Lexicon

“
Years?
”
    “Please appreciate that this is the best possible outcome.”
    “No. Eliot. Please.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she put her hand on his arm. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Eventually, she understood that this was final. “Well,” she said. “Bye, then.”
    “Your bag is in the trunk.”
    “Thanks.” She opened the door. It was difficult, as if everything had gotten heavy. Her hands were numb. She dragged herself from the car.
    Eliot said, “If you work hard, and discipline yourself, you can conceivably return in—” She shut the door on the rest.
    • • •
    First the red-eye from DC to Los Angeles: six hours. She landed at dawn and spent half a day moving the two hundred yards from Domestic Arrivals to International Departures. She hadn’t slept in the air so she curled up in a seat, but there were families and kids vibrating at high frequency and men with booming laughs. A younger couple discussed in-flight movies in a flat, broad accent. She was going to Australia. Her boarding passes told her so. “We should get
Lord of the Rings
,” said the man.
Lawwwd
, she thought.
Lawwwd of the Reeengs
. They sent convicts to Australia, right? It had been a penal colony. A place of banishment.
    The desk called for first- and business-class passengers and she trudged to the gate. When she surrendered her boarding pass, though, the woman smiled and handed it back to her. “We’ll be boarding economy in a few moments.” Emily looked at her dumbly. She had just assumed. She walked back to the seats.
    “Nice try,” said the man beside her, the one hoping for
Lord of the Rings
. He was friendly, and she smiled back, and it was the most fake thing she had ever done.
    • • •
    She slept fitfully, disturbed by rattling food trolleys and people squeezing by her seat. The flight time according to her screen was fourteen hours, which she thought had to be wrong, like maybe that was including the time difference. She didn’t know enough to sleep properly.
    Somewhere over the Pacific, a flight attendant bent to her ear. “Excuse me. This is for you.” Emily, tangled in dreams of golf and Yeats, stared at the woman without comprehension. It was nighttime; the only light came from the screens in the backs of people’s seats and the little yellow glow lights embedded in the aisles. The woman handed Emily a folded piece of paper. It was an odd texture, thick, stamped with an aviation authority logo.
    “Thank you,” Emily said. The attendant left and she unfolded the paper.
    EMILY YOU ARE TO LIVE IN BROKEN HILL AUSTRALIA THIS IS TO BE YOUR HOME UNTIL YOU ARE CALLED FOR NO PREPARATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE YOU ARE TO USE YOUR OWN RESOURCES YOU CAN DO THIS ELIOT
    She put the paper away and pulled her knees to her chest and silently cried into them. If she were at the school, she wouldn’t have been able to do this. She would have had to control herself. But here she indulged. She let herself sob. After this, things were going to be difficult, and she would have to concentrate, so it was probably her last opportunity.
    • • •
    She grew hypnotized by the in-flight map. The red line began in Los Angeles, curved across the ocean, and terminated at a cartoon plane that never seemed to move. The screen occasionally switched to statistics, like how fast they were moving and how cold it was outside, and these were fascinating because the numbers seemed made up. It didn’t seem possible for the cartoon plane that didn’t move to be traveling at 580 miles per hour. But it was. The flight was fourteen hours.
    Her first problem, she realized, was that she was landing in Sydney with no return ticket, no luggage, wearing a school uniform. She didn’t know what the Australian immigration service was like, but it seemed probable that she would raise a few flags. She would look exactly like an overprivileged white girl disappearing in a cloud of petulance on Daddy’s credit card, and they would ask why she was here and where she was staying and when she was leaving. If they didn’t like her answers, they would turn her around and put her on a plane back home. Which, of course, superficially sounded like a great idea, except for the part where she failed to LIVE IN BROKEN HILL and USE HER OWN RESOURCES. Eliot had told her,
Please appreciate that this is the best possible outcome
, and she had come to believe that. She needed to get through Immigration.
    She extracted herself from her economy