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back home. But she was swinging it along in front of me as if it was a handbag. She wove her way through the parking lot, stopped beside a four-wheel-drive SUV and tossed the duffel bag into the rear cargo area. Without even a glance at me, she climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.
    â€œI’m supposed to have a car,” I said through the open passenger-side window.
    â€œMy dad has one for you. You have a driver’s license, right?”
    Jeez, what did she think?
    She put the vehicle in gear and glanced inquiringly at me.
    I jumped in and hadn’t even begun to buckle my seat belt when she stomped on the gas and we shot forward.
    â€œHey!” It came out automatically.
    She chuckled.
    I wanted to be mad at her—she had real attitude. Like I was supposed to have known she was a girl, like I should know every damn thing about her country when she obviously knew nothing at all about mine. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to spend a lot of time with her. I sincerely hoped she wasn’t planning to hike to the interior with me and her father. If she was, I had news for her. After all, my grandfather was paying for this. If that didn’t give me the right to say who came and who didn’t, then I don’t know what did.
    We had just got underway when it started to rain—an all-out downpour. Brynja had the windshield wipers going flat out. We drove in silence. There was no way I going to make small talk with a girl driving in a storm. The gray sky and the dismal rain were a perfect match for the fields of black rock on one side of the road and the slate-gray ocean on the other.
    The rain stopped suddenly, about the same time a cluster of buildings appeared up ahead.
    â€œReykjavik,” Brynja said. “We’re going past it.” She glanced at me. “It’s good you got here when you did.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œSo you can see my afi .” She glanced at me. “My grandfather.”
    â€œWhat for?” What did her grandfather have to do with anything?
    â€œIf it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be here.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œI mean, you wouldn’t even be alive,” she said. “You know the story, right?”
    â€œWhat story?”
    She rolled her eyes. I was fast getting the impression that I was a huge disappointment to her—not that I cared. I mean, what did it matter to me what she thought?
    â€œYour grandfather’s plane crash-landed in the interior during World War Two.”
    â€œYeah. So?”
    â€œMy afi saved his life.”
    I stared at her. “Your grandfather is the Sigurdur my grandfather told me about?” She nodded. “But I thought—”
    Her sigh was downright theatrical. Yeah, she definitely had attitude.
    â€œYou thought what?” She made it sound like, What ridiculous notion popped into your head this time?
    Well, if she was going to be like that…
    I took a deep breath. “I thought he died.”
    Tears welled up in her eyes. Uh-oh.
    â€œWhat I mean is…my grandfather and yours exchanged cards at Christmas. But last year, my grandfather didn’t hear anything, so he assumed…” When you assume , my most recent school principal said, you make an ass out of u and me. Get it, Rennie?
    â€œHe’s not dead,” she said. Her tone was sharp. Accusatory. I remembered what she had said: that it was good I’d arrived when I did. I hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. I also wondered how it might affect what I was supposed to do. Did Mr. Devine know all this when he chose Brynja’s father as my guide? Did it matter? “When he heard you were coming, he was so excited,” Brynja said. “He wants to meet you.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œYeah.” She said it as if she couldn’t imagine why. She was quiet for a long time, which was okay by me. Then she said, “Tell me about your