Every Boy's Got One (35 page)
Read Every Boy's Got One Online
Authors: Meg Cabot
Tags: #Romance, #Humorous, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Travel Diary of
Okay. Okay. Everything is going to be all right. I can figure this out. I can totally figure this out—
No, I can’t. This is a disaster. A total and complete disaster.
What am I going to do????
To: Listserv
Fr: Peter Schumacher
Re: JANE HARRIS
Good morning fellow lovers of Wundercat! There is BIG NEWS today about JANE HARRIS! Her friends who will be getting the marriage both eat the bad oysters last night, and this morning are sick as dogs! YES! They cannot get up out of the beds!
And this is bad because they are supposed to get the form from the Consulate of the US today, so they can have the marriage tomorrow!
But when I drove by the villa this morning on my motorino, to bring JANE HARRIS fresh brotchen, she is very upset, and says, “Ask your grandmother what can be done.” So I get my grandmother, and she comes to the villa and says that nothing can be done from eating the bad oyster, they will have to wait until it has passed through.
Which, if it does not do soon, there will be no marriage tomorrow!
So this is BAD NEWS for JANE HARRIS.
I will keep you informed as news continues! This is Peter Schumacher, #1 Fan Of Wundercat!
Wundercat Lives—4eva!
Peter
Travel Diary of
Oysters. They just HAD to have the oysters.
I warned them. They can’t say I didn’t warn them. Who eats raw shellfish in a foreign country, I ask you? Who? This isn’t Japan. Italy is not known for its raw seafood. What were they THINKING?
Poor Mark. I guess that’s what I heard him throwing up last night. And he’s STILL throwing it up. He can barely move from the bed.
And Holly… my God, when I knocked on their bedroom door to see why they weren’t up yet for our drive to Rome, and Holly answered, she looked like… well, the undead. She hasn’t looked this bad since that Fourth of July we invented the drink with the watermelon balls and vodka (Rockets’ Red Glare).
“I don’t think there’s going to be any wedding,” she said. And then had to run to the bathroom.
What could I do but follow her? It’s not like I haven’t held her hair for her while she barfed plenty of times before—Rockets’ Red Glare in particular.
“Holly,” I said, as gently as I could, when she’d sunk back down onto the bathroom tiles in exhaustion. “You guys HAVE to make it to Rome today. You know tomorrow’s the only day the mayor said he could fit your wedding into the schedule.”
Which turned out not to be the right thing to say, since Holly promptly started to cry.
“I know!” she wailed. “But what can we do? We wouldn’t last five minutes in the car. We’d have to pull over every thirty seconds to throw up. Oh, God, Janie. It’s over. We’re not getting married. Not now, anyway. Not in Italy. And the way everything seems to be going against us… maybe not ever. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe HIS mother is right. Maybe we should just forget it. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.”
I know! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Not meant to be? Holly, I know you don’t feel well, but are you NUTS? You can’t just forget it. You guys HAVE to get married. And you have to get married here, in Italy.”
She just looked at me through miserable, swollen eyes. “Why?”
“Because I already told Darrin!” was what I ALMOST said. I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to have told anyone, though, and at the last possible second changed it to, “Because it’s what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve been planning this forever. And Mark wants it, too, I know it. More than anything. You can’t just give up because of a little food poisoning!”
To which she responded by barfing some more.
I got her back to bed, somehow. Then I found Peter outside with more of those breakfast rolls, and asked him to get his grandmother. Frau Schumacher came over, looking very concerned, and went in to see the stricken couple. Her expression, when she came out of the room again, was grave.
“No good,” she said to me. “Zey vill not make the drive to Roma and back today. Tomorrow, yes. But not today.”
“But it HAS to be today,” I cried. “There’s no other time! The mayor said Wednesday was the only day…and we leave Friday anyway.”
But I know Frau Schumacher is right. She’s downstairs making some hot broth for Mark and Holly to choke down—it doesn’t matter if the lights go out right now, since it’s daytime. A beautiful day, as a matter of fact. The sun is beaming down, and the pool is sparkling, and the breeze is causing the palm fronds to sway gently….
Damn it! Why did they eat those oysters?
And why does this country have to be so BACKWARD??? If a person wants to get married here, and has all the right forms from back in the US, why CAN’T she??? Why do they have to send her all over creation for MORE forms??? Is it some kind of test to see how dedicated they are to the idea of being married? I mean, it’s just a FORM,
anybody
can get a form—
Holy crap.
Anybody
can get a form.
PDA of Cal Langdon
Honest to God, I don’t know how this happened. Last thing I knew, I was sleeping blissfully.
Then, not five minutes ago, a small but very determined missile hit my bed, tearing off my very comfortably arranged sheets and shouting in my ear that it was time to get up and get in the car.
I vaguely recall that this missile seemed feminine in form—not an unpleasant way to be roused. Until I realized just which, precisely, female the form belonged to.
Then a cup of coffee was shoved in my hand, and I was urged to dress. Which I did. And then, when I wandered downstairs, wondering what was happening and why Frau Schumacher was at the stove, making what appeared to be soup of some kind, I was very rudely snatched, shoved outside, pushed into the passenger seat of the car, and driven off at considerable speed down the driveway by someone who is apparently not exactly familiar with a stick shift.
A someone who looks remarkably like Jane Harris.
On crystal meth.
Oh, that’s right. It’s all coming back to me now. We’re supposed to be escorting Mark and Holly to Rome so that they can apply for some sort of form at the US embassy.
Except that for some reason, Mark and Holly do not appear to be in the car with us.
“Um, Jane,” I ask, in what I hope is a soothing tone that won’t startle the young woman beside me, looking so wild-eyed behind the wheel. “Aren’t we forgetting something? Or should I say, someone? A pair of someones?”
She seems barely to register my presence in the car, she’s checking so frantically in the rearview mirror for a hole in the oncoming traffic so she can make the turn onto the strada principale.
“Mark and Holly have food poisoning,” is her surprising response. “They won’t be able to make it. We have to go without them.”
“I see.” I’m trying to sound as reasonable as I can, seeing as how she is clearly unaccustomed to driving and conversing at the same time. “And am I to understand that we’ll be applying for whatever form it is they’re lacking?”
“Yeah.” She tosses something into my lap. Looking down, I see that it’s a pair of passports. “Don’t worry, I got their passports. Their birth certificates, too.”
This strikes me as highly amusing.
“And do you really think that the US embassy is going to issue this form to us just because we’re holding our friends’ passports and birth certificates,” I ask, playing along, “simply because we ask them to, as a favor?”
“No,” comes Jane Harris’s somewhat startling reply. “They’re going to issue the form because we’re going to tell them we’re Mark Levine and Holly Caputo.”
This is definitely the funniest thing I’ve heard all morning.
“Isn’t that going to be a little difficult?” I ask. “Seeing as how Mark is dark-haired and wears glasses, and I’m fair-haired, and have twenty/twenty vision?”
Next thing I knew, Mark’s glasses were hurled into my lap.
“I filched them off his bedside table,” my kidnapper explained. “And you can’t tell his hair is that dark in the picture. It’s black and white. You could say it got bleached in the sun, or whatever, if anybody asks. Which they won’t.”
Sadly, I’m starting to wake up now. Even more sadly, this is all starting to seem less and less like a dream, and more and more like a real-life nightmare.
“Wait a minute. Are you serious?” Because she LOOKS totally serious. And we are hurtling down the strada principale—past signs that say ROMA—at a very serious speed. “We’re going to POSE as Mark and Holly?”
“Why not?” She is passing a large truck carrying—predictably— numerous live chickens, stacked high. They squawk at us hysterically. “All we have to do is show our IDs and sign some forms. What’s the big?”
“The BIG,” I say (since when did people start leaving off the word ‘deal’ when asking what the big deal is, anyway? Is this an artist thing? Mary does this, as well), “is that that is what I believe is called forgery. And probably perjury. And maybe a whole bunch of other things, as well.”
Jane Harris has not once turned her head in my direction. She is wearing sunglasses, which makes it extremely difficult to see her eyes, and thus whether or not she has gone absolutely and completely bonkers.
“Oh, please,” she’s saying. “Like we’ll get caught. Mark’s a doctor, remember? No one can read his signature anyway. And I’m an artist. I’ve been forging Holly’s mom’s name on report cards and tardy slips for ages. I think I can easily manage to do Holly’s. You can just scribble something for Mark’s.”
This has progressed from a pleasant game to an entirely unpleasant situation.
“Jane,” I try again. “Are you kidnapping me and forcing me to go to Rome with you to commit fraud against the US government?”
She refuses to see the gravity of the situation, replying merely, “Oh, shut up and drink your coffee and keep writing in your little machine there, if it makes you feel better. There’s some of Peter’s brotchen in the back if you want it. And I’m not kidnapping you. I’m not demanding a ransom from anybody for you. As if anybody’d pay it if I did.”
There must be some sort of Italian law that forbids this sort of thing… taking advantage of a man in a less than wakeful state, and forcing him to drive hundreds of kilometers to a city he only just came from a day or two before, where he will be forced to impersonate another man….
She’s wearing Adidas, but I can see still see the cat tattoo. Is it because it’s so early, or can it really be… well… winking at me?
Travel Diary of
This is going to work. This HAS to work.
I know Cal doesn’t think it’s going to (big surprise).
But what does HE know? He’s been against those two getting together since before any of this even started. Look at him now, asking for the key to the men’s room. He STILL looks as if he doesn’t know quite what hit him. His hair is sticking up in the back in the most peculiar—but strangely erotic—fashion.
EROTIC???? What am I THINKING???? I am on a MISSION here. I can’t be thinking about sex at a time like this!!!
This HAS to work. We’re halfway to Rome now, and it’s only a little after ten. We should get there before lunch… well, probably just as they’re closing for lunch.
But that’s okay. It’s the US embassy. They can’t POSSIBLY take a four-hour lunch at the US embassy. They’re AMERICAN, for God’s sake. They probably take an hour lunch, like all normal people. So we can fill out the form, get the APOSTILLE, and get back on the road by two or three o’clock, and be home before dark.
PLEASE let them only take an hour for lunch….
