Meant to Be Read online

  I feel like I’m in some kind of horror movie, standing at the front door, trying to decide if I should let the vampire in to defend me from the snarling werewolf. One will tear me limb from limb; the other will suck the life out of me. I can’t decide which is worse.

  He’s nearly to the exit when I call out to him. “Wait!” I say, and he skips back over to me.

  “ ‘Was at the Globe last night and thinking of you,’ ” he reads aloud as I show him the phone. “First of all, good sign. Thinking of you? That means he’s—”

  “Thinking of me?”

  “Exactly,” he says, ignoring my sarcasm. He plows on. “And the Globe. That’s got to be a clue. Well, it looks like we have a little mystery on our hands, Julia Lichtenstein! And possibly some adventure.” He rubs his hands together like a super villain. “The Globe is like the old-school version of a movie theater, right?”

  I stare at him. “If by ‘movie theater,’ ” I reply, “you mean the world-famous theater in which the majority of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed.”

  Jason laughs. “Chill out. I’m with you. I’m not a total moron.” His face lights up. Even his freckles seem to get brighter. “Maybe Chris is a theater geek. A nerd, like you!”

  I stifle a nasty retort. Our class is heading out of the exhibit and down the stairs, another tour finished. Soon we’ll be on the street and splitting up to “enjoy” our cultural hours. Our classmates’ voices bounce off the stone walls, and I can hear them excitedly planning their next steps (most of which involve shopping or going to a pub to watch football). Jason and I hurry after them.

  “So what do you think I should do?” I ask when we find ourselves back on the sidewalk.

  “Well, I think this is a clue, and we should follow it,” he says, looking around for some kind of direction. “And figure out who he is. And then you can live happily ever after reading books and going to museums, or whatever it is you nerds do.”

  “Ha-ha,” I say, snapping the phone shut. “I’m not just a nerd, you know. I mean, I’m not a nerd at all. I just happen to find history interesting. And literature. And political structures. And—”

  Jason cuts me off. “Please,” he says, looking pained. “Never go into law. You put up a terrible defense.” Then he perks up again. “So … feel like checking out some British theater? We should swing by the Globe. Ask around. Maybe he works there or something.”

  “And when do you suggest we go?” I ask. I’m torn between my desire to do some major sleuthing on Chris and my vow not to break any more rules. I’ve got our itinerary in my bag, and there’s not much free time on the schedule.

  “No time like the present,” he says, without missing a beat. “We’ll use our cultural hours.”

  “We’re supposed to use that time for independent tours so we can write our reflection papers,” I say, trying to mask my exasperation.

  “I think the sentence structure you’re looking for is ‘so I can write our reflection papers,’ ” Jason says. He bends down to tie his left sneaker, the lace of which is fraying and dirty. “Besides, half the class is using that time to hit pubs and go shopping. We’re actually going somewhere that Mrs. T would call culturally relevant.”

  It’s honestly not a bad idea, and I’ve wanted to see the Globe Theater ever since I first read Romeo and Juliet in the sixth grade. Even if Chris isn’t there, at least I’ll be fulfilling a lifelong dream.

  Still, I’m conscious of the fact that I’m about to follow Jason through the streets of London while he supposedly helps me hook up with a guy. I think if someone had written that sentence down a week ago and showed it to me, my brain would have exploded and oozed out of my eye sockets.

  “Come on, Julia, your destiny awaits, or whatever,” Jason says, already a few steps down the road.

  I know better than anyone that it’s impossible to argue with destiny. I heave my bag up higher on my shoulder and start down the street to catch up.

  wow, I guess you’ve got a new mtb … —P

  “Dude, this place is seriously vintage. Can you believe Shakespeare might actually have stood right here?”

  Jason and I are standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the Globe Theater in front of us. The sky is gray and looks on the verge of dumping on us, but it just makes the theater even more imposing. Jason once again seems to be intrigued and impressed by history, and I’m once again a little thrown off by it.

  A cold, damp wind blows through and whips my curls directly into my face. I sigh heavily, tossing my head around, trying to wrangle my hair. I’ve been wrestling with my mane since we left the Tower of London, and the half-hour stroll along and finally across the Thames to arrive at the Globe has turned it into a Bride of Frankenstein—esque tangle.

  “It’s a reproduction,” I reply, rummaging around in my bag for a hair elastic. I normally carry at least two.

  “Seriously?”

  I look over at his face, which registers the same kind of shock you expect to see when you’ve told your five-year-old cousin that fairies aren’t real.

  “Yup. This is actually the third one,” I explain, winding my wild hair into a messy ponytail. “The first burned down during a show in the early 1600s, the second was demolished about thirty years later, and this one wasn’t built until the late 1990s.”

  “See? Who needs Tennison when I have you as my tour guide?”

  Great. I’ve gone from Book Licker to pathetic high school English teacher. I suppose both are improvements over sad crush girl, so I can’t really be choosy.

  Jason pops a piece of grape gum into his mouth. “Let’s go find your lover boy,” he says, taking off up the steps. “Race ya!”

  When I get to the top of the stairs, I find Jason studying the theater’s schedule in a glass display case.

  “There was a show here last night,” Jason says, tapping his finger on the glass next to a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Maybe your mystery man was here.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” I ask impatiently. “Review security tapes?”

  “Not a bad idea, CSI: London, but no,” he says, gesturing toward the box office. “We’ll go a little lower tech and ask that guy.”

  All the ticket windows are closed except for one at the end, where an old man with bushy eyebrows and a gin-blossomed nose is reading a thick leather-bound book. The nameplate in the window reads FELIX.

  Jason sidles up to the window, but the man is too engrossed in his book to notice. We stand there for a moment, clearing our throats and trying to make ourselves known, but Jason finally just taps on the glass.

  “What’s that about?” Felix grumbles. His big, watery eyes peer at us over his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Yes sir, so sorry to bother you,” Jason says, “but we were hoping you might be able to help us out with something.”

  “Whatssat?” he mumbles, clearly not particularly interested in helping us out.

  Jason takes off his hat and twirls it around his finger. “Well, you see, my friend here is looking for her friend Chris …”

  “ ’Scuse me?” he says. Now he’s not even trying to conceal his irritation.

  “We’re hoping you might tell us whether my friend was here last night,” I say, putting on the sweet, polite voice I use to get grown-ups to do what I want.

  “Young lady, do you have any bloody idea how many people were here last night? It was a full house.” Felix directs his attention back to his book.

  I turn away from the ticket booth and let out a long sigh. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get anywhere.

  “A full house?” Jason asks, undeterred by the lack of information. “Now, Felix, how many people is that?”

  Felix jabs a finger to the wrinkled, weathered sign that reads MAXIMUM CAPACITY: 1500 in the corner of his tiny ticket booth. “Last night we was chock-full of schoolkids, so there’s no way I could tell yer if your lad was here.”

  “Schoolkids?” Jason presses his nose against the window, s
training to see the papers on Felix’s desk.

  Felix slams his book down onto the counter and whips off his glasses. I can tell he was hoping this conversation would be over by now.

  Felix leans in close to the glass. It almost looks like he and Jason might bump noses. “Yes, young man. A whole gaggle ’a kids from St. Bonaventure’s Academy. Some kind of class assignment or some rubbish.”

  My ears perk up at the mention of a class trip. There were definitely some prep school boys at the party. I can picture the little gold crests on their blazers. Chris could have been one of them!

  “Excuse me, um, sir?” I say, putting my grown-up voice back on and bumping Jason out of the way with my hip. “Could you possibly point me toward St. Bonaventure’s?”

  “Get the phone number,” Jason whispers behind me. “Get the phone number!”

  “Okay!” I snap, giving him a jab with my elbow. “And, um, maybe you have the phone number? That would be great, too. I promise, after that, we’ll leave you to your book.”

  Felix looks at me with eyes narrowed, like he doesn’t quite believe we’ll ever leave him alone. His gaze settles on Jason, and he smartly realizes that Jason is a professional when it comes to being annoying. Seconds later, he’s pulled up the phone number.

  “Gimme a pen,” Jason says, fishing unsuccessfully in his pockets for one. What comes out instead is a handful of change, some pieces of lint, and half a pack of gum.

  I reach into my bag, pull out my pencil case, and offer Jason one of my fully sharpened number twos.

  “Who carries pencils?” he asks, looking at it like I’ve offered him a quill and scroll.

  “I do,” I reply, my mouth set in a straight line. I want the phone number, and I don’t want any guff with it. I haven’t carried pens around since ninth grade, when, while cutting through the gym en route to the library, I found myself in the middle of a full-contact game of dodgeball. The next thing I knew, I was on my butt, the pen in my back pocket spilling dark red ink all over the back of my white linen pants. Evie went around telling everyone I got my period, and convinced a few boys—including Jason—to deliver tampons to my locker. I’ve been Team Pencil ever since.

  “Do you want it or not?” I ask. I hold it out to Jason point-side first, visions of jamming it right into his eyeball bouncing through my head.

  “Yes please, Miss Lichtenstein, ma’am,” he says, doing some kind of ridiculous bow to me (his left eye coming perilously close to the sharpened point, I might add). He snatches the pencil from my hand, along with the mini spiral notebook I also keep tucked in my purse. He leans over, the pad perched on his knee, and starts to jot down the phone number. He barely gets the first number down before I hear the telltale snap. He picks up the pencil and stares wide-eyed at the now-empty tip.

  “It broke!” he says.

  “You pressed too hard,” I inform him.

  “This is why people use pens, Book Licker. Why don’t you have a freaking pen?”

  “Pens leak.”

  “Pencils break.”

  “Yeah, but you can always sharpen them. What do you do with a broken pen?”

  “Sharpen them? Who carries around a pencil sharpener? What is this, 1943?”

  I reach into my pencil case and produce a small red pencil sharpener. Then I take the pencil from his hand and, looking him straight in the eye, jam it into the sharpener and give it three hard twists.

  “You’re whacked,” he says, snatching the pencil back from me.

  When we’ve got the number down, we thank Felix (who grunts back at us) and step away from the window. Jason pulls out his phone, sets it to speaker, and dials the number. I lean in close, not wanting to miss a minute.

  “Hullo?” A cheerful female voice chirps out of the speaker.

  There’s a moment of silence, as we forgot to discuss which one of us was going to do the talking. I’m overtaken by sudden panic and can only let out a gurgle, so Jason jumps in.

  “Y-yes ma’am, hello,” he stammers, clearing his throat. “Um, I’m looking for a student of yours. I thought possibly you could help me.”

  “It’s possible,” she says, a smile still in her voice. “What’s the student’s name?”

  “Chris,” Jason says before giving me a panicked look. I wonder what he’s worried about when the woman on the other end of the line continues.

  “Last name?” she chirps. Oh. Right.

  “Um, that’s the thing,” he says, giving a little laugh to smooth things over. “We’re not totally sure. You see, my friend met him—”

  “Him?” the voice cuts in.

  “Yes ma’am,” Jason replies, “and, well—”

  “Oh dear,” she says. “I’m afraid you must have rung the wrong number. St. Bonaventure’s is a girls’ academy. No boys here, I’m afraid.”

  The air goes right out of my lungs. Our only clue, and now it leads to nothing. Jason mumbles a polite thank-you into the phone and snaps it shut, then shoves it back into his pocket.

  “This is a bust,” I say, staring back up at the Globe. “We’re no closer to finding Chris than we were when we got here.”

  It’s starting to drizzle, and despite my obsessive packing and checking this morning, I still managed to forget my mini umbrella back at the hotel. I really need to get my head on straight; this is so unlike me.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Jason says as he hops under a nearby doorway to avoid the rain. “What do you say we find someplace to eat and wait out this weather?”

  “Sure,” I reply. My stomach does feel kind of hollow, and I still haven’t made any progress on my search for the best fish-and-chips. I reach for my guidebook in my messenger bag, but Jason reaches out a lanky arm and swats my hand away.

  “Dude, it’s raining,” he says. “This is no time for guidebooks. We must be spontaneous. We might have to pick a place we haven’t read a single review about.” He puts on a shocked expression, his hands pressed to his cheeks. “Gasp! Can you take it?”

  We circle around the theater and find a Starbucks. I definitely did not come all the way across the ocean to have the same overpriced beverages and baked goods I can have every other day of my life, but unfortunately, as we’re standing in front of the ubiquitous green sign, the sky opens up and the rain really starts to come down.

  The tinkle of a tiny bell announces our arrival to the nearly empty ’bucks. There’re the same display of white-and-green mugs, the same towers of ground coffee, the same glass case of pastries as in the nine billion other Starbucks stores I’ve visited in my life. The one notable difference, though, is the array of artwork hanging on the walls. Near the counter, above the containers of straws and drink sleeves, a spidery metal sculpture that looks like it was made out of wire hangers takes up almost an entire wall. There’s a portrait of the queen done entirely in M&M’s and a matching Margaret Thatcher done in Starburst wrappers. There’s something in the corner that looks like the artist unspooled an entire roll of toilet paper and stapled it to the wall. Underneath each piece is a tiny white card noting the artist and how much the work is selling for. And there are a lot of zeroes after each pound sign. I wonder what Phoebe would think of this display. It would certainly silence her parents’ fears that a career as an artist is a “one-way ticket to living in a cardboard box,” as her dad is fond of saying.

  “Do you think people actually buy this stuff?” I whisper to Jason.

  “The real question is how they’re going to get that toilet paper off the wall in one piece,” he replies, and I can’t help giggling.

  We make our way through the maze of tiny round tables until we’re at a glass case filled with baked goodies on brightly colored ceramic plates. Hanging overhead is a series of vintage chalkboards, drinks and prices scrawled across in a carefully careless-looking script.

  “So what are you going to get?” I ask, surveying the offerings.

  “I don’t know yet. You? Cuppa tea?” he asks, affecting an English a
ccent.

  “Ugh, no,” I reply, wrinkling my nose. “Tea is gross.”

  “Seriously,” he says, checking out the baked goods. “Tastes like yard.” The girl behind the counter, who has pierced eyebrows and electric-blue bangs, rolls her eyes.

  “I want one of those,” Jason says, jamming a finger against the glass case toward a large fluffy-looking scone dotted with chunks of chocolate.

  “Make that two,” I say, my mouth already beginning to water.

  “Make that four,” he says, pulling out his wallet. “My treat.”

  Jason grabs our plate, piled high with baked goods, and I grab two glasses of water. We park at a small café table in the corner by the window. As we take our seats, I notice that Jason has deposited his wad of purple gum on the edge of the white porcelain plate. I grimace and reach over to scoot my scones to the other side. Jason already has crammed half a scone into his mouth, and as much as I want to give him a dirty look, it’s hard to glare with my own mouth stuffed full of pastry. As we chew quietly, our eyes glued to our snacks, I again think of how strange it is to be sitting elbow to elbow across the table from Jason. We’re usually sitting at opposite ends of the cafeteria.

  But I feel surprisingly relaxed. The silence between us is strangely comfortable. We’ve reached some kind of truce, and it’s not bad. From one window I can see collections of tourists gathering outside the Globe, some with dignified umbrellas, but most draped in those horrible trash bag—like ponchos you can buy in tourist-trap shops. They’re trying to wedge themselves under various ledges overhanging the buildings around the theater, but there are too many of them. They’re starting to seek shelter in the Starbucks, and as they pour through the door, I imagine they’re an army of angry, overstuffed trash bags staging an invasion.

  “So, can I interest you in a diorama containing plastic dinosaurs and old tubes of ChapStick?” Jason asks through bites. He gestures at the piece of what can generously be termed “art” hanging on the wall over my head.