A Drop of Night(3)

I hold the papers in front of my face and let my gaze wander out the window. Watch the trees turn to town, now city, red-brick tenements and gas stations, networks of power lines chopping the sky into manageable pieces. I thought the whole thing was a scam at first. That single unmarked envelope three weeks ago, outlining the opportunity, all smarmy and fake. Dear Miss Peerenboom: The information you are about to read is strictly confidential. That’s as far as I read. I left it sitting on my homework heap for a week. Looked up the name Sapani on a whim. Turns out smarmy and fake can also be synonymous with polite professionalism. The Sapani Corporation is huge. It has offices in Paris, Moscow, San Francisco, Tokyo. Based on my SAT scores and past accomplishments, they had plucked me out of the wallowing masses of New York’s so-called private school elite. I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go.

So here I am. Following their rules like I’m good at it. They had me do the prep, notified me as I passed each round. I was worried they’d ask for a face-to-face meeting in the end, I’d say something rude and they’d throw me out the window. They never asked.

We’re in Queens now, heading south. I try not to think about home. I was supposed to tell parents or legal guardians about the site, have them sign off on it. I didn’t. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t have made much difference either way. As far as they would have known, I’d be visiting a fairly regular—though culturally significant—chateau in the Loire Valley for a restoration camp. After reading the blue folder, I get why the organizers were so stingy about information. This site we’re visiting is not just any chateau. It’s on the same level as the Terracotta Army in China. The pyramids. Ancient Pompeii. Not as old as those, but huge and bizarre and possibly monumental for the historical community. And so nothing’s allowed to leak. No news outlets have been informed yet. Once we’re there, we’re on a complete social media blackout.

The car is pulling up in front of Terminal 4. I tuck the blue folder under my arm. As soon as the car stops, I climb out and scurry for the trunk, dragging my suitcase out while the driver is still opening his door. I walk away as fast as I can without looking like I’m fleeing a crime scene, which I basically am. The driver is probably staring after me, scratching his head.

Sorry, man.

I catch a split-second image of myself in the sliding doors as I approach. Tall. Thin. I’ve got a tiny, vicious-looking, sharp-chinned face. Haircut like a helmet, a severe black bob. Dark rings under my eyes. The granny coat hangs around me like a box, my stick legs punching out the bottom, and from there it’s all skinny jeans and witchy lace-up boots with pointed toes that will probably kill my feet in a few hours––

The doors whoosh open, splitting me in half. I step into the terminal. Eau de Airport washes over me—coffee and dusty carpets, top notes of radiator heating and cheap washing solution. Passengers, pushing their luggage mountains in front of them like they’re doing penance for something, stare at me, bovine and slightly hostile.

I plow into the crowd. Clear security and proceed to the exit at Gate B-24.

A young mom dragging two kids bumps into me. For a second I think she’s going to apologize, but she takes one look at me and her expression changes—embarrassment-surprise-fear-pride-disgust—all in millisecond flashes. It’s almost fun, like watching a slide show. A PowerPoint called How People React to Other People Who Don’t Conform to Their Expectations of Niceness and Civility. I draw my coat around me and step past her. Slap my passport and boarding pass down in front of the TSA guy. I allow myself to wonder what the other kids will be like. What they’ll think of me.

The TSA guy starts leafing through my passport. Does a suspicious double take when he sees that nearly every page is full. Aruba, last summer. Dubai, for a paper on migrant workers. Tokyo, volunteering after the earthquake. He eyeballs my boarding pass. Motions for me to step to the side.

Oh great. I swear I’m not a drug dealer. I move out of the line, eyeballing the boarding pass and trying to see how it incriminated me.

A TSA woman approaches, red lipstick so bright it’s like she just made out with a freshly painted fire truck. “Follow me, miss,” she says in the most bored voice ever, and starts leading me around the endless security queue. I brace myself for deportation, gulag, whatever they do to drug dealers these days. The TSA woman positions me right at the front of the line. And leaves. The security people wave me forward.

Oh. Well, that’s cool.

Phone out, coat off, hands up for the body scan. And now I’m in the gate area, squeezing past some punk guy who thinks it’s a good idea to travel with studded belts and twelve dozen piercings. He looks at me accusingly, like I’m personally responsible for his poor life choices. I head into the gauntlet of fast-food restaurants, coffee shops, screaming kids, and snack walls.

I think of the last time I was here. I was on my way to a master class on Renaissance literature in Perugia, Italy. Everything was infinitely worse. Dad couldn’t take me to the airport—he stays at the loft downtown during the week—and I said I’d order a car, but Mom had to drive Penny to her ballet class so she offered to take me.

I should have guessed this wouldn’t end well. Mom doesn’t do things for no reason.

They sat up front. Mom was chewing that nasty medicinal herbal gum she likes. She kept leaning across the middle console and tucking Penny’s hair behind her tiny, half-gone ear. I wanted to tell her to watch the road.