All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1)
Gabrielle Zevin
I. i defend my own honour
THE NIGHT BEFORE JUNIOR YEAR – I was sixteen, barely – Gable Arsley said he wanted to sleep with me. Not in the distant or semi-distant 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 when caffeine, along with about a million other things, was still 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 seventy-five per cent of the force had been fired. The police that were left didn’t have time to worry about teens getting high on coffee.
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 got 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. 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 junior year as I mentioned; his senior), 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 smelt 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 Special Dark, with hazelnuts, and came from Russia. 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 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, OK, 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 on to his back. I figured 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.