“Honestly, Mr. Kipling, if Leary Alternative doesn’t want me, what school will? There isn’t a school in the city that has a reputation for being more liberal than Leary, and even they think I’m damaged goods. And they’re probably right.” I was standing on a street corner at one thirty in the afternoon on a Monday, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be at Trinity. I wanted to be pretending to fence or complaining about tofu lasagna. I hadn’t realized how much of my identity was wrapped up in that uniform, in that school. I felt as if I belonged nowhere. Despite my resolution to count my blessings, I was starting to feel very sorry for myself.
“Oh, Annie. I wish I could make this easier for you.” Mr. Kipling took my hands in his. The rain had picked up, and the traffic light had turned, but neither of us moved. “All I can say is that this, too, shall pass.”
I looked at my longtime adviser. If he had a weakness, perhaps it was that he loved me too well and expected the rest of the world to conform to his opinion. I kissed him on his bald head. “Thank you, Mr. Kipling.”
Mr. Kipling blushed a deep scarlet. “For what, Annie?”
“You always believe in me. I’m old enough to appreciate that now.”
Back at Mr. Kipling’s office, we were joined by Simon Green, and the three of us went over my options. “As I see it,” Simon Green said, “there are still a handful of other schools in Manhattan we could try—”
I interrupted him. “But don’t you think the others are even more likely to have the objections that Leary Alternative had about me?”
Simon Green took a moment to consider this. “I’m not a mind reader, and of course, I’m not saying I agree with them, but yes, I do.”
“Maybe that hippie headmaster was right,” Mr. Kipling said. “You could take a year off—”
“But I don’t want to take the year off!” I protested. I’d be practically nineteen when I graduated and that was dangerously close to twenty, i.e., ancient. “I want to graduate with everyone else.”
“So, we look at schools outside New York,” Simon Green suggested. “People won’t know who you are there. Finishing schools in Europe, college-prep programs, even military schools.”
“A military school! I…” I couldn’t even complete the thought.
“Simon, Anya is not going to a military school,” Mr. Kipling said softly.
“I was only brainstorming,” Simon Green apologized. “I thought that a military school might be liberal about admittance after the semester had started. Even considering Anya’s … history.”
My history. Naïvely perhaps, I had thought the worst of this would be over once I had served my time at Liberty, but that wasn’t turning out to be the case. I walked over to the window. Kipling & Sons had a view of Madison Square Park. After dark, all the chocolate dealers hung out there. I’d gone with Daddy when I was a little kid. You could get just about any kind of chocolate there—Belgian, bittersweet, baking, and of course, Balanchine. That was when chocolate had been my favorite flavor in the world and before it had taken away almost everyone I loved, and ruined my life. I rested my temple on the glass. “I hate chocolate,” I whispered.
Simon Green put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t say that, Anya,” he said gently.
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s brown, ugly, altogether aesthetically unappealing. It’s unhealthy, addictive, illegal. It’s bitter when it’s good and too sweet when it’s cheap. I can’t honestly understand why anyone bothers with the stuff. If I woke up tomorrow and the world had no chocolate in it, I would be a happier person.”
Mr. Kipling put his hand on my other shoulder. “You can hate chocolate today if you want. But I wouldn’t make a policy of it. Your grandfather was chocolate. Your father was chocolate. And you, my girl, are chocolate.”
I turned around to face my lawyers. “Look into all the options for schools, bearing in mind that I really can’t leave Natty. If we don’t find anything, maybe I’ll get a job.”
“A job?” Simon Green asked. “What skills do you have?”
“I have no idea.” I told them we’d talk later in the week and then I headed out the door.
I was still waiting at the bus stop when Simon Green caught up with me. “Mr. Kipling says I’m to accompany you home.”
I told him I would rather be alone.
“Mr. Kipling is very worried about you, Anya,” Simon Green continued.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll get in trouble if I don’t come with you.”
The bus arrived. On the side was a screen advertising: CHARLES DELACROIX (D) FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY. His aging-superhero face dissolved into his campaign slogan: Great cities require great leaders. The whole thing made me sick. I would have waited for another bus but the schedules were erratic. The Charles Delacroix Express was what it would have to be.
Simon Green sat next to me on a seat toward the back of the bus. “Do you think Delacroix will win?” he asked.
“Haven’t honestly put much thought into it,” I said.
“But I thought you and he were such great friends,” Simon Green joked.
I could not bring myself to laugh.
“I think it’s been a harder campaign than he thought it would be. But I tell you, I don’t think he’s awful,” Simon Green said after a pause. “I mean, I think his heart is in the right place.”
“Heart?” I scoffed. “That man has no heart.”
“The truth is, Anya, I think he could be very good for us. He’s talking a lot about how a safe city needs to have laws that make sense.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should, though,” he remonstrated me. “I’m sorry you lost your boyfriend in all this, but there are greater matters at hand here. Charlie Delacroix is more than just Win Delacroix’s father, and assuming he prevails here, no one thinks district attorney is the last stop for him. He could be mayor, governor, president even.”
“How wonderful.”
“Someday, I might like to get into politics myself,” Simon Green said.
I rolled my eyes. “You really think the best way to go about that is acting as legal counsel to the first daughter of organized crime?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me sometime.”
Simon Green’s laughter was drowned out by a sickening scream followed by an ominous thud. My head was thrust forward into the seat in front of me. There were more screams, and then the bus came to a stop. Simon Green grabbed my arm. “Anya, are you all right?”
My neck hurt a little but other than that, I felt fine. “What just happened?”
“We must have hit something,” Simon Green said in a dazed voice. I turned to look at him. There was a gash on his right temple where his glasses had pierced his skin. “Mr. Green, you’re bleeding!”
“Oh dear,” Simon Green said weakly.
I ordered him to hold his head back. Then I took off my jacket so that I could use it to sop up the blood.
“Everyone stay on the bus!” the driver barked. “There’s been an accident.”
Obviously. I looked out the window. In the middle of Madison Avenue, a girl of about my age was lying unconscious. Her limbs were contorted into catastrophic angles. The worst part was her head, which had nearly twisted off her neck. Only a small band of skin was keeping her from being decapitated.
“Simon,” I said. “I don’t think she’s going to live.”
Simon leaned over me to examine the scene. “Oh dear,” he whispered just before he passed out.
At the hospital, I waited while they examined Simon Green. The doctors determined that, aside from blood loss, there was nothing seriously wrong with him. They stitched up the gash on his temple. Because he had passed out, they were making him stay the night for observation.