Lost in London Read online

  Then he turned and left.

  By the time he was at “I just stick out my chin and grin and say . . .,” it sounded like he was back at the Hole.

  I got back into bed and fell asleep.

  Quickly.

  Deeply.

  • • •

  It seemed like I was only out for a few seconds when Caroline woke me, but according to my watch it was eight a.m. “You sleep like the dead. I thought I’d never be able to knock you awake,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I put my shoes on, made the bed, and got my backpack. We walked down the frozen escalator all the way to the Purse Department. “You going to pick one out?” Caroline asked.

  I thought my pack worked just fine for me. “Sure. I mean, you’re sure we’re going to pay for it?”

  “I promise we’ll pay for it. I don’t know if I can say the same for breakfast, though.”

  “What breakfast?”

  “The one we’re going to take from Lively’s. And, J.J., I do mean ‘take,’ like steal. Sebastian can’t spit on it if he’s not there, and technically you paid for tarts yesterday that were rubbish; so he owes you.”

  When she put it that way, I didn’t feel bad about taking tarts from Sebastian. However, even though Caroline and I had an awesome night, I believed she’d probably been very mean to Sebastian and deserved to be cut off from his tarts.

  I picked out a purse using a very scientific method I like to call eenie-meenie-miney-mo. Caroline nodded her approval, so I guess I’d eenie-meenie-ed a good brand and style.

  • • •

  From behind the counter at Lively’s, we slid the pastry case open. Caroline took a scone and bit into it with an “Mmmm.”

  I took one too. I had to agree. It was like dessert-for-breakfast good. Caroline threw a big white box at me. “Fill that.”

  “Really?”

  “For as long as he’s been withholding these awesome treats from us, yes. Fill it.”

  I took my backpack off so that I could reach inside the case. I chose a mix of different pastries so that it wouldn’t be obvious that we’d ransacked the shelves.

  Caroline took out my phone and made a video of me half inside the case. She narrated a pretend documentary, “Desperate for carbs after a long night of mischief while locked inside Daphne’s, the creature snatches countless pastries—”

  An overhead light came on and surprised her.

  “Ohmigod the power’s back on. Get your bum out of there,” she whispered. “We gotta hide from the security cameras.”

  I removed myself from the case and followed Caroline to a hiding place that was not in front of a mirror but behind a stone statue of a naked man with leaves covering the . . . essentials.

  It was a half hour until opening, and the store workers filed in to prepare the Hall of Gourmets for the day.

  I thought for sure a worker would spot us and know we’d been there all night, but nobody came to our little corner behind the naked statue. We hung out for another twenty or thirty minutes after the store finally opened and customers entered. Then, very calmly, as if we’d just done some early-morning shopping, Caroline casually walked to a register and paid for the items we’d accumulated throughout the night.

  Sam, Ellie, and Gordo were waiting for us on the sidewalk.

  “You survived?” Ellie asked. “How was it? What did you do? Ohmigosh. I have majorly good news—I found my turtle earring that I thought I’d lost.” She pointed to her ear. “I was getting out of the shower and—POW!—I saw it on the floor in the corner. I mean, what are the odds of that? And—”

  Caroline cut her off. “It was a nightmare being locked in the nirvana of shopping all night, but we survived.”

  Gordo said, “Now, that’s good news.”

  Ellie said, “J.J., I love your hair like that.”

  My cheeks warmed. “Thanks,” I said, shrugging like it was no big deal. At least it was dry now. And I could try out that flat iron when we got back to Caroline’s house. In fact, I was psyched to try it. “We had a ton of time to kill.”

  I caught Sam staring at me. Self-consciously my hands went to my newly-dyed hair. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” he said. “Um, how did you make out? You . . . look . . . look different.”

  “Good different?”

  “Um, there was nothing wrong before, but yeah, good.” This time he turned his head, allowing longish hairs to cover his face.

  My insides jumped up and yelled, Yay! I had no idea what it would feel like to get a compliment like that from a boy. A cute British boy. And it felt—well, it “took the biscuit.” They say that, right?

  I said to Sam, “You look good too.” He did in an untucked, crisply ironed oxford.

  I held up the Lively’s box. “I got something for you. No spit.”

  “Aces!” He took the box and popped a lemon square into his mouth.

  I asked him, “What is that sound? Is that the Hungry Club calling?”

  Sam laughed at my impersonation of him.

  Ellie and Caroline slowly inched themselves away from us and talked in whispers. I was a little bummed that I wasn’t included in their secret chat.

  I figured since I had just had an incredible night with Caroline, we were friends, right? And rather than standing with the boys, I could move over to the girls’ area and see what was going on, right?

  I could be like: “Hey, guys, latte?”

  Or maybe: “What’s up, girlfriends?”

  Perhaps: “That was so awesome, eh?”

  I decided I’d go with: “It’s gonna be hard to find something to top that today, huh?”

  I took a step closer to the whispers and was ready to give my line, when I heard Caroline saying, “It was soooo boring . . .” Quickly I turned before they could tell that I’d heard.

  She didn’t have a fun time last night? There’s no way she was that good an actress. She must have been talking about something else. I pretended to look through my Daphne’s bag and listened hard to see if I could get anything else.

  Ellie said, “She’s from a small town in America. Things are different there.”

  “Yeah. Lame,” Caroline said. “It was like she’d never been in a store before.”

  “But isn’t that exciting for you? You can, like, teach her. You know, like in that vampire movie. When Priscilla, the two-hundred-year-old vampiress, had to show the new vamp how to hunt.”

  “Oh, I love that picture,” Caroline said. “But she’s not a newborn vampire.”

  Sam called over to me, interrupting me from eavesdropping on the rest of the conversation. “Hey!” He was holding up his cell phone. “It says it’s you calling.” I wasn’t making a call. “Are you dialing me with your bum?” he joked.

  Instantly my hands went to the back pocket of my new skinny jeans. No phone.

  He picked it up and listened. His expression changed from amused to annoyed. “Hello, Sebastian.”

  Sebastian? From my phone? Where is my phone?

  I looked around.

  My backpack—it wasn’t here.

  I had left it in the store.

  At Lively’s.

  My stomach plunged to my knees. I’d left my backpack at the scene of the crime!

  Sam’s expression flattened. “He’s sending us a list.” Touching the screen of his mobile, he saw it and read it out loud for us. “It says: salon, trampoline, unmade beds, costumes, shoe department, and stolen electronics . . .” Sam looked at me and Caroline. “What’s he talking about?”

  Gordo asked, “What the heck did you guys do? And why did you steal stuff?”

  Caroline assured him, “We didn’t steal anything.”

  Sam added, “And there were items taken from the bakery.”

  “Except a few items from the bakery,” Caroline said. Gordo gave her a questioning look. “Seriously.”

  Gordo said, “He must think it was you guys.”

  Ellie added, “Tell the midget to prove it!”<
br />
  “How does he have your phone?” Caroline asked me with an angry tone.

  “I must’ve left my backpack behind his counter.”

  “That’s just bril, J.J.,” Caroline snapped, and it hurt. All the wonderfulness of the most exciting night I ever had in my life melted into a bazillion pieces like it never happened.

  Ellie said, “That doesn’t prove anything. You could’ve left your backpack there yesterday. Someone saw it lying around and tossed it behind Lively’s counter like it was a sack of tomatoes.” She said it like to-mah-toes. “And no one saw it until the morning.”

  Gordo corrected her, “Potatoes.” Po-tah-toes.

  “Exactly,” Ellie agreed.

  “Simply genius,” Caroline said to me, not listening to the possible po-tah-to explanation, which I thought was good.

  Well, she may be mad at me, but this definitely isn’t boring.

  Ellie looked at Sam’s phone some more. “I’m loving that wig.”

  12

  “Wig?” Caroline barked. She snatched the cell phone out of Sam’s hands. “Oh, how great is this? He has the photos and videos. He can prove we were in the store last night.”

  Sam spoke to Sebastian on the cell phone, not his finger-phone. “I’ll come in now and get the backpack and the mobile. And I’ll pay you for the sweets. You should take it as a compliment; we love them.”

  Under her breath Caroline said, “It’s you we hate.”

  Sam seemed to be listening to Sebastian. “Hang on. Calm down. I’m gonna put you on the speaker so everyone can hear your ranting.” He pushed the button and held the cell phone out for us to hear.

  Sebastian was already talking. “—don’t bother coming in to pick it up, because I’m not giving it back.”

  Gordo said, “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Sebastian boy. We can work something out.”

  “Yes, we can, Gordo. I already have.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  “Here’s the deal,” Sebastian said. “I have a paper due in four days. It’s about the demotion of our poor planet Pluto. You guys are going to write it for me. I will get two hundred and fifty words of this paper e-mailed to me at eight o’clock every night for three nights. Then, on Friday morning I’ll e-mail it to my teacher. If I don’t get them—”

  “If you don’t get them, then what?” Gordo tested him.

  “I’ll tell you!” Sebastian snapped. He paused, drawing out the suspense. “I’ll tell everyone that you guys committed the crime in the store last night! And then, oh my, I wonder what they’ll do? Maybe arrest you? Maybe ban you from the store?”

  Caroline looked shocked, even horrified by these threats. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth crinkled with anger.

  Ellie smacked her hand over her mouth to cover her own shock. Then she shot out questions: “Really? Would they seriously do that? What exactly would that mean? Like banned from the store forever?”

  Gordo took Ellie’s hands in his and lifted them up to her mouth. Quietly he said, “Shh. Please?” That seemed to work well, because she pressed her lips tightly together and nodded.

  “Okay. Fine,” Sam said. “Continue with your threat, which doesn’t really make any sense, because nothing was stolen except a few tarts, which I offered to pay for.”

  Sebastian continued, “From the photographic proof in my hand, it looks like two of your merry band were in this store after closing, making a terrible mess, and I can only conclude that if they were here when the electronics were stolen, then they were involved. I’m quite sure the police will see it that way.”

  “But we didn’t steal anything,” Caroline chimed in.

  “So, it’s purely coincidental that you were in the store on the same night there was a major theft. Maybe you believe that, but I’m not so sure that the authorities would understand. I find it hard to believe myself,” he said. “Look, as long as I get my two hundred and fifty words each night, you have nothing to worry about. And they’d better be good. No plagiarism.”

  Ellie yelled to the phone, “You’re a cheater!” Gordo touched a finger to her lip, and that reminded her she was supposed to be quiet.

  Caroline asked, “So all we have to do is write your blooming paper and we can forget about all of this?”

  “Well, there’s one more teeny tiny little detail.”

  Sam growled, “What?”

  “I need at least a B-plus, and no one—I repeat, NO ONE—can know that I didn’t write it. This paper is vitally important to my future. Do you capisce what I’m saying to you? Very important.”

  We grumbled our understanding into the phone. “Yeah, yeah, we capisce,” Ellie said.

  “I’ve copied the videos and photos onto a flash drive. By the way, how stupid can you be to create evidence like this?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “The paper is due via e-mail at ten Friday morning. And because it is critical, the teacher is going to be checking references and grading pretty quickly.”

  “Why is she grading it so fast?” Sam asked.

  “Did you miss the part when I said ‘vitally important’?” Sebastian barked. “Once I get my grade, we’ll meet and I’ll give you the flash drive. For now Ellie can come in and get this phone. No one else. I can’t stand to see your ugly gobs.” He continued, “If you are even one millisecond later than eight o’clock each night, I’ll make you an instant Internet video sensation.” He laughed evilly.

  He had us. He totally had us in a you-are-my-puppet sort of way. We had to do this for him or we’d possibly get arrested.

  This was definitely not boring, but ending up in a British prison was not the kind of life-changing experience I was looking for on this trip. I could look forward to being locked in my room, with the exception of school or weeding, for the rest of my life. Suddenly I was keenly interested in Pluto.

  “Why can’t you do the paper yourself?” Sam asked.

  “That’s none of your beeswax either. Just do it. Fast.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Gordo said to Sam, loud enough for Sebastian to hear.

  The phone made a jerking sound on the other end. Sebastian said, “Oh my goodness gracious, what just happened? What did I do? Did I just accidentally upload one of those incriminating videos? I think I did.” He ended the call.

  Caroline hissed, “He didn’t.”

  Sam showed us his screen. It was a video of me and Caroline—well, our feet—trying on shoes. Lots of shoes. The clip didn’t show our faces.

  “Un-bloody-believable,” Caroline said. “Let’s do this ridiculous Pluto paper for that pastry midget. We can work at my house.”

  Things were getting more un-boring by the minute. Maybe a little too de-bored-ified.

  “First I’m getting that phone,” Sam said. He stormed into Daphne’s and came back a few seconds later with a flush to his cheeks and no phone in his hands.

  Gordo patted Ellie’s back. “Can you handle it?”

  Ellie made a muscle with her arms. “See these guns?” She walked into the store. A minute later she returned with a mini multicolored layered cake.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “A petit four. Isn’t it cute? It’s like a little rainbow baby sandwich made of cake. Wanna bite?”

  “No, thanks,” I said, but I was still hungry. I had heard about this thing called a full English breakfast. Supposedly everyone ate it. Where was it now? None of my new friends knew how popular it was, obviously.

  “No luck with the phone?” Gordo asked.

  “Oh, that.” She popped the remaining little morsel of petit four into her mouth and reached into her back pocket. “Here you go.”

  “How’d you do that?” Gordo asked.

  “I have my ways,” Ellie said. “But don’t get too excited. He showed me the flash drive, a little plastic worm. It’s very adorable, actually. And fitting, because he’s like a worm.” She handed me my new phone with the hi-res camera, and I thought that maybe the decision to do a photo montage of my trip wa
sn’t such a good idea after all.

  13

  Sam asked, “Don’t you think he’s made other copies of the videos and photos?”

  “We’ll have to worry about copies later,” Gordo said. “But I think we shouldn’t trust anything Sebastian says.”

  We crammed into a taxi, which made me feel like I was a gum ball inside a machine. It took us to the Metro station. “It’s a fifteen-minute train ride to Brentwood,” Sam explained.

  We sat on the train, and I couldn’t help thinking for a second about the Hogwarts Express. Of course, this was nothing like Harry Potter’s train. It was shiny and modern, with half of the seats facing one way and the other half facing the other way.

  “Shh,” Sam said. “Look at the telly.” He indicated a flat screen in the front of the train car. Two news reporters stood in front of Daphne’s.

  The female reporter said, “Shortly after opening this morning, Daphne’s employees discovered that several thousand pounds’ worth of electronic equipment was missing. The investigation is just beginning and we’ll certainly report details on this case as they unfold.” The name “Skye Summers” was written on the screen under her face.

  The male reporter, Cole Miles, said, “Indeed, Skye, what does surveillance footage from the Daphne’s security system show?”

  “It seems that with the big power outage last night, the whole system was down. Authorities are presently looking for the night watchman for answers,” Skye said.

  Cole said, “More on the Daphne’s theft later. But now to sports. Let’s talk about football.” The screen switched to a scene of what I would call a soccer game.

  “There really was a theft last night,” Caroline said. “What are the chances of that?”

  “You tell us,” Ellie said.

  “What do you mean?” Caroline asked.

  “I mean, why would you take that stuff? It’s not like you need it.”

  Caroline snapped at her, “We didn’t steal anything. Do you see any stolen electronics?”

  “No,” Ellie said sheepishly.