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R O O M S   W I T H   A   V I E W

“This is the worst hotel I’ve ever been in,” said Sienna. “I’m supposed to have a room to myself. There’s no concierge and this furniture is crap.”

No elevator, either, and they’d had to hike their suitcases up four flights to the top floor. Not even a glass in the bathroom, Lindsey noted.

“Dad really cheaped-out on this one. Not fair when they take themselves off to L.A. and Cancun and New York whenever the hell they feel like it, first class all the way.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nasty,” said Lindsey as she lifted the window sash and leaned out, thinking Sienna was starting to sound like a broken record. “But who cares? We can still have fun.”

The Cornwall Hotel had a presentable street front with black iron railings and vines climbing round the windows. But its backside was a ramshackle arrangement of parts shoved into the row of flats on the next street. The rooms below theirs even opened onto the ground floor roof, facing each other across an open quad of pebbled roofing.

Lindsey smiled, thinking of Chris, the hotel manager, warning them he’d skin them alive if they ventured onto that roof and, “Don’t think I haven’t seen all the tricks you youngsters can get up to. There’s a sensor alarm goes off and I’ll be there in thirty seconds to march you out into the road. Just you try me!”

All around them, kids were settling into their rooms, realizing they faced each other, opening windows, calling their friends. If Chris wanted a quiet night, he should have nailed those windows closed, she thought.

“Party in my room!” A deep boy’s voice. Coming from above—on the left?

“What’s your room number?” Girl. Directly below.

“That’s the challenge! You got to find us. But first, we’re going out for supplies.”

“Hey, Little Red-Haired Girl,” called a new voice. “I don’t know your name but come and see us in Room 204.”

The red-haired girl had to be Kristen; how had she managed to get to know a guy in the few hours they’d been together?

But what a relief, Lindsey thought, when the room allocations were rearranged and she’d managed to get away from her. So what if she’d gone shopping with Sienna? They weren’t joined at the hip, were they? And there she was talking to her and she’s not even listening; she’s watching some fashion symbol in a hideous yellow dress. Friends are supposed to listen. And then she calls me out for ditching her!

Sienna was already way more fun to hang out with.

“You hear that guy? He’s starting a party but we’ve got to figure out what room it’s in.”

“I know who that is,” said Sienna, listening to the voices waft across the open air. “That guy who needs a shave. He’s eighteen and I heard him talking about getting some vodka.”

“Yeah? I saw him go down the fourth floor hall with his suitcase. Maybe that’s why he has that old-fashioned hard one—so the bottles won’t break. If the party’s on the fourth floor, we just have to follow the noise.”

There was that other guy again, calling across the quad, “Hey, Little Red-Haired Girl, I don’t know your name ...”

“Hey, he must mean Kristen,” said Sienna.

“Whatever. Let’s go find the real party. I bet that Josh guy’s got it going.”

So they headed out to find the action.

“One of those guys from the other school is calling you,” said Sonnet to Kristen, who had flopped on the bed the minute they came into the room. They were in a triple room: Sonnet, Kristen, and Ashley. “He says he’s in Room 204.”

“Who cares? I’m too tired to move,” Kristen said.

At the window, Carly said, “It looks like Mary Poppins, that scene where the chimney sweepers dance.”

Sonnet nodded sadly, looking across at the flats and the buildings in between, all different heights with walls jutting out and chimneys everywhere. All day she had looked at street signs and buildings, handled the different coins. Yes, it was different from home, but not that different. London was a big busy city and the huge signs at Piccadilly Circus were Sanyo billboards, the height of tacky, and now the first encounter with “literature” came from a Disney movie.

“You didn’t like Mary Poppins?” Carly asked, noting Sonnet’s expression.

“I saw it once at a birthday party. But we never had a television so I never really got into all that stuff.”

“Wow. No TV,” Kristen said.

Sonnet waited for the inevitable reactions: Weren’t you bored out of your mind? Were your parents poor? Were your parents mean?

Sometimes downright stupid: So,do you cook over an open fire?

Sometimes stumbling near the truth of what it was like to live without that constant mesmerizing immersion in all-consuming unimaginative film: What did you do with your time, sit around and listen to the radio?

Well, they did, actually. Every weeknight of her childhood, at 6:30, they’d listened to Stories and Music for Children on CJRT. Thank God for no television, she thought.

Because it was the voice and the words alone telling the story of Black Beauty. The scene as real in her mind today as when she was five, the grip on her heart as the horse refuses to pull his master’s carriage over a bridge in a storm, the driver urging, whipping him on, Black Beauty balking, knowing with his horse’s wisdom on the shuddering planks that something is wrong; then the lantern appears in the dark and the call of the man who shouts, “Go back, go back!” for the bridge has been washed away and Black Beauty has saved their lives.

And in that moment, Black Beauty gave Sonnet her destiny. She knew what her life would be for: weaving words that take you out of your skin into wind and storm and the terror of hooves on the boards and the glow of the moment when they see, see how wrong they have been and how right the horse, how unlooked-for the wisdom, how true the truth.

“My mom hated television, too,” said Carly, pulling her back to the present. “We lasted two years without it one time.”

“Wow, you’re the first person I’ve met who didn’t have TV.” Sonnet was surprised to find herself a little annoyed that she didn’t have a monopoly on unique parents.

“Yeah, she was really into saving my imagination for a while, and television was going to corrupt my mind.”

“Did it?” That was Kristen, from on the bed.

Carly giggled. “Oh, yeah. Barney and Polkaroo were my best friends. She wanted me to have relationships with real people.”

“So why did she change her mind?” This was the kind of thing that fascinated Sonnet, the hidden story, the turning point.

“She loves watching historical movies, and she’d allow herself a little DVD time,” said Carly, “and because of one of those movies, we started reading together, so she decided maybe it was okay. I wasn’t going to be brain dead after all.” She smiled. “And I get pretty good marks in history from all those films.”

Kristen was the third roommate in the triple. She’d listened, downhearted and weary, to Sonnet and Ashley from the bed, where her red curls spread on the white pillow. Her best friendship was over. She was bone tired and angry at everything.

Never, ever would she forget the moment when Mr. Robson said, “We have only two rooms for you girls so, sorry Sienna, no private room; the best I can do for you is a double, and the others will have to make a triple set.”

And without missing a beat, Lindsey said, “I don’t mind. I’ll go in with Sienna.”

“Okay. Then Kristen will join Sonnet and Ashley. Problem solved,” said oblivious Mr. Robson.

Of course, Lindsey would latch onto the cool people—snotty Sienna—and in spite of the little hissy fit at the airport, you could tell she was watching the newcomer rich girl with interest. Maybe that’s why she was my friend; I was cool and now I’m not, and here I am with these losers. That Sonnet is so full of herself, she thought, and she’s nosy, too. “What’s wrong with TV?” she said, peevishly. “I’m really sad I’m missing the end of Beauty and the Beast.”

Beauty and the Beast. Remembering, she had to turn away from the others to hide her tears. She talked about the show with Linds after every episode, each rooting for a different couple (pretty girl paired with not-so-pretty guy), hoping they’d make it to the end without being eliminated.

From the open windows. voices were calling. First Sienna shouting, “Where’s the party?”

Alan (it had to be Alan because only a nerd would be quoting from a Snoopy cartoon and she herself had to be a nerd because she got the reference) calling one more time, “Little Red-Haired Girl ... don’t know your name ... Room 204.”

And then Lindsey’s head appeared at the window of a room on the fourth floor she knew belonged to some of the boys from Oshawa. Her voice rang across the quad, high and euphoric and laughing. “Busted! The booze is up here in Josh’s room. Fourth floor in the corner by the back stairs!”

I’ve been voted off the island, Kristen realized. In favor of a boy who didn’t shave, that half-naked girl, and stuck-up Sienna.

And then a flame of anger sat her up in the bed. I’m not a redhead for nothing, she thought. “What room number was that guy calling out?”

“Two-oh-four,” said Sonnet.

“Come on, girls! Let’s find the boys!”

And they went, except for Ashley, who said she was just too tired.

For the real Ashley, it was three in the afternoon, and she sat under the big maple near the paddock where Brock grazed contentedly in the shade.

You, dear horse, are why I got into this, she thought, trying to convince herself that the adventure she’d embarked on was both doable and worth it. But it was twenty-four hours since she’d run up the driveway with the suitcase and yelled her last-minute instructions, and Carly headed for the airport in the limo. In a way, it had been lucky, that crazy crush of time so Carly had no time to get her back up about the money. But still, it had been a long twenty-four hours.

The first afternoon had been bliss. She’d never come to the stables without a deadline (dance lessons, manicure, math tutor, shopping, endless shopping, with Mom), and just to groom Brock from ears to tail as long as she liked had been a joy. From the stables, she’d watched Carly’s mom come out of the house, climb into the rusty car, and drive off. So she’d taken Brock into the schooling ring, warmed him up, and worked him over the jumps. With an hour and a half, she even had time to work on his one weakness, a deep dislike of anything that looked like a water jump. Then the rubdown and a happy session with the creams and the rich leather smell of the tack room.

That was where she was when the car door slammed and footsteps clomped on the stone floor. “Carly?” Mrs. Venn called into the dim shadows of the barn. “What’s the truck doing at the top of the lane?”

Ashley slipped out of the tack room and deked into Brock’s stall, pressing her back into the most hidden corner. Brock looked at her, nuzzled her pocket hopefully, but didn’t give her away.

The footsteps walked the length of the barn, the voice called Carly’s name into the hay mow, the tack room, out both sets of wide doors. Longer, Ashley thought, than she would have expected. Long enough to make her wish she could come out of hiding and go to the bathroom.

But finally the footsteps faded. Peeking out the stable door, Ashley watched Mrs. Venn retrieve a pizza box and a clanking cream-colored bag from the LCBO from the car, dump them on the porch and stomp up the driveway to get the truck. Just as Carly had predicted, Mrs. Venn was on the bottle again.

Only long after dark had Ashley felt brave enough to sneak into the house and grab a few slices of pizza. Without turning the lights on, she groped her way to the bathroom and found the alcohol and cotton. But when she dabbed the stinging disinfectant on all her new piercings, the bottle slipped from her hand and clanked into the sink.

“That you, Carl?” a muffled voice called.

Ashley didn’t trust her voice to sound like Carly, but managed a muffled, “Uh-huh,” hoping no one would investigate.

No one did.

Then silence fell again. Falling asleep had been hard, the strange bed and all the night noises that sounded so loud, crickets and cicadas she never heard because her parents kept the air conditioning on from the day the heating was turned off. And her ears and eyebrows still stung from the piercings. Only when Flip padded across the floor, hopped on the bed, and curled up against her legs had she finally been able to fall asleep.

In the morning, she’d woken with a start. Carly’s mother banged around in her bedroom, boots dropping on the floor as she managed to crawl out to the barn to feed the horses and muck out the stalls. Turned to the wall, covers pulled to her ears, Ashley lay as still as she could, pretending to sleep.

Mrs. Venn’s steps paused once in the doorway but white streaks in red hair and the glint of metal ear studs would be all that showed. It had been a long, heart-thumping pause, but it finally passed.

“Don’t forget to exercise the boarders,” her “mother” muttered, and then the screen door slammed, boots thumped down the porch steps, Flip’s nails clacking on the kitchen floor as he followed, nudged the door open with his nose, and trotted after her.

So the plan was working and wasn’t it great?

Brock in the paddock was a picture of Fine Horse, but the picture blurred with tears. The plan was working, so why did Ashley feel so rotten? Why the queasy, uneasy feeling in her gut?

Maybe she was just tired after that restless night. Or hungry? She’d grabbed some cereal and milk this morning—but I didn’t eat lunch, she realized. The fridge contained nothing but a box of congealing pizza and her appetite vanished, but she grabbed a couple of granola bars and left the house quickly because she had to be careful not to run into Mrs. Venn. Maybe it was just the strangeness of it all, the way the house smelled (fields blowing in and old food), so different from home (airtight and potpourri).

I’m lonely, she thought as she headed for the barn with Flip at her side. This would all be so much fun if Carly were here.

But thinking of her friend made her smile again. That’s what makes it all worthwhile: Carly’s in London, having the time of her life.

After her roommates left to find the party, Carly looked out the window of her room in the Cornwall Hotel and wondered how she was going to survive the next week.

Sienna suspects something, she thought, remembering that awkward exchange during the suitcase scramble. “Is your bag Prada?” Prada? How was she supposed to know what brand Ashley’s suitcase was? She hoped she’d covered that confusion well enough.

“Oh, right, I thought you were talking about my jeans.” Which was a laugh of its own because Carly’s jeans were strictly Value Village, and this particular pair of Mudds had been a welcome secondhand find, and Sienna seemed too sharp to be fooled by her dodge.

She’d have to keep her distance from that girl. And she’d have to watch those slips into the history of her own real life, like that exchange with Sonnet. Fortunately, Mom’s anti-TV phase and their shared historical movie passion belonged to an era of family calm. A rich kid’s mother could have those tastes and opinions, right?

But still, she’d have to watch it.

For a few hours, it had seemed like a happy dream, the airport, the landing, driving through London on the bus, seeing a police officer with that Bobby hat, Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes, the tube and the accents, a dream she knew she couldn’t pinch herself out of.

Then the lightning bolt moment in that Covent Garden shop. There was that bag with the Union Jack that Kristen bought, and she’d thought, “That would be great for Ashley,” and reached for her wallet.

And realized: all she had in her wallet was a Canadian ten-dollar bill and a lonely loonie.

Nothing in their game of switching places had ever reminded her of the hard-knock reality of money. Game was the right word. Passport, hair color, piercings: all just like playing dress-up when they were kids, creating illusions, weaving magical dreams.

And then, suddenly, she’d been in a limo on her way to the airport and, at the airport, they’d actually fallen for it and here she was.

All those bases covered. But they hadn’t thought of money, and now she was in England without a British pound to her fake name.

In the loneliness of her London hotel room, Carly watched night fall above the rooftops and realized that there’d be no vacation from the choice she had to make every day at home. Get on with it or give up. Simple as that. That money sharpened the point of the divide between the two options was a bitter irony. If she gave in to it, she’d soon be deep in anger that Ashley had set her up for such a difficult situation.

Laughter floated from the open windows. Glasses clinked and lights came on one by one in the building behind.

She chose by reaching for the tour itinerary that Sonnet had left on the dresser. Dinner had been terrifying until she realized they were all getting the same prepaid meal. Some ordered and paid for cokes and milk and coffee, but enough had stuck to water so she hadn’t stood out in the crowd.

The brochure told her that dinner and breakfast were included. But not beverages, not lunch or extra excursions, taxes, tips, spending money.

Okay. I’m here, I made it this far. I can live for a week without lunch. The hard part would be going unnoticed. She leaned her arms on the window frame and watched the moon rise above the strange chimneys.

Oh, well. It’ll all be worth it when Ashley and Brock win the Trials. At least Ashley is happy.