He came back, grabbed my arm again, and we joined a long and slowly shuffling queue. Neither of us spoke much. We were tired, though we’d both dozed on the flight. I was fingering our passports and our customs declaration card, and with them, in an envelope, I had the letter from Mum and Dad that I’d printed late the night before. I’d had a bit of trouble with that, not writing it—because that’d been easy—but printing it. The printer wouldn’t work and there was no way I could get Mum or Benjamin to help me. For obvious reasons I don’t usually use the printer, so I’m not sure about how to use it. In the end I pushed every button on its front and it spewed out the copy I needed. At least I hoped it was, and not something that had been sitting in the print queue for three months. If I handed a copy of Dad’s accounts over, we probably wouldn’t get very far.
I panicked and showed the start of the letter to Benjamin.
“What’s that say?” I asked.
Benjamin sighed. I could tell he was bored and tired of standing in the queue.
“To whom it may concern…” he began.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Thanks.”
I relaxed. I had the right letter. I was proud of that opening, it sounded very formal and grown up.
And then it was our turn.
Benjamin had described for me what people did when they went up to the glass booths. They stood there for about a minute, he said, and the man (they were all men, he said) behind the desk asked questions. And the person had to put their hand up onto something that he couldn’t make out; first one hand, then the other. And then they wandered into the hall beyond where they have those big turntable things that bring your bags back to you.
Benjamin led me to the desk, and I did a little trick of brushing the documents up its side until I felt the edge, and slid them onto the top.
“Business or pleasure?” said a voice. A voice with a big, big New York accent.
“Er, pleasure.”
“Take your sunglasses off while at the desk, miss, please.”
It was that kind of “please,” again. It was more like “or else.”
I did what I was told.
There was silence.
“Look into the camera,” said the man, but I could tell he was looking away from me, probably at a computer screen, trying to find out if we were known terrorists.
“Er,” I said.
Benjamin squeezed my hand.
“It’s up to your left,” he said.
Silence. Then, “Miss, are you visually impaired?”
So that was that.
“Yes,” I said.
“Miss, you’re how old?”
“Sixteen.”
“And this is your brother?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Hey!” Benjamin complained.
“Yes,” I said. “Benjamin is my brother.”
“And you’re traveling alone?”
“Yes, but we have a letter from our parents. It’s right there in the envelope.”
There was a short shuffling of paper.
“This letter is unsigned.”
I went cold inside. Of course it needed to be signed. It’s just not something I’ve ever done, or would ever think about.
“Oh, well, Mum must have forgotten to, and Dad couldn’t have signed it anyway, because he’s here.”
“He’s here?” said Benjamin, and he tugged my hand as he looked around.
“Whoa, son,” said the man behind the desk. His voice was slightly above me and he sounded very stern. “You wait right there.”
Benjamin stopped wriggling.
“I mean,” I said, “he’s here, in New York, so he couldn’t have signed the letter.”
Then I started to get carried away.
“In fact, he’s outside now. He’s waiting for us.”
“He’s outside?” cried Benjamin.
“Yes, of course he is,” I said.
There was another long silence from the man.
“Dad’s here?” said Benjamin.
“Shh,” I said. “Let the man do his job.”
“The man’s talking to someone else,” Benjamin said. “In the next box.”
And if that were true, he was talking so quietly I couldn’t hear him. I tried to look as innocent as possible, which I have no idea how to do. I’ve been told, countless times, that what freaks sighted people out about blind people is that we simply don’t look at anything. We just seem to stare into space. I have struggled a thousand times to understand why anyone would think we would be looking at anything in the first place, and have failed. But I do know it makes people feel uneasy and sometimes even cross, so if it’s really important, I do my best to pretend I’m looking at something.
I turned my head to where I’d last heard the man’s voice, and put my best nonpsychotic smile on while I waited for him to finish his discussion.
He did, but there was little explanation.
“We’re going to ask the supervisor about your status,” he said. Whatever that meant. I guessed it wasn’t good. I had visions of sitting in a tiny room being interviewed. Or worse, while they phoned Mum. Or worse still, being put on a plane back home.
“Put your hand on the palm-reader,” he said, then added to Benjamin. “Son, show her where it is. Right hand first.”
Benjamin helped me find the reader and I put my right hand on it, then my left, while it read my palm. I think it was for fingerprints, not for telling fortunes, but then, I’d already met my tall stranger for the day, and he’d given me the brush-off.
“Now you, son,” said the man, and Benjamin said, “Cool! I’m James Bond.”
There was a short pause, and then man behind the desk groaned.
I heard some tapping of keys, gently at first and then more insistent.
“Shoot,” he said, and I didn’t understand at first. “I’m going to ask you to come around to the next window, to my colleague here. There seems to be a problem with the system.”
“Oh, no,” I said, in a small voice.
“Miss?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
So we were put at the head of the queue next to us, and Benjamin had to put his hand on that reader, too, and for a moment I thought everything was okay, but when he put his left hand up, he managed to break that one, too.
After he crashed a third machine, there was a whole gaggle of officials around us. People were shouting from the queues asking why desks were closing when the airport was so busy. Guards were telling them very firmly to be quiet or they would be refused entry to the United States of America, and all the time our man and several others were crowding around a fourth desk while Benjamin was told to put his palm on the reader.
My heart was thumping away, and I prayed that the fourth machine might be more robust than the others.
It was.
It appeared to have survived the Benjamin Effect, and it also appeared that in the chaos, the man had forgotten that we were supposed to speak to someone about why the letter from our parents wasn’t signed.
He told us to leave, and Benjamin began to tell them sulkily that their machines were rubbish but I yanked his arm in what I hoped was the right direction.
“Just look for the exit,” I said. “And don’t look back.”
ONE MONEY SIZE
“Girl? You need a ride? Lady?”
A man’s voice, so American it was like a movie.
“Low fares!” he said, and I held Benjamin’s hand tighter and whispered to him.
“Is that man a real taxi driver?”
“He’s got a car,” said Benjamin.
“That doesn’t mean he’s legitimate,” I said.
“What’s that?” asked Benjamin.
“It means he might not be a real taxi driver.”
“Then what is he doing with his car at the airport?”
“Listen…”
I was about to try to explain when I heard someone else giving the man a hard time, telling him to move
his car along, or they’d call the police. Whoever this second person was then spoke to us.
“Taxi, ma’am? The line is right over here … Don’t ride with those unlicensed drivers, you hear?”
* * *
So we were in a taxi, heading for Queens Library.
All the business with Benjamin had taken ages, and it was already quarter to two. I felt stupid for not remembering how long it takes to get through U.S. Immigration, but I don’t remember the thing with the palm scanners last time, and even if the rest of us had to do it, I guess they thought Benjamin was too young back then and didn’t have to.
It was hot. Walking out of the air-conditioned airport gave us no warning of just how hot an August afternoon it was. I got a brief whiff of the heat as the doors slid open, and then it was like walking into a sauna; very hot, and humid. Hard even to breathe.
The taxi was air-conditioned, too, and I was glad. I was almost scared by how vicious the heat was, and I hadn’t brought any sun cream, or …
“Miss?” the driver said. He hadn’t understood me, so I tried again.
“The Public Library in Queens,” I said. “Main Street, Flushing. Please?”
“Oh, the Queens Library,” he said, and then we were away.
“I thought you said Dad was waiting for us?” Benjamin said, for the fifth time. “You said he was outside. Why are we getting a taxi?”
“Benjamin,” I said. “Benjamin, please. Dad’s not here, okay. We’re going to look for him.”
“But you said he was at the airport.”
“I had to tell that man that. Or he might not have let us through.”
He very nearly didn’t anyway, I thought.
“You told him Dad was here,” Benjamin said. “But he’s not?”
“No,” I said. “He’s not. We’re going to look for him, remember?”
“Is that where we’re going now?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. We’re going to meet a man who has Dad’s notebook.”
“Why? Does he know where Dad is?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I didn’t want to lie to Benjamin. It would have been so easy to, but I could never lie to him.
“I hope so,” I said. “Maybe he does. Hey, how’s Stan? Does he like it in New York?”
“He doesn’t like how hot it is outside. He can’t take his feathers off.”
“But it’s cool in here.”
I heard Benjamin chatting to Stan.
“Look, Stan,” he said. “It’s American.”
I was about to correct him when I realized he was right, in a way. It was American. I’ve never felt heat like it at home. Even a couple of minutes of it had left me feeling exhausted. There was a radio on in the back of the taxi, and the voices spoke fast in strong accents, again like they were off the TV. The taxi drove fast, weaving this way and that, lurching and coming to sudden stops, all very different from sluggish London cabs.
I checked the time.
It was already two.
“Is it far?” I asked the driver, but he didn’t reply.
I tried again, louder, and this time he heard.
“No, it’s not far,” he said.
I turned to Benjamin, and knowing now I had to shout for the driver to hear me, I felt safer talking about money.
“Benjamin,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I need your help.”
“Can Stan help, too?”
“Is he good at counting?”
“Very. Ravens are very clever.”
“Good. Because I need to sort our money out. I should have done it on the plane, but…”
But there’d been other distractions, on the plane.
I took out the bundle of notes from my bag. I’d taken five hundred dollars from a machine at the airport. It was complicated. I can just about cope with the cashpoint ATM Mum always uses at the end of our street, but they all work slightly differently and this one was able to dispense pounds or euros or dollars. I had to get Benjamin to help me, and at the same time keep him from touching anything himself, just in case he crashed it. There was Braille next to some of the keys, but not all of them. Someone once told me that the toilet doors on trains have the controls marked in Braille, but that was news to me; I’ve never found them. And there was another thing the cash machine didn’t tell you: how the five hundred dollars was broken down.
So in the taxi, I showed it all to Benjamin.
“Here,” I said. “Are they all worth the same?”
“No, there’s different ones.”
“But they’re all the same size,” I said. “Are you sure?”
“I know but there’re different numbers on them.”
He grabbed them from me.
“Don’t lose any!” I said, at the thought of him dropping them on the floor.
“I won’t,” he said, and he sounded a bit cross.
“What have we got?”
“Shh, I’m counting.”
“Benjamin…”
“We’ve got three of these. They’re a hundred dollars each.”
“Okay.”
“Then we have three of these. They’re fifty each.”
“That’s four hundred and fifty so far.”
“And then there are two twenties and one ten.”
“And they’re all the same size?”
“Yes, can’t you feel?”
“Of course I can,” I said. “It just makes it harder for me.”
“Why?” asked Benjamin, but then he understood. “Oh, yes. Is our money different sizes?”
“Euros are, too,” I said, thinking about the skiing trip. “Never mind. Give me the hundreds, please.”
He pulled my hand out and pushed the money in. I folded the notes up tightly and put them in the right pocket of my jeans.
“Now the fifties.”
Those went in my left-hand pocket, and then I held the twenties in one hand and the ten in the other until the taxi pulled up to the library.
“Queens Borough Public Library!” announced the driver. “Twenty-two dollars and eighty cents.”
I held out one of the twenties and the ten and waited with my hand out. The driver gave me some notes and a couple of coins and we scrambled from the taxi, and only as it pulled away did I remember I should have given him a tip.
I didn’t know what money he’d given me back, only that it came to seven dollars and twenty cents, but we were late already and I didn’t want to waste time working it out, so I shoved it at Benjamin, and put the other twenty in my back pocket.
“Here,” I said. “Keep this safe for me, please. See anything that looks like a library?”
I felt Benjamin turning round to look.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Wow.”
ONE WEIRD DUDE
Who knows why people are the way they are? Dad says most people don’t even know much about themselves, never mind anyone else. So why Mr. Walker was like he was remains a mystery, but I for one, came to like it. So who cares?
* * *
“You okay?” I said to Benjamin as we went into the library. He seemed very quiet.
“Mmm,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m tired. You know how you told me the time is different here? So it’s already midnight or something…?”
“Benjamin,” I said firmly. “Even at home it is only seven o’clock in the evening. If I told you to go to bed at seven you’d laugh at me. But here it is two o’clock and that’s how we’re going to think about it, right?”
I felt exhausted myself. The flight had been tiring. The heat was making it hard to think. I told myself it was only the afternoon and that way I might just get through the day. We were a bit overdressed, though, and I took off my hoodie and made Benjamin take his off, too, and put them in our bags.
“Okay, Laureth.”
“Okay.”
“But Stan’s tired.”
“Well, he can have a nap if he wants, but we ha
ve to find Mr. Walker.”
“How will we find him?”
“He’s going to find us.”
“How?”
“I told him what we look like.”
Benjamin stopped walking.
“But this place is enormous. And it’s packed.”
I could hear his desperation.
“Can you see a room with lots of people sitting at tables, reading?”
“Yes. It’s through those doors.”
“So lead on,” I said, and we were just heading inside when a kid’s voice spoke, right next to me.
“Do you know Jack Peak?”
I stopped dead, because no one knew me in New York.
“Who are you?” I asked, turning toward the voice.
“I would have thought that was obvious. Do you know Jack Peak? Did he send you? He must have. You’ve got the seven-year-old boy and the bird.”
“You…” I said. “You’re Mr. Walker’s son, are you? I’m sorry we’re late, we—”
“I’m not Mr. Walker’s son,” he said. “I’m Mr. Walker.”
“Mr. Walker? Michael Walker? Oh, I’m sorry, but you sound like a child.”
“I am not a child,” he said. “I’m twelve. That’s a child.”
“Hey!” said Benjamin.
I tried not to laugh.
“You called yourself Mr. Walker. I’m sorry. I thought you were an adult, that’s all.”
“That’s merely a name we let society pin upon us, wouldn’t you say?”
I didn’t know what to say. He might have been twelve but he certainly spoke like an adult. An adult from 1872 to be precise.
“You’re the one I was emailing?” I said. “You found the notebook?”
“I did,” said Mr. Walker. “Pleased to meet you. You may call me Michael.”
I put my hand out as quickly as I could. If you get to the space first it means people have to put their hand where yours already is, not the other way around.
“Laureth. And this is Benjamin.”
“Hello, Benjamin. How do you do?”
“And this is Stan,” said Benjamin.
“Good afternoon, Stan,” said Michael, and I started to like him a bit more.
“Do you have the book?”