Read Online Where She Went by Gayle Forman - Free Book Online

spite of the mask of apology she’s wearing, I feel like a groupie being asked to wait in the back of the bus until the rock star’s ready. But like the groupies always do, I acquiesce. The rock star is Mia. What else am I gonna do?
    “Thank you,” she says.
    I let Mia walk a few paces ahead of me, to give her some privacy, but I still catch snippets of her end of the conversation. I know it was important to you. To us. I promise I’ll make it up to everyone. She doesn’t mention me once. In fact she seems to have forgotten about me back here entirely.
    Which would be okay except that she’s also oblivious to the commotion that my presence is creating along Ninth Avenue, which is full of bars and people loitering and smoking in front of them. People who double take as they recognize me, and yank out their cell phones and digital cameras to snap pictures.
    I vaguely wonder if any of the shots will make it onto Gabber or one of the tabloids. It would be a dream for Vanessa LeGrande. And a nightmare with Bryn. Bryn is jealous enough of Mia as it is, even though she’s never met her; she only knows about her. Even though she knows I haven’t seen Mia in years, Bryn still complains: “It’s hard competing with a ghost.” As if Bryn Shraeder has to compete with anyone.
    “Adam? Adam Wilde?” It’s a real paparazzo with a telephoto lens about a half block away. “Yo, Adam. Can we get a shot? Just one shot,” he calls.
    Sometimes that works. Give them one minute of your face and they leave. But more often than not, it’s like killing one bee and inviting the swarm’s wrath.
    “Yo, Adam. Where’s Bryn?”
    I put on my glasses, speed up, though it’s too late for that. I stop walking and step out on to Ninth Avenue, which is clogged with taxis. Mia just keeps walking down the block, yapping away into her cell phone. The old Mia hated cell phones, hated people who talked on them in public, who dismissed one person’s company to take a phone call from someone else. The old Mia would never have uttered the phrase unbearably rude .
    I wonder if I should let her keep going. The thought of just jumping into a cab and being back at my hotel by the time she figures out I’m not behind her anymore gives me a certain gritty satisfaction. Let her do the wondering for a change.
    But the cabs are all occupied, and, as if the scent of my distress has suddenly reached her, Mia swivels back around to see me, to see the photographer approaching me, brandishing his cameras like machetes. She looks back on to Ninth Avenue at the sea of cars. Just go on, go on ahead , I silently tell her . Get your picture taken with me and your life becomes fodder for the mill. Just keep moving .
    But Mia’s striding toward me, grabbing me by the wrist and, even though she’s a foot shorter and sixty pounds lighter than me, I suddenly feel safe, safer in her custody than I do in any bouncer’s. She walks right into the crowded avenue, stopping traffic just by holding up her other hand. A path opens for us, like we’re the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. As soon as we’re on the opposite curb, that opening disappears as the cabs all roar toward a green light, leaving my paparazzo stalker on the other side of the street. “It’s near impossible to get a cab now,” Mia tells me. “All the Broadway shows just let out.”
    “I’ve got about two minutes on that guy. Even if I get into a cab, he’s gonna follow on foot in this traffic.”
    “Don’t worry. He can’t follow where we’re going.”
    She jogs through the crowds, down the avenue, simultaneously pushing me ahead of her and shielding me like a defensive linebacker. She turns off on to a dark street full of tenement buildings. About halfway down the block, the cityscape of brick apartments abruptly gives way to a low area full of trees that’s surrounded by a tall iron fence with a heavy-duty lock for which Mia magically produces the key. With a clank, the lock pops open. “In