But the next step was still pretty obvious. After all, I had Charity’s address, and Thad had given me a bunch of twenties back at the airport in San Francisco. So I took my roller bag by the handle and went to join the taxi line with as much poise as I could scrape together.
I’ve traveled a lot for someone my age—my dad took me to India once, and we’d gone snowboarding a bunch of times in places like Colorado and Utah. One Christmas break we went to Hawaii, and we even convinced T.K. to come with us, though she refused to surf and spent the entire vacation sitting under a beach umbrella, slathered in sunscreen and working on her laptop.
But I’d never been to New York before. For the first fifteen minutes it looked like any other city, and we sped along a series of highways lined with residential neighborhoods and the occasional more industrial zone. Then the cab rounded a curve, and the Manhattan skyline popped up in the distance, just like in the movies, and I couldn’t help but feel a little rush in spite of everything.
I managed to pick out the Empire State Building, its familiar outline lit in red, white, and blue, before we zoomed up a ramp and onto the 59th Street Bridge, which I would’ve recognized from the first Spider-Man even if there hadn’t been an electronic map on the back of the driver’s seat. A purple blip on the screen represented the taxi, chewing its way across the East River like a real-life version of the old Pac-Man game Erin had hacked to work on her Wii.
The bridge spilled us out onto an expressway with the river to one side and a blur of buildings to the other. I’d just caught a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge and the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, and even the Statue of Liberty, planted on its own island in the harbor, when, without warning, the driver cut across two lanes of traffic. We raced down an exit ramp and onto a street still busy with cars and people hours after everyone in Palo Alto would’ve been in bed.
Snatches of music coming from other cars mixed with the sounds of honking traffic and sirens, and now that the taxi was moving more slowly and wind wasn’t rushing in through the window, I could feel the humidity in the air. We passed block after block of stores and restaurants, a lot of them with signs in Spanish or Hebrew or Chinese.
Even though most of what I knew of New York came filtered through Hollywood, I’d still thought I had a pretty good handle on what different neighborhoods were supposed to look like. The Upper East Side was elegant apartment buildings, and Midtown was glass-and-steel corporate headquarters, and SoHo was chic restaurants and boutiques. But we were now on the Lower East Side heading toward TriBeCa—at least, that’s where the purple blip on the map was headed—and the confusion of people and languages reminded me more of Mumbai or New Delhi than anything I’d seen on TV.
Then the driver made a series of sharp turns, and suddenly the crowds and the noise were gone. “Fifteen Laight,” he announced, jerking the taxi to a stop on a particularly deserted cobblestone street.
This was the first thing he’d said to me the entire ride—he’d spent most of it on his cell phone talking in what I was pretty sure was Urdu. But he helped get my bag out of the trunk, and when I paid him, he insisted on giving some of the money back, saying I’d tipped too much.
“I’ll wait until you get inside,” he offered, and I have to admit, I was glad he did. Now I understood why the taxi dispatcher at the airport had looked so surprised when I told her where I was going.
I’d never heard of Laight Street the way I’d heard of Park Avenue, but I knew from my mother that her parents were wealthy, so I’d assumed my aunts were, too, and that Charity’s address would be just as fancy as Patience’s.
But the building definitely didn’t look fancy. If anything, it looked like a warehouse, and not the kind that had been made over into condos with a Starbucks and a dry cleaner in the lobby, like the ones I’d seen in San Francisco. There was no doorman like on Gossip Girl or even a neat, glass-enclosed directory like the apartment buildings I’d been to in Palo Alto. There was just a plastic intercom panel with a handful of names written on stickers and peeling pieces of tape.
The topmost label said TRUESDALE—#5 in bold capital letters, and I took a deep breath as I reached out to press the button next to it. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if nobody answered. Did hotels take unaccompanied minors?
But then I heard the speaker click on.
“Is this the Truesdale resi—” I started to ask, but before I could finish, the speaker clicked off and the door’s lock buzzed open.
The cabdriver gave me a wave, put the taxi in gear, and disappeared around a corner.
Three
The heavy steel door led into a small foyer with an elevator to one side and a staircase to the other. The elevator was the kind that needed a key to set it in motion, but nobody came rushing down with a key, so after a minute I picked up my suitcase and headed for the stairs.
Between surfing and snowboarding and playing soccer at school, I like to think I’m in pretty good shape, but my pulse was beating hard when I finally reached the landing on the fifth floor. Though that might also have been because I was completely furious.
I probably should’ve been relieved to be safely inside, but as soon as the front door shut behind me, all the anxiety and dread erupted into pure, unadulterated rage. I’d been the ultimate in cool resourcefulness back at the airport. I hadn’t panicked or done anything silly. There’d been no hysteria or accosting of random strangers, telling them my life story and throwing myself on their mercy. I’d gotten into a taxi and gotten myself here, with a minimum of fuss and as if I did that sort of thing all the time. T.K. would’ve been proud.
But instead of effusive apologies, or at the very least an explanation, I’d been greeted by an anonymous buzzer and the world’s steepest stairs. And the single door on the fifth floor, the door with a big 5 scrawled on it in what looked like spray paint, remained closed.
I began counting backward from ten to get my temper under control, but as I counted I just got more and more angry. I knew that suddenly being responsible for the care of a sixteen-year-old girl might not have been what my aunt had planned—it sure wasn’t what I’d planned, either—but it seemed like she could’ve said something instead of just flaking, and preferably before I flew across an entire continent.
There wasn’t a doorbell, which was fine, because pounding on the door felt good even if it did make my knuckles hurt. Given how things were going, I half expected nobody to answer, so I wasn’t that surprised when nobody did.
I was leaning against the door, trying to figure out what my mother would do next, when I spotted a sign taped to the banister of the next flight of stairs. WE’RE ON THE ROOF, it said, in the same handwriting as the label next to the buzzer downstairs. There was also an arrow, pointing up, as if whoever made the sign thought maybe I couldn’t read.
I said a few of the sort of words that T.K. thinks are “indicative of a limited vocabulary and lack of imagination” before following the arrow up the final set of stairs. These let out onto another small landing and yet another heavy metal door.
I glared at the door, not even wanting to consider the possibility of nobody being on the other side. Then I pushed it open and stepped into the dazzling brightness of full day.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust, at which point I realized that the brightness was from banks of brilliant white lights. Extension cords snaked around my feet, and a bunch of glamorous-looking people in tuxes and ball gowns stood posed in little groups under the lights.
But nobody noticed me, because they were all focused on a skinny man in black. “NO NO NO!” he was yelling. “Zat is not vat I vant!” He had spiky blond hair and a long beaky nose, and he wore a scarf around his neck even though it must have been ninety degrees out. One end flowed behind him as he swept from group to group, and I had the feeling he’d spent a lot of time in front of a mirror figuring out how to make it flow that way.
“Zere!” he commanded, repositioning somebody an inch or two so he faced at a slight angle to t
he others. “And zere!” He made a minuscule adjustment to the tilt of a woman’s head. Then he stepped back to admire his work, and I saw that a guy with a huge camera stood behind him, waiting to start filming.
“Zat is better,” said the man in black. “Now, remember, it is a party, but you are sad. It is a celebration, but you are mourning. You are eager, but also vistful.”
“Dieter!” a woman cried out from next to the cameraman. “Come on already. We’re losing the light.” Which made no sense to me. I mean, unless they were running out of electricity. But maybe this was movie-speak for something else.
The man in black—Dieter, I assumed—turned toward the woman. “Ze art cannot be rushed, Gertrude,” he said haughtily.
Gertrude, who was wearing a female version of Dieter’s outfit, complete with the scarf, made a sound that was a combination of a grunt and a snort. “But the budget can be busted. We’re already paying everyone here time-and-a-half.”
Dieter sighed, but he clapped his hands together. “Vight, vight. Places, everyvone. Places!”
Nobody moved, probably because they were already in the places he’d put them.
“Vight. Ready and—ACTION!”
Immediately, the crowd came to life. And almost as immediately, Dieter yelled, “CUT!”
“Now what?” demanded Gertrude.
“HER! Ze face! It is mesmerizing!” And before I knew what was happening, Dieter had my chin in his hand and was turning my head first one way and then the other.
“Mesmerizing” was pretty much the last word I’d ever used to describe myself—mostly I was just short—so I probably should’ve been flattered, but I was too busy being completely mortified. There must have been fifty beautifully dressed and made-up strangers on that roof, and they were all staring right at me. And none of them could possibly know that the only reason I was wearing the jeans and T-shirt I had on was that Nora had packed all of the clothes I actually liked, or that my nose wasn’t usually such a striking shade of beet but I’d forgotten to use sunblock on my last trip to Ross’s Cove.
It also wasn’t like I could explain any of this with Dieter’s fingers clamped around my jaw. “Ve must find her a part in ze scene,” he declared.
“Fine,” said Gertrude, but she didn’t sound like she really thought so. In fact, she sounded like she was ready to throttle Dieter, and potentially me. “But she has to sign the release.”
I tried to say something, but all I could manage was an ineffectual mumble. For such a scrawny guy, Dieter had an impressive grip.
“You are over eighteen, right?” Gertrude asked, stalking up and thrusting a clipboard in my face.
“No,” I said, finally managing to free my chin from Dieter’s grasp. “I’m sixteen.”
Gertrude looked at me as if I’d been born when I had on purpose, just to make her life difficult. “Why is the agency sending us minors?” she said to Dieter. “We can’t use her.”
“But she’s perfect. Ve MUST use her,” Dieter insisted. “Vere is Zarley? ZARLEY!”
An especially glamorous dark-haired woman broke loose from one of the carefully arranged groups and made her way toward us, her red satin dress shimmering under the lights.
“What’s the problem?” she asked brightly.
“This is the problem,” growled Gertrude, pointing at me.
“I must have zis girl in ze film,” said Dieter. “But she is ze minor, so she can’t sign ze release.”
“That’s all right, one of her parents can sign ze—I mean, the—release.” The woman turned to me. “We’ll just need you to get a signature from your mom or dad.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“She says she can’t,” the woman reported to Dieter and Gertrude.
“Then she can’t be in the film,” Gertrude said to Dieter, in a “so there” sort of way.
“But she MUST be in ze film!” Dieter said stubbornly.
Gertrude heaved a sigh of exasperation. “This is what we get for working with amateurs.”
The woman in the red dress didn’t seem to appreciate either of us being called amateurs. She put her hands on her hips and her voice took on a steely edge. “Excuse me?”
Maybe it was her tone, or her height—she was nearly a foot taller than me—or maybe it was simply the way her green eyes flashed as she spoke, but she was suddenly imposing. Gertrude swallowed whatever she was planning to say, and Dieter moved closer to her, like she might come in handy as a human shield.
Satisfied, the woman turned her attention back to me. “Sorry it won’t work out this time,” she said. “But maybe you can be in the next film.”
The steeliness was gone from her tone, and her smile was kind, but it was also dismissive, and somehow the dismissiveness was the last straw. It had been a long day, complete with more mood swings than I usually have in any given week, and I’d been teetering on the brink since the plane landed. I put my own hands on my own hips and let all of the words I’d been holding back pour out.
“I don’t want to be in this film or the next film or any film! I don’t want to be here at all! It wasn’t my idea to leave California, and my home, and my friends, and my school, and my entire LIFE, and to fly three thousand miles to live with someone I’ve never met who doesn’t even pick me up at the airport when she says she’s going to. And I can’t get permission from my parents because my dad is dead, and everyone thinks my mother is, too—”
That’s when I ran out of words, which was just as well, because Dieter cracked up. Which isn’t exactly the reaction you want when you’re trying to show you’re a force to be reckoned with.
“I can see how hilarious this must be for you,” I said to him.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to stop laughing. “It’s just zat you are like ze Mini-Me. You know, from ze Austin Powers. Not an artistic vork, but very entertaining is zis film—”
Meanwhile, the woman in the red dress was staring at me. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Delia,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You can’t be Delia. Delia’s coming tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” I said.
“But Delia’s flight doesn’t get in until five past twelve. That’s hours away.”
“My flight did get in at five past twelve,” I said. “Twelve midnight.”
“Midnight?” she said in disbelief. “What kind of flight gets in at midnight? Flights get in at noon, not midnight.”
I didn’t point out that a plane would’ve had to leave the West Coast at three in the morning to arrive in New York at noon. I only said, “My flight got in at midnight.”
“Then you’re Delia?” she asked. “But when did—how did—I mean—you’re absolutely sure you’re Delia?”
She ran a hand through her hair, and a black curl came loose from its knot. And all at once, I saw her resemblance to the scowling little girl in the picture and realized why the little girl had seemed familiar.
She looked a lot like me.
The thick feeling was suddenly back in my throat, making it hard to say anything, so I just nodded.
Her mouth formed a perfect red O as realization washed over her. Then, slowly, her hands fell from her hips and the O melted into a wide, warm smile.
“Well, Delia,” she said. “I’m your aunt Charley.”
And when she hugged me, it felt like hitting a wave just right.
Four
For a few seconds the next morning I forgot where I was. All of my dreams had been set in Palo Alto, and I could smell bacon, which happens a lot in the morning at home. While T.K. doesn’t have any of the standard vices like smoking or gambling, she does have a serious bacon habit. So with my eyes shut and the bacon-scented air, it was easy to imagine I was in my own bed. But once I opened my eyes it was immediately clear I was somewhere else entirely.
My room at home mostly reflects my mother’s taste, which means the palette is white on white, with the occasional splash of white to
keep things interesting. I’d raised the possibility of alternative color schemes on several occasions, but T.K. believes that “a monochromatic environment promotes focus and intellectual rigor.”
If that was true, then I might as well say farewell to focus and intellectual rigor while I was at Charley’s. Here the paint on the walls was a glimmering silver, and brightly colored silks hung at the windows. The rich blues and greens of the curtains should have clashed with the pinks and purples on the bed, but somehow it worked.
Charley had told me the previous night that she had the curtains and bedspread made from material she found in a store in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood where a lot of South Asians live. She’d redone the room just for me, which was incredibly nice on such short notice, but I had the feeling she’d thought I’d be more exotic, or at least a bit more in touch with my father’s Indian roots. I guess she had no way of knowing that every other person in Silicon Valley is of Indian descent or related to an Internet tycoon, and that frequently they’re both. I’m actually considered pretty mainstream.
Between the hour and the fact that she was supposed to be coproducing, starring in, and serving as the casting director, location manager, and production designer for the movie being shot on the roof, we hadn’t had much time to talk the night before. Charley had told me about Jackson Heights and also a bunch of stuff about Dieter’s brilliant creative vision before promising we’d catch up in the morning and rushing back upstairs.
I’d thought I’d be too wired to sleep, but as soon as I’d seen the cozy-looking bed, a wave of exhaustion broke over me. It took all of the energy I had left to drag a toothbrush across my teeth and change into pajamas. The only reason I’d bothered with the toothbrush was that T.K. has done such a good job scaring me about gum disease.
Now the clock on the bedside table said it was after ten, and the bacon smell reminded me that it had been a long time since I’d last eaten. My pajamas consisted of a tank top and sweat-pants, but Charley seemed like the informal type—she wouldn’t even let anyone call her Charity (“I mean, do I look like a Victorian spinster?” she’d said when I asked)—so I decided it would be okay not to get more dressed and went in search of food.
And Then Everything Unraveled Page 2
