Meant to Be (9 page)

I can’t seem to shake the guy. “Both. Equally.”

“C’mon, Julia,” he says, nudging my shoulder with his. “I know you feel like hell this morning, but last night it seemed like you were having something resembling a good time.”

“I was,” I concede, still avoiding looking at him.

“So I helped you have a memorable first night in London?” Pride creeps into his voice.

“Oh God, more than you know,” I say. As if on cue, my phone buzzes in my bag. I pull it out and flip it open to find another text from Chris.
Hopefully soon
, it reads.

“Excuse me, isn’t that your school-provided cell, Miss Emergency Only?” Jason asks, and when I finally do look at him, sure enough, a sly grin is spreading across his face. There is no doubt he is enjoying my new rule-breaking spree.

“Can you leave me alone now, please?” I sigh, and snap my phone shut quickly. Since when is Jason so interested in harassing me? Since when is he so interested in even acknowledging my existence?

“Oh, come on, I’m your buddy. You can tell me anything.” He throws an arm around my shoulders. I’m startled by the gesture, which is apparently exactly what he wants. He quickly uses his free hand to snatch the phone out of mine before taking off at a sprint into the next gallery.

All hangover symptoms melt away in an instant. I take off after him. I have to wander through two different rooms before I find him in the corner of a gallery dedicated to Warhol. He’s clicking through my phone underneath one of Warhol’s camouflage prints. I snatch the phone from his hands, but I can tell from his mischievous grin that the damage is done. He’s read all the texts. Blood rushes to my face.

“What is the matter with you? Were you dropped on your head or something?” I snap. I’m so embarrassed I feel like someone has shoved my whole head into a pizza oven.

“A photo shoot?” Jason laughs.

“It was the first thing that came to my head. Thanks to
you
, I wasn’t
exactly thinking clearly.” I stuff the phone back into my bag, spin around on my heel, and march away, trying to muster up whatever dignity I can.

“Hey, no one forced drinks down your throat,” he says, following me once again. “Well, aren’t you going to text back? That
is
the proper etiquette.”

I turn around and hold up both hands.

“Shut up! Just shut up. For the rest of the day, I need you to shut up,” I burst out. I glance over his shoulder to see a Warhol print of a handgun.
If only …

“Will do,” he says, miming a zipper across his lips. But that only lasts a split second before he unzips and says, “But first I need to hear the story.”

“What story?” I ask impatiently.

“The one about this Chris character. Who is he?” Jason’s face looks like he’s doing his best not to start laughing hysterically, which makes me more furious than ever.

“I don’t know!” My headache is starting to return, so I once again head to the nearest bench and plop onto it.

“You don’t
know
?” Jason, of course, sits right next to me, since apparently he has decided that today we’re besties.

Maybe because I want him to stop bothering me, maybe because I hope he has a clue to Chris’s identity, or maybe (in fact, definitely) because I’m too exhausted to resist anymore, I tell him the whole story: about Gabe and the shattered table, about Avery and giving out my number, and about all the rest of them, one of whom is named Chris and sent me the text message Jason is now grinning about.

“Let the teasing commence,” I say, dropping my throbbing head into my hands.

“What? Tease you? Me? Surely you jest,” he says, reaching for my cell inside my bag. “I only want to help.”

“Yeah, help me right into a suspension,” I reply, jerking it away.

“Julia, you are my ‘buddy,’ ” he says, using the requisite air quotes. “I would never put you in harm’s way.”

“Oh, right. You’d only take me to a party full of strangers in a foreign country and abandon me. Then get me caught in a street brawl, where I lose all my stuff including my pocket Shakespeare.”

“Your pocket what?” He raises an eyebrow. He probably thinks I’m talking about a mini-Shakespeare action figure. (Actually, I
do
have one of those. But I left it back in Newton,
thankyouverymuch
.)

“Never mind. The point is, why would I accept help from you?”

“Look, I can get anyone to fall in love with me,” Jason says.

I snort. “That seems
highly
improbable.”

Jason doesn’t take offense. “Okay, okay. I can get anyone to fall in serious
like
with me. Anyone. Guaranteed. And I would like to extend that talent to you. Want this dude to fall for you? I can make it happen.” He holds out his hand to shake on the deal.

“Oh, and you’re going to help me out of the goodness of your heart?” I ask, eyeing him.

“Hell no,” he says brightly. “You’re going to help me out, too.”

I stare at him suspiciously. “What do you want?” I ask.

“You’re going to write my reflection papers for me,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Are you kidding?” I cry out. “You want me to help you cheat?”

“No such thing as a free lunch, Book Licker.” He crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “Take it or leave it.”

“No way,” I say. I walk away from him before I can change my mind. I expect him to come after me, pecking at me like some rampant chicken, but he doesn’t move.

“Then good luck in your texting adventures,” he calls out. “May the force be with you.”

I stop right in the middle of the gallery. My phone feels heavy in my
bag. When I pull it out and flip it open, I see the text from Chris still floating on the screen as though it’s taunting me.

“Oh, come on, Book Licker,” Jason says. I yelp and spin around. I didn’t notice him oozing his way off the bench and slinking up right behind me. “So you write a few extra essays. It won’t kill you. Besides, I’m sure you’re already worried about how badly
my
writing is going to hurt
your
average. What better way to protect your GPA than to do it yourself?”

My mind flashes to my cell phone number. Four. My perfect GPA. The number I’ve worked so hard to achieve.

“Is that a threat?” I ask. I try to keep my tone steely, but I can hear the slight quiver in my voice.

“Not at all!” he says, but he grins at me in a way that’s no longer just mischievous. It’s devious. “I’m just saying I’m not the best with the spelling. Or the grammar. Or the finishing things on time.”

“You
are
threatening me!” I say.

“I’m giving you all the facts,” he retorts. “What you do with them is your concern.”

“You sound like a lawyer,” I say, loosening my grip on the phone.

“Like father, like son,” he replies. “C’mon, Julia. It’s a couple extra essays. You’ll probably even like it. Now would you give me that thing?”

He takes the phone from my hand and flips it open, then types furiously on the keypad. “You need to sound confident, even cocky. Guys like confidence.” He hits a couple more keys. “That should do the trick.”

“ ‘Actually, I think I should have been the one kissing you,’ ” he reads aloud, and I instantly flush.

“You
must
be hungover if you think that’s even in the same universe as something I would say,” I reply. “There is no
way
I’m sending that to him.”

“You just did,” he says, snapping the phone shut and pressing it into my hand.

“What!” I flip it back open and scour the message log, hoping he’s lying just to scare me. But alas, there’s the message in the “sent” folder.

“Well, you were yapping about how you’d never do it, so I did it for you,” he says. He’s clearly proud of his good work.

I am about to have a total meltdown when the phone vibrates in my hand. I’m so shocked I nearly send it right to the wood floor.

“What’s it say?” Jason asks, leaning over the display, eager to find out the result of his little experiment.

At this point I’m so sick and shocked and at a total loss for words that I simply pass the phone to him.

“ ‘There’s always tonight …,’ ” he reads aloud. “See? I told you I could do it,” he says to me, grinning hugely.

“But what now? He wants to meet tonight!” My mind is racing.

“Which you cannot do,” he says firmly, flipping the phone shut.

“What? Why not?”

“First of all, you don’t even know who this guy is. He’s a total stranger; you can’t meet up with him after two text messages. Too dangerous. But more importantly, you don’t want to seem too eager. Play hard to get a little. It’s old school, but it works.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course,” he says. “And let’s be honest: you’re going to need a
lot
of help before you can handle Chris on your own. Without my guidance and tutelage, you
will
royally screw this up.”

Sadly, I realize Jason is right. I was reckless last night, and I was lucky to escape with only a fun, mysterious, sexy text message. And what will Chris think when he discovers I’m not some gorgeous supermodel, but a Book Licker from Newton, Massachusetts? He’ll probably run screaming in the opposite direction. I need time to think.

“Besides, you told this guy you’re at a photo shoot,” Jason points out, as if reading my mind. “You can’t see him until that’s over, Kate Moss.” He chuckles to himself.

“Shut up.” I fake-punch his arm but can’t help cracking a smile.

“Hey, I’m not the one who claimed supermodel roots!” he says, holding his hands up.

“I never called myself a supermodel!”

“Oh, you didn’t tell him about your runway work in Milan, supermodel?” he says, pointing an accusatory finger at my nose. I swat at him. He jerks away from me, tripping over the toe of his sneaker, and then springs to his feet.

“What, are you gonna throw that phone at me, Naomi Campbell?” He laughs, shielding his face with his hands in mock fright.

“Maybe!” I say, playfully tossing it at him. He catches it with ease, flipping it open to dash off another text, then tosses it back to me. He looks like a little kid who stole an entire birthday cake.
What did he do?
When I see what he’s written, I flush so deep I’m afraid I look purple.

You couldn’t handle me tonight.

Ack!

“You jerk!” I swat at him again.

“Such language and violence, my lady.” He ducks from the blow, and I only get a whiff of his jacket. I lunge to get him again when the phone rings. I look down and see Chris’s number blinking at me. Not a text message—an actual phone call. In my frozen shock, Jason has time to grab the phone back from me and flip it open.

“Hello there, sexy,” he answers, making his voice phone-sex-operator deep.

That does it. I totally break every museum rule known to man or beast and launch myself at him, taking us both down to the hardwood floor. He rolls away, but I reach out and grab a handful of his shirttail, pulling him back. Just as soon as his hand is within reach, he holds his lanky (and surprisingly muscular) arm over his head. I have no choice
but to climb on top of him if I’m going to have any chance of getting the phone back.

“Having fun?” he asks before executing some kind of ninja flip that finds him over me, pressing my shoulders into the floor. “Because I am.”

With the call ended, Jason rolls off me and sprawls out on the floor next to me. He’s laughing and sighing, happy with his victory. Great. What will Chris think after Jason answered the phone? I
never
should have trusted him.

“Mr. Lippincott! Miss Lichtenstein!” Mrs. Tennison comes flying up to us, her Birkenstocks slapping angrily on the floor. “What in God’s name are you doing on the floor of the Tate?”

Instantly I scramble to my feet, mortified. I haven’t been chastised by a teacher since the fourth grade, when I got caught hiding in the locker room during a game of dodgeball.

“Uh, falling into some culture?” Jason, still on the floor, says with his trademark smirk, which has probably gotten him out of legions of situations just like this with teachers just like Mrs. Tennison.

I step consciously away from him, as though I can physically shake off his bad influence. “Mrs. Tennison, I’m so sorry. What happened was—”

Mrs. Tennison doesn’t let me finish. “Honestly, Julia, I am shocked by this behavior from you. You’re acting like children, and in one of the greatest museums in the world!” Her hideous necklace, which looks like it’s made out of adobe Christmas ornaments, rattles as she gesticulates angrily.

There’s no point in trying to explain. Instead, I croak, “It’ll never happen again.”

“Well, lucky for you, you’re going to get another shot at appreciating fine art,” she says in a tone reserved for teachers who have devised the perfect educational punishment. “Since you’ve wasted your time here at the Tate, you and Mr. Lippincott will be visiting another museum of
your choice during your cultural hours. I want a thousand words from you on the cultural importance of art.”

“A
thousand words
?” Jason asks, barely able to choke out the number.

“Not another comment from you, or I’ll make it two thousand,” she snaps. “Now rejoin the class. It’s time to move on.” She straightens her flower-print blouse and marches off, her shoes smacking against the floor as she goes.

“You are a
jerk
,” I say to him in a low voice as soon as Mrs. T is out of hearing range.

“You started it,” he replies, shrugging as he attempts to de-wrinkle his gray polo.

“What are you, five?”

“I’m rubber and you’re glue.” He sticks out his tongue at me.

“Great. I hope you can bring those creative writing skills to this essay.”

“Uh, no. That’s all you. Remember our deal?” Jason spots Evie and Sarah in a corner, huddled around Sarah’s phone, and heads in their direction. He gets about four steps away, then turns back to me. “Cheer up, Book Licker. It’s extra homework. Your favorite thing, right?”

“It’s Julia!” I fume, but he’s already jogged off to join the rest of the class.