Up Over Down Under (4 page)

They made their way to the parking lot and wound through the parked cars, Nick and Sam narrowly missing slamming Eliza's bags into several of the parked vehicles until they stopped near a small blue sedan. It was obviously the Echolses' car, and Frank popped the trunk open. He manhandled Eliza's bags into place, slammed the trunk shut, and walked around to the passenger's side of the car, unlocking the doors. Eliza slipped into the backseat and was soon flanked on either side by Nick and Sam. Estelle climbed into the driver's side, and they pulled out of the parking lot.

As they made their way out of the airport, Estelle turned around in her seat to face Eliza.

“So, love, I hope you like steak because I got us some real beauts at the butcher shop this morning.”

Eliza was momentarily confused about how Estelle was able to drive a car while turned completely around in her seat. But she breathed a sigh of relief as she remembered that here in Australia, they drove on the wrong side of the road and that Frank was actually in the driver's seat.

“Well, yes, that would be great,” Eliza said. She meant it, she realized. Her mother was a bit of a nutrition fanatic, which meant that red meat was hard to come by in the Ritter household.

“You talk funny!” shouted Nick.

“Say that again!” Sam cried, giggling furiously.

“Say what again?” Eliza asked, confused.

The two boys began trying to imitate Eliza's American accent, exaggerating their
r
's and flattening their vowels.

“You two…” Estelle scolded them, “leave her alone. Maybe it's the two of you who sound funny to her.”

The boys appeared to consider this possibility. “Do you think we sound funny?” Sam (or was it Nick?) asked Eliza plaintively.

“Well, to be honest, you don't sound like my friends back home, but they all sound like me.”

“That's silly,” Sam decided, sitting back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest.

Eliza welcomed the twins' silence. She hated to admit it, but the whole scene was getting to be a bit much. She had just spent nearly twenty-four hours flying around the world and now was crammed into the back of a car with a whole family of people she didn't know. She was on sensory overload.

She took the break in conversation as an opportunity to stare out the window at the city. She could see the small cluster of skyscrapers that made up the downtown area draw closer and closer as they passed through suburbs made up of small houses, then onto tree-lined boulevards with pretty two-story houses lined with balconies. There seemed to be a park on every other corner. Soon they were heading into the center of the city on what appeared to be a major boulevard with a trolley track running down the middle of it and some beautiful buildings on one side hidden behind tall ivy-covered stone walls.

“This is Royal Parade and that's the University of Melbourne there,” Frank said, playing tour guide. “Those are the residential colleges where students stay.”

Eliza thought back to Washington and how one of the great coups you could wrangle as a high school student was to get into a college party at one of the universities in the city. There was American University, and George Washington, and Georgetown. In the spring, Georgetown would have its annual reunion. If you could score a badge, you could get into the alumni parties claiming to be someone's kid. Eliza had
always
wanted to slip into one of those parties under the radar, but of course, as the dutiful D.C. daughter, never had. As she took in these colleges along Royal Parade she made a mental note that she was going to see the inside of one before she left town.

Eliza smiled to herself as she stared out the window while they followed the tram tracks. Occasionally they would come to a stop alongside one of the green-and-yellow tram cars. They seemed to span the city and were packed with students heading from campus into the city center. With everyone driving on the wrong side of the road and these trams edging through intersections, she was amazed that there weren't car accidents all the time, but nobody else seemed to be concerned, so she just sat back in her seat and took it all in.

The car passed through the downtown area with Frank calling out the sights.

“There's the Bourke Street Mall.”

“That there's Flinders Station.”

“Those trees over there are the Royal Botanic Gardens.”

Much of the city felt far quainter than D.C. She once read that the people who designed the city of Washington had tried to copy the great old cities of Europe. They created the mall after looking at Versailles in Paris and the monuments of Rome. The goal was to build a city that impressed the visitor with its power and grandeur, but the consequence of that plan was a city that didn't function very well. Traffic was confusing, and the government buildings seemed to get in the way more than anything. Melbourne was nothing like that.

The abundance of trees and small houses made everything feel very welcoming and manageable. Even the State of Victoria Parliament across from the Bourke Street Mall seemed approachable, with people sitting on the steps reading their papers and eating lunch. There was a charm that suggested that this was a city not meant to be visited but, rather, to be lived in.

After they passed the Botanic Gardens, the shops facing outward became much fancier. There were upscale clothing stores and fancy-looking restaurants.

I'll definitely have to come back and spend some time here,
Eliza thought as she eyed the designer dresses in some of the windows.

“Nearly there now,” said Estelle from the front seat. “This is Toorak Road, and we're in South Yarra, which is where our home is.”

A short distance farther and Frank turned and pulled into the driveway of a low, ranch-style house.

“Welcome home!” Frank beamed, “This is our humble abode. We hope you'll make yourself right at home.”

“It's very nice.”

It wasn't as big as her parents' house, but it was, as she'd said, very nice. By now the lack of sleep on the plane had caught up with her and she was feeling a little groggy and overwhelmed by everything.

They pulled up the driveway alongside the house and parked the car in front of a small garage. Frank took her bags out of the trunk, and they passed through a little gate at the rear of the house that opened onto a back patio and pool area surrounded by an ivy-covered wall with large trees hanging over it.

A door off the patio opened into a kitchen with a big table for eating and older wooden cabinets at the far end over the cooking area. Nick and Sam raced past Eliza and down the hall.

“They're trying to be helpful. Your room's right here,” Estelle explained, leading the way into a room off the side of the kitchen. “It's a bit private from the rest of the house—it even has its own little entrance off of the patio. It's Billie's room, and I made sure she cleaned it up for you.”

“I'm sure it'll be lovely.” Eliza stepped into the room. She scanned the walls, which were covered with posters of surfers and nearly every environmental group under the sun. At one end of the room was a desk with a corkboard over it, and at the other was a twin bed with a big comforter and some fluffy pillows. There was nothing “girlie” about the room at all. In fact, if she didn't know better, the room could just as well have belonged to a high school guy as to a girl. The decorations were all about surfing and saving the trees, and the sheets and covers were all in earth tones.

Billie is in for
such
a surprise when she gets to my room,
Eliza thought with a smile.

“Make yourself right at home,” Estelle said as she patted a pile of presumably fresh towels that were stacked atop the bed. “There's space in the closet, and the top three drawers in the bureau are empty. Why don't you freshen up and come on out back, and we'll have a bite of supper in about half an hour or so?”

“I really should give my parents a call and let them know I've gotten here all right,” Eliza said. She felt awkward around this new ersatz family.

“Oh heavens!” Estelle said with a laugh. “It's about two in the morning in America right now.”

Eliza looked at her watch and realized that she hadn't yet set it for Melbourne time. She shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs out.

“What time is it here?” she asked. If she couldn't handle the metric system, then she probably couldn't handle the time difference, either.

“About ten to six in the evening.”

Eliza stared at the hour hand on her watch as she tried to figure out what time it actually
felt
like.

“Well, you get settled, and we'll see you in a few,” Estelle said again, leaving Eliza to her unpacking.

Eliza hung up her dresses and blouses in the closet and laid her clothes in the drawers. She took out her laptop and put it on the desk, then dug out the plug adapter and plugged it in to charge.

Eliza flopped down on the edge of the bed and fell back into the covers. Staring up at the ceiling, she realized that she was a whole lot more exhausted from the ordeal of travel than she had thought. In fact, if she didn't get up and out of bed, she was going to fall asleep right then and there.

Not the best move to miss her first dinner, she knew. She picked herself up off the bed and stepped into the bathroom to wash up. Her reflection in the mirror was startling; her long journey sure showed on her face. Her hair had sprouted flyaways in every direction, her makeup had practically evaporated, and even her tracksuit somehow managed to look rumpled and wrinkled. She hastily finger-combed her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. She splashed some water on her face and, feeling slightly refreshed, decided she was ready to face her host family and have some dinner.

 

Outside, Frank manned the grill with an enormous smile. As Eliza slipped into a chair at the table, Estelle approached with a tray full of the biggest, juiciest steaks she'd ever seen.

“I hope you're hungry!” she trilled. “Billie decided to become a vegetarian when she started high school, but the rest of us aren't, so we were glad to hear you're a bit of a carnivore yourself.”

Despite being completely disoriented and turned around about time, Eliza was hungry. Dinner was delicious with steak, mashed potatoes, and string beans. The twins made a mess of their plates, dropping food left and right.

The Echolses had lots of questions for her, and she did her best to answer them. They wanted to know about the flight, about her family and her school. They were curious what Billie's classes would be like. The twins wanted to know about what movies were out in the States that hadn't come out yet in Australia. Before long she was stuffed—in the American sense of the word—and helped Estelle to clear the plates.

“Why don't you put those down next to the sink and go get some rest?” Estelle offered. “You look simply exhausted, and you have some big days ahead of you.”

Gratefully, Eliza put the plates where Estelle indicated, said a thank-you and a good-night, and headed to her room. She closed the door behind her and flopped back in the bed. She settled herself on top of the covers, and before she knew it, she had drifted off to sleep, still sporting her tracksuit and smeared makeup. Anything else that needed taking care of would have to wait until tomorrow.

Billie wasn't sure quite what she'd been expecting when her airplane finally touched down in D.C. Obviously she knew that, capital or no, it wasn't as though a marching band brandishing mini American flags was going to come stomping through the baggage claim area. Besides, after the horrifically endless flight to which she'd just been subjected, she wouldn't have had the energy for a marching band, anyhow.

Or would she? She stared dazedly, taking in as much of her surroundings as possible while she made her way toward the traveler pickup area.

After a moment she realized that one of the biggest clichés about America was apparently true. The country's fascination with McDonald's translated to two separate outposts that sprang up in the short distance from the arrival gate and the exit to ground transportation.

Billie was a vegetarian, and the thought of eating a Big Mac or Chicken McNuggets made her stomach churn. As she pressed toward the crush of family and friends who awaited her fellow travelers, Billie kept a sharp eye out for Mr. Ritter. S.A.S.S. had provided Billie with a recent Ritter family photo as reference, but she would have recognized Mr. Ritter without it. He was in the news often, crusading for the environment. The whole reason she'd been chosen for this exchange program was her proven dedication to eco-conservation, and Mr. Ritter was essentially Mr. Environment, as far as the U.S. government was concerned. Billie couldn't wait to meet him, and even—dare she dream it?—“talk shop” with him, as well.