I had been back at school almost two weeks when Alison Wheeler cornered me in the library, where I had been spending my lunch hour taking a makeup test. The library was one of the few places where they still had paper books, though no one ever used them. They were really there for decorative purposes.
Over the summer, Alison had cut off her red storybook hair and now she wore it in a pixie cut that made her green eyes look unnaturally large. She sat down in the seat across from me. In all the years we had known each other, I couldn’t remember us ever having had a conversation.
“That’s wrong,” she said, indicating a response I’d given on the test. (You may recall that she was ranked the number-one student in my class.)
Instinctually, I pulled my slate closer to me. I didn’t want to get thrown out for cheating.
“You’re hard to get alone,” Alison commented. “Always with Scarlet or Gable or your sister, or in the main office getting searched—that’s what they’re doing to you, right?”
I didn’t reply.
“What I think,” Alison Wheeler said to me, “is that sometimes the reason things don’t make sense is because they don’t make sense.” Her green eyes looked at me in a level way.
I turned off my slate and put it in my bag.
“I think Win and I should eat at your table with Scarlet and Gable Arsley. I think that is what we should do.”
“Why? So I can have a front-row seat to the boy I used to love with his new girlfriend?”
Alison cocked her head and studied me. “Is that what you think you’d be seeing?” she said after a moment.
“Yes, I do.”
Alison nodded. “Of course. I must be very cruel.”
I said nothing.
“Or maybe I think it good that Win should have his friends. His father’s campaign is very hard on him, Annie.”
I would rather she didn’t call me Annie. I was starting to really dislike Alison Wheeler.
* * *
The next day, I got a B on my test, and Win and Alison joined us at the table.
Though I had tried to discourage Alison Wheeler, lunch was livelier than it had been with just Gable and Scarlet. Scarlet was less boring, Gable less sullen. Alison Wheeler was odd but dry and smart, too. And Win, well you know how I felt about him as I have exhaustively and probably pathetically detailed those emotions. Suffice it to say, it was the closest Win and I had been since that day at the hospital, and you might think that would be torturous for me but it wasn’t. Seeing Win with his new girlfriend was easier than imagining it had been.
I did not even get him by himself until that Friday. Everyone else had left lunch early for one reason or another, and Win and I found ourselves alone, separated only by picked-over trays of lasagna and a gnarled wooden table.
“I should go,” he said, but he didn’t move.
“Me, too,” I agreed, but I didn’t move either.
“You must—” he began.
“How is—” I said at the same time.
“You first,” he said.
“I was going to ask about your father’s campaign,” I said.
Win chuckled. “That wasn’t what I was going to say at all, but since you asked, I think Dad’s going to prevail.” He looked me in the eye. “You probably despise him.”
My feelings about Charles Delacroix were nearly as complex as the ones I had for his son. On some level, I admired Win’s father. He had been a worthy adversary. But I hated him, too. That seemed a rude thing to say to someone’s son however. I decided to keep my mouth shut.
“I wish I could hate him but he is my father,” Win said. “And I think, despite everything, that he’ll be a very good district attorney. Campaigns…” His voice trailed off.
“Yes?”
“They seem like they last forever, but they don’t, Annie.” Suddenly, he reached across the table and took my hand, which I immediately pulled back.
“Are friends not allowed to shake hands?” Win asked.
“I think you know why I can’t shake your hand.”
I stood up and grabbed my tray. I slammed it down on the conveyor belt that led to the kitchen and a little bit of sauce ended up on my sweater.
The bell rang. As I was leaving the cafeteria, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned. It was Dr. Lau, my Forensic Science teacher. She was the only member of the faculty who had spoken up in my defense last spring and, not coincidentally, the only one who seemed glad that I had returned. “Anya,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?” I asked innocently.
I made my way to Twenty-First Century History, where we had just begun studying the events that had led up to the second prohibition. I was familiar with several of the boldface names.
IV
I AM SURPRISED; I AM SURPRISED AGAIN
FRIDAY NIGHT, I was planning to stay in, but Scarlet insisted that I come out with her and Gable. “You haven’t gone out once since you’ve been back from Liberty,” she said to me on the ride home from school. “You can’t spend the rest of your life at home with Natty and Imogen. We’ll get dressed up and go to one of our old places. How about your cousin Fats’s?”
There was nowhere I wanted to go less except possibly Little Egypt.
“Or maybe you’d prefer Little Egypt?” Scarlet asked.
“Fats’s is fine,” I said.
“I thought you’d say that. Meet us there at eight. And, Anya?” she added just before we parted, “Don’t wear your school uniform!”
Around seven thirty, I changed per Scarlet’s instructions, then took a bus downtown.
“Hey, kid,” Fats greeted me. “Your friends are in the back room.”
Fats had lost quite a bit of weight since I’d last seen him. “You’re skinny,” I said.
“Gave up sugar,” he informed me.
“Cacao, too?”
“No, never cacao, Annie.”
“Maybe we should stop calling you Fats.”
“Nah, it’s got a nice bit of irony now.”
I went into the back room.
“Surprise!”
The place was packed, and it took me a second to realize I knew everyone there. Scarlet, Gable, Natty, Imogen, Mickey and Sophia Balanchine, Mr. Kipling and his wife, Simon Green, Chai Pinter, and several other of my classmates. Even Alison Wheeler was there, though she had come solo.
As you already know, I was a fan neither of surprise parties nor of parties in particular. Still, I could not help but appreciate that so many people had come out for me. Scarlet came up and kissed me on the cheek. “What kind of best friend would I be if I let you come back to Trinity without a party?”
I made the rounds, talking to everyone, thanking them for having shown up.
“Win really wanted to come,” Alison Wheeler whispered in my ear.
In the back of the room, a bit separate from everyone else, stood Mickey and Sophia Balanchine. They were talking to a third person. How could I not have noticed him before?
“Yuji Ono!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around him in a manner I’m not entirely sure was dignified or appropriate. But, well, he had saved my brother’s life.
He smiled at me in his shy way.
“What are you doing here?”
“Business, of course,” he said.
“Had you returned any of my calls, you would have known this,” Mickey Balanchine remonstrated me.
Yuji Ono gave me a look. I could tell he was disappointed in me.
“It took me longer to resolve my high school situation than I would have liked,” I explained. Even as I was saying this, I knew how pathetic it sounded.
I turned to Yuji Ono. I wanted to ask about my brother but not in front of Mickey and Sophia. “Will you come see me at the apartment tomorrow?”
“I don’t know if I will have the time,” he said. “I am only in town for three days and my schedule is inflexible.”
“I could come see you, then. Where are you staying?”
??
?I will try to come to you,” Yuji said coolly. It annoyed me that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me where he was staying when I had trusted him with my whole life.
“Give the child a break, Yuji,” Sophia teased him.
I didn’t like being referred to as a child. “Come or don’t come,” I said. I turned to Mickey. “How is your father?”
“Any day now,” Mickey said glumly. Sophia took his small hand in her large one.
I thanked the three of them for coming and then I went to talk to Simon Green, who had not managed to integrate himself into the rest of the party.
“You look utterly miserable,” I said to him.
Simon Green laughed. “Parties aren’t really my thing.”
“Mine neither,” I said. “What’s your reason?”
Simon Green took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve. “I’m afraid I had a very lonely childhood. Never got used to being with people.”
“The opposite for me. Everything was too crowded. Middle-child syndrome I think they call it.”
Simon Green nodded toward the corner of the room. “Is that Yuji Ono?”
“Yes.” I didn’t want to talk about him.
“And who’s that?” He was pointing at Alison Wheeler, who was dancing with a girl from my history class.
“Ah, that would be my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. We’re friends. It’s all very grown-up and civilized.”
“Her?” Simon Green’s tone was one of utter incredulity. “We’re talking about the redheaded girl with the pixie cut?”
“Yes, her.” I paused. “Why not her?”
“Just not what I expected.” I tried to convince him to elaborate, but Simon Green would go no further.
I continued my rounds. Before I knew it, it was 11:20, and the only ones left were Scarlet and Gable. Scarlet told me to go home, but I stayed. I knew Gable wouldn’t be much help cleaning up.
“It wasn’t awful, was it?” Scarlet asked me. “You weren’t hating me the whole night?”
“Of course not, you silly duck.” I kissed Scarlet on the cheek. “No one has ever been a better and more loyal friend to me than you have.”
“How completely touching,” Gable said sarcastically. “Can we please go home now?”
I asked Scarlet if she wanted to ride the bus back with me. She informed me that she was planning to spend the night at Gable’s.
“Scarlet!” The Catholic schoolgirl in me was scandalized.
“No, it’s fine,” she insisted. “Gable doesn’t like me traveling uptown at night and his parents don’t mind if I use the spare room.”
As it was late—ten minutes until city curfew—my cousin Fats insisted that he see me back to the Upper East Side.
We were waiting for the bus when a black car pulled up to the stop. The door opened. For a second, I wondered if I was about to be shot, if this was how it was all going to end. (But we are only on page seventy-one of the second volume of my life, so surely this could not be the end.)
Fats reached into his pocket. Just in case he had to shoot, I suppose.
Yuji Ono leaned out of the car. “A ride, Anya?” I nodded to Fats to let him know I was fine and then I got in the car.
I had had several cups of coffee that night to aid in the illusion that I was in possession of a sparkly party personality. As soon as I sat down, I started feeling the effects of the caffeine in my body. My heart beat like a hummingbird’s. I was flushed, too bold, too sharp. More like Scarlet than myself. “I thought you were mad at me,” I said to him.
“I am,” he said. “Outraged.” I couldn’t tell if he was serious.
“How is my brother?” I asked.
“Very well,” Yuji promised me. “I have a present for you, but only after you tell me why you’ve been neglecting Mickey Balanchine.”
Daddy used to say that the only people who made excuses were failures. “It was harder coming back from Liberty than I thought it was going to be.”
“You mean finding a secondary school?” Yuji Ono made a face. “Why do you even need a high school diploma?”
“You would rather me be uneducated? A fool?”
“That is not what I am saying. But the things you need to learn, you cannot learn in school.”
“Every time I see you, you lecture me,” I complained.
“That is because I am counting on you, Anya. I think you will agree that I have gone to great lengths for you.”
“Of course, Yuji.”
“You are my investment.”
“I don’t belong to you though.”
The car was just passing the southeastern edge of the park. Yuji reached into his pocket. He took my hand and pried it open. On my palm, he placed a small wooden lion.
“Did Leo make this?” I asked quietly.
“Yes, he has taken up carving.”
I looked at the lion, my miniature miracle. Leo had touched this. Leo was safe. I smiled at Yuji and tried not to cry. “He’s good at this.”
I turned to thank him. I was about to kiss him on the cheek when the car passed over a pothole and I ended up kissing him on the mouth. It was not romantic in the least. His teeth knocked against mine. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was aiming for your cheek. Potholes, you know. This city!”
Yuji blushed. “I know, Anya.” He turned his dark eyes on me. “You would never try to kiss an old man like me on the lips.”
“Yuji, you’re not old,” I protested.
“Compared to you, I am.” He turned to look out the window. “Besides, I have heard that you are secretly with your old boyfriend. The politician’s son.”
I twisted in the seat. “What? That absolutely isn’t true! Who said that?”
“Mickey and Sophia suspect it.”
“They barely know me! They should keep their mouths shut.”
“You are back at your old school, are you not?” Yuji asked me.
“Only because nowhere else would have me. Yuji, it is impossible for me to be with Win. And you should know that even the suspicion of that could be disastrous for me.”
Yuji shrugged. He might have been the most infuriating person I had ever known.
“Was Sophia Bitter your girlfriend?” I asked.
Yuji smiled at me. “Is tonight the night for archaeology?”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Mainly she was my school friend,” Yuji said after a rather long pause. “She was my best school friend.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that when we were at the wedding?” I asked.
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“Neither is my personal life then.”
We traveled up Madison Avenue in silence.
I closed my hand around the lion, letting its edges and imperfections etch themselves into my flesh. Yuji put his hand around my fist. “So you see. Our lives are interconnected.”
His hand was ice around mine, but the sensation was not entirely unpleasant.
The car stopped on East Ninetieth Street, where I lived, and I opened the car door.
“I am sorry that we argued,” he said. “I … The truth is, I see you as … part of myself. I should not, though.”
I got out of the car and went upstairs. I went into Natty’s room. She had already fallen asleep, but I woke her up anyway.
“Natty,” I whispered.
“What?” she asked drowsily.
I held out my palm so that she could see the wooden lion.
“Leo? It’s Leo, isn’t it?” Her eyes were bright and alert.
I nodded.
She took the wooden lion and kissed it on its head. “Will we ever see him again?”
I told her that I hoped so and then I went to bed myself.
* * *
I had barely slept at all when I awoke to a banging on the apartment door. “Police!”
The clock read 5:12 a.m. I pulled on my bathrobe and went to the door. I looked through the peephole. Indeed, two uniformed police officers stood there. I opened the do
or, but left the security chain on. “What do you want?”
“We’re here for Anya Balanchine,” one of the police officers said.
“Yes. That’s me.”
“We need you to open the door, ma’am. We’re here to take you back to Liberty,” the officer continued.
I ordered myself to stay calm. I could hear Natty and Imogen stirring in the hallway behind me. “Annie, what’s happening?” Natty asked.
I ignored her. I had to stay focused. “On what grounds?” I asked the officer.
“Violations of the terms of your release.”
“What violations?” I demanded.
The officer said that he didn’t have that information—just instructions to bring me back to Liberty. “Please, ma’am, we need you to come with us.”
I told him I would come out, but that I needed a moment to change.
“Five minutes,” the officer said.
I closed the door and walked down the hallway. I tried to consider my options. I couldn’t run; there was no other way out of the apartment, except suicide. Besides, I didn’t want to run. For all I knew, this could have been some sort of clerical error. I decided to go with the police officers and figure out the rest later. Imogen and Natty stood at the end of the hallway. Both seemed to be awaiting my instruction. “Imogen, I need you to call Mr. Kipling and Simon Green.”
Imogen nodded.
“What should I do?” Natty asked.
I kissed her on the head. “Try not to worry.”
“I’ll say a prayer for you,” Natty said.
“Thank you, sweet.”
I ran to my bedroom. I took off my necklace and changed into my school uniform. I went into the bathroom, where I took a second to brush my teeth and wash my face. I looked at myself in the mirror. You are strong, I told myself. God doesn’t give you anything that you can’t bear.
I heard more banging on the door. “It’s time!” the officer called.
I returned to the foyer, where Natty and Imogen looked at me with shell-shocked faces. “I’ll see you soon,” I said to them.