Once Every Never Read Free

curves of the Reading Room.
    Clare remained determinedly unimpressed by the spectacle. She’d been there before on visits with her aunt, and for all the dent it made in her attention the museum might as well have been a Walmart back home in Canada. Except that a Walmart would have had makeup counters and a magazine rack. And would therefore have been an infinitely better waste of time, in Clare’s humble opinion.
    She felt a stab of homesickness.
    Already? Bad sign …
    A whole two months away from home was already starting to look like an unending purgatory of waiting around in elegant marble foyers for Maggie to take care of Matters Intellectual. Spending summer vacation in London hadn’t been Clare’s idea, but then again her choices were rather limited as far as that went. Fending for herself had not been presented as an option: she could either spend two months under the ever-watchful eye of her aunt or she could accompany her parents on tour. Which would have meant spending all her time in concert halls and hotel lobbies. Both Clare and her parents had viewed that prospect with almost exactly the same bleak level of enthusiasm.
    Stupid Facebook party …
    At least the London deal had been sweetened by the fact that Al had convinced her mom to allow her to spend the summer with her nice, responsible, reliable cousin in England, too—thereby effectively accompanying Clare into exile. Unlike Clare, Al had actually jumped at the idea of spending the summer in Jolly Olde. She , certainly, could use a break from her home life, which mostly consisted of getting endlessly picked on by a gaggle of older brothers or blithely ignored by her elegantly eccentric mother, who spent most of the time in her art gallery (gin martini clutched tightly in one fist, latest in a series of avant-garde “artiste” boyfriends clutched tightly in the other).
    Of course, having now renewed her acquaintance with the aforesaid “nice, responsible, reliable” scorching-hot cousin, Clare was rethinking her prospects. She wished Milo had been a little more persistent about the sightseeing idea, but apparently he was honouring her house-arrest situation, and so Al had turned up at Maggie’s townhouse solo that morning. Of course, Maggie had gotten frothy at the mouth with the merest suggestion of letting the girls loose on their first day anyway, hence the museum foray. When she wasn’t doing fieldwork, Maggie worked on contract for the institution and had for years. Clare’s mom had once joked that Maggie spent so much time at the museum they should just set up a cot and a hotplate for her in one of the unused display cases.
    Clare turned on her heel and continued to wander aimlessly.
    Al tripped along beside her, the fringe of her midnight-black bangs bobbing above her wide-set blue-grey eyes. “Back to our present dilemma. We’re stuck here until Mags is done. So we might as well go in search of something horrifying to keep us occupied.” She dug through her bag for the illustrated guide. “According to this, that means either a touring exhibit of ancient South American fertility idols, or the bog dudes. Your choice. Or”—she jerked a thumb over her shoulder at where Maggie was standing heads-together with a tall, sharp-featured woman in a crisp white lab coat—“we can tag along with your aunt and the freaky curator lady for some really gripping chat on pottery shards and radio-carbon dating. Whaddya say? Maybe it will inspire you to follow the Perfesser into the old family trade.”
    Clare shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a deep fondness for “the Perfesser,” as Al called her. But she dreaded the thought of becoming anything the least bit like her. Or like the head of British Antiquities, Dr. Ceciley Jenkins, the “freaky curator lady.” It was Dr. Jenkins who’d scheduled the meeting with Clare’s aunt that afternoon.
    “Girls!” Maggie barked from across the hall. “Come meet Dr.