A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter forty-nine

f o r t y - n i n e

*

The worst thing about having friends in other countries is the time difference. I guess if it’s only an hour or three it’s pretty manageable, but Young-mi is a full eight hours behind, which became painfully clear when I stayed up until four o’clock in the morning talking to her last night, and when I couldn’t go on any longer, she was just heading out to eat at eight.

The next year or so is going to be hard, when we have so few waking hours together unless she gets up ridiculously early and I stay up stupidly late, which I don’t plan to do again. I wake up at nine, feeling groggy and raw after too little sleep and wondering why I’m up, until I hear my sister’s voice.

“March! March! Are you naked?”

“Yes,” I call back, sprawled out on my front with my face squashed into my pillow. Until we made it to San Francisco and exchanged a tent for a hotel room, I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d missed naked sleeping. There really is no other way.

“Are you covered?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come in?”

I grunt into the pillow, and apparently that’s a yes to Flo, because the door swings open and she bounces in. I squint at her, both arms wrapped around the pillow, and make no effort to suppress a mammoth yawn.

“Morning,” she says.

“It is, so why are you here?”

She frowns a little and pulls over a beanbag from the other side of my room, dropping onto it with a soft thump. The sides puff up around her, enveloping her amongst the beans. “Today is our day.”

“Hmm?”

She leans back, arms and legs draped over the bulging cushion like a beached starfish. “You said you’d spend time with me when you were back from America. Now you’re back – you’ve been back for two whole nights – so today’s our day. Mum gave me money so we can go to the coffee shop, or the park, or the new pudding place.”

“There’s a new pudding place?”

“Yes! It has everything. Pancakes and waffles and ice cream, and cakes and doughnuts and brownies and every other kind of pudding you can think of.”

“It’s a bit early for pudding, Flo. I’m still half-asleep.”

“We don’t have to go now,” she says, clumsily sitting up as she tries to rearrange the beanbag.

“I don’t know if we can go at all, Flo,” I say. Her face falls. I poke my foot out from under the covers and weakly flex my swollen ankle. “I’m a bad enough driver as it is; I can’t really work the pedals with a sprain, and I’m under doctor’s orders to rest.”

Well, not really. I haven’t been to the doctor since I got home, but in the past, every doctor I’ve seen has told me to rest, and Dad drilled it into me yesterday when my ankle seized up and I lost my footing, and almost threw my supper over Pebs.

“You can rest in the cafe,” Flo says.

“It’s almost a mile away, I can’t walk that,” I tell her. It has nothing to do with not wanting to take her out – of course I do; I’d love to go and chill in a coffee shop with my little sister and let her ask questions until she gets tired or distracted – but I already pushed the limits in California. If I keep trotting around on a sprain, on an already weak ankle, who knows what could happen to it?

“Mum can drive us,” she says, clasping her hands and leaning forward. “Please, March. I can put you in the wheelbarrow and push you there! Or, I think Rocco’s old pushchair is still in the garage. Though I don’t know if you’d fit in it.” Pursing her lips, she furrows her brow as though seriously considering it. “You’re a bit bigger than a toddler.”