The Sweet Life (4 page)
Her photo was cute too, because Ness had caught her smiling in the sunshine, unaware of the camera. The natural-looking photo was a refreshing change from all the seedy prom queen photos that were out there. It was obvious she was the real deal, and not a try-hard, fake friend-collector.
‘Sure thing, Janes,’ said Gabs, polishing off the last of her chicken. ‘Computer’s all yours.’
‘Better get you girls home then,’ said Mr McAdams. ‘Don’t want to keep those fans waiting!’
It was almost midnight. Gabs had long since begged Janey to stop reading to her from her MySpace page and had gone to sleep. Like the good friend she was, Janey was replying to as many comments as she could and was having about a dozen simultaneous conversations with friends who were currently online, most of whom she’d never met in real life.
She was about to log out when a new message came through from Razzle Girl.
Hey chickie, who’s this Fellini dude? Sounds heavy.
Razzle Girl
Janey frowned into the computer screen.
Wat? Don’t know no Fellini.
x X Janey G X x
Where had she heard that name before?
Fellini
. It came to her a moment later. Em’s genius (but dead) Italian film director.
What an odd coincidence
, she thought. She didn’t remember accepting ‘Fellini’ as a friend, but with new friends coming on board all the time, she probably had.
C ur page, Id read if I were u. Sounds serious. Creepy even.
Razzle Girl
Janey hastily closed out of about a million other windows and scrolled further up her own comments list, which she’d been tackling from the bottom. She realised with a sinking feeling that she still had dozens of comments to read and reply to. An absolute avalanche of excited mail had arrived after her last blog about her upcoming trip. But with the last day of term still to get through, she needed to hit the sack
now
, or she’d be a bona fide zombie in the morning.
I’ll just check out this Fellini guy’s comment
, she thought to herself, searching up through the most current comments until she found him. It had been posted on the same day she’d uploaded her latest blog.
Rather than using a personal photo like almost all of Janey’s 369 online friends, Fellini was represented by a photo of a serious car wreck. It was a shiny black sedan with a smashed-in bonnet. The wreck was surrounded by pieces of glass and twisted metal. Janey went cold as she peered more closely at the photo. She thought she could make out a person slumped against the steering wheel which, like all European cars, was a right-hand drive.
The message beside the chilling image made Janey recoil.
Hey this could happen to u. In Rome.
Fellini
Janey frantically scrolled up the remaining comments on her page with shaking fingers and found one further message.
Don’t go. Or bad things will go down. You heard it here first.
Fellini
Her insides went ice cold.
I would’ve remembered an avatar like
that! she thought.
The
guy must’ve changed it recently.
Skin crawling, Janey clicked on Fellini’s profile. All it said was that ‘Fellini’ was male, twenty-one and Italian, and had logged in as recently as today. His page was largely blank, as he had no blogs, blurbs or other photos posted. Which said exactly
zero
about him. Scanning the rest of his meagre page, she saw that the guy had just one friend and that one friend was . . .
her
.
Janey quickly logged out, telling herself it was just sour grapes from some jealous creepazoid who’d browsed her at random and was in the mood for causing trouble.
Still, sleep was a long time coming that night.
She flew for twenty-six bewildering hours to emerge into the chaos that was Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport at six in the morning.
There were people everywhere: shouting, sweating, cursing and pushing their way up ragged, haphazard queues to reach customs windows that were closed, then suddenly opened, then closed again. And when they all cleared customs, there was more shouting, sweating and cursing when people discovered that several flights’ worth of baggage had somehow been mixed up and was now piled at random throughout the arrival hall in every available nook and cranny.
But Janey didn’t mind because Janey was in Rome.
Rome
! And Lou Lou’s lovely suitcase was the easiest bag to spot. And even though her hair was frizzy and her nose was shiny, everything was all right with her world because she still looked cool and classy in her denim sailor pants and jaunty French top and – as soon as she walked through the sliding doors into the golden heat of a Roman morning –
the most beautiful young
man she had ever seen in her life
was standing on the footpath, holding up a sign with
her
name on it.
If she’d been the swooning type, she would have, because the stranger held out a strong, tanned hand to her and said in a deliciously husky voice: ‘Buongiorno, signorina Gordon. I would know you anywhere. I am Luca Sarti.’
Luca was tall, olive-skinned and clean-shaven, with dark curling hair and dark smiling eyes. His brilliant white teeth were ever-so-slightly crooked and he had a dimple in his right cheek. He was wearing a killer black suit, a crisp white shirt and a textured silvery-grey tie. He didn’t appear to be much older than she was. To Janey, he looked utterly perfect.
Speechless, Janey did a panicky sort of half-nodding, half-smiley thing and let Luca take the handle of her suitcase. Not stopping to question why someone who looked like Luca would know someone who looked like her
anywhere
, she floated along beside him wordlessly until she caught sight of the car he was leading her towards.
Like all European cars, it was black and shiny and left-hand drive. It also looked very much like the smashed-up sedan in Fellini’s MySpace avatar. Except not smashed up. Yet.
Janey stopped dead in her tracks.
‘Is something the matter, signorina?’ Luca said with some concern as he caught sight of Janey’s frozen expression.
‘Um, w-who sent you?’ she stammered. ‘And where was it that you’re supposed to be, uh, taking me?’ She had to ask. The coincidence was too weird.
