Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(6)

“Indeed,” I said.

“It’s a good thing, too, now that she’s skipped into tenth,” Scarlet continued.

“Wait, what’s this?” I asked.

“I told Imogen I wanted to tell you myself,” Natty explained to me.

Scarlet nodded. “Come, Gable. The elevator is working again. We should go before you’re stuck here another night.” Scarlet turned to me. “I hope he behaved himself.”

“Don’t lie, Anya!” Gable said.

I told Scarlet that Gable had behaved exactly as I’d come to expect, a remark Scarlet chose to take at face value.

Scarlet helped her appalling boyfriend to his feet, and finally they were gone.

I turned to my sister. “You skipped two grades?”

Natty worried the pimple on her chin with her pinkie. “Miss Bellevoir and the people at genius camp thought it was a good idea, and, well…” Her voice turned cool. “You weren’t around to discuss it.”

My baby sister, a sophomore at Holy Trinity?

I sat down on the couch, which still reeked of Gable’s cologne. After a bit, Natty sat down next to me. “I missed you,” she said.

“Did you have nightmares this summer?” I asked.

“Only one or two or three or four, but when they’d start, I’d pretend I was you. Brave like you. And I’d say, ‘Now, Natty, you are just having a dream. Go back to sleep.’ And it worked!” Natty put her arms around me. “I honestly hated you when I found out you’d gone to Liberty. I was so mad, Annie. Why did you do it?”

I explained to her in the simplest terms possible the deal I had made with Charles Delacroix to protect her and Leo. She wanted to know if ending my relationship with Win had been part of that deal. Yes, I told her, it had been.

“Poor Annie. That was the hard part, I bet,” Natty said.

I smiled. “Well, I’d wager that Liberty isn’t as fun as genius camp. It doesn’t help that everyone keeps telling me how horrible I look.”

Natty studied my face. She held my cheeks in her hands, hands with disarmingly long fingers. “You look strong, Annie. That’s all. But then you’ve always been strong.”

She was a good girl, my sister. “Arsley said that Win has a girlfriend?”

“He does,” Natty admitted. “But I don’t know, Win’s so different. He seems angry all the time. I tried to talk to him the first day of school. I wanted to know if he’d heard from you, and he kind of blew me off.”

I reminded her that she’d promised to hate Win Delacroix for the rest of her life.

“That was before I knew you’d lied about Liberty,” Natty said. “Anyway, his leg seems to have healed. He’s still got a cane, but he’s not like Gable or anything.”

“Natty,” I said, “tell me honestly. You weren’t flirting with Gable this morning, were you?”

“That is gross, Anya,” Natty said. “We’re in the same math class. He was telling me a story about the teacher. I was laughing to be polite.”

“Thank God,” I said. I didn’t think I could handle Natty flirting with Gable Arsley. Later, after I had been home a while longer, Natty and I would need to have a serious discussion about boys.

Natty stood and offered me her hand. “Come,” she said. “We need to go to Saturday market. We’re out of just about everything. And Imogen says thirteen is still too young to go by myself.”

“She’s right,” I said.

“You went at thirteen, didn’t you?” Natty insisted.

“I was almost fourteen. And that was only because no one could take me.”

Natty and I rode the bus down to the market at Union Square. You could purchase or trade for just about anything there. Toilet paper or T-shirts. Turnips or Tolstoy. Things that start with T and every other letter of the alphabet. As usual, it was a madhouse. Tables and tents everywhere. Every possible space was filled with a human being, and all those human beings wanted and they wanted now. Or actually, a week ago. Occasionally, someone died in a stampede. Nana once told me that when she was young, there had been grocery stores where you could buy anything you wanted, whenever you wanted. Now, all we had were irregularly stocked bodegas. Your best bet really was the Saturday market.

That day, our list included: laundry detergent, hair conditioner, dried pasta, a thermos, fruit (if we could find it), a new (longer) wool kilt for Natty, and a paper book for Imogen (it was her thirty-second birthday the following week).

I handed Natty a pile of cash and ration coupons. Then I assigned her the book and the kilt. The price was usually the price on those items, so you didn’t have to be an experienced marketer. I would take care of everything else. I had come armed with several bars of Balanchine Special Dark, which I had been surprised to find while taking stock of our mostly barren pantry. Though I had lost my taste for chocolate, it could still be useful when negotiating.

As I made my way through the crowd to where the household chemicals stand usually was, I passed a group of college students who were demonstrating. (Political activity was common at the markets.) A malnourished-looking girl with greasy brown hair and a long flowered skirt jammed a pamphlet into my hand. “Take one, sister,” she said. I looked down at the pamphlet. On the front cover was a picture of what I thought was a cacao pod and the words Legalize Cacao Now! “All the stuff they tell you about chocolate is a lie,” she continued. “It’s no more addictive than water.”