“They have no right releasing my name,” I grumbled.
“Last spring, Anya Balanchine was arrested for the shooting of her own cousin, who had been trying to shoot Anya Balanchine’s boyfriend at the time, William Delacroix, the son of acting District Attorney Charles Delacroix.”
“His name is Win!” I objected.
“Although Charles Delacroix initially led in the polls, in the last month his major challenger, the Independent Party candidate, Bertha Sinclair, has narrowed the gap to five points. It’s too early to see how this latest incident will impact voters.”
“Like it’s his fault a bus with his picture on it hit that girl,” Simon Green commented.
A nurse knocked on the doorframe. “There’s a man here for you,” she said to me. “Is it okay if I let him in?”
“Yes, we’re expecting him.”
The nurse went to fetch Mr. Kipling.
I sat down on the side of Simon Green’s hospital bed. This whole day had been ridiculously frustrating and yet, I had to count my blessings. That girl had been my age and I’m sure she hadn’t woken up this morning thinking she was going to die. Blessing number nine: At least I haven’t been hit by a bus and decapitated. Despite everything, I started to laugh.
“What’s funny?” Simon Green asked.
“I’m just glad—” I started to say, and then Simon Green cut me off.
“Hey, that’s not Mr. Kipling!” he said.
I turned. Through the window in Simon Green’s hospital room, I saw Win. He was wearing his Trinity uniform. Win waved at me.
“I’ll only be a moment,” I said to Simon Green. I stood up, straightened my skirt, and went out to the hallway.
“You look pretty good for a gal who’s seriously injured,” Win greeted me. His voice was casual. “You wore that to your cousin’s wedding.”
I looked down at my jacket, which was stained with Simon Green’s blood. “I’ll never be able to wear it again.” It would not be the first (or the last) of my clothing to meet such an end. I offered him my hand to shake but he embraced me instead. It was a hard embrace, one that hurt my still sore neck, one that lasted too long. “I was on the bus but they got everything else wrong,” I said.
“I can see that.”
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Win shook his head. “I was nearby when I heard about the accident. And I wanted to make sure you weren’t dying. We’re still friends, aren’t we, Anya?”
I didn’t know if we were friends. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
Win told me she was in the lobby.
“And she doesn’t mind that you’re here?”
“No, Allie knows that you are important to me.”
Allie. The l’s replaced the n’s, and it was like I had never existed. “You shouldn’t be here,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because…” I couldn’t make myself say all the reasons. Because we didn’t belong to each other anymore. Because it hurt me to be near him. Because I had promised his father. Because his father had the ability to make my life very difficult if I didn’t keep my promise.
“Anya, if you thought I was dying, wouldn’t you come?” Win asked.
I was still considering this question when Mr. Kipling arrived. Upon seeing Win, Mr. Kipling looked more than a little nonplussed. “Why are you here?” Mr. Kipling spat at him.
“I’m going now,” Win said.
“Be careful how you leave, son. The paparazzi have just arrived. They’re probably looking for a shot of an injured Anya Balanchine, but I bet they’d settle for a shot of the acting district attorney’s son. And you know what would really drive everyone mad with delight? A shot of you and Anya together.”
Win said that he had learned a secret way out of the hospital from when he’d stayed there last spring and that that was how he and Alison would go. “No one will ever know I was here.”
“Good. Do that. Now,” Mr. Kipling ordered. “Anya, I’m going to go see how Simon is doing but I don’t want you to go home without me. I should be there to shield you from the reporters.” Mr. Kipling went into Simon’s room.
“Well,” Win began once we were alone. He stood up straight and took my hand in both of his. “I am relieved that you are well,” he said in a strangely formal way.
“Um, okay. I am relieved that … you are relieved.”
He released my hand. As he turned away, he stumbled a bit over his cane. “I was hoping for a more elegant exit,” he said.
I smiled, reminding myself that I didn’t love him one bit, and then I went back into Simon Green’s room.
* * *
It was almost nine by the time Mr. Kipling and I were finally in the elevator and on our way out of the hospital. “I’ve got a car waiting for us. If there are any reporters still out there, let me do the talking,” Mr. Kipling said.
“There she is!”
There were probably only a handful of cameras, but the flashes were still blinding in the darkness.
“Anya, are you glad to be out of the hospital?” one of the reporters called.
Mr. Kipling walked in front of me. “Anya is happy to have escaped serious injury,” he said. “She’s had a very long day, folks, and she just wants to go home.” He led me by my elbow toward the curb, where the car was parked.
“Anya, Anya, how was Liberty?” another reporter yelled.
“Give us a quote about Charles Delacroix! Do you hold him accountable for the bus accident? Do you think he’ll win the election?”
Mr. Kipling had gotten into the car, and I was about to follow him when something stopped me. “Wait,” I said. “I do have something I want to say.”
“Anya,” Mr. Kipling whispered, “what in the world are you doing?”
“The girl who died today. She was my age,” I said. “She was crossing the street and then she was gone. I am sorry for her friends, her family, and especially her parents. It is a tragedy. I would hope that the fact that an infamous person was riding on the bus wouldn’t take away from that.”
I got into the car, then pulled the door shut.
Mr. Kipling patted me on the shoulder. “Well done, Annie. Your Father would be proud.”
When I got home, Imogen and Natty were waiting for me, and no small amount of tears was shed over my safe homecoming. I told them they were making too much of it, but it was nice to know that my absence had not gone without notice. It could not be denied that I had been worried over. I was missed. I was loved. Yes, I was loved. And in that, at least, I was blessed.
III
I RESUME MY EDUCATION; MY PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED; MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND
BY THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Charles Delacroix was down two points in the latest Quinnipiac polls, officially putting him in a dead heat with Bertha Sinclair, and I was still no closer to finding a school. Mr. Kipling and I discussed both these issues in our daily phone call. We kept the calls pretty short to manage costs, but their profligate regularity was a sign of just how worried about me Mr. Kipling was.
“Do you think it was the bus?” I asked.
“That and—you won’t like hearing this, Anya—the fact that you were on the bus allowed the Sinclair people to dredge up the old story about you and Charles Delacroix and his son. There are some people who think your sentence to Liberty was too light and showed favoritism, and the Sinclair campaign is playing right into that.”
“Too light? Obviously they’ve never stayed there,” I quipped.
“True, true.”
“You know, Simon likes him. Charles Delacroix, I mean.”
Mr. Kipling laughed. “Yes, I think my young colleague has a bit of a crush. Ever since he talked to him last September to arrange your release from Liberty.
“Anya, I hope you won’t think this is an invasion of your privacy, but I had a question I wanted to ask you.” He inhaled. “Why was Win at the hospital?”
I told him I had no idea.
“If you’re still with him
, as your attorney, that’s something I should know.”
“Mr. Kipling,” I said, “Win has a new girlfriend, though I do think he has the tragically misguided idea that we should still be friends.” I told him about Alison Wheeler and how they had rekindled a romance while working on Charles Delacroix’s campaign.
“I am sorry, Anya, but I can’t pretend to be anything but relieved.”
I had wrapped the phone cord around my wrist. My hand was starting to turn white for lack of blood.
“Onward! Let’s talk schools,” Mr. Kipling said brightly.
“Did you find something?”
“No, but I had an idea I wanted to run by you. What would you think of homeschooling?”
“Homeschooling?” I repeated.
“Yes, you’d finish up your senior year at home. We’d hire a tutor or tutors even. You’d still take your college entrance exams…” Mr. Kipling rambled on about homeschooling, but I had stopped listening. Wasn’t homeschooling for the socially maladjusted? The outcasts? But then, I suppose I was well on my way to being both. “So?” Mr. Kipling said.
“Kind of feels like giving up,” I replied after a pause.
“Not giving up. Just a little retreat until we can come up with something better.”
“Well, on a positive note, I guess I’d graduate top of my class.”
“That’s the spirit, Annie.”
Mr. Kipling and I said goodbye and then I hung up the phone. It was only ten in the morning, and I had nothing to do for the rest of the day except to wait for Natty to come home. I couldn’t help but think of Leo after he’d lost his job last year. Was this how he had felt? Forgotten, discarded, outcast?
I missed my brother.
Natty and I hadn’t made it to church on Sunday, so, lacking other plans, I decided to go.
If I haven’t mentioned it before, the church Natty and I went to was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I loved the place even if it was falling apart. I’d seen pictures of it from one hundred years ago, back when it still had turrets and there hadn’t been a hole in the ceiling. But I was fond of that hole actually. I liked to be able to see the sky when I was praying.
I put some money in the basket for the campaign to restore St. Patrick’s and went into the nave. The kind of people in a church in a decaying city in the middle of a Monday morning were a pretty sad lot—aged, homeless. I was the only teenage girl there.
I sat down in a pew and crossed myself.
I said my usual prayers for my mother and father in Heaven. I asked God to watch over Leo in Japan. I thanked Him that I had been able to keep us safe to this point.
And then I asked for something for myself. “Please,” I whispered, “let me figure out a way to graduate on time.” I knew it was kind of a silly thing to want, considering the more complex problems in my life and in the world in general. For the record, I also thought it was cheap to use prayer in this way—God wasn’t Santa Claus. But I had sacrificed a lot and well, the heart wanted what it wanted, and sometimes what the heart wanted was to walk down the aisle at its high school graduation.
When I got back from church, the phone was ringing.
“This is Mr. Rose. I’m the school secretary at Holy Trinity. I’d like to talk to Anya Balanchine.”
So Trinity had finally hired a new school secretary. That had only taken two years. “This is she.”
“The headmaster requests an audience with you tomorrow morning at nine. Are you free?”
“What is this about?” I asked. It could, for instance, have been something to do with my little sister.
“Headmaster prefers to discuss the details in person.”
* * *
I did not tell Natty or Scarlet about my meeting nor did I wear my Trinity uniform. I did not want to presume what I so desperately hoped—that somehow, somehow, the administrative board at Holy Trinity had revised their decision, that they were taking pity on me and were allowing me to return for my senior year.
Mr. Kipling offered to come to the meeting, but I thought it was better that I go alone. I didn’t want to remind Headmaster that I was the kind of girl who had a lawyer where a proper parent should have been.
Since the last time I had been at school in May, metal detectors had been installed at the main entrance. I could only assume that had had something to do with me. Way to leave a mark on the place, Anya.
I went straight to Headmaster’s office, where I was greeted by Mr. Rose. “Nice to meet you,” Mr. Rose said to me. “Headmaster will be with you in a moment.”
The familiarity of that office was almost unbearable. It was where I had found out my brother had shot Yuri Balanchine. It was where I had been accused of poisoning Gable Arsley. It was where I had met Win.
Headmaster poked her head out the door. “Come in, Anya.”
I followed her into the room, and she closed the door behind me.
“I was glad to hear you weren’t injured in that bus accident,” Headmaster began. “And I must compliment you. You did acquit yourself very nicely in the short interview I saw on the news.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“We’ve known each other a long time, Anya, so I’m not going to beat around the bush here. An anonymous donor has made a significant financial contribution to Holy Trinity. The only stipulation is that Anya Balanchine be allowed to continue her education.”
“I … That’s news to me.”
The headmaster looked me in the eye. “Is it?”
I returned her gaze. “Yes.”
“The donor, if I am to believe that it isn’t you or someone from your family, claims he or she saw your interview on the news and was impressed with your, I believe the word was grace. The donation is so sizable that the board and I feel we cannot merely ignore or return it without talking to you first. As you know, no one wants you with your guns and your drugs back on this campus.”
I nodded.
“Have you found another school yet?” Headmaster asked me warily.
“No. The places I tried feel the same way about me that you do. Also, I’m a senior, so…”
“Yes, I imagine that does make things more difficult. We don’t admit incoming seniors here either.” Headmaster leaned back in her chair and sighed. “If I was to let you return, your freedom here would have to be seriously curtailed. I have parents to answer to, Anya. Each morning, you would have to stop by my office so that Mr. Rose could search through your bag and frisk you. In addition, you could not participate in after-school activities, social or extracurricular. Do you think you could live with that?”
“Yes.” I would have agreed to almost anything at this point.
“Any violation of rules would result in your immediate suspension.”
I told her I understood.
The headmaster furrowed her brow. “It’s a public relations fiasco. If you were me, what would you tell the parents?”
“That Holy Trinity is first and foremost a Catholic school. And that Catholic schools have to practice forgiveness. That you showed me charity when no other schools wanted me.”
Headmaster nodded. “Seems sensible. Don’t mention the donation at all.”
“Exactly.”
“Would you even want to come back here?” Headmaster asked me in a kinder voice than the one she’d heretofore been using. “These haven’t exactly been happy years for you, have they?”
I told her the truth. “I’m sorry if I ever made it seem otherwise but I love Holy Trinity, Headmaster. It has, despite everything, been the one good and consistent place in my life.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Anya,” Headmaster said after a long pause. “Don’t make me regret this.”
When I got back home, I called Mr. Kipling to find out if he’d made the donation to Holy Trinity.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Mr. Kipling said. “I’m putting you on speaker so Simon can hear.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked Simon Green.
“Much better,” Si
mon answered. “Did your headmaster say how big the donation was?”
“Only that it was sizable.”
“Anya, I would tread carefully here. Someone may have an ulterior motive,” Mr. Kipling warned.
I asked Mr. Kipling if he was advising me not to go back.
“The fact is, we still don’t have any other viable options.” Mr. Kipling sighed a hurricane wind. “No, I just want you to keep your eyes open for anything that might seem strange. Someone wants you back at Trinity, and it makes me more than a little nervous that we don’t know who or why.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
“And it goes without saying that you should keep your distance from Win Delacroix,” Mr. Kipling added.
I swore that I would.
“Are you happy, Anya?” Simon Green asked. “You’ll get to graduate with your class.”
“I think I am,” I said. And, for the first time in a very long time, I allowed myself to be, if only just a little bit.
That night, I called Scarlet to tell her I was coming back. I had to hold the phone away from my ear. (Readers, I swear you could hear Scarlet’s screams all the way to Brooklyn.)
* * *
And then I was back at Trinity. Aside from the daily frisking—Mr. Rose and I were developing quite the intimate relationship—it was as if I had never been gone.
All right, there were a few changes, some for the better, others less so. Scarlet had definitely improved at fencing without me to lean on. Natty now took her classes in the upper-school building, so I got to see her several times a day. Win was in my FS III class, but his partner there, as everywhere else, was Alison Wheeler. He was friendly to me, but kept his distance. At lunch, I ate with Scarlet and Gable and tried not to feel like a third wheel. But, well, there were definitely worse things in life than being a third wheel. Mr. Beery announced that the school play would be Romeo and Juliet. When Scarlet suggested I audition, I was happy to inform her that the school had forbidden me to participate in extracurricular activities. It was no great sacrifice. Despite my triumph the prior year as chief witch in Macbeth, I was no actress and besides, I had had more than enough drama for one life.
I kept my promise to Mr. Kipling to be vigilant for evidence of conspiracy but I saw nothing. Perhaps I did not wish to see anything. I have, as you may recall, been guilty of such behavior in the past. I ignored messages from Mickey Balanchine that I probably should not have ignored. In my defense, I had missed a lot of work and my thinking was that there would be plenty of time to assume the mantle of my birthright.