A Drop of Night(8)

She talks about baking quinoa vegan brownies. Her alternative-hippie parents who she clearly adores. A 3-D-looking tattoo of a fly on her arm, which she now realizes was a bad idea because it makes her look like she has the plague or is demonically possessed. She was grounded for getting that tattoo, and when she was done being grounded she got a second tattoo on the sole of her foot. She sang The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” in her high school’s talent show and didn’t win. She doesn’t actually show me the tattoos. And why is she still in high school?

I throw my head back and stare up at the little lights and air conditioners in the ceiling. Lilly’s barely even breathing between paragraphs. I’m assuming she’s too enraptured by her own stories to care that I’m being socially abominable. Her voice becomes a buzz in the background. Everything becomes a buzz. The air-system, the jet engines, the clinking of glass—all of it fades into a single flat line of sound.

I sit up. Glance around. It’s so weird. Like an eerily slow-moving dream. Hayden is lying on a sofa, sipping Orangina from a straw. Will and Jules are sitting next to each other, and Jules seems to be trying to make conversation, and Will seems to be trying not to die of awkwardness. I look to the sliding panel that separates us from Dorf and the rest of the jet. The glass is frosted, shot through with clear strips. I see a sliver of Miss Sei—a leg, some skirt. One eye wide, watching me.

There’s a beeping, sudden and shrill, and sound envelops me again. The captain’s voice breaks through the speakers: “Miss Sei, Professor Dorf, we’re coming up on some turbulence. Would you like to—”

A commotion on the other side of the glass. The speaker goes off in our compartment, but I can still hear it, muffled, in the one ahead of us.

I shiver. Lilly looks over at me, questioning. I slide my earphones back on and turn the music up loud.








Aurélie du Bessancourt, August 29, 1789


Mama returned to her chambers well past midnight. I heard her on the stairs, the noisy clatter of her shoes as she hurried up them. Her door creaked shut and an airy, velvet hush descended. But still the chateau seemed to groan and shift, as if some small object at its heart was pacing, unable to come to peace.

The next morning Mama joined us for breakfast. Her face was drawn and pale, her eyes oddly watery. I should have realized something was not right. Were I not such a fool, I would have silenced my sisters with a severe look and we would have eaten quickly, communicating solely through glances and the tapping of silverware, and then fled to dusty, unused guest rooms where we could discuss the matter in private. But I wanted dreadfully to hear tales of the new palace. When my sisters crowded around her I joined them, asked Mama if the palace was very large, and how many candles it must take to light the hallways, and was it warm in the depths, or bitter cold, and was there a salle d’Apollon like the one in Versailles?

She would not speak a word. She sat gingerly at the table, peeling an orange with a paring knife, cutting it into neat, jewel-bright wedges, and when the servants brought her a bit of fried liver in a painted china dish, she blanched and pushed it away. We continued to chatter mercilessly. We would not cease. And after a while Mama began to weep, putting her hands to her ears, and the orange lay on the table, a knobbly spiral of peel, and the rich flesh within hacked to bits.



Exhibit A—I had a boyfriend once. I was fifteen. He was fifteen. He had green eyes and floppy hair and liked The Killers, and if that doesn’t guarantee a life of shared bliss, I don’t know what does. We were going to get married. Move to the West Village and have zero children and drink tea and live a life of bohemian ennui. It didn’t happen. Green-eyed Boyfriend was expelled for pouring lighter fluid all over the bike stands and setting them on fire. Not even to protest anything. Just because. It was okay, though, because he didn’t know we were getting married. I never actually talked to him. The height of our romance consisted of me ignoring him all the way through chemistry, and the instant I heard about the bike stand incident I was over him anyway. People who are dumb enough to light bike stands on fire are not people I want to share a lifetime of bohemian ennui with.

Exhibit B—Two years earlier, when I was thirteen, I went to the library and checked out all the books on sociopaths and bizarre human psychology I could find. The librarian probably thought I was deranged, but I wanted to be sure. I figured if I had a medical reason to be mean and angry, things would be simpler. It turns out having medical reasons to be mean and angry doesn’t actually help you become less mean and angry. It doesn’t fix you.


I lean my head against the window of the black Mercedes and watch the landscape rush past. It’s an endless conveyor belt—frosty green fields, gray sky. We’re whooshing along a six-lane highway. Behind us are two more Mercedes, long, low cars with tinted windows. Ahead is another. We’re like a shiny, furiously speeding funeral procession.

Jules is lying on the seats across from me, staring up at the ceiling. Professor Dorf and a driver are up front behind darkened glass. Will, Lilly, and Hayden are one car behind us. I’m starting to regret this arrangement. Jules is much too effusive for me. He has this way of laughing loudly and then looking at me cautiously, like the only reason he laughed is because he wants me to laugh, too. I don’t like that kind of pressure. Still, I guess it’s better than being in the other car. Lilly’s trying to drag Will out of his shell. I don’t know what Hayden’s doing. He didn’t stick with Orangina for long on the plane ride, and his reaction to all the drinks was to become very slow and buzzy, and speak in short, dramatic sentences about the sky and the tarmac. But maybe he’s knocked out cold by now, which is more than I can say for Jules.