I See London. Chanel Cleeton

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      Chapter 1

      I couldn’t find my underwear.

      Knickers, as the British called them.

      It should have been easy; there wasn’t much to them. They were black, lacy…and shit, I was going to miss my flight home if I kept looking.

      “Start by thinking of the last place you had them,” my grandmother would always tell me when I lost something. The bed seemed like the best place to start. Or had it been on top of the dresser? Or against the wall by the window?

      I’d been a busy girl.

      “You leaving?”

      I stared down at the boy lying in bed. His voice was heavy with sleep, the sheets tangled around his naked body. The sight of all that skin sent a flash of heat through me.

      I wasn’t ready to handle the morning after. Screw my underwear.

      “Don’t worry about it.” I leaned down, pressing a swift kiss to his lips, barely resisting the urge to climb back into bed with him. “See you next year,” I whispered, grabbing my shoes and heading for the door.

      I paused in the doorway, wondering how the hell I’d gone from spending my Friday nights studying to doing the walk of shame sans underwear.

      I blamed the Harvard admissions committee.

      Ten months earlier

      I was going to die and I wasn’t even wearing my best underwear.

      My Southern grandmother loved to tell me a girl should always look like a lady—even down to her “unmentionables,” as she liked to call them.

      “But no one’s going to see them,” I would insist.

      “It doesn’t matter. You could be in a car accident and then what? Would you want people to see you in those?” (Cotton, black, perfect for fat days.)

      I wasn’t sure if the underwear rule applied to plane crashes. But if it did? I was about to die in the world’s ugliest pair of black cotton underwear.

      “Are you okay, dear?”

      I loosened my grip on the armrest, turning slightly to face the woman in the seat next to me. My head jerked.

      “It’s just a little bit of turbulence. Perfectly normal.” She looked to be about my grandmother’s age; unlike my grandmother’s smooth Southern drawl, though, her voice had a clipped British accent. “Is this your first flight?”

      I cleared the massive, boulder-sized knot of tension from my throat. “It’s been awhile.”

      “It can be scary at times. But we’re only about an hour away.”

      The plane hit another bump. I gripped the armrests, my knuckles turning nearly white.

      “What takes you to London?”

      “I’m starting college.”

      “How exciting! Where?”

      I loosened my grip on the armrest, struggling to focus on her questions rather than the plane plummeting from the sky. The irony of my fear of flying wasn’t lost on me.

      “The International School. It’s an American university in London.”

      According to the glossy brochure I’d conveniently received the day my dreaded thin-envelope rejection letter from Harvard arrived in our mailbox, the International School boasted a total of one thousand undergraduate students from all over the world.

      “Do you know anyone in London?”

      I shook my head.

      “I’m surprised your parents let you move over there by yourself. You can’t be more than what, eighteen?”

      “I’m nineteen.”

      I was a little surprised, too. My dad hadn’t been a big fan of the whole London idea. He could travel the world, heading to exotic locations. I just couldn’t go with him. I’d heard all the reasons before. He couldn’t be a fighter pilot and a single parent. It was too difficult for him to predict when he would be sent away on another mission. If my mom were still around—It hung between us, the rest of the words unspoken.

      I could fill in the blanks. If my mom were still around, we would be a family. But she wasn’t. When she left my dad, she took our family with her, dooming me to life in a small town in South Carolina, my dad’s elderly parents assuming the role of my legal guardians. I loved my grandparents and they tried the best they could.

      But it wasn’t the same.

      “You must be awfully brave to come to London by yourself. Especially at such a young age.”

      Brave? I wasn’t sure if it had been bravery or desperation spurring my sole act of teenage rebellion. But ever since I’d received that rejection letter in the mail, my thoughts had been less than rational.

      It was all I’d ever wanted—Harvard. It was the best. I’d imagined my dad beaming with pride at my high school graduation, the one he’d ended up missing anyway. Harvard had been my chance to change everything. It was the reason I didn’t date and skipped parties in favor of doing SAT prep on Friday nights, the motivation behind me joining every student organization known to man. In the end, none of it was enough.

      She nudged me. “We’re nearly there.”

      I turned toward the window, peering through the glass. Fog filled the sky, the air thick and heavy with it. I pulled back, disappointed.

      “It’s hard to see anything.”

      “Just wait for it. Keep looking.”

      I turned back to the window, my eyes trained downward, waiting for the exact moment when—

      Lights. Scattered throughout the fog were lights. Hundreds, thousands of lights. Like a Christmas tree. Beneath us was a carpet of lights.

      “Welcome to London.”

      * СКАЧАТЬ