Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning Page A

up as the rain came down faster. I picked up my pace as I saw him squint at his watch and tried to think of some excuse for being late that didn’t involve Part 317 of the ongoing row with my paternal signifier.
    When he saw me coming across the road, he lifted up his hand and smiled, like he was pleased to see me. Or pleased to get his iPod back. Or relieved that soon he’d be inside where it was toasty warm and there were no raindrops dripping down his back. Or none of the above.
    “Hey,” he called. “I was just about to give up on you.”
    “I had this thing,” I said, just a mite tetchily. “I’m sure I told you I had a thing.”
    “I thought this was the thing you had,” he protested as I reached his side. He leaned forward, head down, like he was about to kiss me on the cheek, which threw me, so I took a hasty step backward because he was taller and leaner and actually better looking if you got used to the nose, which I didn’t think I ever would, and smelled much nicer than I remembered. I needed a second to just take it all in.
    “I had a dinner thing, too.” It was like I’d become Miss Inarticulate 2006.

    “You’re doing the monosyllable thing again,” he teased, like we were friends who had an in-joke about my inability to string a coherent sentence together.
    “Well, yeah, I do that. A lot.” I shut my eyes in despair, and when I opened them, he was gesturing down the steps.
    “Look,” he shouted over the rain, which was starting to upgrade to a full-on gale. “Do you want to go in?
    I’ve got a spare plus-one.”
    I peered at the shadowy depths of the entrance to see if my least favorite doorman was lurking, all ready to mock my attempts to pass as an eighteen-year-old. He didn’t seem to be on duty.
    “I was meant to meet my friends . . . yeah, whatever . . . okay.”
    The Trio of Evil could fend for themselves, I thought as I followed Smith down the steps and let him pull the door open for me. There was a mousy girl standing there, holding a clipboard with a sheet of names on it, who didn’t look like she was going to give me any trouble.
    “I’m on Duckie’s guest list. Smith, no, just Smith, and I’ve got a plus-one.”
    I stood there with my hands in my pockets and tried hard to look nonchalant, as if it was my right, nay my privilege, to be the plus-one for the achingly hip boy in the achingly hip, retro trackie top, who was on the guest list for the most achingly hip local band. I wasn’t convinced that it was working too well and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bouncer bearing down on me.
    I quickly shifted so I had my back to him, but he’d obviously read up on sneaky behavior exhibited by obviously underage girls.
    “How old are you?” he bellowed at me from across the foyer.
    “I’m eighteen!” I said, like it was so painfully obvious that he must need glasses. I had signature eye shadow for crying out loud!
    “What’s your date of birth?” he shouted in my face, like that was going to outfox me.
    I didn’t try anything fancy, just stuck two years on the original date. “August 8, 1987. And my star sign’s Leo,” I added helpfully because, yeah, it seemed like a really good idea to antagonize the angry man.
    He didn’t believe me, I could tell. He was examining me intently as if I had the year of my birth etched into my skin with a laser.
    “You don’t look eighteen,” he announced eventually. “You look about fifteen, tops, if you ask me.”
    I didn’t even have to fake my indignation. “I am not fifteen.”
    “ID,” he said blankly, holding out his hand.
    “Why do you always pick on me?”
    “ID,” he repeated, and I was already fumbling in my pockets in the vain hope that I’d have some kind of legally binding document in there that would exonerate me.
    Instead, I got Smith’s arm suddenly curling around my shoulders. “She’s with me,” he told the age Nazi.
    “Is there a problem, Frank?”
    Of course, he would know the