“Hey, a choice is a choice,” Logan remarked.
“Thank you, O Wise One,” I said.
Stacey sighed. “Not all of us are so thrilled about the trip, Mary Anne.”
“Right,” Kristy agreed. “We have to share it with this strange school. Who knows what those kids’ll be like?”
“That’s not it,” Stacey murmured.
“Don’t tell me,” Claudia said. “Harrods is closed for renovations. You won’t be able to shop.”
“I’ll be shopping,” Stacey replied. “But I’ll be with Mom. And possibly Robert.”
Robert is Stacey’s former boyfriend. Mom is Stacey’s permanent mother.
Personally, I think they’re both pretty cool. But I’m not Stacey.
“Hey, your mom’s not the only chaperone,” I reminded her. “When we split into groups, go with Mr. Dougherty or a chaperone from that Canadian school.”
“Right,” Stacey muttered. “Abby, you don’t know my mom. She used to lead me around New York City with a telephone cord attached to my waist!”
Claudia nodded solemnly. “But she gave that up when you turned thirteen.”
“Don’t worry,” Dawn reassured her. “I thought Jeff would ruin my family trip, but I didn’t even notice he was there. There’s just so much to see.”
“You went to England?” Kristy asked.
“No. France.” Dawn’s eyes grew faraway and misty. “The Loire Valley…. I still remember the names of the chateaux: Chambord, Chenonceaux, Chervery, Chinon —”
“Champagne?” asked Watson, holding out a tray of drinks.
“That was beautiful too,” Dawn said.
“The drink, Dawn,” Kristy said. “Not the region.”
Actually it wasn’t champagne. Watson was offering us sparkling apple cider. Which, in my opinion, tastes much better.
We each took one beautiful, fluted glass. And Mrs. Brewer announced, “I want to propose a toast. Here’s to a safe, educational trip!”
“A fun trip!” Kristy called out.
“To adventure!” Mallory piped up.
“To shopping!” Stacey said.
“To Mary Anne, Claudia, and Dawn!” Jessi said.
Logan held up his hand. “Uh, hello?”
“And Logan too,” Mary Anne said.
“To a break from baby-sitting!” I added.
“Yyyyyes!”
I don’t know who yelled that.
But we all drank to it.
What a weird expression.
That’s what Mr. Dougherty had been saying since we’d arrived at the airport. “Next stop, the Old Country!”
When you think of it, though, it makes no sense. Europe isn’t “older” than any other part of the world. I mean, dinosaurs lived in the Americas too.
Oh, well. I guess that’s why Mr. Dougherty teaches creative writing, not science.
As our plane rose higher over the Atlantic, I could see Mr. D deep in conference with Mallory and a couple of other kids, giving them advice about their personal journals. He was probably telling them to seek out places where the famous writers hung out. Shakespeare’s favorite snack shop. Whatever.
He was wearing a beret. I think that is so corny. I remember the time Dad bought one, way back when our family went to Ireland. He thought it looked cosmopolitan. Mom thought it looked dorky. So it stayed in his suitcase.
Fortunately, Mom was being very kind to Mr. D. She hadn’t mentioned a thing about the beret. Nor about the stray pieces of honey-roasted peanut that were nesting in his big handlebar mustache.
Unlike everyone else in our group, I never received a bag of those peanuts. Mom had grilled the flight attendant about the sugar content, and then she made a scene, pointing me out and demanding that I be given a nonsugary snack.
As if I couldn’t have taken care of that myself. Without making everyone in the cabin stare at me.
Grrrr.
Do I sound like a horrible daughter? I’m not. I love my mom. Because I’m an only child, and Mom’s divorced, we’re super-close. But in a way, that’s the problem. Sometimes — just sometimes — it’s nice to have a break.
I was sitting, by the way, in seat 29A. Mom was sitting in seat 14C.
I think Mom had imagined she’d be in seat 29B, next to me. The separate seating wasn’t my fault. As I approached the ticket counter, Mom was off fetching kids from the candy shop (including Alan Gray, the Plague of the Eighth Grade, who should have been banned from the flight because he is definitely hazardous waste).
Well, maybe I did slide closer to the counter just then. I didn’t exactly wait for Mom.
Anyway, Robert was standing next to me at the time, so the agent assigned us seats together.
I felt a little funny about that. Uncomfortable. I was hoping I’d be closer to Kristy, Abby, Jessi, and Mal.
Now, sitting in the plane, I could hear their voices, chattering away happily, while I sat silently next to my former boyfriend.
I mean, I like Robert. He’s a great guy. Funny and kind and handsome. We had fun times back when we were going out. But that was so long ago. Phase One of our complicated relationship.
In Phase Two, we broke up.
In Phase Three, we made up and agreed to be just friends.
In Phase Four, Robert became needy and sad and depressed all the time. And he started treating me as if I were his girlfriend/best friend/mother/shrink all rolled into one.
In Phase Five, we talked it out. He seemed to understand how I felt: that I needed a little breathing room and he needed to lean on other people, not just me.
Robert got the message. He began having some long talks with his baseball coach, who really seemed to help. Over the early summer, Robert and I hadn’t seen much of each other. Not that we’d been avoiding contact. We just finally became real, honest-to-goodness friends.
I liked it that way. A little distance was just what we needed.
So I was feeling nervous on the plane. I was worried I’d given him the wrong signal at the airport counter. Did he think I’d plotted to sit next to him?
“This is way cool,” Robert exclaimed. “It’s too bad we can’t see outside.” (We were taking a night flight, so we’d have a full day ahead of us when we arrived in London.)
“Don’t tell me this is your first plane ride,” I said.
“First one overseas,” he replied.
“Uh-huh. Wow.”
I needed to loosen up. I was tense.
I took a deep breath. My brain started putting together a conversation.
I turned toward Robert. He was facing away from me. Looking at a pair of extremely tight bell-bottoms.
Well, at the girl in the bell-bottoms. Jacqui Grant.
“Are you going to finish those?” Jacqui asked sweetly, nodding toward his bag of honey-roasted peanuts. Which was obviously empty.
“These?” Robert held up the bag. “Sorry.”
Jacqui giggled. “I am such a pig.”
Robert smiled shyly.
“Isn’t this the clearest day?” Now Jacqui was standing in the aisle, leaning over Robert.
Way over Robert. With a low-cut shirt that showed … well, a lot.
Puh-leeze. I mean, how obvious can you get?
This was no accident. I know Jacqui pretty well. We used to hang out together. She got me into big trouble once at a rock concert. She sneaked liquor into the stadium and was caught — and she blamed me. I have never, ever forgotten that.
Jacqui has tried to flirt with Robert before, but it didn’t work. She’s not his type. He doesn’t go for girls with red-and-green-dyed hair and nose rings.
“You can really see so much, Jacqui,” I said.
Not that I cared.
I was just annoyed at Jacqui’s obnoxiousness.
That’s all.
Jacqui finally gave up when the captain turned on the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign. By that time the meal was about to be served.
Not much to tell about the rest of the flight. The airl
ine’s diabetic meal was a salad that tasted as if it had earned frequent flyer miles for life. The in-flight movie put me to sleep. Which was good, since we were flying through the middle of the night. Eventually I did have a chance to walk around the cabin and visit my friends. Of course, Jacqui moved right in on Robert. And she wasn’t the only one. At one point she was sitting in my seat while Kathleen Lopez and Kara Mauricio were facing him from the seats in front.
How did I feel about this? A little strange, I have to admit. But hey, it’s a free country. And it was good to see him talking to someone besides me.
When we started our descent into London, the plane began bucking. You couldn’t see a thing out the windows. Just morning fog. The captain kept telling us that things were fine, and I tried to believe him.
But when those wheels hit the ground, my knuckles were white from grabbing the armrest.
When we finally stepped onto solid land, I was so relieved.
Now, I have done a fair amount of traveling, and most airports look the same. But the minute I stepped into Heathrow Airport, I wanted to scream with delight.
I don’t know why. Maybe it was the relief. Or maybe the unfamiliar billboards. The accent of the airport announcer. The £ before all the prices on the ads.
It all just felt … so totally, fantastically foreign.
Jessi was twirling around on the tile floor. “Even the air smells different!”
“Tallyho!” Mr. Dougherty suddenly called out, marching toward the baggage claim area. “Once more into the breach!”
Nobody was paying much attention to him. We were all yakking like crazy. Alan was trying to sneak off into a sweetshop. Abby and Kristy were reading billboards and laughing at the strange phrases.
It was only when things started to slow down a little that I realized how tired I was. After all, it was still the middle of the night in Stoneybrook!
Mom had to usher us all to the baggage area, which was total, absolute chaos.
At least one other flight was sharing our conveyor belt. People were blocking every inch of it, so we had to squeeze between them whenever we saw our suitcases. Little kids were screaming and running around, and Alan Gray actually stopped the carousel for a long time because he sat on it.
It seemed like hours before we retrieved everything, and then we had to wait in line for customs. By this time, I was dying for a nap.
“Are they going to search us?” Mallory asked.
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Dougherty reassuringly. “It’s just a formality. They only search the suspected terrorists.”
Mr. D was one of the first ones through. Mom waited until the end, herding the rest of us. (I felt bad for her. Mr. D seemed to be in his own world.)
Mallory, Jessi, Kristy, Abby, and I didn’t stop jabbering. The customs officials just stamped our passports and waved us by.
As we dragged our luggage toward the exit, I heard a commotion. Mom’s voice. Pleading.
I spun around.
“There must be some mistake,” she was saying as she walked behind two customs officials, who were heading toward a small office.
Between them, looking very scared, was Alan Gray.
“Oh my lord …” I mumbled.
Kristy had a different reaction. I’ll bet her laugh could have been heard halfway to Wales.
* * *
Well, guess why Alan was stopped. He had been acting suspicious on purpose — pretending to hide stuff in potted plants, tying a kerchief over his mouth, speaking in a nonsense language.
I figured the experience would quiet him down. But no. He was proud of himself. He said they had tortured him, tied him to a chair, shone flashlights in his eyes, and asked him about his connections to the Stoneybrook Liberation Front.
Alan Gray is such a jerk.
Fortunately he sat far from me on the bus to our hotel. The ride kind of freaked me out, even though I knew that the English drive on the left side of the road. It felt as if we were heading for an accident anyway. But I grew used to it. Before long my nose was plastered to the window, like everyone else’s.
London is mega-cool. Crowded, narrow streets, a little like Greenwich Village in NYC, but with much older buildings. Even though we were all tired, our excitement jolted us awake.
As we came closer to our hotel, we passed an enormous park.
“Kensington Palace,” Jessi read from a sign. “Can we stop in?”
“We’re scheduled to take a tour later this week,” Mom said.
“Maybe that’s where Victoria Kent lives,” Abby suggested.
“Oh? A member of the royal family?” asked Mr. Dougherty.
“Like, forty-ninth in line to the throne,” I explained.
Mr. Dougherty laughed good-naturedly. “She’s probably in one of the lower-priced palaces.”
As the bus continued to wind through the streets, Mallory suddenly let out a gasp. “Baker Street!”
“Yeah, I could go for some pastries,” Kristy said.
Mallory shook her head. “No! That’s where Sherlock Holmes lived!”
“I knew that,” Kristy muttered.
“And there’s Marylebone Lane, where Charles Dickens wrote several of his books,” Mr. Dougherty said.
“Kristy knew that too,” Abby remarked.
Kristy stuck out her tongue.
Before long, we pulled up to our hotel, the Cardington Inn. It had begun to rain, so we raced to move our luggage out of the cargo hold on the bus and into the front lobby.
It wasn’t at all what I expected. I guess I’ve seen too many Fawlty Towers reruns with Mom, so I had pictured a run-down place with eccentric characters running around.
The Cardington was as modern and comfy as a Holiday Inn.
Just inside, we were met by a balding man in a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe.
“The return of the colonists!” Mr. Dougherty announced, shaking the man’s hand. “From New England to Old. I’m Dougherty, from the Stoneybrook Middle School.”
“Phelps,” replied the man. “From the Cotswolds.”
Then, without another word, he walked out the front door.
Mr. Dougherty looked bewildered.
“He’s a guest,” Mom whispered.
We were cracking up. Poor Mr. Dougherty was bright red.
Mom quickly found the desk marked RECEPTION and spoke with a clerk.
“The other school has already arrived,” she announced to us. “Let’s settle into our rooms, and I’ll find out when and where the two groups are going to meet.”
The clerk handed Mom a big envelope and said, “Take the lift to the third story. And heavy rain is on its way, so if you do go out, remember your macs, wellies, and bumbershoots!”
As we piled onto the “lift” (which means “elevator”), we were politely trying not to laugh.
Except Alan Gray. “Bumbershoots?” he cried out. “Sounds like some kind of weird vegetable.”
“You have relatives here?” asked Kristy.
Ding! The lift opened on the third floor (which was really the fourth floor, but the English count them differently). Mom was handing out room assignments. “Jessi and Mal: three-oh-seven … Abby and Kara: three-ten … Stacey and Kristy: three-twelve …”
I looked at Kristy. She looked at me. “Yyyes!” we exclaimed at the same time.
My excitement lasted about two minutes.
It ended when I flipped my suitcase onto my bed and opened it.
I recognized nothing inside. Tweed pants, business shirts, argyle socks, boxer shorts — it was all men’s stuff.
“Uh-oh,” Kristy said, reaching for a metal canister tucked into the middle of the neatly piled clothing.
“Don’t touch it!” I said. “It doesn’t belong to —”
“What the heck is this?”
Kristy turned the canister around, revealing a label:
HANDLE WITH CARE
HUMAN ASHES
* * *
REMAINS OF
MR. D. PETROPOULOS
“What do you mean, ashes?” screamed Ms. McGill.
“Look!” Stacey grabbed the container and held it out.
I thought Ms. McGill was going to faint. “Oh my lord. Stacey, do you know what that is?”
“Yes! What am I going to do, Mom?”
“Put that thing down!”
“It’s not a thing. It’s a person.”
“Put it down right this minute! And … and go wash your hands!”
Stacey dropped the canister. It’s a good thing it landed in the suitcase, or Mr. D. Petropoulos would have been all over our hotel room floor.
I am so bad. I should not have been laughing. But I couldn’t help it.
“It’s not funny, Kristy,” Stacey growled as she ran past me to the bathroom.
She was right. This was serious.
Morbid.
Tragic, really.
And not only for Stacey.
I mean, right that minute, some guy was opening up his suitcase, expecting to find his ash can — and pulling out designer dresses instead.
Just thinking about it made me laugh.
“I don’t believe this is happening,” Ms. McGill said, pacing the room. “What do we do now?”
“I know.” It was time to make myself useful. I went to the suitcase and flipped over the ID tag. “‘Louis P. Anderson,’” I read. “‘Forest Canyon Drive, Parker, Colorado.’”
“Let’s contact the airline,” Ms. McGill said, picking up the phone.
Stacey ran back into the room. “Wait! Doesn’t this seem weird to you? I mean, why would this guy be carrying around someone else’s ashes?”
“That’s none of our business,” Ms. McGill said.
“He might be … a smuggler or something,” Stacey continued, a bit hysterically. “Or a serial killer. And we have evidence. If he finds out who we are, he could come after us.”
“Stacey, you’ve been reading too many crime novels.” Ms. McGill tapped out a number on the phone. “Our top priority is to get your luggage back.”
“Let’s head over to Baker Street and find Sherlock,” I suggested.
I was just trying to lighten things up.
Neither Stacey nor Ms. McGill was amused.
“Yes, hello, I need the number for Interworld Airways,” Ms. McGill said into the receiver.