Airhead

by Meg Cabot

Chapter 11

  I woke to the sound of a buzzer. At first I couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. That’s because, for a minute or so, I thought I was in my own room. I reached out, fumbling for my alarm clock. But instead of my fingers coming into contact with hard plastic, all I felt was warm skin. This was unusual, to say the least. What was even more unusual was that when I opened my eyes, I saw I wasn’t in my room at all. Or even in the last place I remembered waking up, the hospital. No, I was in Nikki Howard’s downtown loft, where I’d apparently fallen asleep on the living room couch – with my head on Brandon Stark’s chest, no less. When I jerked myself to an upright position – completely startled by the intimate way in which I’d curled myself up to a complete and utter stranger – I got a head rush. Not just a head rush, but a headache. It only took a second or two to remember why. And when I did, I groaned and dropped my face to my knees, Nikki Howard’s long blonde hair falling all around me like a tent. Cosy – Nikki Howard’s dog – didn’t seem to like that very much. She wiggled her way past my hair and on to my lap so she could give me a good-morning lick. Then the buzzer went off again. ‘Oh God,’ I groaned, and, lifting Cosabella, I staggered across the living room, looking for the source of the sound so I could make it stop. It was morning. The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was already a bright autumnal blue. But that didn’t seem to trouble the two FONs who’d fallen asleep beside me and who continued to doze undisturbed. Lulu Collins looked like a little angel, with her pageboy all messed up and her mascara smudged. And Brandon Stark, all six and a half feet of him, lay half on and half off the couch, snoring lightly, the television remote in his hand. On the screen over the fireplace flickered soundless images of famous faces. It was MTV, on mute. The buzzer sounded again and Lulu, over on the couch, groaned and pulled the cashmere blanket we’d all been sharing over her head. I realized the sound was coming from some sort of intercom located to one side of the door to the elevator. Not knowing what else to do – but desperate to make the sound stop – I lifted the handset that was connected to the wall where the buzzing seemed to be coming from. ‘Hello?’ I croaked into the handset. ‘Sorry to wake you, Miss Howard,’ said a man’s voice I didn’t recognize (of course), ‘but Mr Justin Bay is here, and he’s asking to see you. ’ Justin Bay? The star of the Journeyquest movie (which blew)? Justin Bay wanted to see me? Then I remembered. He wasn’t there to see me at all. He was there to see Nikki Howard. But wait. Why? Wasn’t he Lulu Collins’s boyfriend? I remembered the pink sapphire she’d shown me that time she’d visited me in the hospital, when I’d hoped she’d been a hallucination. Hadn’t she said that ‘Justin’ had given it to her? Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d said. ‘He must mean Lulu,’ I said. ‘But she’s asleep—’ ‘No, Miss Howard,’ the doorman – because that’s who it had to be, right? – said. ‘Mr Bay says to tell you he’s here specifically to see you, and that he’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell Miss Collins, and if you’d come down to meet him. He says it’s important. ’ I stood there staring at the intercom in confusion. Justin Bay wanted to see Nikki Howard, but he didn’t want her to tell Lulu. What was going on here? ‘He also says,’ the doorman went on in a slightly bored voice, ‘that he’s not leaving until you see him, and that this time he really means it. ’ Whoa! I stared at the intercom some more. Why did Justin Bay need to see Nikki Howard so badly, but didn’t want Lulu to know? I tried to remember what I knew about Justin Bay, which – beyond what I’d read in the pages of Frida’s Us Weekly and that he’d been horrible in the Journeyquest movie as Leander – wasn’t much, except that he was incredibly good-looking. Oh, and rich. Because his dad, Richard Bay, had also been an actor, star of the mega-successful Sky Warrior franchise when he was younger. Now he produced heartwarming family friendly television shows on prime time and raised buffalo (why did Frida keep leaving her celebrity gossip magazines lying around for me to find? Worse, why was I always picking them up and reading them?) on a huge ranch in Montana. Maybe Justin had a surprise for Lulu. Sure, that had to be why he wanted to see Nikki and not her. Right? ‘Do you want me to call the police, Miss Howard?’ was the doorman’s next surprising question. ‘What?’ I squawked in astonishment into the intercom’s handset. ‘No! No, that’s OK. I’ll be right down. ’ ‘Sure thing, Miss Howard,’ the doorman said. ‘I’ll send the elevator up for you. ’ I hung up the handset. OK. Great. I was going to have to talk to Justin Bay. As Nikki Howard though, not as me, because I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t Nikki. It had been hard enough to convince Lulu and Brandon that I wasn’t Nikki Howard. Forget Justin Bay. His portrayal as Leander in the Journeyquest movie had pretty much proven he was the dumbest guy on earth . . . Fine. I could do this. I could – Oh God. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t have time for this. I had to get back to the hospital. I knew now that I had had a good night’s sleep (even if it had been on a couch, in front of Lulu’s demo for her new rock video – she was cutting her first album. Her singing voice wasn’t that bad actually) that I had to find out what was going on, how my parents could have done this to me, why no one had even told me what was going on, what had happened to my old body . . . . . . and Nikki Howard’s brain. I put Cosabella down and darted into Nikki Howard’s bathroom. Yeah. Nikki’s face was still the one that looked back at me in the mirror. No chance that any of this had turned out to be some kind of bizarre nightmare. I splashed some cold water on to it to wash the sleep away, then pulled open a drawer in the hopes of finding a brush, found one and dragged it through my hair – carefully, so as not to hurt the tender sutures at the back of my head. I mean, Nikki’s head – then pulled a toothbrush from the gold cup by the sink. It was Nikki Howard’s toothbrush, but I used it anyway. Because, whatever – my teeth are Nikki Howard’s teeth now. Right? I rinsed and wiped my mouth, then grabbed the first jacket my hands came into contact with – something made out of buttery soft brown suede. I was about to walk out of Nikki’s room, when it hit me that I’d almost walked by her computer without checking it to confirm whether what Brandon had said last night was true. I mean, about me being dead. Sure, Justin was waiting – but Googling myself would only take a second. And besides, if I’d really been in a coma for a month, I probably had a ton of emails. Sure, most of them would be spam, but it would only take a minute to check them and see if maybe Christopher had written . . . But when I opened Nikki’s pink laptop, I saw right away something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that it was a Stark-brand PC, which frankly wasn’t what I’d buy if I was a millionaire supermodel with all the money in the world. It was that the keyboard was sluggish, not responding to my commands quite as soon as it ought to have. It only took a second for me see why. Every time I pressed a letter on the keyboard, the network activity light on Nikki’s modem flashed. Which meant, I knew perfectly well from Christopher’s father’s obsessive belief that all our computers were being monitored by the government, that someone was tracking Nikki Howard’s keystrokes. Her computer – unlike the Commander’s – was totally being spied on. Someone who didn’t spend much time on computers – like, say, a world-famous supermodel – wouldn’t have noticed. But to someone who basically lived on one, like me, it was totally obvious. And deeply, deeply sinister. I pulled my fingers off the keyboard so fast it was like I’d been stung. I hadn’t clicked on anything except Google News. I hadn’t typed in my name or anything else that could have given me away. Still. Talk about creepy. Who’d be spying on Nikki Howard? And why? How interesting could a supermodel’s emails be anyway? Just then I heard the elevator doors open, and I darted from Nikki’s room. The elevator operator – a different one from last night – grinned at me and said, ‘Good morning, Miss Howard. ’ ‘Shh,’ I said, and pointed at the sleeping Lulu and Brandon. They looked so angelic. No way would you guess they were a couple of lunatics who might kidnap someone in the hopes of curing her of brainwashing by ‘Scientologists’.
‘Oh, sorry’ the elevator operator whispered. He held the door open for me. ‘Going down?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, with one last and final look at my ‘captors’. And I stepped into the elevator . . . . . . just as a tiny white blur whizzed past me and into the car. ‘Cosy,’ I hissed at Nikki Howard’s dog, who’d plopped down on to the elevator floor as if she owned it. ‘Get out. You don’t really belong to me. I’m not coming back. Go home. ’ But Cosabella only whined softly. ‘Seriously,’ I whispered. ‘You can’t come. I’m going back to the hospital’ I scooped the tiny dog up and plopped her down on to the white carpeting just outside the elevator door, where I commanded her to ‘Stay’. But one look at that sad, furry little face – not to mention hearing her pathetic whine – and my heart melted. ‘Oh,’ I said, realizing her desire to go with me might actually have nothing to do with her love for me and more to do with a call from nature. ‘Sorry Come on then. ’ And the dog leaped excitedly into the elevator after me, her stumpy tail wagging like a . . . well, I don’t even know what. Thing that wags a lot. The elevator operator smiled at me (well, at Nikki Howard) and closed the door. Then we glided down to the lobby, where he slid the door open again and said, ‘Have a nice day, Miss Howard. ’ ‘I’m not –’ I began. But then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the lobby’s mirrored walls. And I realized the futility of it all. ‘Thanks,’ I said instead. And stepped out of the elevator, with Cosabella at my heels. The strangest thing of all? Even though all I’d done was wash her face and brush her teeth, Nikki Howard still looked gorgeous. Gorgeous enough, anyway, that the UPS guy delivering packages to the mail room dropped his electronic clipboard thingy when he saw me . . . then picked it up, all flustered. Either that, or he was just freaked out to see a celebrity of my magnitude in jeans and Skechers. Somehow I suspect it was the aforementioned gorgeousness. Which might sound like it’s cool. I mean, being so gorgeous that you stop UPS drivers in their tracks. But when it’s just something you were transplanted into? It isn’t really all that much of an accomplishment. I hadn’t really had a chance to notice the night before – having been in the middle of being kidnapped and realizing I was trapped inside someone else’s body and all – but the lobby of Nikki’s building was huge, with a gigantic crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling. Standing directly beneath that chandelier was Justin Bay, looking as if he’d just stepped out from between the pages of one of my sister’s teen magazines. He was dressed casually in jeans, a grey V-necked sweater – and a brown leather jacket. When he saw me coming towards him, his darkly good-looking face twitched, and his gaze darted nervously past my shoulder as if to see if anyone else was getting out of the elevator with me. When he saw it was just me though, he seemed to visibly relax. He even broke into a grin that showed all his white, impossibly even teeth. ‘You came,’ he said, in that voice I recognized from the awful Journeyquest movie, as I approached him. ‘Uh,’ I said. Cosabella had pranced away from me, heading straight towards the revolving doors outside. ‘Yeah . . . but I can only stay a minute. I have to go. Was there something you wanted me to give Lulu?’ Justin’s grin vanished. ‘Lulu?’ His handsome face looked perplexed. ‘Why would I want you to give something to Lulu?’ ‘Um, I don’t know,’ I said. Cosabella was standing on her hind legs, dancing around in front of the revolving doors. I’d been right. She really needed to go. ‘I just figured that’s why you wanted to see me and not her. I thought you had a surprise for her or something. ’ ‘What is this, a joke?’Justin reached out and grabbed one of my hands. And he wasn’t exactly shaking it. He clung to it, while gazing down meaningfully into my eyes with his own pleading and half-filled with tears – just like that scene in Journeyquest the movie when his character Leander pleaded with the evil sorceress not to kill his beloved Alana (played by Mischa Barton). ‘Nikki, where have you been, baby? I’ve been dying. You haven’t returned any of my calls or text messages. It’s been more than a month. Then I hear you’re finally back, and you don’t even call. What did I do wrong? Just tell me. ’ As I stared at him in growing horror as his words sunk in, I became aware of three things at once. One, Justin Bay was in love with me. Well, not with me, but with Nikki Howard. Two, Nikki Howard was apparently a total skank who was slutting around behind her best friend and room-mate Lulu’s back with her boyfriend, Justin. Not to mention behind the back of Nikki’s own boyfriend, Brandon. And three, Nikki Howard’s dog was about to pee on the marble floor of the lobby of her building. ‘Could you just hold that thought?’ I said to Justin, slipping my hand out from his. ‘I just have to let my dog out. ’ ‘Nikki,’ Justin said, his face clouding over with frustration. ‘You can’t—’ ‘Seriously,’ I said. Just hold on a minute. ’ I hurried away from him, and over to the revolving door. ‘Here, Cosy,’ I called to the dog. ‘Here, girl –’ And the little dog darted after me as I pushed on the revolving door and went out into the cool autumn air. As soon as we got outside, Cosabella squatted next to one of the planters beside the building . . . and I realized she hadn’t just needed to pee. I also realized I had nothing to clean it up with. ‘Oh my God. I’m so sorry,’ I apologized to the doorman, who’d been standing a few yards away, flagging down a cab for another resident. He looked at me with an expression of bewildered amusement. ‘Miss Howard,’ he said, ‘I’ll take care of it, like always. ’ Oh my God. Nikki Howard’s doormen clean up after her dog for her? How totally embarrassing. I could feel myself blushing. A detached part of me realized that it was interesting that Nikki Howard blushed so easily. But most of me just continued to be mortified. Also hideously uncomfortable, because of what had just gone on back in the lobby. ‘Really, um,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. If you just have a plastic bag, or something, I’ll clean it up. ’ ‘That’s not necessary, Miss Howard,’ the doorman said, now looking at me as if he thought I’d lost my mind. Apparently Nikki Howard never offered to clean up after her own dog. ‘It’s me, Karl. I’ll take care of it. ’ I wanted to die. I said, ‘Well, OK, Karl. I’m really sorry. Look, I hate to ask, but I, um, have to go. Can you make sure Cosy gets back to the loft?’ No way was I going back into that lobby and facing Justin again. Karl nodded and went to scoop up the little dog – Who took one look at me and began to wail. Not just whine. Not just bark. But howl. Like a tiny coyote. With a bouffant hairdo. What was her problem now? Karl was all too happy to answer that question for me. ‘She misses you,’ Karl said all jovially. But there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his voice. ‘She did this the whole time you were gone last month. ’ Oh my God. I was a horrible person. I had abandoned my dog for more than a month. Then I remembered: she wasn’t my dog. And I wasn’t a horrible person either. Karl didn’t know that the reason Cosabella had been abandoned was because her real owner was – I’m pretty sure – dead. Well . . . in a way. Unless Lulu was right about the whole spirit-transfer thing. Which I was pretty sure she wasn’t. Because such a thing wasn’t physically possibly. ‘Cosy’ I hurried back to the doorman and took the little dog from his hands. Instantly she stopped crying and tried to bury herself inside my jacket. ‘Cosy’ I whispered to her, my heart melting all over again. ‘I can’t take you. You don’t really belong to me. And I’m going back to the hospital. They don’t let dogs in the hospital. Remember?’ But the dog just smiled up at me from inside my jacket, panting happily, her tail thumping against me. And I knew in that instant that I was taking Cosy with me, come hell or high water. Whatever that expression meant. Yeah. My life wasn’t getting unduly complicated or anything. It was kind of ironic that, just as I was thinking this, Justin Bay appeared, looking annoyed. He strode over to me to take my arm. ‘Is this about that ring?’ he leaned down to ask me in a low voice. We were standing on Center Street, a one-way street that was still busy enough that I could barely hear him above the traffic noise. ‘The one I gave Lulu? Because it didn’t mean anything, baby. I only did it to throw her off the scent, becau
se she was getting suspicious about us. You can’t honestly be holding that ring against me—’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I told him. Which was the truth. ‘And I really have to go now –’ His face twisted with emotion. And the next thing I knew, he had hold of both my arms and was hauling me towards him to lower his lips over mine. My second kiss in the past twelve hours was even more devastating than the first one. I could feel this one all the way down to my toes, which instantly curled inside my Skechers. I used to always snort derisively when I got to the parts in Frida’s romance novels where the dukes snatched up the poor but spunky heroines and moulded their bodies against the front of their waistcoats or whatever. I always thought to myself, as the heroines’ bodies went limp in response, ‘Yeah, right. Like that ever happens. ’ Imagine my surprise when my own body – or, I guess I should say, Nikki Howard’s body – went limp in response to Justin Bay’s kiss, right there on Center Street, in front of Karl the doorman, a string of taxis waiting for the lights to turn, a million pigeons and everyone else who might have been looking. I nearly dropped Cosabella – who was getting smushed between us anyway – I was so shocked. Was this normal? Was this how bodies were supposed to react when getting kissed – especially by guys who were practically strangers to me (aside from a passing familiarity due to the pages of gossip magazines)? Or were Justin Bay and Brandon Stark just phenomenally good kissers? Because this kissing thing – seriously, I could totally get into it. Kissing rocked. I was loving the kissing thing. I mean, obviously it was wrong – so wrong – to be kissing Nikki Howard’s best friend’s boyfriend behind her best friend’s back and especially behind Nikki Howard’s boyfriend’s back. Not to mention the fact that, truthfully, I didn’t even like either of these guys. I mean, I still had a monster crush on my own best friend, back home. If he had been the one bending my body back there on Center Street, I swear to God, there probably would have been an explosion or something. Which was why I knew I couldn’t let this kissing business continue, however much Nikki’s body might have wanted it to. What if Christopher came strolling up (for whatever unlikely reason) and saw me with Justin Bay’s tongue rammed down my throat? He hates Justin Bay for what he did to ruin the Journeyquest movie with his terrible acting. And OK, he wouldn’t necessarily know it was me and not Nikki Howard. But that’s beside the point. And what about Lulu? Supposing Lulu woke up and looked out of the window and saw us? True, Lulu had kidnapped me. But she had done it out of the goodness of her heart. It was kind of hard to say anything though, withJustin’s mouth on mine. Awesome as this felt, it just couldn’t go on. It took every ounce of determination I had to wrench my lips from his and say, ‘Um, please stop—’ ‘You know this is what you want,’ Justin said in a thick voice – really! Just like the dukes in Frida’s books! – keeping an iron grip on my arms. The thing was, he was totally right. I did want it. Did I ever. But I wasn’t going to be boneheaded enough to say that. ‘No,’ I said weakly instead, ‘I don’t. It’s wrong. ’ ‘That’s not what you said in Paris,’ Justin reminded me. ‘Um,’ I said, keeping my still throbby mouth carefully averted from his in case he tried to persuade me some more. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been to Paris. Please let go –’ A second later, much to my surprise, he did let go. But not because I’d asked him to. He’d let go because Gabriel Luna, of all people, appeared as if from nowhere and yanked him forcefully off me. ‘I believe the young lady asked you to release her,’ Gabriel said to Justin in his crisp British accent. Whoa! This was getting more and more like one of Frida’s romance novels every minute! In a totally excellent way. ‘Who the hell,’ Justin asked, checking his leather jacket for dents where Gabriel had manhandled it, ‘do you think you are?’ ‘A friend of Nikki’s,’ Gabriel said woodenly in response. An FON! Gabriel Luna had just called himself an FON. ! To me, Gabriel asked, in a much warmer, concerned tone, ‘Are you all right, Nikki?’ I nodded, absently stroking Cosabella, who hadn’t taken too kindly to being squashed against me, and was growling at Justin with all the ferocity of a nine-pound Rottweiler. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just worried about – you know. Who might have seen us. ’ I meant Christopher – and Lulu – of course. But this caused Justin to look all around quickly, as if realizing for the first time that we were actually standing on a fairly busy street corner. Not once did he glance in the direction of the wide floor-to-ceiling windows above us, though. The cad! Or was scoundrel the right word? I’d have to check one of Frida’s books. ‘That’s right,’ Gabriel said mildly, noticing Justin’s sudden alarm. ‘Paparazzi could show up any minute. I thought I saw some around the corner actually, on my way over. ’ And that was all it took to cause Justin to say, ‘I’ll call you later, babe,’ to me before flipping up the collar of his leather jacket and hurrying away. I couldn’t believe it! Lulu, his alleged girlfriend, he didn’t give a second thought to. But paparazzi scared him so badly he took off like a shot! What a jerk. Or rake. Or whatever. Gabriel looked at me and asked, ‘Are you really all right, Nikki?’ I blinked at him . . . then glanced over at Karl, who was staring at both of us with his mouth hanging open a little, his fingers on his cellphone, as if he’d just been about to call nine-one-one. Noticing the direction of my stare, he hastily tucked the phone away. ‘I’m fine,’ I said to Gabriel. ‘Really I just . . . I need to go. Back to the hospital. I . . . I wasn’t supposed to be let out this early and . . . I just need to get back. ’ ‘I know,’ Gabriel said in the same calm voice in which he mentioned the paparazzi. ‘I’ve just come from there. I stopped by to see how you were doing, and I found the place in an uproar because you were gone. Snuck out for a bit of fun last night, did you?’ I stared at him, not understanding what he meant at first. Snuck out for a bit of fun? No, actually, I was kidnapped by two FFBFs dressed as surgeons. But then I realized what he must have walked up and seen – me in front of my (well, Nikki Howard’s) apartment building making out with Justin Bay – and how that had to have looked. And I felt myself blush to my hairline. ‘N-no,’ I stammered. ‘No, it wasn’t like that! Not at all. There was a misunderstanding. It was Lulu! Lulu Collins and Brandon Stark –’ I broke off. I could tell by his expression that I was only making things worse. ‘Look, I just need to get back,’ I said, unable to meet his gaze, I was so mortified. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll see you later. ’ And I turned, Cosabella still in my arms, and headed for Center Street. His voice stopped me before I’d gone a single step. ‘I wouldn’t bother. There are no taxis. ’ ‘Hardly ever are, this time of day,’ Karl, who appeared to be an unapologetic eavesdropper, called from over by the door. ‘Everyone’s heading uptown to work. Give it an hour. ’ An hour! I didn’t have an hour! I had to get back to the hospital! Especially if what Gabriel had said was true, and the place was ‘in an uproar’. Why had I stopped to check my email upstairs on Nikki’s completely compromised computer? I should have looked for a cellphone so I could call my parents and tell them not to worry. Maybe Karl would let me borrow his . . . oh, whatever, I just needed to get uptown . . . ‘That’s OK,’ I said in a voice gone suddenly shaky. ‘I’ll just take the subway. ’ ‘You can’t take the subway,’ Gabriel said simply. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, turning to head in the opposite direction, towards Broome Street. This was my neighbourhood, after all. I knew exactly where I was. I didn’t really think it was going to be fine, but what else could I do? ‘I can just grab the Six over by Bleecker and take it to Fourteenth Street and walk the rest of the way. It’s not far. ’ Then, as I reached into my pocket for my wallet and MetroCard, I realized it wasn’t actually my pocket at all, but Nikki Howard’s pocket. And it was empty. ‘Oh no,’ I said with a groan. I didn’t have my wallet. Or my MetroCard. Great. Just great. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gabriel said in the same calm voice. ‘Because you can’t take the subway anyway. ’ I started to say that of course I could – why couldn’t I? But no sooner was the first word out of my mouth than m
y arm was grabbed. Thinking it was Justin Bay (again), I whipped around fast, expecting to have to fend off another knee-melting French kiss. But instead I saw a group of elementary school girls in plaid skirts and maroon sweaters, who all started screaming the minute they saw my face. ‘I told you, Tiffany!’ shrieked the one who had hold of my arm, an adorably freckled nine-year-old in braids. ‘It’s her! See!’ And Braidy pointed past my face to a four-storey-high mural painted on the side of a nearby building – a mural which just happened to be of Nikki Howard in a bikini, urging viewers to come to the new Stark Megastore in SoHo. ‘See? I told you! It’s her!’ Braidy screamed, practically yanking my arm out of its socket. ‘Nikki, Nikki, can I have your autograph?’ ‘I want it too, Nikki!’ Tiffany shrieked, shoving a pen and a French notebook in my face. ‘Sign mine, oh, please!’ ‘I’m not Nikki,’ I cried. I tried to get away from them without outright smacking any of them. ‘Seriously you guys, I’m not—’ ‘Girls!’ A nearby nun, who was clearly supposed to be in control of the group, but who had vastly underestimated the power of a supermodel over her young charges, called vainly for order. ‘Stop this! Stop this at once! Leave the young lady alone!’ But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t Nikki Howard. And why should they, when the proof that I was Nikki Howard was spray-painted as big as a building just a street away? They were pulling at my jacket, threatening to tumble Cosabella out from under it. Who knows what they would have done, if Gabriel and Karl the doorman hadn’t waded in and rescued me? One minute I was being mauled by a pack of screaming schoolgirls, and the next, Karl was holding them off while Gabriel was steering me bodily away from them, one arm around my shoulders, saying in a wry voice, ‘Now do you see why you can’t take the subway? At least, not unless you’re wearing a hat. ’ It was a joke. Well, sort of. Except that the situation wasn’t actually all that funny. Because in a way, he was right. I was never going to be able to ride the subway again as an anonymous New York City citizen. From now on, I’d be riding the subway as Nikki Howard, supermodel. Unless I carried around a giant sign that said, I’m not really her. Don’t bother asking for my autograph. I must have looked really crushed or something, since a second later, Gabriel gave me a little hug with the arm he’d put around me, and said with a sigh, ‘Never mind. I’ll give you a ride. ’ And he gestured towards a pale green Vespa that was parked in the circular drive in front of the building. That’s right. A Vespa. Which has to be the least cool mode of transportation in the universe. I mean, to American guys. But Gabriel wasn’t American. And he obviously didn’t care that his motorbike would be considered, by the average American male, completely effeminate. ‘I have helmets,’ he assured me, I guess mistaking my astonishment for reluctance to ride on a scooter due to the safety issue. ‘OK,’ I said faintly. I just wanted to get away from Nikki Howard’s screaming fans – who were still being held back by Karl and the frantic-looking nun – and Nikki Howard’s crazy room-mate and her boyfriend(s) and her building and the giant mural of her on the building right down the street, and back to my family. And I didn’t care how I did it. ‘Here,’ Gabriel said, and handed me a motorcycle helmet from a compartment on the back of his Vespa. He helped me fit it over my head (or Nikki Howard’s head). It didn’t make my stitches hurt, which was good. Then he helped me climb on to the bike, and showed me where to put my feet. Then he got on as well, and said, ‘Hang on to me. ’ Which I knew meant put my arms around his waist. But of course I’d never touched a guy like that. I mean, aside from all the guys I’ve made out with in the past twenty-four hours. Which hadn’t exactly been initiated by me. Except before I had a chance to fully obsess over what I was about to do, some of the schoolgirls broke away from Karl and their teacher, and began tearing towards us, screaming, ‘Nikki! Nikki!’ Then Gabriel started the motorbike up. There was a lurch and I had to grab him around the waist to keep from falling off the bike backwards. And then he said, ‘Here we go!’ And we went.