Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

overheated car. There was a lot of concrete and scrubby brush, interrupted occasionally by a perfectly square plot of green, vined plants or a small grove of trees. Then it was more concrete buildings covered in laundry, trucks, highways, exits, signs. She had never been to Italy, and she had been expecting a bit more than this. This couldn’t be the place that people always raved about.
    Stuck in her little hot box with two silent companions and a front-row seat to her father’s date with Julia, Clio had little else to think about. She kept her eyes trained on the back of her father’s cap, as if holding him in place with the intensity of her stare. There had better be no more ear canoodling. She decided 51

    that if they tried anything at all, she would start screaming and flailing and claim there was a bee in the van.
    One thing was clear: this was going to be the worst summer of her life. No one would be able to fault her for that when she went home and handed out the explanations. Trip to Italy? No sympathy. Going along on her dad’s date? People would get on board with that. Maybe she could even call her mother and tell her the second they stopped, and her mother would be outraged and rescue her. Better yet, she’d call Ollie. He would understand everything.
    Meanwhile, Aidan was moving his head ever so slightly to the music. A heavy beat pulsed out of his earphones, just audible over the wind and traffic noise coming through the half-open windows. Elsa was fast asleep and had slumped farther down; now she was leaning against Clio.
    She hadn’t felt like she was going far away on the plane because planes didn’t give her that feeling. You can’t really tell where you’re going on a plane because you usually just see sky or clouds, and that never changes. If you can see the view, there’s something about the height and perspective that makes it all seem like a joke. Just a ride. But being in a hot van with strangers on a long ride on actual Italian highway—that felt far. Ollie, her mother, Suki, Jackson . . . everyone faded from view.
    She replayed the final moments with Ollie in her mind. She needed to hold the name tag. Clio pulled her bag up on her lap carefully, reaching into the pocket to where the pin was stashed.
    There was no way she was letting Aidan see her do this, because it was unquestionably odd. Elsa would get it. Aidan would mock her. This much was already obvious.
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    Ollie had given her the tag to keep, and he’d said he would remember. And she had said . . .
    Wait a minute—she had fallen over herself to say that she wasn’t coming back. It occurred to Clio in one horrible flash that in her attempt to be smooth, she’d actually told Ollie that she wouldn’t be back. Why had she said that? Why hadn’t she realized it up until now, in a van in Italy ?
    She fumbled around inside her bag, found her cell phone, and switched it on. No signal at all. And even if she had gotten one, making a call home would probably cost a hundred dollars a minute or something horrible. It was still worth it, but it would hurt.
    They turned off the highway, and it immediately became shadier and greener. Tree branches scraped the roof of the van.
    They entered a town with narrow roads full of Vespa scooters and tiny-but-determined little businesses housed in what were probably once magnificent buildings. Lots of long, shuttered windows, verandas, and peeling paint. This was more like it.
    Europe decayed so well.
    As they turned the corner around a laundry, the van coughed and died. This jolted them all. Aidan took out his earphones.
    “Hey!” her dad turned around and said. “Don’t mind pushing, do you, kiddo?”
    “Can you stop it with the kiddo ?” Clio said. “I have a name.
    It’s kind of weird, but you gave it to me. Why don’t you use it?”
    He smiled, though a bit more weakly than his usual, and turned around. Another look from Julia, with a half-turned head. So this is your daughter, it