Lexicon

seat and made her way to the rear bathrooms. In the mirror, she practiced some expressions. Then she washed her face and unlocked the door. On the way back, she stopped beside a girl she had identified who was sleeping and roughly Emily’s age, and opened her overhead locker and rummaged inside. There was a possibility of someone being awake and alert enough to say,
Excuse me, do those things belong to you
, of course, but not a large one, nor with serious consequences, and it didn’t happen. She found a little suitcase and a duffel bag and went through these, standing on tiptoe. Inside were a purse, a wallet, a digital camera, which she took because maybe she could sell it, and a book. Also a coat, which could conceal her school uniform, so she tucked that beneath her arm. She closed the locker. Two or three sets of eyes were on her, but they were glazed and disinterested, their owners critiquing her hair or fantasizing about schoolgirls, and that was fine; she was just getting some of her stuff. She cracked open the book and read it there, right next to the sleeping girl she’d robbed, like she was stretching her legs. Soon enough a man came down the aisle and she could retreat to her own seat without it looking like a getaway.
    Just before the plane began to descend, she switched seats, to avoid a potential
where’s my coat
situation. She was among the first off the plane, and she walked briskly toward Customs, her new coat flapping around her ankles. The lines were short, not at all like in Los Angeles, and she was able to take her pick of Immigration officials. His name was Mark, and he was a 114 or 118, good-natured and reasonably intelligent but resigned in his job, which he considered important but dull. This she could tell right away. No glasses, no beard, a simple hairstyle but not a severe one, so no overt arrogance or vanity. No cross or religious markings. So she went for mirroring: She was Emily Ruff, simple and straightforward, slugging hours into a customer interface job as a DMV inspector. An entry-level position, but if you didn’t do your job right, people could get hurt.
    “Hi,” she said. “Just right up, I don’t have a return ticket. I’m sorry, I know that means you have to give me the third degree.”
    Two hours later, they released her from the interview room. They’d asked a lot of questions, but she never felt in real danger, not from the moment Mark’s face relaxed into her opening statement. She had lied a great deal, inventing a traumatic case at the DMV and a late-night Australian tourism ad culminating in a spur-of-the-moment urge to get away (
You understand that, right, Mark? The need to leave?
). She was charming and forthright and understood more about how the brain reached decisions than these guys did about anything, so that was that. She got rid of the coat before Arrivals, in case the owner was still hanging around filling out lost-and-found forms. She found a currency exchange place that let her sign for up to five hundred dollars on a credit card. Australian dollars were hilarious, she discovered: bright and shiny, like money for children. She liked them a lot. She bought a magazine and ate a cookie. She went to baggage claim and watched luggage go round and round, waiting for something wealthy, female, and unattended. A gray-suited official led around a beagle in a purple jacket, which sniffed luggage; when it found a banana in someone’s carry-on, it sat on the floor and the official gave it a treat. In Los Angeles, they’d been German shepherds. Eventually a purple Louis Vuitton suitcase completed a third lonely loop on the carousel, so she tugged it off, balanced her Pikachu bag on top, and headed for the exits.
    • • •
    The sun was brighter. The air smelled salty and felt wider, somehow. She found a cab rank and the driver wrestled her stolen suitcase into the trunk while she climbed into the back.
    “Where to, love?”
    The driver was white, something else she wasn’t used to. “Broken Hill, please.”
    He turned in his seat. “Broken Hill?”
    “Is that a problem?”
    “I don’t know. It’s a thousand kilometers, is that a problem?”
    “What are . . .” She felt stupid. “How far is that in miles?”
    “Seven hundred miles, give or take.”
    Why had she assumed Broken Hill would be near Sydney? “I’m sorry. In which state is Broken Hill?”
    “New South Wales.”
    “And where am I?”
    “New South Wales.” He smiled at her face.