Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning Page A

quid a month for clothing and sundries.
    “I have stuff to do.”
    “Very well.”
    I was just settling down for an evening of hardcore skulking in my room, which involved lying like a starfish in the middle of the floor and listening to Smith’s Mope Rock Playlist Number Five when Felix barged in and threw the cordless phone at me.
    “For you,” he said. “And we’re ordering Chinese, do you want some?”
    “You’re such a little suckass.” I suddenly remembered that we needed to have a conversation about presenting a united front. “But thanks for the whole allowance thing.”

    “Hey, it wasn’t my idea to give you money!” Felix protested, put out by the very thought that he might have done me a good turn. “I told Dad that you didn’t deserve any.”
    “Whatever, monkey boy. Get me some fortune cookies and a . . . oh, egg rolls and some Kung Pao chicken,” I told him, picking up the phone. “Okay, you can piss off now!”
    He slammed the door with great force as I said a cautious hello.
    “Isabel. You still have my iPod.”
    I closed my eyes and sank back down on the floor. He sounded like the dictionary definition of “I hate your guts.”
    “Yeah, I know.” I waited for him to tell me how to get it back to him, but apparently I wasn’t going to get anything from him but a frosty shoulder. “Well, I can’t tonight because I have a thing.”
    “Oh yeah, you and your things,” he drawled. “You and your little brother—it was your little brother, wasn’t it?—and some Chinese. Sounds enthralling.”
    “How much did you hear?” I demanded, scrolling back to my slanging match with Felix to see if I’d said anything which might indicate that I was a sixteen-year-old compulsive liar.
    “Fortune cookies. Egg rolls. Kung Pao chicken. Something about an allowance and that even being a blood relation is little protection against your infamous nastiness. Do you snub him publicly, too?”
    I decided to ignore his last dig. “No one asked you to eavesdrop. ”
    “I kinda couldn’t help it.” He exhaled heavily. “Look, I need to get my iPod back. I can’t do tonight, anyway, so shall I come around and pick it up tomorrow?”
    Come around where ? “No!” I hissed. “I’ll meet you somewhere. ”
    “Where do you live?” he asked.
    “You’re not coming around here,” I repeated furiously, already seeing the horrific scene unfolding in front of my eyes.
    Dad acting as if Smith was some grubby-pawed potential rapist and then letting slip my real age within, like, ten seconds.
    “Isabel, look, the hissy fit is a nice change of pace, but I was just trying to find out if you live near me,” he said with teeth-gritted exasperation, which made me feel like a complete drama queen. “Like, do you live out in Hove or something?”
    “I live near Seven Dials. Montpelier Villas,” I admitted somewhat unwillingly. Our nabe was pretty posh.
    In fact, we lived on the swankiest street in Brighton. “And you?”
    “Kemp Town, George Street, behind Safeway. So do you want to come around here tomorrow afternoon? Just to swap iPods ...”
    “Well, why else would I come around?”
    He made an impatient “pffffting” sound. “It’s number seventy-three. Come around about two-thirtyish.”
    “Fine, whatever,” I said, like I didn’t care one way or another.
    “Fine. Maybe you’ll be in a better mood,” he snapped.
    “Don’t count on it,” I said, but he’d already hung up and I was talking to dead air.
    10
    It was a beautiful afternoon. There was still a faint hint of summer in the air, even though it was late September, and I decided to walk along the seafront to Kemp Town, dodging day-trippers and strollers with every step I took. I scowled at every single one of them, but I had my sunglasses on so it was all wasted.
    There’s this little stone-walled spit by the pier that I like to stand on and watch the water, but it was knee-deep in fat-faced hordes down from London for the day.