Lost in London Read online

  Maybe Caroline liked dramatic. I could do that. “I know, right? It’s like going around with a big green ogre on your back.”

  Ellie jumped in at the mention of an ogre. “Maybe one that just ate a village of trolls. I think I saw a picture like that once. He popped the little trolls into his mouth like they were chips.”

  Sam studied the castles. “I’m psyched,” he said. “For the sightseeing, not the troll eating. And that’s saying something, because I like eating.”

  “I think we know that,” I said. “I guess we need to get tickets to go in.”

  Caroline sighed. “We don’t have to go in, do we? We can just hang out here and mock all the tourists walking by. I mean, unless you want to.” She said it like it was a ridiculously lame idea.

  What can I say? I mean, of course I want to go in. I’m in London to see the sights, DUH!

  I needed to make this more interesting than an average field trip.

  I got an idea.

  “Mocking the tourists sounds superfun,” I said to Caroline. “But I thought maybe you’d want to see the Crown Jewels. And, Ellie, I thought you might want to see the ghosts that haunt this place. Sam, the brochure I read said they have an assortment of royal chocolates in the gift shop.”

  “I’d forgotten that the Crown Jewels were here,” Caroline said, reconsidering. “We didn’t see them on our school trip.”

  Ellie said, “We didn’t see any ghosts then either. They probably don’t take schoolkids to the truly ghostly parts of the Tower, eh?”

  “What are we waiting for?” Sam asked.

  Yay, me! I had gotten them a little interested.

  We passed through the stone archway, on top of which was an iron gate that would be dropped to protect the royal court from threats.

  Inside the Tower walls my eyes feasted on the old stone buildings. I imagined ladies in layered lacy dresses, maybe a poor fellow locked in a stockade, and a stray dog scampering for a scrap of bread.

  We took a long bridge that passed over a grassy path. I overheard a tour guide, who was dressed in a yeoman’s tunic, saying that the plush greenway was once a moat. I took lots of pictures.

  “The deep water was like a security system,” Sam added. “It was probably filled with man-eating fish.”

  “Now, that’s cool,” Ellie said. “Too bad they filled it in.”

  Caroline’s mobile rang. She answered it and spoke for just a second in hushed tones that I couldn’t decipher. “It was Stepmummy. She got the picture, and noticed J.J. wasn’t all smiles. I assured her you were having a grand old time.” Then she asked, “So, where are the jewels?”

  I looked at the map. “For the Jewel House we need to go this way.”

  “Then let’s head over there.” Caroline hooked her arm into mine and walked with me like we were Dorothy and the lion parading down the yellow brick road. (I would be the lion in that scene.) I was continuing to follow the directions, when I saw something that I thought Ellie would be interested in. It had that horror-movie feel to it. “See this tower?” I asked her. “They call it the Bloody Tower.”

  “Awesome,” Ellie said. “Let’s go in.”

  “Oh, yes! Let’s,” Caroline said excitedly, too excitedly? Or was she actually getting into this?

  We walked inside the Bloody Tower. A cool feeling of death and despair was everywhere as I followed the signs and led the group up a narrow spiral staircase surrounded by stone walls. Velvet ropes blocked us from a small room that held only a few pieces of furniture: an ornate wooden chair, a writing desk, a small wooden bed against the wall. There was light from just one square window.

  “I don’t see any ghosts,” Ellie said. “What a rip-off.”

  We followed the gloomy corridors, whose silence felt very haunted. The corridors were narrow and bendy. Occasionally there was a mirror in the corner, angled so that you could see if someone was coming from the other direction. I didn’t like the eerie feeling in this place. I walked fast until I made it outside to the warm sun.

  I continued walking in the direction of the jewels, but then I saw the Tower Green. I stopped and stared at the square patch of grass. It was smaller than I’d imagined, considering what went on there.

  “What is it?” Sam asked me. “What’s wrong?”

  “This is the Tower Green. It’s where they held public executions,” I said.

  Caroline said, “That’s what the medieval times were all about. Maybe it’s novel to you because Columbus hadn’t even discovered America yet. But we know all about it.”

  I didn’t know what to say; this was new to me. Maybe they’d seen it all before, but I hadn’t.

  Caroline looked like maybe she realized her comment was insensitive, and tried to gloss it over. “But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” She smiled. “To see our wonderful history.”

  I stared at the Green. “I especially like Anne Boleyn’s story. It’s so romantic and tragic,” I said.

  “I love romance,” Gordo said.

  “I love tragic,” Ellie said.

  “Go on,” Caroline. “Tell us what you know about her.”

  I was a little apprehensive because I couldn’t tell if she really wanted to hear the story. “Well, King Henry was married to Catherine when he fell madly in love with Anne, one of her lady’s maids. Henry and Anne married, and their love was true and deep. They had a daughter who later became queen. But after they had been married for several years, King Henry began courting Lady Jane Seymour and he wanted to marry her. So that the new marriage could be legal, he told everyone that Anne had bewitched him to make him fall in love with her. Anne was locked away in the Tower and eventually executed—in this exact spot right here.” A chill went through my entire body, and for a moment no one spoke.

  “Positively gruesome,” Ellie finally said with a sparkle in her eye.

  I took a picture of the grassy area. “Here, let me get a picture of you on the Green,” Caroline said, and took my phone. “Now smile really big.” She clicked the picture, handed the phone back to me, and said, “Send that to the mums too.”

  I did.

  “Now, how about the jewels?” Caroline asked again.

  We entered the narrow stone corridor of the Jewel House. It was dark and damp. Security cameras along the halls reminded me that modern surveillance was in use, not that we were planning to do any dress-up or trampolining.

  The main room that housed the jewels was also guarded by security men, the no-nonsense-no-tunic kind.

  Caroline got dangerously close to one of the glass cases that shielded from potential theft crowns and scepters adorned with enormous gems. A guard cleared his throat, and Caroline stepped back.

  I went to click a picture, and the guard told me I couldn’t in this room.

  I said, “I would love a time machine so that I could go back and see these actually being worn at a big celebration with dancing and live music and court jesters.” As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Caroline didn’t think about things like time machines.

  Apparently Gordo did. “And knights with swords and shields.”

  Caroline said, “But I’m not interested in living without air-conditioning or cell phones or Jacuzzi tubs or TV. No thanks. I’ll pass.”

  “I don’t need a time machine,” Ellie said. “The MoviePlex takes me to all sorts of places in time. That’s the same MoviePlex that’s showing Bloodsucking Zombies at four o’clock, which we can make if we leave right now.” She sang “right now.”

  “Yes!” Caroline said. “I mean, as long as J.J. is okay with that. I think you’re going to absolutely LOVE this picture. It’s all the rage.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, and I liked that Caroline had checked with me. She had been totally nice and attentive to me today, and initially she hadn’t even wanted to come.

  “Right after we check out the gift shop,” Ellie said. “I never leave anywhere without a souvenir.”

  “Fine,” Caroline agreed. “We’ll all get souvenir
s.”

  Gordo bought a little knight figurine, Sam grabbed some chocolate, and even Caroline got a few postcards. I chose a London bus key chain to put in my new purse.

  Ellie got a three-foot-tall pencil with a big crown eraser, and a tiara that she wore out of the store.

  Outside the Tower walls, we were back in modern London; I followed the gang underground via stairs in the sidewalk. In medieval times this might have led to a dungeon, but today I suspected it went to something like a subway. Not like I had ever actually been on a subway, but I’d seen them on TV and in movies.

  “This is the Tube,” Sam said.

  The Tube? How British. I imagined myself in a New York subway one day and saying to the person I was with, It’s nice, but it’s not like the Tube in London. Have you ever been on the Tube? Well, I have, and I can tell you all about it, if you’d like. Or maybe I’d be back at school and someone from our lame school paper would interview me about this trip and I could say something like, Well, we took the Tube from sight to sight. Don’t you know what that is? Well, let me explain . . .

  The walls were white, with different-colored stripes indicating the routes. Sam seemed to know which underground train to get on. I sat on a hard plastic seat. Ellie was in front of me, holding on to a metal pole. The train took off through the tunnel, which was kinda like an underground tube. I guessed that was where it got its name. The train moved so fast that Ellie kept bumping into me.

  “Sorry,” she said. She took her phone and clicked four or five pictures of everyone acting silly. Then she held it out and took one of herself in her tiara, which she hadn’t taken off. “I’ll text these to you so you’ll have them.” She frowned. “Drat! No signal down here.”

  We emerged from underground, and I felt my phone vibrating in my new purse. I looked at it. I figured it was the pictures Ellie had just sent, but it wasn’t. “Oh no,” I said. “It’s Sebastian. He wants his pages at five o’clock instead of eight.”

  “Can he do that?” Ellie asked. “Just change the time?”

  “No,” Sam said. “He can’t. Tell him he’s a twit and we’ll get him the pages as agreed.”

  I texted Sebastian back, leaving out the part about the twit and writing much more politely than any of them would have.

  He immediately replied.

  “What did he say?” Gordo asked.

  “It’s just a link.” I clicked it, and it went to an online video. I held it out for the others to see. They had to crowd around me. Sam’s cheek practically touched mine, and I felt the wisps of the longish part of his hair on my face.

  The video began to play. The background was Daphne’s. The video was familiar. You could clearly see two people in costumes, jumping on a trampoline. There were no faces, but I could hear my own voice and Caroline’s.

  “That looks like fun,” Ellie said. “Can we do that?”

  “Blast it!” Caroline groaned.

  16

  We sat on the curb outside the MoviePlex. Sam tapped out words that Gordo dictated based on the printouts he had. Gordo also told him where to add a citation.

  Ellie fidgeted and kept looking at her watch. “It’s almost four o’clock. I’m going to miss the previews. I hate missing the previews. Can’t you go any faster?”

  Sam picked up his hand-phone and looked at Ellie. “It’s the Shut Your Piehole Factory; they want to talk to you,” he said.

  She closed her mouth and huffed over to Caroline and started imitating Sam on his finger-phone. Caroline sent Ellie to buy tickets. I really hoped this movie would involve popcorn. I wouldn’t mind a hot dog, but that might be too much to hope for.

  Finally Sam said, “Okay, it’s sent to the pastry jerk. We overachieved, my friend. Two hundred and fifty-six words.” He gave Gordo a high five.

  Ellie rushed us through the theater. I passed a poster for Bloodsucking Zombies. It was a gruesome image of a walking-dead person with blood dripping from his mouth. I noticed it was rated “15.” A quick glance of the other movies and ratings told me that meant it was for kids fifteen and older. A little beat of excitement pulsed through my veins. Ellie handed me a ticket. I guess she’d passed for fifteen, which wasn’t really surprising. “My treat,” she said.

  I thanked her.

  I sat between Ellie and Sam. After only a second, Sam got up and left. “BRB,” he whispered.

  Ellie said, “You know I started ‘BRB’?”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  She nodded. I think she believed that she had started the abbreviation, but I didn’t think so.

  The theater darkened, and a few previews later, blood started splattering everywhere.

  Ellie was entranced. Something on the ground caught my eye. Her feet were glowing. She saw that I was staring. “Glow-in-the-dark socks,” she said. “Very popular.”

  “Really?” I had never heard of them. I glanced down the row. Gordo’s feet were kicked up onto the chair in front of him, and a smile covered his face. I think Caroline was checking her watch. It was like she always wanted to be somewhere else, but her friends were all here. It didn’t make sense to me. In some ways I wanted to be like her—she was so pretty and had cool clothes and everyone wanted to be around her. But I didn’t think she was that nice to her friends. She’d been really nice to me all day, but it felt different than it had at Daphne’s. It was like she was . . . acting.

  Sam came back with a bucket of popcorn and a mega-huge soda.

  “Help yourself,” he whispered into my ear.

  “Did you hear my stomach growling?” I whispered back.

  “No, but I can only imagine after hanging out with those guys all day.”

  “Why don’t they eat?” I asked.

  He said, “Too busy, I think.”

  Ellie shh-ed us. Sam and I stared at the screen with our hands occasionally meeting in the bucket. I had to think about something other than the blood and guts on the screen for a second:

  • I was in London, staying in a mansion.

  • I’d just come from seeing the Crown Jewels.

  • I now sat at a movie, sharing popcorn with a totally cute British boy.

  • Oh, and I had on hot new clothes and makeup, and had a great new hairdo.

  This had been a pretty successful trip so far, except for being blackmailed by some guy to do his homework. And that there were videos of me (faceless, thankfully) online in connection with a robbery.

  Yup. I’d say smashingly successful so far.

  • • •

  The movie was terrible, but the popcorn was good. I learned a new English word that I thought maybe I would try to use while I was here.

  They sat through all the credits. When the houselights came on, they still didn’t get up.

  “That was so good,” Ellie said. “I totally cannot wait to see it again. Did you see that bloke’s fingers go into the blender? He didn’t even feel it. I think I want to be a zombie when I die.”

  “Too true,” Gordo said. “But with better hair.”

  Caroline said, “That picture had better win some major awards. I love Riley Goodwin; he is so cute.”

  Sam asked, “Which one was he?”

  “Are you kidding?” Ellie asked. “You’re just having a laugh, Sam, right? Everyone knows who Riley Goodwin is. The hot zombie. The one who never wore a shirt.”

  “How can a zombie be hot?” Sam asked. “I mean, they’re dead. They must smell terrible, and random body parts just fall off and tumble to the ground.”

  Gordo said, “Just ’cause they’re dead doesn’t mean they should completely neglect their hygiene, does it? Half of them had bugs crawling out of their ears or nose or eyes. That’s not hot. But even I have to admit that Riley Goodwin is a good-looking guy.”

  Then Sam held his thumb and pinky to his ear and mouth like he was making a phone call. “Hi,” he said. “I am looking for the Hot Zombie Club. Can you help me? Oh, you can’t because zombies aren’t hot? Okay, thanks. That’s what I thought too.”
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br />   Ellie shooed Sam and continued talking to Caroline. “Do you think he owns a shirt that isn’t ripped to shreds?”

  “I hope not,” Caroline said. She looked at her watch. “Latte?”

  Gordo said, “The sooner the better.”

  Caroline asked me, “You think your mom will be okay with us stopping for a warm beverage, or will you miss too much sightseeing?” She sounded like it was a totally normal question, but it was mean, right?

  “I think she’ll be okay with that.”

  We walked to a small coffee shop next door. Gordo, Ellie, and Caroline all shared a sandwich. Sam and I each got our own scone and passed on the latte.

  “I suppose we’ll head to the train, and we can do yet another fabulously touristy thing tomorrow,” Caroline said. I wasn’t sure she really meant that touristy things were fabulous. “That new reality show about the cooking club is on tonight, right? I cannot wait to see it. They’re going to have a live online chat during the show.”

  Sam said, “It’s only seven o’clock. And it’s not raining. It’s a good night to go to the Eye. Is that on your list, J.J.?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I really want to ride that big Ferris wheel.”

  Caroline exhaled like this was terribly inconvenient for her reality TV schedule. She pushed out a smile. “Maybe we should save it for tomorrow?”

  “Why don’t you stay here,” Gordo said. “Look, they have a telly.” He indicated an ancient TV in the corner near the cappuccino machine. “We’ll come back and get you when we’re done. Your stepmummy didn’t say you had to be in every picture. We’ll take J.J. and we’ll text the photo.”

  Hmmm, I thought. It might even be more fun without her.

  “Fine,” she said. “Ellie and I will hang here while you ride that wheel.”

  Ellie pouted. “I sorta want to go.”

  “That’s just fab,” Caroline said. “Then we’ll all go, won’t we?”

  17

  London was lit up under the night sky like a perfect postcard. I was looking up and wondering which light was Pluto, when I saw the London Eye in the distance.