by Anna Woltz
Abby and I both agree: Comfort food during a hurricane comes in big bags and crunches deliciously between your teeth. And it would seem that the rest of New York thinks the same, because the shelves of chips and snacks are almost empty.
Abby stares at them in horror. “I’ve never seen that before. The entire city’s going to run out of food!” She dashes for the last two bags of salty popcorn and clutches them in her arms.
“Soda!” I cry. “We need something sweet and fizzy.”
But Abby shakes her head. “We’ll have to go to Kmart for that. They’re way too green here for normal soda.”
“Sorry?”
“They think soda’s bad for us.”
It’s insane. On TV, I’ve seen hugely obese Americans who had to be hoisted out of their homes with cranes. But most New Yorkers seem to be really slim. You see gyms and yoga classes and runners wherever you go, and every meal tells you how many calories are in it.
“Look.” Abby picks up a tub of dark green flakes. KALE CHIPS, it says on the packaging. “If you really want to belong, this is what you snack on. Chips made from raw, organically grown, freeze-dried kale. Seven dollars a tub.”
“People are crazy.”
“Every year,” she says solemnly, “New York gets a different vegetable that’s hip. This year it’s kale. They mix raw kale in with salads too. And you can even buy tote bags with pictures of kale on them.”
“People really are crazy.”
“Not everyone. We don’t have enough money to be crazy. But some rich New Yorkers are totally nuts.”
• • •
Our final expedition takes us to Kmart. We stand in line to pay, with our four bottles of lethal soda. The line isn’t long this time, but the woman at the register is moving more slowly than any human being I’ve ever seen. Sometimes she gives a deep sigh and then rests her arms for a while beside her gigantic breasts. And then she continues, still in slow motion.
“By the way,” Abby says suddenly, “did you know Seth has been beaten up at school three times?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve only known him two days.”
“So? You can ask a lot of questions in two days.” She tugs the hat with the beak down over her ears. “Did Seth tell you what happened on Friday? Why he raced off to get me and left you standing on the sidewalk?”
I shake my head and she looks at me sternly.
“Do you want to know or don’t you care? Would you rather look at your phone, or at all those lists you have in your bag? I’ll just shut up, then.”
I swallow. “I’d like to know.”
“Okay. So … I’d arranged to meet someone on Friday.” She looks expectantly at me.
“Who?” I ask obediently.
She starts giggling. “A gentleman from a dating site.”
“Abby!”
“It wasn’t for me! Gross! The man was forty! He was for Mom.”
The line isn’t moving at all now. There’s something wrong with the cash register and we have to wait for the manager, who has a special key.
“You had a date for your mom?”
“Yes! Dad’s been dead for two years now and so … ” She stops.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I say quickly. “If you don’t want to … ”
“Duh, but I do want to talk about it! The whole thing’s so dumb. Of course we all mega-miss him. More than mega. Supergigamega. But it’s like Seth and Mom are stuck in some kind of time capsule. They act like he died last week. Which isn’t true.”
I don’t say anything.
“And you know Seth builds websites as a part-time job? Well, recently he made this dating site. He showed me the home page, and I went back to take another look at it later. Girls can join for free, so I did. I put up a photo of Mom and she got responses right away. It was superfunny. Men are totally weird. But anyway, one man sent a nice email, so I made a date with him for Friday. To see if he might be good for Mom.”
“And?”
“Seth turned up before ‘talldarkandhandsome72’ got there. He’s so mean! If Mom never ever gets a boyfriend, then it’s all Seth’s fault.” Abby sighs. “But of course that’s exactly what he wants.”
“Do you really think so?”
She nods. “They want to stay together in that time capsule of theirs. And they don’t care that I’m not in there with them. They don’t even notice.”
We get home with four seriously heavy bags of food. Abby starts unpacking and I dash straight to the computer. Of course, I have better things to do, but I still want to take a quick look and see what those horrible swamp people are up to. To see if my dad’s still an idiot. And if my mom’s found the time to get in touch.
I open my dad’s email, read the first couple of lines, and feel goose bumps on my arms.
“Emilia,” Abby calls from the kitchen. “If you don’t come quickly, I’m going to organize the kitchen cabinet without you!”
I stare at the screen. It’s too late for fences inside my head.
“I’m putting the cans of chili con carne in their place right now!” shouts Abby.
I stand up. It’s weird, but I can only think of one thing: I have to tell Seth. I walk to his room and knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
It’s the first time I’ve seen his room. It’s a small space with two computers, an overflowing toolbox, a tangle of colored electrical wires, and a model of a dinosaur. And then, above his bed, completely unexpectedly, a poster of one of Picasso’s paintings. A pale woman you can see in profile and from the front at the same time.
“What?” he asks.
He turns his desk chair to look at me. I feel like the woman in the poster. He’s not just looking at the face I can see in the mirror. Ever since this morning, he’s been able to see me from the side as well.
“My dad knows I’m in America!”
I notice that he stops breathing for a moment. My hands are tingling.
“He got suspicious after our conversation yesterday, so he did a bit of detective work. When he took a look at his credit card statements, my ticket to New York was on it, and now he says he’s taking the first plane here tomorrow morning. He’s told the police too. He says I’m not allowed to walk around the streets on my own for a second longer and that I have to report to a police station.”
I’m out of breath. This city was mine. I was safe here. And now I’m not.
“But you’re not on your own, are you?” says Seth. “You have us now.”
I look at his dark brown eyes and feel my heart beating just a fraction more calmly.
“I’ve found a place for the soup too,” Abby calls from the kitchen. “You’re missing all the excitement!”
“I can’t go back to the Netherlands,” I whisper urgently to Seth. “Not this soon. Everyone on the Internet’s still yelling way too loud.”
“Then don’t go to the police,” he says calmly. “Send your dad an email to say you’re safe and staying with sensible people, and then let’s hope Sandy takes care of the rest. So that he can’t fly.”
“But what about the police? He emailed my photograph to them. They’ll be looking for me.” My fingers twitch anxiously. “I’m going to have to disguise myself. It’s the only solution. I need another coat and I have to dye my hair.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Seriously? You want to dye your hair because the police are looking for you, even though an actual hurricane’s on the way? That is a total Abby plan!”
“But it could work.” I look at him pleadingly and after seven seconds he lowers his eyes.
“You can borrow a coat from my mom. But hair dye … ”
“We’ll buy some! Right now, before the stores close.”
“We?” he asks.
“Please? I don’t want to go on my own.”
And then Abby appears beside me.
“What have you two been up to all this time?” she asks indignantly. “I’ve already organized our entire kitchen cabinet!”
“We have to go out for a little while,” says Seth. “You’re staying home, okay? Mom’s going to call on Skype soon.”
“But I want to go with you,” she says. “It’s megafun outside. Just like when everyone’s doing Christmas shopping, but it’s hurricane shopping instead. I can talk to Mom later.” Seth looks at me. I don’t know why, but I don’t want Abby to come with us.
“We’re just going to buy some extra peanut butter,” I say.
“It’s going to be really boring,” says Seth.
Abby looks at the floor. “Well, if you don’t want me there … ” She looks forlorn. As if she’s not being allowed in the capsule again. I’m about to give in, but then Seth blurts out something.
“Emilia and I are going on a date. That’s why you can’t come.”
We both stare at him in amazement.
“Really?” asks Abby. “Did you really, actually ask her? And she doesn’t think you’re dirty?” She looks at me. “Emilia, are you going on a date with Seth?”
I know it’s not real. Of course I do. It’s just the only way in the world to keep Abby at home—that was very smart of Seth.
But still I feel like someone’s asked me out for the first time in my life.
I nod casually. “Yeah, we’re going on a date.”
“But what if he starts kissing you?” Abby cries out excitedly. “You’ll get seven billion of his bacteria in your mouth!”
I can’t help it. I shudder.
“Do you often go out on dates?” I ask Seth as we walk together down Broadway.
He stops. “You do know this isn’t a date, right? I just said that to keep Abby home.”
“Yeah, like I didn’t get that already!” As I thrust my hands into my pockets, I feel my face turning red.
The sky above our heads is now the color of clay. There’s the occasional gust of wind and I immediately think: Are these the first tentacles of Sandy?
Lots of the old-fashioned buildings along this part of Broadway are at least ten stories high. Everywhere I look, I see wrought-iron curlicues and designs in the stone: lilies with long stems, owls, peacock feathers, and wavy lines. Of course I don’t mention that to Seth. I realized a long time ago that most fifteen-year-olds don’t know anything about Jugendstil and Art Deco. It’s no one else’s business that they’re my favorite decorative styles and that New York is full of them.
• • •
We stop in front of the wall of hair dyes at a huge drugstore. There are at least a hundred different kinds, and I have no idea which brand to choose. I haven’t even decided which color I want.
“No,” says Seth suddenly, his eyes wandering over the packaging, “I’ve never been on a date before. Why would I? Way too much hassle.”
“Exactly,” I say quickly. “Couldn’t agree more. A complete waste of time.”
“Do you know what color you want?”
I shake my head. He looks at my straight, light brown hair and frowns. “Not blond. That’s not you.”
“My mom has red hair. But I don’t think … ”
“Dark brown,” he says. “Really dark, so that it’s almost black. But not quite.”
“Like yours?”
He runs his fingers through his rough hair. “More like Abby’s. Glossy, I mean. And, um, a bit wavy.”
I sigh. “I don’t think a little dye is suddenly going to make my hair wavy.”
• • •
As we leave the drugstore, Seth stops. He looks up at the sky and then at the people walking by, huddled into their winter coats.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ll take the subway. I want to show you something. Anyway, once Abby and Mom get Skyping, they can’t stop.”
I hesitate. The longer I’m outside, the more chance I’ll be recognized by the police. I look at the plastic bag I’m holding, with the hair dye inside, and wonder if this is an Abby kind of plan. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing. But maybe not.
“Okay,” I say.
There are huge posters about Hurricane Sandy all over the subway station. Digital signs are warning that the last trains will leave the station at seven this evening.
“Poor tourists,” I say. “Just imagine choosing this week of all weeks to see New York … ”
As I say it, I realize that I’m actually one of those poor tourists.
When we come up aboveground from the South Ferry station, the wind’s blowing harder than before. We walk through a park, step over a line of sandbags, and then we’re standing by the water. Choppy gray waves with screeching seagulls above. On the left, an orange ferry sails by, and on the right …
It feels as if my heart grows a little bigger for a moment.
There, in the hazy distance, is the Statue of Liberty.
The giant woman made of gray-green metal stands on her own island, a crown on her head and a burning torch in her right hand, triumphantly raised aloft. As if she’s just won some kind of contest.
“She was already there,” says Seth, “when my great-great-grandparents arrived on the boat. They’d been persecuted in Russia, so they immigrated to America.”
I feel a shiver run down my spine.
“Can you imagine what it must have been like?” he says. “There were no airplanes, so you had to travel by ship to America. You were at sea for, like, two weeks. Two weeks without land in sight, on the way to an unknown place. Movies didn’t exist back then, and you couldn’t just download a travel guide on your phone. Those people had absolutely no idea where they were going to end up. Then, after two weeks at sea, they sailed into the harbor of New York. And the first thing they saw was her.”
He points at the Statue of Liberty. Seagulls skim across the water. My hair blows into my eyes.
“Lady Liberty,” he says quietly. “All those Italians and Poles and Irish and Russians who were dreaming of becoming American saw her torch, high in the sky. They’d left behind their villages and families. Everything. Their entire lives. And then they started over again here.”
I look at the Statue of Liberty and try to imagine it. Not what it’s like to leave and then to email and call and send text messages every day. No. To leave and never hear anything else from each other for your entire life. Truly to start all over again.
Seth turns around. He leans with his back against the railing and looks at the gleaming skyscrapers around Wall Street, at the huge bronze eagle in the park nearby, and at the line of white sandbags on the waterfront walkway.
I don’t know how many people have ever seen New York like this. Gray, abandoned, with a helpless little line of sandbags in the foreground.
“You probably think it’s a load of crap,” he says. “The whole story about the land of the free. The American dream. When we wage war all over the world. When people have been imprisoned without trial at Guantánamo Bay for ten years.”
I shake my head. “No. Not at all. It’s not crap.”
“So what were you thinking about just then?” he asks. “You looked so … ”
“I was thinking about all those people. What it must have been like to arrive here a century ago. What New York looked like back then. And what you’d have done if you didn’t know anyone and had nowhere to sleep … ”
I don’t tell him what I thought after that.
That, if this really had been a first date, it would have been a pretty perfect one.
“Hey, you guys!” calls Abby when we get home. “I just saved someone’s life!”
The living room smells like baked beans. The heating’s up high and there’s soft jazz music playing. And on the couch, under a flowery blanket, lies Jim.
Seriously. The nine-fingered movie star is back.
His eyes have a strange glint and his cheeks are red. Abby’s eyes are gleaming too. She’s put her hair up and she’s found a purple party dress to wear.
“Oh … my … God,” Seth says slowly. “You’ve gone crazy.”
Abby laughs. “You say that every day. So it can’t be true, can it? If I alre
ady went crazy yesterday, there’s no need to act all surprised about it today.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t want Jim to be lying there on the couch. I’m the one who’s staying with Seth and Abby. Not him. That guy is way too good-looking to be just lying around here. This is going to end badly.
“I went over there to check up on him, and it’s a good thing I did. He has a temperature,” says Abby. “I felt his forehead.” She looks at me. “I washed my hands after. With detergent.” She picks up a cell phone that I recognize as Jim’s. “And I’ve made a diagnosis. Those other doctors don’t have a clue. Jim still has all ten fingers. Take a look.”
She shows us an X-ray picture on the screen. A white-and-gray skeleton hand on a black background. Four intact fingers and one intact thumb, but there’s a line running through the index finger that stops just before the end of the bone.
“He was cutting meat with one of those scary machines. At the restaurant where he was working. And then he slipped. A little bit more and he really would have only nine fingers left.”
I sigh. I go out to take a quick look at the Statue of Liberty and suddenly this kid knows everything there is to know about Jim. Great. So he had all ten of his sticky fingers all over my clothes. That really doesn’t make it any better.
“Abby,” says Seth. “Hall. Now.”
He doesn’t look at me, but I follow them into the semidark hallway. There’s no way Jim can stay here; that seems perfectly clear to me. And the two of us together should be able to stand up to an eleven-year-old girl, shouldn’t we?
“Am I grounded again?” Abby asks happily as soon as the door to the living room is closed. “What a terrible punishment! Having to stay indoors during a hurricane!”
I look at that slender little girl, standing there defiantly with her chin in the air—and suddenly I understand what she’s up to. She’s trying to break open the capsule. Her mom and Seth have to come out of their isolation. All she cares about is making the two of them wake up.
“That guy,” Seth whispers, “could be a murderer. Jesus, Abby, I can’t believe you went over there to see him!”