The It Girl in Rome

by Katy Birchall

  “What a wonderful present!” my mom said excitedly. “Very useful for the heat in Rome and it’s so beautiful.”

  “Handmade by a charming geisha in Japan,” Helena informed her, pointing at the colorful, detailed pattern. “I was filming for a few weeks out there once.”

  “Thanks, Helena,” I said, brushing the glitter off my sleeves.

  “I’ve got you a little something too,” Mom said, holding out a bag. I reached for it tentatively. Mom has always had a rather odd taste in gifts because they are mostly relics from far corners of the earth, which isn’t surprising considering she’s a well-known travel journalist, but my standard response of “Great, Mom, this is so unique” was wearing thin.

  I put my hand cautiously inside the bag, ignoring Dad’s eyebrows, which were wriggling away in warning, and pulled out what can only be described as a grubby, jagged bit of rock.

  “Er—great, Mom, this is so unique!”

  “It is for guidance, wisdom, and luck,” she said knowingly. “Particularly useful now that you won’t have your phone on you to contact us when you need to. But at least you have this stone.”

  I nodded. “Brilliant,” I said, and shoved it in my pocket. “That’s great. Right, well, I better be going through, then. Thanks for the . . . uh . . . fan and the rock.”

  I hugged them all good-bye and gave a final wave before joining the line to get through security. Glancing back at my family, who were waving enthusiastically, the press still buzzing around them, I tried to ignore the whispers and pointed looks too, acting as though I didn’t know the person behind me in the line was taking photos of my back.

  “See you for the wedding!” Marianne cried over the crowd.

  “And try not to get into any trouble!” Dad added.

  I handed over my boarding pass, turning the corner and out of sight from them all, the sudden quiet making my worries seem all that bit louder in my head. This was Connor’s time to work on his comic and my time to have a sophisticated Italian experience. Without any embarrassing press stories. Either way, I just had to make sure I didn’t get into any trouble in Rome. Easy, right?

  I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the bit of rock. “I hope you work,” I said under my breath to it, hoping no one was paying attention to me talking to a stone. I had a feeling I was going to need all the luck I could get.

  6.

  I SPOTTED JESS CHOKING NEXT to the perfume stand.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as she coughed and spluttered all over the place.

  “I . . . sprayed . . . the . . . perfume . . . in . . . my . . . mouth.”

  “No, Jess, perfume doesn’t go there,” I said, offering her the bottle of water I’d just bought. “It goes on your wrists.”

  She gratefully glugged the water and then put her hands on her hips. “No kidding. The nozzle was facing the wrong way when I sprayed it. How come it took you so long to get here? Danny, Stephanie, and I have already been around all the shops.”

  “My family gave me presents before I went through security.”

  “Going-away presents? That’s so cute. What did they get you?”

  “A fan and a rock. Where are the others?”

  Jess looked confused for a moment by the going-away offerings but didn’t comment. She was very used to my weird family by now. “Everyone’s in the bookstore. We’ve got to meet Mrs. Ginnwell in ten minutes by the information point before going to the gate. I volunteered to wait here for you. So, were you okay with all that?” she added, jerking her head back toward security.

  “Oh yeah,” I sighed. “I set off the alarm about ten times coming through the scanner and they couldn’t work out what it was. I thought maybe it was the rock, but they used that handheld beepy thing and it kept going off on my right arm.”

  I held my arm out to illustrate my story. “But I’m not wearing any jewelry so the security woman was weirded out by the whole thing and that got me thinking: Maybe I’m actually a product of a scientific experiment that went wrong and when I was little they injected me with an experimental serum just like Captain America, but it didn’t work out so my parents have kept it secret from me all this time and the only way I’ve discovered the truth is because whatever chemical runs through my veins sets off airport security scanners!”

  Jess lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, I actually meant were you okay with all the press out there, but thanks for that really long spiel of crazy.”

  “Oh.” I checked my wrists suspiciously anyway. “Yeah, it was fine. Let’s go to the information point.”

  As we walked, I filled Jess in on the family dinner.

  “Marianne and Tom are moving in together?” She looked surprised. “I thought he was on tour at the moment.”

  “He is. When he gets back, they’ll sort it out.”

  “Ah. More importantly, though, how did you leave things with Connor? Did he give you a passionate good-bye kiss?” she teased, nudging me with her elbow as I swatted her away.

  “No! Well, you know.”

  I felt my cheeks growing hot. It hadn’t exactly been the most romantic setting, what with my whole family in the car behind us as we stood at his doorstep.

  “Well, thanks for inviting me tonight,” he’d said, as I spotted everyone in the car looking very obviously the other way. Except Dad who was having his head forcibly turned by Helena.

  “Thank you for coming,” I replied. “I hope my family wasn’t too overwhelming. They can be.”

  He laughed. “They were great.” He paused, pushing his bangs back. “I’m going to miss you, Spidey.”

  I blushed at the nickname he’d given me on discovering that we were both big Marvel geeks.

  I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of how I wished so badly he could come with me to Rome and was there any chance he could forget about the comic book for just two weeks. But I stopped myself, swallowing my words. It wasn’t fair. I should be proud of having such an intelligent and motivated boyfriend who was willing to give up his summer vacations to work on something he was passionate about.

  “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “By the sounds of things, I’m not sure you will,” Connor joked, looking slightly uncomfortable.

  “What are you talking about?” I said, taken aback.

  “Oh, you know.” He jerked his head toward the car before looking down at his feet. “What Helena said . . . You’ll be having too much fun.”

  “I’d have way more fun with you there.”

  Connor smiled and reached across for my hand.

  “HOOOOOONK!”

  I jumped around at the embarrassingly loud car horn just in time to see Helena giving my dad a reproving whack across the head.

  Oh my God. Just let me curl up and die in a hole in Outer Mongolia right now.

  “Haha. I guess we should be used to having an audience by now.” Connor laughed nervously. “At least they don’t have cameras.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sure a car horn is much better,” I muttered, glaring at my dad.

  “It will be nice for you to escape the press in Italy. Plus”—he smiled—“I’ll be shut away in my room most of the time working on The Amazing It Girl so they can’t use me as an excuse to hound you. I’ll be away from it all.”

  “Sure,” I said, trying to match his enthusiasm. “Although, you know, it would have been better to get away from it all together.”

  “I know. It would have.” He nodded. “But we’ll speak and message all the time, though.”

  The car honked again and my dad gestured for me to hurry up, pointing at his watch. I felt a little better when I saw Helena give him yet another thwack over the head.

  “I better go!” I sighed. “Good luck with the comic.”

  And then that had been that.

  “That’s it?” Jess looked unimpressed.

  “What were you expecting?” I laughed. “A pledge of his undying love?”

  “That would have been nice,” she said before g
etting overexcited at all the headphones on display in the electronics store. She ran over to try them all on and I followed, picking up the first pair and shoving them over my ears, immediately shutting out all the busy airport noise with a tragically slow romantic ballad about heartbreak. Not quite what I needed right now, but I wasn’t going to show that in front of Jess.

  I sighed. The truth was that I was a little disappointed at my good-bye with Connor. I don’t think some signs of a little more pain and heartbreak at having me leave the country for two weeks would have gone amiss. A little tear? The exchange of romantic tokens, perhaps? Obviously nothing gross like in the olden days when they exchanged lockets of hair, which, you know, probably would have creeped me out, but something.

  I comforted myself with the reminder that Connor was shy and I wasn’t exactly the smoothest of operators. And that my dad seemed to have lost control of his senses when it came to what’s appropriate in a seeing-your-daughter’s-boyfriend-safely-to-the-door situation.

  And they say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Just like Arwen and Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings for example. Or Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson . . . Anyway, he had definitely said we’d speak every day. I’d probably even have an e-mail from him waiting for me as soon as I landed telling me how much he regretted not being able to have a proper good-bye. . . .

  Suddenly my headphones were yanked off my head. “Hey!” I spun around to find Jess was standing right next to me.

  “Didn’t you hear me say your name like a hundred times? It’s time to go join the group,” she said, placing the headphones back on their stand. “You were in some sort of weird daydream.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said, feeling my cheeks going hot and picking up my bag.

  “Oh, really?” She raised her eyebrows and put my headphone to her ear. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking about.”

  We came around the corner and saw Mrs. Ginnwell waiting for everyone by the information point. She was now holding up a large yellow sign that said WOODFIELD ASSEMBLING POINT and was waving a Union Jack with her other hand.

  “May I commend you, Mrs. Ginnwell, on your variety of signs,” Jess said, as we approached her.

  “Thank you, Miss Delby,” she replied, gesturing for us to wait by her side. “Any more of that cheek and you’ll be making notes on the architecture of the hotel while everyone else is at the end-of-trip party. Understand?”

  Jess scowled and I pursed my lips, trying not to laugh. I had to give it to Mrs. Ginnwell, she was taking her job very seriously, making sure the students were all under control. Unlike the other two members of staff, Miss Lawler and Mr. Crowne, who were having a heated debate in the bookstore over the best crime writers, and Mr. Kenton, who I spotted in the arcade playing a zombie game with James Tyndale.

  I laughed when I saw James throw up his arms in victory after destroying the zombies, forcing a grumpy-looking Mr. Kenton to declare him the winner and earning a congratulatory high five from his best friend, Brendan Dakers. James has a competitive streak, which admittedly had been very handy when he was on my team last semester for Sports Day, but also, it turns out, can be really quite tiring when he regularly shows up at your door over summer vacation expecting you to join him for a “casual jog.”

  Clearly I tried to refuse every time because (a) Sports Day was over and we had won so there was no point in doing physical exercise anymore and (b) I’m not an insane person who runs for fun.

  But he forced me to go running with him and then kept yelling stupid stuff at me that was meant to be motivating, like “Keep those knees up,” and “Winners don’t take breaks” and “Anna, try not to fall in the pond this time.”

  So it really didn’t come as any surprise that he would be taking zombie games very seriously indeed.

  James caught my eye and shot me a triumphant grin. I was giving him one back when Jess elbowed me in the ribs, gleefully drawing my attention to the whining voice nearby coming from the Queen Bee of our school, Sophie Parker. This time she was pompously demanding to know from Mrs. Ginnwell where she could make a formal complaint about the airport.

  Danny wandered over with Stephanie. “What’s all the fuss about this time?” he whispered, keen not to put himself in the way of Sophie Parker’s latest angry tirade.

  It didn’t work. She fixed him with a death stare. “They took my water at security.”

  “Just buy a new drink,” Jess snorted.

  “It wasn’t just any drink,” Sophie hissed, flicking her hair back dramatically behind her shoulders. Sophie was not Jess’s biggest fan. She wasn’t particularly fond of either of us, but at least she wasn’t threatened by me. In her eyes, I was just one big loser who kept getting in her way. Jess, on the other hand, being beautiful and sporty, was Sophie’s biggest nightmare.

  “It was an incredibly expensive, special type of flavored water that regenerates your skin cells from the inside out,” parroted Josie Graham, sounding like a really bad TV commercial. Sophie’s minion, Josie, was never far from her Queen Bee’s side and hated me more than anyone else in the school. Probably because I once set her on fire and then another time hit her in the face with a discus. They were both accidents, but it is really bad luck that she should be the victim on both occasions. She looked down her nose at me. “The water is imported—from Italy.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jess laughed, causing Sophie to puff up angrily. “Where do you think we’re going today?”

  “Thank you, girls—that’s enough,” Miss Ginnwell interjected, before a full-on brawl could ensue. “Sophie, you know you can’t bring liquids through security. It’s your own fault for not checking the rules. Right, I think everyone is here.” Mrs. Ginnwell put her sign down and clapped her hands together. Looking furious about being so easily dismissed, Sophie folded her arms and shot daggers at a smug-looking Jess. “You will all have an allocated seat on your ticket,” Mrs. Ginnwell continued. “That is where you will sit on the plane. I don’t want anyone swapping or complaining. Is that clear? It will just cause a lot of fuss and make things much more difficult for the members of staff to keep track of you all.”

  There was an immediate burst of chatter as everyone rummaged around for their ticket and conferred with their friends.

  “We’re miles away!” I exclaimed, as Jess and I compared.

  “We’re two rows away, Anna.” She smiled. “I’m sure you can cope.”

  “Hey, I’m in the row in front of you,” James pointed out, looking over my shoulder.

  “Cool! We can pass messages!” I exclaimed without thinking, causing Jess to cover up a laugh by pretending to have a coughing fit.

  “Can we paint each other’s nails too?” James grinned.

  Swallow me up now, please, ground.

  But if I thought that situation was awkward, it was nothing compared to the plummeting in my stomach when I boarded the plane and saw just who I was sitting next to.

  7.

  “REALLY?” SOPHIE SNEERED AS I shuffled into the seat next to her.

  “Hey, how is your summer going?” I asked in what was clearly an overly chirpy voice, but hoping slightly desperately that maybe a plane journey could be what was needed to break the frostiness that was radiating off Sophie in waves.

  Of course that was fairly unlikely taking into account that since starting at Woodfield I had accidentally and temporarily stolen her boyfriend and then last semester I had beaten her team in Sports Day, something she cared about A LOT, so chances were slim that she would be willing to start afresh.

  “Don’t talk to me the rest of the flight,” she stated, pulling out a silk eye mask from her designer handbag. “And if you fall asleep don’t even think about snoring.” With that she placed her eye mask on, adjusted her pink neck cushion, and turned away.

  I wished Connor had been there. He was very good at ignoring Sophie and knowing exactly the right thing to say to make me feel less of a loser. I wiggled my head around
to see if Jess could come over and rescue me. But in the process I somehow managed to knock Sophie’s special cushion from behind her neck.

  She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl. I yelped and jumped away, then sat rigidly next to her, too terrified to move.

  * * *

  After takeoff, a note flicked through the gap in the seats in front of me and landed on my lap. It was from James.

  Dare you to draw on her face. How good are you at moustaches?

  I snorted, and Sophie shuffled slightly, shutting me up instantly. I waited until she was perfectly still before quietly ripping a page out of my notebook and scribbling something back.

  Want to switch places and show me how it’s done? She actually likes you, so the punishment would probably be way less harsh.

  Chicken.

  Pretty rich coming from the guy who is scared of worms.

  Anyone would be scared of worms when they are THROWN at their face out of the blue.

  Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn’t yell at people when they are taking a five-second break from a grueling run.

  You had been lying on the grass for twenty minutes. I did several laps of the park while you had a nap.

  I didn’t have a nap. I spent the time digging up worms to throw at you.

  Hey, guess what?

  What?

  I just peeked around. Jess is fast asleep.

  I considered the risks of any movement near Sophie carefully.

  I’ll get my pen.

  We were all so excited about touching down in Rome that not even Josie or Sophie complained when we were piled into the stuffy hired coach after collecting our bags. We stared out of the windows, gaping at the beautiful monuments and buildings as we drove to our hotel, while fashionably dressed people on scooters zipped past us, ducking into narrow, cobbled streets.

  I was too distracted to inform Jess that she now had felt-tip cat whiskers on her face.

  We burst into the hotel chattering excitedly to one another and it took a while before Mrs. Ginnwell could get us to quiet down so she could be heard.