Wanderlust

The room is small and tidy but not fussily so. An ancient electric kettle has been put on, its roar louder than the music coming from the corner of the room. In a moment it will start steaming up the windows, because that is what ancient kettles do. If left to its own devices, the kettle would slowly boil away at the water until the room is full of steam and moisture and the kettle is empty and hissing angrily.

The girl knows this about the kettle. She rescues it from itself just before the steam becomes bad, and pours the water into a travel mug. It is the best she has at the moment, but it has served her well, and she is oddly fond of it. The cup is filled ¾ of the way, and then the rest of it is filled with cold tap water. Waiting for an ancient electric kettle’s water to cool is to wait hours.

She takes a Trader Joe’s tea bag that is lying on the sink and cuts it open with a pair of scissors, dunking the bag into the water. Peppermint immediately fills the air, and the girl wrinkles her nose. But she is hungry, and her stomach is so flat, and peppermint would do her better than the strong Edinburgh teas hidden under her bed. For a moment she thinks nostalgically of the Irish Breakfast Tea she has left behind, but she shakes that thought away. Her friends already tell her that she is too gloomy.

Leaving the cup on the sink to cool down, she sits down at her laptop and types King’s London summer school into the google search bar and clicks the first link that comes up. To her left sit two textbooks which need to be read, and a strange list of terms relating to artificial intelligence. She has time. Most of her friends are in Washington, D.C. for the March; one of them is going home to Ionia because she is sick with Pink Eye; one is working, and the rest live off campus.

For a moment, the girl abandons her search and writing down of figures (£1,350; £950, £60) and turns the heat down. For the last three weeks she has woken up cold, gone to bed cold, and suffered. Only last night she realized that the heat was off. Now the heat is on full blast, but even that is getting stifling. Outside, the snow is falling. She does not pity her friend the drive back to Ionia, a three hours’ distance from their University in Livonia.

Ionia. Livonia. American cities, named for places in the Old World. She pulls the teabag out of her cup and tosses it in the sink; she’ll rescue it later. The tea tastes weak and wrong. She’s never liked peppermint. Maybe she should try again, and make another cup—make it the proper British way. Instead she takes another sip of what she already has and thinks, I’ll get used to it.

Oh, but for a proper cup of tea!

No, I’m getting used to it.

Maybe she could go back to the Old World. Classes in America still don’t sit right on her shoulders; she squirms underneath the gazes of the professors. Look at the classes offered at King’s. They study fanfiction. What American university studies fanfiction? Doesn’t matter—three weeks back in the U.K., in England, is all that matters.

Now, why go there when people are dying to go here?

King’s College. It has a nice ring, she thinks. She’s already been to Queen’s University. A King and a Queen—how does that song go? We are the kings and queens of promise?

Oh dear, she thinks, turning away from the laptop. I’m getting an idea; and it’s never good when I get ideas. I’ve too many ideas for mayhem already. Her gaze sweeps over the room. She has worked hard to make it look like a nest, like she never left. But there are packages lying on the windowsill, to send away to Northern Ireland—pudding, American pudding, candy canes, Milky Ways and Three Musketeers. Could she really say good-bye to food again, just for a proper cup of tea? And what about all of the books she needs to read, nestled in with the books she brought back from abroad—and oh, can’t it wait another year at least, this wanderlust? This is not her journey to make!

She takes another sip of tea, gags, and tosses it down the sink.

Note to self: Do not drink tea people leave in your room willy-nilly.