“Yeah, nice try,” I said. “Changing the subject.”
He shrugged. “Guilty.”
We sat together for a few minutes without saying anything. It was nice. Sometimes New York is a lot quieter than you think it can be.
“I haven’t told anyone about my mom,” Jesse finally said, his eyes focused somewhere toward the Chrysler Building. “So, you know, please don’t …”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I promised. “Here, pinky swear.”
He turned his head to look at me. “Pinky swear?” he said. “What are you, six years old?”
“It’s a time-honored oath!” I countered. “Pinkies out, c’mon.”
He rolled his eyes but did so anyway. His skin was a little cool. Does this count as holding hands with a boy? I suddenly thought. Oh my God, I’m holding hands with a boy. A cute boy. It’s not like he’s someone’s cousin who’s supposed to be a pity date.
“Are we sworn now?” he said, his eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Yes,” I said, and tugged on his finger for good measure. “It’s also possible that we’re now considered married in the country of New Guinea.”
We both cracked up at the same time. “Kidding!” I giggled. “Kidding! At least I think I am. Who knows?”
“Let’s Wikipedia that when we get home,” Jesse suggested, but he was still laughing. “Are you always this goofy?”
“I—I don’t know,” I answered. I didn’t know. I had never hung out with other teenagers before. I hadn’t even had a friend my own age since the third grade. “I guess I can be kinda goofy. Maybe it’s one of my hidden talents.”
“One of? What other hidden talents do you have?”
“Well, I can’t tell you or they wouldn’t be”—I lowered my voice dramatically—“hidden. But I have a few skills.”
And suddenly I realized that Jesse and I were really close together. More specifically, our mouths were really close together.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, hi.”
“Hi,” he whispered back. “This okay?”
“Well, we’re already married in New Guinea,” I whispered back. “This is just the natural progression of—”
And then he kissed me.
Not that I had any experience with this sort of thing, but Jesse was a really good kisser, and I suddenly wondered if I was holding up my end of the deal, so to speak. I tried desperately to think of all the movies I had seen where people make out, but my brain was in meltdown mode and so I just went with it.
Best. Assignment. Ever.
“You’re shaking,” he said when we pulled apart after a minute or an hour or a year. I’m not sure how long we were together. However long it was, it wasn’t enough.
“Oh, yeah, um, sorry.” I put my hand on his arm to steady myself. “Ice cream. Sugar rush. You know.” Also the fact that you just kissed me.
“I’m sorry I was an asshole to you when we met,” he murmured, pushing my hair out of my face.
“It’s okay. I was an asshole, too. Sometimes I’m bossy.”
“Really? I had no idea!”
“Shut up!” I cried, swatting at his arm. “I can’t help it, it’s my nature.”
“Luckily you’re a good kisser.”
My head swam and if I weren’t already sitting down, I would have had to sit down. “I am?” I asked. “I mean, I am! Duh.”
“Waaaaaait,” Jesse suddenly said, leaning back a little and staring at me. “Am I your first kiss?”
Whoops.
“Define first,” I said.
“I think it defines itself.”
“Then no. Because Brian McConnell was pretty handsy back in preschool.”
“Okay, fine. Your first kiss after you turned twelve.”
I screwed my eyes shut in embarrassment. “Yes,” I admitted. But when I opened my eyes again, Jesse was still staring at me. “Okay, you can stop doing that now,” I told him.
“I like looking at you,” he replied. “I like kissing you, too.”
“You do?”
He nodded and leaned in again.
We pulled apart after another few minutes. “You know what?” I whispered. My arms were looped around his neck so I could rest my forehead against his. Sometimes it amazes me, all the things that can happen in a single evening.
“What?”
“Second kisses are even better than first kisses.”
“Wait until you get to the third one.”
I was about to find out when Jesse’s phone suddenly started buzzing, jolting both of us back onto the step. “Shit,” he whispered, glancing at the screen. “It’s my dad. I’m late. Shit.”
I looked at the clock on his phone: 2:02. “Wow,” I said. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Yeah, guess so.” He tapped out a message to his dad before tucking the phone away. “C’mon, let’s get a cab.”
I held his hand as we walked to the corner. “God, your fingers are freezing,” I told him. “Do you want your coat back?”
“Nope.” He held out his free arm and a cab slipped up to the curb, Celine Dion blasting from the radio. “After you,” Jesse said. “Celine insists. Loudly.”
The cab’s heater was running full blast, making it feel like we were stuck in a moving hair dryer, and I scooted across the cracked pleather seat to make room for Jesse. “Just so you kids know,” the cab driver announced over his shoulder, “I charge a—”
“Fifty-dollar cleaning fee, yes, we know,” Jesse interrupted him.
“Good thing Roux’s not here,” I said as we lurched away from the curb.
“For many reasons, yes.”
I was sort of tempted to kiss him again, but I was afraid the cab driver had a ten-dollar surcharge for making out, so I settled for continuing to hold Jesse’s hand. “You know what I like about cabs?” I murmured as I leaned against his shoulder. “They move fast.”
Jesse laughed a little. “What, do you normally travel by horse and wagon?”
“No, I mean that usually in New York, you walk everywhere, right? But when you’re in a cab, it’s like flying.”
“Unless there’s gridlock. Plus the subway moves way faster.”
“True. But then we wouldn’t get to be serenaded by Celine.”
“And that would be tragic.”
The cab driver suddenly braked, sending both Jesse and me into the plastic divider that separated the backseat from the front. “We also wouldn’t get facial contusions if we were on the subway,” Jesse muttered as he settled himself back in his seat.
“It’s part of the experience,” I reassured him. “There should be a Dramamine dispenser back here.”
By the time the cab pulled up in front of my apartment, we were both white-knuckling the door handles. “Is this where you live?” he asked, peering up at my building through the window. “I live just around the corner. Crazy.”
“Yeah, totally random,” I said, then climbed out of the cab before my face could give away how nonrandom it was. The air outside was crisp and cold, but it felt icy against my flushed cheeks, and it was just starting to hit me: not only had I kissed a boy, but I had been lying to him the entire time.
Jesse paid the driver and followed me up to the front door. “This is fine,” I said, rushing my words. “I can make it from here, I’m good.”
“I had fun,” he said. “Keep that ring safe.”
I smiled and glanced down at my Ring Pop, which was still ridiculous. “I’ll treasure it forever,” I promised. “Cross my heart.”
He smiled and leaned in again, kissing me so hard that it left me a little breathless. “I’m really glad I met you,” he whispered. “Seriously.”
“Me, too,” I whispered back. “More seriously.”
“Have a good night. Happy Halloween.”
“Halloween’s over,” I reminded him. “It’s November first now.”
“Ah, you’re right. Guess you’re not a spy anymore.”
I smiled at him, but my heart felt like someone was squeezing
the blood out of it. “Right,” I said. “Good night.”
Inside the elevator, I took a huge deep breath and leaned against the wall. “Oh my God,” I whispered to myself. “You just made out with a guy. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Three months ago, I couldn’t even make eye contact with the neighbor boy, and now I was making out with a guy? Talk about overachieving.
I entered the code to our front door and opened it carefully. My parents were probably sleeping and I didn’t want to—
“Where have you been?”
Both my mom and my dad were standing in the kitchen, arms folded, staring at me. I hadn’t seen them look that angry since … well, ever.
“Oh, hi,” I said. “I can explain.”
Chapter 13
“Do you have any idea how worried we were?!”
The confrontation had moved from the front door into the kitchen, where I could see remnants of my dad’s stress eating habit: a crust of toast and a smear of jelly on a plate next to his open laptop. Not a good sign.
“Look, I’m sorry, but what do you want?” I said. “You signed me up for this, so this is what I have to do. I have to go to Halloween parties and spend time with people! It’s my job!”
“It’s two thirty in the morning!” my mom cried. “In Manhattan! Do you know all the things that could have happened to you?”
I looked at my parents like they were speaking Korean. (And to be fair, my dad can speak Korean, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.) “Wait, so let me get this straight,” I said to them. “We moved here so I could make friends and get information from Jesse Oliver, right? So why are you so mad when I’ve spent my entire evening doing exactly that?”
“Because it’s two thirty in the morning!” my dad shrieked. In English.
“We need to set up some ground rules,” my mom added. She was starting to pace, and Pacing Mom was the equivalent of Stress-Eating Dad. “This cannot happen again. We were worried out of our minds.”
“Did it occur to you,” my dad chimed in, “to call us?”
Of course it hadn’t. I had been hauling a very drunk Roux around Upper Manhattan and kissing Jesse. I didn’t even think about my phone. “I agree with Mom,” I said. “We need some ground rules. And rule number one: you need to trust me to do my job!”
“You could have been kidnapped!”
“Or worse!”
“Oh my God!” I said for the thirtieth time that night. “Okay, you know what? You guys need to decide whether you want me to do this or not.”
That stopped them in their tracks.
“I mean it,” I continued. “Because I can either do this job and hang out with this guy and make friends with people and get the information that I was assigned to get, or I can quit and someone else can do it.”
I had no intention of quitting, though. This was the first solo assignment I had ever had, and the perks included making out with cute guys. I was going to try to hang on to this for the rest of my natural life.
My mom finally spoke. “We need to compromise. A curfew.”
“Excellent,” my dad said. “Ten o’clock at night.”
My eyes almost fell out of my head. “Ten o’clock?” I screeched. “In New York? Are you trying to sabotage me?”
“Margaret.” My mother’s tone of voice was warning enough. Sabotage was not a thing we joked about in our household, but I didn’t feel like backing down.
“I’m serious!” I sent my own message right back. “This is the first time in my entire life that I get to hang out with people my own age, and you’re trying to stop it!”
“We’re not trying to sabotage you,” my dad insisted. “We’re trying to make sure you’re safe. We need to know where you are because there are dangerous people out there, and I’m not talking about regular-city dangerous people, either. There are people that want to be able to do what you do.” He paused for a few seconds. “They would do anything to get your talent.”
The air hung heavy between us. I knew this, of course. I had always known it. You don’t grow up like this and not know it. “It’s just … it’s nice to pretend to be normal,” I told them. “You guys already had your teenage years before you joined the Collective. I didn’t get to do that.”
My parents exchanged glances. “Being a normal teenager means having rules and boundaries,” my mom said.
“But I’m not normal,” I shot back. “That’s the problem.”
My dad sighed and leaned against the countertop. “Let’s just go to bed,” he said. “It’s late, we’re all tired. We can figure this out tomorrow.”
The idea of waking up and having this conversation all over again was exhausting, but I didn’t say that. “Oh, by the way,” I said instead. “I had a really fun time tonight. Thanks for asking.”
Chapter 14
I barely slept that night, thinking about my parents and Jesse and Jesse and my parents some more. I wasn’t sure how my evening had gone from sublime to shitty so quickly, but it had. My parents and I had never fought like that before. No one had ever kissed me before. It was an odd night of first-time experiences, let’s just say.
I finally dozed off right when the sun was a pinkish hue in the gray sky, and when I woke up again, rain smacked against my window and Angelo’s card was propped up next to my bedside lamp. I squinted at it, trying to focus my eyes on a pencil sketch of a garden atrium, a tiered fountain in the middle surrounded by Greek columns. It was the garden court at the Frick Museum on the Upper East Side. Angelo used to take me there on rainy days. I was being summoned.
My phone started buzzing and I scrambled for it. Was it Jesse? Was he calling me? I was too busy turning my phone around and around in my hands to look at it. Was Jesse doing the same thing? Was he debating whether or not to call me? Should I just wait until Monday morning at school to talk to him?
Roux’s number flashed on the screen.
“Pray tell,” she croaked when I answered, “why are there feathers everywhere?”
“Hi to you, too,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Eeuuuuurgh.” She made a sound that didn’t sound human. “Seriously. Feathers. Why?”
“No clue.”
“I think I dreamed that I was the Black Swan. Oh my God, I need coffeeeeeeeee. If I don’t have coffee, I will shrivel up and die just like one of those little roly-poly bugs.” She paused. “There’s a feather in my mouth. Blechhh.”
“Roux,” I said, trying to bring her back to the present. “I need to talk to you.”
“Is this an intervention?”
“What? No. God, no.” I didn’t have that kind of time, for starters. “I just have some questions.”
“Okay. Come over now. Bring coffee for your good friend Roux.”
“I can’t right now, I have to …” I hesitated, not wanting to mention Angelo. “I have to run some errands for my mom.”
“In the rain? Child abuse.”
I rolled my eyes and rested my forehead against the window. The next time I had to infiltrate a bunch of high schoolers, I was not picking the recently exiled mean-girl drama queen for a friend. I would head straight to the library and find the nerdish bookworm instead. “It is not abuse,” I told her. “Go shower. Do something productive. Gather up all the feathers and make a pigeon sculpture.”
“Pigeons are gross. I wish every pigeon would fly away and take a squirrel with it.”
“Such a charming visual. Look, I’ll be there soon, okay?” Angelo would have to wait for an hour or so. It was all right, though, I knew he loved hanging out at the Frick.
“Okay. Call when you’re on your way. Bring coffee!”
My parents were in the kitchen when I finally emerged from my bedroom, showered, dressed, and grumpy from caffeine withdrawal. “Was Angelo here?” I asked, holding up his business card. “Because this happened.”
“He said to meet him whenever you could,” my mom said, clicking away on her laptop without looking up at me. I could tell she was stil
l pissed. “Take an umbrella if you’re going. It’s raining out.”
I bit back my sarcastic response and reached for the coffeepot. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I said. “I might have to go see Roux.” And Jesse, I thought. Just thinking about him made me nervous, which was weird because I never get nervous. My dad used to call me “Steely McGee” because my hands wouldn’t shake, even when I opened the most difficult combo locks, but now when I thought about Jesse, it felt like my stomach was filled with liquid gold, warm and burning.
And to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do now that we had made out. Should I text? Was I supposed to send a thank-you note or something? Did Jesse even want to see me again? I needed Roux’s advice, and I knew she’d have no problem giving it to me.
“—car,” my dad said, and I realized he had been talking.
“What, sorry?”
“We’ve got a town car now,” he said. “New rule starting this morning. It’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So, we’re not going to talk about last night and instead you got me a chauffeured car?”
My mom put up her hands. “Hey, not our call. This was all Colton’s idea. You know that.”
I did know that, but I was still annoyed. I sort of wanted to apologize for being so angry the night before, but I also didn’t know what to say or how to say it. My parents and I had always been a team, but now it felt like me versus them, and I didn’t know how to play the game.
“Better go,” my dad said. “The umbrella’s broken, by the way. I found out the hard way this morning.”
Great.
My Hunter rain boots clomped on the floor as I headed toward the front door, but my mom stopped me with her arm. “Here,” she said. “Take an apple. You didn’t eat breakfast.” Then she brushed an invisible piece of lint off my red plaid coat and kissed my temple. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure it out.”
I bit my lip and gave her a quick hug. “Don’t stare at the computer screen too long,” I told her as I left. “You kids these days, you’ll ruin your vision.”