a purple knapsack loaded down with books. Before boys made an impression on her mental landscape. Before she ever stopped to wonder how and where she belonged.
Ed also loves how Jericho always gives the kindest interpretation possible of what she says, and never makes her feel like a bad person. He is a little like an alien, a bespectacled, motley-skinned being with a superior temperament. And so Ed vents her spleen: railing against the professor of her summer class, and examining her ongoing grievances with Owen without ever mentioning his name.
When Jericho asks about her own name, he surprises her with his guesses. “Short for Edelina? Edelweiss? Edwarda?”
“Edith,” she says.
Jericho shakes his head. “You’re neither an Edith nor an Ed. You’re something more like Feina.” Feina, he tells her, is the word for “fairy” in Esperanto.
Ed’s hands fly to her cheeks and she flutters her eyelashes, feeling pleased but also slightly embarrassed. “How many bitchy-ass fairies are you acquainted with?” she asks.
Jericho pulls her hands away from her face with the barest touch, and sets them down on the table.
“Feina,” he says, and from then on refuses to call her anything else.
* * *
In late July, Ed goes to one of Jericho’s Esperanto workshops in the evening after her summer course. She finds a strange assembly of six or seven who look to be regulars and a few wary newcomers, standing diffident and apart at the back. Three guys sit on the tops of desks at the front, surrounding an emptying cookie tin of home-baked lemon bars, taking turns reading incomprehensible dialogue off photocopied sheets.
“This is Feina, everyone,” says Jericho.
A girl in a wool sweater raises her head as Ed offers a smile. The girl has a neat binder set in front of her, with tabbed dividers in a rainbow of colours, and a sharpened purple pencil. Her eyes are fixed on Jericho.
“Esperanto means ‘one who hopes,’ ” says Jericho, “and I hope we’ll all get a lot out of tonight’s session. Why don’t we go around the room and introduce ourselves, for everyone here tonight who’s new?”
Afterwards, Jericho tells Ed that he has been leading the workshops for four years. She is hole-punching her scrawled notes from the class, putting them into a binder with her handouts, determined to at least give the appearance of someone attempting to learn the language.
“And how many more Esperanto speakers do you think there are now?”
He looks startled by the question. “You mean, because of me? I don’t know. Maybe one?”
“Only one?” Ed is surprised. “And you don’t think that’s kind of sad?”
“Don’t you think one person can make a difference?”
Ed considers it. “I guess I do, sure.”
“Well, one by one, that’s how change happens. And then imagine if there’s a catastrophe, like another flood or an ice age or whatever happened to the dinosaurs.” Jericho speaks in the calm tones of a flight attendant pointing out the emergency exits. “We’ll need a way to communicate with people all over the world.”
“What about English?” Ed blurts out. It is a question she has been attempting to repress for weeks.
Jericho looks disappointed in her. “Just think of its colonial past.” Then he crooks an eyebrow. “You know who doesn’t need to be convinced of the need for an alternative? The frontman of your favourite band.” One side of his lip curls with this last remark; he claims not to be a Dove Suite fan himself.
Now Ed is the one who is startled. “Stu Jenkins speaks Esperanto?” Jericho nods. “I’ve never read that. And I swear, I have read every single interview.”
“It’s true. At least, he has expressed an interest in it to me, via email.”
Of course it is too good to be true. “Ah. Email.”
Jericho has a curious expression on his face. “You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.” Ed doesn’t want to pry into the details of how exactly her friend has been catfished. She changes the subject without asking any more questions.
When he isn’t promoting Esperanto, Jericho works part-time as a veterinary assistant. He claims that the animals speak to him.
“Not so much in words,” he says, “or sounds like woof woof or meow. But with their eyes, the way they breathe. The way their fur moves.”
Ed is skeptical and calls him the “dog whisperer,” but Jericho doesn’t laugh. He says, “I can make my own fur move. See?” He holds his forearm up to her face like a crossbar between them and closes his eyes. After a minute his skin ripples