Meant to Be (21 page)

I pull my laptop back into my lap and stare at the blank screen. I take another stab at my notes, this time attacking them with my favorite
green highlighter. I flip through the pages of my script, trying to pull out themes, or even a starting point. As my flipping gets more manic, I cram the highlighter into my mouth, running my fingers along the lines to find something,
anything
I can write about. The further I get from a finished paper, the closer I get to a full-on breakdown. This is
useless
.

My broken travel alarm clock glares at me with angry red cracked lights, taunting me for how long I’ve been grinding away at this assignment. I jump up from the bed, charge over to the wall and lean against it, then drop into a low squat. Wall sits. A good burn in my thighs ought to take the burn out of my brain. I start counting the seconds. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety. They tick by, but nothing is happening. I get to nearly two minutes, and my thighs start to quiver, but I’m still feeling crazy. Somewhere around the three-minute mark, my legs give out, and I plop to the floor right on my butt. I massage my thigh, breathing heavily and trying to figure out what to do.

It’s like I’m groping around in my brain with two hands and a flashlight, yet I can’t find a single word to name what I’m feeling. All I know is there’s no way I can write two of these stupid reflection papers, especially since Jason has been little or no help to me lately. In fact, he has been the exact
opposite
of helpful (help-empty?).

If he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal, I won’t hold up mine.

And I’m going to tell him so. Now.

I run my hands over my stomach, smoothing my wrinkled shirt, take a deep breath, and then slip into the hall, wedging a shoe in the door so it doesn’t lock closed behind me, since Mrs. Tennison has already collected key cards for the night.

I stop in front of Jason’s door, and before I can think or talk myself out of it, I give it a hard knock.

Nothing.

I press my ear against the door, but I don’t hear music or the
television or any rustling around. Maybe he’s asleep? I glance at my watch. It’s ten-thirty already. Jason must have snuck out.

I knock again. I lean close as if I’m going to see in through the peephole, and my forehead smacks on the door.

“Ow,” I mutter, rubbing my forehead.

“Dude, he’s not in there.” The voice startles me, and I whirl around to see Quentin Phillips, lacrosse player and stoner extraordinaire, poking his head out of the room directly across the hall.

“Excuse me?”

“Dude, you have … stuff … on your …” He can barely get the words out between laughs.

“What? What is it?” I snap.

“Your lips are green,” he says, and raises a finger to point directly at my face. Suddenly, the memory of the green highlighter, stuck between my teeth while I was trying to write my reflection paper, comes flooding back. Excellent. I lick my fingers and rub furiously, but without a mirror I have no idea if I really got it off.

“Where did he go?” I ask, and Quentin doesn’t laugh, so I assume the green is mostly gone.

“He’s out,” Quentin says in his bizarre surfer accent. (I know for a
fact
the kid was born and raised in Boston.)

“Do you know where he went?”

“Not sure, dude,” Quentin says slowly, watching me through eyes narrowed to slits. “Some kind of anti-liquor protest, I think.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I don’t speak faux surfer, so I
must
have misunderstood.

“I dunno, dude,” Quentin says, a lazy grin spreading across his face. “He was talking about prohibition, and I was kinda tired at the time, but I’m pretty sure that’s where they, like, think booze is the devil, right?”

“Are you sure about that?” I ask. Prohibition? For real? What in the
world is this kid smoking? I mean, even if there
were
some kind of throwback anti-liquor rally going on in London, I think Jason would sooner set his hair on fire than participate. He seemed to be pretty pro-alcohol the other night.

“Look, man, I was getting back from a run and I saw him in the hall and I was all like, ‘Hey, dude, where ya going?’ and he was all like, ‘I’m going to prohibition,’ ” Quentin says, getting a little testy. “I’m not his keeper or whatever. Isn’t that
your
job?”

A lightbulb goes on in my brain. It’s not a protest; it’s that expat bar we passed on our first day here. It’s
called
Prohibition. Of course Jason went out drinking. He snuck out
again
, and this time he didn’t even bother to tell me.

I stomp back to my room and give the door the hardest slam I can muster. The gilded mirror rattles on the wall. I grab one of the heavy silk-covered pillows off my bed, bury my face in it, and let out the loudest, longest scream I think I’ve ever heard.

I throw the pillow back down on my bed and look at myself in the mirror. I look
pissed
. Actually, I look crazy. I’ve been running my hands through my hair so much that it’s starting to frizz and stick up in funny places. My eyes are slightly bloodshot, and my cheeks seem to have adopted some kind of permanent blush. My hotel room is starting to feel tiny and stifling. The air is thick and stale and sticky all at once, and I have trouble drawing good, deep breaths.

I need to get a hold of myself. Now.

I whip open my bureau and pull out my running shorts. I dress, tie my running shoes, and pile the frizz ball that is my hair into a messy bun. Then I fish around in my suitcase for my broken purse. In the inside zipper pocket, my hand closes around the plastic key card, the one Jason stole for me. I haven’t used it since the night of the party, when I told myself I wouldn’t be breaking any more rules. Boy, was I wrong.

I open my door and poke my head out, glancing up and down the hall. No one. Then I step out into the hall, take a deep breath, and let the door shut behind me with a mechanical click. I test the key to be sure it still works, and I’m happy to see the little green light flicker next to the knob, indicating that all is good to go. I tuck the key into the pocket of my running shorts, then take off for the stairs.

I run for blocks. For miles. For what feels like hours. I run until I’m no longer tired, until my legs don’t ache anymore, until I’m on autopilot. I run to the rhythm of my pounding heart. It’s late and dark, but there are plenty of people out, so I’m not worried about ending up in some abandoned back alley. No one seems to pay any mind to the short little American girl sprinting through the streets in neon-pink gym shorts.

As I’m finally starting to relax, to ease into the rhythm of my run, my sneakers catch something. I stumble and then tumble to the ground. I get my hands down in time to avoid bashing my knee on the sidewalk, but my palms sting and I manage to scrape the skin off my left thumb.

“Great,” I mutter as I pick myself up carefully. My left shoe is completely untied. I must have stepped on the lace. I was in such a rush to get out of the hotel, I forgot to double knot my laces.

I bend down to retie my shoes.

“Sweeeeet Caroline!”

Even though his voice is slurry, I recognize it right away: Jason. I turn around and see him stumbling out of a pub.

I ran right to Prohibition. Of course I did.

I consider tucking my head and bolting. But then I see that he’s in bad shape. He stumbles over a trash bin in the street and laughs a little.

Uh-oh. He is definitely drunk.

He doesn’t seem to see me. He just rights himself and starts down the block. He’s stumbling a lot. I dart after him. I’d better make sure he doesn’t get into any
more
trouble. After all, I am, as Quentin so artfully
put it, “his keeper or whatever.” I barely get five steps down the block before he whirls around on his heel and plows right into me.

“Oh!” I yelp in surprise, trying to figure out what I’m going to say about why I’m following him from a bar and down the street in the middle of the night.

“Wow, lucky me,” he slurs, “bumping into a hot girl like you.”

It would mean more if his eyes weren’t clamped tightly shut. In actuality, I’m red and splotchy from my run. My old Newton North High T-shirt is soaked with sweat, and stray bits of my hair have escaped from my bun and are glued to the sides of my face and my forehead.

Jason rubs his eyes as though he got maced.

“It’s me, Julia,” I snap, trying to pull his hands away from his eyes, but he resists. When I let go, his left fist snaps back kind of hard and he ends up punching himself in the eye.

“Ow!” he shouts, still rubbing his face. “Wazzat for?”

“It’s for sneaking out of the hotel
again
without telling me,” I snap. I use the hem of my T-shirt to wipe some of the excess sweat from my face as I sigh into the damp fabric. “And for getting so wasted—
alone
—that you apparently can’t even open your eyes.”

“Not alone! With friends! Lots of new friends …,” he says, trailing off, but I see no sign of these supposed friends around.

“Where are these awesome new friends?” I ask.

“Just left.” He shrugs. “And I’m leaving, too.” He takes a step down the sidewalk and promptly trips over his untied laces. I grab him before he can hit the pavement.

“You’re not going to make it anywhere on your own in this condition,” I say. I lean him against the wall of a small sporting goods store, then drop down to tie his laces. Quentin was right. I really
am
Jason’s keeper.

“What are you, my mom?” he slurs, leaning into a nearby lamppost.
It comes out like “Whadda yous, my maaaam?” Apparently Jason has quite the Boston accent when he’s drunk.

“Maybe you could use one,” I retort, and he drops his hands from his eyes, which are watery and red. “What
happened
to you, anyway?”

“This guy bought me this shot and it was called a stuntman and when you do it you squirt a lime in your eye and it sounded like a weird idea but like the shot was free ya know and what kind of ugly American would I be if I turned down a free shot,” he explains in one long, continuous sentence, only stopping to take a big gulp of air.

“Reaaally smart, kid ace,” I reply, throwing his arm over my shoulder and guiding him back onto the sidewalk in the direction of the hotel. I wish I had thought to bring cash, because then I could shove him into a cab and be done with it. Instead, sweating from head to toe, with legs full of lead, I have to practically drag Jason through the streets. Jason is skinny, but he’s still a head taller than me, which adds a lot of weight. Deadweight, which is now draped around my neck. As we’re inching our way forward, he stumbles again and again. I glance down at the ground to see if maybe his shoes have come untied, but they’re still in perfect double knots.

“Lissen,” he says after falling with his entire body pressed into mine. “I was jus doin’ some recon, ya know? Like a spy.” He hiccups with his whole body, and I have to hold him tighter around the waist so he doesn’t face-plant on the pavement.

“What are you talking about?” I grunt, making sure we’re clear of traffic as I gingerly lead him across the street. TEEN TOURISTS FLATTENED BY DOUBLE-DECKER BUS. That would be a lovely headline for the hometown paper.

“I’m tawkin’ about the Globe, Julia,” he says like I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Iss not justa name of some stupid, fake old musty theater that’s not even the real one”—hiccup—“iss also this underground
club. Ya know, like this cool place no one knows about! Maybe your dude, Chris, was there.”

The more excited he gets about his inside info, the less steady he gets on his feet. He’s gesturing wildly, and his hand brushes up against my boob. My face burns and an electric shock goes from my belly button to my spine, but Jason didn’t notice, so I keep quiet and keep guiding him back toward the hotel.

“Isnit great, Julia?” I look up and he’s beaming at me, happier than I’ve seen him in days. “We should check it out! Less go!”

“You are not checking out anything besides your bed,” I say firmly. I take the next left onto Regent Street, a busy road populated by boutiques and restaurants. We’re only three blocks away. Almost home.

He seems to be walking a little more steadily, so I loosen my grip. Jason takes that moment to lunge away from me and press his nose against the glass of a snooty-looking restaurant. A French name is painted in gold scroll across the window.

“Look, Julia! Meat! I love meat!” He starts tapping on the window like it’s a fish tank, pointing toward a middle-aged couple in front of us who are feasting on what looks like a leg of lamb. They look pretty pissed, no doubt because they did not order a side of drunken teenage boy.

I grab his arm and try to tug him up the street, but he resists me. I get closer, putting my arm around his waist again, and start to pull. I mouth an apology to the couple in the window. Then my gaze lands on something sequined sparkling just behind the woman. My stomach drops into my toes. It’s a silver sequined bolero jacket, and it’s draped across the shoulders of a frizzy-haired woman who is sitting across from a tall, thin, balding man in a three-piece suit.

Mrs. Tennison.

I feel a dual urge to laugh and scream. Apparently it’s not all tea and crumpets for our chaperone. I don’t know what shocks me more: that
Mrs. Tennison snuck out, too, or that she’s apparently getting more action than me.

She’s waving her empty wineglass in the air and trying to get the attention of a waiter who is bustling his way toward the window, probably to command Jason and me to clear off.

As soon as her head starts to pivot toward the window, I grab Jason by the back of his shirt and yank him to the pavement. Fortunately, he’s not in any condition to do anything other than crumple.

“Hey,” Jason says. He tries to stand again and I pull him to the ground. “Watcha doin’?”

“Resting,” I say.

“Yeah, I need a rest, too,” he says. He leans his head on my shoulder and sighs. “This is nice.”

“Yup,” I reply. I place my hand on his head to keep him from popping up into Mrs. Tennison’s sight line. “It’s nice, until our chaperone comes out and finds you drunker than a cast member of an MTV reality show.”