Girl Online (17 page)

“You hungry?” Noah asks.

I nod. Now I come to think of it, I’m absolutely starving.

“OK, I know this great place we can go to that has food and adventure all rolled into one.” He looks at me and grins and I get that shivery feeling again.

“Food
and
adventure,” I say, trying to joke my way back to un-shivery normality.

“Uh-huh. This place was made for Magical Mystery Day.”

“Well then, we must go there immediately.”

As we head back to the truck, I see the girl from the bookstore. She’s standing outside a café now, chatting on her phone. When she sees us, she starts really staring at Noah again.

“There’s that girl, the one I thought knew you,” I say.

Noah casts a brief look at the girl and pulls his hat down. “Never seen her before,” he mutters, quickening his pace.

As we pass the girl, I glance at her.

“It is,” she says animatedly into her phone but still staring at Noah. Then I realize what’s going on. He’s so striking-looking that this kind of thing must happen all the time. He’s literally a girl-gaze magnet. I feel a sudden pang of sorrow. What am I doing having fluttery feelings for someone like Noah? For all I know, he might have a girlfriend. He
must
have a girlfriend. How could the owner of those cheekbones and that smile not have a girlfriend?

“Why the sad face?” Noah asks as we get into the truck.

“I’m not sad,” I say as breezily as I can, gazing out of the window. The girl is walking toward us now, still holding her phone.

“OK, let’s go,” Noah says, quickly pulling out onto the road.

I instinctively grip onto the seat. Thankfully, a call from Mum provides a welcome distraction.

“Did you get it?” she says without even saying hello.

“Yes and it’s lovely,” I tell her. “Even better than the original.”

I can actually hear her sigh of relief.

“Noah and I were just going to get some lunch,” I say, praying that she won’t need me to come back to help her with anything.

“What’s that? Oh, could you hang on a second, darling?”

“Sure.”

I hear the shriek of children’s laughter. “No dancing on the tables, please,” Mum says in a shrill voice. “Sorry, Penny, it’s the flower girls—they’re very
full of life
. What were you saying?”

“Would it be OK for me to go and get some lunch with Noah?”

“No!” Mum yells. “Do not get chocolate all over your dress! Oh, Penny, I swear, if their mothers don’t come back soon I am going to go insane. Yes, of course you can go for lunch, darling. Your dad just texted and he and Elliot have gone off to see a movie in Times Square, so take your time. Have some fun,” she says wistfully. The shrieking in the background reaches fever pitch.

“Thanks, Mum. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart. No! Do not eat the flowers!”

We’re driving through a more industrial area now. Every so often I catch glimpses of the river between the buildings.

“All OK back at the ranch?” Noah asks.

“Yeah. I think my mum might be about to have a nervous breakdown but she said I can stay out as long as I like.”

“Awesome.” Noah glances at me. “I mean, awesome that you can stay out, not awesome that she’s having a nervous breakdown. But don’t worry—it’s impossible to have a nervous breakdown with Sadie Lee around. She’s like a walking, talking, baking, comfort blanket.”

I laugh. “Sounds like the perfect grandma.”

“Oh, she is.” There’s something about the serious way Noah says this that makes me instantly look at him, but his face is expressionless and fixed on the road. “So, up at that turn I’m going to hang a left,” he says, “and then we’re pretty much there.”

“Oh.” We’re surrounded by grim-looking warehouse buildings now, and there are hardly any people around. I
can’t see anywhere that looks remotely like a hotbed of food and adventure, but maybe once we get around the corner we’ll emerge into the heart of a quirky little neighborhood, crammed full of vintage stores and cafés.

Instead, when we get around the corner, we emerge into an industrial wasteland full of garbage Dumpsters and tumbleweed. OK, there isn’t actually any tumbleweed, but there should be—it’s totally a tumbleweed kind of place.

Noah pulls up outside a warehouse building that looks long abandoned. The walls are crumbling and covered in faded graffiti like old tattoos. Most of the windows are boarded up with sheets of corrugated iron and the few that aren’t are lined with heavy metal bars. Even the trees that are dotted about look derelict, leafless, and spindly against the beige brickwork.

“I know it looks kind of sketchy,” Noah says in what has to be the understatement of the year, “but once you get inside it’s a whole other story.”

“We’re going inside—there?” I stare at the building. The only time I’ve seen anything like this before has been in the scariest scenes of really scary movies—usually involving crazed psychos armed with guns. Or, one time, an actual chain saw.

Noah laughs. “You’re gonna love it, seriously.”

I turn to stare at him. Maybe he really is crazy, and not in a good way. “But w-what—is it?” I stammer.

“I’m taking you to a secret café—for artists,” he says.

I admit it; now I’m interested. “Really?”

“Yep. No one knows it’s here. They never advertise it. It’s strictly invitation-only.”

“So how do you know it’s here?” Although the idea of an invitation-only, secret café for artists intrigues me, I’m still not fully convinced.

“My dad used to have a studio here,” Noah says, taking the keys from the ignition. “The whole building’s full of artists’ studios. It began in the seventies when the building was empty and a whole bunch of artists started squatting in it. Then, in the nineties, when the authorities wanted to bulldoze it, the artistic community got together to protest and the mayor granted the building a special status.”

“Wow.”

Noah nods. “This is the real New York,” he says wistfully. “Places like this. It’s also my favorite place in the world,” he says.

I immediately get that fluttery feeling again at the thought of him bringing me to his favorite place in the world.

“And, hey, it seemed like the perfect place for Magical Mystery Day—it’s top secret and it has cake.”

“It’s perfect,” I say, and Noah starts to grin.

We get out of the truck and the icy wind is so biting it makes me shiver.

“You cold?” Noah asks.

I nod. “A bit.”

He takes off his scarf. “Here.” I stand dead still as he puts the scarf around my neck. He’s so close to me I daren’t lift my gaze from the floor. Then I do look up, and for a split second we’re staring into each other’s eyes. And
click
—I feel another part of me slotting into place with him.

“Come on.” He places his hand gently in the small of my
back and guides me over to a gap in the metal fence surrounding the building.

We scramble down a steep bank covered in weeds and stubbly grass, and over to a large metal door. There’s an old keypad next to the door. Noah presses some of the numbers and there’s a clicking sound. He pulls the door open and ushers me in. We’re standing in a concrete corridor lit by harsh flickering fluorescent strip lights. The one appealing thing is the graffiti on the walls. This graffiti isn’t like the faded tags on the outside. These are proper works of art, whole murals stretching all the way along the corridor.

A door in the wall opens and a woman comes out. She’s wearing a long tie-dyed dress and her hair is pulled back into hundreds of beaded braids. It’s so nice to see someone so bright and colorful and friendly-looking that I’m instantly reassured.

“Noah,” the woman cries as soon as she sees him.

“Hey, Dorothy, how’s it going?”

“Great. I just found out I’ve got two pieces accepted for an exhibition downtown.”

“That’s awesome.” Noah gives the woman a hug. Then he turns back to me. “This is my friend Penny. She’s come all the way from the UK. I wanted to bring her someplace special for lunch.”

Dorothy gives me a warm smile. “Well, you came to the right place. Welcome to New York, honey.”

“Thank you.”

“OK, I’ll catch you guys later—gotta go have a meeting with the gallery. Well done, Noah. I’m so proud of you.”
Dorothy gives him another hug and starts heading off along the corridor.

Noah looks really embarrassed as he turns to me. “Come on, let’s go eat.”

I follow him to a door at the end of the corridor that opens onto a stairwell.

“The café’s down in the basement,” he explains, holding the door open for me.

“Why was Dorothy proud of you?” I ask as we head down the concrete steps.

“Oh, she was just messing,” Noah says.

“What do you mean?”

“I think it was because I was with you.”

I look at him blankly.

“Because you’re a girl,” he says, the tips of his cheeks beginning to flush. “She’s always on me that I should have a girlfriend—not that you’re my girlfriend,” he adds hastily, his cheeks blushing even redder.

“No,” I say, and we look at each other for a split second.

He shrugs, and then we carry on walking.

But I can’t help feel a glow spread all the way up from my toes. Because even though he’s Rock-God–tastic, and even though he lives in a whole other country, on a whole other continent, and even though I’ll be going back home in two days’ time and will probably never see him again, part of me wants to jump up and down for joy. He doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Chapter Twenty

Once we get to the bottom of the stairwell, Noah leads me over to a door.

“It’s going to be really dark at first,” he says. “Is that all right?”

I nod, but I must look apprehensive, as he instantly takes hold of my hand.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It has to be dark to get the full effect.”

“OK,” I say, not having a clue what he’s on about, but it really is OK—anything would be OK right now—his hand holding mine feels so warm and so strong.

“Ready?” he says.

“Yes.”

I hear him flick a switch and suddenly we’re standing in a beautiful underwater world. At least it feels as if we are. The whole corridor has been painted to look like a seascape. The black walls glimmer with luminous pictures of fish and shells and emerald-green strands of seaweed.

“It’s done in a special paint,” Noah explains, “so that the
ultraviolet lights in the ceiling make it glow.” He looks at me hopefully. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” I say, slowly turning around to take it all in. Every fish, every shell, every tiny detail is a work of art in itself. It’s incredible.

“How does it make you feel?” Noah asks quietly.

I turn to look at him. “How does it make me feel?”

He nods. “Yes. My dad used to say that you should always ask yourself how art makes you feel.”

I look back at the glimmering walls. “It makes me feel calm and peaceful. And it makes me feel as if I’m in a magical world—as if I’m a mermaid.” There’s something about the darkness that makes me feel safe to say exactly what I’m thinking rather than try to censor myself for the sake of being cool.

“You look like a mermaid,” Noah says.

“Really?”

“Yes, with all that long, curly hair.”

I smile. For years, I’ve felt insecure about my hair—that it’s too red, too long, too curly. But now I’m starting to think for the first time that it might not be “too” anything at all.

“I’m kind of glad you don’t have the scaly tail, though,” Noah says, squeezing my hand.

Oh yes—did I mention he’s still holding my hand?

The fluttering feeling returns to the pit of my stomach, as if it’s full of fairies all flapping their wings in excitement. “Yes, I’m glad about that too,” I say softly.

“Come here—I want to show you something.” Noah leads me along the painted seabed, past the picture of a treasure chest overflowing with gold and an old anchor with the
name
Titanic
carved on it. “See that starfish?” Noah points to a bright turquoise starfish with a smiley face.

“Yes.”

“I painted that.”

“What? Really? Did you do all of this?” I stare at him in amazement.

He shakes his head. “No, my dad did. But he let me paint the starfish. I was only about ten at the time.”