A Hundred Hours of Night Page 2

  “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?” she asks.

  I gulp. The airport here feels different than the one at home. English is my second mother tongue, but I’m not sure if I’ve memorized the right lies.

  “Just a vacation,” I say. “I want to see New York.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Two weeks.”

  On Wednesday night, when I booked the flight, I wanted to buy a one-way ticket at first. But then I started to read all the horror stories about the American immigration system, and I soon realized that I’d never, ever be allowed into the country without a return ticket. They only let you in if they’re sure you’re going to clear off again before too long.

  “Where will you be staying for the next two weeks?” asks the woman.

  I take the folder of printouts from my bag. It contains all the information about my room and the emails that the owner sent me. The paper seems to be shaking even worse than my hand.

  The woman takes a good, long look at everything, leafs through my passport, and then frowns.

  “You’re fifteen?”

  I nod.

  “And you’re here on your own?”

  This is the big moment. Of course this woman doesn’t need to hear all about my real life. She just wants a story that sounds right, a fairy tale she can listen to without becoming concerned.

  “My friend Klara’s coming too,” I say. My voice sounds like cold oatmeal. “We rented the apartment together. Klara’s twenty-one and she used to be my family’s au pair. She’s landing at John F. Kennedy Airport on a flight from Frankfurt this evening. I have her telephone number right here.” I push another piece of paper over to the woman. “But she’s still on the plane right now … ”

  With one hand, I hold on tightly to the counter, even though it’s sticky. If I don’t, I know I’ll fall over.

  The woman flips through my passport again and looks up at me.

  “Do you have written permission from your parents for this trip?”

  I offer up silent thanks to the Internet. I knew I was going to need a letter. I take it out of the folder, along with the copies of my parents’ passports. I snagged half the letter from the Internet and made up the rest myself. And I copied the signatures from their passports, so they should be right.

  I slide the documents across to the woman and wait anxiously. She studies the letter and the photocopies for a long time. If I believed in God, I’d be praying now. Constantly, pleadingly. But I don’t believe in God.

  I used to believe in grown-ups. And now I don’t believe in anything.

  Finally, she nods. Gravely, as if she’s decided I can go straight to hell.

  “Okay. Place your left thumb on the scanner.”

  I hesitate at the sight of the greasy glass plate. But I’d do anything for America. I think as hard as I can about the antibacterial gel in my bag and I put my thumb on the scanner.

  This is incredible! I made it! Emilia December de Wit is in America.

  My first stop was an ATM. Then I used my first-ever dollars to buy a ticket for the bus into the city. Which is where I am now. On the bus. Right at the front, almost next to the driver, so I can look out through the windshield. It was the only way to see out, because there are advertisements stuck all over the side windows, from top to bottom.

  As we wait for more passengers to get on, my self-control fails me: I have to turn on my cell phone. The messages come pinging in. Nine missed calls from “Dad” and three from “Mom’s cell.” As I stare at the glowing screen, I start to feel sick. Ever since Tuesday, the Netherlands has been just one big stinking swamp, and I can smell the stench even from here.

  There’s no way I want to listen to whatever those voice mails have to say, but I make myself read the text messages. Dad sent the first one just after I’d boarded the plane.

  Damn it, Emilia! Just saw the broken glass in my office. I understand why you’re angry, but this is unforgivable. I know you skipped school today. Call me ASAP.

  I look down at the bandage on my hand before opening the next text message.

  Pick up the phone! If you don’t call back, I’m getting into the car and coming to fetch you from Frankfurt. We need to talk. Now!

  The last message was sent an hour ago.

  If we don’t hear from you by midnight, we’re calling the police and reporting you missing.

  My hands are shaking. I knew he’d be mad. That’s exactly what I wanted. But “unforgivable”? He’s never said that before.

  Don’t call the police, I text back. Do you really want to mess things up even more? Klara and I just ate schnitzel and I’m fine. Will call tomorrow.

  As I hit SEND, the bus starts moving. I put my phone on silent and bury it in the bottom of my bag. I have to forget about the swamp, or I might as well not have bothered to escape.

  Look outside, I say to myself. You’re Columbus!

  I focus on the details. The traffic signs above the road are bright green. The sky is cloudy, and the cars are the size of tanks. Americans build their roads with big slabs of concrete, and the old bus shudders every time we bump onto a new one. We make a slow curve. The concrete road becomes an overpass. And then I stop breathing.

  There, in the gray distance, is New York City.

  I recognize the skyline immediately from the poster over my bed: Hundreds of gray, brown, and glistening glass buildings combine to form the most beautiful bar graph in the world. As I gaze at it, one word dances and spins around inside my head: finally.

  All those movies and photos and TV shows and news items have prepared me for this moment. But now I’m seeing it for real. And it feels just like when I made the planets move for the first time.

  Suddenly, I realize why American immigration wanted my story to be just right. As I see that world-famous skyline with my own eyes, I understand.

  America is the ultimate story. It’s like stepping onto a life-size movie screen. If you want to play your part, you have to fit in.

  • • •

  The bus drives into a tunnel that seems too narrow. Tiled walls whizz past. Car lights flash by in the darkness. I see an orange traffic cone lying in the middle of our half of the road, and I close my eyes for a moment.

  Then we emerge from the tunnel and we’re in Manhattan. A handful of Native Americans once lived on this small island between two rivers. Now it has 1.6 million inhabitants, and it’s crammed full of skyscrapers.

  From the bus, I can’t see where the buildings stop. The Friday-afternoon traffic is insane. Yellow cabs everywhere. They’re honking their horns in a hundred different ways, as if every taxi is speaking a different language.

  We drive past oceans of people gazing up at gigantic neon signs. Flashing advertisements for The Lion King and the latest Samsung phone and the “Biggest Burger Ever!” dance across the buildings.

  The world around me is sparkling. Everything is gleaming and glittering away.

  • • •

  And suddenly I wonder if I really fit in here.

  As New York roars outside, I look down at my hands. The skin is dry and cracked, like the surface of an old painting. I wash my hands constantly, and it’s ruined my fingers.

  What would this city want with me?

  I am Emilia December de Wit, and I’m too scared even to touch the metal bar in front of me. I’m too scared to eat a hot dog from a food cart. I’m too scared to use the subway at rush hour.

  I don’t know what would happen to us if my dad had to go to jail.

  I have no idea how I would look after my mom. Or if I’d even want to.

  I wonder …

  But then I stop.

  We’re driving past a singing, jingling, laughing park. Around the edges, beneath the red and yellow trees, are glass stalls with little stores inside. In the middle of the park, there’s an ice rink full of skaters in brightly colored hats. As I hear the first Christmas song of the year, I feel happiness in my veins.

&n
bsp; Do I fit in?

  Hey, this is New York City. You only have to look at all the girls who live here in the movies. If the stories are even a little bit true, this place is teeming with lonely, hung-up control freaks like me. Women who write down everything in their bulging diaries. Who can’t stand surprises. Who constantly clean their apartments, wearing an oversize sweater that once belonged to their ex or their dead father, and who have only a cat to talk to, and eat takeout every night from one of those cardboard boxes, and have piles of teddy bears gazing up at them from their perfectly made beds …

  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

  My collection of dusty teddy bears is a big, fat zero, and I definitely don’t have a fluffy cat. But if there’s anywhere in the world I should feel at home, it’s here, in this glittering city.

  • • •

  The bus gasps to a halt at the last stop.

  “Grand Central,” calls the bus driver without looking around. “Last stop. Everyone out.” He throws our bags onto the sidewalk, and the rattling bus drives away.

  And so here I am. With my boots on the flat gray sidewalk of New York. Everyone else knows where they need to go. They disappear, along with their suitcases and bags.

  All on my own, I stand on a sidewalk that’s as wide as an entire Dutch street. Enormous buildings tower all around me. I tilt my head to look up at them. A few streets away, a silver skyscraper shimmers like the spire of a fairy-tale church. High in the sky, eagles’ heads stretch out from the metallic building. As I gaze at them, I fall in love.

  I just wish I could actually see Grand Central station … Where could it be?

  It’s a lot colder here than in the Netherlands, so I button my winter coat all the way to the top. My head’s spinning. The sky’s still light, but to me it feels like eleven thirty at night. If I stay here forever, I’ll have seen six extra hours of sunlight by the time I die. And my dad will have lived in the dark for six hours longer.

  A yellow cab pulls up. The driver smiles at me through his open window. “Need a ride?”

  I was planning to take the subway to my room. My printout says I need to take the green line, number 6, downtown, but suddenly I feel like I’m about to keel over with jet lag. My psychologist—I saw her for a while, but thankfully that’s over now—always said an occasional change of plan isn’t a bad thing.

  So I nod.

  My bag goes in the trunk, and soon we’re zooming south down Lexington Avenue. You only have to study the map of New York once to see how the city fits together. It’s like someone arranged a box of building blocks on a sheet of graph paper. The wide routes from north to south are called avenues, and the ones from east to west are streets. The streets all have a number, so you always know exactly where you are.

  If only my life were that simple.

  I sit in silence, looking out the cab window. The buildings are starting to shrink, and the sharply dressed businessmen turn into kids in skinny jeans.

  I found my room online just yesterday morning, on craigslist. My finger was sore from hours of scrolling and my eyes were burning. I’d just about given up. It wasn’t going to work. I’d have to resign myself to life in the swamp. America didn’t want me. But then, hidden among five hundred dingy broom closets and seven hundred insanely expensive apartments, I suddenly spotted my “studio.”

  The photographs showed sunlight streaming in through two large windows, and the description said those windows had a view of the Empire State Building. I felt like Goldilocks: This room was just right. It was available for the next couple of weeks. And all I had to do was pay in advance with my dad’s credit card.

  It’s like stepping out of the cab and onto a movie set, a set that fifty people have worked on for weeks to make it obvious to even the dumbest of viewers: This story takes place in New York.

  But this isn’t a set; it’s for real.

  As the taxi pulls away, I gaze around. My street’s lined with tall trees in flaming fall colors. Most of the buildings are five stories high. They’re reddish-brown and ocher and gray, with flat roofs and elegant metal fire escapes. Two girls walk past. I can tell just by looking at them that they’re runway models. Their legs are so long and thin. They have bored looks on their faces and big cups of coffee in their hands. With those little plastic lids on top.

  I look at the house numbers. My room must be on the top floor of that bloodred building. Beside the front door, there’s a messy line of buzzers. There are more buzzers than stories, so it takes me a while to find the name I’m looking for. There it is, in faded letters: Greenberg.

  I’m too tired to be nervous, so I pull my sleeve over my finger and press the button.

  Nothing happens.

  I ring again, but there’s still no sound from behind the front door. All around me, though, the city is insanely loud. Sirens wail from three different directions and there’s honking everywhere: long blares and short beeps and whole stretches of uninterrupted noise. Then a truck rumbles down the narrow street, engine growling and black clouds pumping from the rattling muffler.

  As I start coughing, the front door opens. I was expecting a guy with a goatee. On the website, Mr. Greenberg was a grown man with two Chihuahuas, a big grin, and a blond beard.

  But the guy in the doorway isn’t an adult. He can’t be much older than me. His short dark hair is ruffled, his T-shirt’s inside out, and he’s not wearing any shoes.

  He’s not smiling either.

  “Okay,” he says. “What is it this time?”

  I stare at him.

  “I know Abby sent you.” He sounds mad. “My aunt already called.” He holds up an iPhone. “Abby’s disappeared, and when that kid goes missing, she’s always up to no good.”

  “I … ”

  “You got a banana with a note hidden inside?” He doesn’t even wait for me to answer. “No, of course not. Abby never does the same thing twice.” He sighs. “So are you going to act something out for me? Or do you have a video clip? Do I need to go somewhere?”

  I shake my head. I seem to have forgotten how to speak.

  “Okay, I get it,” the boy says. His eyes are very dark brown. “You’re not going to answer until I say exactly the right thing. Like a kind of password.” He frowns and looks down at the ground. His cheeks are slowly turning red.

  “Abby wants me to talk to you. To have an actual conversation with you, just like that, out of nowhere. That’s it, isn’t it?” He wipes his hand across his face. “That’s why she chose you. A pretty girl, the kind of girl I normally wouldn’t talk to. But she doesn’t get it. It doesn’t work that way. I mean, there’s a reason why I don’t talk to pretty girls. Pretty girls and me … ”

  He stops and I stare at him. A pretty girl?

  The boy sighs. “You can tell Abby I blew it. This challenge was too difficult.” He starts to shut the door.

  “Wait!” I say. “Who’s Abby?”

  The door swings open again.

  “My little sister,” he says. “But you already know that … ”

  As he looks at me, I can see it slowly dawning on him.

  “Really?” he says, in that feeble little cold oatmeal voice that I so often hear myself using. “You don’t know who Abby is?”

  “No.”

  “So you have nothing to do with one of her challenges? She didn’t tell you to wait here until I started flirting with you?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “My name’s Emilia. I come from the Netherlands and I’ve rented a room here.”

  He’s about to say something, but then he shakes his head and remains silent.

  “So Abby’s missing?” I ask.

  “She was supposed to stay with my aunt this weekend, but she ran away.” He still can’t quite meet my eyes. “Abby’s eleven, and that seriously is a terrible age. She has no idea how dangerous the world can be. She thinks she’s James Bond and that she can solve all the problems in New York.”

  “And that she can find you a girlfriend …
”

  I immediately wish I hadn’t said anything, because the red glow in his cheeks had just started to fade.

  “I talk too much,” he says.

  “Me too,” I blurt.

  That’s not true, because usually I keep my mouth tightly shut. I’m always scared of saying the wrong thing. Fifteen years old and I still feel like I don’t know the rules.

  It’s a while before we pluck up the courage to make another sound. The sirens go on screaming in the background; the taxis keep blowing their horns; the city still races and gleams.

  Finally, he breaks the silence. “Hi. I’m Seth Greenberg,” he says. Like a well-programmed American robot, he shoots out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Emilia … ” But his hand isn’t part of a clean and polished robot arm. His fingers are covered with black smudges, as if he’s just changed the cartridge of a printer from the Stone Age. Or maybe he repaired his bike, like, a week ago, and he hasn’t washed his hands since.

  I know it’s dumb, but I can’t handle it right now. I can’t touch that dirty hand. I’m too tired. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

  So I say, “Sorry.” I clench my right hand into a fist behind my back. “I have a cold. I don’t want you to catch it.”

  He shrugs. “But if Abby didn’t send you, why are you here?”

  “Because of the room!”

  He looks puzzled.

  “I just told you, didn’t I? I rented your studio.” I take the printout from my bag. “I was in touch with Mr. Greenberg. I guess that must be your dad?”

  “I don’t think so,” says Seth. “My dad’s been dead for two years.”

  I leaf through the papers. My hand with the cut is shaking again. I pretend not to have heard what he just said about his dead dad. Right now, all I want is for Seth to take me to my room. I want to pee and to shower and to sleep.

  “Look.” I hold the papers in front of his face and he begins to read. The information about the studio. The emails I sent to Mr. Greenberg. His replies.

  “So you’re here all alone?” Seth asks after a while. “You’ve come from the Netherlands and you rented a room off craigslist?”