They had met when she’d been up a tree—literally—at Kew Gardens, obtaining a sample of lichen for a study. She’d dropped the bit of green moss, and it had landed on Father’s hat below, where he’d been studying a sundial. And the rest, as they said, was history.
But Lucy did not climb trees or study sundials. She did not have a “thing,” as most people seemed to. She kept waiting to find it, looking out over the Thames, or over the sea when they were on rare holiday, wondering who she would be. Sometimes she searched in books, pulling them one at a time from the shelves of Candlewick’s reading room.
One day, after returning from school, Lucy ran into the reading room, pulled out a book, and walked through the tunnel that led to Candlewick Commons’ front doors. She always shivered as she passed through. Not so much from cold, as from the distinct impression that the tunnel was a portal to a dragon’s lair, and its many windows reached story upon story into the sky.
Passing through the massive front doors, she entered the garden courtyard, where she liked to read while circling the fountain. “‘All the world is a stage,’” Lucy read aloud, trying to keep from chucking the book into the fountain. Chopped up in strange lengths of lines, it made no sense to her. Whoever had given a pen to this man Shakespeare had made a massive mistake.
“All the world is not a stage,” she argued right back at the book. And with her nose buried in the offending pages, she collided with something and only had time to think one thing on her way down—that something was tall.
Not having far to fall, she hit the ground before her counterpart, and when a boy landed next to her, all limbs and glasses, they looked at each other wide-eyed for a moment. When her haze lifted, Lucy made to speak, but the boy—dark-haired, brown-eyed, a year or two older than her ten years—beat her to it.
“Sorry,” he said.
American. His Rs dug deep into the word, mouth as wide as his eyes when he spoke it. She attributed it to his accent but would later come to learn it was just him. Wide-eyed, wide-worded, wide-hearted.
“Sorry,” she echoed.
He stood, reaching first for her book, which had fallen near the fountain and was catching stray water droplets on its aged pages. He pushed his black-rimmed glasses up as he read the title. “As You Like It. What’s that mean?”
Lucy shrugged. “I don’t like it.”
He seemed to remember her presence then, nearly tripping over his lanky legs all over again as he reached a hand to pull her up—the first instance of many times in their lives.
“Why are you reading it if you don’t like it?”
Lucy blinked, embarrassed to admit she had just liked the way the gold words shone against its old blue spine on the shelf. And more than that, it had been on the upper shelf, meaning she had an excuse to climb the rolling ladder. All her schoolmates had swing sets in their gardens or nearby parks. She . . . she had a fountain in place of a merry-go-round and a rolling ladder instead of monkey bars.
But she was full of rebellion against Shakespeare’s words and refused to play a part by giving some more logical excuse as to why she was reading this old play. So out of sheer defiance against the bard, she said to the boy, “I’ll show you.”
He followed her through the “dragon’s lair,” up the corridor to the north wing, and into the tower that had been made into a quiet gathering place for the community, complete with two wingback chairs and an oversized fireplace. She showed him the ladder and the high row of Shakespeare volumes lined up like royal sailors in their navy blue and gold. She climbed dark rungs to replace the book, then came down and gestured for him to take a turn.
Pulling out the fourth volume, he tossed it down to her and pulled out another for himself. Planting themselves in the old wingback chairs facing the cold fireplace, they took turns reading random lines and allowing the other to spout off a retort.
“‘You speak an infinite deal of nothing,’” the boy read.
“Yes, you do, Mr. Shakespeare,” Lucy said. The boy grinned.
Lucy read, “‘What’s past is prologue.’”
“I think you mean anti-log,” the boy said, and they dissolved into snickers over their own cleverness, neither knowing what a prologue was. This continued—one of them vaulting a line into the air, the other taking a crack at it like a cricket player—until the tall windows let in less and less light, the night calling them each home.
“Hey,” the boy said, as he stopped at what she assumed was the long hallway to his flat. “What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“I’m Dashel,” he said. “Dash.” He walked away in exactly the opposite speed of his name, slow and thoughtful, looking over his shoulder and offering a clumsy wave.
The next night, when Lucy and her parents sat on the porch of their little brick home, eating cinnamon toast and reading from Peter Pan as the crickets began to sing, she saw that same thoughtful walk in silhouette, going round about the fountain.
“Sometimes stories are more real than you think,” Father said, gesturing at the book in Mother’s lap. “Take the lost boys, for instance.” He tipped his head toward the fountain. “And take that boy. I thought he might just come ’round.”
“You know him?” Lucy narrowed her eyes, looking between the boy and her father’s laughing eyes.
“Who do you think told him he should go to the fountain yesterday?”
“But . . . you were at the watch shop then.”
“Yes, but you weren’t.” He had a glimmer in his eyes, one that turned to compassion as he looked again at the boy who was casting furtive glances their way. “He spends every night alone in that flat. Lives there with an aunt . . .” He looked ready to say more, but a cloud crossed his face and he simply said, “She’s not there much. So I may have told him in passing when to happen upon the fountain.”
Lucy’s heart beat quicker. “What exactly did you say he’d find, Dad?”
Her father shrugged mischievously. “A shooting star.”
“Dad!” Her eyes grew wide in embarrassment.
“What? It’s what you are, Lucy—light on the move. What else would you call that?”
Lucy groaned, dropping her face to her hands. Her father . . . Would he never tire of writing a fairy tale with his every word?
Mum tipped her head toward the fountain. “Why not go and invite him over, Lucy?” She had the prettiest hair—golden and wavy, where Lucy’s was black and straight around her freckled face. Cruel irony for a girl named after light. The only thing they shared were wide eyes, “bluer than blue,” Dad liked to say.
And so she invited the lost boy into their circle. That night, and the next, and the next—until it was just expected that Dash would be there for dinner each night. The brother she’d never had. The friend she hadn’t known she’d needed.
two
London
2002
“Hey, Matchstick Girl,” Dash said one night. He had learned that her bedroom was once the place where sticks became matches, and the name had stuck. “Did you hear about the supernova?” He was always asking about some astronomical wonder or another.