Page 17 of Just Come Over
He retreated to logic and command. His happy place. “No. It’s impractical. Besides, Cinderella doesn’t have a suitcase.”
“Yes, she does. Because she goes to live in the castle, so she has to take her clothes.”
For somebody whose own clothes were currently in rubbish bags, she proved impossible to budge, even after he took the time to explain it to her. “She doesn’t have any clothes she’d want to take, surely. That’s the whole idea. Her dresses are rags, but she’s whisked away by the prince, and all her troubles are over. Which isn’t how it works, by the way. There’s no rescue, just hard work.” Wait. He probably shouldn’t be telling her that right now, since he actuallywasrescuing her.
Fortunately or otherwise, Casey didn’t care about his life lesson. “She does too have clothes,” she insisted. “She has the most beautiful dress in the world, and it’s blue and sparkly. It’s a ball gown. You have to take a ball gown, because it’s very, very special.”
“She changes back, though,” he said, “when the coach becomes a pumpkin. The clock strikes twelve, and she’s wearing her old clothes again. All she has left is her shoe. Which doesn’t make sense, actually. If everything else vanished, wouldn’t the shoes vanish as well?”
“Because it’smagic,”Casey said. “And when Fairy Godmother comes, at the end, she waves her magic wand and changes Cinderella back again, and she has her ball gown again, and her crown.” She bobbed her head in triumph. “So she does too.”
Did he consider saying that in that case, Cinderella would have beenwearingthe only item of clothing worth taking with her, and therefore would have had nothing to pack? Yes, but hedidn’tsay it, did he? He sidestepped. “Look at this one over here. It’s made for kids, which you are, so there you go. It’s round, which is cute, it’s pink, it has unicorns on, and you could pull it yourself, because it doesn’t weigh forty Kg’s before you’ve even packed it.”
He had now referred to a suitcase as “cute.” His life was officially changed.
It didn’t work. “I don’t want that one, though,” she said. “I wantthisone. Please. It’sshiny.It’s the best one ever, and Iloveit. My mommy says I can have it. She says you should always choose pretty things, especially if they’re on sale.”
That was how he ended up walking through the airport doors pushing one suitcase in bombproof black fabric, the kind that would bump up and down endless kilometers of conveyer belt and endure all the indignities of international air travel for years on end and still come out looking exactly the same. And one that assaulted his eyeballs, and that Casey had kept her anxious hand on all the way, as if it would kick up its heels otherwise and run away to join the forest of magical tacky sparkle-suitcases. When they checked in and it headed down the conveyer belt, she craned her neck and watched it go.
All in all, though, he hadn’t done so badly, had he? She wasn’t crying, and he hadn’t been arrested. By the time they boarded, once Casey got over the excitement of flying and they’d had dinner, she’d surely be ready to fall asleep. How much of a sixteen-hour flight could a six-year-old girl sleep through? Nine hours, maybe? Ten, he devoutly hoped. That wasn’t too much to ask after the day she’d had. And when they got to Auckland and he got her settled in school, which was going to be the first day, Wednesday, because he had a team to coach, he’d get some... advice. Some help.
The school would have recommendations. They’d be fine.
His optimism lasted all the way to Security.
Casey didn’t complain, not exactly. She just asked.
When they queued up for Security, she asked, “How come we’re stopping?”
“Because they need to check us,” he said. “To make sure we’re safe.”
“How come?”
“Because sometimes, people might do bad things. Bring a knife or something.” He wasn’t going to say “bomb” in a security queue. He wasn’t a fool.
“Oh.” She digested that, and the queue moved forward again. “Did you bring a knife?”
“No.”
“It’s a good thing your fish hook isn’t big,” she said. “Maybe they’d arrest you, if you had a fish hook as big as Maui’s.”
“You could at least not sound so hopeful.” He preferred not to talk about being arrested in a security queue, also, especially as they were near the front now, with a TSA agent a couple meters away. “Just feel lucky that we’re in the fast lane,” he told her, putting his backpack into a tub and reaching for hers. “The one benefit of frequent travel is that you don’t have to take off your shoes. Shove your doll in there. Your coat as well.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to. They need to scan it.”
“Why?”
“They scan everything, in case there’s a weapon anywhere.”
“Mydolldoesn’t have a weapon. That would be silly. She’sMoana.”She was clutching the doll tighter. He wasn’t getting it out of her arms, it was clear, without a battle.
He sighed and waved the couple behind them past. His laptop, which was all of two months old and held every single bit of proprietary information his brain and the Blues possessed, headed into the scanner. He had backups, of course, and even if somebody walked off with it, the chances of them being from a rival Super Rugby team were slim to nil. He told himself that, even as he wanted to dive in after it. “See?” he told Casey instead. “Look over there. That old lady is getting scanned in her wheelchair. She looks about a hundred. Does she have a weapon? I’m guessing ‘no.’ It’s a rule, that’s all.”
“Moana is scared, though,” Casey said. “She doesn’t like the dark. She doesn’t want to go in the tunnel.”
“It’s dark for a minute,” Rhys said. “Less than a minute. A couple seconds.” Casey stared at him, absolutely unmoved, and he cast about for something else. “And there are, uh, X-ray beams that will light her up.”
