Meant to Be (35 page)

I don’t see a little Jason, though. I see a little girl, maybe five or six, sitting on an overstuffed couch with her mother. A book lies across their laps, and the little girl is running her chubby finger across the lines, her mouth moving slowly to form the words. Her mother smiles and nods, encouraging her to continue. A man enters carrying a newspaper, and he settles into a wingback chair.

No. Not a man—my father.

I blink a few times and the image fades. The man inside is not my father; the girl is not me. I realize I’ve been holding my breath, and I can feel tears pushing at the backs of my eyes, so I take a step back,
breaking my gaze on the family inside. I look at my shoes, my laces still tied as tightly as they were when I put them on this morning, perfect double knots.

I don’t know if it’s the running or the sight I’ve just seen, but my legs feel like they’re made of jelly. I grasp the edge of the low brick wall in front of the house and lower myself onto the stone steps that lead up the path to the front door. When I’m sitting, I lean over to rest my forehead on my knees, my breaths coming quick with the approaching tears. I blink through them and notice something stuck to my shoe. It’s a little white slip of paper. I reach for it but realize it’s attached to the sole of my sneaker, connecting me to the pavement with a big juicy wad of gum.

Grape gum.

I pluck the paper off, scraping the gum off my shoe onto the pavement. The edge where the paper was stuck to the gum tore off, but most of it is still there. The printing is slightly faded, but I can read it enough to see it’s a receipt from the Only Running Footman. As I squint at the front, I notice there’s red ink bleeding through, and I flip the scrap of paper over. I recognize the handwriting immediately, the crooked, haphazard chicken scratch. There’s a phone number at the top, and underneath it, there’s the line he recited at the bookstore, only this time it’s right.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind

It’s the line. The one from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. The one he mangled back when we were dancing. The one that is my all-time favorite.

Jason was lying. He
did
come to visit his old home. He must have stood right here, his grubby sneakers on the pavement, his perpetually untied laces dragging through the pile of leaves on the sidewalk. Did he
see the new family inside? Was he remembering his own family, just like I did? The times when it was good? Before everything fell apart?

The thought of him here, on the outside looking in, causes my heart to shatter. Now there’s no way to stop the tears. They come in big, fat, rolling drops. My head falls into my lap, and I let myself cry. I cry for Jason, and I cry for myself. I don’t know for how long, but I cry until there’s nothing left.

And when I finally pick my head up, wiping the last of the tears from my cheeks with a sniffle, I realize what I should have known all along.

I have completely fallen for Jason.

All that time I spent hating his obnoxious jokes and his bizarre behavior, I was kidding myself. I’ve been falling for him since that first day in the skate park, when he sang to me. I’ve been denying it, chasing my fairy tale of Mark, a fairy tale I built for years that fell apart right in front of me in minutes. And then there’s Chris, the fairy tale I’ve only had for a few days, but the one I’ve already ruined by lying. Maybe I could have had something with him, but I never got the chance to see because I ruined it right from the start.
Supermodel?
What was I thinking?

I suck in a deep breath, the kind that comes when I emerge from underwater after a long, hard swim. I feel like I’m taking in air for the first time in a week, and my lungs burn. My chest feels heavy and full. I’m finally surfacing, facing the truth.

But the truth makes me feel even sadder.

Because Jason said I was a mistake. He doesn’t feel the same way. And then there’s the blond at Harrods.

I came all the way across the ocean to discover my Mark fantasy is a total myth, to fall for my least favorite classmate, and to find myself once again pining for someone who doesn’t want me back.

“so quick bright things come to confusion” —J

I
pull myself up off the steps before the family inside notices a sobbing American girl parked in front of their house and calls the police. I start down the street. More than anything, I want to have a heart-to-heart with Phoebe, but I glance at my watch and see that I’m supposed to be at the Globe Theater in exactly twenty-six minutes, and I
can’t
be late. We’re seeing a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and everyone will notice if I come in after it starts. After everything else on this trip, if I miss the play, I’ll probably get expelled. Not to mention that Mrs. Tennison will know for sure that I went off by myself. I’ll be totally screwed.

I take a quick scan of my surroundings, searching for the busiest-looking street, which seems to be at the end of the block. I know I’m at 42 Ebury Street, but I don’t know where 42 Ebury Street
is
, and I have no idea how long it will take to get to the Globe.

I manage to hail a cab fairly quickly this time; I pray the ride won’t cost me more than the twenty-five pounds I have in my wallet. The cab ride is the fastest, jerkiest, scariest twenty minutes of my life, but when
we screech to a halt in front of the theater with five minutes to spare, I tip the driver generously.

The entrance to the Globe, nearly empty a week ago, is now packed with people. Cabs are trying to squeeze down the road, dropping people off for the evening show, and they keep having to honk to get pedestrians out of their way. It’s loud and chaotic, and it looks like Mardi Gras, with tourists and theatergoers milling around, only everyone is sober. I tuck my chin and try to make a beeline for the entrance. The crowd is so thick that I find myself ducking under elbows and backpacks and babies perched on hips.

When I get to the entrance, I am greeted by a rather official-looking and angry ticket taker. My heart sinks further into my sneakers as I realize that Jason must have both of our tickets. Without him, there’s no way I’m getting in.

I rise up on my tiptoes and even take a few vigorous jumps as I attempt to see over the crowd. A dense crowd of tourists is clustered around a life-size diorama of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, complete with fairy mannequins and a donkey costume, entirely blocking my view. Damn short legs. I’m about to give up and go sit on the curb and cry when I spot a rusty mop of messy hair in the back of the crowd. Jason is standing with Ryan Lynch and they’re talking animatedly. Ryan’s got a dusty, ratty Hacky Sack out and the two of them are passing it back and forth between them, barely missing knocking over the people around them.

“Jason!” I call out, waving my arm over my head like a crazy person, but his back is to me and he doesn’t notice. I wedge my way through the crowd of theatergoers and tourists, and as I get closer, I begin to hear snippets of his conversation. I hear him say “she,” and realize he’s talking about a girl. “Intense” comes through and “long time,” but I can’t catch it all. Intermittent honks from the cabs trying to get through keep interrupting my eavesdropping.

“And she’s really cute, but—” HOOOOONK. “You know what I mean?” Jason says.

“Totally, dude,” Ryan replies. He executes some weird hopping motion, passing the Hacky Sack behind his back, then over his head to Jason. “I really think you should just—” HOOOOONK.

Dammit. I can’t hear a thing. They must be talking about that blonde from Harrods, but none of the good stuff is coming through. Stupid cabs.

Ryan gives the Hacky Sack a hard kick, and it comes at Jason so fast he has to flail for it. His toe barely gets a piece of it, but it’s enough to send it flying over his head to land right at my feet.

Jason turns to grab it, and I realize instantly that he’s going to spot me. I don’t want him to think I was eavesdropping, so I duck quickly and sort of hop backward away from him. I spot a Globe employee wearing a sandwich board bearing the image of Queen Titania and race to get behind him. Only I don’t look where I’m going and bump into a grizzled, potbellied man, who looks down at me and grunts angrily.

“Sorry!” I squeak, and try to dodge him. I collide face-first with the guy wearing the sandwich board. It’s kind of hard to retain your balance when you’re wearing a giant piece of cardboard, so he goes flying backward. I reach for him and manage to grab the edge of Titania’s face, but he’s too heavy. He tumbles backward and I tumble with him, landing right on top of the pile. I actually bump noses with the poor guy. He grins at me.

“Hello, lovely,” he says. I realize I am now practically straddling him.

I quickly roll off him, thudding down on my butt.

“That was graceful, Book Licker.”

Jason extends his hand to me. He’s laughing so hard that he has a tough time pulling me off my butt. I scramble to my feet, feeling as though I’ve been stuck headfirst into the sun. My whole body is burning. I forget that I was actually
trying
to find Jason, and instead wish I were back in the cab, panicking over not having my ticket.

“Don’t look so glum,” he says in a faux-British accent, chucking me on the shoulder. “No one was looking.”

Clearly, he’s lying. A Globe employee is trying to haul the sandwich-board guy up off the ground, muttering to herself and casting me dirty looks. A couple of other groups are still chuckling, and a nearby mother with a toddler on her hip looks concerned that I’m injured. I feel so ridiculous and so out of control I’m worried I’ll start crying again.

“Julia!”

I whip toward the sound of my name, but all I see is a giant furry donkey head bobbing next to me. I hear cackling coming from inside the donkey head as it starts performing some kind of weird, shuffly dance.

Now people are staring, but at least they’re not staring at
me
. Ryan is laughing and squeezing his legs together, like he’s trying not to pee his pants. Even I have to admit Jason looks pretty funny, and I manage to crack a smile, right before Mrs. Tennison lets out a horrified shriek and barges toward Jason.

Jason whips off the donkey head and gives me a wink. As Mrs. Tennison shakes her finger in Jason’s face and launches into her Why-Can’t-You-Have-Any-Respect spiel, which at this point I seem to have memorized, I feel a rush of gratitude for him. It’s followed quickly by a wave of sadness. Things seem slightly back to normal, whatever normal is for things between us. Just two buddies, having a good time being buddy-buddy.

I try to forget my revelation today—that I’ve totally and completely and pathetically fallen for him and become sad crush girl—and instead concentrate on getting us both into the theater. I don’t know whether to feel relieved that things seem normal, or sad that they’re not different.

I follow the rest of the class into the theater. Or at least, I
try
to follow them. There’s a bottleneck at the entrance, and the crowd is getting tight and a little testy.

“You always do this,” a woman snipes behind me. “I tell you ten
times, and you get annoyed that I have to tell you ten times, and then you still forget. If I didn’t love you, I think I’d have to kill you.”

“How about next time you only tell me once, and maybe we can avoid these stupid arguments?” a man replies. There’s a bit of an edge to his voice, and it cuts through the hustle and bustle of the crowd.

“Or maybe I tell you twenty times, and you
finally
remember to bring the camera,” she snaps.

We all make our way through the door onto the floor of the theater. It’s standing room only, and the angry couple winds up right behind me. Great.

The lights go down and the play begins. I’m nearly taken in by the magic onstage, but I can’t shake this overwhelming feeling of
ick
. It doesn’t help that midway through the second act, I hear the woman whisper to her husband, “I
really
wish we had the camera,” and he just sighs heavily in response.

The headache that’s been building since the lights went down has become a dull ache at the base of my skull. It creeps around to my forehead and by intermission is throbbing heavily in my temples. As I suffer through act three, I can’t believe I’m actually hoping for the play to end. This performance, which I’ve been looking forward to since I got the itinerary (my favorite Shakespeare play performed
at the Globe
? Um, awesome!), is turning into the nightmare of my life. I’m totally miserable, and miserable about
being
miserable.

The crowd is packed in tight all around us. I look up to see that the balconies all around us are packed, too. It feels oppressive, faces everywhere bearing down on me. I want to sit down, even if it’s just on the ground, but there’s not enough room. I can’t focus on the stage. The actors dart around in a total blur. I feel like someone’s shoved cotton balls soaking in Jell-O into my ears. I hear muffled laughter from the audience, which only makes my head pound harder.