Chapter Seventeen
We’re just by the service lifts when Noah stops in his tracks. “Sorry, I forgot I need to tell Sadie Lee something. Be right back.”
As I watch him race back into the kitchen, my brain starts doing that thing where it automatically composes a Facebook update: Penny Porter is about to go out to Brooklyn with a super-cute New Yorker who looks like he just strolled off the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. I shake my head and laugh. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to me. I’m the kind of girl who falls into holes and tells boys she has fleas and shows the entire universe her worst knickers—in close-up. Maybe this whole thing is a dream. Maybe I’m actually still asleep in Brighton. Maybe it’s still the night after the play. Maybe I—
“All righty, let’s go.” Noah comes bursting out of the kitchen with a grin on his face. He holds something out to me. In his hand are two of Sadie Lee’s fairy cakes. “She’ll never know they’re missing,” he says with a grin. “We can be their official food testers. They don’t want anyone dropping dead from cake poisoning at the wedding, do they?”
I shake my head. “No, definitely not.” I take a bite of the cake, and it’s so light and fluffy it practically dissolves on my tongue. “Oh wow!”
Noah nods. “I know. Sadie Lee makes the best cakes in all of New York—if not the world.” He calls the lift. “So, what’s the most fun thing that’s ever happened to you?”
I look at him blankly. “Pardon?”
He laughs. “Oh man, your accent is so cute.” The lift arrives and we get in—which is super bad timing as now we’re in a really small well-lit space together and there’s no way I can hide my blushing cheeks.
“What’s the most fun thing that’s ever happened to you?” Noah repeats. He takes a woolly hat from his back pocket and pulls it down tight over his head.
“What, ever?”
“Yes.”
My mind goes completely blank. As the lift starts zooming down through the floors, it’s like a clock counting down: 20, 19, 18 . . . What is the most fun thing that’s ever happened to me? 17, 16, 15 . . . And then an answer comes to me and I’m so desperate to say something that I blurt it out without thinking: “Magical Mystery Day!”
“Say what?” Noah looks at me.
Oh crap. Now my face actually feels as if it’s on fire. “Magical Mystery Day,” I mutter, staring intently at the lift display: 10, 9, 8 . . .
“What’s Magical Mystery Day?”
5, 4, 3 . . .
“It’s a day my parents invented when my brother and I were little. We had it once a year.”
The lift arrives in the basement and the door opens. But Noah doesn’t move.
“And what happened on Magical Mystery Day?” he asks.
I dare myself to glance at him. To my surprise, he looks genuinely interested. “Well, it would always be on a weekday and we’d be given the day off school. My dad would have made a huge Magical Mystery cake, which we’d eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was one of the rules—on Magical Mystery Day you had to have cake with every meal. And the other rule was that we had to go on a Magical Mystery Tour.”
Noah grins. “Like the Beatles’ song?”
I nod. “Yes. Mum and Dad would take out a map and one of us would have to close our eyes and point at a random place and then we’d go off and have an adventure there.”
The lift doors close again. Noah quickly presses the button to open them.
“Magical Mystery Day sounds awesome,” he says wistfully.
We step out of the lift into a huge underground car park.
“It was,” I say, relieved that he doesn’t seem put off by my bonkers family tradition. “I used to love the way it was our secret. How everyone else would be at school or work and we’d be feasting on cake and out having an adventure. And I loved the way we never knew when it was going to happen either. Our parents would just spring it on us.”
“Like a surprise Christmas Day?” Noah says.
I look at him and grin. “Yes, exactly.”
He nods and even in the dim lighting of the car park I can tell he’s impressed.
“You mustn’t tell anyone I told you, though,” I add. “We were always sworn to absolute secrecy because my parents would have to tell the school that we were off sick.”
Noah nods. “The first rule of Magical Mystery Day is: you do not talk about Magical Mystery Day,” he says in a deadly serious voice.
“Precisely.”
Noah grins. “So, do you guys still do it?”
I shake my head and laugh. “No, we haven’t done it for ages. I suppose we grew out of it.”
Noah frowns. “How can you outgrow Magical Mystery Day? How can you outgrow cake and adventure?”
I laugh. “Good point.”
Noah takes his car keys from his jeans pocket and presses the key tag. A shiny black Chevy truck just ahead of us beeps and the lights flash on and off.
“How old are you?” Noah asks.
“Fifteen—nearly sixteen.” Instantly my inner voice starts having a freak-out. Why did you say “nearly sixteen”? It’s going to look like you like him. It’s going to—
“Right, and I’m eighteen,” Noah says. “We are definitely not too old for cake and adventure.”
We get to the truck and I instantly go to the passenger side. Noah follows me. “What say we make today Magical Mystery Day?” he whispers conspiratorially.
I stare at him. “Seriously?”
He nods and looks around from side to side as if to check that no one’s listening. “We’ve already had some cake, now I can take you on a Magical Mystery Tour of Brooklyn.”
I cannot stop grinning now. “That would be brilliant!”
“Awwwwwesome,” he corrects in a really strong New York accent. “You’re in the Big Apple now, you have to say, ‘That would be awwwwwesome.’?”
“That would be awwwwwesome,” I say, opening the truck door.