Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [18]
I get up. “I’m going to head,” I say. “I’ll let myself out.”
“Stay. You can crash here.”
I kiss him on the forehead, fierce and quick, because he still tries when everyone else has quit and I have no idea why. “Zardari’s waiting,” I tell him. “Pakistan’s got the bomb now. You better not piss him off.”
And then I’m gone. Outside again, on my way home. I don’t want to go there but I’m cold and tired, and where else am I going to go?
I’ve got my shoulders hunched and my head down, so I don’t see it when I turn onto my street. But when I get to my house, there’s no missing it. DYE SLUT is written on the sidewalk at the bottom of my stoop. In giant spray-paint letters. I know who did it. There’s only one person in all of Brooklyn who could spell die wrong.
That’s bad, but what I see next is worse. Far worse. Keith Richards’s guitar. On the sidewalk. In a million pieces.
Arden hates me. That much is clear. Nick must, too. A quick grope cost him a really nice guitar. And once Arden gets busy IMing, anyone at St. Anselm’s who doesn’t already hate me, will hate me. All of Brooklyn Heights will hate me. New York State. The East Coast. North America.
And suddenly, Paris doesn’t look so bad.
10
Airports should all belong to the same country. The country of Crappacia. Or Bleakovania. Or Suckitan.
They all look exactly the same. No matter where you go in the world, when you land, it’s all asphalt, weeds, and dead coffee cups. We arrived at Orly and waited an hour for our suitcases because the baggage handlers are on strike. Then we got in a cab. Now we’re stuck in the Monday night rush on the A106 near Rungis—rhymes with grungy—outside Paris. But we could be in Queens. Or Newark. Or hell.
“Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go
I wanna be sedated.”
“Can you stop, please?”
“Nothin’ to do
Nowhere to go
I wanna be sedated.”
“Andi …”
“Just get me to the airport
Put me on a plane
Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane—”
“Stop!”
Dad pulls out my left earbud so I have to stop pretending I can’t hear him.
“What?”
“I’m trying to make a phone call!”
My singing pisses him off. The Ramones piss him off. My guitar is taking up too much room on the seat between us and that pisses him off. Everything about me pisses him off. My heavy hand with the eyeliner. My hair. The metal. Especially the metal. It cost us fifteen minutes at Logan’s security gates when we were already late. I set off the detectors half a dozen times. I had to take it all off. The studded jacket. The skull belt. Bracelets, rings, and earrings.
“You going into battle, hon?” the security guard asked me as she watched it pile up in a plastic bin.
I walked through again. More beeps. Dad was fuming. The guard patted me down. She felt under my arms. Looked inside my socks. Ran her fingers around the collar of my shirt.
“What’s this?” she asked, tugging on the red ribbon around my neck.
I didn’t want to take it off but I had no choice. I pulled it over my head and handed it to her. Then I stepped through the detector again. No beeps. I glanced at my father, thinking he’d be relieved I’d finally made it through. But it wasn’t relief I saw. His whole face had shifted. Like plate tectonics.
“You have that?” he said as the guard handed the key back to me.
He reached for it, but I quickly put it over my head and dropped it inside my shirt—a dad no-fly zone.
“I didn’t … I didn’t know you had that,” he said. “How—”
“From his clothes. It was in his pocket.”
“I looked for it. I thought it was in my desk.”
“He took it back.”
“When?” His voice was a whisper.
“After the Nobel.”
“Why?”
I didn’t answer.
“Andi … why?”
“Because you’d found your own key to the world.”
Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever. Truman turning to wave at me for the last time. My mother collapsing in the detective’s arms. And now this one: My father standing by