Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(27)

“I don’t want you to,” I told him.

“There’s never been anyone else for me but you.” He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching us. He leaned over the bed and put his hand on the back of my head. “I love your hair,” he said.

“I’m cutting it all off.” Simon Green and I had thought I would be less recognizable when I was traveling without my mane. Shears would be waiting for me on Ellis Island.

“That’s a shame. I’m glad I don’t have to see that.” He pulled my head closer to him and then he kissed me, and even though it was probably pressing my luck, I kissed him again.

“How can I stay in touch with you?” he asked.

I thought about this. E-mail wasn’t safe. I couldn’t give him the address of the cacao farm, even if I knew it. Maybe Yuji Ono could deliver a letter to me. “In a month or two, go to Simon Green. He’ll know how to get to me. Don’t go through Mr. Kipling.”

Win nodded. “Will you write me?”

“I’ll try,” I told him.

He reached over the bed rail and set his hand on my heart. “The news said this almost stopped.”

“Sometimes I wish it would. What good is it, you know?”

Win shook his head. “Don’t say that.”

“Of all the boyfriends in the world, you are the least suitable one I could have picked.”

“Same to you. Only girlfriend, I mean.”

He rested his head on my chest and we were quiet until the time for visiting was over.

As Win walked to the door, he adjusted his absurd wig.

“If you meet someone, I’ll understand,” I told him. We were seventeen years old, for God’s sake, and our future was uncertain. “We shouldn’t make any promises that are too hard to keep.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I’m trying to,” I said.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

I thought about this. “Maybe check in on Natty every now and again. She adores you and I know she’ll be lonely without me.”

“I can do that.”

And then he was gone.

All I had left to do was wait.

*   *   *

Around 1:55 a.m., I heard nurses and guards running down the hallway. I called out to one of the nurses. “What’s happened?” I asked.

“There’s been a fight in the girls’ dormitory,” she told me. “They’re bringing over a half dozen badly injured girls. I have to go!”

I nodded. Thank you, Mouse. I prayed she wasn’t too hurt.

It was time. I slipped the key out of the mattress and unlocked the handcuff. My wrist was sore, but there was no time for that. Shoeless and still dressed in an open-backed hospital gown, I walked down the hallway and slipped through the door marked Fire Stairs. I ran down the stairs with legs stiff from the prior week’s inactivity. On the ground floor, I poked my head out into the hallway. A guard was directing gurneys down the corridor. It was now or never but I didn’t know how to get past the exit without being observed by the guards or the girls on the gurneys. From one of the gurneys, Mouse poked her head up. She had two black eyes, a gash on her forehead, and her nose looked like it might be broken. With her less swollen eye, she looked at me. I waved. She nodded and mouthed something that looked like “Now.” A second later, she screamed. I had never even heard Mouse’s voice before and here she was screaming for me. Mouse’s body began to writhe and convulse. Her arms flailed in a seemingly random pattern, but from my vantage point I could see her design. Mouse was managing to strike the other girls and anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity.

“This girl is having a seizure!” a guard called.

As all attention turned to Mouse, I was able to slip past everyone.

I ran outside on bare feet. It was late October now and maybe 50° out but I barely noticed the cold. I had to get to the gate. Simon Green had promised to bribe the guard who watched the gate, but just in case, he had given me a syringe with one dose of tranquilizer at the same time as he’d given me the handcuff key. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the syringe, but if I did, I knew to aim for the neck.

I ran through a dark patch of grass, trying not to wince as burrs pierced my feet.

Finally I reached the cobblestoned driveway that led to the gate. Someone had left the gate wide open. I looked in the guard’s station. No one was there. Perhaps Simon’s bribe had worked or maybe the guard had simply been called to the girls’ dormitory.

I was almost to the shore when a voice called my name. “Anya Balanchine!”

I turned. It was Mrs. Cobrawick.

“Anya Balanchine, stop!”

I debated whether to run back and try to tranquilize her or just take my chances and keep moving forward. I looked up and down the shoreline. The rowboat that was to take me to Ellis Island wasn’t there yet, and I must confess that the idea of tranquilizing that woman appealed to me.

I turned around. Mrs. Cobrawick was running toward me. I heard the sizzle of a Taser.

“Stop!”

Her Taser would trump my syringe.

I started running for the water.

“You’ll drown!” Mrs. Cobrawick yelled. “You’ll freeze to death! You’ll get lost! Anya, it isn’t worth it! You think you’re in a desperate situation, but all of it can still be worked out.”