Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(2)

Daddy always said that there was no commodity more precious or potentially volatile than friendship. I looked into her dark, red-rimmed eyes. “Mrs. Cobrawick, I can honestly say that I won’t ever forget this act of friendship.”

She released my hand. “Incidentally, Charles Delacroix is an incredible fool. If my experiences working with troubled girls have taught me anything, it’s that no good ever comes from keeping young lovers apart. The more he pulls, the more the two of you will pull back. It’s a Chinese finger trap, and the finger trap always triumphs.”

Here, Mrs. Cobrawick was wrong. Win had visited me that one time. I had kissed him, then told him that he should never come again. To my great annoyance, he’d actually obeyed me. A little over a month had passed since that encounter, and I hadn’t heard from or seen Win since.

“As you’re leaving us tomorrow, this will also serve as our exit interview,” Mrs. Cobrawick said. She opened up my file on her slate. “Let’s see, you were brought here on…” She scanned the file. “Weapons-possession charges?”

I nodded.

Mrs. Cobrawick put on the reading glasses she wore on a brass chain around her neck. “Really? That’s it? I seem to remember you shooting someone.”

“In self-defense, yes.”

“Well, no matter. I am an educator, not a judge. Are you sorry for your crimes?”

The answer to that was complicated. I did not regret the crime I had been charged with—having my father’s gun. I did not regret my actual crime either—shooting Jacks after he shot Win. And I did not regret the deal I had made with Charles Delacroix that had ensured both my siblings’ safety. I regretted nothing. Of course, I could sense that saying this would have been frowned upon. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m very sorry.”

“Good. Then, as of tomorrow”—Mrs. Cobrawick consulted her calendar—“the seventeenth day of September in the year 2083, the city of New York considers Anya Balanchine to be successfully rehabilitated. Best of luck to you, Anya. May the temptations of the world not lead you to recidivism.”

*   *   *

It was lights-out by the time I got back to the dormitory. As I reached the bunk bed I had shared with Mouse these past eighty-nine days, she lit a match and gestured that I should come sit by her in the bottom bunk. She held out her notepad. I need to ask you something before you go, she had written on one of her precious pages. (She was only allotted twenty-five per day.)

“Sure, Mouse.”

They’re letting me out early.

I told her that was great news, but she shook her head. She handed me another note.

After Thanksgiving or even sooner. Good behavior, or maybe I use too much paper. Point is, I’d rather be here. My crime makes it so I can’t ever go home. When I get out, I’ll need a job.

“I wish I could help, but—”

She put her hand over my mouth and handed me yet another prewritten note. Apparently, my responses were just that predictable.

DON’T SAY NO! You can. You’re very powerful. I’ve thought a lot about this, Anya. I want to be a chocolate dealer.

I laughed because I couldn’t imagine that she was in earnest. The girl was five feet tall in socks and completely mute! I turned to look at her, and her expression told me that she hadn’t been kidding. At that moment, the match burned out, and she lit another one.

“Mouse,” I whispered. “I’m not involved in Balanchine Chocolate that way, and even if I was, I don’t know why you’d want that kind of a job.”

I’m seventeen. Mute. Criminal. I have no people, no $, no real education.

I could see her point. I nodded, and she passed me one last note.

You are the only friend I’ve made here. I know I’m small, weak, & mousy, but I am not a coward and I can do hard things. If you let me work with you, I will be loyal to you for life. I would die for you, Anya.

I told her that I didn’t want anyone to die for me, and I blew out the match.

I climbed out of Mouse’s bunk and went up to my own, where I quickly fell asleep.

In the morning when she wrote and I said goodbye, she didn’t mention that she had asked me to help her become a chocolate dealer. The last thing she wrote before the guards came for me was See you around, A. My real name is Kate, by the way.

“Kate,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

At eleven a.m., I was taken to change out of the Liberty jumpsuit and back into my street clothes. Despite the fact that I had been booted from the school, I had worn my Trinity uniform the day I had surrendered myself. I was so used to wearing the thing. Even three months later, as I was pulling the skirt over my hips, I could feel my body wanting to go back to school, and specifically to Trinity, where classes had started without me the previous week.

After I’d changed, I was brought to the discharge room. A lifetime ago, I had met Charles Delacroix in this same room, but today, Simon Green and Mr. Kipling, my lawyers, waited for me instead.

“Do I look like a person who has done hard time?” I asked them.

Mr. Kipling considered me before he answered. “No,” he said finally. “Though you do look very fit.”

I stepped out into the muggy mid-September air and tried not to feel the loss of that summer too much. There would be other summers. There would be other boys, too.