A Long Way From You (11 page)

She looks down at my flip-flops. “Flip-flops are not city chic. They are daytime shoes, but only in resort locations like Bermuda and Bora Bora,” she declares. Kicking off her own shoes, pink heels, she chirps, “These. On your feet.”

I quickly change into my “new” outfit as Waverly goes back to her closet and puts on a pair of four-inch magenta high heels.

“I’m working for a stylist,” she says. “If you couldn’t tell. I totally should’ve taken before-and-afters of you to put in my portfolio. I work, like, what’s the word . . . magic,” Waverly finishes, looking at me as if I were a mannequin rather than a human being with ears to hear and feelings to be hurt.

Great. According to Miss Waverly Dotts, teen stylist, magic is required to make me look suitable for the city. I guess I’ll need to invest in a fairy wand if I want to make it through my month here. I
totally
understand why Iona cut Waverly’s ponytail off. I might need to write her a belated thank-you note for that.

Glancing down at her watch, Waverly perks up. “Time to go. And don’t tell Corrinne, but I invited Rider. Always helps to have an inspiring musician and his band on the guest list even if he is from nowhere.”

“Nowhere” echoes in my head. If you are from
nowhere
, I think, does that mean you’re a
no one
, and that you’ll always be a no one?

Waverly gracefully turns on her heels as if they were ballet flats and not monstrous stilettos. I fumble into my Waverly-approved outfit and stumble after her as I try to adjust to walking in someone else’s shoes.

Arriving at another high-rise in the Upper East Side, we take an elevator up twenty-three floors and enter a party already in session. Music is playing but it’s difficult to hear it over all of the many conversations.

Rider, who has already swapped his Broken-Spoke emo look for the hipster style, barely gives me a head nod when I spot him near the kitchen. No matter that we’re from the same remote corner of earth. Now that Rider’s in New York and part of a New York band, I reckon he’s too cool for the girl who held paper towels to his bloody nose when he fell on the playground in fourth grade. Maybe that means I can reinvent myself, too. I’m off to a good start since I’m not even wearing my own clothes and I’m here with girls I don’t even know.

Before running off to the bathroom with a girl named either Octavia or Ophelia, Waverly gives me a few introductions. I take some rosé wine, which tastes disgusting, and settle on the couch next to one of the twin brothers, Blake or Breck, from Vladlena’s birthday party. I’m ready for take two. Hopefully, this time I’ll find some common ground with them.

“So, Kitsy, as a Texan, where do you see the future of oil going?” he asks me earnestly, moving closer to me.

Was that some sort of a pickup line? And if it was, who in the world gets sweet on someone talking about
oil
? I set my glass on a side table and stand up. “As a Texan, I’m going to search for deeper wells,” I say confidently.

I’m only in New York for four weeks, and I’m not spending four more
seconds
with either of those twins—or Waverly. I need to make my own friends, not tag along with Corrinne’s crew. I have got to get out of this party. I’m here to forge my own path, so why not explore New York on my own? I’ll text Waverly that something else came up. I maneuver my way through the party and out the door.

In the hallway, I notice a door marked
ROOFTOP
and decide to see if I can go up. I push it open, and start to climb a steep flight of grated metal stairs. After charging up the stairs, I rest near the top and take a deep breath. One advantage of my tiny house: no stairs. Summoning my energy, I move to tackle the last stair when my three-inch pink pump heel—or rather Waverly’s pink pump heel—gets wedged into a crack in the stair. I want to leave it and keep going up, but then I’ll be barefoot and have Waverly Dotts after me. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to her and worn flip-flops like I wanted.

Slipping my foot out of the wedged high heel, I see that my toes have started to bleed into Waverly’s Loubi-bottoms or whatever she called them. Oh, great. Please, God, I pray, don’t let Waverly make me buy her a new pair. If she does, I’ll have to become her indentured servant for life.

Bending down, I try to yank the heel up with two hands. No luck. Is it too soon in my friendship with Ford to ask for a rescue?

I sit on a narrow step of the dark, dank stairwell to ponder my options. I sort of want to cry, but I think the lack of fresh oxygen in this city has dried up my tear ducts because they don’t come.

And then the door downstairs creaks open. I’m hoping it’s not Waverly: I don’t want to throw my one-shoe self off the roof.

“Hey there,” an unfamiliar male voice calls from the bottom. “What are you doing up here?”

Great!
Now this scene has added an additional character, a no-good city man who is ready to take my country innocence away. Amber, Hands, and every other Broken Spoker warned me this would happen in New York City, and I have no one to blame but me for not listening to them. What was I thinking?

“Um-m,” I stutter, trying to make out the figure to discern what my assailant looks like. I’ll probably have to do a sketch composite later.

“Don’t worry,” the voice calls out to me gently and I hear him start walking up the stairs. “I’m Tad. I think we were just at the same party. I saw you sneak out and I figured that you might be coming up here.”

I sigh a huge breath of relief. I just might not end up as a victim on
Law & Order: SVU
, which I’m sure has filmed in this exact stairwell.

Tad climbs the stairs to me before he stops to look at my shoe that’s being held hostage by the stair. He points and says, “I can honestly say that’s the first time I’ve seen a high heel like that.”

I soften up and laugh. “It’s very urban Cinderella, isn’t it?”

“It’s only Cinderella if I’m a prince, and you end up running away. And I’m no prince”—and I can finally see his face. With full lips, jade-blue eyes, and a Roman nose, Tad looks fit to play a fairy-tale prince. Like many of Disney’s leading men, he’s tall (at least six feet), dark (his hair is chocolate brown), and definitely handsome. Strangely, he also looks familiar.

Pointing toward the roof, Tad adds, “I’m hoping that you don’t run away. In fact, how about a smoke on the rooftop?”

“Only if you can retrieve my shoe,” I say, smiling. “It’s actually not mine. That’s part of the problem.”

With one hand, Tad bends down, yanks the heel, and frees it from the stair. “Not bad for a musician,” he says and pats his own back before handing me the high heel.

At the very top of the stairs, there’s another door that Tad pulls and holds open for me. This is the very first time in New York—minus doormen, who are paid to do it—that someone has opened a door for me. Light coming from the roof shines on Tad’s face, and my heart races as I realize how I know him. I stop and don’t move any closer.

“Something wrong?” Tad asks me, still holding the door.

“I know this may sound weird, but were you at MoMA on Saturday?” I ask.

I cross my fingers that I’m not going crazy.

Tad snaps his fingers and winks.

“That’s it!” he exclaims, pointing at me. “When I saw you at the party, I thought I knew you. Funny how New York isn’t that big after all. And if I remember correctly,
you
ran away.”

Smiling, I think how I’m here less than a week, and I’m already having a New York moment. Somehow I’ve met Art Boy not just once but twice in a city of millions.

“I didn’t want to leave,” I say, looking directly at him as I step through the door and out onto the rooftop.

Before I can tell him about why I didn’t stay and talk at MoMA, I see it. Rather, I see all of it. I forgot that we’re twenty-four floors up. The city looks like a jewel box, an urban landscape of twinkling skyscrapers. Who knew electricity could be so beautiful? Maybe Texas
isn’t
the only place that’s God’s country.

I walk straight past Tad and go to the rooftop’s edge. To the east, I see the river and the moonlight dancing on its smooth surface. From another angle, I see the park. The bright street lamps illuminate its greenery. I keep turning and see the Chrysler and the Empire State Building, rising high in the sky. It’s like the movies. It’s how I thought it would be.

“Whoa, girl,” Tad says and comes up behind me, “you okay?”

I spin around and ask impulsively, “What’s the highest you’ve ever been?”

Tad smiles and points to his pack of cigarettes. “This is about as high as I get these days. What are
you
on?”

“No, no, not like that,” I say, laughing and shaking my head. “This, this right here is the highest I have ever been. Twenty-four floors. Before this, it was the top of our local bleachers. I was too scared to climb the water tower. There’s also this spot to jump off a cliff into a deep pond, but I’m not crazy enough to do it on account of the swimming rats. So this is definitely the highest I’ve been.”

“Pretty sick,” Tad exclaims as he looks around to take in the view for the first real time since we got up here. “I forget how amazing it is. It takes stopping for a moment to remember. So where exactly are you from? Not here obviously. Thankfully, our rats don’t swim.”

“Broken Spoke, Texas,” I respond softly.

Tad lights up his cigarette and blows the smoke into the night air. He hands one to me, and I wave it off. “You must know Rider then. He’s the newest guy in my band, Hipster Hat Trick. We picked up Rider from some of his YouTube clips. We try to get him to tell us about Texas, but he’s always saying how he doesn’t want to talk about the past. What are you doing in the city?”

“I’m in art school,” I say. I can feel my cheeks get rosé, the color of that gross wine downstairs.

“That’s cool,” Tad says and ashes off the building. I cross my fingers that he won’t ignite the entire city. “I love art, too, but I’m the equivalent of tone deaf when it comes to drawing, painting, really any of it. I do love looking at it. It helps with my music, so that’s why I’m always at MoMA. It inspires me to write. How’s school coming?”

“It’s been . . . ,” I say, slowly taking a breath and figuring out how to summarize my first two days at Parsons. “Interesting. First week is nudes. The professor totally did it to freak us out. Of course, I got the most up-close and personal seat. So my nudes are more of a zoom lens than a figure sketch if you know what I mean. Am I talking too much? Sorry. I talk a lot when I’m comfortable, which hasn’t happened much at this party,” I say and force myself to stop running my mouth. I wish I at least had a piece of gum to pop. That usually slows me down.

Tad smiles really big and takes the two steps between us. He puts his hands on my shoulders. He leans toward me, and I don’t lean away from him.

“I’m a native New Yorker, and I can assure you that we
all
talk a lot. We even speak with our hands. So never worry about talking too much here. And you,” he says, “are adorable.”

I step out of his grip. “My name is Kitsy, not adorable. I really can’t believe how people don’t use names in this city. ‘Not important,’ this girl Waverly said about her own doorman’s name when I asked her what it was earlier tonight. I mean, his job is to guard your building from this city, yet his name is unimportant?” I manage to stop my tirade. “Sorry, I told you I talk a lot.”

“Just makes you more adorable,” Tad says and tilts his head closer, just as I feel my pocket vibrate.

“Hold on a second.” I pull back quickly as the image of Hands texting me from the Spoke pops into my head. If it is Hands, I’m not sure if I feel relieved or upset. And that in itself scares me.

I look at my new text, and it’s not Hands. I exhale without realizing it.

Kiki: Call me . . . it’s Mom.

I feel my shoulders go limp, I take one last look at Tad and the view, and then I turn back to the stairs.

Tad’s in a band with Rider, who is Corrinne’s number one enemy. I have a boyfriend. Yet there’s something here making me want to stay.

But it doesn’t matter because I have to talk to Kiki.

“Sorry,” I call back over my shoulder. “I need to run.”

“Wait, Kitsy!” Tad exclaims. “The highest I’ve ever gone is the World Trade Center. You know . . . before it all happened.”

I have no idea how to respond, so I don’t say anything at all. I half smile and move to shut the door.

“Good night, Cinderella. This is the
second
time you’ve run away from me,” Tad calls out as I pull the door shut without a word.

I descend the stairs with one heel on and one heel in hand. Figuring no one cares, I don’t bother to say good-bye to anyone at the party and decide to just text Waverly that I had to leave early. Outside the building, I keep attempting to hail cabs that either already have passengers or whose drivers shout out “Off duty” through their windows as they speed by. Allegedly, there’s a signal for on, occupied, and off duty, but it’s basically impossible to determine which lights indicate what. They must teach Taxicab Light Systems in New York City schools. This is not intuitive.

When a doorman from a neighboring building notices my confusion, he walks over and helps me hail a cab. He looks down at my feet and asks, “Rough night?”

“It had some highlights,” I say, recalling the view—and re-meeting Tad.

I shouldn’t take a cab since they charge per second, but I can’t afford to get lost on the subway instead of talking to Kiki right away. I climb into the cab, wave good-bye to the doorman in shining armor, and dial Kiki’s number quickly.

“Kiki!” I exclaim before he even has time to say hello. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Kiki’s giggles erupt through the phone. “Nothing, I just wanted to let you know that I finished all my summer reading today. I think I’m a kid genius!”

“That’s great, Kiki,” I tell him because I do want to encourage him with his reading. “But why did you say it was Mom?”

“Because I know that you worry about her and that you’d call right away,” he answers and I slump back into the cushiony seat. Maybe Kiki
is
a prodigy. He sure is perceptive.