In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright #3)(19)
She hung up on me. I walked into the living room and threw my phone at the couch, not realizing that someone was lying on it.
“Ow!” Theo yelled. “What is wrong with you?”
“None of your business.” I didn’t want to go into it with him. “When are you getting a place of your own?”
“When my mean boss gives me some time off,” Theo said.
“Why are you even here? No date tonight?” Theo was popular in New York, to say the least. I didn’t know how he found the time, but he was with a different girl every night.
“No, tonight I get beauty sleep.” Theo handed me my phone.
“Lucky you.”
In my bedroom, I didn’t even try to sleep. I stared at the ceiling, hoping the cracks in the plaster might offer some insight regarding what I should do. I thought of myself, lying in this same bed at age sixteen, the year everything had begun to go so horribly wrong. What would sixteen-year-old Anya have wanted someone to do for her?
I waited until five a.m. to call Mr. Kipling. “I need to find a new school for Natty. Something strict, but with good academics. Something far away from here.”
Mr. Kipling was quick. Several hours later, he reported that he had found a convent school in Boston that was willing to take her in the middle of the semester.
“Are you sure about this, Anya?” Mr. Kipling asked. “It’s a big decision, and you don’t want to be hasty.”
* * *
I went into Natty’s bedroom and packed a suitcase. I was closing the suitcase when she came through the door. She looked from me to the packed suitcase. “What’s this?”
“Look,” I said, “we both know that I’m not being a good guardian to you right now. I’m too busy with the club to watch you—”
“I don’t need to be watched!”
“You do, Natty. You’re a kid, and I’m worried that if I don’t act now, your whole life is going to be ruined. Look what happened to Scarlet.”
“Pierce is nothing like Gable Arsley!”
“I see you making mistakes now that you’re with him. I see you heading down a bad road.” I took a deep breath. “I said before that I didn’t want you to end up like Scarlet, but the person I don’t want you to end up like is”—it was so hard to admit—“me.”
My sister looked at me with the saddest expression. “Annie! Annie, don’t say that! Look at the club you made.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I got myself kicked out of school. Maybe it seems like my life is working out right now, but I want you to have more options than I had. I don’t want you to end up working in a nightclub. I don’t want you to have anything to do with chocolate or our rotten Family. I truly believe that you’re destined for better.”
Natty wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “You’re making me cry.”
“I’m sorry. This school Mr. Kipling found for you has a great science program, much better than HT’s.” I tried to make my voice upbeat. “And wouldn’t it be great to be somewhere no one knew anything about you? A place where no one had any preconceptions.”
“Stop trying to sell me, Anya. Maybe you want me out of your hair. Maybe you want me to be someone else’s problem for a while.”
“That isn’t true! Do you have any idea how horribly lonely I’m going to be without you? You are my sister and there is no one in this whole lousy dystopia I love more than you. But I’m scared, Natty. I’m scared I’m messing everything up. I don’t know the right things to do for you right now. I barely know the right things to do for myself most of the time. I wish Daddy were alive. Or Mom or Nana. Because I’m only eighteen and I have no idea what to say, what you need. What I know is I wish someone had gotten me out of New York City when I was having such a rough time at Holy Trinity. I wish someone had gotten me away from Mr. Beery and people like him, and our relatives, too.”
* * *
She fought me on the cab ride to Penn Station and at the ticket counter (to the amusement of a youth athletic team—I saw the bag of balls, but could not identify the sport), and now she was still fighting me in the waiting area under the departures sign. A panhandler nudged my sister and said, “Give her a break.” Her was me, by the way, and even the homeless thought I needed defending from the fourteen-year-old haranguer.
“I’m not going,” Natty said. “No matter what you say, I’m not getting on that train.” She had her arms crossed and her lower lip jutted out. She looked exactly like what she was—a teenager who hated the world and everyone in it. For my part, I suspected that I looked and sounded like a kid pretending to be an adult for a school play.
“You’re going,” I said. “You agreed back at the apartment that you would. Why are you changing your mind now?”
The loudspeaker announced that Natty’s train to Boston was boarding. She was crying and sniffling, so I offered her my handkerchief. She blew her nose and then she stood up straight.
“How would you make me get on the train?” she asked in a calm voice. “You can’t physically force me. I’m taller than you and I’m probably stronger than you, too.”
The jig was up. The lion had realized the impotence of the zookeeper. “I can’t, Natty. All I can tell you is I love you, and I think this is for the best.”