Looking for Jamie Bridger by Springer Nancy

Author:Springer, Nancy [Springer, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781497689091
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween
Published: 2014-12-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter

8

The bus trip to New York was a long one, six hours, and Jamie sat hunched forward the whole time, clutching between her knees the tote bag Kate had insisted on in case she got stranded, chewing her nails and trying not to think. If she let herself think, she would be sick right in her lap; she knew it. Don’t think.

Could she find him? Would he answer her knock at the door? What would she say if he did? “Listen, I’m Jamie Bridger too, and I think you’re my—”

Don’t think.

In the city the crowds and traffic and noise made the knot in Jamie’s chest pull yet tighter. There were dirty white flutters of trash everywhere—that bothered her. At home Mrs. Leweski would have picked it all up, no matter how long it took. Under the trash everything looked gray to Jamie, and there was a gray buzzing feeling in her head from exhaust fumes. Even the birds were gray. Sparrows. Pigeons.

I don’t belong here.

And people seemed to know she didn’t belong. She must have been doing something wrong, or else being an out-of-town kid with a tote bag was wrong, because the taxis would not stop for her. Once one finally pulled over, the driver barely spoke English. She had to tell him the address twice, then sit with her fists clenched and hope he knew where he was going.

The traffic moved unlike any traffic Jamie had previously experienced, not in lanes but in blobs and stops and stampedes. Inches from another taxi her driver gestured and cursed—in a foreign language, but Jamie could tell it was cursing. The meter muttered and mumbled to itself the whole time whether her taxi was moving or not, doing its sums.

Abruptly the driver pulled over at a corner. “Here go,” he said.

He meant—was this it? Rattled, Jamie got out, pulled her money out of her jeans pocket and paid him the unbelievable amount that was winking on the meter. The taxi driver sat looking at her a minute, but she was not paying attention; she was staring around at a bewilderment of buildings. She was just about to try to ask the taxi driver which one it was when he made an angry noise in his throat, then roared away.

The names on the street sign seemed unrelated to the address she wanted. Jamie had no idea which direction to walk but started walking anyway, trying to look more like a New Yorker and less like a hick from the sticks. This seemed like a quieter section than the crowded area around the Port Authority. There weren’t many people on the sidewalks here, and the ones Jamie saw were hurrying and scowling. There were no shops, no shopkeepers Jamie could ask for directions, just blocky buildings that must be office buildings and—apartments, one of them the other Jamie Bridger’s apartment building. So close. Jamie was too nervous to think straight. The few building numbers she saw seemed to be about right, but where was the street?

Jamie came to another street sign.

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