Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online

is screaming, pointing at me. “Jennifer Garner! Jennifer Garner!”
    I keep walking, my head down, trying to ignore her. But both Andrew and his father are looking over at her, bemused smiles on their faces. Andrew does look a bit like his dad. Will he, too, be totally bald when he’s fifty? Is baldness a trait passed on by the mother’s side of the family or the father’s? Why didn’t I take a single bio course while I was designing my own major? I could have squeezed in at least one…
    “Is that child speaking to you?” Mr. Marshall asks me.
    “Me?” I glance over my shoulder, pretending to notice for the first time that a small child is shrieking at me from across the garage.
    “Jennifer Garner! It’s me! Marnie! From the plane! Remember?”

    I smile and wave at Marnie. She flushes with pleasure and grabs her mother’s arm.
    “See?” she cries. “I told you! It reallyis her!”
    Marnie waves some more. I wave back while Andrew wrestles my suitcase into the small trunk, swearing a bit. Since he’s been wheeling it along the whole time, he had no idea how heavy it is until he bent to lift it.
    But really, a month is a long time. I don’t see how I could have packed less than ten pairs of shoes.
    Shari even said she was proud of me for being sensible enough not to bring my lace-up platform espadrilles. Although I did manage to squeeze them in at the last minute before I left.
    “Why is that child calling you Jennifer Garner?” Mr. Marshall wants to know as he, too, waves at Marnie, whose grandparents, or whoever they are, still haven’t succeeded in herding her into the car.
    “Oh,” I say, feeling myself begin to blush. “We sat next to each other on the plane. It’s just a little game we were playing, to pass time on the flight.”
    “How kind of you,” Mr. Marshall says, waving even more energetically now. “Not all young people realize how important it is to treat children with respect and dignity instead of condescension. It’s so important to set a good example for the younger generation, especially when one considers how unstable many of today’s family units really are.”
    “That’s so true,” I say in what I hope sounds like a respectful and dignified manner.
    “Christ,” Andrew says. He’s just tried to pick up my carry-on bag from where I’ve set it on the ground.
    “What have you got in here, Liz? A dead body?”
    “Oh,” I say, my respectful and dignified demeanor threatening to crumble, “just a few necessities.”
    “I’m sorry my chariot isn’t more stylish,” Mr. Marshall says, opening the driver’s door to his car. “It’s certainly not what you’re used to, I’m sure, back in America. But I hardly use it, since I walk to the school where I teach most days.”
    I am instantly charmed by the vision of Mr. Marshall strolling down a tree-lined country lane in a herringbone jacket with leather elbow patches—rather than the extremely uninspired windbreaker he is currently wearing—and perhaps a cocker spaniel or two nipping at his heels.
    “Oh, it’s fine,” I say about his car. “Mine isn’t much bigger.”
    I wonder why he’s just standing there by the door, instead of getting in, until he goes, “After you, er, Liz.”
    He wantsme to drive? But…I just got here! I don’t even know my way around!
    Then I realize he isn’t holding open the driver’s door at all…it’s the passenger side. The steering wheel is on the right side of the car.
    Of course! We’re in England!

    I laugh at my own mistake and sit down in the front seat.
    Andrew slams down the trunk and comes around to see me sitting in the passenger seat. He looks at his dad and says, “What, I’m supposed to sit in the boot, then?”
    “Mind your manners, Andy,” Mr. Marshall says. It seems so strange to hear Andrew called Andy. He is such an Andrew to me. But evidently not to his family.
    Although truthfully, in that jacket, he looks a bit more like an Andy than an