A Hundred Hours of Night Read online

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

  Contents

  Half Title

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Copyright

  That shocking story on the Internet is not me.

  The fairy tale I’m about to tell the American officials is a lie.

  Do I still have a story of my own? I don’t know.

  • • •

  I’m fifteen and I’m from the Netherlands. My dad wears corduroy pants and likes stargazing more than anything else. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot—last Tuesday he destroyed the world. My mother is Nora Quinn. She was born in Ireland, and now and then she speaks to me in English.

  I mean: She speaks to me now and then. Always in English.

  She’s an artist. Her paintings are in museums all over the world, and if she feels like taking off all her clothes and starting a new painting up on our roof, stark-naked, she does exactly that.

  • • •

  I’m their daughter. That was my story.

  But now I have nothing at all.

  I’m the only person in the world who knows what I’m going to do today. That is, if I actually go through with it …

  My boots wait, perfectly still, on the smooth tiles of the departure hall. Whenever someone glances at me, my heart stops beating for an instant. Do they recognize me from the Internet? Are they about to start yelling at me?

  But nothing happens. Everyone at the airport looks right through me. Yesterday they were all reading about my dad and what he did, but today they’re off on vacation. They’re dragging around suitcases and screaming toddlers and they’ve already forgotten all about their tweets.

  • • •

  I certainly haven’t forgotten the threats on Twitter, though.

  My breathing has felt shallow since Tuesday evening. My mouth is dry. Somewhere inside my head, an alarm’s ringing, over and over. Danger, it says. Run! Get away!

  • • •

  I act like it’s perfectly normal for me to be standing here all alone at Schiphol Airport. The information boards flicker above my head; I smell men’s sweat; a dog the size of a small horse is pushed past inside a plastic cage.

  Every thirty seconds, my hand reaches for my bag to grab my cell phone—but every time, my arm stops halfway. For the first time ever, I’ve actually turned off my phone.

  I take out my passport and flick through the blank, stampless pages. When I get to my photo, I pause. I don’t like looking at pictures of myself. My hair’s too straight, my eyes are too big, and my face is too pale. I look like I’m fading away into nothing.

  But the photo in my passport is different: It was taken four years ago when I was still in elementary school. I’m looking out of the photo fearlessly, as if I’m superexcited about the rest of my life. I was eleven and I liked to grow sprouts in empty eggshells.

  I’m not that girl anymore.

  My name is next to my passport photo: Emilia December de Wit. Seriously, that’s my name.

  The middle name was my mom’s bright idea, and even when I arrived late and wasn’t born until January 2, she still thought calling me December was an excellent plan.

  My dad could easily have said, “Maybe Susanne would suit her better. Or Margriet.” Then again, he could also have said, “How about we call her Cosine Isosceles Triangle de Wit?” Then my mom might have realized that incorporating your own insanity into your child’s name really isn’t such a great idea after all.

  But my dad just kept his mouth shut. Of course he did. Even fifteen years ago, the guy was already a selfish jerk. He simply didn’t give a damn about the name of his only child.

  • • •

  Finally, it’s my turn. I put my passport on the desk and desperately try to work up a little moisture in my mouth.

  “And what’s your destination today?” asks the desk clerk in her bright blue suit.

  “New York.”

  I stand up straighter. I’m scared, but at the same time, I feel something new and exciting running through my veins as I say the name of the city: I’m going to New York. My friends all have posters on their bedroom walls of boys they’ve never seen in real life. But above my bed, I have the New York City skyline. Okay, I’ve never been there, but I’m in love with it all the same.

  “Are you flying alone?” the desk clerk asks.

  I nod. Breathlessly, I answer her questions.

  Yes, I packed my own bag.

  No, I don’t have any hazardous substances in my carry-on.

  I’m just taking my shoulder bag onto the flight.

  The woman looks at me, but she doesn’t seem to recognize me from the Internet. And thank God she doesn’t suddenly remember seeing a disgusting man on the news last night who had the same last name as me.

  My bulging suitcase gets a label and disappears from sight. And I get a boarding pass. Boarding will begin in ninety minutes.

  All alone, I walk to the line for passport control. I don’t belong with anyone and I feel strangely light without my luggage. My blood is tingling. I still can’t quite believe it: I’m really going to do this. Two days ago, it was no more than an idea. Just a thought: If I were a completely different person, I’d give the world the finger and fly to New York.

  It’s Friday, October 26. In ten and a half hours, I’ll be there.

  Everything is so different when you’re on your own. Colors are brighter, noises sound louder, plans can go wrong at any moment. As I walk through the echoing terminal after the passport check, I tell myself to be tough. A girl who steals her dad’s credit card in the middle of the night so she can buy a plane ticket isn’t going to sit crying in the airport restroom. A girl like that isn’t going to start screaming, and she’s certainly not going to turn on her cell phone to call her mom.

  I buy a cappuccino even though I don’t like coffee; I need to stay alert. The cut on my left hand is still painful. Blood’s seeping through the bandage now, but I can’t do anything about it. I’d rather bleed out than change the bandage in a public restroom.

  And then suddenly I stop walking.

  I stare at a girl in the store that sells impossibly expensive bags. She has blond curls, tight jeans, and Uggs. It’s Juno—it m
ust be. She’s standing with her back to me, so I can’t see her face. Heart pounding, I wait for her to turn around.

  It’s someone else.

  Shaking, I walk to the nearest row of seats. I sit down, clench my hands together, but stop as soon as I feel the cut. How could I have ever thought I was brave?

  With trembling fingers, I take out my folder full of papers. I printed out absolutely everything. My flight times. The bus I have to take when I arrive. The dollar exchange rate. How much of a tip I should give. Which museum has the most Impressionist paintings. I keep reading until I get my breath back, and then finally I dare to look up again.

  Outside, through huge panes of glass, I can see seventeen airplanes. They’re about to let their engines roar, soar away, and transform into swans, high in the sky.

  It’s over now, I tell myself. I can’t bump into Juno in the hallways anymore. Her friends won’t be able to yell at me in the school yard. My gym bag is safe from their lighters, and that locker with all the stuff written on it isn’t mine anymore.

  I’m never going back to that school.

  • • •

  In the waiting area by the gate, I have to turn my phone on, just for a moment. I wait anxiously to see if any messages arrive, but there’s nothing. My mom and dad think I’m at school and everyone in my class naturally assumes I’m under the covers at home, crying my eyes out.

  Well, it just so happens that they’re wrong. And it just so happens that the time has come to flip off the world—or at least my mom and dad. The email’s been ready and waiting to be sent since last night:

  To the losers who created me,

  I thought we had a deal. I’d do my homework, set the table, and not get my navel pierced. You’d feed me and not do anything that might get you sent to prison.

  The deal’s over now. That much is clear.

  You think I’m doing some monster physics test, but I’m actually on the train to Germany. I’m going to stay with Klara. I’m going crazy here, so I’m off to a country where my dad isn’t the latest news. You have no idea what it’s been like at school and on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else.

  You don’t have a clue what it’s like to be me.

  Don’t come after me. And don’t call either—I won’t pick up. Neither will Klara, and, anyway, she changed her number ages ago.

  I’ll send another email tomorrow to let you know I’m still alive.

  That is, if I am still alive …

  E.

  My thumb hovers over the SEND button. At this point, I can still go back. I could just get up and walk from here to Arrivals, through the baggage claim, where the suitcases dizzily spin around in circles, and out into the hall, where no one’s waiting for me. I could catch the train back home as if I’d never planned to escape.

  And then I remember Tuesday evening again.

  • • •

  I was sitting in our quiet, cozy living room, doing my history homework. It was about the American Declaration of Independence. Which is, without a doubt, one of the best things ever written, but that’s not the point right now.

  Mom was working in her studio—she hadn’t even stopped to eat—and my dad was upstairs in his office, fiddling with his scientific instruments.

  Outside in the dusk, people walked past our window. I looked out at those unfamiliar shadows as the first, shining lines of the Declaration of Independence marched through my head, and I was happy. For one brief moment, everything felt just right.

  And then the phone rang.

  Not my cell, but the landline. I walked to the phone, pulled my sleeve down over my hand, and picked up the receiver.

  On the other end of the line I could hear a hysterical woman sobbing and choking.

  She said she was Juno’s mother.

  And she wanted to speak to my dad.

  • • •

  I press SEND and my email flies away. I don’t want to go back.

  More people die in car accidents than in plane crashes. That’s what I tell myself as I walk through the gray tunnel to the airplane. The alarm bell in my head is still ringing, but I try to ignore it.

  I have an article in my bag, which I memorized last night. A plane’s air-conditioning system filters out no less than 99.97 percent of all bacteria and viruses from the air. If you keep strictly to the Ten Golden Rules for Plane Journeys, you’ll be fine.

  As soon as I’m sitting in my seat by the window, I put Golden Rule Number One into action. I take a packet of disinfectant wipes from my bag and I start scrubbing. The plastic tray table, my armrests, and the buckle of my seat belt all need to be clean. Luckily, the people around me are focused on their magazines and earplugs and on flattening other people’s luggage by ramming their own bags into the overhead bins. They barely even look at me.

  During takeoff, I stare at the bandage on my left hand. I can feel the plane jolting in the wind, the sky tugging at our wings, the engines racing to keep us alive.

  To be honest, though, for more than an hour, I actually feel pretty fine inside that Boeing.

  Unfortunately, I then have the brilliant idea of asking a flight attendant how many people are on board.

  “Three hundred,” she says cheerfully as she hands me a plastic cup of apple juice.

  I look around. I’m hanging up here above the ocean inside a vibrating cocoon with three hundred other living creatures. Three hundred slimy, snotty creatures who are sniffing and coughing and breathing the entire time. A large man closes the restroom door, and suddenly I wonder how many people would be crazy enough to poop eleven kilometers in the air, high above the clouds. No one at all, I’d have thought. But clearly I must be wrong. After all, some people poop at school, or at the fairground, or when they’re visiting someone else’s house …

  Then it starts.

  Sometimes, when I think too hard about my PIN code, I suddenly can’t remember it. And it’s the same with breathing. As soon as I start paying attention to my breathing, my lungs forget how to act normally.

  God, this is so embarrassing.

  I’m hyperventilating.

  • • •

  No one notices at first, because I’m trying to suffocate quietly. But after a couple of minutes I can’t hide it anymore. My chest is going up and down, faster and faster. I can feel sweat on my forehead and my throat is burning. I gag and a kind of whining sound comes out.

  The whole plane is looking at me. Five people press their bells. A little girl starts crying.

  Soon there are three flight attendants standing beside my row of seats, discussing me in whispers. Then a call goes out through the airplane to ask if there’s a doctor on board.

  I don’t really notice what’s going on because I’m too busy dying, but a Russian doctor appears from business class. He confers in broken English with the flight attendants and with about fifteen passengers, who are all butting in. While the consultation is still in full swing, a woman who is clearly a fully qualified mother tells me to breathe into a paper bag. Then the Russian doctor gives me something to calm me down.

  It’s a long time before they all stop looking at me.

  • • •

  Tears roll quietly down my cheeks and onto my neck, because I obviously got it all wrong. I’m not giving the world the finger. The world is giving me the finger.

  Yet again.

  Dazed, I stare out the window. The sunny clouds beneath the plane look like they’re made of whipped egg whites. It’s a frozen world with no people in it. With no plans and no disappointments.

  Then I fall asleep and dream about my dad’s orrery, his model of the solar system.

  It’s an old-fashioned contraption that stands in the middle of his office. When you crank a brass handle, the planets creakily turn around the sun. I was six when he let me operate it for the first time. It was magical. With just one hand, I could make the planets move. As I slowly turned the handle, my dad explained what makes it light in the daytime and dark at night. And why it doesn’t
get dark all over the world at the same time.

  In my dream I’m standing in the darkness outside his office door. Inside, I can hear the planets quietly squeaking. I hesitate for a moment before opening the door. The light of a streetlamp comes in through the windows. The instruments are gleaming: the big electrostatic generator by the window, the barometers on the wall, the microscopes under their glass domes.

  In the middle of the room is the orrery with its brass handle. But it’s not my dad who’s turning it.

  It’s Juno.

  Her blond curls are shining more brightly than all the instruments combined. She looks at me.

  And then she laughs.

  As the wheels of the plane touch the ground, I feel a lump in my throat.

  I am Columbus. For the first time in my life, I am in America.

  • • •

  As soon as I’m inside Newark Airport, I look eagerly around. But all I can see is a gray corridor with dirty carpet on the floor and threatening signs with pictures of cell phones crossed out in red. I’d imagined America would gleam. That everything would be spotlessly clean and modern. Which sounded great to me.

  After the corridor, we enter a room the size of a church. A long line of people zigzags silently through a collection of poles and cordons. It’s like an amusement park, but without any signs to tell you how long the wait is.

  A tense silence fills the hall. America isn’t a country you can just walk into. If the immigration people think you’re secretly planning to stay for longer, or if they suspect that you’re lying, they put you on the next flight home.

  And yes, I’m planning to lie.

  My stomach feels like I’m right at the top of a roller coaster. I can see the large man from the plane looking at me. The mother with the paper bag is keeping an eye on me too. Do they hope I’m about to start panicking again?

  Well, if I have to stand here for another thirty minutes, their wish will come true.

  Finally, a man in a uniform sends me to desk number seven, where a woman with deep-set eyes and scraped-back hair is waiting for me.

  “Good afternoon,” she says gloomily. She takes my passport. “How are you today?”

  I look at her. This woman, someone I’ve never met before, will decide, in less than ten minutes, if I’m allowed to enter America.