A Drop of Night Read Free

easy. I think of the last time I was here. I was on my way to a master class on Renaissance literature in Perugia, Italy. Everything was infinitely worse. Dad couldn’t take me to the airport—he stays at the loft downtown during the week—and I said I’d order a car, but Mom had to drive Penny to her ballet class so she offered to take me.
    I should have guessed this wouldn’t end well. Mom doesn’t do things for no reason.
    They sat up front. Mom was chewing that nasty medicinal herbal gum she likes. She kept leaning across the middle console and tucking Penny’s hair behind her tiny, half-gone ear. I wanted to tell her to watch the road.
    Later, in Departures, Penny was power texting, her hair brushed forward to hide the scarring on her cheeks. Mom was telling her something about Madame Pripatsky’s carpel tunnel syndrome. I was being pathetic, thinking, Mom? Penny’s not even good at ballet. I’m the one going to Italy. Talk to me .
    And I was saying, “Penny, don’t forget to feed Pete.”
    I adore Penny. I shouldn’t even be allowed near her,but she’s the only person in the world I’d bother rescuing, if, say, the world were about to be hit by a comet and I had a spaceship. She’s the one who gave me the nickname Ooky, back when she was two and the name “Anouk” involved way too much drooling. When she was four, she told me she wanted to be a starfish when she grew up, a blue one, and also a veterinarian. I remember saying she could totally do that because blue starfish skilled in veterinarian work were really rare. She’s eleven now. She wants to become principal dancer at the New York City Ballet someday. She can barely walk upright.
    I remember Penny nodding to me. Her thumb, tapping away at her screen. Me and Mom, staring past each other. Mom’s forty-three. She’s got huge hair, like Mufasa. She’s charismatic. She can make shareholders, VPs, the hot-dog seller on the curb outside her office building follow her into the void. She wishes I were dead.
    We stood like that for maybe ten seconds, and inside I was screaming for her to just turn her eyes a quarter of an inch and look at me.
    She didn’t. She fixed her gaze on a point over my shoulder and said: “Keep those Italian boys in line.” And then she smiled this tiny, grim smile that said: Serves you right.
    She unwrapped another square of gum. Leaned down and whispered into Penny’s ear, like they were friends, or at least a mother and a daughter. I watched them and I wanted to slap Mom, grab her flowing black clothes and shake her until she screamed, until she hated me, because if she hated me at least she’d have to look at me. I stood perfectly still, my skin crackling. “There are three bottles of M oë t behind the couch in the basement if you’re planning on celebrating when you get home,” I said.
    I left feeling sick and angry, and hid in the business-class lounge as soon as I got through security. Chewed on blood orange rinds until my mouth hurt. Three of my classmates from St. Winifred’s were there, also on their way to Perugia. A trio of perfect brains, perfect nose jobs, and perfect Tiffany jewelry, whispering and throwing glances in my direction. One of them—Bahima Atik, I think—waved. I pretended not to see. I don’t feel bad about that. Neither did they. At St. Winifred’s you don’t have friends. You have allies. You have trade agreements and pacts of nonaggression, and if you’re lucky you have one or two people who won’t stab you in the back. Unless stabbing you in the back is a prerequisite to becoming president of something, inwhich case, buy a coffin; you’re already dead.
    I snap back to the present, and I feel the anger again, nestling behind my ribs like it belongs there. I left the lounge that day like some kind of dark and spiny sea creature, daring anyone to get too close.