Silent Alarm (23 page)

The smile faded from my face, and I stared out the window at a garbage truck clanging down the street, not wanting to look her in the eye. “You could say that,” I mumble, my voice tight in my throat as if I'm being strangled by my own words.

“I thought things had gotten worse when you showed up with that black eye,” Sara said quietly, her eyes on the rug, “but I didn't know what to say. I
never
know what to say.”

“No one really does.” My voice broke on the last word to leave my lips.

When I think about my mother, I have to stop what I'm doing and just breathe, my brain flooded with images: shades pulled down like eyes slowly closing, the windows shut tight. Wiping the blood and snot from my nose and cleaning the cut that splits my upper lip with hands that won't stop shaking. That feeling of invisibility, the noise of the city closing in around me like a noose.

“What about your dad?” Sara put her arm around my shoulders, leaning in. I could smell her strawberry shampoo and the patchouli oil she always dabs on her neck and behind her ears. It made me think of the industrial-strength cleaning products our maid, Jaronda, used in the kitchen once a week to clean the floors and countertops, that faint medicinal smell she left in her wake.

“What
about
him,” I sighed, untangling myself from Sara's embrace. “He's the one who signed the lease on my new place.”

“That's fucked up,” Sara said, sitting down beside me and twisting her unruly mass of hair into a knot on top of her head. “When they got divorced, I always thought you'd go live with him eventually.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. “I don't think Jasmine would appreciate that.”

Jasmine. Long dark hair, tanned skin and liquid black eyes. It was no wonder he fell for her the moment she came to work at his firm. Now they live on seventy acres in Connecticut. My father started his career in the mailroom of Solomon Brothers, working his way up to account executive, cold-calling big fish like Donald Trump for hours at a time, then senior account executive, before finally making partner just before my tenth birthday. Now he practically runs the whole place. After the movie
Wall Street
came out,
Forbes
magazine featured him on the cover, a wry grin plastered across his overly tanned face, his blue eyes staring out from beneath the caption that read
THE REAL-LIFE GORDON GEKKO.
Sure, there were checks on each birthday, and when the social workers called him last spring, stating in no uncertain terms that I could no longer live in my mother's penthouse apartment on Eighty-Third and Park, he'd signed the lease on the East Village apartment without comment, except to mention that at six hundred dollars a month, the rent was more than reasonable. A steal. But never once did he suggest that I live with him, that maybe it wasn't a good idea for a seventeen-year-old to be fending for herself in the heart of Manhattan's Lower East Side, just steps from Alphabet City, where gunshots popped in the night air like a string of firecrackers and junkies routinely nodded out in doorways.

As I waited for him to speak, to tell me that I was finally and unequivocally coming to live with him once and for all, I could hear Jasmine cooing nonsensically in the background like a demented bird, her tinkling, melodic voice amplified over the wire, and I knew I was lost.
Say it say it,
I thought, concentrating with all of my being, squeezing my eyes so tightly that I saw stars exploding, flowers of red and white unfurling their violent petals. My thoughts echoed in the silence that followed, and the words never came.

I take the train seven stops each way, and I usually like the ride, the narrow series of dark tunnels, the flashing lights that remind me of the strobes that shine down on me in the club, my body illuminated like an X-ray. But today, I'm too nauseated, the whiskey sours I drank last night tumbling around in my stomach like a team of trapped, acidic acrobats. Of course it would help if I could sit down, but there are never any seats during morning rush hour. A man sits across from me reading the
Post,
his face set in grim concentration. The headline for today rises above a large picture of Mikhail Gorbachev and shrieks
IS THE COLD WAR OVER?
Gorbachev's expression looks worried, his bushy eyebrows knitted together in what might be concern or fear, and I wonder if he knows something I don't. I hang on to the metal pole and close my eyes, wondering how long I can go on this way, how long I can maintain, my blank eyes reflected in the mirror each morning, red-rimmed and wasted. As the train lurches out of the station, I sway back and forth, my fingers burning like icicles, my body frozen to the core.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!