Soul Snare: A Clare James Art Adventure

By Charlene Yoder

Clare James never intended to do more than visit museums and sketch the work of centuries of artists who had come before her when she signed up for a study abroad program in London, England.

However, after her travel companions belongings are nearly blown up under suspicious circumstances, she arrives at her flat where her new roommate bullies her at knifepoint. Exhausted and scared, she is quickly disillusioned about her reasons for coming overseas.

And then Lizbeth, a friend from the United States whose mother is British, shows up with a mysterious tale of a stolen family heirlooma painting so small it could be hidden in the sole of a shoe. This painting could prove the existence of a lost royal heir and close the doors of one of Londons largest churches forever.

Intrigued like a modern Nancy Drew, she goes from decoding messages by candlelight in the dome of St. Pauls cathedral to avoiding capture by doodling caricatures of guests amidst the glitz of a grand country ball.

In her quest to find the truth, can Clare stay connected to the unique voice God has given her to share her testimony with the other students in the program and solve the meaning of the miniature paintings existence without compromising her beliefs?

Readers Guide Included

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490861210

Charlene Yoder

Charlene Yoder studied abroad while earning her Graphic Design BFA from Millikin University. She holds an art teacher’s license for all grades. She does murals and teaches private art lessons in Sarasota, Florida where she lives with her husband and daughter. Yoder won first place in the 2014 Aspiring Authors Writing Contest for Soul Snare, her first novel.

Book preview

Chapter One

BEFORE IT COULD REACH my eyes, the smile had died on my lips, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Our group was sprawled around after the meeting in various positions of repose on the decaying pews in the abandoned cathedral. They had gotten quiet, looking to me for a reaction, so I forced my constricted throat to spit out a decidedly American response.

Wow.

Applause broke out like fireworks sputtering at a backyard barbecue.

I knew you’d see it our way, Boone said quietly in his thick Irish accent. He held out his hand and I automatically took it. I tried not to cringe as our fingers interlocked and he raised them over our heads.

Cheers all! So much for being a little fish in a big pond anymore. We’re getting married!

The group clapped and whooped, but I didn’t feel their exuberance. My heart was thudding slow and heavy in my chest. I hadn’t said yes. I stood there frozen. It was as if I had noticed a tiny spec in the middle of a lavishly restored ancient painting that I thought I loved. I’d looked at the painting numerous times, but today I’d been handed a magnifying glass to examine it. There, in the center, I had found a tiny red devil laughing at me from his cozy kingdom bordered by the gilded picture frame. How could I have not realized what they really wanted? I had been so blind! And now the question was, would they just let me fly home after I said no thanks?

Instinctively, I didn’t want him to know my thoughts. I needed to get out of there. I needed to figure this out – like now! Forcing myself to breathe slowly, I fought the urge to burst into hysterical laughter and run screaming toward the door.

They started slapping each other on the back and congratulating him. He had dropped my hand by now, so I moved one foot behind me and took a step backward. Niema bounced to my side like a small, immaculate black-bird and her hand gripped my arm. Her clipped British tones were shrill in my ears.

From the second I met you, I knew it was going to be you. No one expected an American, much less a woman, but I knew no one else was bringing in so much information from visitors so quickly. I mean, you have the gift of charisma, like Cleopatra or if Hitler had a wife, she gushed. Or did he? I am flustered today! He was not supposed to announce this yet, but he is so headstrong. You will have to watch that. Tisk, what a comparison. To Hitler! Forgive me.

I couldn’t mask my expression of disbelief so I avoided her eyes and looked down at her delicate, brown fingers clinging to my sweatshirt sleeve. Her nails were unpainted. I had watched those same fingers rifle through thin pages dozens of times to answer my questions. She had always been calm, cool, and probably calculated.

She’d never once babbled like this in the four months I’d known her. She tilted her head from side to side and twittered as she squeezed my arm. Our group knew you were going to be high-ranking. Our group brought you in. We knew you were going to get us big rewards.

Her face distorted in the widest smile I’d ever seen her express, her teeth gleaming white against her dark skin. She darted away to the front of the long room, too pleased with her anticipated rewards to notice my lack of enthusiasm.

Turning abruptly, I stepped into the middle of a quiet cluster of people walking out the door with their heads down. Bowing my head too, I clenched my backpack in front of me and slipped out the door among them. On the sidewalk, the silent group broke off into different directions, leaving me standing alone in a pool of light next to an iconic, red, English phone booth. It was empty. I turned my head to the shops along the street, but their windows were all dark, hollow eyes staring back at me. They had long been closed for the evening. Maybe it was just because I was an art student, but I felt like I was in an Edward Hopper painting, alone.

The nightly mist began rolling in around my ankles, and I could feel the damp through my trouser legs. I shivered. They would miss me any minute now. Consciously I forced my legs to move through the thick swirls of mist until I spotted the subway, or the tube as they called it. Ducking down the stairs to the empty platform, I fumbled for my pass. A train’s doors were just opening. I didn’t care where it was going; I just had to get away from there.

Behind me, the doors clicked shut with a hiss. As I quickly sat down, I saw Baing charge onto the cold gray platform. Boone, his twin brother, and supposedly, my intended, followed him. My frozen brain fumbled for words to pray as I hunched down behind the homeless man sleeping in the seat next to me.

God, don’t let them spot me. Hide me. Please, help me!

The train gathered speed and the lights in the compartment flickered. I desperately tried to focus my eyes on the bouncing map of the underground system mounted across the ceiling.

I was not near my apartment, or my flat, as they called it, by a long shot. The tube was heading in the right direction, though. I’d have to change trains four times. Of course, they knew where I lived, and they’d be racing there now in Langland’s car.

I grimaced at the thought of riding with Langland. He was a maniac driver, but the only one of the students with his own transportation. I avoided him as much as possible after he’d casually offered to give me a lift to lunch one Sunday after church. Trying to be polite, I had unwittingly accepted his invitation.

Riding on the opposite side of the street, and in a car with the steering wheel on the right side of the dash, would have been enough of an experience without his excessive speeding to boot. The streets had sailed past in the tiny roller skate car like a series of Impressionist paintings. I saw blurred glimpses of nannies pushing perambulators, dogs barking on leashes, and bicycles ambling like gaggles of geese.

As we hurtled unwaveringly toward a fork in the road going eighty kilometers an hour, he’d turned to me, as any polite British gentleman might, and calmly asked in his dashing accent, Left or right?

What? I was startled.

As Bob’s your uncle, pick one now, he repeated steadily. Should we divert to the left or the right of the fork?

Hold your horses a minute. I don’t know how to get there! His penetrating stare unnerved me as we sped forward at an alarming rate. Shouldn’t you slow down or at least look at the road? I don’t know which way – FINE, RIGHT! I yelled as I stomped my foot down on the floor, seeking a nonexistent brake and clawing at my seat belt.

We were so close to the fork, we took out a bush planted by the side of the road as he cranked the steering wheel, and the tiny car banked off the curb on two tires. The bush bounced off the hood and over the roof in a flash. The swirl of leaves it coughed out hadn’t settled before we had already raced through two more intersections, and I had decided this James Bond wannabe had a screw loose.

I later found out both sides of the fork could get you to the cafe. So much for the great idiom about life’s two paths. In this case, Langland used the fork every time he had a girl in the car. So far they had all picked the right fork and thus, as the car swerved, they were thrown to the left and away from him. He was waiting for the girl who picked the left fork. When the car spun to the left, centrifugal force would throw her toward him and confirm she was his girl.

It merely confirmed for me, he was an idiot.

The tube hissed to a stop, the doors slid open, and I scrambled over the gap to the platform. The hot tunnel winds generated by the trains blew my scarf into my eyes. I fought it off my face to see the stairs and assess my situation. My brain was starting to click. I had to surface to the street and cross over the top to get to the platform on the opposite side to catch my next connection. Hoisting my pack, I sprinted up the stairs two at a time. The metallic sounds of the station were interrupted by Boone’s mournful Irish accent echoing down from above me.

Are you down there, Clare? It’s me, Boone. Clare!

Langland’s driving had gotten them to the tube stop before me! My heart sank as I froze, balanced on a steep step in the dimly lit tunnel. My mouth was dry and my chest hurt from breathing so hard. The place was deserted. I looked at my hands for a moment as if for an answer. They were shaking so I pushed the palms together to steady them. The motion reminded me of prayer and snapped me out of my paralysis.

God, I need your direction. I knew this was dodgy. I just thought I could handle it. Clearly I can’t. I need your help, I whispered desperately into the artificial breezes that swirled around me. With a quiet resolve in my spirit, I turned on the stairs and retraced my steps.

From the opposite platform, a rush of air blasted the oily smell of the arriving train into my nostrils, and its roar drowned out Boone’s pleading cries as I slipped between the closing doors onto the train that I had just left. It was going in the opposite direction of my flat, straight on into the English countryside with no more connections.

They knew all my stops. They would be checking each one before my flat. What could I do once I got there? This was probably better anyway. I leaned stiffly back against the cold vinyl seat, alone in the train as the lights flicked and it bumped along its track. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it pounding through the thin material of my blouse. I closed my eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Words from the first four verses of the twenty-third Psalm floated through my mind and I whispered them out loud for the company of my own voice.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, and he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

I was in the darkest valley across an ocean from my family. Within minutes this evening I had realized that I was in danger of becoming a kidnapped bride for a cause I didn’t support.

I would disappear in this foreign country, where only God, and the tiny red devil, would know what had happened.

Chapter Two

I TURNED TWENTY-ONE ON a flight to England.

That particular birthday will always stick out in my mind, but not for the reasons that most people remember their twenty-first birthdays. No, besides being practically excited out of my skin about England, burned in my brain is also the annoying fact that my Indiana driver’s license expired that day.

If I had been able to go into the DMV on my birthday, I could have renewed my license without any fuss. The hardest thing I would have had to do was pose my unruly brown curls for the obnoxious photo. However, since I had a morning flight from O’Hare, which was four hours from my home, I had to go to the branch on the day before my birthday. I needed a current form of identification besides my passport.

And that’s where the ferry jackknifed, so to speak. Despite my study abroad acceptance letter, my airline tickets, and my safe driving references, the woman behind the counter would not budge from her position. And the more she dug in, the more it irritated me that my character seemed to be in question.

It’s only sixteen questions. You know how to drive. Just take the test, Sweetheart.

Exactly! You said it yourself, I know how to drive. This is about the principle. It’s 1993. People expect more from their government offices. Some branches even have computers from what I’ve read. I was exasperated.

Humph, she sniffed. "We don’t have any of those new-fangled things in this respectable area. We got families here to protect. From what I’ve read, those computer gizmos are huge. They’d take up this here whole room. And control your mind, and give you cancer." She shifted her weight and leaned an elbow on the counter.

"Anyway, it’s policy. One day before, or one day after, your B-day you have to take the test. It’s at each individual branch manager’s discretion, so if you don’t like my ruling, you can take your jet setting to another branch. Maybe one with a com–put–ter." She wheezed out the last words with a sarcasm only country people scorning technology can achieve.

I focused my russet brown eyes on a speck in the middle of the grey wall behind her head and tried to calm down. We had argued for fifteen minutes already, proving she was as stubborn as a mule. The next branch was fifty miles away and I had no idea if the manager would be any more forgiving. The injustice reminded me of Smarty’s.

Back when I had two curly pony tails, and my mother clad me in stiff dresses with lace collars and satin ribbons that never stayed tied, my youngest brother and I hoarded a stash of round, chalky candies under the fat, wood dresser in our parents’ room. The candies were called Smarties. Everyone knew that the more you ate, the smarter you got. We knew our middle brother wouldn’t want any no matter what they could do for him, because, as my grandma said, he was a picky eater. So, we didn’t tell him about the stash. Of course this created a problem later. After we had eaten all the Smarties and became geniuses one or the other of us always beat the picky eater when we were playing board games. He didn’t take it well. Eventually, his fits got us all banned from playing board games.

And that’s how I felt once again. Punished, because of someone else’s bad attitude.

But this time I didn’t want the invincible feeling to go down the drain. No one in my family had ever been to college, much less out of the state. There wasn’t a lot of care for that sort of thing in the Midwest farming community I grew up in. Most people I had graduated high school with were married with babies and factory working or farming. Listening to the radio while repairing your truck or tractor, hunting, and avoiding Amish buggies on the road were the three biggest recreational activities.

Impossibility was my biggest foe and I was already wiping the floor with him when the driver’s license diva came on my radar.

Well, Hon, what’s it gonna be? She licked her swollen lips in anticipation like a food critic surveying pie.

Fine, I said in a low voice. I’ll take the test. But, for the record, I don’t see how I will be any better of a driver tomorrow then I am today. My words made a hissing noise through my clenched teeth as I fought to remain polite.

The woman couldn’t suppress a smirk of victory as her sausage fingers clipped the test to a board, and handed it between the walls of her counter cubicle to me. I took the clipboard and pencil gently from her. Without breaking her gaze, I neatly wrote sixteen letters down the side of the test. ACBCCCACBCCCACBC. Her eyes widened in surprise as I slowly laid the pencil down on the clipboard and slid it back across the counter under my hand. I remember a baby crying somewhere behind me, but the rest of the room was holding its breath.

You know if you miss more than three, you’ll have to wait ten days to take the test again, don’t you? She raised a thin, penciled eyebrow at me.

Without flinching, I lifted my hand off the clipboard. Her gaze remained locked with mine for what seemed an eternity as our wills battled. Then, just when my nerves of steel began to give way to a queasiness in the pit of my stomach at the possible consequences of my ridiculous behavior, she broke. Reaching under the counter she brought up a stamp, which she pressed onto my paper. Swallowing into a dry throat, I gritted my teeth and looked down at the red ink. My mind could hardly compute the four blotchy letters emblazoned on my test. P–A–S–S.

I have to say that was the best driver’s license photo I’ve ever taken in my life. The shine of satisfaction was so bright on my face; I could have been in the middle of a mudslide and come out looking like a model in a toothpaste ad.

I really was invincible.

* * *

The next day, as 11:02 a.m. approached when I was originally born, that feeling had fled. As a first time flyer, butterflies whipped around in my stomach like a blender. I sat in my seat before takeoff, gripping my armrests, and praying for the pilot. The dread of arriving at a big city airport alone, with a bus to catch and pickpockets to avoid, washed over me. I was going from being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond at the end of eight hours.

There were so many things I couldn’t control. It was hard to be prepared for what might go wrong when I was so far from the help of my family. I heaved a shaky sigh. There wasn’t any way to go back now. I gave myself a mental slap and tried to focus on what I knew, instead of what I didn’t know.

I knew once I got settled, I could find Lizbeth, my University friend from the States. While I would be bunking in housing provided by our program, her mother was British, so she was staying with family. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat.

I knew while I was taking art history courses at the Courtyard Institute through the University of London, Lizbeth was also taking courses at U of L toward her world history degree. We would be in a general lecture class together and I’d take a familiar face anywhere I could get it.

I knew she was tracking some family history and needed my help with an old painting too. That meant we would explore the city together. A big city seemed less daunting with a friend. And if we got lost, I had program number to call for help. There would probably be people to ask too. It wasn’t like a country road with no one around but the backside of a bunny.

I took a deep breath and exhaled.

I also knew that my God was with me every step of the way. After all, was any of this possible without Him? With Him I was invincible!

"I can do all things, even if they’re not in Indiana, through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13," I whispered to myself.

The plane jostled and begin to roll. I heard my case in the overhead compartment shift and bump above me. Since I would be maneuvering customs and finding transportation to my hotel all by myself, I figured it was best to pack lite. Everything I needed for my six months abroad was in one hard-sided, carryon suitcase. I had read the travel guides with their warnings and advice – no flashy new luggage to attract unwanted attention from thieves trying to pick a bag off the herd, or drug dealers trying to plant things on me to smuggle into the country. Once things like that happened, you were in the weeds without a way out.

After dinner, as the cabin lights dimmed and flight attendants passed out blankets and pillows, I leaned my seat back and tried to sleep. When we arrived it would be morning in London, although it was still in the middle of the night where I grew-up. I wished I had one of those big portable car phones movie stars and the like had, only here on the plane, so I could call home. I dozed off.

I awoke to a scratchy voice over the intercom asking us to fasten our seat belts and put our seat backs in an upright position. I looked out my window through the clouds to the Heathrow airport below us. I had read about factions of the IRA targeting it with bombs. The book said it was like flying into any other airport, though. You just had to keep an eye on your luggage. If anything was left alone, it was confiscated and blown up. I doubted that every happened.

A girl breezed past me and hit the man’s elbow across the aisle, sending his coffee flying. Our flight attendant quickly handed out paper towels and in the ensuing chaos, the girl’s coil of Titian red hair slipped from under her sloppy sunflower hat and fell into her cobalt eyes.

I recognized that face. I didn’t know her name, but I had seen her vibrant coloring before. An artist never forgets a face, especially one with her palette. Portraits were my thing and while I was taking my required art history classes in England, I was actually an art major. It took every cent I had made from the past two summers drawing caricatures of resort guests to buy my ticket and provide meal money, but here I was. And between you and me, I was here on a shoestring, a very threadbare shoestring.

I stretched up in my seat to see where the red headed girl sat down. Maybe we’d passed in the library or sat next to each other at a football game. I couldn’t remember that part, but it didn’t matter. Someone to travel with would discourage the lurking pickpockets because four eyes were better than two.

Snatching the crumpled cocktail napkin out of an empty cup rolling past me on the floor, I scribbled: Are you coming to London to study with ASP? My rendezvous point is the Arms Hotel on Ashcroft. I believe we attend the same college.

I paused a moment in my writing. How would she identify me? I’d been very careful to dress nondescriptly like the guidebooks said to avoid the attention of gypsies. No hat or a scarf, just hair corralled into a pony tail. A cranberry colored sweatshirt over a plain white T-shirt, blue jeans and smart brown leather shoes. No jewelry, not even a watch. No makeup to smear on the overnight flight.

I shrugged to myself and finished the note: Wait for me when you get off the plane. I’m behind you.

The captain was asking the flight attendants to take their seats. The people who were frightened to fly were tensing the air with their murmurs and wheezing. A baby cried as her ears popped. I tapped the lady’s arm in front me.

Can you please pass this note up? It’s for the girl in the flowered hat.

She nodded and passed the napkin up two rows to a grandfather soothing a toddler. He used it to swipe a tear away from the little boy’s face, before her frantic tapping on his arm redirected him. It slowly made its way toward the front of the plane. Everyone who touched the slightly soggy slip was waving a hand as if to create a breeze to blow it to the front.

The plane was in a steep descend now and a lady two rows behind the girl had just pulled a scarf of hot, red Georgia O’Keefe poppies over her matted wig. She was smoothing and tucking it and everyone became confused by its brilliance. Triumphantly, the little boy behind her flipped his seat belt off, and leaped up to give her the note. She looked back, and the passengers behind her all gave a victory wave.

She strained against her seat belt to yell behind her, I’m not staying at the Arms Hotel.

I was already wagging my head no. "Sunflower hat."

The rolling motion came to a halt and the seat belt sign flickered off. I lost sight of both the poppies and the sunflowers as people erupted out of their seats. Eager to move after such a long flight they jostled for standing room and twisted to reach the overhead luggage.

Moving swiftly out of my seat, I pulled my sturdy heirloom suitcase from the compartment above me, and stood smartly at attention waiting for the people ahead of me to move.

Chapter Three

TWENTY MINUTES AND TWENTY prayers later, I had not moved more than a foot forward, but I had not wilted from my intense posture. The wait to embark had only increased my adrenaline as I anticipated what was to come.

After what felt like hours, I was released from the confines of the plane’s stuffy belly like Jonah being expelled from the whale. Exploding down the exit ramp, I plowed dab-smack into the red-haired girl, who had sprung into my path with open arms. We hit like two charging rams and shot apart onto our backs in the middle of the customs zone. We scrambled to our feet.

She tilted her head to one side as she looked at me.

Got it! She clapped her hands together with a loud smack. "I know you! You’re that girl they call Wholesome. Too funny."

She jabbed a finger at me. Everybody’s always quoting you as the Queen of Idioms in the theatre department. It’s the drama, you know? We love you! That’s me, theatre, set design. Oh, oh, what is the one you said about Paris burning? No, it was Rome. My roommate uses that all the time – he’s fiddling, she’s fiddling, the establishment is fiddling while Rome burns. She threw back her head and laughed. I have to admit, I loved that one too until she over used it. Or beat it like a dead horse, as Wholesome would say. OH! She paused, her eyes widening. "Or you would say actually because you’re actually her. Wow, this is confusing."

Inwardly I groaned. She was as flighty as a hen with a fox at home.

And another groan. I was doing it again.

I had been trying to cut back on my wild use of idioms. While I didn’t mind what the nickname Wholesome stood for, freshmen nicknames were supposed to dissolve as you got older. Three years later this one was like gum on my shoe. Probably because the rec room in our old dorm was still called Wholesome’s Basement by the new batch of freshmen every year.

When I had arrived at college, using colorful idioms to describe everything around me was a habit intensified by nerves. My unabashed observations made me surprisingly popular and my catchy phrases began to come back at me wherever I went. Invitations to attend campus parties and Greek rush poured in, but I declined them all as gracefully as I could. The party scene didn’t appeal to me, and this quickly earned me the nickname Wholesome. That nickname let other kids know they weren’t alone in their choices not to drink or do drugs or sleep around. The dorm where I lived had a dusty recreational room that became our Saturday night hang out. Whether you were a Christian or not, you weren’t hazed in Wholesome’s Basement. You were safe and included. Things I had a feeling I was going to miss here.

I didn’t think I knew anyone in drama, I said. Have we met before?

We had been strolling with the flow of passengers across the airport toward the luggage carrousels. My legs were stiff and I was glad to walk with her, until she flung her arm in front me and halted us.

Wait a minute, we have to get our bags. She announced, ignoring my question. I’m so glad you’re here to help me. Mine’s huge! Oh, look, it’s actually stuck in the door. Too funny. Here, how many bags do you have? I’ll help you find them.

She turned to look at me when I didn’t answer. I was speechless. Her bag was canvas and tubular. It resembled something like you’d see mafia men carry around in a movie. It was as long as I was tall. You could have stuffed three bodies in it and still had room. It was wedged in the opening of the rotating baggage carousel and it wasn’t letting any other luggage out.

Ah, this is it, I said weakly, slightly lifting the carry-on I held in one hand. My grandfather used to live out of it in the Twenties when he was an on-call fire fighter in the Rocky Mountains. If he could do it, so can I, I said proudly, only to realize she hadn’t heard a word.

Hold that thought. I need to get my bag. Too funny. She hopped onto the edge of the carousal and jumped like a goat over the rotating belt. With each yank of her bag, her ponytail gave a saucy jerk. She yelled as it let lose in front of a tidal wave of baggage. The surge knocked her down. She rounded the corner of the carousal pinned beneath her sausage shaped luggage as the belt began to rotate again. Her flailing arms were the only clue of where she was. Several passengers leaped forward to help me pull the overstuffed sack off the track. She tumbled after it.

Whew! That almost got ugly. Thanks for watching my stuff. She grabbed my hand and cranked it up and down like a lever. I hadn’t even noticed her two other bags, with a blue backpack, next to me on the floor.

She is clearly more of a liability than an asset. Ugh. I thought to myself as I scanned the crowd to see if I recognized anyone else.

Not missing a beat, the enthusiastic actress slung her blue backpack over her shoulder, and shot by me to the carts stationed at the side of the luggage area. Loading the slot at the gate with coins, she released a flatbed cart. With her sunflower hat at a jaunty angle, she wove her way back through the crowd to my side.

Did you say you didn’t have any more luggage than that? You’re joking, right? She laughed at my apparent cleverness as she threw her back into her bloated, worm like bag.

No, I spoke slowly and with extreme enunciation. This is exactly what I was not going to tucker myself out doing. We have five minutes to catch bus number four and I do not even know how to get out of customs.

She stopped pushing at the worm and stood there looking forlornly at me. I hesitated as I argued in prayer.

God, what have I gotten myself into? I know, I know. It would be too mean to leave her. I so wish I could, though. Just this once would it be so bad not to do the right thing?

I looked in her pleading blue eyes.

Oh, all right, Lord, this one’s definitely for you. Just please help us catch this bus.

I checked my watch. We’d have to move right now to even have a chance. Trying not to roll my eyes, I flung my suitcase on top of the worm. Gripping the steering bar at the back of the cart, I locked my elbows. With everything I had, I shoved the flatbed under the worm and it lazily turned over onto the cart, cupping my carry-on in one of its rolls. She joined me with both hands shoving at the steering bar with extreme energy, but it still seemed to take forever to gain momentum. As we neared the end of a long hall, the floor sloped slightly downward, helping us increase our speed. A guard, at the back of the large crowd waiting for custom’s interviews, saw us coming and raised his voice, Americans?

Yes! We answered in unison. We were both panting slightly now. He smiled and waved his arms to the left as if he were landing a plane. As we banked the corner, the flatbed started to drag us more than we were pushing it. Its four wheels made a high-pitched buzz that echoed off the walls of the corridor.

Hey, watch it! A man with a briefcase yelled at us as we narrowly missed his toes. I gripped the steering bar and braced my body to slow us down, but my shoes merely slide on the waxed floor like skis. My new acquaintance was flat out running by this time to keep up. Her face was as flushed as her hair color. My own coat and scarf clung to me in a suffocating hug.

What’s ahead? Can you see where we are going? I panted. My knuckles were white on the steering bar as I struggled to keep up.

Sort of, she yelled as she did a hop-skip-bounce to see over the giant rolling worm as it drug her along. Her ponytail began to loosen, and the hat, perched on her head like a tangled flower garden, launched off and floated down somewhere behind us. Her eyes met mine.

Leave it! I can’t control this thing by myself, I gasped. The giant clock in front of us gave one minute to the bus departure time listed in our paperwork.

The cart hit a series of divots in the floor that didn’t help to slow us down a bit. I heard the ribbit noise they made with the wheels as automatic doors parted before us. We flew over the bump at the entrance in a slow motion kind of movie, like you see when the camera is too close to the action. With my hands still gripping the steering bar, my feet left the pavement like a pole vaulter. Papers like snowflakes were spitting out of her blue backpack. I noticed her shoes were both untied as they passed my face. The cart came to a halt with a deep thud and my somersault ended with my back on the worm. My suitcase, nestled on the worm’s belly, was now wedged between my shoulder blades. My heels had hit the feet of a girl in a bus seat. My heart was thundering in my ears.

Sorry, I mumbled as I gingerly pushed myself off the worm and stood. I could see now that we had landed against the side of a double decker bus. It had a wide, side door open and I had spilled right in. The driver was now yelling somewhere outside of the bus. Amid apologies to the other passengers, I shucked my case and the red– headed girl’s other two from the top of the worm. I stretched up and dislodged her blue backpack from the hinges of the side door where it had hung itself. I placed it on the floor with the other pieces.

The worm had landed half off the cart inside the bus. Out the window I could see the cart, bent and crippled. The bus driver’s face was red as he ranted about the schedule he had to keep in words that resembled English, but were distorted with a thick accent.

The red-haired girl kept interrupting him. Look, just help me shove. We can get this in. It will only take a minute. I saw the worm quiver so I grabbed a strap. Three teenagers in the back of the bus came forward with smirks and began to tug too. The girl whose feet I’d landed on grabbed the edge nearest her and halfheartedly yanked. The worm shook and shivered before rolling an inch. Then another. And another. Several tourists with cameras around their necks snapped some photos and then bent to lend a hand. The whole bus was involved now and the grunting was fierce.

Fine! The bus driver yelled from outside as he charged the worm, hitting it with his shoulder. His final contribution rolled it on into the aisle and the automatic side doors swished smoothly shut. Flipping her disheveled strains of fiery hair out of her eyes, its proud owner triumphantly charged onto the bus through the front door, her face spread in a grin as wide as the Mississippi. The driver followed her and settled into his seat muttering about Americans.

She grabbed her backpack from our pile and motioned me to follow her as the bus pulled away from the curb. I wasn’t leaving my suitcase anywhere, so I pulled it out from under her carry-ons and followed her up the winding narrow stairs at the back of the bus. The stairs were open to the outside and I could see the pavement beneath me. It was no mean feat, with legs like rubber and a suitcase clasped to my chest, to climb as the bus braked and swerved through traffic.

The top deck was empty of passengers, but why, I couldn’t tell. It was an amazing place, entirely enclosed in windows, allowing the city to sprawl before us, a far cry from the rolling cornfields of Indiana.

Well, come on! She tossed her blue backpack into an empty seat and pulled me to the front window. We sat on a narrow bench with our knees rubbing the windshield. Despite the cramped quarters, it was like riding on a cloud. The outside bustle was muted and all the sights, colors, and smells of a foreign country stretched before us.

In the distance, London icons like the Tower Bridge and Big Ben were scenes from postcards. As we drove further into the heart of the city, the streets became