A Hundred Hours of Night Read online

  I nod.

  “Holy crap!” He shakes his head. Not just a quick shake, but a really slow, long one. “You’re even worse than an eleven-year-old.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I honestly thought things would get easier with Abby. I thought, sooner or later, that she’d quit her secret missions and going AWOL and causing trouble. But then I see this … ” He looks at me. “This room doesn’t even exist.”

  “Of course it does!”

  “No, it doesn’t. This so-called Mr. Greenberg of yours is a scammer. There’s no studio for rent here. The guy’s just used photos of some other room. Like you could see the Empire State Building from here!”

  “But look!” My voice sounds shrill. “His name’s in the ad. That’s right, isn’t it? Greenberg. That’s your last name.”

  Seth shrugs. “He must have copied it from the nameplate by the buzzer.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, just looks at me. He’s giving my brain time to absorb what he said.

  These past few days, every disaster that happened since the big bang has gone through my mind. And all the disasters that are yet to come. Train collisions, plane crashes—I was prepared for anything.

  But I never would have imagined that the room I paid for simply doesn’t exist.

  Seth’s cell phone starts ringing. An irritating, tinny jingle. He answers.

  “Abby!” he cries. “Where are you? I just spoke to Aunt Leah. She was in tears … ” He listens for what seems like ages. “You’re crazy! Stay where you are. I’ll come get you.”

  He puts his phone in his pocket. “Got to go. The kid’s a disaster area.”

  “But … ”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. Abby’s arranged to meet someone off the Internet. I’ve got to get to her as quickly as possible. You’ll have to find somewhere else to stay. Lucky there are plenty of hotels in New York.”

  “Wait!” I call, but the front door’s already closed.

  I hear his feet racing up the stairs. And then … silence. Just my heart, pounding in my head. And the blood rushing past my ears.

  I stand there, looking at the closed door.

  And I’m still there, motionless, when Seth comes back out of his building with his bike. He’s wearing worn-out sneakers and a black hooded sweatshirt, and he has a neon-green helmet on his head.

  “Good luck!” he calls, and then he leaps onto his bike and races away.

  I want to yell at him that he has to stay with me. That I’m fifteen and I have no idea what to do next. He’s the only New Yorker I know even just a little bit. The only one who actually counts, anyway, because otherwise I only know celebrities: Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and Daniel Radcliffe. But I don’t yell and Seth goes zooming around a corner in the distance.

  OH MY GOD! I say furiously to myself. How dumb can you be? You know you can’t trust the Internet! At school last year we even had these stupid lessons in “social media awareness,” taught by a very prim and proper lady who knew ten times less about computers than we did.

  Why did I believe for even a second that Mr. Greenberg, with his smile and his blond goatee, would be so kind as to rent such a wonderful room to me for hardly any money at all?

  Or, yeah, well, for five hundred dollars a week.

  Compared to the other rooms, though, that was cheap. And yesterday I’d been stupidly naive and transferred a thousand dollars to Russia or to Nigeria or to God knows where that guy and his Chihuahuas actually live. If the mutts even exist …

  I clench my fists—including my left hand, the one with the cut—until my eyes fill with tears.

  Finally, for the first time in my life, I’m in my favorite city in the world.

  But with no faucet.

  With no mattress.

  And with no credit card.

  I look at my phone. Three more missed calls from my dad. An astonishingly large number of the cells that make up my body want to call him back, sobbing, but I ignore them.

  It’s six in the evening and it’s getting dark fast. Then the lights come on and suddenly my street looks like a street in a play. First I was walking across a movie set, now I’m standing on a stage with fire escapes made of cardboard and fake trees made of plastic. Every now and then someone throws down a few fall leaves. Every leaf is the shape of two little hearts stuck together.

  I stare at them for a long time. Then I put my foot on two hearts and slowly twist my boot back and forth.

  With great determination, I put up fences inside my mind. I’m only allowed to think about the next quarter of an hour. What to do next—that’s all that matters. Thoughts about murderers and rapists are off-limits. Calling my parents is out of the question. Shaking, shivering, trembling—those words aren’t part of my vocabulary.

  Okay. The facts. I don’t have a bed in this city.

  So how does a person get a bed here?

  By paying money.

  What do I need to do first?

  Withdraw more cash.

  And what do I need for that?

  An ATM.

  I extend the handle of my suitcase and start walking. The wheels make a dull rattle on the concrete sidewalk. As I go past the colorful houses, from spotlight to spotlight, I think about a guy in this documentary I once saw on TV. He was about twenty, but ever since he was thirteen, he’d felt like he was in a movie. He wasn’t real, that’s how he put it. And he thought his mom and dad and friends and teachers were all actors too.

  I felt sorry for him. No one wants to be an actor forever. But at the same time I wondered if he was the only one saying out loud what everyone feels. Maybe it was different in elementary school. But I know that everyone at my high school is playing a role. Seriously. Our whole building is just one big theater.

  I hope that’s all going to change when I’m older. But sometimes, when I lie awake and the night is at its darkest, I’m scared it’ll never stop. And I worry that people can’t give up acting even when they’re adults. That we’re never free. That the performance will go on forever.

  • • •

  At the end of the street is a six-lane road that cuts straight through the city. The traffic is blocked solid and—of course—everyone is beeping and honking away. At least half the cars are taxicabs. Cabs going nowhere.

  On the broad sidewalk, people with all kinds of different plans in their heads are crossing paths. Professionals in designer clothes are leaving work and rushing to the subway. There’s a group of boys in secondhand coats and glasses with thick frames who have to be students. And girls in ultrashort, shiny minidresses who are wobbling their way to couches, cocktails, and blond rich guys with names like James Howard III.

  Those guys really do exist. I’ve seen them in the movies.

  As I’m thinking about numbered heirs, I spot the brightly illuminated window of a Bank of America. Pulling my heavy suitcase behind me, I half jog to the bank. I rattle the door.

  Locked.

  Feeling kind of stunned, I stare at the ATMs inside their bare box and suddenly a man with a beard appears beside me. Not a white Santa Claus beard, but one of those hipster beards that are suddenly so popular.

  “You want to go in?” he asks.

  I just nod.

  He swipes his credit card through a slit beside the door. The light turns green and the door opens.

  “Thank you!” I say, surprised.

  The man gives me a grin and then walks on. I pull my suitcase into the bright box and put my card into the machine.

  But it doesn’t work. It seems I can only withdraw cash once a day when I’m abroad. But all I took out at the airport was fifty dollars—nowhere near enough for a hotel.

  I drag my suitcase back outside. The fences inside my head are still upright. But they’re shaking. It won’t take much to make them fall.

  “Excuse me!” I call to a woman in a hilarious outfit that looks like something straight out of Sex and the City. “Do you know where I can get free Wi-Fi?”
/>   I can’t tell how old she is. Her skin is pulled tight and her face is heavily made up. She’s like some scarily realistic mannequin from a window display.

  “They got Wi-Fi at Starbucks,” she says in a sugary voice like a little girl’s. “Go straight and take a right onto Broadway.”

  I wheel my suitcase through the honking and the neon lights toward the green-and-white logo with the mermaid. Inside, it’s warm and smells like coffee. I go to the bathroom first, which—thank God!—is clean. Then I buy a cup of tea and a blueberry muffin. I sit at a table by the window and, before even removing my coat or having a bite of my muffin, I take out my phone.

  I know that I quickly need to find a hotel where I won’t have to pay until tomorrow, but first I Google “how to treat cuts.” The wound in my hand is a constant throb. And I also want to know how polluted the air in New York is and I have to check if Daniel Radcliffe really does live here.

  I deliberately don’t look at my email. Or at any news sites. And I can’t even sneak a peek at Facebook or Twitter, because I deleted my accounts yesterday.

  The muffin is sweet and gooey, with juicy blueberries and a faint vanilla flavor. Finally, I feel warm again, and fewer of the cells in my body want to phone home and sob.

  But then I look at a forum for tips about hotels—and it’s all over.

  As a minor in America, you can’t rent a hotel room on your own. Apparently it’s a liability thing. And you can’t lie about your age, because everyone always asks for your passport.

  I keep on looking, but I can’t find a solution. An hour later, there’s only one thing I can think of: Go to the police. Hand myself in.

  And they’ll put me on the first plane home tomorrow morning.

  Starbucks closes at eleven at night. I put on my coat, pick up my flowery bag and my suitcase, and head outside. I stand on the ice-cold sidewalk.

  New York loves to celebrate the fact that it’s Friday night. A stretch limo drives by, a group of men in tiaras and boas is yelling that Mitchell’s getting married, two giggling girls walk past in glittery skirts—but I’m just not interested. In the Netherlands, it’s five in the morning. I’ve never, ever been awake for such a long stretch of time. My head feels muzzy and my body’s shaking.

  I know exactly where the nearest police station is now. But I walk in the opposite direction.

  I spent a long time thinking about it at my little table by the window. I imagined what it would be like to report myself to the police. How it would feel when they called my parents. And then, later, what it would be like sitting around the kitchen table, the three of us.

  So I’m walking back to Seth and Abby’s place. If I turn up on their doorstep at eleven thirty at night, they’re sure to let me in, aren’t they? They’ll have to, won’t they?

  Exhausted, I trudge along the six-lane street, past the ATMs inside their bare box, back to the narrow street with the trees. A bunch of drunk people go by. A few men call out something, but I look down at the ground and walk on.

  I don’t know if I’m scared.

  No, of course I’m scared, but I’ve got bigger problems than a bunch of drunk guys. That’s what I tell myself. I try to think about movies and imagine I’m walking across a stage again, but I’m too tired.

  All I can think about is my dad’s solar system. I can see planet Earth in front of me, and I feel as if I’m walking at an angle. All that time in the Netherlands I was walking upright. Now I’ve flown to an entirely different part of the globe. That has to affect your head somehow, doesn’t it? Surely your blood must stop flowing normally?

  Feeling dizzy, I stand in front of the red building again. I pull my sleeve down over my finger and press the button next to “Greenberg.” I put my ear to the door and listen. I ring again and wait.

  After seventeen rings, I give up. Seth must be sleeping like a mammoth, or maybe he never came back.

  I drop down onto the stoop and lean my head against the red-painted bricks. My hands were already cold, and now I can feel the ice creaking inside my legs. I look longingly at my bulging suitcase. Neatly folded inside that suitcase is a wonderful sleeping bag that I always take with me because I don’t like other people’s blankets and quilts.

  I think about taking out the sleeping bag, but I don’t. It would get dirty out here on the street. And what if the police see me lying there in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk like a homeless person? Then I won’t have to walk to the station on my own. They’ll just ask me to accompany them.

  I take my phone out of my bag and see that my dad’s finally answered my text message.

  Okay, we won’t go to the police yet. But I want to talk to you and Klara tomorrow.

  I immediately hide the message behind the fences inside my head. Tomorrow I’ll decide how I’m going to answer him.

  A group of men walks past singing. One of them yells that I’m cute. Another stands right in front of me and asks if I want to go with them to a bar on a hotel roof in the Meatpacking District. I tell them I’m staying here, that I’m waiting for friends who are stuck in traffic.

  He asks if I’m from Ireland. I say no.

  He asks for my number. I say no again. The whole group laughs. They nudge one another, but then walk on.

  My teeth start chattering.

  All those heart-shaped fall leaves lie withering on the ground around me. Most of them are yellow, but there’s a red one among them. I stare at it. I’m used to feeling lonely. Whenever I hear my mom talking about what it was like to be pregnant, I know that even then, inside her tummy, I must have been a little bit lonely.

  But being this lonely—that’s something new.

  • • •

  I open my eyes again when I hear a boy’s voice. For a moment I think it’s Seth. But this voice is different. Louder. Angrier.

  I sit up straight. My bones are chilled through. My eyes are stinging. It’s a blond boy and he’s coming closer. He’s walking down the middle of the street, kicking an empty beer can and cursing wholeheartedly.

  “Those fucking arrogant bastards!” He gives the can another kick and almost loses his balance, but manages to stay upright. “I hate those rich fuckers!”

  And then he sees me. He stops.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so handsome before. His faded jeans are fraying and the laces of his black high-tops are loose. Under his jacket he’s wearing a white T-shirt with splashes that look black in the streetlight. But I can tell they’re bloodstains. His right hand is bandaged.

  He takes a swig from a bottle in a brown paper bag and looks at me.

  I’m so tired now that the whole world seems like a movie. Slowly I hold up my own bandaged hand—a kind of salute from one wounded soldier to another.

  “Vietnam?” he asks, pointing his brown bag at my bandage.

  “War of Independence,” I say. “How about you?”

  “Me?” It’s a while before he answers. “I’m having the worst fucking day of my life. I’ve only got nine fingers left and I got fired.”

  His blond hair hangs over his ears. I can’t work out quite how old he is. Older than me in any case. Older than Seth too.

  He takes another swig. Then he frowns. “Are you part of my worst ever day too? Or are you just sitting here?”

  “I think I’m just sitting here,” I reply. “I’m already part of other people’s worst day.”

  My teeth have started chattering again and I know I’m going to get sick. Not a cold, but double pneumonia. Acute meningitis. Or, quite simply, dead.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “Just waiting for some friends.”

  “Friends? You mean those little square pictures on Facebook?”

  I nod. “That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “And what if … ”

  He stops talking and sways. I watch as his eyes roll back into his head. The bottle falls clattering onto the street.

  I’m too late to catch him, but I manage to grab his shoulders
and make sure his head doesn’t hit the curb. Together, we collapse onto the ground.

  I can feel the roughness of his jacket and the warmth of his skin against my bare hands, and I shiver. How filthy does a leather jacket get if it’s never washed? Can dried blood make you sick?

  I look at his pale face. My breathing is fast.

  Should I scream for help?

  Start banging at random on nearby doors?

  Call 911?

  I’m going to do all of that. I really am. I’m not going to let this guy die on the street. Of course not. But I’ll wait just a moment. Because I don’t want to call the police. I don’t want to go back to Amsterdam.

  Carefully, I lay him on the cold sidewalk. His head has to be low, so the blood can flow to it. I check his pulse. I know how to do it because I check my own heartbeat every day. Something’s beating away, inside his body. He’s still alive.

  And then he moves. I instantly let go of his hand.

  “Jesus.” He groans. “What … ”

  “You fainted,” I say.

  “Wow.” He rubs his hand across his face. Slowly, he shakes his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have had a drink after those painkillers at the hospital … ”

  I’m kneeling beside him. The street’s deserted. I feel like having a quick cry, but of course I can’t.

  He looks up at the starless sky. “Maybe I should just go to bed,” he says, without moving.

  “Do you live far from here?”

  “No. I’m nearly home. I live just over there.” He points at an off-white building with a rusty fire escape. “Pretty handy.” He’s still lying there.

  “Come on, then,” I say. I’m worried he’s going to get pneumonia too.

  Between the two of us, we get him to his feet. He’s still swaying, so I don’t say anything when he puts his arm around my shoulders. I’ve never felt such a heavy arm before. He can’t get the door open, so he hands the keys to me.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Now I’ve just got to get up these three flights of stairs … ”

  I sigh. Looks like I have no choice. “Wait a moment,” I say. “I’ll just put my suitcase here in the hallway, or it’ll disappear.”