Teach Me How to Fly

We only return home when the sun’s already going down. We do it the way we always do. Henry walks me home and then drives home with the bike he left at my place.

Or that’s the plan, anyway. Because as we walk up the street to where my house is, we see a large van by the house next to mine. And just as we come closer, a girl emerges from the back of the van, carrying a large cardboard box.

She’s really pretty. Almost my height with long, strawberry blonde hair that looks absolutely amazing in the light of the setting sun. She also has a lot of freckles.

She glances in our direction but then continues her way into the house.

I know what’s about to happen even before Henry opens his mouth.

“Hey, sorry, what’s your name?”

She flinches and it looks like she almost drops the box. Then she balances it on one knee for a moment to readjust her grip and turns to face us.

“Sadie,” she says, narrowing her eyes to look at us past the sunlight. “Schafer,” she adds then, a little awkwardly. But she pronounces it a little weirdly. Like the first vowel is a single sound, not the normal ‘ei’, and like the ‘er’ isn’t an ‘er’ but an ‘a’.

A tall woman emerges from the house wearing loose cargo pants and a tank top. She’s got the kind of tanned skin you get from spending all day outside. “Who’ve we got here?” she says with a friendly grin in our direction. “Do you boys live here?”

Henry points at me. “He does. He lives right next to you, apparently.”

“That so?” She nods slowly, coming closer, inspecting me with newfound interest. Then she extends a hand. “Pleasure to meet you, neighbour. We’re the Schafers, you can call me Cordelia.”

Her handshake is firm and lasts just long enough. And then I realise that I’m supposed to say my name, too, and I stammer, “Wells…. Richter.” I feel my face heat to an uncomfortable temperature.

Cordelia nods, then she turns. “Hey, Sadie,” she says and swiftly takes the box from her. Where the box had looked heavy in Sadie’s hands, it looks like it barely weighs anything in Cordelia’s. “Why don’t you get to know our neighbours a little while Dad and I finish bringing in these last few boxes?” And with that she nods goodbye at me and disappears into the house.

Henry and I exchange glances. He seems about as startled as me. And Sadie, I realise. She’s still standing where her mother left her, staring at us.

Henry’s the first to get a hold of himself again. “I’m Henry,” he says and steps closer but doesn’t offer his hand. I join them a second later. “I’m his friend. You’ll probably see us walking around together a lot.” He grins at her and she smiles back.

Is he hitting on her? I swear, this guy.

“Hi, Henry.” She nods slowly and her smile broadens a little, but she doesn’t seem to know what she’s expected to say now.

I’d love to tell her how well I can relate right now.

She’s genuinely pretty. The kinda pretty I’d usually fall in love with? Probably, but right now, that only makes the situation worse. It’s something about pretty people that makes their judgement hurt worse? I can’t really describe it. I used to be very uncomfortable around pretty people and it got better in recent years but it seems like I’ve just had a massive relapse. No wonder, I am slowly turning into a girl after all. And I won’t ever be pretty. Not to me, anyway. All I’ll ever be is some weird in-between. And she’ll know.

“So, where are you from?” Henry asks, retaking the initiative. God, this is going to be awkward if neither of us is going to step up anytime soon.

“Germany,” she says and nods again.

“You lived there your whole life?”

She looks at him confused for a moment, then she laughs. “No, but I was born there. We moved here from Thailand.”

Henry gives an impressed nod. “So you were born in Germany, grew up in Thailand and now you’re moving to England?” I think he’s about to ask how that came to be and I’m curious too, but she shakes her head and laughs once again.

“No, I grew up pretty much all around the world. I spent most of the time until I was, like, six, in Germany and France, but since then it’s been pretty much everywhere.”

She definitely has an accent to her English. Is it German? But it’s only slight. Maybe it’s just that she speaks a more international kind of English than us.

“So how many languages do you speak?” I ask when Henry waits a moment too long, obviously hinting me into participating in the conversation.

She frowns like she actually has to think about it.

When she starts counting on her fingers I know it’s going to take a while. “So, I speak English, German, and Portuguese fluently. My Hindi’s pretty good because I spent almost two years in India and my French is… alright. Apart from that, I speak like very basic Thai and Croatian, Greek, a bit of Afrikaans.” She makes a vague movement with her hand. “I went to a lot of international schools, so a lot of the times I didn’t have to actually learn the languages.”

I laugh. “That’s too bad. Now you speak only…” I frown. “Four languages more than me?”

We have French at school but I was never really good at it. I don’t like how difficult it is to remember all the irregularities of an unfamiliar language and then have to be aware of them while speaking. I struggle enough with English, thanks very much.

She shrugs. “Have you ever lived abroad for a long time?”

I shake my head and she nods. “Makes it easier. Like, a lot.”

“So, why did you travel so much?” Henry asks now.

“My parents are internationally operating climate activists and journalists,” Sadie says with a shrug. “They go places to… shoot documentaries and help the locals brainstorm climate-friendly concepts.” She scrunches up her nose. “Not sure how much it actually does, but… y’know, I guess somebody has to do it.”

“So now they’ve come to England to… help us develop climate-friendly concepts?” Henry asks with an uncertain grin.

“No, no,” Sadie hurries to explain. “I’m just old enough to kind of live on my own and since I have both German and British citizenship, I decided I wanted to try living here.”

This place of all? With all the places she could have chosen? She could be in London now or Bristol or Manchester or-

“Your parents got you a house?” All this seems pretty funny to Henry. Funny in the ‘I can’t believe a person like this even exists’ way.

“No. They want a place to retire to when the time has come and they say they’re going to ease their way out of the international life now.” She shrugs, grinning. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“They’re just going to leave you here?” I realise a little too late that that question might be offensive, but Sadie doesn’t seem to mind.

She shrugs again. “I’m used to living alone a lot. Y’know, when they’re out in the Amazonas shooting a documentary they can’t exactly drop by to make me dinner.”

I want to ask about her relationship to her parents – if her parents have left her home alone so much it can’t be that good, right? – but I don’t. It seems like way too personal a question for now.

Cordelia and a man emerge from the house, presumably Sadie’s Dad. He’s tall and very athletic. He’s built like an elite swimmer.

He gives us a friendly nod as he walks past us to the van. Cordelia stops for a moment.

“How’s it coming along?” she asks, clearly feeling the need to embarrass her daughter. Or trying to seem like a caring mother. I’m not exactly sure which of the two is more likely.

Sadie looks like whatever it really is, she doesn’t appreciate it. “Mu-um!” she complains.

Her mother laughs and raises her hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry.”

“She just told us about all the countries she’s been to and all the languages she speaks,” Henry says.

Cordelia rolls her eyes playfully. “Bragging, are we?”

“MUM!”

Again, she raises her hands. “Alright, I’ll leave.” As she turns to join her husband in the back of the van, she adds, “As long as you don’t tell them about our past as internationally hunted terrorists….” She winks at us and disappears into the van.

Henry raises an eyebrow at Sadie who looks very annoyed.

“She’s joking of course,” she says, glaring daggers at the van.

The parents re-emerge with boxes in their hands and walk past us with smiles. This time, neither of them stop.

I notice that the atmosphere isn’t really that awkward anymore. Nice.

“So, what year are you going to be in at school?” Henry asks now, probably having realised that the topic of family relations is done for now, trying to find some common ground. “You are going to attend the school here, right?”

She nods. “Yeah, uhm, I’ll still have to do some of the tests so they know which grade to put me in, but I’ll probably go to eleventh grade. My education might be international, but it’s really not that bad…. I think. What about you?”

“We’re in eleventh now, too,” I say.

She smiles. “That’s great. Then it won’t be super awkward when I walk into the classroom.” She blows air through her cheeks. “God, you guys have no clue how much I hate first days.”

“Shouldn’t you be good at those by now?” Henry asks with a chuckle.

She smirks. “You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Then she shakes her head. “But no, not really. I’m not exactly comfortable talking to strangers. One of the many reasons why I’m going to be staying here now. For longer than just two to eight months.”

Henry puts his hand on his chest. “What an honour you’re talking to us, then.”

“Don’t let it get to your head. Mum forced me.” She almost manages to maintain the facade of seriousness for both sentences but even before she cracks up, there’s a gleam in her green eyes. “And anyway, I need somebody to show me around, right? And even more importantly, somebody to keep me from wandering into the wrong classroom on my first day. Happened way too many times.”

“What is there even to show around?” I say with a shrug. “You can’t really get lost in town. We could show you the beach….”

“What about the zoo?” Henry says to me, then turns to Sadie. “It’s a twenty-minute bus ride away, but it’s in a forest and it’s a really nice place to walk around.”

I nod. He’s right. I used to constantly pester my parents to take us there when I was a child. But I haven’t been there in a long time.

Cordelia walks past us and gives Sadie a look I can’t quite read. She has one eyebrow raised.

“Mum!” Sadie complains again and her mother moves on. “I’d love to go visit the zoo with you,” she says then. “Are you two free tomorrow?”

And just like that, the plan stands. Henry and I are going to take my new neighbour on a trip to the zoo tomorrow. I only realise that I’ve almost completely forgotten about the virus when I’ve already unlocked the front door to my house.