Instead, Jason speaks up. "But things work out, you know. Even if it doesn't feel okay for a long time, or even if it feels like things will never be okay again, everything works out in the end." I look up, surprised by the softness of his voice. Now he looks like he feels sorry for me. My neck gets warm, and I'm glad I'm wearing my hair down so he can't see the splotches that I know are forming. I take a breath, and my body sways toward him a little. In the small space, it brings me awfully close, and I worry he can feel the pounding of my heart. I want to say something, but I don't know what, so we end up staring at each other for way too long.

Then he pulls the wad of grape gum out of his mouth and sticks it to the side of a record crate.

"Oh, gross!" I cry out. Just like that, the intensity of the moment is over.

Jason laughs and turns to a cardboard display of the Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger's mouth is wide open, mid-lyric. In one quick move, Jason grabs Mick and gives him a deep dip, his arms wrapped around his cardboard waist.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting me some satisfaction," he replies.

"I don't think that's the lyric," I say.

"Yeah, I'm getting that," he says. "Mick won't kiss back, rotten prude." Jason throws the cutout at the floor and accidentally takes Keith Richards and Brian Jones down with it. Before I can even blink, the entire cardboard band goes flying, knocking over a stack of CDs near the register. Everyone's eyes snap toward us at the sound of the clatter, including those of the shop clerk, who is putting price tags on a stack of vintage albums at the register.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry," I say to no one in particular, and reach down to pick up some of the CDs. But before I can make any progress, Jason grabs my hand and pulls me toward the door. Once again, an outing with Jason culminates in disaster and the pair of us sprinting down the street away from trouble.

And once again, my head is full of more questions than answers.

is Jason still being a total ass? -P "And this window treatment was selected by Queen Victoria herself, the first monarch to live in the palace, just before the first attempt on her life," our tour guide says, his voice rising in excitement as he gestures toward some truly hideous drapes. Then he chuckles softly to himself. "One hopes the two things were unrelated!"

I clutch my notebook, scribbling furiously. Q. Victoria. Drapes. Assassination attempt?*

Underneath this, I add my own commentary: *Why are we learning this?

Our tour guide at Buckingham Palace today has been about as interesting as a Latin translation of the Boston phone book. He's got a monotone voice and only shows hints of excitement when discussing the historical significance of the different draperies throughout the palace. He can't stop talking about fabrics and color swatches. I'm a fan of symbolism and all, but sometimes a tassel is just a tassel, okay, guy? I'm willing to go out on a limb and say the gold thread in the drapes in the throne room has very little to do with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

I turn to say this to Jason, but he's planted himself in the very back of the crowd. He's been cranky all morning. He started the tour at my side, following our guide closely while I scribbled notes in my book. He kept looking at his phone, then snapping it shut in disgust. He barely paid attention to anything our tour guide said, and as we moved through the palace, he quickly drifted away from me.

Our tour guide leads us down a hallway and into a library. My heart quickens as I gaze over the shelves of leather-bound books. I stop to run my fingers along a shelf full of gorgeous editions of Shakespeare, but the tour guide is at it again. This time it's the fabric on a gold-striped wingback chair in the corner. Something about how Churchill once sat here on a visit. If he can connect that chair to Churchill's leadership during the Blitz, even I'll be impressed. I flip to a clean page in my notebook and scurry back toward the front of the group. I get almost right to the front, but Deirdre is blocking my view of whatever our tour guide is gesturing to now. Her giant, unruly blond mane could seriously block the sun. I stand up on my tiptoes and dance around a little, trying to get a good view, but there's no seeing around or over her hair. I'm going to have to get physical.

I clear my throat a little, then sort of step widely around her, giving her a gentle hip bump along the way.

"Hey!" she whispers.

"Oh, sorry," I reply, giving her a sympathetic look. "I'm such a klutz!"

I turn to see what we're looking at now, and I instinctively give a half-whispered yelp of fear and take a quick step back.

Perched atop a table is a perfectly taxidermied goose, wings spread as if in mid-flight.

"Are you okay?" Deirdre asks, surprisingly forgiving, considering I just hip-checked her to get a better view.

"Yeah," I reply, trying to tear my eyes away from the animal in front of me. "It's just ... geese. I hate them."

"Oh yeah, totally," she whispers back with a little laugh. "There was this one time when a goose crapped on my new messenger bag, which thank God was waterproof, and ..."

Deirdre charges on, but I'm not listening. I'm already thinking about my own horror story. I was five years old, and my family was at a neighborhood picnic held at a local park. I was playing with some of the other kids near a pond when a flock of geese landed nearby. I toddled my little kindergarten legs over to one and tried to pet it.

From my fuzzy little-kid memory, that bird let out the loudest, longest, scariest screech I'd ever heard from any animal of any kind, and snapped toward my hand. I screamed like a banshee and ran like hell, and that bird chased right after me. I thought I was going to die (or at least that's what I screamed like, said my dad). Dad ran over and scooped me up, and all of a sudden I was bigger than that dumb bird. With me held high in his arms, we chased that stupid goose together.

Still, I've always been afraid of them. Whenever I see one, it's a reminder that I've got to chase the geese on my own now. At least this goose is stuffed and shellacked and mounted on a wooden platform. Phoebe-the-vegetarian would kill me for saying so, but it kind of gives me a sick sort of satisfaction.

Luckily, our tour doesn't linger long. When we finally make our way back to the grand hall, the class disperses to wander around the room, looking at the portraits set into the walls and examining the marble staircase. I tuck my notes into my bag for safekeeping and hurry over to where Jason is gazing out an oversized window. He's tossing his phone back and forth between his hands, and I'm guessing he's not contemplating the political ramifications of the purple brocade covering the window.

"Everything okay?" I ask him. "You get up on the wrong side of the bed or something?"

"What?" Jason starts, as though he didn't even notice I'd appeared at his side.

I wave a hand in front of his face. "You haven't made a sex joke in, like, two hours. Are you feeling okay? Do you have a fever?"

Out of nowhere, he blurts out, "Is Mark Bixford seriously your type?"

My brain powers down completely. "Excuse me?" I say. It's all I can do not to choke on the words.

"I mean, he seems kind of shallow," Jason says. My face must not be betraying the fact that I'm having a mini meltdown that is happening in my brain.

"Where did you hear that?" I say, struggling to keep calm, struggling to keep the panic from my voice.

"Where else? Sarah Finder, Queen of Gossip."

Of course. Suddenly, I feel sick. The gilded room is spinning around me. Who else has Sarah told? Does Mark know? And how the hell did she find out?

Oh my God. Did she tweet about this?

Jason charges on. "But then again, he's probably really charming, and not a complete ass like me." His voice hangs on "charming" in a way I don't like. I hoped we could forget about my flipping on him yesterday. He certainly didn't seem mad last night when we went to Cue-2-Cue, but he's clearly still a little pissed about it now.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I finally squeak. I hope he doesn't notice the beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

"You can chill out," Jason says. "Like I even give a crap who you swoon over. I'm not going to tell anyone."

"I'm not swooning over Mark. And even if I was, why do you care?" I try to sound confident and dismissive, but all I can think about is that my knees are wobbling like they've been replaced with mint jelly. I try to casually drape my arm across the back of a wingback chair for support, but instead, it looks like I'm clinging to a piece of furniture as the Titanic is sinking. I hope the chair isn't a priceless piece of history in case I pass out in it. Or barf on it.

"I don't," Jason replies. He plops down in the chair, and I imagine we must look like we're posing for some bizarro portrait. Only I probably look like I'm participating at gunpoint.

"Then why did you bring it up?" I demand. My face is burning.

"You totally don't get it," Jason says, rolling his eyes.

I plant myself directly in front of him. "Listen, don't hate on Mark just because he's everything you're not," I say right to his face.

"Excuse me?" Jason looks up at me, his eyes narrowed to angry slits.

"You heard me. Mark is charming, and respectful, and he's not always vying for attention." Jason opens his mouth, but I charge on before he can say anything. "He's a really great guy who's never said a bad word about anyone, and for you to trash him for no reason is pathetic."

"You know what, Julia? You-"

Before something really nasty can come out of Jason's mouth, my phone starts buzzing in my back pocket. I hold up a finger at him, the international symbol for " 'Scuse me, I have something more important to pay attention to, so you're gonna have to hold on." I glance around for signs of Mrs. Tennison, but unwilling to take any chances, I crouch behind one of Queen Victoria's fancy-pants drapes and flip open my phone to find a new text from Chris.

Sitting in a cafe with a burnt caramel mocha

watching the rain dreaming of u ...

My face burns even hotter. No one has ever sent me a text this sweet before. I read it again. And again. Then I feel a finger poking at me through the drapes.

"You in there?"

I push on the drapes, trying to find my way out, but Jason is in the way and I can't find the opening. I feel his hand poking me, but I can't follow it out from behind the drapes. I have a brief, panicked fear that I'll never get out of here, and my mummified body will become part of the palace tour.

I finally have to drop to my knees and wiggle out the bottom. When I emerge, Jason is rolling his eyes and giving me a total "you're the chief resident of crazytown" face.

"What is your problem?" I ask, trying to pretend I didn't stage an epic battle with a set of velvet drapes.

"If you're soooo obsessed with Mark, if he's your MTB"-here he makes air quotes-"or whatever, then why are you chasing after this dude Chris? For someone who probably irons her underpants, you're pretty all over the place, aren't you? Just like all the girls you look down on."

"I don't look down on people!" I protest.

"Don't you? Haven't you spent most of this trip thinking that all your classmates are shallow horndogs who couldn't appreciate the history and literature of London if it kicked them in the teeth?"

"Well, Sarah and Evie are shallow," I retort. "Especially Sarah. Why can't she mind her own business? She acts like other people's lives are her personal Us Weekly."

"You don't even know her," he replies. "If you spent a second reading a Sarah Finder guidebook, you'd know she's in everyone's business because she wants to protect her friends. You're too busy in Julia Land to notice anyone else."

"Whatever," I mutter. My throat is having spasms. Jason makes me sound like an awful, uptight, self-involved monster. I'm not like that! He thinks he knows me! He doesn't know me at all. I inhale deeply and lower my voice. "Mark is none of your business, okay? Just because you've dated a bunch of girls doesn't make you an expert on love. I mean, yeah you've had girlfriends, but have any hung around for more than like a week?" I bite my lip, regretting the words as soon as I've said them.

"If I'm such an idiot, then why did you ask for my help?" He tosses something small and silver at me. I catch it before it smacks me in the cheek. My phone! "Here. Good luck with your texting."

"What? How did you-When did you-" I sputter.

"Slimeballs like me have sticky fingers," he deadpans.

Oh my God. The drapes. When he was trying to "help" me out, he must have snatched my phone. My breaths are coming fast and deep, like I've just climbed out of the pool after a hard sprint. Everything is upside down. If there is such a thing as spontaneous human combustion, I fear I'm about to experience it.

"Leave me alone" is all I can whisper.

"Gladly." Jason brushes past me, bumping me hard with his shoulder. I take a stumbling step backward ... and run smack into a suit of armor.

The whole thing starts to teeter on its tiny base. I reach out to grab it, but it's too late. It seems like slow motion as the armor, surprisingly heavy for a mini replica, crashes to the ground. The sound bounces across the marble floor and swirls around the room like a tornado. I stand frozen in horror. Everyone is looking at me, including Jason, his face registering a mixture of annoyance and amusement.

Our tour guide gives a tight, choking laugh and says to the staring faces, "Just a reproduction, just a reproduction. Do be more careful, though, won't you, miss?"

"Julia Lichtenstein, what has gotten into you?" Mrs. Tennison stage-whispers through clenched teeth. It's clear she doesn't want to make even more of a scene in front of our tour guide, but she is capital-P Pissed. She plods heavily across the floor in a pair of beat-up Uggs, which Mrs. Tennison probably thinks make her look trendy, though actually she looks like she has clubfeet. She takes me by the arm and leads me quickly over to a side hallway.

"Miss Lichtenstein," she begins, winding up for a serious talking-to, "your behavior on this trip has been completely unacceptable. I was hoping you would be a role model for your classmates, but instead you have been impulsive, thoughtless, and disrespectful. I did not expect this from you, of all people."

Her words pack a punch right to my gut. I feel like all the wind has been knocked out of me, and my eyes burn with tears. I've never been talked to like this by a teacher. Ever.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper. Suddenly, my throat is squeezing shut and I realize I'm about to cry.

"Really. What has gotten into you?" she asks, staring me hard in the face, eyes narrowed. She turns on her heel toward the rest of the group, waving me along after her. Apparently she wasn't looking for an answer, which is good, because I don't have one. What is wrong with me? Did a teacher just seriously refer to me as impulsive? And disrespectful? Jason's calling me shallow; Mrs. Tennison is calling me thoughtless.... What's next?

I trudge after Mrs. Tennison, rejoining my classmates. As I wipe the tears from my cheeks, I catch a glimpse of Sarah Finder, standing near the back of the room. I expect to see a smirk, but all I can see is ... pity. She actually looks like she feels sorry for me. Which doesn't make me feel better. In fact, it makes me feel worse. Maybe I am shallow. Whatever. I just know that I'm sick of being ignored, pitied, judged ... by everyone.

lovers quarrel? do tell! -SF I quickly type back as if in response to Sarah's text, then wander through the rest of the tour like a zombie, trying to remain expressionless and emotionless. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

When the tour ends, we make our way to a pub curiously named the Only Running Footman. It's listed in my guidebook as one of the best places for "true British grub," though unfortunately, my book doesn't tell me where it got its wacky name. It's located in what my book tells me is the Mayfair district. I want to flip and cross-check just what that is, but my head hurts too badly to focus on the index. Once inside, my classmates spread out among the tables and the black vinyl booths. They place orders for shepherd's pie and fish-and-chips, giddy over the delicious-smelling pub fare. Ryan attempts to order a pint, but he has to laugh it off like it's all a big joke when Mrs. Tennison whips around and shoots him the evil eye. This would be the ideal place to continue my quest for the perfect fish-and-chips. They even offer what the menu calls "proper mushy peas" as a side, but I'm not hungry. I keep thinking back to Mrs. Tennison's angry voice, her finger wagging in my face.

Instead of ordering, I take a small table in the corner and flip open my notebook, hoping I can focus on going over my notes and drafting some of today's reflection paper, but what I see on the pages are not my standard, neatly lined-up notes with indents and symbols. My system is nonexistent and my notes are a hot mess. I can't get anything right today. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.

A shadow swallows my notebook. I look up to see Jason. He's holding two porcelain white plates of fish-and-chips, perfectly rounded scoops of tartar sauce and mushy peas on the sides. He has two bottled waters tucked under his arms.

"You can't leave England without eating some fish-and-chips," he says. When I don't respond, he says, more softly, "Come on, Julia. I know you can eat like a running back."

He drops one of the plates in front of me, and it clangs loudly on the table. One of the fries escapes its pile and plops down on top of the mountain of tartar sauce. I instinctively reach for it, dabbing the sauce on the side of the plate before returning it to its pile.

"Thanks," I mumble, but I have to push the plate back across the table. The smell of the beer batter reminds me of our night of drinking at the house party, the start of all the rule breaking that led me here. I drop my head onto my folded arms, my messy curls spread out across the table.

"Mind if I sit?" He doesn't wait for a response, of course; he deposits the other plate in front of the empty chair next to mine and plops down beside me. A few minutes pass in silence, other than the sounds of his noisy chewing. I keep my head down, but the smell of the French fries is starting to work its telltale magic. I finally raise my head, and Jason immediately slides my lunch in front of me.

"Listen, I really appreciate that you didn't bring my name into that," he says, passing the malt vinegar my way.

"What are you talking about?"

"Back at the palace. You were mad at me; it was my fault you ran into that suit of armor." He has to swallow back a laugh as he says it, which only reminds me of how awful and embarrassing the whole situation was. He quickly continues, "Anyway, I appreciate that you didn't say anything to Tennison. If Mrs. T gives me a terrible grade for this trip, my grade for the semester is screwed, and frankly so is my GPA."

"What happened to that seven twenty verbal score?" I reply, an edge in my voice. "Shouldn't you be cruising through classes with those smarts?"

"I'm very smart," Jason says matter-of-factly. "But as you yourself have pointed out, I'm also not the most ... serious student in the world. If my GPA takes another hit, I won't get into a good college. And if I don't get into a good college, I won't get into a good law school. Doth sayeth my father, anyway. And if I don't get into a good law school, trust me-I won't even be welcome at family holidays anymore." His laugh comes out forced.

I want to continue being mad, but I feel a stab of sympathy for him. My dad wouldn't have cared what I did with my life, as long as I was happy. I can't imagine having pressure like that from my parents. So I swallow back my snotty retort and instead stare at my plate.

"Look, you're pissed. I get that. I'm sorry for what I said before, okay? I want to make it up to you." For once, he seems sincere.

"How do you plan on doing that?" I sigh.

"Well, that text from Chris ...," he says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a crumpled piece of paper; it looks like a receipt, with his trademark chicken scratch on the back. "He mentioned having a burnt caramel mocha. Turns out there're only two places in London that have them on the menu. I Googled," he explains as he holds the paper out to me. I see that he's written the addresses on it.

"Where in the hell did you Google?"

"The girl sitting at the security desk. She was cute. She thought I was cute...." He trails off, and I get it.