All About the Hype Read Free

resting inside.
    ‘Whoa.’ I take it out of the box. ‘It’s beautiful!’
    There are a few charms attached and I pause at the sight of a tiny, diamanté-studded guitar.
    ‘They’re real diamonds,’ Meg whispers with a smile.
    I gasp. ‘I’ll be
so
careful not to lose it,’ I vow seriously.
    ‘We thought you could collect charms that mean something to you,’ Johnny says, as I turn the bracelet around in my fingers and spy the number sixteen dangling there. A lump springs
up in my throat.
    ‘But that’s not the last present,’ he adds quickly, taking the bracelet from me and placing it back in the box.
    ‘Disneyland!’ Barney interrupts with a gleeful shout.
    ‘BARNEY!’ Meg and Johnny bellow at him simultaneously.
    He freezes and then stares at them contritely.
    ‘That was supposed to be a surprise!’ Meg scolds.
    ‘Disneyland?’ I manage to ask, as Johnny tickles Barney’s ribs and makes him squeal with hysteria.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Johnny asks his tiny son as he falls back on the bed, narrowly missing my head.
    ‘Disneyland!’ Barney barks between giggles. Phoenix waddles over to join the fun and Johnny grabs him and tickles him, too.
    ‘VIP access,’ Meg says to me knowingly, amid the mayhem.
    ‘What, today?’ I ask weakly.
    ‘Yeah! Today!’ Barney shouts, scrambling to his feet and proceeding to bounce on my bed.
    Oh.
    That’s the last thing I feel like doing.
    I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. I’d love to go to Disneyland sometime, but I’d planned on staying here and having a quiet one today. I can’t imagine having fun.
    Johnny is completely oblivious to my internal dilemma. ‘Who are we seeing today?’ he asks Barney.
    ‘Mickey Mouse!’ Barney obligingly replies at high volume.
    I glance up at my half-brother’s beaming face and know that my plans to wallow are shot. How can I possibly disappoint him?
    ‘What time are we leaving?’ I ask.
    ‘NOW!’ Barney yells.
    ‘No, not now,’ Meg says brusquely, making a grab for him. ‘We’ve got to eat breakfast first, and get ready.’
    ‘And we still have to give Jessie her last present,’ Johnny interjects.
    ‘What, my last present isn’t Disneyland?’ I ask with confusion.
    ‘Nope,’ he replies, throwing me a key.
    A car key.
    A
Fiat
car key?!
    I have a sudden vision of the crummy old white Fiat that Stu used to have, but I don’t care! It’s a car! A
car
! I’m sixteen and in America that means I can get my
driving licence!
    I leap out of bed and all five of us race down the stairs in our PJs to the front door. I wrench it open and my jaw drops.
    ‘It’s a Fiat 500 Abarth,’ Johnny says proudly.
    The model means nothing to me. All I know is that what sits before me is one of the coolest little cars I have ever seen: matt-black with red wing mirrors and a red racing stripe down the side
–
nothing
, absolutely nothing, like Stu’s former old banger.
    ‘I thought it looked kind of cheeky. Like you,’ my dad adds with a shrug.
    I squeal, running out of the house, unlocking the car doors with a button on the key as I go. Meg laughs and Johnny chuckles as he follows me, both of us hopping gingerly over the sharp gravel
beneath our bare feet. I almost go to the right-hand side of the car, but remember that the driver’s seat is on the left in America. I climb in and Johnny gets in the passenger seat beside
me.
    ‘Like it?’ he asks, grinning across at me.
    ‘Are you kidding me?’ I gape at him. ‘How soon can I drive it?’
    ‘Aah, well,’ he replies ominously. ‘I’m afraid you have to jump through a few hoops first. You need a learner’s permit before you can drive on the road, under adult
supervision until you do your actual test, of course. But to get your learner’s permit you have to do a Driver’s Education course – six hours of driving lessons with a qualified
instructor and a written test. Annie’s told me how it all works over here.’ Annie is his PA.
    ‘No problem,’ I