Lost in London (11 page)

“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?”

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.

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.

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 inched 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.