Melody interrupted my babbling. “So, do you know Kate Middleton?” she demanded. “Did you, like, go to school with her?”
The eye-rolling guy caught mine again and shook his head, hanging it with mock shame. I tried not to laugh. “Umm, no. Not exactly. England’s still pretty big. We don’t all go to the same school.”
Melody’s gorgeous face fell. The excitement of meeting me was waning fast. “But, hang on,” I said. “Prince Andrew came to our college and opened our new Art block. I met him.”
Melody’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, Prince Harry?! He is SO hot.”
“Umm… No not Prince H…” I trailed off and admitted defeat. “Yes. Prince Harry. That’s the one. I met him.”
“You’ve both got red hair,” she announced.
“Oh yes, I guess we do…?”
The super-tanned guy was seriously cracking up now. I kept glancing at him, and his teeth. Wondering what his face looked like in proper light. Someone plugged some portable speakers into their phone and turned some music on. Melody untangled her long limbs and announced she was getting a beer. The circle dispersed and I sighed. I’d made it through the induction, and even in my state, not been mean to anyone. It was a miracle. Whinnie scooted up closer to me and the Native American guy appeared with a huge crate of beer.
“I thought you Americans couldn’t drink until you’re twenty-one?” I said as he handed me a bottle. He grinned back at me and swigged from his.
“We have our ways. Just don’t tell the boss, right?”
In answer, I ripped my bottle top off with my teeth like Joel, one of our metal friends at college, had taught me to do. “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “The more I can do to piss off Bumface Kevin, the better.”
He laughed. “Wow, you’re right. I never noticed before but he does have a really big dip on his chin.”
I downed half the Bud Light, savouring the sweet taste. “It’s the source of all his evil powers,” I said simply.
He laughed again. “I’m Russ. I bet you’re struggling to remember all the new names, huh?”
“Russ,” I repeated. “I’m Amber. I’m Kevin’s stepdaughter, I guess. So, where you from in America?”
“You won’t have heard of it.” His eyes scrunched when he grinned.
I took another mouthful of my beer. “Try me.”
“Taos.” Then he laughed while I looked baffled.
“Is that in New York or something?”
“No. Taos is in a state called New Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
Another patient laugh. “And I saw you rolling your eyes at Kyle when Melody asked you stupid questions. You’re worse than her!”
I smiled. “Who’s Kyle?”
“The super tanned guy who looks like he should be in an infomercial.”
Ahh, the laughing guy with the teeth…
“Anyway, we have a state called New Mexico. And Taos is a small town right in the mountains. I live on a reservation there.”
I’d finished my beer and risked another stupid question.
“A nature reservation?”
“No, Melody-the-second. A reservation for…my people, I guess.”
So he was like Jacob from Twilight…and before I could say it—
“… Like Jacob from Twilight,” he said, reluctantly. “Before you say it.”
I put my hands up. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Oh, you were.”
Whinnie was kind of hopping on one foot behind him, and interrupted.
“Ignore him,” she said. “He has an issue with Jacob from Twilight.” She turned to Russ. “Dude, get over it, nobody even watches them any more.” She turned back to me. “He was whining all of last summer,” she explained.
“Hey,” Russ said. “I’m an ethnic minority – we’re allowed to whinge.”
Whinnie pointed to her expansive butt. “And I’m Puerto Rican so I’m minority enough to tell you a) I get it, and b) tell it to my genetic ass.”
I laughed nervously with them, not sure if I was allowed to join in. But liking them – thinking they were funny. Also highly aware that everyone was friends already.
Whinnie and Russ started chatting about their unis, or “colleges” as they called them, and I took another beer. Whinnie went to college in a place called Albuquerque which was the best word I’d ever heard. Apparently it was only a few hours away from Russ’s reservation and they swapped favourite diner recommendations.
I was proud of how un-scared I felt. Yes, okay, so I’d now had two beers. But maybe Americans weren’t so bad. I couldn’t blame an entire country for taking my mum away.
I drank another beer and took everything in. Melody dancing in the sand with some jock in charge of water sports. Russ and Whinnie arguing over red chilli versus green chilli. The blackness of the lake…
And then another beer.
And then…
Two more beers later, and I was struggling not to let my inner sarcastic British bitch out. Melody was quizzing me about England again, and my eyeballs needed leashes to restrain them from rolling.
“So,” Melody said, untangling the water sport guy’s arm from her waist. “In England, you guys call it a pavement, right? Whereas we call it a sidewalk.”
“Yes.” I sounded so world-weary. “And let’s not get started on the tomato thing, shall we?”
Water sport guy’s eyes lit up. “Hang on? Did you just call it a to-MAR-to? That’s SO English.”
They all laughed and I actually closed my eyes to stop them rolling. I wished Russ and Whinnie were still here, but they were involved in some treacherous game of volleyball I’d turned down as I’m inherently allergic to “sport”.
“Wait wait wait wait…” Melody interrupted. “So, like, what do you call the trash?”
I withheld another sigh.
“We call it rubbish.”
She giggled with several others, repeating “rubbish” and tittering.
“… Shall we save some time here? English people call yards, gardens? And we call jelly, jam. And we call potato chips, crisps. And we call french fries, chips, and…and…” I tried desperately to get them all out the way “… And, well, Americans use ‘fanny’ to describe your butt, and we use the word ‘fanny’ to talk about OUR BIG ENGLISH VAGINAS, OKAY?”
I sat back on the log and hiccuped.
Melody and Watersports instantly stopped asking questions. I turned to look over at the volleyball game. The tanned guy, Kyle, walked over to the fire, chucking the volleyball over his head effortlessly. He’d been close enough to hear my vaginal outburst.
“Well, well, well,” he said, when he arrived. He had the most American of American accents the world has ever known. “Who’d have thought the boss’s daughter would have such a dirty mouth?”
I blushed, which I hated, because Lottie says I blush ginger instead of red.
“Stepdaughter,” I corrected him. I closed my eyes to stop my head spinning in the abyss of a thousand (or five) Budweiser Lights. “And you are the most American person I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
It wasn’t a reasonable thing to say…
But it was what I was thinking.
He laughed and looked down at himself. I opened my eyes a tiny bit and looked at the half of him glowing in the flickering fire. He was VERY American, to be fair. If someone had told me to sketch an American guy, I would’ve drawn Kyle. He was uber tall, just the right side of broad, and his arm muscles were all ripply in his T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He even wore a backwards cap for Christ’s sake. And baggy jean shorts. His skin glowed with the kind of easy tan achieved only by living in a naturally hot climate. And his face was the archetypal American face – all strong macho jawline, slightly fat head, smiling eyes.
“Who me?” he asked.
I pointed, my finger wobbling in the air. “Yes, you. Well, you’re all ridiculously American here. But I think you’re by far the biggest culprit.”