After brunch, they walk down Michigan Avenue. They’ve left their bags at the hotel, but Mae still has her trusty camera with her, and whenever they pass something noteworthy—the greenish river or the ornate building made of limestone or a little boy in a pirate’s hat—Hugo waits while she pauses to capture some footage.
“B-roll,” she says.
He gives her a mystified look. “What’s that?”
“Just extra footage to intersperse with the interviews.”
He can’t help smiling. “I like it when you talk film. You sound very impressive.”
“Well, it’s not my first rodeo.”
“Is that another movie thing?”
“No,” she says, laughing. “It just means I’ve done this before.”
“Right. So tell me: How does the B-roll fit into the rodeo?”
Mae shakes her head at him, but he can see that it lights her up, talking about this film.
“Well, I don’t want the interviews to feel stagnant,” she says. “Part of the story is the train itself: where it’s going, where it’s come from. So I’m trying get some shots along the way to weave in: people passing by, birds flying overhead, the light changing over the city. Plus, any major landmarks and cool sights and stuff like that.”
Hugo steps in front of the camera with a grin. “Do I count?”
“As a landmark?” she says, pointing it away from him. “No.”
“How about as a cool sight?” He leans closer to her as people stream around them on the sidewalk. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m very, very cool.”
When she laughs, it feels to Hugo like he’s won some sort of prize.
“That might be true,” she says, “but you still don’t make the cut.”
“Why not?” he asks as they start to walk again, weaving past some people taking selfies in front of the river. “I’m part of the trip too.”
“Yeah, but the film is about the interviews. Not us.”
He smiles at the word us. “But you’re the one doing the traveling. It’s your journey.”
“It’s not,” she says, looking over at him sharply. “It’s theirs. That’s the whole point.”
“But surely there must be documentaries that include the filmmaker?”
She frowns at the sidewalk. “Maybe,” she says after a moment. “But this isn’t one of them.”
“Why couldn’t it be?”
This time she’s the one to stop. Her eyes are shiny, and her hair is tangled from the wind. She seems to be deep in thought, and while he waits, Hugo counts the freckles on her nose.
“Because,” she says eventually, and there’s an intensity to the words, “I don’t know how to be on both sides of the camera.”
Hugo almost makes a joke about the simple logistics of this—You just take two steps to the left!—but he can see how pained she looks, so he stays quiet. There’s more he’d like to know, but he can almost see the window closing, something in her face shifting, and then she turns and begins to walk again. He follows her, both of them silent, until they pass a huge grayish building, where Hugo notices a rock embedded in the side, and he nearly trips over her as he hurries to take a closer look.
“Whoa,” he says as she joins him. He points to a dark stone with words carved beneath it. “That’s from the Great Wall of China.”
Her eyes widen. “Wow.”
“And look,” Hugo says, getting even more excited. He shuffles to the left, where there’s another stone, this one white and uneven. “The Colosseum.” His eyes dart up and around to all the many other rocks embedded in the building. “And the Alamo! Saint Peter’s! Bloody hell…that’s from the Berlin Wall.”
Mae is trailing after him as he skirts the building, his head tipped back to take it all in. He’s aware that he sounds like a lunatic, but he can’t bring himself to care. All these places, all these tiny pieces of the world assembled right here in front of him. His mouth has fallen open as he scans through them: bits of the Arc de Triomphe and Westminster Abbey and the Taj Mahal, rocks from Antarctica and Yellowstone and even the moon. The moon!
“This is incredible,” he says quietly, peering at a stone taken from the Parthenon. He turns to Mae. “How did I not know about this? How is it not the first thing people tell you to do in Chicago?”
She laughs at his enthusiasm. “I don’t know. I never heard of it either. But it’s pretty cool.”
“No, Mae,” he says in a stern voice. “The pizza last night was pretty cool. So were the waffles this morning. But this? This is something else entirely.”
Their train is only a few hours away, and there’s so much more of the city to see, but Hugo insists on staying until he’s had a chance to look at each and every stone, pacing the perimeter of the building in a daze. When they finally leave, his mind is still busy with it, the idea of all those different places gathered like that, the way the whole world could be contained in a single building.
He feels a little giddy as they make their way farther along Michigan Avenue. It’s a beautiful day, the sky shot through with silver, the heat just starting to lift. As Mae darts into a shop, Hugo’s mobile begins to buzz in his hand. He waits outside to read his siblings’ texts as they arrive one after another:
Alfie: Hey, Hugo. I bet George will bake you fresh scones every morning if you agree to live with him….
George: Sod off, Alfie.
Alfie: Just trying to help you out, mate.
Isla: You were the last one to share a room with him, Alf.
Alfie: So?
Oscar: So now he’s gone off us.
Alfie: So?
Poppy: Good lord. Connect the dots, man.
Alfie: Hey! I’m a delight.
Isla: Not the first word that comes to mind.
Alfie: Is that because the first word is genius?
Isla: Do you really want me to answer that?
Hugo’s stomach twists, the guilt settling over him. He wants to tell them it’s not about George. It’s not about any of them. But he knows that’s not entirely true. How is it possible to miss someone—to miss five someones—and still be so outrageously happy to be away from them?
A new message appears, this one separate from the group:
Poppy: Don’t worry about George. Really. He’ll be fine either way.
Hugo: You think?
Poppy: I realise this isn’t always easy, but you should just do what you want.
What I want, Hugo thinks, looking up at the clouds.
He stares at the phone for a second before writing: I don’t want to go back.
Then he erases the letters one at a time, his heart beating very fast. He didn’t even realize he was thinking that, but the words feel solid and heavy in his mind.
I don’t know what I want, he types instead, but his face is burning because he’s not so sure that’s true.
Poppy: Well, don’t wait too long to work it out.
Hugo: Thanks, P. You’re the best.
Poppy: I don’t know about that, but I’m at least better than Alfie, right?
Hugo: Top three, for sure.
When Mae comes out of the shop, he gives her a smile and starts to follow her up the street, but his mind is still turning over the words in his head: I don’t want to go back. He tries his best to stuff the thought down again, but now that it’s out there, sunlit and exposed, it’s difficult to tuck away.
At the end of Michigan Avenue, past the old stone water tower, there’s a thumbnail of beach. Sitting in the shadow of the towering Hancock building, right at the end of one of the busiest shopping streets in the world, it’s a strange sort of oasis. They cross the street and walk out onto the sand, which is soft and glittering—full of people, and crowded with towels—then pick their way to the edge of the green-blue lake. It’s rough today, a reminder of last night’s storm, and Hugo holds his trainers in one hand as he inches closer to the water. When it rushes over his feet, he shivers.