Picture Perfect

Fifty minutes into the journey I still can’t see any of them. I’ve got my nose pressed against the window and three guidebooks on my lap, but the roads are getting wider and the buildings are getting smaller and the people fewer, rather than the other way round.

There’s a dodgy-looking restaurant on the side of the road, and an enormous superstore with flashing lights on the other. There are some of the biggest trucks I have ever seen in my life, blowing their horns at each other.

So far, skyscrapers spotted: 0.

Parks: 0.

Little ladies with push-along shopping trolleys: 6.

The Empire State Building is 381 metres high. It really shouldn’t be this difficult to see.

Another twenty minutes pass, and then another thirty, and I’m finally starting to lose my brand-new shiny patience. I know I’m supposed to be acting like an adult now, but clearly my parents don’t know how to navigate America.

“Are we lost?” I say helpfully, leaning forward and sticking my head in between the seats. “Because if you need help reading a map, I have a Brownie badge that will confirm I’m quite good at it.”

Silence.

I look back at the guidebook. “I think we should have gone over the Hudson River by now. Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

Then I see my parents glance at each other.

“What’s going on?” I say as the car starts pulling into a tiny little road surrounded by small, solitary houses made out of white, blue or grey slats and shutters around the windows and pointy roofs. There’s a dog sitting on the porch, casually licking itself, and a ginger cat perched on the fence opposite, staring at it in total disgust.

One of the curtains twitches, and a small boy on a bike rides slowly past. Another silver SUV drives by with a family inside it.

At random intervals on this road there is a tiny hairdresser’s called CURL UP AND DYE, a small mechanical shop called JONNO’S AUTOPARTS and somewhere that sells chicken called MANDYS.

On the corner is a tiny church the shape of a box, with an enormous blue sign that says GREENWAY CHURCH OF CHRIST.

And then, in small letters underneath:

TRY JESUS! IF YOU DON’T LIKE HIM, THE DEVIL WILL HAVE YOU BACK.

Dad pulls into a driveway and with a quick flick of his wrist turns the engine off.

“Are we visiting someone?” I say curiously, rolling down the window. “Or maybe picking up the keys to our super-cool Manhattan loft-with-a-view?”

There’s another silence.

And then I can feel it: sticky alarm rising from my feet upwards until my whole body feels full of something explosively panicky.

“This isn’t New York,” I say slowly as Annabel and Dad open their car doors. We’re parked outside a small grey house with neat little hedges and a pointed window in the roof. “This isn’t New York. We’re nowhere near it.”

“Umm.” Annabel clears her throat. “Yes. About that …”

I can feel the panic starting to surge into my head until all I can hear is an incoherent, wordless roar.