Meant to Be (3 page)

Mrs. Tennison scurries onto the bus last and begins surveying the crowd. Her palazzo pants and floral tunic whip students in the face as she rushes down the aisle.

“Do we have everyone? Is anyone missing?” she asks, counting heads, then wringing her hands. “It appears we’re one short!” Her mostly penciled-in dark brows furrow together.

“I’m here! Never fear!” Jason bounds onto the bus, laughing, and squeezes down the aisle past Mrs. Tennison. “Thanks for holding the bus for me, Mrs. T.”

“Jason, please stay with the group. It is very important that we all stick together.” Fifteen minutes in London, and already Mrs. Tennison is massaging her temples. Clearly, this is going to be a rough ten days for her, too.

“Sorry, Mrs. T. Never again, Scout’s honor.” He grins, shuffling down the aisle. He pauses by my seat, his nose crinkling. “Hazelnut, Book Licker? I would have taken you for a black-coffee kind of girl.” I clench my fists.

Babbling brooks and cool breezes. Birds and hearts and rainbows and Mark’s third tooth to the left of center …

“Thank you, Jason,” Mrs. Tennison sighs, pulling out a thick file folder. The bus rumbles to a start, and Mrs. Tennison has to grasp the nearest seat so as not to fall into someone’s lap. She nearly grabs Deirdre Robinson’s fluffy head of crazy-curl hair, but Deirdre executes a quick duck-and-weave maneuver that I’m guessing she picked up on the fencing team (of which she is the sole member).

“Okay, everyone, listen up,” Mrs. Tennison says, clearing her throat. “I’ve got some good news. There was a mix-up with the hotel, and everyone ended up in single rooms.”

A cheer rises from the bus—a cheer even I join in on. A single room means I’ll be spared from sharing with Sarah Finder and her explosion of designer jeans and faux Louis Vuitton bags. Thank GOD. This trip is getting better by the minute!

“Okay, okay,” Mrs. Tennison says, waving her hands to shush us. “Moving on. Your curfew will be at ten p.m., and you
will
respect it. I will be holding on to your keys for the night so I can be sure you’re in your rooms and not …” She trails off, and I know that she’s imagining half the bus getting arrested and the other half getting pregnant.

All the other students begin grumbling and groaning. Evie even
squeaks out, “But that’s fascist!” I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know what “fascist” means.

I don’t mind the curfew. Early to bed, early to rise and swim my laps.

Mrs. Tennison goes on: “The way we’re going to ensure that no one wanders off on their own is an old standby: the buddy system.”

All around me, people are grabbing hands with their buddies, but having attended many summers at Camp Tanasi, I know exactly what’s coming, and I feel a cold knot of dread building in my stomach.

“I’ve
assigned
partners for the duration of the trip. Not only will you be responsible for keeping track of your buddy, but they’ll also be your partner for all activities and assignments. Remember, this is an
educational
tour of the UK.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Evie mutters from two rows back. Evie spent the end of the flight paging through
The Fashionista’s Guide to London Shopping
. It’s the first book I’ve ever seen her read.

“You will be responsible for your partner for the duration of this trip,” Mrs. Tennison continues, winding up for a speech I suspect she practiced in her bathroom mirror before we left. “Their success is
your
success. You’ll not only be together on our regularly scheduled tours, but you’ll be keeping each other company during assigned cultural hours. You’re probably thinking, What are cultural hours?”

“Um, no.” Evie’s eye roll is practically audible in her voice. Luckily, Mrs. Tennison doesn’t hear her.

“Your cultural hours are daily two-hour blocks of time, in which you are permitted to explore London on your own. With your partner, of course!”

“Shopping time!” Evie squeals.

This Mrs. Tennison
does
hear. She shoots Evie an evil eye before charging on. “
Cultural
hours are to be spent exploring even more of the
culture
of London,” she says, not so subtly emphasizing the words, “and
this does
not
include shopping. I will be keeping track of your hours via your daily reflection papers, where you will write about all the wonderful British experiences you’ve had throughout the day.”

My classmates continue their chorus of groans. I don’t know what they expected. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t a vacation. It’s for credit, and I plan to get an A.

Mrs. Tennison begins running through the list of partners, and I strain to hear my name. As she moves through the list, I start to notice a pattern. Brian Arnett is paired with Jamie Barnes. Evie Ellston with Sarah Finder. Tony Harrison and Logan Hunt. Lucy Karns and Adam Landry. Uh-oh. This can only mean …

“Julia Lichtenstein, you’ll be with Jason Lippincott.”

No. No no no. I
cannot
be with Jason. First of all, I just told him to leave me alone. Forever. I can’t even
look
at Jason, much less tour castles with him. Second of all, what will we even talk about? Aside from our brief encounter today, Jason and I haven’t so much as interacted since he stuffed tampons into my locker in ninth grade. He sits across the cafeteria with his lacrosse teammates and their giggly groupies at lunch and spends most of class time trying to embarrass our teachers with “that’s what she said” jokes. I don’t know how to play lacrosse, and I’m pretty sure he’s never read … well, a book. Plus he’s going to spend 90 percent of the trip figuring out ways to meet girls, which is going to be supremely annoying for the person who has to keep track of him. Which, apparently, is me.

But before I can ask if there is any room for negotiation, Mrs. Tennison pulls out a box filled with identical silver cell phones, each topped with a sticky note containing the phone’s number in neat script. (Mrs. Tennison may be a psychotic mess, but she has beautiful penmanship.)

“These are your temporary cell phones—or ‘mobiles,’ as they say in
England,” she says, tittering a little, as she moves up the aisle, distributing phones. My sticky note reads:
+442026415644

I stare at the jumble of unfamiliar numbers, trying to commit them to memory. The standard country code is 44, so that’s easy. Twenty … That was dad’s jersey number in high school; he was captain of the football team. The numbers rearrange in my head, forming different patterns. Then I see it: 26 April, 1564. It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! That must be a sign.

There’s only one remaining number to memorize, and that’s easy enough: the last four is my GPA. Dad’s jersey number, Shakespeare’s birthday, my GPA. I mouth it silently to myself until it’s committed to memory.

Mrs. Tennison is prattling on. “These phones are pay-as-you-go. They’ve been preloaded with twenty minutes’ worth of credit, which is exactly the amount of time you should need to call the police, a taxi, or me. This means these phones are meant for
emergencies
.” She says the word with as many syllables as she can stretch. She places the last phone in Susan Morgan’s tanned palm and then whirls around to face the crowd. “Any credit you use beyond those twenty minutes you will need to purchase on your own. However, I am not giving you permission to spend this entire trip on the phone. Excuse me, Miss Ellston?”

I turn around to see Evie with her nose already buried in her phone, her manicured fingers tapping furiously at the keys. At the mention of her name, her head snaps up at the exact moment she snaps her phone shut.

“Yes, Mrs. Tennison?” she says brightly.

“What were you doing on that phone, Miss Ellston?” Mrs. Tennison crosses her arms over her chest and mimics Evie’s peaches-and-cream tone.

“Oh, nothing,” she says. Her voice gets even more syrupy, which
happens whenever she’s lying to an authority figure. I’ve been in at least a dozen classes with her, so I’m kind of an expert.

“Miss Ellston, thank you for reminding me to bring up one final point. As I have said, these phones are for emergencies. They are
not
for texting or Twittering or Facebooking or connect four-ing or socializing or anything else that will keep you from truly experiencing your time here in London. This trip is an opportunity for you to disconnect from technology and connect with a vibrant city full of art, culture, and history. If I discover that your phone use is proving too much of a distraction, I will confiscate it immediately. You will then have to rely on your partner’s phone for the rest of the trip. Do I make myself clear?”

The bus breaks into a scattered chorus of yeses and some random grumbling. I flip my phone open, wishing I could use it to send an SOS to Phoebe. I even start typing a text.
Help! Partnered with Jason! Suicide likely, homicide imminent!
But because I’m a rule follower, I flip the phone shut without sending it.

Why does every1 think a girl who prefers bks to ppl must be in want of a life? —J

T
he bus pulls away from the airport, and I practically press my nose against the windowpane. I refuse to miss a single second of England just because I’m stressing about Jason. We merge onto the M4 and begin speeding toward London. Everything looks
greener
here than at home. I gaze out over rolling hills dotted with patches of wildflowers and huge shade trees. It’s a cool but sunny spring afternoon. I wish I could open my window and breathe in the air, because it looks like it smells earthy, heavy, and sweet.

The green hills give way to a vista of dense row houses and large supermarkets. For a minute I’m disappointed; we could be in Cleveland, Ohio. Then we veer off the busy motorway, and the street suddenly gets narrow, the buildings more opulent. This is the London I’ve always imagined. Everything looks like it is or was, at one time, a castle. Even the McDonald’s, with its stone facade located beneath a stately brick apartment building, looks impressive.

Our bus disappears underground, rolling through a tunnel before
emerging onto the street. We pass a lush green garden filled to the brim with beautiful flowers. I can’t wait to take my old copy of
Pride and Prejudice
and read it in a real English garden. Although knowing me, I will probably get attacked by a wild goose or something. (I have goose-related issues. Don’t judge me.)

Before I know it, we’re in the thick of the city, passing locations I’ve heard my mom describe to me since I was a kid: Kensington High Street, Imperial College, Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus. For a second my throat tightens up and I find myself holding my breath. London is where Mom and Dad went on their honeymoon, and they always talked about coming back here. Dad used to joke that Paris was the city of love for unimaginative folks. “Give me those guards in the big fuzzy hats any day,” he’d say, laughing and planting a kiss on Mom’s forehead. They’d even saved up for a tenth-anniversary trip, but when Dad got sick, the trip was quickly forgotten.

My parents met as teenagers attending rival high schools. Mom had watched Dad across the football field for two seasons, always wanting to talk to him. One day she twisted her ankle while out on a run, and Dad’s was the first car to come by. He picked her up and drove her to the emergency room, and they were together all the way until he died. My mom has always said that it was fate, and I know she’s right. It could have been any old Good Samaritan who picked her up, but fate brought her my dad.

Most people I know have parents who are separated or divorced or somewhere in between. But in all my memories of my parents together, they’re always laughing or dancing around the kitchen or holding hands. They had more bliss in the decade they were married than most people get in a lifetime.

Fate worked for them, and it’ll work for me.

That’s why Mark Bixford is the guy. I know it. I’ve only been in love with him since we were
five
, when he was my next-door neighbor. We
did all the usual kindergarten-neighbor stuff: running through the sprinkler, riding bikes, trying to swing so high we’d flip over the bar. We’d pretend we were spies, war heroes, teachers, royalty, the president.… We even had a pretend wedding once. Mark went home to put on his black T-shirt (the closest approximation a five-year-old has to a tuxedo), I threw a pillowcase over my head for a veil, and an old stuffed lion I named Growly presided over the blessed event under the willow tree in my backyard. The wedding ended with my very first kiss, and I’ve been smitten with Mark Bixford ever since. On my sixth birthday, he presented me with a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with only the lemon Starbursts, my absolute favorite flavor. (They sort of remind me of lemon Pledge, and my favorite chore as a kid was helping my mom dust all the antiques in our house.) Mark had saved up his allowance to buy a case of Starbursts, then picked out the yellow ones for me.

You see why I love him?

But the next year his dad got transferred to Pittsburgh, and I thought he was gone forever. I resolved to find a new crush, but over the years I kept thinking about Mark, wondering if maybe our “wedding” might have been a sign, or a premonition.