Meant to Be (31 page)

“Excellent! A volunteer!”

I shove my sunglasses back to their perch on top of my head and shake my hair out of my face. I’m sitting right on my butt in the middle of a circle of tourists. The only other person in the middle of the crowd is a tiny old man with scraggly gray hair. His face is long and looks even longer with his aged skin sagging low around his chin. He’s wearing the kind of black spandex leggings you see on male ballet dancers or circus performers, and a grubby white V-neck T-shirt hangs loosely on his bony body.

It’s only when he points a long, bony finger in my direction that I realize he’s talking about me.
I’m
the volunteer.

“Oh, uh, no,” I say, scrambling to my feet and dusting the street grit off my butt. “I’m not, uh … What I mean is, I don’t really want to—”

“Don’t be shy, m’dear!” he says, giving me a wink. “Let’s have a round of applause for our lovely volunteer!”

The crowd breaks into a booming applause. I scan the audience, panicked. The crowd is thick and heavy. There must be at least a hundred of them, and all their eyes are trained right on me. I feel a lump the size of a tennis ball forming in my throat.

“Please … you don’t understand.… I don’t really like—” Crowds. People. Volunteering. Being in public. All the words collide in my head at once, and I can’t get a single one of them out.

“Just stand there and look pretty,” the man replies. He’s now holding my arm up, making me wave at the crowd. “Easy peasy.”

Great. Now I have to embarrass myself in public in a foreign country, and I’m expected to look good while I do it. I liked it better when my biggest problem was a rock in my shoe.

The man introduces himself as “The Fire Man.” This can’t be good. Before I can repeat my protests, he whisks me off to the dead center of a circle and points at a wooden box painted bright banana-yellow. It’s pretty tall, about half my size, and narrow. It looks like a stiff breeze might send it tumbling over.

“Stand,” he orders. I stare at him.

“I’m sorry, what?” My brain feels as though it is a pile of oatmeal. The crowd thinks I’m making a joke, and everyone roars with laughter.

In response, this tiny old man who looks like he’s made of toothpicks suddenly develops Hulk strength and picks me up by my armpits. In one quick motion, I’m standing on top of the yellow box. My knees start shaking immediately, which causes the box to wobble, making a little tap-tap-tap noise on the sidewalk.

“Hold still, now,” he says loudly in a stage voice to the crowd. “As an American, you’ll want to have very,
very
good insurance for this next bit.”

“What?” I cry, but the Fire Man is already prancing away from me, shaking hands with the people in the front row, really working the crowd. Everyone is laughing and cheering, and I start to worry that they actually
want
to see me seriously injured.
I thought I was in London, not the Roman Colosseum!

Standing—or, more accurately, wobbling—on top of the box, I can see over the crowd a bit, all the way back to the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, where people are lounging on the steps in the morning sunshine. I spot Jason in the audience, directly in front of me and about three rows back. He’s standing with Ryan and the ever-present Susan, and they’re smirking at me. (Well, actually, Susan’s too busy making moony eyes at Ryan to smirk at me, but he’s making up for it by smirking extra smirkily.) I freeze.

“Ah yes, that’s much better,” the Fire Man quips. “You’ll want to hold absolutely still.”

A young boy, maybe about ten or eleven years old, appears out of the crowd. He looks like a younger, miniature Fire Man. His hair is blond, stringy, and shoulder-length. He’s wearing the same black tights and white V-neck, though his T-shirt looks a bit newer than Fire Man Senior’s (or at least like it’s been washed sometime in the last year). The boy takes his position to my left, never meeting my eyes, and the Fire Man stands to my right. I look back at the boy, hoping he’ll take some pity on me and let me get down, but he just stares straight past me. I see a spark in his eye, which I realize quite quickly is a reflection of an
actual
spark.

Behind me, the Fire Man is holding what look like four bowling pins, and he’s lit the fat end of each on fire.

ON. FIRE.

I yelp and make a move to hop down, but the Fire Man shouts, “HOLD STILL!” I freeze just in time for the first flaming bowling pin to go whizzing past my face. Within seconds, all four of them are in motion, back and forth between the old man and the little boy. They alternate in front of me and behind. I want to reach back and grab my ponytail to protect it from the flame, but I’m too petrified to move. I watch the flames fly back and forth, faster and faster. I can’t take my eyes off them. As they move, I start to slip into a slight haze. The crowd seems to melt away and all I can see are the flames darting past my eyes. They’re falling into a steady rhythm, and my thoughts go with them.

Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark.

Mark. Mark. Mark. Chris.

Mark. Chris. Mark. Chris.

Mark. Chris. Mark. Jason.

As Jason’s image flies into my brain, my vision clears and I spot him in the crowd. He’s staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read, though it’s definitely not his standard sarcastic smirk. I can still see the flaming bowling pins flying around, but I’m suddenly not afraid. I’m just tired. Talk about juggling. How did I get here? A little over a week ago I hated Jason, and Mark didn’t speak to me. The biggest adventure I’d ever experienced was a Boston Duck Tour with Phoebe. (She pretended we were Swedish exchange students, which meant I mostly sat mute.) Now I’ve kissed Jason (but I’m back to hating him) and Mark is not only talking to me, but he wants to spend time with me. Throw in the fact that I’ve got the single hottest guy I’ve ever seen (after Mark, of course) reading Shakespeare and texting to meet me, and I feel like I’ve
Freaky Friday–
ed myself into the life of someone far cooler than I am.

What in the WHAT is going on with my life?

The crowd breaks out into thunderous applause, and just like that, I’m out of my trance. The pins aren’t burning anymore, and the Fire
Man and the little boy are taking a bow. They gesture to me, and I give an awkward little curtsy from my perch on top of the box.

“Very nice, very nice,” the Fire Man says, offering me a hand as I hop back down to the pavement. “Always good when our volunteers don’t wear a whole lot of hairspray!”

The audience laughs, and I take the opportunity to dart back into the crowd. I push my way through to where I saw a few of my classmates standing, but they’ve disappeared. I push through farther until I’ve finally hit the outer circle of people. I reach the foot of the Eros Fountain and decide to finally take the annoying pebble out of my shoe. Out of nowhere, Jason plops down next to me. At this point, I’m too exasperated to think about moving, and I ignore him as I pick at my double-knotted sneaker until the lace finally comes loose. I pull my sneaker off and turn it upside down, giving it three good, hard shakes. Nothing falls out.

“Are you going to ignore me for the rest of your life?” he asks, nudging me with his shoulder.

The answer is yes, so instead of replying, I jam my sneaker back onto my foot and quickly retie the double knot. When I’m done, I hop up and step onto my newly adjusted foot, happy that I don’t feel any kind of rock in there.

“Don’t you want to enjoy the fountain? It’s a famous landmark,” he says. He reaches down and brushes a smudge off the white toe of my sneaker, and I can feel myself softening. “If you study the details, you could probably get an entire reflection paper out of it.”

Even though the dirt on my sneaker is now gone, I reach down and rub at it anyway.

“C’mon, Julia,” Jason says. He reaches down and pulls my guidebook out of my bag. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

I sigh. “They should assign you to interrogate criminals with the
Boston police,” I reply. I take the book out of his hands. “You could definitely wear down even the most hardened criminal.” I flip to the section about Piccadilly Circus, London’s classier approximation of Times Square.

“This is called the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain,” I say as I read, running my finger along the tiny text as I skim for the pertinent information. “It was built to commemorate a famous Victorian philanthropist named Lord Shaftesbury. When it was built, many Londoners were angry with the presence of the naked winged archer, Eros, at the top. They felt it was too erotic an image for such a respected and conservative man. And also that the statue was in a vulgar part of town. As a result, Eros is often called the Angel of Christian Charity. I guess because a
naked love god
is a bit too scandalous.”

At the mention of the words “erotic,” “vulgar,” and “naked love god,” I brace for Jason’s inevitable dirty joke, but all I get is a distracted “uh-huh.” He’s typing away on his phone, not even looking up.

Jason continues with his nose in his phone, so I find another empty spot at the foot of the fountain and open my guidebook. I can be distracted, too. But as I flip the pages, I find I can’t focus on any of the words or pictures. I feel strangely anxious. I haven’t seen Mark at all today or heard from him, either. I did get a text from Chris, but it didn’t give me the buzz of excitement it has in the past.

All my attention is on Mark, and my attempts to be rational about his sudden appearance in London are not working. Sure, we had a great day yesterday, and he walked me home and let me keep his sweatshirt (and I totally
didn’t
sleep with it, I swear), but that’s hardly a declaration of love. Still, I can’t seem to shake the
blah
feeling that’s overtaken me.

It doesn’t help that Jason is acting stranger than normal. He’s barely spoken to me, though he has managed to impersonate me falling into the pond three times today. The only things that seem to be distracting him right now are the living statues scattered around Piccadilly Circus,
and that’s only because he’s taking great pleasure in taunting them. I feel bad for them (really, I know their pain all too well), but I’m also thankful he’s teasing someone
other
than me. With the icky feeling resting on my shoulders, I mostly just want to be left alone.

But as the day wears on, Jason’s cold shoulder makes me feel worse and worse. I can’t help running through the last few days: the almost kiss on the London Eye, the full-on make-out session in Stratford-upon-Avon, the note in which he called it all a mistake.

And then yesterday’s weirdness with Mark. Jason was so
hostile
. There was definitely something going on, some kind of history between them that even Mark didn’t realize, because he acted cool and calm in the face of Jason’s insanity. I tried bringing it up once or twice already, but Jason got all cagey and changed the subject. It’s downright bizarre. I could ask Mark, but I don’t particularly want to bring him into all the ridiculous drama that is my junior class trip. Maybe there
isn’t
a good reason for it. Maybe Jason is just taking pleasure in being an ass, which really wouldn’t shock me in the slightest.

I close my book hard, pressing the covers together between my palms. I close my eyes and try to clear my mind of all the craziness that seems to be hopping around like a million little Jasons playing pranks on my psyche.

“Uh, I hate to interrupt your meditation, but I’m headed into Lillywhites.” I open my eyes to see Jason towering over me again, his thumb pointed over his shoulder at the famous London sporting goods store. “I want to get a soccer jersey to take back with me.”

“Football,” I mutter wearily.

“Whatever,” he says. “I’ll be back in a bit. I’ll find you here later?”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “Sure.” I rub my temples, but it doesn’t soothe the dull ache in my skull. I put my head down in my lap and take a few deep, cleansing breaths like my swim coach has us do before a meet. The oxygen floods my lungs and brain, and I actually do feel a little better. When
I look up, the scenery isn’t so painfully bright anymore, the tourists not so cacophonously loud.

I scan the square and spot Jason. He’s stopped outside the entrance to Lillywhites. He’s engrossed in that damn phone again, but he quickly snaps it shut. His eyes dart around like he’s looking for someone, and then he turns and walks away.

He’s ditching me.

I’m suddenly furious. He wouldn’t let me ignore him—no, he wore me down by being nice … all so he could use me as a cover!

What a manipulative little …

His ball cap bobs across the square and disappears down the steps of the Piccadilly tube station. Without consciously deciding to follow him, I hop up from my spot on the step and hurry after him. I’m sick of being lied to. I’m tired of being used.

And I want to know where in the heck the little weasel is going.

When he gets to the bottom of the stairs, I jog after him. I find a particularly tall businessman with broad shoulders and duck behind his pinstripe suit. When the train arrives and the doors slide open, I hop on the opposite end of Jason’s car. I can see his reflection in one of the windows, and I keep my eyes trained on it so I’ll know when he gets off.

The train whooshes down the track, and I grab the pole to keep myself from toppling over into the tired-looking woman next to me with the screaming baby in her arms. I make a mental note to find the hand sanitizer in my bag when I get off the train. Each time the train stops, I have to strain to keep Jason in my sight while people rush onto and off the train. First Green Park, then Hyde Park Corner. As we approach Knightsbridge, I see him move toward the doors. This is it. I take a deep breath. The train stops; the doors slide open.

“Mind the gap,” the automatic voice trumpets, and people begin rushing off, including Jason. My heart pounds hard as the electronic ding alerts us that the doors will soon close. And right when I think I
might burst from waiting, I finally leap off the train as the doors are sliding closed.

Jason moves fast along the platform, weaving through commuters and tourists. He’s hoofing it with such purpose and speed that I don’t worry about him turning around to catch me following him. He jogs up the stairs to the street and down Brompton Road, and I follow him, leaving a half block between us.