Describe yourself as though I have never seen you. What physical traits define you as a person?

I blinked skeptically at my next assignment for Anthropology. A letter to the professor, who I had one new class with as a result of the new year. Kind of stupid, I thought. Oh, well. If she wanted it, she wanted it. I began to write.

Dear Dr. Griffin,

My name is Emily Day. I am twenty, nearly twenty-one, with brown hair that isn't quite straight (that I loathe) and green eyes (which I like). My hair is long because I have no idea what to do with it otherwise, and

I paused, unsatisfied. As I was pondering what to write next, Hana came in. I felt her eyes on me but was too focused to consider it. I heard her take in a deep breath. Here we go, said a little voice in the back of my brain. I continued writing,

I am on the lowest possible standard of average height, being a measly five-foot-two-

"Em, I want to go abroad. Would you come with me?"

Oh, another one of her schemes. I sighed.

"Sure, love." Maybe something about what I wear- that was identifying, right? You would most often find me in my favorite Converse.

"No, really. There's something-"

"Mhmm." I wondered if a propensity for vintage was an identifying trait. I certainly had a lot of that.

"Emilia Day, pay attention!"

I reluctantly tore my eyes from my notebook, facing Hana's rare steely expression. Obviously, she was not in the mood to be ignored. Oops.

"Sorry, what?" I put the book down to show I was listening, and her glare melted back into excited chatter as she bounced like a ten-year-old from foot to foot.

"I want you to come with me to the study abroad office! Ben said that you have to sign up early to be able to go, and oh Emily I want to go, please go with me we'll have soo much fun!" And without waiting for an answer, she grabbed my hand, yanked me off the top bunk, and raced out of the building.

"Go where?" I called after her breathlessly, distracted by the warm autumn sunshine. For autumns in the Northeast, this one was gorgeous.

"England, of course! Duh. Come on, Em- where better for two English majors to study for a year?"

"A year?" My attention was firmly in place, now. I tried shaking my hand off, but Hana's gymnastics-firm grip was like iron. Just another thing we had in common, but at the moment I was finding it hard to appreciate that.

She looked back as I struggled and frowned like I was stupid. "Yes, a year. We wouldn't be going for a quick visit, how boring! No, a year away's just what I need..." I heard her sigh.

"Have you broken it off with Stephen, then?" I asked suspiciously. Hana cleared her throat and wouldn't look at me, striding a little faster. We passed a throng of students, but Hana was determined to get to her destination, and with her long, elegant legs was leaving me to run after her trail of red hair.

"Yes, but that's not the point! He was always an arrogant pig, but that's not why I want to go."

"I think it is." I grumbled.

"Oh, Em!" Hana suddenly sighed. We had reached the spanse of trees outside the campus office building. Pausing outside the door, Hana looked sober- which was as rare as her stern gaze before. I wondered just how serious she was about escaping the whole boyfriend thing. I had been pretty sure Stephen had been a mutual, spring-into-fall fling- but Hana certainly was not required to tell me everything. Maybe she had cared more than she let on. But my thoughts were ahead of me, as usual.

"Em, you need a year away too! Don't you see? You're so..." she trailed off, looking for the right word. Once again derailed from my thoughts, I sputtered defensively,

"So what?"

"Moral!" She sighed. "You're an old lady behind that cute little face and curls. When are you going to do what you want?"

"I do what I want!" I protested indigantly. "I'm twenty-one, aren't I?"

Hana's stern face threatened to show again. "No, you don't. You go to school, go to work, do your homework. It's the Devil's work to get you to go to a party, and God forbid I set up a date for you! When's the last time you got kissed, anyway?"

"Hana!" I scolded. And since she looked so smug at my reaction, I spat, "Last week at that party you made me go to, if you must know. Jeremy Rounds had one too many and so did I."

Hana snorted skeptically. "Yeah, right. I've never seen you drunk."

"The once was enough, thanks."

"My point is that you always say you're bored. Why not take this once in a lifetime chance?" Hana's blue eyes grew huge and pleading, and she squeezed my hands. "Please? For me? For you? You know I wouldn't make it alone without the best roomie ever." And for those few seconds she looked like such a lost, woebegone child that I actually felt myself give a little.

I pursed my lips. "I'll... consider it."

Hana yelled triumphantly, and I took an alarmed step back at her gleeful shouts of, "We're going to England! OhmyGodwe'regoingto England!"

"Hana! We still have to be selected first!"

"Oh, silly. I signed us up weeks ago. And your father loves the idea. He didn't want me to tell you this way, he knows how you are; especially about leaving your mom." She rolled her eyes and then sighed at me pityingly. But unlike other instances, she didn't try to ask about my mom again, and her sunshiney smile returned. "But I convinced him that weekend we went to your house hiking and we're going! We're really going!" Hana continued her flighty victory dance, laughing joyfully.

"What?" I was flabbergasted. She couldn't possibly be saying...

"Pack your bags, Emily Day! We're going to London!" Hana whooped happily, confident in her (and apparently my Dad's) victory over me.

Feeling myself pinned to a mental wall in shock, I made a choking noise, threw up my hands, and stalked in the other direction. Hana didn't seem to mind my reaction, (reaction? I didn't know what I was feeling) judging by her smug smile.

"Why did you drag me out to tell me this if you've already signed us up?" I managed half-angrily at Hana.

She shrugged. "I had energy to spare. Thought the walk would do you good. Break it to you gently." She changed tact, her tone businesslike. "Oh, and you'll want to get a passport now, so you don't have to deal with it later. And we'll work on visas later, after dinner. Okay?" Hana, the planner. Or should I say the meddler.

I could only gape mentally. A year. In England. A long coveted dream. And here I was, pissed about it. I couldn't believe this.

The only good thing about being essentially forced to go, I thought to myself, was that good adventures start with an unwilling hero, right?

Yes, I agreed with myself, but those heroes didn't have the likes of a meddling ginger.

To my amazement and Dad (plus Hana's) delight, the trip was arranged rather easily. Our Visas were obtained, passports updated, and bags packed. I hadn't even known that first semester studying abroad was possible in our little college.

Frankly, I suspected that Hana, who was attending simply to annoy her persnickety mother, had pulled some strings with her doting dad, who was Dean in a college somewhere. But no matter. I didn't ask.

I had firmly required myself to "take a chill pill" as Hana had so often encouraged me to do, and embrace the year away from home with as big a smile as I could muster. My dad just seemed relieved that his head wasn't on the chopping block. Mom seemed glad for me, too.

"You'll have so much fun." She said the week before we left, smiling in her painfully fragile way. Her skin was pale. She didn't go out enough, I thought sadly. But this time, spending a quiet weekend at home, reading together, I didn't comment.

"You'll send me letters, won't you? I used to love your letters." She said, curled in her duvet and looking very small in it.

"There's always email too, Mom." She smiled wanly at me and continued re-reading Austen. I watched her with a feeling that was both affectionate and tired. I wondered how much postage it would cost me to send a letter every week.

Before I knew it, the agonizingly long flight was over and we were settling down in an apartment (no, a flat) and were looking around for jobs to supply our meager income. Bubbly, charismatic Hana got a job nearly immediately- two days in- waiting tables in a really nice place in the middle of London.

I was pickier. I didn't like to be too busy when I waited tables- that only ended in no sleep and lousy tips. So for a few weeks, I played cashier at a pharmacy, keeping my eye out for a place where I could fall back on my seven years' experience in the restaurant biz.

Even if I had had a waiting job, we were still pitifully poor. But there was no point, Hana said stubbornly, in coming to London and not playing tourist while you were there. I wholeheartedly agreed. We accordingly skimped our pennies together.

For two months, we spent as much as we dared on fall sightseeing trips, escapades to Big Ben, Parliament, and once even an eventful three-day weekend in Paris (Hana ashamedly agreed to improve her French skills before we went again and I promised never to let her near a married man again).

I felt a change begin in me. I was having fun, even going without things I had so brazenly taken for granted- peanut butter, my own bed (Hana and I shared the queen that had come with the flat) and heat, to name three. I felt lighter and more adventurous- maybe it was a sixth sense- a sense of the events to occur right outside our shoddy little door.

One night, sharing our weekly "splurge" on Friday Chinese food night, (an honored tradition) Hana said thoughtfully around a mouthful of noodle,

"Do you still want another job, Em?"

"Yeah." I shuffled my feet closer to our only space-heater and sighed. "I'm getting really sick of selling condoms."

Hana giggled and teased, "Not that you need them. Old lady."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "I'm not an old lady! I have standards!"

"Sure." Hana made a face at me. This had been a matter of discussion before. "But really, Em, you've been a lot better lately. More relaxed. I think you put yourself into too much of a role back home, love." Hana patted my foot reassuringly. And because it was Hana, she swallowed and said, "I still think you'd like Tony."

"I'm not going on a blind date with a British guy, Hana." I said for the upteenth time. "I don't have time to date if I'm going to work, besides. I don't know how you do it."

"Yes." She said dryly. "It's such an effort." She heaved a melodramatic sigh and then stood up with a look that preceded news. Or heralded disaster. In this case, it was news.

"Oh, anyway, you got me distracted! You'll love me, I found you a job!" She clapped her hands excitedly.

"You did?" I sat up.

"Yeah! Nice little café job. Nights. 24-hour place. Some sweet old lady runs it came in for dinner with her boyfriend the other night and asked if I knew anyone. I told her I'd have you come by."

"Okay, great." I grinned and relaxed back onto the bed to drag forth a novel. I didn't like being behind on my "To Read" pile and it was looking like the Odyssey was on the chopping block next.

Hana blinked. "No lecture? No "Don't make plans for me, Hana? Hana, you should have called? I don't even know where it is, Hana? Hana-what-the-hell-were-you-thinking?" Seriously?"

"No. Why?" I raised an eyebrow with a smile. I did lecture her a lot. "Would you like one? I have a few saved, if you really feel that bereft."

"But-!" She struggled and then laughed. "Oh, fine. London air seems to be good for you. I won't spoil it. But I do love your lecture face."

I frowned from over the top of Homer. "I have not got a lecture face."

"Oh yes you do." Hana made a kissy face at me. "And it's sweet. You know, Tony would think it's sweet, too..." She leered at me suggestively.

I rolled my eyes.

The next week, I found myself rather happily employed in the café only a bus ride away- there hadn't been anything to worry myself over, after all. I was enjoying my new philosophy of taking things as they came more than I had thought I ever could. I suspected it had something to do with living so frugally- being poor gave me such an unexpected freedom. I was ready for anything.

Actually, let me rephrase. I was ready for nearly anything. Sometimes you can't account for wayward strangers coming in and smashing your life to bits.