Lost in London Read online

A regular Ferris wheel from a Wilmington carnival was like a dwarf planet compared to this gigantic wheel.

  Once we were right under it, Ellie looked up. “It looks even more massive up close, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose we should get a photo for the mums,” Caroline said. She tapped a passerby to take it. “Smile big, J.J.,” she said as we posed.

  I looked at the photo on the screen, and it showed the five of us but didn’t capture the wheel or the River Thames behind us. “You can’t tell where we are,” I said.

  “We can get a better shot from up top,” Sam said.

  We moved up in line, which Gordo called the queue. Caroline said, “Let me guess. You read all about the London Eye before you came.”

  “Yes,” I said, embarrassed.

  “Please enlighten us,” she said.

  This felt like a pop quiz for which I didn’t know the answers. I looked down at the brochure as if I needed it to give me the information, which I didn’t. “It was built to be the biggest Ferris wheel in the world, and it was until two bigger ones were built, one in China and one in Singapore.”

  Caroline looked up. “Bigger than this?”

  It seemed that I knew something that Caroline hadn’t learned on a field trip.

  Our turn came up faster than I expected, even though the Eye turned very slowly. The Eye didn’t even stop to let us on. We walked onto the clear plastic capsule that was like a big bubble with a long bench down the middle.

  “How long does this take?” Ellie asked.

  “A half hour for a rotation,” I said.

  We were off the ground and above the river. The panoramic view of the city was beautiful and amazing, and I sent my mom and dad a mental thank-you for letting me go on this trip. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “Look at the lights of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster. I want to go there so badly.”

  My four new friends soaked in the view. “It really is spectacular,” Gordo said. Ellie took my phone and asked another capsule passenger to take our picture. The person didn’t speak English but understood what she was asking.

  Under her breath Caroline said, “You’d think the least these people could do is unbutton the top of their oxford shirts. Maybe the top button is in style in their country, but not here.”

  The tourists showed no sign of hearing or understanding her, thankfully. That would’ve been so embarrassing.

  We stood with our backs to the capsule’s glass wall so that Big Ben was in the picture. It came out great. I texted the proof of our stop at the London Eye to our moms.

  “I wonder why they call it Big Ben,” Ellie said.

  How can she not know this? “The biggest chiming bell of the clock tower is called Ben and gives the tower its nickname.”

  “Why ‘Ben,’ and not ‘Bob’ or ‘Burt’?” Caroline asked.

  “There is the name of a politician named Benjamin Somebody inscribed on the bell,” I said.

  “You seem to know a lot about this stuff,” Caroline said. “What else do you know about the clock?”

  I thought she was joking, maybe setting me up to be mocked, but her face showed no indication that she was anything but serious. “Well, it’s the only tower with four faces of a clock. And it’s known for its accuracy. It’s been lit and has kept good time for a hundred and fifty years. During the First and Second World Wars the lights were turned off to protect it from attacks. Also, only UK residents can go in.”

  “Bummer, eh?” Caroline asked. “We’ll just have to focus all our fun time elsewhere. I’m sure you have other places we can visit on that list of yours.”

  “I’d love to get a picture in front of it,” I said, even though I knew it would be an unpopular idea.

  “Sure thing,” Sam said on behalf of his friends.

  Caroline’s glare said that he did not have the authority to make a commitment like that on her behalf. “Maybe we can fit it in one day,” she said coldly.

  Needless to say, we didn’t get that picture.

  18

  The next day at breakfast Mrs. Littleton asked us, “Where are y’all going today?” She looked like she had already been to yoga.

  I said, “I was thinking Madame Tussauds.”

  I caught Caroline puff out an annoyed exhale. “Bril,” she said with a smile that I didn’t believe.

  “Maybe I’ll come along,” Mrs. Littleton said. “Just let me get a quick shower.”

  “Oh,” Caroline said, looking at her watch. “I wish we could wait, but we were supposed to pick up the others about five minutes ago.”

  “Oh, drat! Well, have fun,” Mrs. Littleton said. “Before ya go, I just wanna talk to Caroline for one smidgen of a second.”

  Caroline followed Mrs. Littleton to the hallway. I could hear a hushed conversation. As promised, they returned to the kitchen in a smidgen of a second. “Will we see you for dinner?” Mrs. Littleton asked.

  “Unlikely,” Caroline said. “We’ll probably go to some London icon; you know, to make sure J.J. has a superepic time here in London.”

  It was amazing how her mom kept trusting us. I never had this much freedom at home.

  Liam was waiting to drive us to the train station. I was already hungry because the berries and tea from breakfast hadn’t been enough to fill me. I couldn’t wait to see Sam, both because I was starting to really like hanging out with him—okay, so maybe I was starting to like him—and because he’d be into getting a snack with me.

  From two blocks away I could see the huge green dome. I knew from my pre-travel research it was Madame Tussauds, the famous wax museum. It’s the home of tons of wax figures of famous people, like Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, politicians, athletes, and any other star you could imagine. It’s been visited by famous people and tourists for almost two hundred years.

  “Oh, blast,” Caroline said. “Look at this queue.” We were in a long line of people waiting to get in. She looked at her phone. “There’s no new videos uploaded, so those pages must’ve met the pastry pest’s standards.”

  “Did you say ‘pastry’?” Sam asked. “Because I think there’s a shop right around the corner. It’s not as good as Lively’s, but it’s all right.”

  “Sounds like something we should check out,” I said.

  Ellie said, “We’ll get in the queue while you get something to eat.”

  Sam and I crossed the street, which is harder than you’d think when people are driving on the wrong side of the road.

  Sam asked for two scones. I ate it as slowly as I could, which was kinda fast. It really hit the spot.

  We rejoined the gang, who had inched up in line a bit.

  Gordo said, “Let’s work on the next set of pages now. We can’t do anything else while we’re standing here.”

  Ellie said, “Give me the Pad-i, and I’ll type today.”

  “Pad-i?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Like ‘Pad Thai,’ ” she said.

  I asked, “What’s wrong with ‘iPad’?”

  “I thought it might be fun to change it. You know, see if it catches on,” she said. “Who knows, maybe I’ll start a whole new trend. You know I was the first to use ‘BTW’?”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. Ellie nodded, confirming that it was her. I wondered if Ellie could single-handedly rename the Apple suite of products. I doubted it, but I admired her for trying.

  “You go for it,” Gordo encouraged Ellie.

  Caroline examined her nails.

  Ellie fished the tiara from the Tower of London out of her purse and set it on her spiky head. She checked her reflection in the museum’s tinted windows.

  Caroline looked at her. “Seriously?”

  “What?” Ellie asked. “Don’t you like it? I wonder why women stopped wearing them.”

  “Because they look dumb,” Caroline said.

  Ellie didn’t take it off. I thought maybe she was trying to start another trend. I loved that Ellie wore it even though Caroline had just said it was dumb.

  The line inch
ed forward.

  “Are you a good typer?” I asked Ellie while she touched the iPad screen, which Gordo held for her.

  “Not really, but I like to do it. I’m not a good tap dancer either, but I like to do that, too.” She clomped her feet around and smiled.

  Caroline’s foot was tapping, but it was much less enthusiastic than Ellie’s. “Let’s get a photo now,” Caroline said, “so we can take off quickly when we’re done.” I wondered why she was in such a big hurry.

  Sam asked the lady in front of us to take our picture. Caroline once again reminded me to smile big. I looked at the picture on the small LCD screen before sending it to the mums.

  Caroline said, “We’ve got the shot. Do you wanna skip this and just go see the zombie picture again? This place gives me the creeps.”

  “But a zombie movie doesn’t?” asked Sam.

  “That’s different,” Caroline said. “That’s Hollywood. This place is, like, actual spookiness right here in front of us.”

  “Too true,” Ellie added. “That’s what I like about it. Can you imagine if you’d been locked in here overnight instead of Daphne’s?”

  “Shhh!” Everyone shushed her.

  “Sorry. But that would’ve been a bomb.”

  Gordo said, “I haven’t been here since I was a kid. I liked it then, and I wanna see it again.”

  “Same,” Ellie said.

  “Do they have food?” Sam asked.

  “Yes!” we all assured him.

  “Speaking of food,” I said, “if you ever want a lemon tart again, we should work on those pages.”

  It seemed like everyone had ignored Caroline’s suggestion to go to the movie. Her toe tapping and watch-looking indicated that she didn’t like that, but for some reason she didn’t make a big deal about it.

  Sam read a few lines from a printout he still had in his pocket, and Ellie used the touch screen to type. Every few words she said “Oops” or “Wait a sec.”

  And then, just to tease her, Sam would talk really fast. “Slow down, Sam,” Ellie told him, but he sped up again, even faster. Sam dictated, “Pluto was a planet until recently, when astronomers decided it was too small and stripped it of that title.”

  “That’s good,” Ellie said. “I am totally writing that—stripped it—it’s very dramatic and really makes you feel bad for the sad little dwarf planet. Kinda like Sebastian is a dwarf person.”

  I admired that even though they were waiting in line for some touristy thing, writing a school paper for someone else—an annoying bully who spit in their tarts—they were still having fun. I really liked these guys. I looked at Caroline fiddling with her phone, and I didn’t understand why they’d want to be friends with her. But I did understand why she would want to be friends with them.

  Once again Ellie was nagging Sam to slow down, when I heard something familiar. With a start, I realized it was my own voice coming from the phone of the girl behind us in line.

  Motioning for everyone in our group to be quiet, I tilted my head toward the girl.

  We heard Caroline’s voice too—and lots of laughing.

  It was the trampoline video clip that Sebastian had uploaded.

  19

  The girl behind us in line, the one chomping on her chewing gum, held her phone out enough for us to listen and watch. It was the news reporters again:

  The anchor named Skye said, “The recent theft at Daphne’s remains unsolved, but it’s believed that these two people are responsible.”

  They flashed a still photo of our feet midjump.

  “As you can see, there are no images of the suspects’ faces. But from the voices, it’s assumed to be two girls—an American and a Brit. Police have reviewed the surveillance cameras from the night in question, but since the storm knocked out the electricity, there is no recording.”

  The reporter named Cole asked, “Skye, what about a backup generator? Surely a store as high-tech as Daphne’s has a backup system?”

  “Indeed. They do have a generator, which was disconnected. The Daphne’s security team said the heist was well thought-out, because these girls chose a night when a storm killed the electricity, and they also knew how to disconnect a generator.”

  “They sound like smart and experienced thieves,” Cole said. “What happens next?”

  “The authorities will comb the videos before power was lost to see if they find a pair of girls matching these feet,” Skye said, and the screen filled with the shot of our feet again.

  “Can you believe it?” Bubble Gum said. “They recorded themselves and then put it on the Internet. It’s like they want to get caught.”

  Then her friend with a pierced nose said, “Why would they want that? They’ll probably go up the river if they get caught.”

  “I can’t imagine it will take that long to identify them,” Bubble Gum said.

  “Then what?” Pierced Nose asked.

  “Bring them in for questioning, I guess,” Bubble Gum said. “I’ll make you a bet that they have the American-British robber pair in custody before morning.”

  Pierced Nose said, “No way. The police aren’t that good. I’ll take that wager.”

  “What shall we bet?” Bubble Gum asked. “Tickets to the Riley Goodwin picture?”

  “YES!” Pierced Nose agreed. They shook on it.

  I whispered, “What are we going to do?”

  Gordo said, “All right. Starting now you’re not American, J.J.”

  Ellie asked, “How about Chinese? Can you do a Chinese accent?”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “But even if I could, I don’t think I can look Chinese.”

  “You haven’t tried.”

  Sam said, “Why don’t you just be English? From Manchester.”

  “I guess I could try that,” I said.

  “In the meantime it wouldn’t hurt for you to lie low,” Sam said.

  Caroline said, “We’re standing in the queue at a museum. It doesn’t get much lower than this.”

  “I know!” Ellie raised her hand like an eight-year-old in school. She waited for Caroline’s acknowledgment to allow her to talk. “One word. ‘Disguises.’ I am the best at disguises. We had a costume party at my school, and I won the prize for the best costume. I went as a royal guard with a homemade hat. I made the hat with pillow stuffing and painted it black. It was, like, four feet tall. Tell her how awesome it was, Sam.”

  “It was actually quite good,” Sam agreed.

  Ellie said, “I thought everyone was going to make their own and wear them to school the next day, but it didn’t catch on that way. That’s the thing with starting new fads, sometimes they catch on and sometimes they don’t—”

  “Anyway,” Caroline interrupted. “Back in the real world I suppose a little camouflage wouldn’t be a totally awful idea.”

  “True,” Gordo agreed.

  Ellie said, “I don’t want to totally freak you out, but look.” She pointed to two policemen coming down the street. “Duck!”

  Caroline bent down as if she was tying her shoe, which was silly because she was wearing boots with zippers. “Stop pointing!”

  I stuck my head into my purse like I was looking for something very important that was way down at the bottom in the corner. I continued to hunt until Ellie said, “They’re gone. You can climb out of your designer bag now. I’ve never actually seen someone try to fit inside a handbag. You gave it a good go. Let me try.”

  She took my purse and bent her head down into it but didn’t get very far. “You’re better at it. One time I tried to see if my foot would fit into an orange juice container. My foot was smaller back then, of course. I got my foot in but couldn’t get it out, and since I couldn’t walk with it on my foot, I had to hop around until my dad could saw it off—the plastic orange container, that is, not my foot, obviously, because I still have it. See.”

  She held up her leg and showed us her foot, like it would be news to us that her foot was still there. Caroline’s eyes said she was
irritated by Ellie’s moronic behavior, but I got a laugh out of it—something I definitely needed at the moment.

  “We know all about the ol’ foot-in-the-orange-juice-container story,” Caroline said. “But right now we have something to take care of. Can you boys stay in line and save our places?”

  Gordo studied how far we had left to go before we got into the wax museum. “You’d better be quick.”

  As we girls set out to buy disguises, I overheard Bubble Gum say, “I wish that was me. How awesome would it be to stay in Daphne’s overnight? Those two chicks are my heroes.”

  She was talking about me! Boring old me was her hero!

  Then Pierced Nose said, “You aren’t kidding. I’d love to have an exciting night like that, except I wouldn’t steal anything.”

  “Come on,” Ellie said, and she ushered us away.

  “How are we gonna get out of this?” I asked. “My parents are going to be superangry if they find out the police are looking for me.”

  “We need two things,” Caroline said. “Disguises, and to get those videos from the Tart Fart so that he can’t upload anything else to the Internet, or turn anything over to the police.”

  Ellie was laughing so hard that she had to hold herself up against the brick wall of the building we were going to walk into. “Tart Fart! That’s a good one, Car. I LOVE it.”

  “Caroline,” she corrected Ellie.

  “Ahhh.” She exhaled and caught her breath back. “Right. Sorry about that.” She was slightly more serious as she held the door to the Shamrock Boutique open for us. “Maybe if you apologize for breaking in and stealing the electronics—”

  “We didn’t break in!” Caroline said loud enough to draw attention from the four customers and store lady. “And.” She lowered her voice but said very firmly, “We. Didn’t. Steal. Anything.”

  “Jeez,” Ellie whispered. “You don’t need to yell about it. Okay, you have five minutes for the ultimate disguises. I’ll be over here by the earrings for free consultations.”

  “Why are you whispering?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t want her to yell at me again.”

  I went right for a soft pink wool cap with a really big flower pin affixed to it.