Bookish London

Chapter 10 - Kyle

She amazes me every time.
Playing confused as to make me ask her out? Real clever, Cuthbert, clever.
The truth is, I thought she wouldn’t take the offer…not that I gave her a choice…typical me.
Anyway, I take up on her hints of my leaving, and I go back home, taking the tube to Monument.
I spend the rest of my night between dinner and the boring homework stuff for the school days ahead, trying hard to concentrate, often slipping away to my thoughts.
Thoughts full of someone, someone special. Thoughts full of HER.
I know I should block them but why try? There’s no point denying me the fact that some part of me finds her appealing, and not for her body, differently from other guys of my age…but for her head.
Her brain. Her intelligence.
She’s one of the smartest people I know, and I wish we were in a good position right now but…I don’t want to ruin the relationship we have now, more like the non-relationship…besides, she has no feelings, no inclinations whatsoever towards me and why should she?
I’ve treated her badly enough, mocking her because she could reach goals, I never could grasp for myself.
She was and still is, better than me.
In everything.
I alternate these dense thoughts about the only real rival I ever had to my exercises and my textbooks.
I never quite realized how she fills my mind even when she’s streets away from me.
This apartment is too quiet for me, more so after what happened this afternoon.
She fills the world with sound.
Yes, she can be annoying and boring and shy and whatever you use to describe the stereotypical nerdy reader girl, but she’s more than that, I’m sure of it.
I wish I could get to know her more…have a chance to make up for the jokes me and the boys made as idiotic kids about her and show her that I am here for the competition, in and out of school.
I always like a challenge.
Especially one I can win.
With this, I get ready for bed, but it takes me some time to fall asleep…too many thoughts in my head. HER.
As I wake up the next morning, with a terrible headache and a blaring alarm clock showing that it’s eight in the morning. On a Saturday!
Well, I did set it myself, but I silently hoped it wouldn’t work…just for once!
I take my usual Saturday routine, which consists of breakfast, alone, getting dressed casually, grabbing the book I’m currently reading, my study-bag and my coat and heading out for my favourite place, that particular bench along the Thames’ riverbank near Blackfriars.
Just about halfway on the tube trip there I remember about my so-called “date” with Elizabeth and that I was supposed to pick her up by ten, so I step down at the first stop I reach, on the green line going to stops like Edgware Road, Kensington, Ealing Broadway, Richmond, Wimbledon to the end-of-the-line stop called Upminster.
I step down at Mansion House, just one stop away from my solitary resting place, and take the yellow line going from Hammersmith to Edgware Road.
I catch the first train I find going into the direction of Barbican station, checking my watch every minute or two, not very sure that I was going to get there on time. 
I got to Barbican station at last, stepped out and walked-ran to her apartment’s building.
I go up to her level by taking the lift and finally step in front of her apartment’s door and ring the bell.
“Coming!” she yells from inside, and two minutes later she opens the door.
She’s wearing a nice dark blue sweater layered over a white shirt, black jeans and black DMs.
She is wearing something different from our usual school uniform for once.
As she closes the door, she throws on a black coat and matching scarf and hat, then turns to me, smiles and says: “Shall we start?”
She’s a ray of sunshine, this girl.
No, better, she’s the whole weather. Different every day. Unpredictable.
One moment she’s as bright and sunny as a summer day in the south, the next she’s all dark and cloudy like the sky with an incoming storm.
I shake my head, letting the thought wash over and leave my mind, and smile without realizing it.
She looks over to me with a grin and says: “What have you got to smile about, heh, Carter?”
I laugh nervously without answering and not long after she joins in as we descend to the first floor using the lift.
We leave her building and I follow her decisive route, not sure where she intends to go.
“Hey Cuthbert, anything you want to say to the rest of the party?” I blurt out between breaths, trying to keep up with her more-running-than-walking kind of step.
“Just wait and see.” She says cryptically as she jumps onto a train.
“Are you coming?” She asks, inviting me to follow her on the train.
Of course, I oblige her, not wanting to be responsible for leaving a sixteen year old girl on her own in the tube.
“Again, Cuthbert, where are we going?” I ask her repeatedly throughout the tube-ride.
And again, she says: “I said just wait and see and that’s what you’re going to do, or you’re not coming with and have a Fail on your homework. You decide.”
I slump on a newly freed seat in the carriage, abandoning any attempt at decrypting our destination from Liz’s answers.
After a while, the seat next to mine is free and Liz slumps on it with a murmur of relief.
After a while, I ask her: “You okay, Cuthbert?”, nodding at the tired expression on her face.
“Everything’s fine, Carter. Let’s go, this is our stop.”
And sure enough, the train stops at London Bridge Station, after we took the black line from Moorgate.
We leave the station through the escalators, and, to my surprise, I find myself under the Shard, one of the most famous skyscrapers in the city.
“Liz, The Shard isn’t exactly from Shakespeare’s time, you know?” I tell her, almost jokingly.
“Of course, it’s not, Carter. Obviously, this is not our destination, you dimwit. Now follow me.” She orders me, and I do not dare contradict her.
She leads me towards what seems to be a church, called Southwark cathedral, and she marches inside.
I run along behind her, unsure of her intentions.
She fans out two slips of paper in the face of the controller at the entrance and they let us pass.
“How did you-? When-?” I blubber, trying hard to find the words to explain my confusion.
“I bought the tickets online, Kyle. Nothing extraordinary.” She says nonchalantly.
“So, you had this day planned? Since when?!” I ask her frantically moving my hands to show my level of disdain.
“I had it all planned, with or without you. I’m not one to wait on a guy for anything, just so you know.”
As she says this, she walks to the left and then straight up until the corner turning into the church’s east wing.
She stops and looks the wall. It’s a memorial monument to Shakespeare.
“In Shakespeare’s time, Southwark Cathedral was a simple church, called church of St Saviour’s and St Mary Overie (which literally means: ‘over the water’). The church itself would have been known by Shakespeare himself. His brother Edmund was buried in this very place in 1607. We’ll go and see it later.”
She informs me, as a good tour guide would.
“Very interesting, Cuthbert. You did your research well, I see.” I say, smirking a little.
“You think this is interesting, Carter? This is only a taste of the discovery tour of Shakespeare’s London I planned for today. Shall we proceed?” She adds, as she offers me her hand and we run away laughing through the half-empty church on this Saturday morning.