and a gravel parking lot.
A few other people from their car have gotten off, too, some of them smoking, others squinting at the sky in hopes that the sun might come out, though a line of clouds is gathering in the distance.
He spots Mae all the way up front near the engine, looking very small and very much alone.
As he walks toward her, she lowers her mobile, which was pressed to her ear, and stares at it for a second, as if considering whether to launch it onto the tracks.
Then she bends down and puts her hands on her knees instead, trying to collect herself.
“I’m okay,” she says as he approaches, her head still lowered.
“You don’t have to be.”
“Yeah, but I am.” She sucks in a breath, then stands up. He can see that her eyes are rimmed with red. “It’s just this stupid—where the hell are we, anyway?”
He glances back at the sign on the platform. “Fort Morgan, Colorado.”
“I know, I just mean…how are there so many places in this country without phone service?” she says, waving her mobile around. “It’s nuts.”
“Nuts,” he agrees, and her face softens.
“I need to call my dads.”
He takes a step closer. “Of course.”
“You don’t have to—look, it’s going to be fine. She went through chemo this spring, and I think this can just happen sometimes. But she’s survived a lot worse. She’ll pull through. She always does. It’ll be fine.”
Hugo puts a hand on either of her arms, and she goes very still. “You’re allowed to be worried.”
“I know that,” she snaps, wrenching away, but he doesn’t move. He bends so their faces are level and sees that her eyes are filled with tears.
“It’s okay to be upset,” he says quietly.
She shakes her head, but her lip is quivering. “I’m fine.”
“Stop saying that. It’s just me. You can talk to me.”
“I hardly even know you,” she says, looking up at him through blazing eyes, and Hugo steps back, stung. He tries to compose his face in a way that doesn’t show this, but he can tell that he’s failed. Her shoulders sag.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “That’s not what—”
“No, you’re right.” He kicks at a gray stone on the ground, watching it skip over the pavement.
The train is loud beside them, a sound like the rush of waves at the beach yesterday.
Beyond the tracks are a rusty water tower and a distant construction site, but otherwise the landscape is flat and gray and muted, nothing to see for miles around.
All that emptiness stirs something in Hugo, and he lets the thought float up again like a brightly colored balloon: I don’t want to go back.
“Really,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know,” he says, because he does. It’s not her. It’s just the wall she puts up sometimes. But he’s managed to knock enough bricks out by now that he can see through it anyway.
He can see her.
“The truth is,” she says, not quite able to meet his eyes, “you probably know me better than a lot of people in my life do. Which is a weird thing to say, when it’s only been a few days.”
“It’s not, actually,” Hugo says with a smile. “It’s not weird at all.”
She nods, and so does he, and then the whistle sounds, and the conductor—who has been standing nearby—shouts to the passengers still lingering on the platform: “All aboard!”
Above them, the sun is starting to burn through the clouds.
The train is louder now, hissing and popping and giving off a hazy heat as they begin to make their way along the length of it.
Halfway down, Hugo bends to pick up the gray stone.
He slips it into his pocket. Then Mae reaches for his hand and they walk the rest of the way together.