Up Over Down Under (13 page)

“Oh yeah?” Eliza raised her eyebrows. “And who do you ‘barrack' for?”

“No question in my mind. I'm loyal to Geelong.” Macca threw both arms into the air and yelled, “GO CATS!”

Before Eliza could even think of being embarrassed by his outcry, a stranger from the other side of the café called back.

“Oi! Oi!”

“You see,” said Macca, “we're a loyal bunch down here.”

Clearly,
Eliza thought.

Aloud she simply said, “Aha. Well, I haven't had the pleasure yet, but maybe
someone
will take me so I can have a look.” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

He didn't miss a beat. “Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. I will do you the favor of taking you to a game at the MCG if you do a favor for me.”

Eliza was intrigued. “And what would that be?”

“Well, my brother is in his second year at uni, and they have a formal coming up at his college. We can't go to the dinner, which is fine because they're boring, but he can get us into the after-party. Technically, the invites are for students at other residential colleges, but if we act like we belong, no one will give us a hard time.”

Eliza was floored, and momentarily rendered speechless. She looked down to make sure that her heart, which was beating a mile a minute, wasn't actually bursting out of her chest. She took a little breath and tried to play as cool as she could, all things considered.

“Well, I guess that sounds like a pretty fair deal,” Eliza said with a grin. “I accept, but only because you're doing a nice favor for me,” she said, reminding him playfully.

“Great, it's the week after next on Friday night. It'll be a ripper!”

Eliza had no idea what a “ripper” was. But she had a feeling she was going to like it. A lot.

Things just weren't clicking for Billie.

She was discouraged to have learned that her primary reason for wanting to be in the United States—the chance to work with Mr. Ritter on Proposition Seven—amounted to little more than pushing papers. Today, an e-mail blast. Tomorrow, a snail mailing. All for the sake of letting the public know that money to clean the bay wasn't going to be available for another two years at the earliest.

She should have known. His wife
did
drive an SUV. How could Ritter be anything
but
a farce?

From what Billie had read, ever since the Chesapeake Bay had been officially declared dirty water, one of the EPA's announced objectives had been to fund a massive cleanup. There wasn't a single classroom in Washington that hadn't heard about Proposition Seven and the plans to finally clean the bay. But apparently the EPA's budget for programming had come in lower than expected, and—as Eliza mentioned in her e-mail—other projects were suddenly bumped ahead on the priority scale. Cleaning the bay would have to wait. Which would have been awful enough news on its own, even if it hadn't meant that Billie's job now consisted of finding ways to spread the news about the proposition in a positive and enthusiastic light. She felt like a fraud, like a typical government spin doctor.

At any rate, she would have much preferred to spend her days collecting soil samples, or testing water for contamination. Even if Proposition Seven were progressing full steam ahead, she wanted to get her hands dirty—like Eliza was doing. The girls' work was meant to be opposite sides of the same educational coin. The two schools had arranged it that way. At the end of the semester, they'd exchange reports on their internship experiences, as well.

It was almost as though she and Eliza had switched places, and the American was the one who was all hands-on. Not that Eliza begrudged her academic doppelganger a worthy cause; instead, she wished they could somehow be sharing that cause. Couldn't they be twins instead of shadow sisters? Firing off impassioned e-mails every five minutes wasn't going to change the world.

And also, it was pretty clear that Iris was growing weary of Billie's constant barrage of questions. Her expression darkened every time Billie either raised her hand or started with a timid “excuse me.” It was apparent that Billie was most definitely not excused.

To her surprise, she hadn't made any real, close friends since she'd been here, either. Fiona-belle mostly stuck to themselves, which was just as well; they were kind of creepy. Heather seemed to like Billie well enough, but Billie's internship kept her so busy that they didn't get as much time together as she would have liked. And Parker, while outgoing, was, to a certain way of thinking, Eliza's. Even if Billie didn't know what was going on with the two of them this semester, she felt a bit awkward trying to get to know him better, given his relationship to the girl with whom she'd swapped places.

The rest of the American students were all friendly enough (and incredibly taken by Billie's accent), but they had clearly settled into their own little bubble of high school existence ages ago and weren't necessarily looking to take any new stragglers into their cliques.

She wondered how Eliza was faring at St. Cat's. People there were generally more outgoing. Or was it just that it
felt
that way to Billie when she was home, surrounded by everything familiar? Eliza had mentioned talking to Jess and Nomes, so she'd have to ask if they'd become better friends.

Monday morning proved to be more of the same. D.C. was rainy—she'd had to skip her before-school run, which meant that she was doubly stir-crazy—and Billie's sandy hair was frizzy from the humidity, clinging to her forehead in unruly waves. D.C. was
always
humid, no matter what else the weather was doing. It wasn't the sort of thing that Billie would whine about in general, but each day her hair-style became increasingly mad, until she wasn't surprised that she wasn't being mobbed by American fans on a daily basis. Thank goodness for hairpins. She'd be relieved to get home to the Australian climate—even if it was reliably unreliable.

At least the topic of discussion in her social studies class seemed interesting. Ms. Franklin was just getting the class's attention.

“Proposition Seven looks to reduce pollution in the Chesapeake Bay by thirty percent over the next five years,” she began.

In an alternate reality, Ms. Franklin must have been Billie's kindred spirit. She was the only person whom Billie had met in D.C. who was as interested in Proposition Seven (as opposed to, say, interested in
sending out five million e-mails about
why
Proposition Seven would have to be postponed
) as Billie herself was.

“Does anyone know how they plan to do so?”

Poor Ms. Franklin. Billie suspected she was the only one really paying any attention to the teacher.

Or was she? From the front row of the classroom, Parker hesitantly inched his arm forward. Ms. Franklin nodded at him.

He sat up straight in his seat. “The EPA wants a cleaner and healthier bay, and is committed to holding polluters accountable and to working with all of our partners to speed up the cleanup. That means using innovative and sustainable tools and focusing on environmental cooperation.”

Was it Billie's imagination, or did he turn to her and actually wink?

She wasn't seeing things. Parker was grinning at her from across the room. And no wonder. She was the only person in class likely to know that he was quoting directly from the press release that Ritter had sent out the week before. Printing and collating five hundred copies of it tended to leave an imprint on one's memory.

Before she could stop herself, she snickered aloud.

“He's actually right, Billie,” Ms. Franklin said. “But did you have something that you wanted to share?”

“Oh, no, of course not…” Billie replied, embarrassed. She hadn't meant to speak—or, for that matter, snort—out loud. How humiliating. If only she could meld to her plastic seat like a human chameleon. Unfortunately, the seat was a misguided shade of banana yellow, and Billie's peaches-and-cream complexion stood out all too starkly against it. Between that and the snorting, she figured there was no way to get out of answering Ms. Franklin.

“It's just…” she hedged, trailing off uncertainly. She had to be very careful how she answered this question, after all. The last thing she wanted was to go on record slamming Mr. Ritter, so instead she just jabbered on endlessly like an enormous prat.

“I guess I just feel like there are some other, more, um, urgent steps that we maybe should be taking right now?” Her voice went up at the end of her suggestion, making it sound like more of a wild guess. Now, in addition to looking like a lunatic, everyone would think for sure that she was a bit mental. “I mean, that sentiment is nice and all, but without funding, the bay doesn't get clean.”

Ms. Franklin readjusted her glasses and peered over their lenses at Billie. “True enough, but surely the money has been set aside for equally worthy programs. In which case, what would you have the EPA do?”

Billie swallowed. “Well, funding is crucial, of course. I certainly don't mean to imply otherwise. But we can also solicit volunteers for actual fieldwork to help clean the water, until the money to bring in professional teams is available,” she said, trying to project more confidence.

Eeep!
Had she actually said that out loud—that she was starting to see things from the
non
-Ritter point of view?

The classroom was stonily still except for Parker, who'd taken to rubbing his hands together with an almost cartoonish glee. At least she had
one
ally in the room, Billie thought. Since the look on her teacher's face was utterly inscrutable at best.

Ms. Franklin mashed her lips together, her expression still impassive. “Hmm,” she said, finally. “I see.”

But that was all.

 

“Hmm” could have meant many things, but apparently, in this case, “hmm” meant, “Billie, please stay after class.”

If Billie had been embarrassed before, now she was fairly desperate with panic. She hoped she wasn't getting into trouble, or getting sent home, and even though neither outcome seemed especially likely, by the time the bell rang signaling the end of class, her palms were slick with sweat and her heartbeat was fluttery inside her rib cage. What if they'd called Mr. Ritter in just to have him feed her a nice kick in the butt for speaking ill of his program? Could you be fired from an unpaid internship that wasn't even, technically, a job?

“You wanted to see me, Ms. Franklin?” Billie asked, clutching her heavy stack of notebooks close to her chest defensively.

“Yes.” The teacher looked up from her grade book. “I was interested in what you were saying earlier in class about Proposition Seven.”

Billie flushed and ran a hand through her fringe to move it out of her eyes. “It was just…you know, a suggestion. I mean…everybody knows how essential clean water is.”

“I don't think everybody
does
know, Billie,” Ms. Franklin replied pointedly. “If they did, I think we'd see funding going toward cleaning the bay right away rather than two years from now.” At this, Billie could only shrug. True or not, she wasn't sure what Ms. Franklin was getting at.

“I know that, through S.A.S.S., you're working for Ritter,” the teacher went on, leaning forward as though she were sharing a secret, instead of just telling Billie something she already knew. “It sounds to me like maybe you're getting a little bit frustrated?”