FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX
NEW YORK
ALL
THESE
THINGS
I’VE DONE
GABRIELLE ZEVIN
An Imprint of Macmillan
ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE. Copyright © 2011 by Gabrielle Zevin.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America by
R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia. For information, address
Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and
are used by Farrar Straus Giroux under license from Macmillan.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Zevin, Gabrielle.
All these things I’ve done / Gabrielle Zevin.
p. cm. — (Birthright)
Summary: In a future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband, teenage cellphone
use is illegal, and water and paper are carefully rationed, sixteen- year- old Anya Balanchine
finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight as heir apparent to an important New
York City crime family.
ISBN 978- 1- 250- 01028- 5
[1. Or ga nized crime— Fiction. 2. Celebrities— Fiction. 3. High schools— Fiction.
4. Schools— Fiction. 5. Family life— New York (State) — New York— Fiction. 6. New York
(N.Y.) — Fiction. 7. Science fi ction.] I. Title. II. Title: All these things I’ve done.
PZ7.Z452All 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010035873
Originally published in the United States by Farrar Straus Giroux
First Square Fish Edition: May 2012
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
macteenbooks.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
AR: 4.4 / LEXILE: HL630L
THE NIGHT BEFORE JU NIOR YEAR— I was sixteen, barely—
Gable Arsley said he wanted to sleep with me. Not in the distant
or semidistant future either. Right then.
Admittedly, my taste in boys wasn’t so great. I was attracted
to the sort who weren’t in the habit of asking permission to do
anything. Boys like my father, I guess.
We’d just gotten back from the coffee speakeasy that used to
be off University Place, in the basement of a church. This was
back when caffeine, along with about a million other things, was
against the law. So much was illegal (paper without a permit,
phones with cameras, chocolate, etc.) and the laws changed so
quickly, you could be committing a crime and not even know it.
Not that it mattered. The boys in blue were totally overwhelmed. The city was bankrupt, and I’d say maybe 75 percent
of the force had been fired. The police that were left didn’t have
time to worry about teens getting high on coffee.
I. i defend my own honor
4
I should have known something was up when Gable offered
to escort me back to the apartment. At night at least, it was a
pretty dangerous trek from the speakeasy to where I lived on
East Ninetieth, and Gable usually left me to fend for myself. He
lived downtown, and I guess he figured that I hadn’t been killed
making the trip yet.
We went into my apartment, which had been in the family
practically forever— since 1995, the year my grandma Galina
was born. Galina, who we called Nana and who I loved like nobody’s business, was busy dying in her bedroom. She had the
distinction of being both the oldest and the sickest person I had
ever known. As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the machines that were keeping her heart and everything else pumping.
The only reason they hadn’t turned the machines off, like they
would have for anyone else, was because she was responsible
for my older brother, my little sister, and me. Her mind was
still sharp, by the way. Even confined to the bed, not much got
past her.
Gable had had, maybe, six espressos that night, two of them
with shots of Prozac (also illegal)— and he was mad up. I’m not
making excuses for him, only trying to explain a few things.
“Annie,” he said, loosening his necktie and sitting down on
the couch, “you gots to have some chocolate in here. I know you
do. I’m gagging for it. Come on, baby, hook Daddy up.” It was
the caffeine talking. Gable sounded like a different person when
he was on the stuff. I especially hated when he referred to himself as Daddy. I think he’d heard it in an old movie. I wanted to
say, You aren’t my daddy. You’re seventeen years old, for God’s sake.
5
Sometimes I did say this but mostly I let it go. My actual daddy
used to say that if you didn’t let some things go, you’d spend
your whole life fighting. Chocolate was why Gable’d said he
wanted to come up to the apartment in the first place. I told him
he could have one piece and then he had to leave. The first day
of school was tomorrow (my ju nior year as I mentioned; his
se nior), and I needed to get some sleep.
We kept our chocolate in Nana’s room in a secret safe in the
back of her closet. I tried to be real quiet as I walked past her bed.
Not that there was much of a need for that. Her machines were
as loud as the subway.
Nana’s room smelled like death, a combination of day- old
egg salad (poultry was rationed) and overripe honeydew melons
(fruit was pretty scarce) and old shoes and cleaning products
(purchase permitted with voucher). I went into her walk- in closet,
pushed her coats out of the way, and entered the combination.
Behind the guns was the chocolate, which was superdark, with
hazelnuts, and came from Rus sia. I put a bar in my pocket and
closed the safe. On my way out, I stopped to kiss my grandmother on the cheek, and she woke up.
“Anya,” she croaked, “what time did you get home?”
I told her that I’d been home for a while. She’d never know
the difference anyway and she’d only worry if she knew where
I’d been. Then I told her to go back to sleep, that I hadn’t meant
to wake her. “You need your rest, Nana.”
“What for? I’ll be resting forever soon enough.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’ll be alive a really long time,” I lied.
“There’s a difference between being alive and living,” she
6
muttered before changing the subject. “First day of school tomorrow.”
I was surprised she remembered.
“Go get yourself a nice chocolate bar from the closet, okay,
Anyaschka?”
I did what she said. I put the bar from my pocket back in the
safe and replaced it with a different, identical one.
“Don’t show anybody,” she said. “And don’t share it unless
it’s with someone you really love.”
Easier said than done, I thought, but I promised I wouldn’t.
I kissed my grandmother’s papery cheek again. I closed the door
softly behind me. I loved Nana, but I couldn’t stand to be in that
awful room.
When I went back out to the living room, Gable wasn’t
there. I knew where he’d be.
Gable was lying in the middle of my bed, passed out. As I
saw it, that was the problem with caffeine. A little of it, and you
had a nice buzz. Too much, and you were a goner. At least, that’s
how it was for Gable. I kicked him, not too hard, on the leg. He
didn’t wake up. I kicked him again, harder. He grunted a little
and rolled onto his back. I fi gured I’d let him sleep it off. If worst
came to worst, I’d sleep on the couch. Anyway, Gable was cute
when he slept. Harmless, like a puppy or a little boy. I suppose I
liked him best that way.
I took my school uniform from my closet and laid it out on
my desk chair for the next day. I or ga nized my bag and charged
up my slate. I broke off a single piece of dark chocolate. The flavor was strong and woodsy. I rewrapped the rest in its silver foil
7
and put it in my top drawer for safekeeping. I was glad I hadn’t
had to share it with Gable.
You’re probably asking why Gable was my boyfriend when
I barely wanted to share chocolate with him. The thing is, he
wasn’t boring. He was a little dangerous and, stupid girl that I
was, I guess I found that sort of thing attractive. And— God rest
your soul, Daddy— it could be said that I lacked positive male role
models. Besides, sharing chocolate wasn’t some casual thing: it
really was hard to come by.
I decided to take a shower so I wouldn’t have to do it in the
morning. When I got out ninety seconds later (everyone’s showers ran on timers because of how expensive water was getting),
Gable was sitting cross- legged on my bed while stuffi ng the last
of my chocolate bar down his throat.
“Hey,” I said, my towel wrapped around me, “you went into
my drawer!”
Chocolate was smudged on his thumb, index finger, and the
inside corners of his mouth. “I wasn’t snooping. I sniffed it out,”
he said in t he middle of a bite. He paused chomping long enough
to look up at me. “You look pretty, Annie. Clean.”
I wrapped my towel tighter around myself. “Well, now that
you’re awake and you’ve had your chocolate, you should leave,”
I said.
He didn’t move.
“Come on, then! Out!” I said this strongly, if not loudly. I
didn’t want to wake my siblings or Nana.
That’s when he told me that he thought we should have sex.
“No,” I said, wishing very much that I hadn’t been so foolish
8
as to take a shower while a dangerous, overcaffeinated boy lay in
wait on my bed. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” he asked. And then he said that he was in love
with me. It was the first time a boy had ever told me that. Even
as inexperienced as I was, I could tell he didn’t mean it.
“I want you to go,” I said. “We’ve got school tomorrow, and
we both should get some sleep.”
“I can’t go now. It’s past midnight.”
Not that there were enough cops to enforce it, but midnight
was the citywide, under- eighteen curfew. It was only 11:45, so I
lied and told him he could still make it if he ran.
“I’ll never make it, Annie. Besides, my parents aren’t home,
and your grandma will never know if I stay. Come on, be sweet
to me.”
I shook my head and tried to look tough, which was somewhat hard to do while wearing a yellow, flowered towel.
“Doesn’t it count for anything that I just told you I love
you?” Gable asked.
I considered this briefly before deciding that it didn’t. “Not
really. Not when I know you don’t mean it.”
He looked at me with big, dumb eyes like I had hurt his
feelings or something. Then he cleared his throat and tried a
different technique. “Come on, Annie. We’ve been together almost nine months. That’s the longest I’ve ever been with anyone. So . . . Like . . . Why not?”
I gave him my list. One, I said, we were too young. Two, I
didn’t love him. And three, the most important of all, I didn’t
believe in sex before marriage. I was a mostly good Catholic girl,
and I knew exactly where the type of behavior he was suggesting
9
would get me: straight to Hell. For the record, I very much believed (and believe) in Heaven and Hell, and not in an abstract
way either. More about this later.
His eyes were a little crazy— maybe it was the contraband
he’d consumed— and he got up from the bed and walked closer
to me. He started tickling my bare arms.
“Stop that,” I said. “Seriously, Gable, this isn’t funny. I know
you’re trying to get me to drop my towel.”
“Why’d you take that shower if you didn’t want—”
I told him I’d scream.
“And then what?” he asked. “Your grandma can’t get out of
bed. Your brother’s a retard. And your sister’s just a kid. All
you’ll do is make them upset.”
Part of me couldn’t believe this was actually happening in
my own house. That I’d allowed myself to be so witless and
vulnerable. I hooked my towel under my armpits, and I pushed
Gable away as hard as I could. “Leo is not a retard!”I yelled.
I heard a door open at the end of the hallway and then, footsteps. Leo, who was tall like Daddy had been (six feet five inches),
appeared in my doorway wearing pajamas with a pattern of
dogs and bones on them. Even though I had been handling things,
I had never been so happy to see my big brother. “Hey, Annie!”
Leo wrapped me in a quick hug before turning to my soon-
to- be ex- boyfriend. “Hello, Gable,” Leo said. “I heard noise. I
think you should leave now. You woke me which is okay. But if
you wake Natty that won’t be good because she has to go to
school tomorrow.”
Leo led Gable to our front door. I didn’t relax until I heard
it shut and Leo had latched the chain.
10
“I don’t think your boyfriend is very nice,” Leo told me
when he got back.
“You know what? I don’t think so either,” I said. I picked up
Gable’s discarded chocolate wrappers and crushed them into a
ball. By Nana’s standards, the only chocolate- worthy boy in my
life was my brother.
The first day of school stunk more than most first days of
school, and they tend to stink as a rule. Everyone had already
heard that Gable Arsley and Anya Balanchine were over. This
was annoying. Not because I had had any intention of staying
with him after the foul he’d committed the night before, but because I’d wanted to be the one to break up with him. I’d wanted
him to cry or yell or apologize. I’d wanted to walk away and not
look back as he called my name. That sort of thing, right?
I have to admit: it was amazing how fast the rumors spread.
Minors weren’t allowed to have their own phones, and no one of
any age could publish, virtually or otherwise, without a license
or even send an e-mail without paying postage and yet gossip
always finds a way. And a good lie travels a heck of a lot faster than
the sad, boring truth. By third period, the story of my breakup
had been carved in stone, and I hadn’t been the one doing the
carving.
I skipped fourth period to go to confession.
When I entered the confessional, I could see the distinctly
female silhouette of Mother Piousina through the screen. Believe
it or not, she was the fi rst female priest Holy Trinity School had
ever had. Even though these were supposedly modern times and
everyone was supposedly enlightened, more than a few parents
11
had complained when the Board of Overseers had announced
her as their selection the prior year. There were some people who
just weren’t comfortable with the idea of a lady priest. In addition to being a Catholic school, HT was also one of the better
schools in Manhattan. Parents who paid its exorbitant tuition
did so with the understanding that the school wasn’t allowed to
change no matter how bad things got everywhere else.
I kneeled down and crossed myself. “Bless me, Mother,
for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last
confession . . .”
“What’s troubling you, daughter?”
I told her how I’d been having impure thoughts about Gable
Arsley all morning. I didn’t use his name but Mother Piousina
probably knew who I was talking about anyway. Everyone else at
school did.
“Are you considering having intercourse with him?” she
asked. “Because action would be an even greater sin than the
thoughts themselves.”
“I know that, Mother,” I said. “Nothing like that. The thing
is, this boy’s been spreading rumors about me, and I’ve just
been thinking how I hate him and I want to kill him or at least
hurt him a little.”
Mother Piousina laughed in a way that only somewhat offended me. “Is that everything?” she asked.
I told her that I’d used the Lord’s name in vain several times
over the summer. Most of the instances had occurred during
the mayor’s Great Air- Conditioning Ration. One of our “off
days” had coincided with the hottest day in August. Between
the 110- degree temperature and the heat generated by Nana’s
12
many machines, the apartment had been a pretty close approximation of Hell.
“Anything else?”
“One more thing. My grandmother is very sick and even
though I love her”— t his was really hard f or me to say—“somet imes
I wish she would just die already.”
“You don’t want to see her suffer. God understands that you
don’t mean it, my child.”
“Sometimes I have bad thoughts about the dead,” I added.
“Anyone specific?”
“My father mainly. But my mother sometimes, too. And
sometimes—”
Mother Piousina interrupted. “Perhaps three months is too
long for you to go between confessions, daughter.” She laughed
again which annoyed me, but I continued anyway. The next one
was the hardest to say.
“Sometimes I am ashamed of my older brother, Leo, because he’s . . . It’s not his fault. He’s the kindest, most loving
brother but . . . You probably know that he’s a little slow. Today,
he wanted to walk me and Natty to school but I told him that
my grandmother needed him at home and that he’d be late
for his job. Both lies.”
“Is this your entire confession?”
“Yes,” I said, bowing my head. “I’m sorry for these and all
the sins of my past life.” Then I prayed the Act of Contrition.
“I absolve you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost,” Mother Piousina said. She told me to say a Hail
Mary and the Lord’s Prayer as penance, which seemed a ridicu-
13
lously minor punishment. Her pre de ces sor, Father Xavier, really knew how to give a good penance.
I stood. I was about to open the burgundy curtain when she
called to me, “Anya, light a candle for your mother and father in
Heaven.” She slid open the screen and handed me two candle
vouchers.
“We’re supposed to ration candles now,” I grumbled. With
the endless stupid coupons and stamps ( weren’t we supposed
to be rationing paper?), the arbitrary point system, and the constantly changing rules, ration laws were incredibly annoying and
impossible to keep up with. It was no wonder so many people
bought goods on the black market.
“Look on the bright side. You can still have as much of the
host as you want,” Mother Piousina replied.
I took the slips and thanked Mother Piousina. For all the
good lighting candles would do, I thought bitterly. I was pretty
sure my father was in Hell.
After giving my vouchers to a nun with a wicker ticket basket and a box of votives, I went into the chapel and lit a candle
for my mother.
I prayed that, despite having married the head of the Balanchine crime family, Mom somehow wasn’t in Hell.
I lit a candle for my father.
I prayed that Hell wasn’t so bad, even for a murderer.
I missed them both so much.
My best friend, Scarlet, was waiting for me in the hallway
outside the chapel. “Nice work skipping Fencing on the first
day, Miss Balanchine,” she said, linking her arm through mine.
14
“Don’t worry. I covered for you. I said you were having scheduling issues.”
“Thanks, Scarlet.”
“No problem. I can already see exactly what sort of year
this is going to be. Shall we go to the caf?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, you could spend the rest of the school year hiding in
the church,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll even become a nun and swear off boys forever.”
Scarlet turned to study me. “No. Your face wouldn’t be good
in a habit.”
On the walk to the dining hall, Scarlet filled me in on what
Gable had been telling people, but I had overheard most of it
already. The most important points were that he had broken up
with me because he thought I might be a caffeine addict, because
I was “kind of a slut,” and because the start of a school year was
a good opportunity for “taking out the trash.” I comforted myself with the thought that if Dad had been alive, he probably
could have had Gable Arsley killed. “So you know,” Scarlet said,
“I did defend your honor.”
I was sure Scarlet probably had but no one ever listened to
her. People thought of her as the crazy drama girl. Pretty and
ridiculous.
“Anyway,” she said, “everyone knows that Gable Arsley is a
horse’s backside. The whole thing’ll blow over by tomorrow. Everyone’s only talking about it because they’re losers with no lives
of their own. And also, it’s the first day of school so nothing else
has happened yet.”
“He called Leo a retard. Did I tell you that part?”
15
“No!” Scarlet said. “That’s pure evil!”
We were standing in front of the double doors that led into
the dining hall. “I hate him,” I said. “I really and truly hate him.”
“I know,” Scarlet agreed, pushing the doors open. “I never
knew what you saw in him in the first place.” She was a good
friend.
The dining hall had wood- paneled walls and black- and-
white linoleum tiles like a chessboard, which made me feel like
a piece in a chess game. I saw Gable seated at the head of one of
the long tables by the window. He had his back to the doors, so
he didn’t see me, though.
Lunch that day was lasagna, which I have always detested.
The red sauce reminded me of blood and guts, and the ricotta
cheese, of brain matter. I’d seen guts and brain matter for real
so I knew what I was talking about. In any case, I wasn’t hungry
anymore.
Once we sat down, I pushed my tray toward Scarlet. “You
want?”
“One’s more than enough, thanks.”
“All right, let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“Other than—”
“Don’t you say that name, Scarlet Barber!”
“Other than the horse’s backside,” Scarlet said, and we both
laughed. “Well, there’s a most promising new boy in my French
class. Actually, he kind of looks like a new man. He’s all, I don’t
know, manly. His name’s Goodwin but he goes by Win. Isn’t
that OMG?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Um, it stands for something. Dad said it used to mean,
16
maybe, ‘amazing’? Or something like that? He wasn’t sure. Ask
your nana, okay?”
I nodded. Scarlet’s dad was an archaeologist and he always
smelled like garbage because he passed his days digging up landfills. Scarlet went on about the new boy for a while but I wasn’t
really paying attention. I couldn’t have cared less. I just nodded
occasionally and pushed my repulsive lasagna around my plate.
I looked across the cafeteria. Gable caught my eye. What
happened next is somewhat blurry to me. He would later claim
that he hadn’t, but I thought he sneered at me, then whispered
something to the girl sitting to the left of him— she was a sophomore, maybe even a freshman, so I didn’t know who she was—
and they both laughed, and in response, I lifted my plate with
the uneaten, though still scalding- hot lasagna (all food was required by law to be heated to 176°F to avoid the bacterial epidemics that were so pervasive), and then I was running diagonally
across the black- and- white linoleum floor like a bishop gone
mad and just like that Gable’s head was covered with ricotta and
tomato sauce.
Gable stood, and his chair toppled over. We were face- to-
face, and it was like everyone else in the dining hall had disappeared. Gable started to yell, calling me a string of names that
I won’t bother to repeat here. I’d rather not type a whole long
list of curse words.
“I accept your condemnation,” I said.
He moved to punch me but then he stopped himself. “You’re
not worth it, Balanchine. You’re scum like your dead parents,”
he said. “I’d rather just get you suspended.” As he left the dining
17
hall, he tried to wipe off some of the sauce with his hand, but it
didn’t do any good. The sauce was everywhere. I smiled.
At the end of eighth period, I was delivered a summons to
appear in Headmaster’s office after school.
Most everyone managed to avoid getting into trouble on
the first day of school so there weren’t that many people waiting. The door was closed which meant someone was already in
the office, and a long- legged guy I didn’t know waited on the
love seat in the foyer. The secretary told me I should have a seat.
The boy was wearing a gray wool hat that he took off as I
passed. He nodded, and I nodded back. He looked at me sidelong. “Food fi ght, right?”
“Yeah, you could call it that.” I wasn’t in the mood for making new friends. He crossed his hands on his lap. He had calluses on his fi ngers and despite myself, I found this interesting.
He must have seen me staring because he asked me what I
was looking at.
“Your hands,” I replied. “They’re kind of rough for a city
boy.”
He laughed and said, “I’m from upstate. We used to grow
our own food. Most of the calluses are from that. A couple are
from my guitar. I’m no good; I just like to play. The rest I can’t
explain.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Interesting,” he repeated. “I’m Win, by the way,” he said.
I turned to look at him. So, this was Scarlet’s new boy? She
was right. He certainly wasn’t hard to look at. Tall and thin.
Tanned skin and toned arms which must have come from the
18
farming he’d mentioned. Soft blue eyes and a mouth that seemed
more inclined to smile than to frown. Not my usual type at all.
He offered me his hand to shake, and I accepted it. “An—”
I started to say.
“Anya Balanchine, I know. Everyone can’t seem to stop
talking about you today.”
“Hmmph,” I said. I could feel my face getting flushed.
“Then you probably think that I’m crazy and a slut and an addict and a mafi ya princess so I don’t even know why you’re
bothering to talk to me!”
“I don’t know about here, but where I’m from, we come to
our own conclusions about people.”
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
“That’s an awfully big question, Anya.”
“No, I meant here outside this office. What did you do
wrong?”
“Multiple choice,” he said. “A. A few pointed comments I
made in Theology. B. Headmaster wants to have a chat with the
new kid about wearing hats in school. C. My schedule. I’m just
too darn smart for my classes. D. My eyewitness account of the
girl who poured lasagna over her boyfriend’s head. E. Headmaster’s leaving her husband and wants to run away with me.
F. None of the above. G. All of the above.”
“Ex- boyfriend,” I mumbled.
“Good to know,” he said.
At that moment, Headmaster’s door opened, and out came
Gable. His face was pink and splotchy from where the sauce had
hit him. His white dress shirt was covered in sauce, which I knew
was probably bothering the heck out of him.
19
Gable scowled at me and whispered, “Not worth it.”
Headmaster poked her head out the door. “Mr. Delacroix,”
she said to Win, “would it prove a terrible incon ve nience to you
if I saw Ms. Balanchine first?”
He consented, and I went into the offi ce. Headmaster shut
the door behind us.
I already knew what would happen. I was put on probation
and assigned lunch duty for the rest of the week. All things considered, pouring the lasagna on Gable’s head had still been completely worth it.
“You must learn to resolve these little relationship problems
outside of Holy Trinity, Ms. Balanchine,” Headmaster said.
“Yes, Headmaster.”
It somehow seemed beside the point to mention that Gable
had tried to date- rape me the night before.
“I considered calling your grandmother Galina, but I know
she’s been in poor health. No need to worry her.”
“Thank you, Headmaster. I appreciate it.”
“Honestly, Anya, I worry for you. This kind of behavior, if
it becomes a pattern, could be damaging to your reputation.”
As if she didn’t know that I’d been born with a bad reputation.
When I left the office, my twelve- year- old sister, Natty, was
sitting next to Win. Scarlet must have told her where to find me.
Or maybe Natty had guessed— I was no stranger to the headmaster’s office. Natty was wearing Win’s hat. They’d obviously
been introduced. What a little flirt she was! Natty was cute, too.
She had long, shiny black hair. Like mine, except hers was stick-
straight while I was stuck with untamable waves.
“Sorry about stealing your place in line,” I said to Win.
20
He shrugged.
“Give Win back his hat,” I told Natty.
“It looks good on me,” she said, batting her eyelashes.
I took it off her head and handed it to Win. “Thanks for
babysitting,” I said.
“Stop infantilizing me,” Natty protested.
“That’s a very good word,” Win commented.
“Thank you,” Natt y replied. “I happen to know lots of them.”
Just to annoy Natty, I took her by the hand. We were almost
to the hallway when I turned around and said, “My bet’s on C.
You’re probably too smart for your schedule.”
He winked— who winked? “I’ll never tell.”
Natty actually sighed. “Oh,” she said. “I likethat.”
I rolled my eyes as we went out the door. “Don’t even think
about it. He’s way too old for you.”
“Only four years,” Natty said. “I asked.”
“Well, that’s a lot when you’re twelve.”
We had missed our regular crosstown bus and, due to MTA
bud get cuts, the next one wasn’t for another hour. I liked to try
to be home when Leo got back from work and I decided that
it would take less time for us to walk across the park back to our
apartment. Daddy once told me how the park used to be when
he was a kid: trees and fl owers and squirrels, and lakes where
people could canoe, and vendors selling every kind of food imaginable, and a zoo and hot- air balloon rides and in the summer,
concerts and plays, and in the winter, ice skating and sledding.
It wasn’t like that anymore.
The lakes had dried up or been drained, and most of
the surrounding vegetation had died. There were still a few
21
graffiti- covered statues, broken park benches, and abandoned
buildings, but I couldn’t imagine anyone willingly spending time
there. For Natty and me, the park was a half mile to be gotten
across as quickly as possible, preferably before nightfall when it
became a gathering place for just about every undesirable in the
city. Incidentally, I’m not entirely sure how it got so bad, but I
imagine it was like everything else in the city— lack of money,
lack of water, lack of leadership.
Natty was pissed at me for making the crack about babysitting in front of Win, so she refused to walk with me. We were
just across the Great Lawn (which, I suppose, must have had
grass at some point) when she ran ahead about twenty- five feet.
Then fifty.
Then one hundred.
“Come on, Natty,” I yelled. “It’s not safe! You’ve got to stay
with me!”
“Stop calling me Natty. My name is Nataliya, and for your
information, Anya Pavlova Balanchine, I can take care of myself!”
I ran to catch up with her but by then she’d put even more
distance between us. I could barely see her anymore; she was a
tiny dot in a schoolgirl uniform. I ran even faster.
Natty was behind the glass section of the enormous building that used to be an art museum (now a nightclub) and she
wasn’t alone.
An incredibly skinny child, dressed in rags and, coincidentally, a decades- old Balanchine Chocolate Factory T-shirt, was
holding a gun to my sister’s head. “Now your shoes,” he said in
a squeak of a voice.
22
Natty sniffled as she bent down to unlace her shoes.
I looked at the child. The boy, despite being emaciated,
seemed sturdy, but I was pretty sure I could take him. I scanned
the area to see if he had any accomplices. No. We were alone.
The real problem was the gun and so I considered the gun.
Now, what I did next might sound reckless to you.
I stepped between my sister and the boy.
“Anya! No!”my baby sister screamed.
My dad, you see, had taught me a thing or two about guns,
and this kid’s handgun didn’t have a clip. In other words, no
bullets unless there was one in the chamber, and I was betting
that there wasn’t.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I asked
the boy. In point of fact, the boy was three inches shorter than
Natty. Up close, I could see he was younger than I had thought—
maybe eight or nine years old.
“I’ll shoot you,” the boy said. “I’ll do it.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “I’d like to see you try.”
I grabbed his gun by the barrel. I thought about tossing it
into the bushes, but I decided I didn’t want him terrorizing any
more people. I put it in my bag. It was a nice weapon. Would have
done a heck of a job killing my sister and me. Had it been functional, that is.
“Come on, Natty. Get your stuff back from the kid.”
“He hadn’t taken anything yet,” Natty said. She was still a
bit teary.
I nodded. I handed Natty my pocket handkerchief and told
her to blow her nose.
At this point, the would- be mugger had started to cry, too.
23
“Gimme back my gun!” He lunged at me, but the kid was weak
with hunger, I’d guess, and I barely felt him.
“Look, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna get yourself killed waving that broken gun around.” This was true. I wouldn’t be the
only person who would notice he didn’t have a clip and, likely as
not, the type of person who noticed such a thing would shoot
the kid between the eyes without a second thought. I felt a bit
bad about taking his gun, so I gave him what money I had on
me. Not much, but it’d keep the kid in pizza for a night.
Without even a moment’s reflection, he took my offerings.
Then he yelled an obscene name at me and disappeared into the
park.
Natty gave me her hand, and we walked in silence until we
were in the relative safety of Fifth Avenue.
“Why’d you do that, Annie?” she whispered as we were waiting for a walk signal. I could barely hear her above the city noise.
“Why’d you give him all that stuff after he tried to rob me?”
“Because he was less fortunate than us, Natty. And Daddy
always said that we have to be mindful of those who are less
fortunate.”
“But Daddy killed people, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Daddy was complex.”
“Sometimes, I can’t even remember what he looked like,”
Natty said.
“He looked like Leo,” I said. “Same height. Same black hair.
Same blue eyes. But Daddy’s eyes were hard and Leo’s are soft.”
Back at the apartment, Natty went into her bedroom, and I
scrounged around for something for dinner. I was an uninspired
24
chef but if I didn’t cook, we’d all starve. Except for Nana. Her
meals were delivered to her via tube by a home- health- care worker
named Imogen.
I boiled exactly six cups of water per the package’s instructions and then threw in the macaroni. At least Leo would be
happy. Macaroni and cheese was his favorite.
I went to knock on his door to tell him the good news.
There was no answer, so I opened it. He should have been home
from his part- time job at the veterinary clinic for at least two
hours, but his room was empty aside from his collection of stuffed
lions. The lions looked at me questioningly with their dull plastic eyes.
I went into Nana’s room. She was asleep, but I woke her up
anyway.
“Nana, did Leo say if he was going anywhere?”
Nana reached for the rifle she kept under her bed, and then
she saw that it was me. “Oh, Anya, it’s only you. You scared me,
devochka.”
“Sorry, Nana.” I kissed her on the cheek. “It’s just Leo’s not
in his room. I was wondering if he said he was going anywhere.”
Nana thought about this. “No,” she said finally.
“Did he come home from work?” I asked, trying not to
sound impatient. Clearly, Nana was having one of her less cogent days.
Nana considered this for about a million years. “Yes.” She
paused. “No.” She paused again. “I’m not sure.” Another pause.
“What day of the week is this, devochka? I lose track of time.”
“Monday,” I told her. “The first day of school, remember?”
“Monday still?”
25
“It’s almost over, Nana.”
“Good. Good.” Nana smiled. “If it’s still Monday, that bastard Jakov came to see me today.” She meant bastard literally.
Jakov (pronounced Ya- koff ) Pirozhki was my father’s half brother’s illegitimate son. Jakov, who called himself Jacks, was four
years older than Leo, and I had never much liked him since the
time he’d had too much Smirnoff at a family wedding and tried
to touch my breast. I’d been thirteen; he’d been almost twenty.
Disgusting. Despite this, I’d always felt a little sorry for Jacks
because of the way everyone in my family looked down on him.
“What did Pirozhki want?”
“To see if I was dead yet,” Nana said. She laughed and pointed
to the cheap pink carnations that were sitting in a shallowly
filled vase on the windowsill. I hadn’t noticed them. “Ugly,
aren’t they? Flowers are so hard to come by these days, and that’s
what he brings? I suppose it’s the thought that counts. Maybe
Leo’s with the bastard?”
“That’s not nice, Nana,” I said.
“Oh, Anyaschka, I would never say it in front of him!” she
protested.
“What would Jacks want with Leo?” I had only ever known
Jacks to ignore or show outright contempt for my brother.
Nana shrugged, which was difficult for her to do considering how little mobility she had. I could see that her eyelids had
begun to flutter shut. I squeezed her hand.
Without opening her eyes, she said, “Let me know when
you find Leonyd.”
I went back into the kitchen to tend to the macaroni. I
called Leo’s job to see if he was still there. They said he’d left at
26
four as usual. I didn’t like not knowing where my brother was.
He might be nineteen, three years my se nior, but he was and
would always be my responsibility.
Not long before my father was killed, Daddy made me
promise that if anything ever happened to him, I would take care
of Leo. I’d only been nine years old at the time, roughly the same
age as that little mugger, and too young to really know what I
was agreeing to. “Leo is a gentle soul,” Daddy had said. “He isn’t
fit for our world, devochka. We must do everything we can to protect him.” I’d nodded, not quite understanding that Daddy had
sworn me to a lifelong commitment.
Leo hadn’t been born “special.” He had been like any kid, if
not, from my father’s point of view, better. Smart, the spitting
image of Daddy, and best of all, the first born son. Daddy had
even given him his name. Leo was actually Leonyd Balanchine, Jr.
The year Leo was nine, he and my mother had been driving
out to Long Island to visit my maternal grandmother. My sister
and I (ages two and six) had strep throat and had to stay behind.
Daddy had agreed to stay with us, though I doubt it was much of
a sacrifice as he’d never been able to tolerate Grandma Phoebe.
The hit had been meant for Daddy, of course.
My mother was killed instantly. Two shots through the windshield and straight through her lovely forehead and honey- scented
chestnut curls.
The car my mother had been driving slammed into a tree
as did Leo’s head.
He lived, but he couldn’t talk anymore. Or read. Or walk.
My father had him sent to the best rehabilitation center followed
27
by the best school for learning disabilities. And Leo certainly
got a lot better, but he would never be the same. They said my
brother would always have the intellect of an eight- year- old. They
said my brother was lucky. And he was. Though I knew his limitations frustrated him, Leo managed a lot with the intellect he
had. He had a job where everyone thought he was a hard worker,
and he was a good brother to Natty and me. When Nana died,
Leo would become our guardian— just until I turned eigh teen.
I had added the cheese sauce and was considering calling
the cops (for all the good that would do) when I heard the front
door open.
Leo bounded into the kitchen. “You’re making macaroni, Annie!” He threw his arms around me. “I have the best
sister!”
I pushed Leo gently away. “Where were you? I was crazy
worried. If you’re going out, you’re supposed to either tell
Nana or write me a note.”
Leo’s face fell. “Don’t be mad, Annie. I was with our family.
You said it was okay as long as I was with family.”
I shook my head. “I only meant Nana, Natty, or me. Immediate family. That means—”
Leo interrupted me. “I know what that means. You didn’t
say immediate.”
I was pretty sure I had, but what ever.
“Jacks told me you wouldn’t mind,” Leo continued. “He said
he was family, and you wouldn’t mind.”
“I bet he did. Is that the only person you were with?”
“Fats was there, too. We went to his place.”
28
Sergei “Fats” Medovukha was my father’s cousin and the
own er of the speakeasy Gable and I had been at the night before.
Fats was fat, which was less common in those days. I liked Fats
as much as I liked anyone in my extended family, but I’d told
him that I didn’t want Leo hanging out at his bar.
“What did they want with you, Leo?”
“We got ice cream. Fats closed his place, and we went out
for it. Jacks had . . . What do you call it, Annie?”
“Vouchers.”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
And if I knew my cousin, he’d probably made those vouchers himself.
“I had strawberry,” Leo continued.
“Hmmph.”
“Don’t be mad, Annie.”
Leo looked like he might cry. I took a deep breath and tried
to control myself. It was one thing to lose my temper with Gable
Arsley but behaving that way around Leo was completely unacceptable. “Was the ice cream good?”
Leo nodded. “Then we went . . . Promise you won’t be mad.”
I nodded.
“Then we went to the Pool.”
The Pool was in the nineties on West End Avenue. It used
to be a women’s swimming club back before the first water crisis, when all the pools and fountains had been drained. Now, the
Family (by which I mean the semya, or the Balanchine Family
crime syndicate) used it as their primary meeting place. I guess
they got the space on the cheap.
29
“Leo!” I yelled.
“You said you wouldn’t be mad!”
“But you know you’re not supposed to go to the west side
without telling someone.”
“I know, I know. But Jacks said that a lot of people wanted
to meet me there. And he said they were family so you wouldn’t
mind.”
I was so angry I couldn’t speak. The macaroni had cooled
enough to be eaten so I began to serve it into bowls. “Wash
your hands, and tell Natty that dinner is ready.”
“Please don’t be mad, Annie.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said.
I was about to make Leo promise that he would never go
back there when he said, “Jacks said maybe I could get a job
working at the Pool. You know, in the family business.”
It was all I could manage not to throw the macaroni against
the wall. Still, I knew it was no good getting mad at my brother.
Not to mention, it seemed excessive to commit two violent acts
with pasta in the same day. “Why would you want to do that?
You love working at the clinic.”
“Yeah, but Jacks thought it might be good if I worked with
the Family”— he paused—“like Daddy.”
I nodded tightly. “I don’t know about that, Leo. They don’t
have animals to pet at the Pool. Now, go get Natty, okay?”
I watched my brother as he left the kitchen. To look at him,
you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him. And maybe
we made too much of his handicaps. It couldn’t be denied that
Leo was handsome, strong, and, for all intents and purposes,
30
a grownup. The last part terrified me, of course. Grownups
could get themselves in trouble. They could get taken advantage of. They could get sent to Rikers Island, or worse: they
could end up dead.
As I filled glasses with water, I wondered what my padonki
half cousin was up to and how much of a problem this was going
to be for me.
THE WORST PART OF LUNCHduty was the smock. It was red
and tentlike and made me look fat and had a dry- erase sign velcroed to the back that read anya balanchine must learn to
control her temper. At first, you couldn’t see the sign because
of my hair but then they made me wear a hairnet. I didn’t protest. The ensemble would have seemed incomplete without the
hairnet.
While I collected my classmates’ trays and glasses, Scarlet
kept shooting me sympathetic looks which almost made the
whole thing worse. I would rather have just served my time in a
completely zoned- out state.
For obvious reasons, I saved Gable Arsley’s table for last.
“I can’t believe I ever went out with that,” he said in a low
voice that was still loud enough for me to hear.
Though several replies did occur to me, I smiled and said
nothing. You weren’t supposed to talk when you had lunch duty.
I I. i am punished; defi ne
recidivism;tend to family matters
32
I pushed the cart with the trays to the kitchen, then I went
back out to the cafeteria to eat my own lunch in the two minutes
I had left. Scarlet had moved and was now sitting with Win. She
was leaning toward him across the table, and laughing at something he said. Poor Scarlet. Her flirting technique could hardly
be called subtle, and I had a sense that this approach wouldn’t
work with Win.
I didn’t really want to sit down with them. I smelled like
cafeteria fumes and garbage. Scarlet beckoned to me. “Annie!
Over here!”
I trudged over to her.
“Love the hairnet!” Scarlet said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I was considering wearing it full- time.
The smock, too.” I set down my tray and put my hands on my
hips. “Probably needs a belt, though.” I took off the smock and
set it on the bench next to me.
“Anya, have you met Win?” Scarlet asked. She slightly raised
her eyebrow to let me know that he was the one she’d been telling me about.
“In the principal’s office. She was busy getting herself in
trouble,” Win said.
“Story of my life,” I said. I started eating the vegetable
potpie in what I hoped was a somewhat ladylike fashion. Even
though I was sick of smelling the stuff, I was still famished.
As the bell rang, Win and Scarlet left, and I concentrated
on speed- eating. I noticed that Win had forgotten his hat on the
table.
Just as the second bell rang, Win returned to the cafeteria.
I held out the hat to him.
33
“Thanks,” he said. He was about to leave but then he sat
down in the chair across from me. “Felt rude to leave you here
all alone.”
“It’s fine. You’re late.” I took one last forkful. “Besides, I like
my own company.”
He crossed his hands over his knee. “I’ve got in de pen dent
study this period anyway.”
I looked at him. “Suit yourself.” Scarlet was into him and
there was no way I would ever go for a guy she was into, no matter how nice his hands were. If there was one thing my dad had
taught me, it was the importance of loyalty. “How do you know
Scarlet?”
“French,” he said, and he left it at that.
“Well, I’m done now,” I informed him. It was high time for
Win to be on his way.
“You forgot something,” he said. He removed the hairnet
from my hair, his thumb gently grazing my forehead, and my
curls spilled out. “The hairnet’s nice and all, but I think I prefer
you without it.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt myself blush and so I ordered myself to
stop blushing. This flirtation was starting to annoy me. “Why
did you move here anyway?”
“My dad’s the new number two in the DA’s office.” It was
well- known that DA Silverstein was basically a puppet— too
old and ailing to be effective. Being the second- in- command was
actually like being the first- in- command but without the annoyance of having to run in an election. Things must have been
pretty bad for them to have brought in someone from Albany.
An outside hire implied a major regime change. In my opinion,
34
that could only be a good thing as the city couldn’t get much
worse. I didn’t remember exactly what had happened to the old
number two, but it was probably the usual: he’d been incompetent or a thief. Possibly incompetent anda thief.
“Your dad’s the new top cop?”
“He thinks he’s gonna clean everything up,” Win said.
“Good luck to him,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s probably pretty naïve.” Win shrugged. “Calls
himself an idealist though.”
“Hey! I thought you said your people were farmers,” I said.
“My mother is. She’s an agricultural engineer specializing in
irrigation systems. Basically a magician who grows crops without
water. My father used to be the Albany DA, though.”
“That’s . . . You lied!”
“No, I only mentioned what was relevant to your question,
which, if you recall, was how did I get my calluses? And I certainly did not get my calluses because my dad’s the DA.”
“I think you didn’t say anything because you knew who my
father was, and . . .”
“And?” Win prompted me.
“And maybe you thought I wouldn’t want to make friends
with a guy whose family is on the opposite side of the law from
my family.”
“Star- crossed lovers and all of that—”
“Hold on, I didn’t say—”
“I take it back. And I apologize if I misled you in any way.”
Win looked a bit amused with me. “That’s certainly a good
theory, Anya.”
I told Win I had to get to class which, in point of fact, I did.
35
I was already five minutes late for Twentieth- Century American History.
“See you around,” he said as he tipped his hat.
On the board, Mr. Beery had written Those who don’t remember
history are doomed to repeat it. I wasn’t sure if this was meant
to be inspirational, thematic, or a joke about making sure to
study.
“Anya Balanchine,” Mr. Beery said. “Nice of you to join us.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beery. I had lunch duty.”
“Thus, Ms. Balanchine provides us with a walking example
of the societal problems of crime, punishment, and recidivism.
If you can tell me why this is so, I won’t send you back to Headmaster’s office for a late pass.”
I’d only had Mr. Beery for one day so I couldn’t completely
tell if he was serious or not.
“Ms. Balanchine. We’re waiting.”
I tried not to sneer when I answered, “The criminal is punished for his or her crimes, but the punishment itself leads to
more crimes. I was punished for fighting by being given lunch
duty, but the lunch duty itself made me tardy.”
“Dingdingdingdingding! Give this woman a prize,” Mr.
Beery said. “You may take your seat, Ms. Balanchine. And now,
boys and girls, can anyone tell me what the Noble Experiment
refers to?”
Alison Wheeler, the pretty redhead who would likely be
our class’s valedictorian, raised her hand.
“No need for any hand- raising in my classroom, Ms. Wheeler.
I like to think of us as being in discussion.”
36
“Um, yes,” Alison said, lowering her hand. “The Noble Experiment is another name for the fi rst prohibition, which lasted
from 1920 to 1933 and banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in the United States.”
“Very good, Ms. Wheeler. Any brave soul wish to hazard a
guess as to why I’ve chosen to start the year with the Noble
Experiment?”
I tried to ignore the fact that all my classmates were looking
at me.
Finally, Chai Pinter, the class gossip, offered, “Because of,
maybe, how chocolate and caffeine are today?”
“Dingdingdingdingding! You aren’t quite as dull a lot as
you look,” Mr. Beery proclaimed. For the rest of the period,
he lectured about Prohibition. How temperance people believed
that banning alcohol would magically solve everything that was
wrong with society: poverty, violence, crime, etc. And how the
temperance movement succeeded, in the short run at least, because it allied itself with other more powerful movements, many
of which didn’t care about alcohol one way or the other. Alcohol
had been a pawn.
I wasn’t an expert on the chocolate ban as it had happened
before I was born, but there were definite similarities. Daddy had
always told me that there was nothing inherently evil about chocolate, that it had gotten caught up in a larger whirlwind involving food, drugs, health, and money. Our country had only chosen
chocolate because the people in power needed to pick something,
and chocolate was what they could live without. Daddy once
said, “Every generation spins the wheel, Anya, and where it lands
37
defines ‘the good.’ Funny thing is, they never know that they’re
spinning it, and it hits something different every time.”
I was still thinking about Daddy when I became aware of
Mr. Beery calling my name. “Ms. Balanchine, care to weigh in
on the reason the Noble Experiment ultimately failed?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you asking me specifically?”
I would make him say it.
“Only because I haven’t heard from you in a while,” Mr.
Beery lied.
“Because people liked their liquor,” I said stupidly.
“That’s true, Ms. Balanchine. A bit more, though. Something from your personal experience perhaps.”
I was starting to loathe this man. “Because banning anything leads to or ga nized crime. People will always find a way to
get what they want, and there will always be criminals willing
to provide it.”
The bell rang. I was glad to be out of there.
“Ms. Balanchine,” Mr. Beery called to me. “Stay a moment.
I’m worried we may have gotten off on the wrong foot here.”
I could have pretended I hadn’t heard him I suppose, but I
didn’t. “I can’t. I’ll be late for my next class, and you know
what they say about recidivists.”
“I’m thinking of asking Win to come out with us this Friday,”
Scarlet said on the bus ride back from school.
“Ooh, Win,” Natty said. “I like him.”
“That’s because you have excellent taste, Natty darling,”
Scarlet said, kissing Natty on the cheek.
NEW YORK
ALL
THESE
THINGS
I’VE DONE
GABRIELLE ZEVIN
An Imprint of Macmillan
ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE. Copyright © 2011 by Gabrielle Zevin.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America by
R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia. For information, address
Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and
are used by Farrar Straus Giroux under license from Macmillan.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Zevin, Gabrielle.
All these things I’ve done / Gabrielle Zevin.
p. cm. — (Birthright)
Summary: In a future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband, teenage cellphone
use is illegal, and water and paper are carefully rationed, sixteen- year- old Anya Balanchine
finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight as heir apparent to an important New
York City crime family.
ISBN 978- 1- 250- 01028- 5
[1. Or ga nized crime— Fiction. 2. Celebrities— Fiction. 3. High schools— Fiction.
4. Schools— Fiction. 5. Family life— New York (State) — New York— Fiction. 6. New York
(N.Y.) — Fiction. 7. Science fi ction.] I. Title. II. Title: All these things I’ve done.
PZ7.Z452All 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010035873
Originally published in the United States by Farrar Straus Giroux
First Square Fish Edition: May 2012
Square Fish logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
macteenbooks.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
AR: 4.4 / LEXILE: HL630L
THE NIGHT BEFORE JU NIOR YEAR— I was sixteen, barely—
Gable Arsley said he wanted to sleep with me. Not in the distant
or semidistant future either. Right then.
Admittedly, my taste in boys wasn’t so great. I was attracted
to the sort who weren’t in the habit of asking permission to do
anything. Boys like my father, I guess.
We’d just gotten back from the coffee speakeasy that used to
be off University Place, in the basement of a church. This was
back when caffeine, along with about a million other things, was
against the law. So much was illegal (paper without a permit,
phones with cameras, chocolate, etc.) and the laws changed so
quickly, you could be committing a crime and not even know it.
Not that it mattered. The boys in blue were totally overwhelmed. The city was bankrupt, and I’d say maybe 75 percent
of the force had been fired. The police that were left didn’t have
time to worry about teens getting high on coffee.
I. i defend my own honor
4
I should have known something was up when Gable offered
to escort me back to the apartment. At night at least, it was a
pretty dangerous trek from the speakeasy to where I lived on
East Ninetieth, and Gable usually left me to fend for myself. He
lived downtown, and I guess he figured that I hadn’t been killed
making the trip yet.
We went into my apartment, which had been in the family
practically forever— since 1995, the year my grandma Galina
was born. Galina, who we called Nana and who I loved like nobody’s business, was busy dying in her bedroom. She had the
distinction of being both the oldest and the sickest person I had
ever known. As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the machines that were keeping her heart and everything else pumping.
The only reason they hadn’t turned the machines off, like they
would have for anyone else, was because she was responsible
for my older brother, my little sister, and me. Her mind was
still sharp, by the way. Even confined to the bed, not much got
past her.
Gable had had, maybe, six espressos that night, two of them
with shots of Prozac (also illegal)— and he was mad up. I’m not
making excuses for him, only trying to explain a few things.
“Annie,” he said, loosening his necktie and sitting down on
the couch, “you gots to have some chocolate in here. I know you
do. I’m gagging for it. Come on, baby, hook Daddy up.” It was
the caffeine talking. Gable sounded like a different person when
he was on the stuff. I especially hated when he referred to himself as Daddy. I think he’d heard it in an old movie. I wanted to
say, You aren’t my daddy. You’re seventeen years old, for God’s sake.
5
Sometimes I did say this but mostly I let it go. My actual daddy
used to say that if you didn’t let some things go, you’d spend
your whole life fighting. Chocolate was why Gable’d said he
wanted to come up to the apartment in the first place. I told him
he could have one piece and then he had to leave. The first day
of school was tomorrow (my ju nior year as I mentioned; his
se nior), and I needed to get some sleep.
We kept our chocolate in Nana’s room in a secret safe in the
back of her closet. I tried to be real quiet as I walked past her bed.
Not that there was much of a need for that. Her machines were
as loud as the subway.
Nana’s room smelled like death, a combination of day- old
egg salad (poultry was rationed) and overripe honeydew melons
(fruit was pretty scarce) and old shoes and cleaning products
(purchase permitted with voucher). I went into her walk- in closet,
pushed her coats out of the way, and entered the combination.
Behind the guns was the chocolate, which was superdark, with
hazelnuts, and came from Rus sia. I put a bar in my pocket and
closed the safe. On my way out, I stopped to kiss my grandmother on the cheek, and she woke up.
“Anya,” she croaked, “what time did you get home?”
I told her that I’d been home for a while. She’d never know
the difference anyway and she’d only worry if she knew where
I’d been. Then I told her to go back to sleep, that I hadn’t meant
to wake her. “You need your rest, Nana.”
“What for? I’ll be resting forever soon enough.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’ll be alive a really long time,” I lied.
“There’s a difference between being alive and living,” she
6
muttered before changing the subject. “First day of school tomorrow.”
I was surprised she remembered.
“Go get yourself a nice chocolate bar from the closet, okay,
Anyaschka?”
I did what she said. I put the bar from my pocket back in the
safe and replaced it with a different, identical one.
“Don’t show anybody,” she said. “And don’t share it unless
it’s with someone you really love.”
Easier said than done, I thought, but I promised I wouldn’t.
I kissed my grandmother’s papery cheek again. I closed the door
softly behind me. I loved Nana, but I couldn’t stand to be in that
awful room.
When I went back out to the living room, Gable wasn’t
there. I knew where he’d be.
Gable was lying in the middle of my bed, passed out. As I
saw it, that was the problem with caffeine. A little of it, and you
had a nice buzz. Too much, and you were a goner. At least, that’s
how it was for Gable. I kicked him, not too hard, on the leg. He
didn’t wake up. I kicked him again, harder. He grunted a little
and rolled onto his back. I fi gured I’d let him sleep it off. If worst
came to worst, I’d sleep on the couch. Anyway, Gable was cute
when he slept. Harmless, like a puppy or a little boy. I suppose I
liked him best that way.
I took my school uniform from my closet and laid it out on
my desk chair for the next day. I or ga nized my bag and charged
up my slate. I broke off a single piece of dark chocolate. The flavor was strong and woodsy. I rewrapped the rest in its silver foil
7
and put it in my top drawer for safekeeping. I was glad I hadn’t
had to share it with Gable.
You’re probably asking why Gable was my boyfriend when
I barely wanted to share chocolate with him. The thing is, he
wasn’t boring. He was a little dangerous and, stupid girl that I
was, I guess I found that sort of thing attractive. And— God rest
your soul, Daddy— it could be said that I lacked positive male role
models. Besides, sharing chocolate wasn’t some casual thing: it
really was hard to come by.
I decided to take a shower so I wouldn’t have to do it in the
morning. When I got out ninety seconds later (everyone’s showers ran on timers because of how expensive water was getting),
Gable was sitting cross- legged on my bed while stuffi ng the last
of my chocolate bar down his throat.
“Hey,” I said, my towel wrapped around me, “you went into
my drawer!”
Chocolate was smudged on his thumb, index finger, and the
inside corners of his mouth. “I wasn’t snooping. I sniffed it out,”
he said in t he middle of a bite. He paused chomping long enough
to look up at me. “You look pretty, Annie. Clean.”
I wrapped my towel tighter around myself. “Well, now that
you’re awake and you’ve had your chocolate, you should leave,”
I said.
He didn’t move.
“Come on, then! Out!” I said this strongly, if not loudly. I
didn’t want to wake my siblings or Nana.
That’s when he told me that he thought we should have sex.
“No,” I said, wishing very much that I hadn’t been so foolish
8
as to take a shower while a dangerous, overcaffeinated boy lay in
wait on my bed. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” he asked. And then he said that he was in love
with me. It was the first time a boy had ever told me that. Even
as inexperienced as I was, I could tell he didn’t mean it.
“I want you to go,” I said. “We’ve got school tomorrow, and
we both should get some sleep.”
“I can’t go now. It’s past midnight.”
Not that there were enough cops to enforce it, but midnight
was the citywide, under- eighteen curfew. It was only 11:45, so I
lied and told him he could still make it if he ran.
“I’ll never make it, Annie. Besides, my parents aren’t home,
and your grandma will never know if I stay. Come on, be sweet
to me.”
I shook my head and tried to look tough, which was somewhat hard to do while wearing a yellow, flowered towel.
“Doesn’t it count for anything that I just told you I love
you?” Gable asked.
I considered this briefly before deciding that it didn’t. “Not
really. Not when I know you don’t mean it.”
He looked at me with big, dumb eyes like I had hurt his
feelings or something. Then he cleared his throat and tried a
different technique. “Come on, Annie. We’ve been together almost nine months. That’s the longest I’ve ever been with anyone. So . . . Like . . . Why not?”
I gave him my list. One, I said, we were too young. Two, I
didn’t love him. And three, the most important of all, I didn’t
believe in sex before marriage. I was a mostly good Catholic girl,
and I knew exactly where the type of behavior he was suggesting
9
would get me: straight to Hell. For the record, I very much believed (and believe) in Heaven and Hell, and not in an abstract
way either. More about this later.
His eyes were a little crazy— maybe it was the contraband
he’d consumed— and he got up from the bed and walked closer
to me. He started tickling my bare arms.
“Stop that,” I said. “Seriously, Gable, this isn’t funny. I know
you’re trying to get me to drop my towel.”
“Why’d you take that shower if you didn’t want—”
I told him I’d scream.
“And then what?” he asked. “Your grandma can’t get out of
bed. Your brother’s a retard. And your sister’s just a kid. All
you’ll do is make them upset.”
Part of me couldn’t believe this was actually happening in
my own house. That I’d allowed myself to be so witless and
vulnerable. I hooked my towel under my armpits, and I pushed
Gable away as hard as I could. “Leo is not a retard!”I yelled.
I heard a door open at the end of the hallway and then, footsteps. Leo, who was tall like Daddy had been (six feet five inches),
appeared in my doorway wearing pajamas with a pattern of
dogs and bones on them. Even though I had been handling things,
I had never been so happy to see my big brother. “Hey, Annie!”
Leo wrapped me in a quick hug before turning to my soon-
to- be ex- boyfriend. “Hello, Gable,” Leo said. “I heard noise. I
think you should leave now. You woke me which is okay. But if
you wake Natty that won’t be good because she has to go to
school tomorrow.”
Leo led Gable to our front door. I didn’t relax until I heard
it shut and Leo had latched the chain.
10
“I don’t think your boyfriend is very nice,” Leo told me
when he got back.
“You know what? I don’t think so either,” I said. I picked up
Gable’s discarded chocolate wrappers and crushed them into a
ball. By Nana’s standards, the only chocolate- worthy boy in my
life was my brother.
The first day of school stunk more than most first days of
school, and they tend to stink as a rule. Everyone had already
heard that Gable Arsley and Anya Balanchine were over. This
was annoying. Not because I had had any intention of staying
with him after the foul he’d committed the night before, but because I’d wanted to be the one to break up with him. I’d wanted
him to cry or yell or apologize. I’d wanted to walk away and not
look back as he called my name. That sort of thing, right?
I have to admit: it was amazing how fast the rumors spread.
Minors weren’t allowed to have their own phones, and no one of
any age could publish, virtually or otherwise, without a license
or even send an e-mail without paying postage and yet gossip
always finds a way. And a good lie travels a heck of a lot faster than
the sad, boring truth. By third period, the story of my breakup
had been carved in stone, and I hadn’t been the one doing the
carving.
I skipped fourth period to go to confession.
When I entered the confessional, I could see the distinctly
female silhouette of Mother Piousina through the screen. Believe
it or not, she was the fi rst female priest Holy Trinity School had
ever had. Even though these were supposedly modern times and
everyone was supposedly enlightened, more than a few parents
11
had complained when the Board of Overseers had announced
her as their selection the prior year. There were some people who
just weren’t comfortable with the idea of a lady priest. In addition to being a Catholic school, HT was also one of the better
schools in Manhattan. Parents who paid its exorbitant tuition
did so with the understanding that the school wasn’t allowed to
change no matter how bad things got everywhere else.
I kneeled down and crossed myself. “Bless me, Mother,
for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last
confession . . .”
“What’s troubling you, daughter?”
I told her how I’d been having impure thoughts about Gable
Arsley all morning. I didn’t use his name but Mother Piousina
probably knew who I was talking about anyway. Everyone else at
school did.
“Are you considering having intercourse with him?” she
asked. “Because action would be an even greater sin than the
thoughts themselves.”
“I know that, Mother,” I said. “Nothing like that. The thing
is, this boy’s been spreading rumors about me, and I’ve just
been thinking how I hate him and I want to kill him or at least
hurt him a little.”
Mother Piousina laughed in a way that only somewhat offended me. “Is that everything?” she asked.
I told her that I’d used the Lord’s name in vain several times
over the summer. Most of the instances had occurred during
the mayor’s Great Air- Conditioning Ration. One of our “off
days” had coincided with the hottest day in August. Between
the 110- degree temperature and the heat generated by Nana’s
12
many machines, the apartment had been a pretty close approximation of Hell.
“Anything else?”
“One more thing. My grandmother is very sick and even
though I love her”— t his was really hard f or me to say—“somet imes
I wish she would just die already.”
“You don’t want to see her suffer. God understands that you
don’t mean it, my child.”
“Sometimes I have bad thoughts about the dead,” I added.
“Anyone specific?”
“My father mainly. But my mother sometimes, too. And
sometimes—”
Mother Piousina interrupted. “Perhaps three months is too
long for you to go between confessions, daughter.” She laughed
again which annoyed me, but I continued anyway. The next one
was the hardest to say.
“Sometimes I am ashamed of my older brother, Leo, because he’s . . . It’s not his fault. He’s the kindest, most loving
brother but . . . You probably know that he’s a little slow. Today,
he wanted to walk me and Natty to school but I told him that
my grandmother needed him at home and that he’d be late
for his job. Both lies.”
“Is this your entire confession?”
“Yes,” I said, bowing my head. “I’m sorry for these and all
the sins of my past life.” Then I prayed the Act of Contrition.
“I absolve you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost,” Mother Piousina said. She told me to say a Hail
Mary and the Lord’s Prayer as penance, which seemed a ridicu-
13
lously minor punishment. Her pre de ces sor, Father Xavier, really knew how to give a good penance.
I stood. I was about to open the burgundy curtain when she
called to me, “Anya, light a candle for your mother and father in
Heaven.” She slid open the screen and handed me two candle
vouchers.
“We’re supposed to ration candles now,” I grumbled. With
the endless stupid coupons and stamps ( weren’t we supposed
to be rationing paper?), the arbitrary point system, and the constantly changing rules, ration laws were incredibly annoying and
impossible to keep up with. It was no wonder so many people
bought goods on the black market.
“Look on the bright side. You can still have as much of the
host as you want,” Mother Piousina replied.
I took the slips and thanked Mother Piousina. For all the
good lighting candles would do, I thought bitterly. I was pretty
sure my father was in Hell.
After giving my vouchers to a nun with a wicker ticket basket and a box of votives, I went into the chapel and lit a candle
for my mother.
I prayed that, despite having married the head of the Balanchine crime family, Mom somehow wasn’t in Hell.
I lit a candle for my father.
I prayed that Hell wasn’t so bad, even for a murderer.
I missed them both so much.
My best friend, Scarlet, was waiting for me in the hallway
outside the chapel. “Nice work skipping Fencing on the first
day, Miss Balanchine,” she said, linking her arm through mine.
14
“Don’t worry. I covered for you. I said you were having scheduling issues.”
“Thanks, Scarlet.”
“No problem. I can already see exactly what sort of year
this is going to be. Shall we go to the caf?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, you could spend the rest of the school year hiding in
the church,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll even become a nun and swear off boys forever.”
Scarlet turned to study me. “No. Your face wouldn’t be good
in a habit.”
On the walk to the dining hall, Scarlet filled me in on what
Gable had been telling people, but I had overheard most of it
already. The most important points were that he had broken up
with me because he thought I might be a caffeine addict, because
I was “kind of a slut,” and because the start of a school year was
a good opportunity for “taking out the trash.” I comforted myself with the thought that if Dad had been alive, he probably
could have had Gable Arsley killed. “So you know,” Scarlet said,
“I did defend your honor.”
I was sure Scarlet probably had but no one ever listened to
her. People thought of her as the crazy drama girl. Pretty and
ridiculous.
“Anyway,” she said, “everyone knows that Gable Arsley is a
horse’s backside. The whole thing’ll blow over by tomorrow. Everyone’s only talking about it because they’re losers with no lives
of their own. And also, it’s the first day of school so nothing else
has happened yet.”
“He called Leo a retard. Did I tell you that part?”
15
“No!” Scarlet said. “That’s pure evil!”
We were standing in front of the double doors that led into
the dining hall. “I hate him,” I said. “I really and truly hate him.”
“I know,” Scarlet agreed, pushing the doors open. “I never
knew what you saw in him in the first place.” She was a good
friend.
The dining hall had wood- paneled walls and black- and-
white linoleum tiles like a chessboard, which made me feel like
a piece in a chess game. I saw Gable seated at the head of one of
the long tables by the window. He had his back to the doors, so
he didn’t see me, though.
Lunch that day was lasagna, which I have always detested.
The red sauce reminded me of blood and guts, and the ricotta
cheese, of brain matter. I’d seen guts and brain matter for real
so I knew what I was talking about. In any case, I wasn’t hungry
anymore.
Once we sat down, I pushed my tray toward Scarlet. “You
want?”
“One’s more than enough, thanks.”
“All right, let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“Other than—”
“Don’t you say that name, Scarlet Barber!”
“Other than the horse’s backside,” Scarlet said, and we both
laughed. “Well, there’s a most promising new boy in my French
class. Actually, he kind of looks like a new man. He’s all, I don’t
know, manly. His name’s Goodwin but he goes by Win. Isn’t
that OMG?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Um, it stands for something. Dad said it used to mean,
16
maybe, ‘amazing’? Or something like that? He wasn’t sure. Ask
your nana, okay?”
I nodded. Scarlet’s dad was an archaeologist and he always
smelled like garbage because he passed his days digging up landfills. Scarlet went on about the new boy for a while but I wasn’t
really paying attention. I couldn’t have cared less. I just nodded
occasionally and pushed my repulsive lasagna around my plate.
I looked across the cafeteria. Gable caught my eye. What
happened next is somewhat blurry to me. He would later claim
that he hadn’t, but I thought he sneered at me, then whispered
something to the girl sitting to the left of him— she was a sophomore, maybe even a freshman, so I didn’t know who she was—
and they both laughed, and in response, I lifted my plate with
the uneaten, though still scalding- hot lasagna (all food was required by law to be heated to 176°F to avoid the bacterial epidemics that were so pervasive), and then I was running diagonally
across the black- and- white linoleum floor like a bishop gone
mad and just like that Gable’s head was covered with ricotta and
tomato sauce.
Gable stood, and his chair toppled over. We were face- to-
face, and it was like everyone else in the dining hall had disappeared. Gable started to yell, calling me a string of names that
I won’t bother to repeat here. I’d rather not type a whole long
list of curse words.
“I accept your condemnation,” I said.
He moved to punch me but then he stopped himself. “You’re
not worth it, Balanchine. You’re scum like your dead parents,”
he said. “I’d rather just get you suspended.” As he left the dining
17
hall, he tried to wipe off some of the sauce with his hand, but it
didn’t do any good. The sauce was everywhere. I smiled.
At the end of eighth period, I was delivered a summons to
appear in Headmaster’s office after school.
Most everyone managed to avoid getting into trouble on
the first day of school so there weren’t that many people waiting. The door was closed which meant someone was already in
the office, and a long- legged guy I didn’t know waited on the
love seat in the foyer. The secretary told me I should have a seat.
The boy was wearing a gray wool hat that he took off as I
passed. He nodded, and I nodded back. He looked at me sidelong. “Food fi ght, right?”
“Yeah, you could call it that.” I wasn’t in the mood for making new friends. He crossed his hands on his lap. He had calluses on his fi ngers and despite myself, I found this interesting.
He must have seen me staring because he asked me what I
was looking at.
“Your hands,” I replied. “They’re kind of rough for a city
boy.”
He laughed and said, “I’m from upstate. We used to grow
our own food. Most of the calluses are from that. A couple are
from my guitar. I’m no good; I just like to play. The rest I can’t
explain.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“Interesting,” he repeated. “I’m Win, by the way,” he said.
I turned to look at him. So, this was Scarlet’s new boy? She
was right. He certainly wasn’t hard to look at. Tall and thin.
Tanned skin and toned arms which must have come from the
18
farming he’d mentioned. Soft blue eyes and a mouth that seemed
more inclined to smile than to frown. Not my usual type at all.
He offered me his hand to shake, and I accepted it. “An—”
I started to say.
“Anya Balanchine, I know. Everyone can’t seem to stop
talking about you today.”
“Hmmph,” I said. I could feel my face getting flushed.
“Then you probably think that I’m crazy and a slut and an addict and a mafi ya princess so I don’t even know why you’re
bothering to talk to me!”
“I don’t know about here, but where I’m from, we come to
our own conclusions about people.”
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
“That’s an awfully big question, Anya.”
“No, I meant here outside this office. What did you do
wrong?”
“Multiple choice,” he said. “A. A few pointed comments I
made in Theology. B. Headmaster wants to have a chat with the
new kid about wearing hats in school. C. My schedule. I’m just
too darn smart for my classes. D. My eyewitness account of the
girl who poured lasagna over her boyfriend’s head. E. Headmaster’s leaving her husband and wants to run away with me.
F. None of the above. G. All of the above.”
“Ex- boyfriend,” I mumbled.
“Good to know,” he said.
At that moment, Headmaster’s door opened, and out came
Gable. His face was pink and splotchy from where the sauce had
hit him. His white dress shirt was covered in sauce, which I knew
was probably bothering the heck out of him.
19
Gable scowled at me and whispered, “Not worth it.”
Headmaster poked her head out the door. “Mr. Delacroix,”
she said to Win, “would it prove a terrible incon ve nience to you
if I saw Ms. Balanchine first?”
He consented, and I went into the offi ce. Headmaster shut
the door behind us.
I already knew what would happen. I was put on probation
and assigned lunch duty for the rest of the week. All things considered, pouring the lasagna on Gable’s head had still been completely worth it.
“You must learn to resolve these little relationship problems
outside of Holy Trinity, Ms. Balanchine,” Headmaster said.
“Yes, Headmaster.”
It somehow seemed beside the point to mention that Gable
had tried to date- rape me the night before.
“I considered calling your grandmother Galina, but I know
she’s been in poor health. No need to worry her.”
“Thank you, Headmaster. I appreciate it.”
“Honestly, Anya, I worry for you. This kind of behavior, if
it becomes a pattern, could be damaging to your reputation.”
As if she didn’t know that I’d been born with a bad reputation.
When I left the office, my twelve- year- old sister, Natty, was
sitting next to Win. Scarlet must have told her where to find me.
Or maybe Natty had guessed— I was no stranger to the headmaster’s office. Natty was wearing Win’s hat. They’d obviously
been introduced. What a little flirt she was! Natty was cute, too.
She had long, shiny black hair. Like mine, except hers was stick-
straight while I was stuck with untamable waves.
“Sorry about stealing your place in line,” I said to Win.
20
He shrugged.
“Give Win back his hat,” I told Natty.
“It looks good on me,” she said, batting her eyelashes.
I took it off her head and handed it to Win. “Thanks for
babysitting,” I said.
“Stop infantilizing me,” Natty protested.
“That’s a very good word,” Win commented.
“Thank you,” Natt y replied. “I happen to know lots of them.”
Just to annoy Natty, I took her by the hand. We were almost
to the hallway when I turned around and said, “My bet’s on C.
You’re probably too smart for your schedule.”
He winked— who winked? “I’ll never tell.”
Natty actually sighed. “Oh,” she said. “I likethat.”
I rolled my eyes as we went out the door. “Don’t even think
about it. He’s way too old for you.”
“Only four years,” Natty said. “I asked.”
“Well, that’s a lot when you’re twelve.”
We had missed our regular crosstown bus and, due to MTA
bud get cuts, the next one wasn’t for another hour. I liked to try
to be home when Leo got back from work and I decided that
it would take less time for us to walk across the park back to our
apartment. Daddy once told me how the park used to be when
he was a kid: trees and fl owers and squirrels, and lakes where
people could canoe, and vendors selling every kind of food imaginable, and a zoo and hot- air balloon rides and in the summer,
concerts and plays, and in the winter, ice skating and sledding.
It wasn’t like that anymore.
The lakes had dried up or been drained, and most of
the surrounding vegetation had died. There were still a few
21
graffiti- covered statues, broken park benches, and abandoned
buildings, but I couldn’t imagine anyone willingly spending time
there. For Natty and me, the park was a half mile to be gotten
across as quickly as possible, preferably before nightfall when it
became a gathering place for just about every undesirable in the
city. Incidentally, I’m not entirely sure how it got so bad, but I
imagine it was like everything else in the city— lack of money,
lack of water, lack of leadership.
Natty was pissed at me for making the crack about babysitting in front of Win, so she refused to walk with me. We were
just across the Great Lawn (which, I suppose, must have had
grass at some point) when she ran ahead about twenty- five feet.
Then fifty.
Then one hundred.
“Come on, Natty,” I yelled. “It’s not safe! You’ve got to stay
with me!”
“Stop calling me Natty. My name is Nataliya, and for your
information, Anya Pavlova Balanchine, I can take care of myself!”
I ran to catch up with her but by then she’d put even more
distance between us. I could barely see her anymore; she was a
tiny dot in a schoolgirl uniform. I ran even faster.
Natty was behind the glass section of the enormous building that used to be an art museum (now a nightclub) and she
wasn’t alone.
An incredibly skinny child, dressed in rags and, coincidentally, a decades- old Balanchine Chocolate Factory T-shirt, was
holding a gun to my sister’s head. “Now your shoes,” he said in
a squeak of a voice.
22
Natty sniffled as she bent down to unlace her shoes.
I looked at the child. The boy, despite being emaciated,
seemed sturdy, but I was pretty sure I could take him. I scanned
the area to see if he had any accomplices. No. We were alone.
The real problem was the gun and so I considered the gun.
Now, what I did next might sound reckless to you.
I stepped between my sister and the boy.
“Anya! No!”my baby sister screamed.
My dad, you see, had taught me a thing or two about guns,
and this kid’s handgun didn’t have a clip. In other words, no
bullets unless there was one in the chamber, and I was betting
that there wasn’t.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I asked
the boy. In point of fact, the boy was three inches shorter than
Natty. Up close, I could see he was younger than I had thought—
maybe eight or nine years old.
“I’ll shoot you,” the boy said. “I’ll do it.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “I’d like to see you try.”
I grabbed his gun by the barrel. I thought about tossing it
into the bushes, but I decided I didn’t want him terrorizing any
more people. I put it in my bag. It was a nice weapon. Would have
done a heck of a job killing my sister and me. Had it been functional, that is.
“Come on, Natty. Get your stuff back from the kid.”
“He hadn’t taken anything yet,” Natty said. She was still a
bit teary.
I nodded. I handed Natty my pocket handkerchief and told
her to blow her nose.
At this point, the would- be mugger had started to cry, too.
23
“Gimme back my gun!” He lunged at me, but the kid was weak
with hunger, I’d guess, and I barely felt him.
“Look, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna get yourself killed waving that broken gun around.” This was true. I wouldn’t be the
only person who would notice he didn’t have a clip and, likely as
not, the type of person who noticed such a thing would shoot
the kid between the eyes without a second thought. I felt a bit
bad about taking his gun, so I gave him what money I had on
me. Not much, but it’d keep the kid in pizza for a night.
Without even a moment’s reflection, he took my offerings.
Then he yelled an obscene name at me and disappeared into the
park.
Natty gave me her hand, and we walked in silence until we
were in the relative safety of Fifth Avenue.
“Why’d you do that, Annie?” she whispered as we were waiting for a walk signal. I could barely hear her above the city noise.
“Why’d you give him all that stuff after he tried to rob me?”
“Because he was less fortunate than us, Natty. And Daddy
always said that we have to be mindful of those who are less
fortunate.”
“But Daddy killed people, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Daddy was complex.”
“Sometimes, I can’t even remember what he looked like,”
Natty said.
“He looked like Leo,” I said. “Same height. Same black hair.
Same blue eyes. But Daddy’s eyes were hard and Leo’s are soft.”
Back at the apartment, Natty went into her bedroom, and I
scrounged around for something for dinner. I was an uninspired
24
chef but if I didn’t cook, we’d all starve. Except for Nana. Her
meals were delivered to her via tube by a home- health- care worker
named Imogen.
I boiled exactly six cups of water per the package’s instructions and then threw in the macaroni. At least Leo would be
happy. Macaroni and cheese was his favorite.
I went to knock on his door to tell him the good news.
There was no answer, so I opened it. He should have been home
from his part- time job at the veterinary clinic for at least two
hours, but his room was empty aside from his collection of stuffed
lions. The lions looked at me questioningly with their dull plastic eyes.
I went into Nana’s room. She was asleep, but I woke her up
anyway.
“Nana, did Leo say if he was going anywhere?”
Nana reached for the rifle she kept under her bed, and then
she saw that it was me. “Oh, Anya, it’s only you. You scared me,
devochka.”
“Sorry, Nana.” I kissed her on the cheek. “It’s just Leo’s not
in his room. I was wondering if he said he was going anywhere.”
Nana thought about this. “No,” she said finally.
“Did he come home from work?” I asked, trying not to
sound impatient. Clearly, Nana was having one of her less cogent days.
Nana considered this for about a million years. “Yes.” She
paused. “No.” She paused again. “I’m not sure.” Another pause.
“What day of the week is this, devochka? I lose track of time.”
“Monday,” I told her. “The first day of school, remember?”
“Monday still?”
25
“It’s almost over, Nana.”
“Good. Good.” Nana smiled. “If it’s still Monday, that bastard Jakov came to see me today.” She meant bastard literally.
Jakov (pronounced Ya- koff ) Pirozhki was my father’s half brother’s illegitimate son. Jakov, who called himself Jacks, was four
years older than Leo, and I had never much liked him since the
time he’d had too much Smirnoff at a family wedding and tried
to touch my breast. I’d been thirteen; he’d been almost twenty.
Disgusting. Despite this, I’d always felt a little sorry for Jacks
because of the way everyone in my family looked down on him.
“What did Pirozhki want?”
“To see if I was dead yet,” Nana said. She laughed and pointed
to the cheap pink carnations that were sitting in a shallowly
filled vase on the windowsill. I hadn’t noticed them. “Ugly,
aren’t they? Flowers are so hard to come by these days, and that’s
what he brings? I suppose it’s the thought that counts. Maybe
Leo’s with the bastard?”
“That’s not nice, Nana,” I said.
“Oh, Anyaschka, I would never say it in front of him!” she
protested.
“What would Jacks want with Leo?” I had only ever known
Jacks to ignore or show outright contempt for my brother.
Nana shrugged, which was difficult for her to do considering how little mobility she had. I could see that her eyelids had
begun to flutter shut. I squeezed her hand.
Without opening her eyes, she said, “Let me know when
you find Leonyd.”
I went back into the kitchen to tend to the macaroni. I
called Leo’s job to see if he was still there. They said he’d left at
26
four as usual. I didn’t like not knowing where my brother was.
He might be nineteen, three years my se nior, but he was and
would always be my responsibility.
Not long before my father was killed, Daddy made me
promise that if anything ever happened to him, I would take care
of Leo. I’d only been nine years old at the time, roughly the same
age as that little mugger, and too young to really know what I
was agreeing to. “Leo is a gentle soul,” Daddy had said. “He isn’t
fit for our world, devochka. We must do everything we can to protect him.” I’d nodded, not quite understanding that Daddy had
sworn me to a lifelong commitment.
Leo hadn’t been born “special.” He had been like any kid, if
not, from my father’s point of view, better. Smart, the spitting
image of Daddy, and best of all, the first born son. Daddy had
even given him his name. Leo was actually Leonyd Balanchine, Jr.
The year Leo was nine, he and my mother had been driving
out to Long Island to visit my maternal grandmother. My sister
and I (ages two and six) had strep throat and had to stay behind.
Daddy had agreed to stay with us, though I doubt it was much of
a sacrifice as he’d never been able to tolerate Grandma Phoebe.
The hit had been meant for Daddy, of course.
My mother was killed instantly. Two shots through the windshield and straight through her lovely forehead and honey- scented
chestnut curls.
The car my mother had been driving slammed into a tree
as did Leo’s head.
He lived, but he couldn’t talk anymore. Or read. Or walk.
My father had him sent to the best rehabilitation center followed
27
by the best school for learning disabilities. And Leo certainly
got a lot better, but he would never be the same. They said my
brother would always have the intellect of an eight- year- old. They
said my brother was lucky. And he was. Though I knew his limitations frustrated him, Leo managed a lot with the intellect he
had. He had a job where everyone thought he was a hard worker,
and he was a good brother to Natty and me. When Nana died,
Leo would become our guardian— just until I turned eigh teen.
I had added the cheese sauce and was considering calling
the cops (for all the good that would do) when I heard the front
door open.
Leo bounded into the kitchen. “You’re making macaroni, Annie!” He threw his arms around me. “I have the best
sister!”
I pushed Leo gently away. “Where were you? I was crazy
worried. If you’re going out, you’re supposed to either tell
Nana or write me a note.”
Leo’s face fell. “Don’t be mad, Annie. I was with our family.
You said it was okay as long as I was with family.”
I shook my head. “I only meant Nana, Natty, or me. Immediate family. That means—”
Leo interrupted me. “I know what that means. You didn’t
say immediate.”
I was pretty sure I had, but what ever.
“Jacks told me you wouldn’t mind,” Leo continued. “He said
he was family, and you wouldn’t mind.”
“I bet he did. Is that the only person you were with?”
“Fats was there, too. We went to his place.”
28
Sergei “Fats” Medovukha was my father’s cousin and the
own er of the speakeasy Gable and I had been at the night before.
Fats was fat, which was less common in those days. I liked Fats
as much as I liked anyone in my extended family, but I’d told
him that I didn’t want Leo hanging out at his bar.
“What did they want with you, Leo?”
“We got ice cream. Fats closed his place, and we went out
for it. Jacks had . . . What do you call it, Annie?”
“Vouchers.”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
And if I knew my cousin, he’d probably made those vouchers himself.
“I had strawberry,” Leo continued.
“Hmmph.”
“Don’t be mad, Annie.”
Leo looked like he might cry. I took a deep breath and tried
to control myself. It was one thing to lose my temper with Gable
Arsley but behaving that way around Leo was completely unacceptable. “Was the ice cream good?”
Leo nodded. “Then we went . . . Promise you won’t be mad.”
I nodded.
“Then we went to the Pool.”
The Pool was in the nineties on West End Avenue. It used
to be a women’s swimming club back before the first water crisis, when all the pools and fountains had been drained. Now, the
Family (by which I mean the semya, or the Balanchine Family
crime syndicate) used it as their primary meeting place. I guess
they got the space on the cheap.
29
“Leo!” I yelled.
“You said you wouldn’t be mad!”
“But you know you’re not supposed to go to the west side
without telling someone.”
“I know, I know. But Jacks said that a lot of people wanted
to meet me there. And he said they were family so you wouldn’t
mind.”
I was so angry I couldn’t speak. The macaroni had cooled
enough to be eaten so I began to serve it into bowls. “Wash
your hands, and tell Natty that dinner is ready.”
“Please don’t be mad, Annie.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said.
I was about to make Leo promise that he would never go
back there when he said, “Jacks said maybe I could get a job
working at the Pool. You know, in the family business.”
It was all I could manage not to throw the macaroni against
the wall. Still, I knew it was no good getting mad at my brother.
Not to mention, it seemed excessive to commit two violent acts
with pasta in the same day. “Why would you want to do that?
You love working at the clinic.”
“Yeah, but Jacks thought it might be good if I worked with
the Family”— he paused—“like Daddy.”
I nodded tightly. “I don’t know about that, Leo. They don’t
have animals to pet at the Pool. Now, go get Natty, okay?”
I watched my brother as he left the kitchen. To look at him,
you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him. And maybe
we made too much of his handicaps. It couldn’t be denied that
Leo was handsome, strong, and, for all intents and purposes,
30
a grownup. The last part terrified me, of course. Grownups
could get themselves in trouble. They could get taken advantage of. They could get sent to Rikers Island, or worse: they
could end up dead.
As I filled glasses with water, I wondered what my padonki
half cousin was up to and how much of a problem this was going
to be for me.
THE WORST PART OF LUNCHduty was the smock. It was red
and tentlike and made me look fat and had a dry- erase sign velcroed to the back that read anya balanchine must learn to
control her temper. At first, you couldn’t see the sign because
of my hair but then they made me wear a hairnet. I didn’t protest. The ensemble would have seemed incomplete without the
hairnet.
While I collected my classmates’ trays and glasses, Scarlet
kept shooting me sympathetic looks which almost made the
whole thing worse. I would rather have just served my time in a
completely zoned- out state.
For obvious reasons, I saved Gable Arsley’s table for last.
“I can’t believe I ever went out with that,” he said in a low
voice that was still loud enough for me to hear.
Though several replies did occur to me, I smiled and said
nothing. You weren’t supposed to talk when you had lunch duty.
I I. i am punished; defi ne
recidivism;tend to family matters
32
I pushed the cart with the trays to the kitchen, then I went
back out to the cafeteria to eat my own lunch in the two minutes
I had left. Scarlet had moved and was now sitting with Win. She
was leaning toward him across the table, and laughing at something he said. Poor Scarlet. Her flirting technique could hardly
be called subtle, and I had a sense that this approach wouldn’t
work with Win.
I didn’t really want to sit down with them. I smelled like
cafeteria fumes and garbage. Scarlet beckoned to me. “Annie!
Over here!”
I trudged over to her.
“Love the hairnet!” Scarlet said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I was considering wearing it full- time.
The smock, too.” I set down my tray and put my hands on my
hips. “Probably needs a belt, though.” I took off the smock and
set it on the bench next to me.
“Anya, have you met Win?” Scarlet asked. She slightly raised
her eyebrow to let me know that he was the one she’d been telling me about.
“In the principal’s office. She was busy getting herself in
trouble,” Win said.
“Story of my life,” I said. I started eating the vegetable
potpie in what I hoped was a somewhat ladylike fashion. Even
though I was sick of smelling the stuff, I was still famished.
As the bell rang, Win and Scarlet left, and I concentrated
on speed- eating. I noticed that Win had forgotten his hat on the
table.
Just as the second bell rang, Win returned to the cafeteria.
I held out the hat to him.
33
“Thanks,” he said. He was about to leave but then he sat
down in the chair across from me. “Felt rude to leave you here
all alone.”
“It’s fine. You’re late.” I took one last forkful. “Besides, I like
my own company.”
He crossed his hands over his knee. “I’ve got in de pen dent
study this period anyway.”
I looked at him. “Suit yourself.” Scarlet was into him and
there was no way I would ever go for a guy she was into, no matter how nice his hands were. If there was one thing my dad had
taught me, it was the importance of loyalty. “How do you know
Scarlet?”
“French,” he said, and he left it at that.
“Well, I’m done now,” I informed him. It was high time for
Win to be on his way.
“You forgot something,” he said. He removed the hairnet
from my hair, his thumb gently grazing my forehead, and my
curls spilled out. “The hairnet’s nice and all, but I think I prefer
you without it.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt myself blush and so I ordered myself to
stop blushing. This flirtation was starting to annoy me. “Why
did you move here anyway?”
“My dad’s the new number two in the DA’s office.” It was
well- known that DA Silverstein was basically a puppet— too
old and ailing to be effective. Being the second- in- command was
actually like being the first- in- command but without the annoyance of having to run in an election. Things must have been
pretty bad for them to have brought in someone from Albany.
An outside hire implied a major regime change. In my opinion,
34
that could only be a good thing as the city couldn’t get much
worse. I didn’t remember exactly what had happened to the old
number two, but it was probably the usual: he’d been incompetent or a thief. Possibly incompetent anda thief.
“Your dad’s the new top cop?”
“He thinks he’s gonna clean everything up,” Win said.
“Good luck to him,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s probably pretty naïve.” Win shrugged. “Calls
himself an idealist though.”
“Hey! I thought you said your people were farmers,” I said.
“My mother is. She’s an agricultural engineer specializing in
irrigation systems. Basically a magician who grows crops without
water. My father used to be the Albany DA, though.”
“That’s . . . You lied!”
“No, I only mentioned what was relevant to your question,
which, if you recall, was how did I get my calluses? And I certainly did not get my calluses because my dad’s the DA.”
“I think you didn’t say anything because you knew who my
father was, and . . .”
“And?” Win prompted me.
“And maybe you thought I wouldn’t want to make friends
with a guy whose family is on the opposite side of the law from
my family.”
“Star- crossed lovers and all of that—”
“Hold on, I didn’t say—”
“I take it back. And I apologize if I misled you in any way.”
Win looked a bit amused with me. “That’s certainly a good
theory, Anya.”
I told Win I had to get to class which, in point of fact, I did.
35
I was already five minutes late for Twentieth- Century American History.
“See you around,” he said as he tipped his hat.
On the board, Mr. Beery had written Those who don’t remember
history are doomed to repeat it. I wasn’t sure if this was meant
to be inspirational, thematic, or a joke about making sure to
study.
“Anya Balanchine,” Mr. Beery said. “Nice of you to join us.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beery. I had lunch duty.”
“Thus, Ms. Balanchine provides us with a walking example
of the societal problems of crime, punishment, and recidivism.
If you can tell me why this is so, I won’t send you back to Headmaster’s office for a late pass.”
I’d only had Mr. Beery for one day so I couldn’t completely
tell if he was serious or not.
“Ms. Balanchine. We’re waiting.”
I tried not to sneer when I answered, “The criminal is punished for his or her crimes, but the punishment itself leads to
more crimes. I was punished for fighting by being given lunch
duty, but the lunch duty itself made me tardy.”
“Dingdingdingdingding! Give this woman a prize,” Mr.
Beery said. “You may take your seat, Ms. Balanchine. And now,
boys and girls, can anyone tell me what the Noble Experiment
refers to?”
Alison Wheeler, the pretty redhead who would likely be
our class’s valedictorian, raised her hand.
“No need for any hand- raising in my classroom, Ms. Wheeler.
I like to think of us as being in discussion.”
36
“Um, yes,” Alison said, lowering her hand. “The Noble Experiment is another name for the fi rst prohibition, which lasted
from 1920 to 1933 and banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in the United States.”
“Very good, Ms. Wheeler. Any brave soul wish to hazard a
guess as to why I’ve chosen to start the year with the Noble
Experiment?”
I tried to ignore the fact that all my classmates were looking
at me.
Finally, Chai Pinter, the class gossip, offered, “Because of,
maybe, how chocolate and caffeine are today?”
“Dingdingdingdingding! You aren’t quite as dull a lot as
you look,” Mr. Beery proclaimed. For the rest of the period,
he lectured about Prohibition. How temperance people believed
that banning alcohol would magically solve everything that was
wrong with society: poverty, violence, crime, etc. And how the
temperance movement succeeded, in the short run at least, because it allied itself with other more powerful movements, many
of which didn’t care about alcohol one way or the other. Alcohol
had been a pawn.
I wasn’t an expert on the chocolate ban as it had happened
before I was born, but there were definite similarities. Daddy had
always told me that there was nothing inherently evil about chocolate, that it had gotten caught up in a larger whirlwind involving food, drugs, health, and money. Our country had only chosen
chocolate because the people in power needed to pick something,
and chocolate was what they could live without. Daddy once
said, “Every generation spins the wheel, Anya, and where it lands
37
defines ‘the good.’ Funny thing is, they never know that they’re
spinning it, and it hits something different every time.”
I was still thinking about Daddy when I became aware of
Mr. Beery calling my name. “Ms. Balanchine, care to weigh in
on the reason the Noble Experiment ultimately failed?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you asking me specifically?”
I would make him say it.
“Only because I haven’t heard from you in a while,” Mr.
Beery lied.
“Because people liked their liquor,” I said stupidly.
“That’s true, Ms. Balanchine. A bit more, though. Something from your personal experience perhaps.”
I was starting to loathe this man. “Because banning anything leads to or ga nized crime. People will always find a way to
get what they want, and there will always be criminals willing
to provide it.”
The bell rang. I was glad to be out of there.
“Ms. Balanchine,” Mr. Beery called to me. “Stay a moment.
I’m worried we may have gotten off on the wrong foot here.”
I could have pretended I hadn’t heard him I suppose, but I
didn’t. “I can’t. I’ll be late for my next class, and you know
what they say about recidivists.”
“I’m thinking of asking Win to come out with us this Friday,”
Scarlet said on the bus ride back from school.
“Ooh, Win,” Natty said. “I like him.”
“That’s because you have excellent taste, Natty darling,”
Scarlet said, kissing Natty on the cheek.
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