CHAPTER 1
10 DAYS LATER
DATE: SUNDAY, JUNE 12
LOCATION: LONDON, ENGLAND
ITINERARY
9:00 A.M.: PACK
10:00 A.M.: BREAKFAST AT THE WORLD’S END
3:00 P.M.: FLIGHT HOME: (
I miss peanut butter, salsa, and ice cubes. I miss sunshine and my family. I miss my dog.
But most of all, I miss the girl I thought I was ten days ago, before I realized I’m the worst kind of traveler: the kind who just wants to go home. I flew almost four thousand miles for the adventure of a lifetime with my best friend, and all I got was this lousy homesickness.
Once upon a time, I thought the worst thing an American tourist could be was obvious. Brooke warned me about all the stereotypes: Americans are obnoxious and loud. They wear gym shoes when they shouldn’t. They smile too much.
I vowed not to be that person, even if it meant blisters on my feet and a week of nonstop whispering. I’d prove how happy I was to be in London by scowling at people on the street.
I had a plan.
But after spending five days facedown in a hotel toilet, that plan is in tatters. I might as well parade down Abbey Road in tacky sneakers and a Stars and Stripes fanny pack, waving my basic bitch flag. I’d consider it if it meant this trip even remotely resembled the one on my detailed ten-page itinerary.
Nine pages down, one left to go. My eyes stray to the last item on the list as I neatly fold a dirty sweater and place it in my suitcase. 3:00 P.M.: Flight home. Frowny face. I had such high hopes when I penciled that doodle in, the final touch to my masterpiece years in the making. Now the face mocks me: one more thing the itinerary got wrong. When that airplane takes off from Heathrow, I’ll be mentally dancing in the aisle.
The door to our shared hotel room bangs open and Naomi rushes in. I try to ignore the jealous pang that burns behind my ribs over the fact that she was out without me. She tosses her hotel key on the TV stand and collapses, distressed, across my bed. “The prince is missing.”
“Which one?”
“The important one,” she says seriously, showing me a Daily Mail article on her phone. I glance at the headline: PRINCE THEO GLARINGLY ABSENT FROM TROOPING THE COLOUR. WITH NO WORD FROM THE PALACE, WE’RE LEFT TO WONDER: IS THE FUTURE KING SICK, OR JUST PLAYING HOOKY?
“So he skipped an event.” I return my attention to the mountain of clothes in front of me. It shouldn’t be this difficult to fit them back into my suitcase. I have acquired nothing on this trip except disenchantment.
Naomi sits up, a protective glint in her eye. “He’s supposed to be working at this event—”
“Liberal use of the term ‘working.’”
“Trooping the Colour is very important to the monarch,” she says with complete seriousness.
“If that’s true, they shouldn’t have given it such a silly name.”
“Trooping the Colour marks the official birthday of the sovereign.”
“I’m sorry—all this fuss is because the prince missed his mom’s birthday party?” I pick up Naomi’s phone and scroll through the photos included with the article. The event appears to be the height of British pomp and pageantry. There are thousands of guards in silly costumes. Guards on foot and guards on horses. Guards in a house. Guards with a mouse. Guards here and there! Guards everywhere. Musical instruments, funny fuzzy hats as far as the eye can see, and, because why not, a whole bunch of cannons. Real goofy shit.
“He’s not on the balcony. The entire royal family is always on the balcony.” Naomi takes the phone and points to a picture of a crowded mezzanine occupied by a group of polished children whom I vaguely recognize as the prince’s younger siblings. The photo holds an air of importance that I begrudgingly admire.
“Maybe he jumped,” I say.
“Not funny.”
“If this is the royal equivalent of work, then he’s been working since the moment he was born. Before, even! He deserves a day off.”
“When the royals take a day off, they release a statement. The Palace’s silence speaks volumes. Something’s not right.”
“I hear you. I acknowledge you. Please don’t make me talk about the royals anymore.”
She drops her phone with a huff as tension chills the air. It’s not common for us to get annoyed with each other, but it’s been happening more and more the past few days.
“Emily, Tatum, and I are going to walk to Camden Market to shop for souvenirs,” she says.
I’m stung by the period at the end of her sentence. The finality of it. There’s not even a hint of invitation lingering in the air.
When I was too sick to leave our room for five days, Naomi had to adjust her plans and find other people to hang out with. The strain between us didn’t start until I stopped puking and assumed she’d ditch Emily and Tatum so we could spend the second half of the trip the way we’d planned. Turns out she didn’t want to do that; turns out European Naomi doesn’t like my itineraries nearly as much as Chicagoan Naomi does. After years of working her ass off to be valedictorian, she wanted to let loose and let off steam, not follow another rigid schedule. Initially she invited me to join them on morning walks through the park or evening trips to the pub, but I kept saying no. First out of hurt, and then out of a stubborn unwillingness to let my itinerary die. I’m great at making plans and backup plans, but I didn’t have a plan for when my best friend started choosing other people over me. Soon enough, she stopped asking.
“Have fun. I have to finish packing anyway.” There. Proof that I’m fine without her invitation.
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you going so slow?” She gathers an armful of clothes and shoves them haphazardly into my suitcase, holding the top down to zip it shut. “There. All done.”
Okay then. I press my lips into a thin line as I pick up a pen from my bedside table and carefully scratch a line through 9:00 A.M.: Pack. “Thanks,” I say. I fall quiet as tension bubbles between us. “I’m getting breakfast down by Camden Market!” I announce. Not at all hurt. Not at all sad.
“With who?”
“Just myself.”
She sighs and leans back against my pillows. “Sounds … fun.”
My fist curls tightly around the edge of my itinerary. This trip has been nothing but disaster after disaster. First, the never-ending stomach virus from hell. Then a string of stormy days that canceled Shakespeare in the Squares and ruined our trip to the London Zoo. Even the larcenous British Museum turned out to be a disappointment, but that could have been my fault. I don’t have the right disposition for museums; I can only pretend to care about old things for so long. The Rosetta Stone, for example: objectively, a very cool old thing. Props to the French guy who found it! Staring at a midsize boulder with ancient writing on it that you can’t even read? Eh. Interesting for fifteen seconds. I couldn’t even bring myself to get excited about taking photos of the priceless artifact because there must be millions of the exact same photo floating around in the cloud right now. That’s not my thing. I’d have been much happier lying in the grass on the lawn outside the museum and snapping candids of the people around me, capturing small moments that exist and are gone in a breath.
But Brooke said that the World’s End had the best breakfast she’d ever eaten, and I’m determined to get one thing on my itinerary exactly, perfectly right. The plan may be in shreds, but it’s nothing I can’t carefully tape back together.
“Brooke ate breakfast at this pub on her last morning of the program. It’s a family tradition.” Or it will be once I follow in her footsteps.
Naomi scoots to the edge of my bed and stands up, refusing to look at me. “Well … enjoy your plans.”
“You can come with me if you want! The full English is supposed to be amazing.”
“Do you know what’s in a full English breakfast?”
“Fried tomatoes and mushrooms and baked beans and—”
“Blood pudding and sausage,” she says. “Wren, you’re a vegetarian!”
My sensitive stomach revolts. I press my lips together, the memory of my virus so fresh that I want to throw myself off the Buckingham Palace balcony. “I won’t eat the meat, obviously.”
“Do you even want to eat tomatoes for breakfast?” she asks.
“Of course!” Defensiveness flares in my chest.
“Just like you wanted to ride the London Eye on our first night here?”
“It was—”
“On the itinerary,” we say at the same time. In retrospect, the decision to ride London’s famous Ferris wheel when I was already feeling nauseous was not my brightest idea. At least my vomit didn’t land on anyone—except the tail of that bulldog, but he didn’t hold it against me. Angus was a total sweetheart when I got off the ride to apologize, though his humans were less kind. I may not have understood all the words they yelled at me, but I felt the venom behind them. No one’s ever crocheted “manky git” on a throw pillow, to say the least.
“Not this again. Don’t you ever want to change the itinerary?” Naomi huffs. My inflexibility never bothered her at home, but now it does. Now I can feel her roll her eyes every time I consult the schedule.
“Actually, I do.” I scribble over the frowny face next to Flight home and replace it with a smiling one. “There. Happy?”
She shakes her head with a small sigh. “C’mon, let’s get our stuff downstairs and you can walk with us.” She heaves her luggage into the crook of her arm and holds the door open for me. I drag my suitcase off the bed and spare one backward glance for my temporary London home. The Grange Beauchamp Hotel in the heart of Bloomsbury sounded so glamorous at the beginning of all of this. Bloooooooomsbury. The word rolled off my tongue like a name in a romance novel. Even when we arrived, I was enchanted by the brick building with white curtains and red flowers in the windowsills. Now my eyes rove over the threadbare blankets to the window that refused to open and let in fresh air, and my enchantment is nowhere to be found.
“I’m going to miss this place.” Naomi says the words I wish I felt. A painful knot grows in my throat. We walk into the hall and let the door thump closed behind us, sealing four years of disappointment inside.
I’m not going to dwell on it. Or on the fact that if this plan was a bust, the future I envisioned for myself might also be vulnerable. I don’t want to make new plans. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Downstairs, we step out of the hotel into watery sunlight. After drizzling most of the night, the clouds have finally cleared and the smell of diesel exhaust fights with musty rain-soaked brick. I’m no stranger to humidity, but no matter which neighborhood I find myself in, the air in London is consistently thicker and heavier than what I’m used to in Chicago. It sticks to my lungs, coating them in black coal dust.
We ditch our luggage on the curb with Mrs. Kerr, our English teacher and one of the trip chaperones, who warns us to meet back here at the van no later than noon or “we’ll leave without you!”
Emily and Tatum join Naomi and me as we board the Tube near our hotel and exit about twenty minutes later, strolling into the colorful and chaotic streets of Camden Market. They peel off at an outdoor souvenir stall sitting between a tattoo parlor and a vintage clothing shop, and I can’t quite meet Naomi’s gaze.
My fingers itch to grab my camera and photograph the people around me: a mixture of tourists with selfie sticks and locals in black leather and goth makeup. It reminds me of high school, the way the groups move around each other while pretending the others don’t exist. Because there’s not time to use my DSLR, I settle for my phone. I point the camera at the crowd of people while the market’s curious shop signs provide a vibrant background, snapping a dozen quick shots before sliding my phone back into my pocket.
The smell of damp stone mixes with a curry stall tucked across the street and a mouthwatering fish and chips shop. My feet slow and I can’t help but gaze through the floor-to-ceiling windows. For the first time in ten days, my stomach pangs with a craving for the hot, salty French fries. I waver, but the last page of my itinerary weighs heavy in my pocket. Today’s the only day I can get completely right. If Brooke can do it, so can I.
My boots clack against the brick as I walk down Camden High Street toward my destination: the World’s End.
CHAPTER 2
Brass letters reading THE WORLD’S END shine against a red background. It looks exactly the way I envisioned it—except for the glaring CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS sign in the window. The dates scrawled below indicate it closed this morning.
I sigh and press my forehead against the cool glass, my feet aching from the long walk. I can’t believe I’m one day late. When I started this itinerary years ago, it never occurred to me that an iconic landmark that’s been around since the 1800s would be closed during my eventual visit. Sure, the World’s End opened its doors for Charles Dickens and Radiohead and Brooke Wheeler, but now that I’m here, the curtains are drawn, the doors boarded shut.
Copyright © 2023 by Kara McDowell