PART ONE
One Day
One
AUGUST
Stratford-upon-Avon, England
What if Shakespeare had it wrong?
To be, or not to be: that is the question. That’s from Hamlet’s—maybe Shakespeare’s—most famous soliloquy. I had to memorize the whole speech for sophomore English, and I can still remember every word. I didn’t give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words right and collect my A. But what if Shakespeare—and Hamlet—were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?
The thing is, I don’t know if I would have asked myself that question—how to be—if it wasn’t for Hamlet. Maybe I would have gone along being the Allyson Healey I had been. Doing just what I was supposed to do, which, in this case, was going to see Hamlet.
“God, it’s so hot. I thought it wasn’t supposed to get this hot in England.” My friend Melanie loops her blond hair into a bun and fans her sweaty neck. “What time are they opening the doors, anyhow?”
I look over at Ms. Foley, who Melanie and pretty much the rest of our group has christened Our Fearless Leader behind her back. But she is talking to Todd, one of the history grad students co-leading the trip, probably telling him off for something or other. In the Teen Tours! Cultural Extravaganza brochure that my parents presented to me upon my high school graduation two months ago, the Todd-like graduate students were called “historical consultants” and were meant to bolster the “educational value” of the Teen Tours! But so far, Todd has been more valuable in bolstering the hangovers, taking everyone out drinking almost every night. I’m sure tonight everyone else will go extra wild. It is, after all, our last stop, Stratford-upon-Avon, a city full of Culture! Which seems to translate into a disproportionate number of pubs named after Shakespeare and frequented by people in blaring white sneakers.
Ms. Foley is wearing her own snow-white sneakers—along with a pair of neatly pressed blue jeans and a Teen Tours! polo shirt—as she reprimands Todd. Sometimes, at night, when everyone else is out on the town, she will tell me she ought to call the head office on him. But she never seems to follow through. I think partly because when she scolds, he flirts. Even with Ms. Foley. Especially with Ms. Foley.
“I think it starts at seven,” I say to Melanie. I look at my watch, another graduation present, thick gold, the back engraved Going Places. It weighs heavy against my sweaty wrist. “It’s six thirty now.”
“Geez, the Brits do love to line up. Or queue. Or whatever. They should take a lesson from the Italians, who just mob. Or maybe the Italians should take a lesson from the Brits.” Melanie tugs on her miniskirt—her bandage skirt, she calls it—and adjusts her cami-top. “God, Rome. It feels like a year ago.”
Rome? Was it six days ago? Or sixteen? All of Europe has become a blur of airports, buses, old buildings, and prix-fixe menus serving chicken in various kinds of sauce. When my parents gave me this trip as a big high-school graduation present, I was a little reluctant to go. But Mom had reassured me that she’d done her research. Teen Tours! was very well regarded, noted for its high-quality educational component, as well as the care that was taken of its students. I would be well looked after. “You’ll never be alone,” my parents had promised me. And, of course, Melanie was coming too.
And they were right. I know everyone else gives Ms. Foley crap for the eagle eye she keeps on us, but I appreciate how she is always doing a head count, even appreciate how she disapproves of the nightly jaunts to local bars, though most of us are of legal drinking age in Europe—not that anyone over here seems to care about such things anyway.
I don’t go to the bars. I usually just go back to the hotel rooms Melanie and I share and watch TV. You can almost always find American movies, the same kinds of movies which, back at home, Melanie and I often watched together on weekends, in one of our rooms, with lots of popcorn.
“I’m roasting out here,” Melanie moans. “It’s like middle of the afternoon still.”
I look up. The sun is hot, and the clouds race across the sky. I like how fast they go, nothing in their way. You can tell from the sky that England’s an island. “At least it’s not pouring like it was when we got here.”
“Do you have a pony holder?” Melanie asks. “No, of course you don’t. I bet you’re loving your hair now.”
My hand drifts to the back of my neck, which still feels strange, oddly exposed. The Teen Tour! had begun in London, and on the second afternoon, we’d had a few free hours for shopping, which I guess qualifies as culture. During that time, Melanie had convinced me to get my hair bobbed. It was all part of her precollege reinvention scheme, which she’d explained to me on the flight over: “No one at college will know that we were AP automatons. I mean, we’re too pretty to just be brainiacs, and at college, everyone will be smart. So we can be cool and smart. Those two things will no longer be mutually exclusive.”
For Melanie, this reinvention apparently meant the new heavy-on-skimp wardrobe she’d blown half her spending money on at Topshop, and the truncating of her name from Melanie to Mel—something I can’t quite remember to do, no matter how many times she kicks me under the table. For me, I guess it meant the haircut she talked me into.
I’d freaked out when I’d seen myself. I’ve had long black hair and no bangs for as long as I can remember, and the girl staring back at me in the salon mirror didn’t look like anything like me. At that point, we’d only been gone two days, but my stomach went hollow with homesickness. I wanted to be back in my bedroom at home, with my familiar peach walls, my collection of vintage alarm clocks. I’d wondered how I was ever going to handle college if I couldn’t handle this.
But I’ve gotten used to the hair, and the homesickness has mostly gone away, and even if it hasn’t, the tour is ending. Tomorrow, almost everyone else is taking the coach straight to the airport to fly home. Melanie and I are catching a train down to London to stay with her cousin for three days. Melanie is talking about going back to the salon where I got my bob to get a pink streak in her hair, and we’re going to see Let It Be in the West End. On Sunday, we fly home, and soon after that, we start college—me near Boston, Melanie in New York.
“Set Shakespeare free!”
I look up. A group of about a dozen people are coming up and down the line, handing out multicolored neon flyers. I can tell straightaway that they’re not American—no bright white tennis shoes or cargo shorts in sight. They are all impossibly tall, and thin, and different looking, somehow. It’s like even their bone structure is foreign.
“Oh, I’ll take one of those.” Melanie reaches out for a flyer and uses it to fan her neck.
“What’s it say?” I ask her, looking at the group. Here in touristy Stratford-upon-Avon, they stand out like fire-orange poppies in a field of green.
Melanie looks at the flyer and wrinkles her nose. “Guerrilla Will?”
A girl with the kind of magenta streaks Melanie has been coveting comes up to us. “It’s Shakespeare for the masses.”
I peer at the card. It reads Guerrilla Will. Shakespeare Without Borders. Shakespeare Unleashed. Shakespeare For Free. Shakespeare For All.
“Shakespeare for free?” Melanie reads.
“Yeah,” the magenta-haired girl says in accented English. “Not for capitalist gain. How Shakespeare would’ve wanted it.”
“You don’t think he’d want to actually sell tickets and make money from his plays?” I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, but I remember that movie Shakespeare in Love and how he was always owing money to somebody or other.
The girl rolls her eyes, and I start to feel foolish. I look down. A shadow falls over me, momentarily blocking out the glare of the sun. And then I hear laughter. I look up. I can’t see the person in front of me because he’s backlit by the still-bright evening sun. But I can hear him.
“I think she’s right,” he says. “Being a starving artist is not so romantic, maybe, when you’re actually starving.”
I blink a few times. My eyes adjust, and I see that the guy is tall, maybe a full foot taller than I am, and thin. His hair is a hundred shades of blond, and his eyes so brown as to almost be black. I have to tilt my head up to look at him, and he’s tilting his head down to look at me.
“But Shakespeare is dead; he’s not collecting royalties from the grave. And we, we are alive.” He opens his arms, as if to embrace the universe. “What are you seeing?”
“Hamlet,” I say.
“Ah, Hamlet.” His accent is so slight as to be almost imperceptible. “I think a night like this, you don’t waste on tragedy.” He looks at me, like it’s a question. Then he smiles. “Or indoors. We are doing Twelfth Night. Outside.” He hands me a flyer.
“We’ll think about it,” Melanie says in her coy voice.
The guy raises one shoulder and cocks his head toward it so his ear is almost touching his very angular shoulder blade. “What you will,” he says, though he’s looking at me. Then he saunters off to join the rest of his troupe.
Melanie watches them go. “Wow, why are they not on the Teen Tours! Cultural Extravaganza? That’s some culture I could get into!”
I watch them leave, feeling a strange tug. “I’ve seen Hamlet before, you know.”
Melanie looks at me, her eyebrows, which she has overly plucked into a thin line, raised. “Me too. It was on TV, but still . . .”
“We could go . . . to this. I mean, it would be different. A cultural experience, which is why our parents sent us on this tour.”
Melanie laughs. “Look at you, getting all bad! But what about Our Fearless Leader? It looks like she’s gearing up for one of her head counts.”
“Well, the heat was really bothering you . . . ” I begin.
Melanie looks at me for a second, then something clicks. She licks her lips, grins, and then crosses her eyes. “Oh, yeah. I totally have heatstroke.” She turns to Paula, who’s from Maine and is studiously reading a Fodor’s guide. “Paula, I’m feeling so dizzy.”
“It’s way hot,” Paula says, nodding sympathetically. “You should hydrate.”
“I think I might faint or something. I’m seeing black spots.”
“Don’t pile it on,” I whisper.
“It’s good to build a case,” Melanie whispers, enjoying this now. “Oh, I think I’m going to pass out.”
“Ms. Foley,” I call.
Ms. Foley looks up from ticking names off her roll-call sheet. She comes over, her face so full of concern, I feel bad for lying. “I think Melanie, I mean Mel, is getting heatstroke.”
“Are you poorly? It shouldn’t be much longer now. And it’s lovely and cool inside the theater.” Ms. Foley speaks in a strange hybrid of Britishisms with a Midwestern accent that everyone makes fun of because they think it’s pretentious. But I think it’s just that she’s from Michigan and spends a lot of time in Europe.
“I feel like I’m going to puke.” Melanie pushes on. “I would hate to do that inside the Swan Theatre.”
Ms. Foley’s face wrinkles in displeasure, though I can’t tell if it is from the idea of Melanie barfing inside the Swan or using the word puke in such close proximity to the Royal Shakespeare Company. “Oh, dear. I’d better escort you back to the hotel.”
“I can take her,” I say.
“Really? Oh, no. I couldn’t. You should see Hamlet.”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll take her.”
“No! It’s my responsibility to take her. I simply couldn’t burden you like that.” I can see the argument she’s having with herself play out over her pinched features.
Just One Day - English romantic Novel
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romantic_story
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romantic_story
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- Posts: 228
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Re: Just One Day - English romantic Novel
“It’s fine, Ms. Foley. I’ve seen Hamlet before, and the hotel is just over the square from here.”
“Really? Oh, that would be lovely. Would you believe in all the years I’ve been doing this, I have never seen the Bard’s Hamlet done by the RSC?”
Melanie gives a little moan for dramatic effect. I gently elbow her. I smile at Ms. Foley. “Well, then, you definitely shouldn’t miss it.”
She nods solemnly, as though we are discussing important business here, order of succession to the throne or something. Then she reaches for my hand. “It has been such a pleasure traveling with you, Allyson. I shall miss you. If only more young people today were like you. You are such a . . .” She pauses for a moment, searching for the right word. “Such a good girl.”
“Thank you,” I say automatically. But her compliment leaves me empty. I don’t know if it’s because that’s the nicest thing she could think to say about me, or if it’s because I’m not being such a good girl right now.
“Good girl, my ass.” Melanie laughs once we are clear of the queue and she can give up her swooning act.
“Be quiet. I don’t like pretending.”
“Well, you’re awfully good at it. You could have a promising acting career of your own, if you ask me.”
“I don’t ask you. Now, where is this place?” I look at the flyer. “Canal Basin? What is that?”
Melanie pulls out her phone, which, unlike my cell phone, works in Europe. She opens the map app. “It appears to be a basin by the canal.”
A few minutes later, we arrive at a waterfront. It feels like a carnival, full of people hanging about. There are barges moored to the side of the water, different boats selling everything from ice cream to paintings. What there isn’t is any kind of theater. Or stage. Or chairs. Or actors. I look at the flyer again.
“Maybe it’s on the bridge?” Melanie asks.
We walk back over to the medieval arched bridge, but it’s just more of the same: tourists like us, milling around in the hot night.
“They did say it was tonight?” Melanie asks.
I think of that one guy, his eyes so impossibly dark, specifically saying that tonight was too nice for tragedy. But when I look around, there’s no play here, obviously. It was probably some kind of joke—fool the stupid tourist.
“Let’s get an ice cream so the night’s not a total write-off,” I say.
We are queuing up for ice cream when we hear it, a hum of acoustic guitars and the echoey beat of bongo drums. My ears perk up, my sonar rises. I stand on a nearby bench to look around. It’s not like a stage has magically appeared, but what has just materialized is a crowd, a pretty big one, under a stand of trees.
“I think it’s starting,” I say, grabbing Melanie’s hand.
“But the ice cream,” she complains.
“After,” I say, yanking her toward the crowd.
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
The guy playing Duke Orsino looks nothing like any Shakespearian actor I’ve ever seen, except maybe the movie version of Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. He is tall, black, dreadlocked, and dressed like a glam rock-star in tight vinyl pants, pointy-toed shoes, and a sort of mesh tank top that shows off his ripped chest.
“Oh, we so made the right choice,” Melanie whispers in my ear.
As Orsino gives his opening soliloquy to the sounds of the guitars and bongo drums, I feel a shiver go up my spine.
We watch the entire first act, chasing the actors around the waterfront. When they move, we move, which makes it feel like we are a part of the play. And maybe that’s what makes it so different. Because I’ve seen Shakespeare before. School productions and a few plays at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. But it’s always felt like listening to something in a foreign language I didn’t know that well. I had to force myself to pay attention, and half the time, I wound up rereading the program over and over again, as if it would impart some deeper understanding.
This time, it clicks. It’s like my ear attunes to the weird language and I’m sucked fully into the story, the same way I am when I watch a movie, so that I feel it. When Orsino pines for the cool Olivia, I feel that pang in my gut from all the times I’ve crushed on guys I was invisible to. And when Viola mourns her brother, I feel her loneliness. And when she falls for Orsino, who thinks she’s a man, it’s actually funny and also moving.
He doesn’t show up until act two. He’s playing Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, thought dead. Which makes a certain sense, because by the time he does arrive, I am beginning to think he never really existed, that I’ve merely conjured him.
As he races through the green, chased after by the ever-loyal Antonio, we chase after him. After a while, I work up my nerve. “Let’s get closer,” I say to Melanie. She grabs my hand, and we go to the front of the crowd right at the part where Olivia’s clown comes for Sebastian and they argue before Sebastian sends him away. Right before he does, he seems to catch my eye for half a second.
As the hot day softens into twilight and I’m sucked deeper into the illusory world of Illyria, I feel like I’ve entered some weird otherworldly space, where anything can happen, where identities can be swapped like shoes. Where those thought dead are alive again. Where everyone gets their happily-ever-afters. I recognize it’s kind of corny, but the air is soft and warm, and the trees are lush and full, and the crickets are singing, and it seems like, for once, maybe it can happen.
All too soon, the play is ending. Sebastian and Viola are reunited. Viola comes clean to Orsino that she’s actually a girl, and of course he now wants to marry her. And Olivia realizes that Sebastian isn’t the person she thought she married—but she doesn’t care; she loves him anyway. The musicians are playing again as the clown gives the final soliloquy. And then the actors are out and bowing, each one doing something a little silly with his or her bow. One flips. One plays air guitar. When Sebastian bows, he scans the audience and stops dead on me. He smiles this funny little half smile, takes one of the prop coins out of his pocket, and flips it to me. It’s pretty dark, and the coin is small, but I catch it, and people clap for me too, it now seems.
With the coin in my hand, I clap. I clap until my hands sting. I clap as if doing so can prolong the evening, can transform Twelfth Night into Twenty-Fourth Night. I clap so that I can hold on to this feeling. I clap because I know what will happen when I stop. It’s the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie—one that I’ve lost myself to—which is that I’ll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn’t make any sense.
But there’s no restarting tonight. The crowd is dispersing; the actors drifting off. The only people left from the show are a couple of musicians passing around the donation hat. I reach into my wallet for a ten-pound note.
Melanie and I stand together in silence. “Whoa,” she says.
“Yeah. Whoa,” I say back.
“That was pretty cool. And I hate Shakespeare.”
I nod.
“And was it me, or was that hot guy from the line earlier, the one who played Sebastian, was he totally checking us out?”
Us? But he threw me the coin. Or had I just been the one to catch it? Why wouldn’t it have been Melanie with her blond hair and her camisole top that he’d been checking out? Mel 2.0, as she calls herself, so much more appealing than Allyson 1.0.
“I couldn’t tell,” I say.
“And he threw the coin at us! Nice catch, by the way. Maybe we should go find them. Go hang out with them or something.”
“They’re gone.”
“Yeah, but those guys are still here.” She gestures to the money collectors. “We could ask where they hang out.”
I shake my head. “I doubt they want to hang out with stupid American teenagers.”
“We’re not stupid, and most of them didn’t seem that much older than teenagers themselves.”
“No. And besides, Ms. Foley might check in on us. We should get back to the room.”
Melanie rolls her eyes. “Why do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Say no to everything. It’s like you’re averse to adventure.”
“I don’t always say no.”
“Nine times out of ten. We’re about to start college. Let’s live a little.”
“I live just plenty,” I snap. “And besides, it never bothered you before.”
Melanie and I have been best friends since her family moved two houses down from ours the summer before second grade. Since then, we’ve done everything together: we lost our teeth at the same time, we got our periods at the same time, even our boyfriends came in tandem. I started going out with Evan a few weeks after she started going out with Alex (who was Evan’s best friend), though she and Alex broke up in January and Evan and I made it until April.
We’ve spent so much time together, we almost have a secret language of inside jokes and looks. We’ve fought plenty, of course. We’re both only children, so sometimes we’re like sisters. We once even broke a lamp in a tussle. But it’s never been like this. I’m not even sure what this is, only that since we got on the tour, being with Melanie makes me feel like I’m losing a race I didn’t even know I’d entered.
“I came out here tonight,” I say, my voice brittle and defensive. “I lied to Ms. Foley so we could come.”
“Right? And we’ve had so much fun! So why don’t we keep it going?”
I shake my head.
She shuffles through her bag and pulls out her phone, scrolls through her texts. “Hamlet just let out too. Craig says that Todd’s taken the gang to a pub called the Dirty Duck. I like the sound of that. Come out with us. It’ll be a blast.”
The thing is, I did go out with Melanie and everyone from the tour once, about a week into the trip. By this time, they’d already gone out a couple times. And even though Melanie had known these guys only a week—the same amount of time I’d known them—she had all these inside jokes with them, jokes I didn’t understand. I’d sat there around the crowded table, nursing a drink, feeling like the unlucky kid who had to start a new school midway into the year.
I look at my watch, which has slid all the way down my wrist. I slide it back up, so it covers the ugly red birthmark right on my pulse. “It’s almost eleven, and we have to be up early tomorrow for our train. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my adventure-averse self back to the room.” With the huffiness in my voice, I sound just like my mom.
“Fine. I’ll walk you back and then go to the pub.”
“And what if Ms. Foley checks in on us?”
Melanie laughs. “Tell her I had heatstroke. And it’s not hot anymore.” She starts to walk up the slope back toward the bridge. “What? Are you waiting for something?”
I look back down toward the water, the barges, now emptying out from the evening rush. Trash collectors are out in force. The day is ending; it’s not coming back.
“No, I’m not.”
Two
Our train to London is at eight fifteen—Melanie’s idea, so we will have maximum shopping time. But when the alarm clock starts beeping at six, Melanie pulls the pillow over her head.
“Let’s get a later train,” she moans.
“No. It’s already all arranged. You can sleep on the train. Anyway, you promised to be downstairs at six thirty to say good-bye to everyone.” And I promised to say good-bye to Ms. Foley.
I drag Melanie out of bed and shove her under the hotel’s weak excuse for a shower. I brew her some instant coffee and quickly talk to my mom, who stayed up until one in the morning Pennsylvania time to call. At six thirty, we trudge downstairs. Ms. Foley, in her jeans and Teen Tours! polo shirt as usual, shakes Melanie’s hand. Then she embraces me in a bony hug, slips me her business card, and says I shouldn’t hesitate to call if I need anything while in London. Her next tour starts on Sunday, and she’ll be there too until it begins. Then she tells me she’s arranged a seven-thirty taxi to take me and Melanie to the train station, asks once again if we’re being met in London (yes, we are), tells me yet again that I’m a good girl, and warns me against pickpockets on the Tube.
“Really? Oh, that would be lovely. Would you believe in all the years I’ve been doing this, I have never seen the Bard’s Hamlet done by the RSC?”
Melanie gives a little moan for dramatic effect. I gently elbow her. I smile at Ms. Foley. “Well, then, you definitely shouldn’t miss it.”
She nods solemnly, as though we are discussing important business here, order of succession to the throne or something. Then she reaches for my hand. “It has been such a pleasure traveling with you, Allyson. I shall miss you. If only more young people today were like you. You are such a . . .” She pauses for a moment, searching for the right word. “Such a good girl.”
“Thank you,” I say automatically. But her compliment leaves me empty. I don’t know if it’s because that’s the nicest thing she could think to say about me, or if it’s because I’m not being such a good girl right now.
“Good girl, my ass.” Melanie laughs once we are clear of the queue and she can give up her swooning act.
“Be quiet. I don’t like pretending.”
“Well, you’re awfully good at it. You could have a promising acting career of your own, if you ask me.”
“I don’t ask you. Now, where is this place?” I look at the flyer. “Canal Basin? What is that?”
Melanie pulls out her phone, which, unlike my cell phone, works in Europe. She opens the map app. “It appears to be a basin by the canal.”
A few minutes later, we arrive at a waterfront. It feels like a carnival, full of people hanging about. There are barges moored to the side of the water, different boats selling everything from ice cream to paintings. What there isn’t is any kind of theater. Or stage. Or chairs. Or actors. I look at the flyer again.
“Maybe it’s on the bridge?” Melanie asks.
We walk back over to the medieval arched bridge, but it’s just more of the same: tourists like us, milling around in the hot night.
“They did say it was tonight?” Melanie asks.
I think of that one guy, his eyes so impossibly dark, specifically saying that tonight was too nice for tragedy. But when I look around, there’s no play here, obviously. It was probably some kind of joke—fool the stupid tourist.
“Let’s get an ice cream so the night’s not a total write-off,” I say.
We are queuing up for ice cream when we hear it, a hum of acoustic guitars and the echoey beat of bongo drums. My ears perk up, my sonar rises. I stand on a nearby bench to look around. It’s not like a stage has magically appeared, but what has just materialized is a crowd, a pretty big one, under a stand of trees.
“I think it’s starting,” I say, grabbing Melanie’s hand.
“But the ice cream,” she complains.
“After,” I say, yanking her toward the crowd.
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
The guy playing Duke Orsino looks nothing like any Shakespearian actor I’ve ever seen, except maybe the movie version of Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. He is tall, black, dreadlocked, and dressed like a glam rock-star in tight vinyl pants, pointy-toed shoes, and a sort of mesh tank top that shows off his ripped chest.
“Oh, we so made the right choice,” Melanie whispers in my ear.
As Orsino gives his opening soliloquy to the sounds of the guitars and bongo drums, I feel a shiver go up my spine.
We watch the entire first act, chasing the actors around the waterfront. When they move, we move, which makes it feel like we are a part of the play. And maybe that’s what makes it so different. Because I’ve seen Shakespeare before. School productions and a few plays at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre. But it’s always felt like listening to something in a foreign language I didn’t know that well. I had to force myself to pay attention, and half the time, I wound up rereading the program over and over again, as if it would impart some deeper understanding.
This time, it clicks. It’s like my ear attunes to the weird language and I’m sucked fully into the story, the same way I am when I watch a movie, so that I feel it. When Orsino pines for the cool Olivia, I feel that pang in my gut from all the times I’ve crushed on guys I was invisible to. And when Viola mourns her brother, I feel her loneliness. And when she falls for Orsino, who thinks she’s a man, it’s actually funny and also moving.
He doesn’t show up until act two. He’s playing Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, thought dead. Which makes a certain sense, because by the time he does arrive, I am beginning to think he never really existed, that I’ve merely conjured him.
As he races through the green, chased after by the ever-loyal Antonio, we chase after him. After a while, I work up my nerve. “Let’s get closer,” I say to Melanie. She grabs my hand, and we go to the front of the crowd right at the part where Olivia’s clown comes for Sebastian and they argue before Sebastian sends him away. Right before he does, he seems to catch my eye for half a second.
As the hot day softens into twilight and I’m sucked deeper into the illusory world of Illyria, I feel like I’ve entered some weird otherworldly space, where anything can happen, where identities can be swapped like shoes. Where those thought dead are alive again. Where everyone gets their happily-ever-afters. I recognize it’s kind of corny, but the air is soft and warm, and the trees are lush and full, and the crickets are singing, and it seems like, for once, maybe it can happen.
All too soon, the play is ending. Sebastian and Viola are reunited. Viola comes clean to Orsino that she’s actually a girl, and of course he now wants to marry her. And Olivia realizes that Sebastian isn’t the person she thought she married—but she doesn’t care; she loves him anyway. The musicians are playing again as the clown gives the final soliloquy. And then the actors are out and bowing, each one doing something a little silly with his or her bow. One flips. One plays air guitar. When Sebastian bows, he scans the audience and stops dead on me. He smiles this funny little half smile, takes one of the prop coins out of his pocket, and flips it to me. It’s pretty dark, and the coin is small, but I catch it, and people clap for me too, it now seems.
With the coin in my hand, I clap. I clap until my hands sting. I clap as if doing so can prolong the evening, can transform Twelfth Night into Twenty-Fourth Night. I clap so that I can hold on to this feeling. I clap because I know what will happen when I stop. It’s the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie—one that I’ve lost myself to—which is that I’ll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn’t make any sense.
But there’s no restarting tonight. The crowd is dispersing; the actors drifting off. The only people left from the show are a couple of musicians passing around the donation hat. I reach into my wallet for a ten-pound note.
Melanie and I stand together in silence. “Whoa,” she says.
“Yeah. Whoa,” I say back.
“That was pretty cool. And I hate Shakespeare.”
I nod.
“And was it me, or was that hot guy from the line earlier, the one who played Sebastian, was he totally checking us out?”
Us? But he threw me the coin. Or had I just been the one to catch it? Why wouldn’t it have been Melanie with her blond hair and her camisole top that he’d been checking out? Mel 2.0, as she calls herself, so much more appealing than Allyson 1.0.
“I couldn’t tell,” I say.
“And he threw the coin at us! Nice catch, by the way. Maybe we should go find them. Go hang out with them or something.”
“They’re gone.”
“Yeah, but those guys are still here.” She gestures to the money collectors. “We could ask where they hang out.”
I shake my head. “I doubt they want to hang out with stupid American teenagers.”
“We’re not stupid, and most of them didn’t seem that much older than teenagers themselves.”
“No. And besides, Ms. Foley might check in on us. We should get back to the room.”
Melanie rolls her eyes. “Why do you always do this?”
“Do what?”
“Say no to everything. It’s like you’re averse to adventure.”
“I don’t always say no.”
“Nine times out of ten. We’re about to start college. Let’s live a little.”
“I live just plenty,” I snap. “And besides, it never bothered you before.”
Melanie and I have been best friends since her family moved two houses down from ours the summer before second grade. Since then, we’ve done everything together: we lost our teeth at the same time, we got our periods at the same time, even our boyfriends came in tandem. I started going out with Evan a few weeks after she started going out with Alex (who was Evan’s best friend), though she and Alex broke up in January and Evan and I made it until April.
We’ve spent so much time together, we almost have a secret language of inside jokes and looks. We’ve fought plenty, of course. We’re both only children, so sometimes we’re like sisters. We once even broke a lamp in a tussle. But it’s never been like this. I’m not even sure what this is, only that since we got on the tour, being with Melanie makes me feel like I’m losing a race I didn’t even know I’d entered.
“I came out here tonight,” I say, my voice brittle and defensive. “I lied to Ms. Foley so we could come.”
“Right? And we’ve had so much fun! So why don’t we keep it going?”
I shake my head.
She shuffles through her bag and pulls out her phone, scrolls through her texts. “Hamlet just let out too. Craig says that Todd’s taken the gang to a pub called the Dirty Duck. I like the sound of that. Come out with us. It’ll be a blast.”
The thing is, I did go out with Melanie and everyone from the tour once, about a week into the trip. By this time, they’d already gone out a couple times. And even though Melanie had known these guys only a week—the same amount of time I’d known them—she had all these inside jokes with them, jokes I didn’t understand. I’d sat there around the crowded table, nursing a drink, feeling like the unlucky kid who had to start a new school midway into the year.
I look at my watch, which has slid all the way down my wrist. I slide it back up, so it covers the ugly red birthmark right on my pulse. “It’s almost eleven, and we have to be up early tomorrow for our train. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my adventure-averse self back to the room.” With the huffiness in my voice, I sound just like my mom.
“Fine. I’ll walk you back and then go to the pub.”
“And what if Ms. Foley checks in on us?”
Melanie laughs. “Tell her I had heatstroke. And it’s not hot anymore.” She starts to walk up the slope back toward the bridge. “What? Are you waiting for something?”
I look back down toward the water, the barges, now emptying out from the evening rush. Trash collectors are out in force. The day is ending; it’s not coming back.
“No, I’m not.”
Two
Our train to London is at eight fifteen—Melanie’s idea, so we will have maximum shopping time. But when the alarm clock starts beeping at six, Melanie pulls the pillow over her head.
“Let’s get a later train,” she moans.
“No. It’s already all arranged. You can sleep on the train. Anyway, you promised to be downstairs at six thirty to say good-bye to everyone.” And I promised to say good-bye to Ms. Foley.
I drag Melanie out of bed and shove her under the hotel’s weak excuse for a shower. I brew her some instant coffee and quickly talk to my mom, who stayed up until one in the morning Pennsylvania time to call. At six thirty, we trudge downstairs. Ms. Foley, in her jeans and Teen Tours! polo shirt as usual, shakes Melanie’s hand. Then she embraces me in a bony hug, slips me her business card, and says I shouldn’t hesitate to call if I need anything while in London. Her next tour starts on Sunday, and she’ll be there too until it begins. Then she tells me she’s arranged a seven-thirty taxi to take me and Melanie to the train station, asks once again if we’re being met in London (yes, we are), tells me yet again that I’m a good girl, and warns me against pickpockets on the Tube.
-
romantic_story
- Expert Member
- Posts: 228
- Joined: 17 Aug 2015 17:28
Re: Just One Day - English romantic Novel
I let Melanie go back to bed for another half hour, which means she skips her usual primp time, and at seven thirty I load us into the waiting taxi. When our train arrives, I drag our bags onto it and find a pair of empty seats. Melanie slumps into the one next to the window. “Wake me when we get to London.”
I stare at her for a second, but she’s already snuggled up against the window, shutting her eyes. I sigh and stow her shoulder bag under her feet and put my cardigan down on the seat next to hers to discourage any thieves or lecherous old men. Then I make my way to the café car. I missed the hotel’s breakfast, and now my stomach is growling and my temples are starting to throb with the beginnings of a hunger headache.
Even though Europe is the land of trains, we haven’t taken any on the tour, only airplanes for the long distances and buses to get us everywhere in between. As I walk through the cars, the automatic doors open with a satisfying whoosh, and the train rocks gently under my feet. Outside, the green countryside whizzes by.
In the café car, I examine the sad offerings and wind up ordering a cheese sandwich and tea and the salt and vinegar crisps I’ve become addicted to. I get a can of Coke for Melanie. I put the meal in one of those cardboard carriers and am about to go back to my seat when one of the tables right next to the window opens up. I hesitate for a second. I should get back to Melanie. Then again, she’s asleep; she doesn’t care, so I sit at the table and stare out the window. The countryside seems so fundamentally English, all green and tidy and divvied up with hedges, the fluffy sheep like clouds mirroring the ever-present ones in the sky.
“That’s a very confused breakfast.”
That voice. After listening to it for four acts last night, I recognize it immediately.
I look up, and he’s right there, grinning a sort of lazy half smile that makes him seem like he just this second woke up.
“How is it confused?” I ask. I should be surprised, but somehow, I’m not. I do have to bite my lip to keep from grinning.
But he doesn’t answer. He goes to the counter and orders a coffee. Then he gestures with his head toward my table. I nod.
“In so many ways,” he says, sitting down opposite me. “It is like a jet-lagged expatriate.”
I look down at my sandwich, my tea, my chips. “This is a jet-lagged expatriate? How do you get that from this?”
He blows on his coffee. “Easy. For one, it’s not even nine in the morning. So tea makes sense. But sandwich and crisps. Those are lunch foods. I won’t even mention the Coke.” He taps the can. “See, the timing is all mixed up. Your breakfast has jet lag.”
I have to laugh at that. “The doughnuts looked disgusting.” I gesture toward the counter.
“Definitely. That’s why I bring my own breakfast.” He reaches into his bag and starts unwrapping something from a wrinkled piece of waxed paper.
“Wait, that looks suspiciously like a sandwich too,” I say.
“It’s not, really. It’s bread and hagelslag.”
“Hachuh what?”
“Hach-el-slach.” He opens the sandwich for me to see. Inside is butter and some kind of chocolate sprinkles.
“You’re calling my breakfast confused? You’re eating dessert for breakfast.”
“In Holland, this is breakfast. Very typical. That or uitsmijter, which is basically fried egg with ham.”
“That won’t be on the test, will it? Because I can’t even begin to try to say that.”
“Out. Smy. Ter. We can practice that later. But that brings me to my second point. Your breakfast is like an expatriate. And, go ahead, eat. I can talk while you eat.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you can multitask,” I say. Then I laugh. And it’s all just the weirdest thing, because this is just happening, so naturally. I think I am actually flirting, over breakfast. About breakfast. “What do you even mean, an expatriate?”
“Someone who lives outside of their native country. You know, you have a sandwich. Very American. And the tea, very English. But then you have the crisps, or chips, or whatever you want to call them, and they can go either way, but you’re having salt and vinegar, which is very English, but you’re eating them for breakfast, and that seems American. And Coke for breakfast. Coke and chips, is that what you eat for breakfast in America?”
“How do you even know I’m from America?” I challenge.
“Aside from the fact that you were in a tour group of Americans and you speak with an American accent?” He takes a bite of his hagu-whatever sandwich and drinks more of his coffee.
I bite my lip to keep from grinning again. “Right. Aside from that.”
“Those were the only clues, really. You actually don’t look so American.”
“Really?” I pop open my crisps, and a sharp tang of artificial vinegar wafts through the air. I offer him one. He declines it and takes another bite of his sandwich. “What looks American?”
He shrugs. “Blond,” he says. “Big . . .” He mimes boobs. “Soft features.” He waves his hands in front of his face. “Pretty. Like your friend.”
“And I don’t look that way?” I don’t know why I bother to ask this. I know what I look like. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Sharp features. No curves, not much in the boob department. A little of the fizz goes out of my step. Was all this just buttering me up so he could hit on Melanie?
“No.” He peers at me with those eyes of his. They’d looked so dark yesterday, but now that I’m up close, I can see that they have all kinds of colors in them—gray, brown, even gold dancing in the darkness. “You know who you look like? Louise Brooks.”
I stare at him blankly.
“You don’t know her? The silent film star?”
I shake my head. I never did get into silent films.
“She was a huge star in the nineteen twenties. American. Amazing actress.”
“And not blond.” I mean for it to come out as a joke, but it doesn’t.
He takes another bite of his sandwich. A tiny chocolate sprinkle sticks to the corner of his mouth. “We have lots of blondes in Holland. I see blond when I look in a mirror. Louise Brooks was dark. She had these incredible sad eyes and very defined features and the same hair like you.” He touches his own hair, as tousled as it was last night. “You look so much like her. I should just call you Louise.”
Louise. I like that.
“No, not Louise. Lulu. That was her nickname.”
Lulu. I like that even better.
He reaches out his hand. “Hi, Lulu, I’m Willem.”
His hand is warm, and his grasp is firm. “Nice to meet you, Willem. Though I could call you Sebastian if we’re taking on new identities.”
When he laughs, little crinkles flower along his eyes. “No. I prefer Willem. Sebastian’s kind of, what’s the word . . . passive, when you think about it. He gets married to Olivia, who really wants to be with his sister. That happens a lot with Shakespeare. The women go after what they want; the men wind up suckered into things.”
“I don’t know. I was glad when everyone got their happy ending last night.”
“Oh, it’s a nice fairy tale, but that’s what it is. A fairy tale. But I figure Shakespeare owes his comedy characters those happy endings because he is so cruel in his tragedies. I mean, Hamlet. Or Romeo and Juliet. It’s almost sadistic.” He shakes his head. “Sebastian’s okay, he’s just not really in charge of his own destiny so much. Shakespeare gives that privilege to Viola.”
“So you’re in charge of your own destiny?” I ask. And again, I hear myself and can hardly believe it. When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that’s how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be so meek and polite. Even with Evan, my boyfriend for junior and most of senior year, I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. But today, apparently, I can skate.
“Oh, not at all. I go where the wind blows me.” He pauses to consider that. “Maybe there’s a good reason I play Sebastian.”
“So where is the wind blowing you?” I ask, hoping he’s staying in London.
“From London, I catch another train back to Holland. Last night was the end of the season for me.”
I deflate. “Oh.”
“You haven’t eaten your sandwich. Be warned, they put butter on the cheese sandwiches here. The fake kind, I think.”
“I know.” I pull off the sad wilted tomatoes and smear off some of the excess butter/margarine with my napkin.
“It would be better with mayonnaise,” Willem tells me.
“Only if there was turkey on it.”
“No, cheese and mayonnaise is very good.”
“That sounds foul.”
“Only if you’ve never had the proper sort of mayonnaise. I’ve heard the kind they have in America is not the proper sort.”
I laugh so hard that tea comes spurting out my nose.
“What?” Willem asks. “What?”
“The proper sort of mayonnaise,” I say in between gasps of laughter. “It makes me think that there’s, like, a bad-girl mayonnaise who’s slutty and steals, and a good-girl mayonnaise, who is proper and crosses her legs, and my problem is that I’ve never been introduced to the right one.”
“That is exactly correct,” he says. And then he starts laughing too.
We are both cracking up when Melanie trudges into the café car, carrying her stuff, plus my sweater. “I couldn’t find you,” she says sullenly.
“You said to wake you in London.” I look out the window then. The pretty English countryside has given way to the ugly gray outskirts of the city.
Melanie looks over at Willem, and her eyes widen. “You’re not shipwrecked after all,” she says to him.
“No,” he says, but he’s looking at me. “Don’t be mad at Lulu. It’s my fault. I kept her here.”
“Lulu?”
“Yes, short for Louise. It’s my new alter ego, Mel.” I look at her, my eyes imploring her not to give me away. I’m liking being Lulu. I’m not ready to give her up just yet.
Melanie rubs her eyes, like maybe she’s still sleeping. Then she shrugs and slumps into the seat next to Willem. “Fine. Be whoever you want. I’d like to be someone with a new head.”
“She’s new to this hangover thing,” I tell Willem.
“Shut up,” Melanie snaps.
“What, you want me say that ‘it’s old hat for you’?”
“Aren’t you Miss Sassy-pants this morning.”
“Here.” Willem reaches into his backpack for a small white container and shakes out a few white balls into Melanie’s hand. “Put these under your tongue to dissolve. You’ll feel better soon.”
“What is this?” she asks suspiciously.
“It’s herbal.”
“Are you sure it’s not some date-rape drug?”
“Right. Because he wants you to pass out in the middle of the train,” I say.
Willem shows the label to Melanie. “My mother is a naturopathic doctor. She uses these for headaches. I don’t think to rape me.”
“Hey, my father is a doctor too,” I say. Though the opposite of naturopathic. He’s a pulmonologist, Western medicine all the way.
Melanie eyes the pills for a second before finally popping them under her tongue. By the time the train chugs into the station ten minutes later, her headache is better.
By some unspoken agreement, the three of us disembark together: Melanie and I with our overstuffed roller bags, Willem with his compact backpack. We push out onto the platform into the already-hot summer sun and then into the relative cool of Marylebone Station.
I stare at her for a second, but she’s already snuggled up against the window, shutting her eyes. I sigh and stow her shoulder bag under her feet and put my cardigan down on the seat next to hers to discourage any thieves or lecherous old men. Then I make my way to the café car. I missed the hotel’s breakfast, and now my stomach is growling and my temples are starting to throb with the beginnings of a hunger headache.
Even though Europe is the land of trains, we haven’t taken any on the tour, only airplanes for the long distances and buses to get us everywhere in between. As I walk through the cars, the automatic doors open with a satisfying whoosh, and the train rocks gently under my feet. Outside, the green countryside whizzes by.
In the café car, I examine the sad offerings and wind up ordering a cheese sandwich and tea and the salt and vinegar crisps I’ve become addicted to. I get a can of Coke for Melanie. I put the meal in one of those cardboard carriers and am about to go back to my seat when one of the tables right next to the window opens up. I hesitate for a second. I should get back to Melanie. Then again, she’s asleep; she doesn’t care, so I sit at the table and stare out the window. The countryside seems so fundamentally English, all green and tidy and divvied up with hedges, the fluffy sheep like clouds mirroring the ever-present ones in the sky.
“That’s a very confused breakfast.”
That voice. After listening to it for four acts last night, I recognize it immediately.
I look up, and he’s right there, grinning a sort of lazy half smile that makes him seem like he just this second woke up.
“How is it confused?” I ask. I should be surprised, but somehow, I’m not. I do have to bite my lip to keep from grinning.
But he doesn’t answer. He goes to the counter and orders a coffee. Then he gestures with his head toward my table. I nod.
“In so many ways,” he says, sitting down opposite me. “It is like a jet-lagged expatriate.”
I look down at my sandwich, my tea, my chips. “This is a jet-lagged expatriate? How do you get that from this?”
He blows on his coffee. “Easy. For one, it’s not even nine in the morning. So tea makes sense. But sandwich and crisps. Those are lunch foods. I won’t even mention the Coke.” He taps the can. “See, the timing is all mixed up. Your breakfast has jet lag.”
I have to laugh at that. “The doughnuts looked disgusting.” I gesture toward the counter.
“Definitely. That’s why I bring my own breakfast.” He reaches into his bag and starts unwrapping something from a wrinkled piece of waxed paper.
“Wait, that looks suspiciously like a sandwich too,” I say.
“It’s not, really. It’s bread and hagelslag.”
“Hachuh what?”
“Hach-el-slach.” He opens the sandwich for me to see. Inside is butter and some kind of chocolate sprinkles.
“You’re calling my breakfast confused? You’re eating dessert for breakfast.”
“In Holland, this is breakfast. Very typical. That or uitsmijter, which is basically fried egg with ham.”
“That won’t be on the test, will it? Because I can’t even begin to try to say that.”
“Out. Smy. Ter. We can practice that later. But that brings me to my second point. Your breakfast is like an expatriate. And, go ahead, eat. I can talk while you eat.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you can multitask,” I say. Then I laugh. And it’s all just the weirdest thing, because this is just happening, so naturally. I think I am actually flirting, over breakfast. About breakfast. “What do you even mean, an expatriate?”
“Someone who lives outside of their native country. You know, you have a sandwich. Very American. And the tea, very English. But then you have the crisps, or chips, or whatever you want to call them, and they can go either way, but you’re having salt and vinegar, which is very English, but you’re eating them for breakfast, and that seems American. And Coke for breakfast. Coke and chips, is that what you eat for breakfast in America?”
“How do you even know I’m from America?” I challenge.
“Aside from the fact that you were in a tour group of Americans and you speak with an American accent?” He takes a bite of his hagu-whatever sandwich and drinks more of his coffee.
I bite my lip to keep from grinning again. “Right. Aside from that.”
“Those were the only clues, really. You actually don’t look so American.”
“Really?” I pop open my crisps, and a sharp tang of artificial vinegar wafts through the air. I offer him one. He declines it and takes another bite of his sandwich. “What looks American?”
He shrugs. “Blond,” he says. “Big . . .” He mimes boobs. “Soft features.” He waves his hands in front of his face. “Pretty. Like your friend.”
“And I don’t look that way?” I don’t know why I bother to ask this. I know what I look like. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Sharp features. No curves, not much in the boob department. A little of the fizz goes out of my step. Was all this just buttering me up so he could hit on Melanie?
“No.” He peers at me with those eyes of his. They’d looked so dark yesterday, but now that I’m up close, I can see that they have all kinds of colors in them—gray, brown, even gold dancing in the darkness. “You know who you look like? Louise Brooks.”
I stare at him blankly.
“You don’t know her? The silent film star?”
I shake my head. I never did get into silent films.
“She was a huge star in the nineteen twenties. American. Amazing actress.”
“And not blond.” I mean for it to come out as a joke, but it doesn’t.
He takes another bite of his sandwich. A tiny chocolate sprinkle sticks to the corner of his mouth. “We have lots of blondes in Holland. I see blond when I look in a mirror. Louise Brooks was dark. She had these incredible sad eyes and very defined features and the same hair like you.” He touches his own hair, as tousled as it was last night. “You look so much like her. I should just call you Louise.”
Louise. I like that.
“No, not Louise. Lulu. That was her nickname.”
Lulu. I like that even better.
He reaches out his hand. “Hi, Lulu, I’m Willem.”
His hand is warm, and his grasp is firm. “Nice to meet you, Willem. Though I could call you Sebastian if we’re taking on new identities.”
When he laughs, little crinkles flower along his eyes. “No. I prefer Willem. Sebastian’s kind of, what’s the word . . . passive, when you think about it. He gets married to Olivia, who really wants to be with his sister. That happens a lot with Shakespeare. The women go after what they want; the men wind up suckered into things.”
“I don’t know. I was glad when everyone got their happy ending last night.”
“Oh, it’s a nice fairy tale, but that’s what it is. A fairy tale. But I figure Shakespeare owes his comedy characters those happy endings because he is so cruel in his tragedies. I mean, Hamlet. Or Romeo and Juliet. It’s almost sadistic.” He shakes his head. “Sebastian’s okay, he’s just not really in charge of his own destiny so much. Shakespeare gives that privilege to Viola.”
“So you’re in charge of your own destiny?” I ask. And again, I hear myself and can hardly believe it. When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that’s how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be so meek and polite. Even with Evan, my boyfriend for junior and most of senior year, I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. But today, apparently, I can skate.
“Oh, not at all. I go where the wind blows me.” He pauses to consider that. “Maybe there’s a good reason I play Sebastian.”
“So where is the wind blowing you?” I ask, hoping he’s staying in London.
“From London, I catch another train back to Holland. Last night was the end of the season for me.”
I deflate. “Oh.”
“You haven’t eaten your sandwich. Be warned, they put butter on the cheese sandwiches here. The fake kind, I think.”
“I know.” I pull off the sad wilted tomatoes and smear off some of the excess butter/margarine with my napkin.
“It would be better with mayonnaise,” Willem tells me.
“Only if there was turkey on it.”
“No, cheese and mayonnaise is very good.”
“That sounds foul.”
“Only if you’ve never had the proper sort of mayonnaise. I’ve heard the kind they have in America is not the proper sort.”
I laugh so hard that tea comes spurting out my nose.
“What?” Willem asks. “What?”
“The proper sort of mayonnaise,” I say in between gasps of laughter. “It makes me think that there’s, like, a bad-girl mayonnaise who’s slutty and steals, and a good-girl mayonnaise, who is proper and crosses her legs, and my problem is that I’ve never been introduced to the right one.”
“That is exactly correct,” he says. And then he starts laughing too.
We are both cracking up when Melanie trudges into the café car, carrying her stuff, plus my sweater. “I couldn’t find you,” she says sullenly.
“You said to wake you in London.” I look out the window then. The pretty English countryside has given way to the ugly gray outskirts of the city.
Melanie looks over at Willem, and her eyes widen. “You’re not shipwrecked after all,” she says to him.
“No,” he says, but he’s looking at me. “Don’t be mad at Lulu. It’s my fault. I kept her here.”
“Lulu?”
“Yes, short for Louise. It’s my new alter ego, Mel.” I look at her, my eyes imploring her not to give me away. I’m liking being Lulu. I’m not ready to give her up just yet.
Melanie rubs her eyes, like maybe she’s still sleeping. Then she shrugs and slumps into the seat next to Willem. “Fine. Be whoever you want. I’d like to be someone with a new head.”
“She’s new to this hangover thing,” I tell Willem.
“Shut up,” Melanie snaps.
“What, you want me say that ‘it’s old hat for you’?”
“Aren’t you Miss Sassy-pants this morning.”
“Here.” Willem reaches into his backpack for a small white container and shakes out a few white balls into Melanie’s hand. “Put these under your tongue to dissolve. You’ll feel better soon.”
“What is this?” she asks suspiciously.
“It’s herbal.”
“Are you sure it’s not some date-rape drug?”
“Right. Because he wants you to pass out in the middle of the train,” I say.
Willem shows the label to Melanie. “My mother is a naturopathic doctor. She uses these for headaches. I don’t think to rape me.”
“Hey, my father is a doctor too,” I say. Though the opposite of naturopathic. He’s a pulmonologist, Western medicine all the way.
Melanie eyes the pills for a second before finally popping them under her tongue. By the time the train chugs into the station ten minutes later, her headache is better.
By some unspoken agreement, the three of us disembark together: Melanie and I with our overstuffed roller bags, Willem with his compact backpack. We push out onto the platform into the already-hot summer sun and then into the relative cool of Marylebone Station.