Girl Online (15 page)

Chapter Seventeen

We’re just by the service lifts when Noah stops in his tracks. “Sorry, I forgot I need to tell Sadie Lee something. Be right back.”

As I watch him race back into the kitchen, my brain starts doing that thing where it automatically composes a Facebook update:
Penny Porter is about to go out to Brooklyn with a super-cute New Yorker who looks like he just strolled off the pages of
Rolling Stone
magazine
. I shake my head and laugh. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to me. I’m the kind of girl who falls into holes and tells boys she has fleas and shows the entire universe her worst knickers—in close-up. Maybe this whole thing is a dream. Maybe I’m actually still asleep in Brighton. Maybe it’s still the night after the play. Maybe I—

“All righty, let’s go.” Noah comes bursting out of the kitchen with a grin on his face. He holds something out to me. In his hand are two of Sadie Lee’s fairy cakes. “She’ll never know they’re missing,” he says with a grin. “We can be their official food testers. They don’t want anyone dropping dead from cake poisoning at the wedding, do they?”

I shake my head. “No, definitely not.” I take a bite of the cake, and it’s so light and fluffy it practically dissolves on my tongue. “Oh wow!”

Noah nods. “I know. Sadie Lee makes the best cakes in all of New York—if not the world.” He calls the lift. “So, what’s the most fun thing that’s ever happened to you?”

I look at him blankly. “Pardon?”

He laughs. “Oh man, your accent is so cute.” The lift arrives and we get in—which is super bad timing as now we’re in a really small well-lit space together and there’s no way I can hide my blushing cheeks.

“What’s the most fun thing that’s ever happened to you?” Noah repeats. He takes a woolly hat from his back pocket and pulls it down tight over his head.

“What, ever?”

“Yes.”

My mind goes completely blank. As the lift starts zooming down through the floors, it’s like a clock counting down: 20, 19, 18 . . . What
is
the most fun thing that’s ever happened to me? 17, 16, 15 . . . And then an answer comes to me and I’m so desperate to say something that I blurt it out without thinking: “Magical Mystery Day!”

“Say what?” Noah looks at me.

Oh crap. Now my face actually feels as if it’s on fire. “Magical Mystery Day,” I mutter, staring intently at the lift display: 10, 9, 8 . . .

“What’s Magical Mystery Day?”

5, 4, 3 . . .

“It’s a day my parents invented when my brother and I were little. We had it once a year.”

The lift arrives in the basement and the door opens. But Noah doesn’t move.

“And what happened on Magical Mystery Day?” he asks.

I dare myself to glance at him. To my surprise, he looks genuinely interested. “Well, it would always be on a weekday and we’d be given the day off school. My dad would have made a huge Magical Mystery cake, which we’d eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was one of the rules—on Magical Mystery Day you had to have cake with every meal. And the other rule was that we had to go on a Magical Mystery Tour.”

Noah grins. “Like the Beatles’ song?”

I nod. “Yes. Mum and Dad would take out a map and one of us would have to close our eyes and point at a random place and then we’d go off and have an adventure there.”

The lift doors close again. Noah quickly presses the button to open them.

“Magical Mystery Day sounds awesome,” he says wistfully.

We step out of the lift into a huge underground car park.

“It was,” I say, relieved that he doesn’t seem put off by my bonkers family tradition. “I used to love the way it was our secret. How everyone else would be at school or work and we’d be feasting on cake and out having an adventure. And I loved the way we never knew when it was going to happen either. Our parents would just spring it on us.”

“Like a surprise Christmas Day?” Noah says.

I look at him and grin. “Yes, exactly.”

He nods and even in the dim lighting of the car park I can tell he’s impressed.

“You mustn’t tell anyone I told you, though,” I add. “We
were always sworn to absolute secrecy because my parents would have to tell the school that we were off sick.”

Noah nods. “The first rule of Magical Mystery Day is: you do not talk about Magical Mystery Day,” he says in a deadly serious voice.

“Precisely.”

Noah grins. “So, do you guys still do it?”

I shake my head and laugh. “No, we haven’t done it for ages. I suppose we grew out of it.”

Noah frowns. “How can you outgrow Magical Mystery Day? How can you outgrow cake and adventure?”

I laugh. “Good point.”

Noah takes his car keys from his jeans pocket and presses the key tag. A shiny black Chevy truck just ahead of us beeps and the lights flash on and off.

“How old are you?” Noah asks.

“Fifteen—nearly sixteen.” Instantly my inner voice starts having a freak-out.
Why did you say “nearly sixteen”? It’s going to look like you like him. It’s going to
—

“Right, and I’m eighteen,” Noah says. “We are definitely not too old for cake and adventure.”

We get to the truck and I instantly go to the passenger side. Noah follows me. “What say we make today Magical Mystery Day?” he whispers conspiratorially.

I stare at him. “Seriously?”

He nods and looks around from side to side as if to check that no one’s listening. “We’ve already had some cake, now I can take you on a Magical Mystery Tour of Brooklyn.”

I cannot stop grinning now. “That would be brilliant!”

“Awwwwwesome,” he corrects in a really strong New
York accent. “You’re in the Big Apple now, you have to say, ‘That would be awwwwwesome.’ ”

“That would be awwwwwesome,” I say, opening the truck door.

Noah frowns at me. “Oh, are you driving?”

“What? No. Why do you say—oh . . .” I glance inside the truck and see that everything is back to front and I’ve actually opened the driver’s door. But miraculously I don’t melt with embarrassment. “Sorry, I forgot you drive on the wrong side of the road here.” I slip past Noah to the other side of the truck.

“Hey, we aren’t the ones who drive on the wrong side,” he calls across the truck to me. “We drive on the right side—literally.”

I go to get in the truck and see a battered notepad on the passenger seat. I pick it up and sit down. It feels so weird sitting on this side with no steering wheel in front of me.

“Oh, hey, I’ll take that,” Noah says, taking the notepad from me as he gets into the driver’s seat. He shoves the pad into the glove compartment. I wonder what secrets the pad contains. Maybe Noah’s a budding writer. Maybe he’s a poet. He kind of looks like a poet with his messy hair and big dark eyes. I glance around the truck, once again getting the strange sensation that I’m in some kind of weird parallel universe. The dashboard is covered with CD cases and guitar picks and there’s a knotted string of black beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Even Noah’s truck is Rock-God–tastic.

“Most of the world drives on the right-hand side of the road,” Noah says, putting the key in the ignition. “It’s pretty much only you Brits who drive on the left.”

“Just because most of the world does something, it doesn’t make it right,” I say, putting on my seat belt. “What about war and making kids take science at school and . . . cherry-flavored Coke? Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“Cherry-flavored Coke?” Noah looks at me and raises his eyebrows.

“Extra-wrong!” I say, pulling a fake grimace. “It tastes like medicine.”

It’s only when Noah pulls out onto Park Avenue that it dawns on me that I’ve actually got into a car without feeling any kind of panic. It turns out that chiseled cheekbones and twinkly, dimply smiles are an even better distraction than superhero alter egos and breathing techniques. But as soon as we approach the first huge junction, I start feeling jittery. It was OK yesterday in the taxi because I was sandwiched in the back between Elliot and Mum but being in the front—in what should be the driving seat—is making me feel really vulnerable and exposed.

“So, are you in college?” I ask, gripping onto the edge of my seat.

Noah shakes his head. “Nah, I’m taking a break from studying for a while.”

“What, like a gap year?”

“Kinda. So, Miss Penny, if you were a musical instrument, what would it be?”

I’m starting to realize that Noah isn’t a fan of the standard question. “A musical instrument?”

“Uh-huh.”

A taxi goes zooming past us on the inside lane, causing my heart to skip a beat. I close my eyes and try to pretend that we
aren’t in a car, on a road, potentially about to die. “A cello,” I say, simply because the cello is my favorite instrument.

“Figures,” Noah says.

I open my eyes just enough to give him a sideways glance. “Why?”

“Because cellos are beautiful and mysterious.” Then the weirdest thing happens—Noah’s face actually goes bright red. “Anyways, aren’t you gonna ask me what instrument I’d be?” he says, looking cool again. I feel all weird inside. Like something important just happened but I’m not quite sure what.

“If you were a musical instrument, what would it be?” I ask.

“Today, I reckon I’d be a trumpet.”

“Today?”

“Yes. I go through different instrument phases. Yesterday was definitely a bass-drum day but today I’m feeling way more trumpet.”

“I see,” I say, not really seeing at all. “So, why a trumpet?”

“Because trumpets always sound so happy. Listen.” He presses play on the stereo. The air is filled with the sound of a trumpet playing. Although I don’t recognize the piece of music, I’ve heard enough of my dad’s CD collection to know that it’s jazz. And Noah’s right; the trumpet does sound really cheerful, tootling away. He turns down the volume and looks at me. “We’re gonna be crossing the Brooklyn Bridge soon. Have you seen the bridge yet?”

I shake my head. “No, we only got here yesterday. I haven’t really seen anywhere yet.”

“You haven’t?” Noah looks at me. I shake my head again.
“Well, it’s a good thing this is Magical Mystery Day then, isn’t it?”

I’m just about to reply when a car comes shooting around the corner straight toward me. “Oh no!” I cry, throwing my hands up in fear.

Noah laughs. “It’s OK. They’re allowed to drive on that side. We drive on the
right
side, remember.”

My body is frozen to my seat but my mind is spiraling back to that freezing wet night, the car spinning, Mum screaming, the whole world turning upside down.
Stay calm
, my inner voice urges.
Don’t freak out. Think of Ocean Strong
. But my calm voice is fading away and now all I can hear is the screeching of brakes and my voice yelling for Mum and Dad. I bite down on my bottom lip to stop myself from crying. But it’s no good; it’s like I’m haunted by the accident. I just can’t get it out of my head. A raw heat whooshes through my body like a forest fire. I can’t swallow, I can’t breathe. I need to get out of the car. I feel like I’m going to die.

“I guess it must seem kind of scary, everything being the opposite way around,” Noah continues. His voice sounds faint and muffled beneath the ringing in my ears.

I shut my eyes tight and cling onto the seat. I feel tears trickling down my burning face and I want to wail with despair. Why won’t this stop? Why does this keep happening? Why can’t I get over the accident?

Chapter Eighteen