Abroad

chapter 3-1

3

Nick had managed to find a pillow and a comforter—well, a duvet, with a cover—and even a set of sheets. He was pretty proud. He’d been spectacularly out of it that first day. But he had walked into a*****e and trudged up and down the aisles until he found bedding, and even managed not to f**k up the pin-and-chip thing at checkout.

And now he had a bed he could actually sleep in, a brand-s******g-new student ID, a set of classes to attend, and it was all very confusing, but he was okay with that.

Because he was in London.

Now that it had been three days and he was no longer a zombie dragging a giant suitcase behind him with a dead arm, he could appreciate that fact. The city wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, he supposed. Maybe he just hadn’t found the parts of it that would meet his expectations. Then again, if your expectations were more or less created by watching British romantic comedies with your mother and sister, he supposed those would be difficult to live up to. No Colin Firth, for one. The streets seemed both narrower than he’d expected and wider in scope. It was more pedestrian and more wondrous than he could ever have predicted.

It was weird, the things he found fascinating. Like how the windows opened outward instead of up and down like in Ann Arbor. The stores carried brands he’d never seen before, and the milk was packaged differently from home. He’d had to figure out his food situation, so he’d walked into the nearest Tesco and probably looked like a complete i***t, just staring at all the stuff that was new to him. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen butter before. But it came in tubs here, and some of it was actually Irish, and he had grinned as he grabbed it. Then he’d gone searching for anything else he might reasonably be able to cook for himself, which largely consisted of eggs (which weren’t in the refrigerator section, he noted), cheese, bread, and various cold cuts.

It was a loose definition of “cook.”

He’d spent a while perusing the juice section, attempting to figure out what the hell Ribena could be, and then he’d bought out half of the chocolate section and all the Earl Grey he could carry.

Then he’d gone back to the dorm and investigated the kitchen situation, at which point he’d realized he would need, like, cooking implements.

He’d even figured out his phone solution, and now had access to data and voice that wouldn’t cost him an arm and a leg. His mom called once every day, as she woke up.

Now he sat on the bed and dialed Zoya’s number.

“Bratishka, wazzzuuuuuuuup!”

God, she was embarrassing.

It was sort of easier for them to speak in English nowadays, even though she had been older than him when they left. Whenever Mom caught them at it, she’d give them her most disappointed look over the rim of her glasses and they’d immediately switch, but she wasn’t here, so after Nick’s initial “privet,” they went straight to English.

“Have you acquired life necessities yet?” Her familiar accent set him at ease. He could hear other voices in the background. She was always surrounded by people. It had been like that back in Moscow, and it was the same now in Ann Arbor. Nick had never understood her ability to simply walk into any social situation and stay afloat.

Even when they’d started American school, she’d been fine. It was Nick who’d fallen apart.

“I have everything a growing boy might need,” he told her. “I even bought a frying pan.”

“You have no idea how to cook. Like, literally, you’ve never cooked a single thing in your life.”

“Hey, I can learn. I learn things.” He thought about it. “I’ve made you eggs before.”

“Mmm-hmm, ’kay. Well, just don’t starve. Have you had fish and chips yet? What about haddock? Trifle? Scones? Oooh, a nice spotted d**k?”

She was on a roll of amusing herself, so Nick let her tire herself out, then said, “I bought Irish butter, does that count?”

“Why is Irish butter so adorable?”

“It is, right?” Nick laughed, feeling weirdly light.

She giggled, then went quiet for a bit. “Hey, uh, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you, but I ran into Lenka yesterday.”

“Oh.” Nick looked down. His left sock was getting a hole straight through the big toe.

“Yeah, she actually stopped to talk to me. Said … to say hi.” A clearing of a throat. “To you.”

Nick shrugged, then realized she wouldn’t see him. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. Maybe she thought it was safe now you’re out of the country.” She sounded tentative, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to make jokes yet or not.

Nick kept picking at his sock.

“Sorry, I just thought maybe you should know,” she rushed on. “Eto nichego?”

“Nichego, Zoykin.”

“You know,” she said after a while, the voices in the background receding. “You never really said what happened there … I mean, one minute everything seems fine, and then I get back from California and you’ve broken up…”

“I…” He sighed. Words refused to get past his throat. “Can we not … right now?”

She huffed out a breath, but he knew it wasn’t really annoyance. “Fine. It’s all right. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”

“That’s fine. Eventually’s fine.” It wasn’t. She would never get it out of him.

“Good.”

“Fine.”

“Shut the hell up.” She laughed, sounding just a tad too forced. “Anyway, sorry. What else you got for me? Meet any cool people yet?”

Nick sucked in his lower lip as he thought. “Sort of … a couple. I dunno.”

“You don’t know what, if they’re people?”

“Shut up. No, just … I went to this international night, I guess, for those who are, you know…”

“I am guessing international.”

“Right, so I went and left pretty quickly.” He waited to see if she’d say anything, but she was just listening, so he went on. “But there were a few people I talked to.” One was a guy from LA who hadn’t held Nick’s interest in any way, then an Italian boy named Antonio who made every head turn as he walked by. Nick couldn’t tell if Antonio had noticed this himself, but he’d had that glow about him. The sort of glow that marked someone out as a higher class of human than the rest. Nick didn’t talk to him for long. It had been loud, and Antonio’s accent had been hard for Nick to catch in the din. The entire time Nick talked to him, he’d had this sneaking suspicion that he was being indulged. Nick hated being indulged.

And then there’d been the English girl who seemed to be the one running everything. She’d been wearing a floppy black hat that should have looked stupid but didn’t on her, and she’d come up to Nick and completely caught him off guard by asking for his number and texting him before he could say, “No, thank you.” Not that he would have said no, necessarily, but it had felt a bit like being railroaded by a very pretty, full-figured redheaded train in a short black dress.

Or something.

Anyway, he had a text from her on his phone to meet her at the union tonight at eight. Nick had no idea why.

“Aaaaand?”

“And what? It’s been three days, give me a break.”

“God, you’re difficult.” Nick heard Jake’s voice calling her name. “Hang on, it’s Nick,” she called back. “Sorry. We’re going to brunch, and waffles wait for no man or whatever.”

“Jake does love his waffles.” Nick sort of wanted to get off the phone and felt a bit bad about it.

“He can wait. Anyway, what else should I ask you?”

She always said this. It was a family habit, and if he took the time to think about it, which he sometimes did, Nick realized that it was a truly weird way of asking someone about their life.

He shrugged. “Nothing more, honestly. Just settling in.”

“Hmm. All right.” She sounded dubious, but like she was conceding the point. “I’ll call in a few days. Maybe we can Skype, too? I’m going over to Mom’s on Sunday.”

Nick agreed on a time, and then he sat on his bed and considered the insane notion of going out with people he’d never even had a single conversation with.

+

“Oh good, you came!”

Nick was incredibly grateful that in her railroading, the girl had saved her number on his phone with her name—Izzy—and he didn’t have to use awkward maneuvers to get it out of her. He felt furiously self-conscious in a way he hadn’t in ages. His eyes had been itchy with allergies all day, so he’d been forced to wear his glasses, and while he’d kind of made an effort with the rest of his outfit, it was also close to what he’d worn the other night. Like a uniform. He probably looked like a total dweeb, but a lifetime of dweebdom had at least instilled in him a certain ability to move on after the first five minutes of feeling awkward and stupid.

“Um, thanks for the invite,” he said, and instantly felt ridiculous again. He smiled to cover it up. He had no idea where they were even going, or why.

“My pleasure!” She beamed at him in return and then nearly gave him a heart attack by grabbing his arm and hooking her hand in his elbow like she’d been doing it all her life. She turned them decidedly away from the Student Union and toward the street. “You looked like a cool dude, and I love meeting new people. So, Nick, right?”

“Uh, right.” Cool? Nick?

“Whereabouts in America are you from?”

“Michigan,” Nick supplied as they power-walked down the street. Maybe it was because she had long legs and was wearing four-inch heels, but Nick was barely keeping up.

“Ohhh, don’t know that I know much about Michigan. What cities does it have that I might’ve heard of?”

Nick thought about it. “Detroit, probably.”

Izzy made a knowing “ooooh” sound.

“But I’m from Ann Arbor. It’s nice, I guess … Small. Ish. College town.” He sounded like a tool. “The state looks like a mitten.” Even worse.

Beside him, Izzy giggled. She leaned so close against him as she did it that her hair tickled his cheek. A tiny bit of panic shivered through him. “A mitten? For real?”

Nick shoved the panic down and forced himself to smile, looking at her a bit sideways. “Yeah, I can show you. It’s stupid. Just a locals thing.” He held up his hand in front of them to demonstrate. “That’s what the state sort of looks like.”

“That’s both ridiculous and endearing.” She led the two of them down the street past all the places Nick had already seen but was only now starting to get used to. He’d come from that corner on his first day, and he’d walked down that side street in search of a grocery store. London was slowly solidifying around him.

She made him nervous. He never did well with people who were so in control of their lives. He could barely tie his own shoes, metaphorically speaking.

“Well, we’re here,” she declared. They’d walked up to a place called the King’s Arms. It had a red door and flowers overflowing from pots hung above the windows. Giddiness swelled up in Nick despite the nerves. A pub! He was going to have his first pub experience. He braced himself. “All right, c’mon,” Izzy said as she ushered them swiftly through the door.

Inside was dim and decidedly warm. Nick felt itchy all over as his eyes adjusted, but he barely had any time to think before Izzy was grabbing his hand and leading him toward a back booth already filled with people. They all turned as Izzy and Nick approached and erupted into various greetings. Nick had to scramble to keep his glasses on his nose because he was so sweaty they’d slid down.

Jesus, this was a lot of people, and it was a lot of people all at once. He gave a vague hand wave, only just stopping himself from hiding behind Izzy. She towered over him. He could have easily done it.

“Right, everyone, this is Nick! Nick’s an international student, he’s American, and I wanted him to be our friend. Nick, this is everyone!”

Again, Nick gave a small hand lift and smiled, unable to force his tongue to even say hi. Zoya once told him, If you smile, even if you don’t feel like smiling, you’ll feel better. Try it, and then made him stand there in the middle of a school event and smile until he felt less shaky. It sort of helped then, and it was sort of helping now. He scanned the faces around him as Izzy talked.

“So, this is Natali.” She pointed to an Indian girl with a punk sort of haircut. She was thin and what his mom referred to as angular, with her pronounced shoulders and collarbones. She wore a ribbed tank top under a flannel shirt and had gauges in her ears along with a bullring piercing in her nose. Nick nearly cowed beneath her intense and curious gaze but managed to hold it more or less steadily.