All These Things I've Done

  Or even Win himself, if he would have me.

  “You and I were born into this,” Mickey continued. “It was not our choice. But we can choose what happens next. Our birthright was to be Balanchines, but our birthright does not have to be violence and death. You said as much in your speech at the Pool. Violence should not always beget more violence.”

  I nodded. A bell indicated that visiting hours were over. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  Mickey grabbed my hand. “Come see me when you’re out of here. September fifteenth, right? We can talk more then.” He ran his fingers through his white-blond hair. “I’ve been thinking about making a trip to Kyoto,” he said as he was leaving. “Perhaps you’d like to come with me?”

  I wasn’t sure what Mickey meant by that. Was it a threat against my brother? He seemed to be on very familiar terms with Yuji Ono, so perhaps it was about seeing Yuji and nothing more.

  My seventeenth birthday was August 12, and this, like every other day of that summer, was passed at Liberty. Scarlet had wanted to throw me a party in the visiting room, a proposition I seriously discouraged.

  “But, Anya,” she protested, “I hate the thought of you alone on your birthday.”

  “I’m not alone,” I assured her. “I sleep in a room with five hundred girls.”

  “Can’t I at least come to visit?” Scarlet insisted.

  “No. I want no reason to remember my seventeenth birthday at all.”

  The morning of my birthday, a guard came into the cafeteria to tell me that there was a visitor for me.

  Oh, Scarlet, I thought, you never listen.

  I went into the visiting room. It was early, barely 7:30, so no one was there except my visitor.

  His hair was cropped short and he was wearing one of his school dress shirts and lightweight pants. I had never known him in summertime, so I had never seen those pants before. I, of course, was looking especially stylish in my navy jumpsuit. I ran my fingers through my knotted hair. I knew I wasn’t supposed to care what Win thought of me anymore, but I did. Had I known he was coming, I might have had time to steel myself against him. I might have refused him altogether. But my feet kept walking me ineluctably toward the table where he sat, and then into a chair that was what they considered a respectable distance away.

  Had I known he was coming, I certainly would have managed to bathe. I could not remember the last time I’d seen myself in a mirror. But it was just as well, I supposed. I would treat this as a visit from an old friend.

  “Good to see you, Win. I’d shake your hand,” I said, “but …” I pointed to the NO CONTACT sign that hung on the door.

  “I don’t want to shake your hand,” he said, looking at me with cold blue eyes. Their hue seemed to have changed from sky blue to midnight since the last time I’d seen him.

  “Where’s your hat?” I asked lightly.

  “I’ve given up on hats,” he replied. “I was always leaving them places, and it had only gotten worse, now I’ve got this cane to manage.” He nodded toward a walking stick which was resting on the table.

  “I’m sorry about that. Are you still in very much pain?”

  “I don’t want your pity,” he said in a rough voice. “You’re a liar, Anya.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do,” he said. “You told me you were going to that crime scene camp, and look where I find you.”

  “Well, this isn’t terribly far off, is it?” I joked.

  He ignored me. “So when I finally heard you were here—and it was a while because of the pains I took to avoid any mention of you—I couldn’t help but wonder what else you had lied about.”

  “Nothing,” I said, willing my eyes not to tear. “Everything else was the truth.”

  “But we’ve already established that you’re a liar so how can I believe anything you say?” Win asked.

  “You can’t,” I said.

  “You told me you were in love with someone else,” Win said. “Was this a lie?”

  I did not reply.

  “Was it a lie?”

  “The truth is … The truth is, it doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. If it’s a lie, it’s one I need to be the truth. Win, please don’t hate me.”

  “I wish I did hate you,” he said. “I very much wish I wasn’t here.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  And then I leaned across the table and I grabbed his hair, what was left of it, and I kissed him hard on the mouth.

  For that moment, I was a person without a last name and so was he. We did not have fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, uncles, or cousins to remind of us of what we owed or were owed. Obligation, consequence, tomorrow—the words did not exist, or perhaps I had temporarily forgotten their meanings.

  All I could think of was Win, and how much I wanted him.

  “No kissing!” yelled a guard who had just come on duty.

  I pulled away, and Anya Balanchine was restored to me. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I said.

  That was when I kissed him again.

  May God forgive me for this and all these things I’ve done.

  Also by Gabrielle Zevin

  Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

  Elsewhere

  QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR

  GABRIELLE ZEVIN

  What did you want to be when you grew up? It changed every day, based on who I was talking to at the time. I never said writer, though, because everyone was always telling me I should be one. I don’t like doing what I’m told, at least not right away.

  When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

  I was always writing stories and letters and plays, so at a certain point, it became completely obvious.

  What’s your most embarrassing childhood memory?

  Oh, that’s funny … . I seem to have blocked it out. Actually, when I was six years old, my friend challenged me to a tree-climbing contest—you know, who could climb higher. It was toward the end of recess, and we both kept going up and up and up. I got to the highest part; I won. I was feeling really superior about my victory when the teacher blew the whistle, which meant recess was over. My friend jumped down from the tree to go inside. I was about to follow her, when I looked down and saw how high I really was. I was too afraid to go back down. All the kids went back into class, and everyone forgot all about me. I was stuck in the tree. And eventually, I had to go to the bathroom. And I did. Right there in the tree. At a certain point, I realized that I had a choice to make—I could either be stuck in a tree with wet pants for the rest of my life, or figure out a way back down. As I’m not still in that tree, you can figure out which I chose.

  What’s your favorite childhood memory?

  Every year, my dad used to take me to a diner before school on my birthday. My dad also used to take me to vote with him, and I liked getting the I VOTED sticker, even though those stickers probably cost about a penny each.

  As a young person, who did you look up to most? My parents. They were so much taller than me.

  What was your worst subject in school?

  Geometry. I considered it a waste of time to prove things that had already been proven a million times before. The worst grade I ever received was in a course on German cinema during college, but I loved the class anyway. Incidentally, I think it’s important to make the distinction between the grade you receive and your overall enjoyment of a subject. This is hard to do when you’re in school because everyone is so focused on the mark.

  What was your best subject in school?

  English. Except in 9th grade—the teacher made us keep diaries, which he would then read and grade. I felt this was a violation of my privacy, and every time I’d sit down to write in mine, I’d find I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sometimes, you don’t do well in a class because the teacher’s style doesn’t match up with yours, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t good at the sub
ject. On the other side of that, I loved Mrs. Murley for European History, because she taught history like she was gossiping about people she knew.

  What was your first job?

  I was a babysitter for exactly one day. When I was growing up, there was this really popular series called The BabySitters Club, and I got obsessed with being a babysitter like the characters in the books. So when someone finally asked me to babysit, I was so excited. I had all these activities planned. I really thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever. But it actually turned out to be the most boring thing ever. Mainly, all the kids wanted to do was sleep, so all I really did was the dishes and watch some TV. The mother even asked me to babysit for her again, but I turned her down. That night was the beginning and end of my brilliant babysitting career.

  My first job that lasted longer than one day was writing music reviews for a newspaper. When I was fourteen, I wrote an angry letter to a local paper disagreeing about a concert review they had run, and they offered me the best job ever. Here’s a bad pun/moral of the story: It pays to express yourself.

  My first soul-killing, 9-to-5 type job was selling lingerie at a department store. At a certain point, I thought I might go mad if I saw another bra.

  How did you celebrate publishing your first book?

  I cut off all my hair. I have long, dark hair, and Samson-like, I hadn’t cut it the whole time I was working on the book.

  Where do you write your books? In my head.

  What was your inspiration for All These Things We Done?

  Organized crime movies, fancy private schools, Prohibition stories, the global economic crisis, and the difficulties of being a woman in power. Not necessarily in that order.

  How would you manage without coffee and chocolate? Strangely enough, I’m not a huge chocolate person. I’ve grown an appreciation for it from the research I did for the book, but I don’t crave it and I could definitely manage without it. I’d be a lot more upset about a society that banned bread! I once read an interview with Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort in the movies, in which they asked him if he was a big Harry Potter fan. He replied that he wasn’t, but that the man who played Voldemort probably shouldn’t be. It’s pretty much like that for me and chocolate. I’d miss the coffee, however. I’d probably have to quit writing if coffee became illegal.

  What made you decide to write a series?

  Here’s the long answer. Just before I began writing All These Things l’ve Done, I was going through a Charles Dickens phase. People forget this, but he was one of the first series writers. All his books were serialized in newspapers and a novel like Bleak House is something like one thousand pages in all and might be published in three books or more these days. What I found when I reread Dickens was the possibilities for series writing. I had never been particularly interested in writing a series. Many contemporary series I’ve read sort of mark time, which is to say, the plot doesn’t turn much past the first book. What we often end up with is a promising first book that doesn’t really go anywhere narratively in subsequent installments. (If readers are attached enough to the characters, they tend not to notice these things.) With Dickens, the plot is turning the whole length of the series. It had to be to keep readers coming back to those newspapers, and the characters are growing and developing the whole time, too. And that’s the kind of series I wanted to write. A series that, if you put all the books together at the end, you would have a planned narrative that made sense from page one to page twelve hundred. In addition, of course, to four books that held up on their own.

  The short answer is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Anya’s story takes place in the future, but her tale is timeless. What attracted you to a future setting?

  The future is sometimes depicted as if it is some far-flung and impossibly strange destination that we’ll never reach. I didn’t want the world of the book to feel remote because that lets a reader off the hook. The ideal reaction a young reader could have is to finish the book and say, “Hey, what in my own society is like All These Things l’ve Done? Why are things the way they are, and what can I do to change them?” Young readers are more powerful than they know, and the future is sooner than we think.

  When you finish a book, who reads it first?

  I do. I don’t believe in punishing my friends and loved ones with early drafts—it’s not fair to me, them, or the work. But assuming that I’m pretty far along, I’ll show it to my partner, Hans, or my editor, Janine.

  Are you a morning person or a night owl?

  I usually do most of my work after midnight and before noon. So in a strange way, I’m both.

  What’s your idea of the best meal ever?

  Anything my mom has made especially for me. I fully believe that food prepared with love tastes better.

  Which do you like better: cats or dogs?

  Dogs, but when I was young, I loved cats. I even went so far as to subscribe to a magazine for cat lovers, but then around twelve or so, I became allergic to them.

  What do you value most in your friends?

  Humor and forgiveness.

  Where do you go for peace and quiet?

  I take long walks with my dog, but as we live in New York City, I don’t know if most people would call them either peaceful or quiet. I suppose I mean a kind of inner peace and quiet.

  What makes you laugh out loud?

  My dog, politicians, newscasters, and good sketch comedy.

  What’s your favorite song?

  At the moment, my favorites are “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes, or maybe “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley—but ask me on a different day and you’d probably get a different answer.

  Who is your favorite fictional character?

  Off the top of my head, Gilbert Blythe (he’d make a nice boyfriend); Holden Caulfield (he wouldn’t); Humbert Humbert (even though he’s a pervert); Charlotte the Spider (good with words).

  As for books I’ve read recently? Edward from Twilight—I told the author, Stephanie Meyer, that he was like Mr. Rochester and Gilbert Blythe.

  What are you most afraid of?

  Nuclear Holocaust. People who don’t value their existences as much as I value mine.

  What time of the year do you like best?

  Fall. I like the smell of leaves and new pencils.

  What is your favorite TV show?

  I’m fickle and at times, tasteless. Seriously though, I am not someone who feels that television is bad and evil, and I really get annoyed with people who complain that “there’s nothing worth watching on TV.”

  If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?

  My dog and my boyfriend. Both would hate to be stranded on a desert island, by the way—my dog loves regular meals and comfy pillows way too much, and my boyfriend loves watching movies.

  What would you do if you ever stopped writing?

  Probably read more.

  What do you like best about yourself?

  My brain and sense of humor. I’m very good company for myself. Physically? I have incredibly well-arched eyebrows that require minimal grooming.

  What is your worst habit?

  Caring what other people think.

  What is your best habit?

  Sending thank-you notes.

  What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

  I’d like to think it hasn’t happened yet.

  Where in the world do you feel most at home?

  Where the people I love, who love me, are.

  What do you wish you could do better?

  I wish that I could run a seven-minute mile and that I had a quicker response time for phone calls and e-mails—those aren’t really wishes, as I could probably do both if I were determined enough. So, real wishes? I wish I could sing well and figure skate. I wish I could write three-hundred-page books in a day, and without actually having to be present for the process.

  Anya Balanchine is determined to follow
the straight and narrow after her release from Liberty Reformatory. But when old friends return demanding that certain debts be paid, Anya is thrown right back into the criminal world.

  It’s a journey that will take her across the ocean and straight to the heart of the birthplace of chocolate.

  AM RELEASED INTO SOCIETY

  COME IN, ANYA, have a seat. We find ourselves in the midst of a situation,” Evelyn Cobrawick greeted me, parting her painted red lips to reveal a cheerful sliver of yellow tooth. Was this meant to be a grin? I certainly hoped not. My fellow inmates at Liberty Children’s Facility were of the universal opinion that Mrs. Cobrawick was at her most dangerous when smiling.

  It was the night before my release, and I had been summoned to the headmistress’s chambers. Through careful adherence to rules—all but one, all but once—I had managed to avoid the woman for the entire summer. “A situ—” I began.

  Mrs. Cobrawick interrupted me. “Do you know what I like best about my job? It’s the girls. Watching them grow up and make better lives for themselves. Knowing that I had some small part in these rehabilitations. I truly feel as if I have thousands of daughters. It almost makes up for the fact that the former Mr. Cobrawick and I were not blessed with any children of our own.”