Just One Day Read Online Free PDF

this.
    And I’m about to back down, say thanks for the offer, but then it’s like Lulu grabs
     the wheel, because I turn to Melanie and say, “She can’t kill me if she doesn’t find
     out.”
    Melanie’s scoffs.
“Your
mom? She’d find out.”
    “Not if you covered for me.”
    Melanie doesn’t say anything.
    “Please. I’ve covered for you plenty on this trip.”
    Melanie sighs dramatically. “That was at a pub. Not in an entirely different country.”
    “You
just
criticized me for never doing things like this.”
    I have her there. She switches tacks. “How am I supposed to cover when she calls my
     phone looking for you? Which she’ll do. You know she will.”
    Mom had been furious that my cell phone didn’t work over here. We’d been told it would,
     and when it didn’t, she called the company up in a tizzy, but apparently there was
     nothing to be done, something about it being the wrong band. It didn’t really matter
     in the end. She had a copy of our itinerary and knew when to get me in the hotel rooms,
     and when she couldn’t manage that, she called Melanie’s cell.
    “Maybe you could leave your phone off, so it goes to voice mail?” I suggest. I look
     at Willem, who still has the fistful of cash spilling out of his hand. “Are you
sure
about this? I thought you were going back to Holland.”
    “I thought so too. The winds are maybe blowing me in a different direction.”
    I turn to Melanie. It’s on her now. She narrows her green eyes at Willem. “If you
     rape or murder my friend, I will kill you.”
    Willem tsk-tsks. “You Americans are so violent. I’m Dutch. The worst I will do is
     run her over with a bicycle.”
    “While stoned!” Melanie adds.
    “Okay, maybe there’s that,” Willem admits. Then he looks at me, and I feel a ripple
     of something flutter through me. Am I really going to do this?
    “So, Lulu? What do you say? You want to go to Paris? For just one day?”
    It’s totally crazy. I don’t even know him. And I could get caught. And how much of
     Paris can you see in just one day? And this could all go disastrously wrong in so
     many ways. All of that is true. I know it is. But it doesn’t change the fact that
     I want to go.
    So this time, instead of saying no, I try something different.
    I say yes.

Three
    ----
    T he Eurostar is a snub-nosed, mud-splattered, yellow train, and by the time we board
     it, I am sweaty and breathless. Since saying good-bye to Melanie and hastily exchanging
     plans and info and meeting places for tomorrow, Willem and I have been running. Out
     of Marylebone. Down the crowded London streets and into the Tube, where I got into
     some sort of duel with the gates, which refused to open for me three times, then finally
     did, before snapping shut on my suitcase, sending my Teen Tours! baggage tag flying
     underneath the automatic ticket machine. “I guess I’m really going rogue now,” I joked
     to Willem.
    At the cavernous St. Pancras station, Willem pointed out the destination boards doing
     that shuffling thing before hustling us to the Eurostar ticket lines, where he worked
     his charm on the ticket agent and managed to exchange his ticket home for a ticket
     to Paris and then used far too many of his pound notes to buy me mine. Then we rushed
     through the check-in process, showing our passports. For a second, I was worried that
     Willem would see my passport, which doesn’t belong to Lulu so much as to Allyson—not
     just Allyson, but fifteen-year-old Allyson in the midst of some acne issues. But he
     didn’t, and we went downstairs to the futuristic departure lounge just in time to
     go back upstairs to our train.
    It’s only once we sit down in our assigned seats on the train that I catch my breath
     and realize what I’ve done. I am going to Paris. With a stranger. With
this
stranger.
    I pretend to fuss with my suitcase while I steal looks at him. His face reminds me
     of one of those outfits that only girls with a