I can do it. He always knows who the killer is in a detective story. I think he could make a career out of detecting, but he wants to write plays for theater. Maybe he could be a Shakespeare instead of a Sherlock. He could be anything. Anything he wants to be.
“We’d better go back inside,” I say, trying to shake off visions of Sean growing up and Lucy kissing him when he gets home, their kids running up to hug him—
He watches me turn away, eyes narrow. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I say with painstaking cheer.
He doesn’t push it. He follows me back up to the cottage, and possibly to distract me, he kicks off one of our lessons: grilling me about social groups and stereotypes and etiquette. What is a goth? What is “emo” short for, and what kind of music would I classify as emo? I need to give him examples. What words might an average teenager’s parents disapprove of hearing from their child? And would these parents frown upon similar words in Amarra’s India and Sean’s England alike, given that they both come from English-speaking families, go to English-speaking schools, and live in towns or cities that are largely if not entirely English-speaking and are subjected to similar TV shows, movies, news, sports, and music?
I get all the answers right.
“Well done, you!” he says, in an exaggeratedly hearty tone of voice. “You can have a cookie for being so good!”
I throw a dishcloth at him.
Sean goes to help Mina Ma with dinner. I’d help too, but I have to finish reading Wuthering Heights and email Erik an essay on whether Nelly Dean is a reliable narrator. I love Wuthering Heights, one of the few things I share with Amarra, so this assignment has been far more fun for both of us than the one on Romeo and Juliet. While Sean and Mina Ma mash potatoes and fry sausages, I sit at the kitchen table with the book and my notepad.
“Nelly”—I read my words out loud, scribbling my introduction—“obviously hates Cathy and Heathcliff, so her judgment is far from objective. Quite frankly, she’s also a bitch.”
Mina Ma and Sean burst out laughing. Mina Ma hastily stops herself and shouts at me for my language.
I’m halfway through the essay when Mina Ma goes out of the kitchen to take the washing off the line and Sean sits down at the table across from me.
“I have a question,” I say.
“What a surprise,” he says. “You, with a question? Unprecedented.”
I grin. “Never mind. It was only about the book, anyway.”
“Well, I have a question, too,” he says. “I happen to have two tickets to the zoo for tomorrow. Want one?”
“What would I do with it?” I ask him. “You might as well give it to somebody who can use it, Sean.” I clench my teeth. “Wouldn’t Lucy like to go as a birthday present?”
Sean sighs. “I’m going to let that slide, because you’ve never been asked this type of question before. Obviously I haven’t done a good enough job of teaching you how to recognize the situation. For future reference, it might help you to know that when a friend tells you they’ve got tickets and asks if you want one, they usually also mean that they would like you to go to the event in question.”
I don’t even notice the sarcasm. I look up at him, taken aback, the book and essay forgotten. “You mean, you’re asking if I’d like to go to the zoo? Like, actually go?”
“Well done,” he approves.
How could he have possibly known how much I have wanted to go to the zoo?
I fly out of the chair. “Sean, do you mean it?”
“Of course I mean it,” he says, exasperated. “Why would I ask you if I didn’t mean it, you daft harpy?”
I falter. “Is this about the tattoo again?” I can see my life unfolding in front of me, filled with pitying gestures like scones and zoos. I can’t bear to imagine that I will always be someone Sean feels sorry for.
He pulls out a pair of tickets. “Here,” he says. “These are the old tickets I got before I changed them. Look at the date on them.”
“These are tickets for next month.”
“And at the bottom, see, there’s my receipt for the day I bought them.”
“You bought them two weeks ago.”
“Right,” says Sean. “Meaning I bought them long before I knew about the tattoo. I’ve changed the date so we can go tomorrow instead, which I