Up Over Down Under Read Online Free

doors. Eliza slipped into the backseat and was soon flanked on either side by Nick and Sam. Estelle climbed into the driver’s side, and they pulled out of the parking lot.
    As they made their way out of the airport, Estelle turned around in her seat to face Eliza.
    â€œSo, love, I hope you like steak because I got us some real beauts at the butcher shop this morning.”
    Eliza was momentarily confused about how Estelle was able to drive a car while turned completely around in her seat. But she breathed a sigh of relief as she remembered that here in Australia, they drove on the wrong side of the road and that Frank was actually in the driver’s seat.
    â€œWell, yes, that would be great,” Eliza said. She meant it, she realized. Her mother was a bit of a nutrition fanatic, which meant that red meat was hard to come by in the Ritter household.
    â€œYou talk funny!” shouted Nick.
    â€œSay that again!” Sam cried, giggling furiously.
    â€œSay what again?” Eliza asked, confused.
    The two boys began trying to imitate Eliza’s American accent, exaggerating their r ’s and flattening their vowels.
    â€œYou two…” Estelle scolded them, “leave her alone. Maybe it’s the two of you who sound funny to her.”
    The boys appeared to consider this possibility. “Do you think we sound funny?” Sam (or was it Nick?) asked Eliza plaintively.
    â€œWell, to be honest, you don’t sound like my friends back home, but they all sound like me.”
    â€œThat’s silly,” Sam decided, sitting back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest.
    Eliza welcomed the twins’ silence. She hated to admit it, but the whole scene was getting to be a bit much. She had just spent nearly twenty-four hours flying around the world and now was crammed into the back of a car with a whole family of people she didn’t know. She was on sensory overload.
    She took the break in conversation as an opportunity to stare out the window at the city. She could see the small cluster of skyscrapers that made up the downtown area draw closer and closer as they passed through suburbs made up of small houses, then onto tree-lined boulevards with pretty two-story houses lined with balconies. There seemed to be a park on every other corner. Soon they were heading into the center of the city on what appeared to be a major boulevard with a trolley track running down the middle of it and some beautiful buildings on one side hidden behind tall ivy-covered stone walls.
    â€œThis is Royal Parade and that’s the University of Melbourne there,” Frank said, playing tour guide. “Those are the residential colleges where students stay.”
    Eliza thought back to Washington and how one of the great coups you could wrangle as a high school student was to get into a college party at one of the universities in the city. There was American University, and George Washington, and Georgetown. In the spring, Georgetown would have its annual reunion. If you could score a badge, you could get into the alumni parties claiming to be someone’s kid. Eliza had always wanted to slip into one of those parties under the radar, but of course, as the dutiful D.C. daughter, never had. As she took in these colleges along Royal Parade she made a mental note that she was going to see the inside of one before she left town.
    Eliza smiled to herself as she stared out the window while they followed the tram tracks. Occasionally they would come to a stop alongside one of the green-and-yellow tram cars. They seemed to span the city and were packed with students heading from campus into the city center. With everyone driving on the wrong side of the road and these trams edging through intersections, she was amazed that there weren’t car accidents all the time, but nobody else seemed to be concerned, so she just sat back in her seat and took it all in.
    The car passed through the downtown area