Page 99 of The Broken Heart Playlist
“Without a doubt.”
“I asked her for a place you’d like, and she suggested this one.” He drags a hand through his hair. “She said you probablywouldn’t know about this museum because it only recently opened.”
I briefly close my eyes. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Do you want to leave?” he asks, disappointment settling in his shoulders.
I look around at the brightly colored walls, the professional-looking exhibits, and the steady trickle of museum-goers. At least we’re not the only visitors.
“We’re here,” I say. “We might as well see what’s it all about. I mean, how bad can it be?”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right.”
Holding onto our sick bags, we head toward the exhibition area. The food is beautifully displayed in colorful bowls on top of wooden blocks. A bare bulb hangs above each bowl, highlighting the food inside.
One of the first displays features a puffer fish, a delicacy in Japan. A plaque below the exhibit informs us that the fish is so poisonous it can only be prepared by trained and licensed chefs.
Relief peppers my skin. That was actually quite interesting. Not awful at all.
We move to the next display, reading about two popular foods in the UK, both of which I’ve eaten. One is black pudding, made from pig’s blood, and the other is haggis, a Scottish dish made from sheep’s offal.
The next couple of stations are more gruesome. There’s sheep head’s soup from Iran. A giant bull penis, which is eaten in some parts of China. Fried tarantulas from Cambodia. A maggot-infested cheese from Italy. I feel bile rise to my throat when I stare at the maggots squirming in the huge hole in the cheese.
Gideon pulls me away hastily. “You okay?” he asks, looking a little pale himself.
I make myself nod. “That was...interesting.” I clutch my paper bag tightly to my chest. “How about you?”
“Hanging in there.” He exhales heavily. “You ready for the smelling section or do you want to leave?”
I straighten my spine. I work with food every day. This museum is not going to defeat me. “I’m ready. We can do this.”
The various foods are showcased in jars, which you can open up and sniff. In one jar is the world’s smelliest cheese, Vieux Boulogne. I open up the lid just the tiniest bit and take a small sniff. It smells like wet earth and rotting leaves. Gideon screws up his nose and insists it smells like a cow’s fart.
The smells become increasingly worse as we move down the displays. Durian, a spiky fruit from Southeast Asia that’s banned on public transport in Singapore, makes both of us gag.
“It smells like a hundred gym lockers all at once,” Gideon chokes out.
The worst smell is a fermented herring from Sweden. The tiniest whiff is enough to cause my throat to spasm and tears to prick my eyes. Gideon, head down, leans a hand flat against a wall for support while he takes slow, deep breaths.
I glimpse an overly loud, slightly obnoxious museum-goer hovering around us, like one of those bloated, black flies always out of swatting range. He was laughing at our reaction, but now I watch as he unscrews the lid, takes a noisy sniff, and then throws up into his vomit bag.
Both Gideon and I look away. In a grim voice, he says, “My only goal is not to be a number on that scoreboard. I don’t want to give Brian the satisfaction.” His eyes travel over me in concern. “How are you doing? Do you want to continue or would you like to go?”
I chew my lip, seriously conflicted. I think of the money Gideon spent on the tickets. I think of having to tell my sister we didn’t finish. “The tasting bar is the last part of the tour,” I say to him. “I would hate for us to give up when we’re so close to the end.”
“All right.” He squares his shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”
Not the most romantic statement a girl wants to hear on her first date.
“Ready to sample some of the fringes of human cuisine?” a woman named Jenny asks us eagerly from behind the tasting counter.
Gideon’s face is set in a serious, determined line. “What’s first?”
“We start you off easy,” Jenny informs us with a grin.
