Read Marooned in Manhattan for Free Online

teeth.
    ‘Sure,’ I replied, I hoped with a degree of nonchalance. ‘Wyoming is in Massachusetts.’
    Scott clutched his stomach and faked mock hysterical laughter.
    ‘Not even close, Evie, and Wyoming is a STATE!’ he called out, as he disappeared down the corridor, returning a few minutes later with a large map of the United States, which he handed to me with a flourish.
    ‘You can learn the states and their capitals. Pop quiz when I get back.’
    Scott stared resignedly at Leela’s three matching crocodile skin suitcases. ‘We are only going to be away for two nights, Leela,’ and turning to me, he muttered, ‘and you, you’rethe person who gets offended when Americans think that Dublin is in Scotland.’
    ‘Point taken,’ I said and I took the map into my bedroom.
    I knew the U.S. was a big country, obviously, but I had no idea it was so amazingly enormous. I guess I had been thinking of it as not extending beyond the Brooklyn Bridge. The population of the Republic of Ireland is about four and a half million and the population of the United States is more than three hundred million. I couldn’t get my head around that number of people. We are just a pimple, I thought, compared to America.
    Scott had roped Joanna into staying in the apartment all weekend to look after me.
    ‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ I’d argued.
    ‘Joanna might,’ he said. ‘Have fun!’ And we did.
    We spent Friday night eating limited edition blueberry cheesecake ice cream and playing a grand slam tennis tournament on Wii. We eventually had to put Ben in my room while we played because he was so excited by the sound of the Wii tennis ball that he kept driving himself (and us) crazy, running around, sniffing everywhere and making excited yelping noises in his hopeless quest to find the cyber ball.
    On Saturday afternoon I helped Joanna stock the medicine shelves in the clinic and we chatted about all kinds of stuff.
    ‘Where in Canada are you from?’ I asked her.
    ‘Prince Edward Island,’ she answered.
    ‘Prince Edward Island, are you serious?’ I said, delighted. ‘That’s where
Anne of Green Gables
is from. It was one ofMum’s favourite books.’
    She smiled.
    ‘I am debt free, thanks to Anne with an ‘e’.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, intrigued.
    ‘Well, I was nine years old, collecting shells on Cavendish beach, when a bunch of Japanese tourists swarmed all over me. They were so excited and kept pointing at me and snapping photographs and exclaiming, “Anne, Anne” because I suppose I looked like their image of
Anne of Green Gables
,’ and she pointed wryly to her red hair. ‘I told my mom about it and she’s not the type of woman to miss out on a good business opportunity. She sewed some old-fashioned calico dresses for me, did up my hair in two braids and used a brown eyeliner pencil to paint some freckles on my face. Our house was on one of the main roads and she cajoled my father into building a little stand in front of it with a hand-painted sign saying, “Have your photograph taken with
Anne of Green
Gables
.” The tourists lapped it up.
    ‘For the rest of that summer and every summer after that, I had a readymade job. I just sat on a little wooden stool in the stand and tourists paid to have their photographs taken with me. The European tourists often kissed me on the cheek, but we had to ban the kissing because they kept smudging my fake freckles so that it looked like I had mud smeared on my face. During the second summer, my mom and my sister started selling lemonade and snacks like hot dogs at the stand. My parents put all the
Anne
money into a college trust fund for me and the snacks money into an account for my sister.’
    ‘Did you like being Anne?’ I wondered.
    ‘Most of the time, yes, but there were some downers. The
Anne of Green Gables
in the books did not wear glasses and I’ve always been too squeamish to wear contact lenses so I had to whip off my glasses whenever tourists