Fear of future nightmares didn’t stop me from spending my entire first week in Scotland in bed. And, thankfully, neither did my grandparents. They were super sweet, but treated me like a guest, not a long-lost grandchild, which was fine with me. I wasn’t up for a family reunion. I wasn’t up for anything. I wasn’t even up.
I missed my house, my old room, and more than anything, I missed my mom. When I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes, I was back in Missouri, back with her.
I only emerged to eat, and I was not excited by the food I found waiting for me. Breakfast, which I’d always assumed was a fairly safe meal for picky eaters, in Scotland consisted of insane things like clotted cream and black pudding. The first is exactly what it sounds like: chunky, spoiled, warm cream. The second is not to be believed, let alone eaten under any circumstance: congealed pig’s blood deep-fried, sliced, and eaten with a knife and fork.
Even the “normal” food in Scotland wasn’t normal. French fries, which were called “chips,” looked like the fries back home, but instead of being crispy and yummy, they were soggy and not. Chips were called “crisps,” which was a true description, but they didn’t have any fun flavors like ranch or hickory barbeque. In fact, they didn’t barbeque anything at all. They’d never heard of brownies or cornbread (“Why would you put corn in a bread?” my grandmother asked). They’d heard of peanut butter, but they didn’t believe in eating it. They didn’t put ice in their drinks (“Waste of money,” my grandfather explained). And even though the can was identical, their Diet Coke tasted gross.
By the sixth day, after I’d eaten every crushed mint and fuzzy piece of gum in the bottom of my backpack, I couldn’t ignore my rumbling stomach. I was miserable enough without the headache from my unintentional hunger strike. I needed to get out and find edible food.
When I came down the stairs and announced my desire to go to the grocery store, my grandparents greeted me with the same exaggerated politeness I’d gotten since I’d first arrived. My grandfather said he would be delighted to drive me, and my grandmother smiled widely from around her romance novel.
They were nothing but nice, but I had the feeling they would treat a beggar off the street the same way. The thought stirred something inside me. I wanted them to treat me differently than a stranger—bad, good, anything but this fake pleasant nothingness.
I’d been frozen in a state of numbness since my mom died, but I’d always been the opposite: very passionate about everything, bordering on histrionic, according to my mother (although, compared to a systems analyst, like my mom, anyone with a pulse could be considered overly dramatic). I realized I needed to feel something again.
I wasn’t ready to dig into my own damaged life, but decided it would be interesting to pick at my grandparents’. I didn’t know how, but I was going to break through their façade and find out what they were hiding behind their charming, gap-toothed grins.
My grandfather took the opportunity of my first trip out of the house to give me a quick driving tour of Aviemore. Scotland felt a little like being in Wonderland; everything looked pretty much the same, but was ever so slightly different. The people spoke English, but I had trouble understanding them because they had such thick accents and used weird words for regular things, like brollie for “umbrella” and bairn for “baby.” The cars not only drove on the wrong side of the road, the driver and the passenger seats were switched. And I discovered via an almost-accident that you had to pay money to unlock public restroom stalls, like a vending machine for pee.
When we arrived at Tesco, the town grocery store, I was surprised at how small it was. Six Scottish grocery stores could fit inside the Super Walmart near my old house.
My grandfather continued his tour guiding through the aisles, taking great delight in explaining every single item to me.
“Do you have Wheatabix in the US?” he asked, gesturing toward an unappetizing cereal that looked like dog food. I shook my head. “What about Frosties?” I smiled at the box of what we called Frosted Flakes, a welcome remembrance of home. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a cartoon tiger.
“Yep,” I confirmed.
“We’ll get some for you then,” he said, lifting a small box into our cart. “Gran doesn’t approve of the sugary cereals, but we’ll make an exception.” He winked at me, and my anger toward him dissipated a little. He was painfully nice. So nice, I got the feeling he’d give me the shirt off his back if I mistakenly admired it. Maybe it wasn’t his fault he was holding me at arm’s length. Maybe he didn’t know how to act after suddenly inheriting a teenage girl. In any case, I decided to cut him some slack. I had the feeling my grandmother was the one who controlled everything anyway.
I was debating how best to approach her when my grandfather handed me a sample of steaming meatloaf in a small, crinkled wrapper. Absentmindedly, I tossed it in my mouth.
“So you enjoy haggis, do you?” my grandfather asked. I shrugged. It was spicier than I’d expected. “I’m surprised. Most foreigners haven’t the stomach for it.” He grinned extra-wide, as if he’d made a joke. I stared blankly, but something told me to stop chewing. He continued, “Because it is stomach, you see? Sheep stomach.”
I spat the offending meat into my hand and tried not to gag while my grandfather chuckled.
Desperate to get the filmy taste out of my mouth, I left my grandfather in the meat section and headed for the bakery counter. This country might not know how to make regular food taste good, but surely they could still do dessert.
A girl my age was working behind the counter. She had shockingly red hair, was delightfully curvy, and had the roundest, happiest face I’d ever seen. She smiled when I walked up. I nodded awkwardly and asked her how the cookies were.
“Sorry, you mean the biscuits?” she said, in the Scottish singsongy way.
“No, the cookies.” I pressed on the glass in front of the chocolate circles. I couldn’t wait to taste them.
She smiled again. Her top lip was a perfect bow and gave her the unusual ability to smile with the corner of her lips turned downward. I’d seen an actress with the same smile in a movie once, but when I tried it at home in a mirror, I looked like I was frowning. Or demented. I loved the upside-down smile; it made your whole face light up.
“You’re from America, aren’t ya?” she asked.
“How’d you guess?” I asked, my ears slightly pained by my own boring, non-musical voice.
“The accent kind of gave you away,” she answered. “Are you enjoying your stay at the Hamiltons’? It’s a beautiful house, isn’t—”
“How do you know where I’m staying?” I interrupted.
“It’s a small town, Aviemore. Everyone’s heard about the Hamilton girl from America living with her gran and granddad.”
So much for starting over in Scotland, I thought grimly.
“What else do you know about me?” I asked, trying not to sound too accusatory.
“I know your mum just died, and that any day now your gran’s going to force you to come out of that attic room and actually go to school,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows at the news of my grandmother’s academic intentions for me. It was already spring, so I’d assumed I wouldn’t have to finish out the school year . . . especially in Scotland. And I sincerely doubted she could force me to do anything.
“But that’s it. Honest,” she continued, still smiling. “I don’t even know your first name.”
“Maren,” I stuttered. “It’s Maren.”
“Nice to meet you, Maren. I’m Joanne, but everyone calls me Jo. Oh, and I do know another thing about you,” she said, handing me a cookie wrapped in a square of tissue paper. “You’re going to love our biscuits.”
I thanked her, and walked away, munching on the dry, chocolate chip-filled “biscuit.” In the interest of actually finding friends in Scotland, I decided not to tell her that her cookies tasted like crap.