Runaway (Airhead #3) (21 page)

It was at Balthazar the other night that I was sitting across from Christopher, happily stabbing a piece of lettuce and goat cheese, when a little girl came up to our table, holding a pen and a piece of paper.

“Excuse me,” she said to me shyly. “But are you Nikki Howard?”

I looked over at her, surprised. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. I saw her parents sitting at a neighboring table, smiling at her encouragingly.

The truth was, I didn’t know what to say. I was Nikki Howard…sort of.

Except I also wasn’t, anymore.

But the little girl’s expression was one of such hopefulness… she was in New York City for the night, all dressed up (she was probably going to a Broadway musical later).

And here she was in a fancy restaurant, and she’d spotted a celebrity. What was I going to do? Say,
No, little girl. Actually, I’m Em Watts.

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

Her face burst into a delighted smile. She was missing her two front teeth.

“Can I please have your autograph?” she asked, shoving the pen and paper at me.

“Of course,” I said, darting a look at Christopher, who just grinned and kept on eating his salad. “What’s your name?”

“Emily,” the little girl said.

I refrained from saying,
Em is my name, too,
and wrote
Best wishes, Emily, love, Nikki Howard
on her piece of paper, and handed it and the pen back to her.

“Here you go,” I said. “Have a nice night.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and scurried back to her table and her parents, looking overjoyed.

“That was nice of you,” Christopher said as soon as she was gone.

“What was I going to do?” I asked. “Kick her in the face?”

“To tell her you were Nikki Howard, I mean,” he said.

“I
am
Nikki Howard,” I said. “As long as I’m stuck with this face, I’ll always be Nikki Howard.”

“Yeah,” Christopher said. “But it’s not such a drag, is it? I mean, being Nikki Howard has its perks.”

“It does,” I said, smiling. “But it has its drawbacks, too. As you might have gathered, since even the real Nikki Howard doesn’t want to be Nikki Howard anymore.”

“Well,” Christopher said. “Maybe this will make you feel better about it.”

And he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long rectangular velvet box, which he slid across the table toward me.

“What’s this?” I asked, surprised, since we weren’t exactly the kind of couple who showered each other with gifts. We sort of had everything we’d ever wanted…which was each other.

“Open it and see,” he said, a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes.

I widened my eyes at him in mock astonishment, then opened the box…

…and my astonishment turned to the real thing.

Because lying there inside, on a whisper-thin necklace chain, was a heart-shaped platinum tag, surrounded by tiny diamonds, on which the words
Em Watts
had been inscribed in elegant cursive.

“I thought if you wore that, no matter what face you saw every morning in the mirror,” he said in his deep voice, “you’ll never forget who you really are.”

My eyes filling with tears, I held my hand out across the tabletop. He grasped my fingers, his grip strong and reassuring.

“As if I ever could,” I said, my voice clogged with emotion, “with you around to remind me.”

About the Author

MEG CABOT
is the author of the
New York Times
bestselling series The Princess Diaries, which was made into two wildly successful Disney movies of the same name. Other books include
All-American Girl
,
Ready or Not
,
Teen Idol
,
Avalon High
,
How to Be Popular
,
Pants on Fire
, and The Mediator, 1-800-Where-R-You, and Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series. Meg divides her time between New York City and Key West, Florida.

Visit Meg online at www.megcabot.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS TO JENNIFER BROWN.

THANKS ALSO TO BETH ADER, MICHELE JAFFE, LAURA

LANGLIE, ABBY MCADEN, AND BENJAMIN EGNATZ.

BOOKS BY MEG CABOT

FOR TEENS

Airhead

Being Nikki

Runaway

The Princess Diaries series

The Mediator series

1-800-Where-R-You series

Avalon High series

All-American Girl

Ready or Not

Teen Idol

How to Be Popular

Pants on Fire

Jinx

Nicola and the Viscount

Victoria and the Rogue

FOR YOUNGER READERS

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls series

FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF MEG CABOT’S BOOKS, PLEASE VISIT WWW.MEGCABOT.COM

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 by Meg Cabot, LLC
Cover photograph © 2008 by Michael Frost
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

All rights reserved. Published by Point, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920
. SCHOLASTIC, POINT, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cabot, Meg.

Runaway / by Meg Cabot. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (Airhead ; bk. 3)

Summary: When sixteen-year-old Emerson Watts learns the truth about Nikki, the teen supermodel into whose body Emerson’s brain was transplanted, she finds that there is only one person to turn to for help — especially since her loved ones seem to be furious with her.

[1. Models (Persons) — Fiction. 2. Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. — Fiction. 3. Identity — Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.) — Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.C11165Run 2010

[Fic] — dc22

2009046813

First edition, May 2010

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E-ISBN 978-0-545-28295-6