Because It Is My Blood

V I TAKE MY LEAVE

I SPENT THE NEXT FIVE DAYS handcuffed to a bed while I planned my escape from Liberty. In the hospital, my visitors weren’t really restricted and this came in incredibly handy. Someday, I would have to thank whoever had poisoned me. Perhaps someday, I would. (Yes, readers, I had been poisoned and, had I had the time to reflect on the matter at all, the source would have been completely obvious.)

My time was spent in the following manner: Tuesday morning, the first person who came to visit was Yuji Ono. “How is your heart?” he asked by way of greeting.

“Still beating,” I told him. “I thought you were meant to be gone on Monday.”

“I found reason to extend my stay.” He bowed, then genuflected by the side of my bed so that his lips landed by my ear. He whispered, “Simon Green tells me that you wish to leave New York. This is good. I think you should go somewhere you can learn the business.”

“I can’t go to Japan,” I said.

“I know that, though for my own reasons, I wish it were otherwise. I think I have an alternative for you. Sophia Bitter’s family has a cacao farm on the west coast of Mexico. You will be able to take a boat there and the connection to Balanchine Chocolate is not so obvious that anyone will think to look for you.”

“Mexico,” I said. “I’m a city girl, Yuji.” A Mexican farm sounded so far from everything and everyone I had ever known.

“Don’t you think your father would have wanted you to see where cacao is grown?” Yuji asked.

I had no idea what Daddy would have wanted and I wasn’t even sure that I cared.

“Would you yourself not like to know what the source of all this misery is?” Yuji waved his gloved hand around the gray hospital room.

I told him I had never thought much about it.

“Do you trust me, Anya?” He took my handcuffed hand. “Do you believe that I, of all people, want what is best for you?”

I thought about this. Yes, I decided, I did trust him as much as I trusted anyone.

“I trust you,” I said.

“Then know I do not say this lightly when I tell you that this is where I want you to go. You will be better able to run Balanchine Chocolate someday if you know a bit about how cacao is grown. And this will make you a superior partner for me. A superior business partner, I mean.” He dropped my hand and moved in even closer to me. “Don’t be frightened, Anya.”

“I’m not.” I looked him in the eye. “Nothing frightens me anymore, Yuji.”

“The warmth and sunshine will be good for you, and you will not be lonely, as Sophia’s family is very kind. If it matters to you, it will be easy for me to invent reasons to come and see you.”

What difference did it make where I went, really? I was leaving the only home I had ever known. “I don’t speak Spanish,” I said with a sigh. I had taken Mandarin and Latin in school.

“Many people will speak English there,” Yuji said.

And so it was decided. I would take my leave in the predawn hours of Sunday morning.

Tuesday afternoon brought Scarlet and she was crying again. I told her that if she wept every time she saw me, I wouldn’t want her to come anymore. She sniffled and declared dramatically, “I’ve had to end things with Gable!”

“Scarlet, I’m sorry,” I said. “What happened?”

She held up her slate. On the screen was the picture of Win and me in the dining hall underneath the headline Charles Delacroix had shown me two days earlier: “Charles Delacroix’s Mob Connections.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Annie. Gable took this picture, and worse, he sold it!”

“What do you mean?”

“He got a long-lens camera phone for his eighteenth birthday,” Scarlet began. (NB: You may recall that minors weren’t allowed to have camera phones.) “And when I saw the picture yesterday morning, I knew someone from our school had taken it. And I doubted it was one of the teachers, so that only left the kids over eighteen. I turned to Gable. ‘Who would do such a thing to Annie?’ I asked. ‘Who would be so low? Doesn’t she have it hard enough?’ And he wouldn’t really answer me. And I knew, I just knew! And then I pushed him as hard as I could. So hard he lost his balance and fell to the ground. And I stood over him, screaming, ‘Why?’ And he’s saying, ‘I love you, Scarlet. Don’t do this!’ And I’m like, ‘Answer the question, Gable. Just tell me why.’ And finally, he sighs, and he says it wasn’t anything against you or Win. He’d done it for the money. Someone had approached him weeks ago, saying they would pay big bucks if he could deliver a picture of Anya Balanchine and Win Delacroix in a compromising situation. And then Gable tried to justify his actions by saying that you owed him this money because of how much he’d lost because of you, like his foot and his good looks and such. And then he said someone else would have taken that picture anyway, if not him.”

At this point, Scarlet started to cry again. “I feel like such an incredible fool, Annie!”

I told her that it wasn’t her fault. “I wonder how much money he got.”

“I don’t know. But I hate him. I hate him so much!” She was by the door, bent over and sobbing. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t have much mobility on account of the handcuffs.

“Scarlet, come over here.”

“I can’t. I disgust myself. I let that snake back into your life. You warned me about him. I just never thought you would be the one to get hurt.”

“The truth is, Scarlet, I shouldn’t have let myself get into that situation with Win.”

“What situation? You were eating lunch.” Scarlet always took my side in everything.

“Win shouldn’t have taken my hand, and I shouldn’t have let him. I should probably never have gone back to Trinity either. And Gable is right about one thing. Someone else would have taken that picture, trust me. It was coming with or without Gable Arsley’s involvement. Someday, I’ll be able to explain all of it better.”

Scarlet approached my bedside. “You have to know I had nothing to do with this.”

“Scarlet, I wouldn’t even think that!”

She lowered her voice. “I never told him about what we did for Leo.”

“I didn’t think you would have.”

Scarlet smiled weakly. Suddenly, she ran across the little hospital room to the bathroom, where she threw up. I heard the toilet flush and the water come on. “I think I’m getting the flu,” she reported once she’d returned.

“You should go home,” I told her.

“I’ll come see you as soon as I’m feeling better. I love you, Annie. I’d kiss you but I don’t want to get you sick.”

“I don’t care. Kiss me anyway,” I said. In case she didn’t make it back to Liberty before Sunday, I wanted to know that we had said a proper goodbye.

“Okay, Annie. As you like it.”

She kissed me, and I grabbed her hand. “Don’t blame yourself for any of this, Scarlet. I am only sorry that the tragedies that dog me have caused you grief, too. What I said after the party … You really have been the most loyal and true friend anyone could ever ask for. When I think about these last couple of years, I can’t even imagine how bleak things might have gotten for me without you.”

Scarlet flushed the color of her name. She nodded, and then she was gone.

The rest of the week passed quickly, with visits from just about everyone and with plans for my escape.

By Thursday, Simon Green and I had settled the arrangements. I was to be released from the hospital on Sunday morning. On Saturday night / early Sunday morning, well after the last nurse had checked on me, I was to get out of my bed and improvise a way out of the hospital, then past the fence that encircled Liberty Island. At that point, a rowboat would transfer me to Ellis Island. On Ellis Island, I was to be met by another boat that would take me to Newark Bay, where I would take a shipping vessel to the west coast of Mexico. In the morning, when the nurses came to transfer me back to the dormitory at Liberty, I would be long gone.

Simon had left me with a copy of the handcuff key, which I stuffed into the side of the mattress under the sheet. The only thing we hadn’t figured out was how I was to get past the guards at the end of the hallway. “Do you have anyone here who can provide a distraction of some sort?” Simon Green asked. Reluctantly, I thought of Mouse and her assertion to me that she could do “hard things.” Even though I needed her help, I didn’t want her to get into more trouble on my account, and yet I lacked other options.

I got a message to her to come see me, and that afternoon, she did. She had a black eye. I asked her what had happened.

She shrugged. Then wrote, Elbow to the face. Rinko.

I told her what I needed. She nodded. Then she nodded some more before putting pencil to pad. I’ll come up with something. I am honored that u came to me, A.

“Once I’m gone, they’ll probably figure out you helped me. You understand that means you won’t get out in November, right?”

I do. Don’t care. Nowhere to go. Better to have friends in a year or 2 than b friendless, homeless, & penniless in Nov.

“I feel selfish asking you to help me,” I said. “Asking you to stay here longer when I’m trying to avoid the same thing.”

Mouse shrugged again. Our situations are diff. I am a criminal. U are a name. Besides, they are stupid here & they might not figure it out & then u will owe me anyway. I will bet on u, if u will bet on me. Around 2 a.m., right?

“Yes. Go see my lawyer Simon Green when you’re free. He will help you with whatever you need.”

She made an “okay” sign.

“Thank you, Kate,” I said.

She bowed, then slipped out of the room. No one had seen her come in, and no one had seen her leave. I wondered if I could count on a girl so quiet to make enough of a distraction.

Saturday morning, Natty and Imogen came to see me. They knew nothing of my plans, and so I tried to keep the mood light. I did hug Natty extra tight. Who knew when I’d be able to see her again.

Simon Green and I had decided that I shouldn’t have any visitors in the afternoon. I needed to rest for the long night ahead.

Still, I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious and I couldn’t even walk around to calm myself. I was starting to wish we hadn’t told everyone not to come.

I looked at the clock. It was 5:00. Visitors weren’t allowed after 6:00 anyway.

I closed my eyes.

I had fallen into a sort of half sleep when someone came into the room.

I rolled over. A tall boy with longish blond dreadlocks and thick black glasses. I didn’t recognize him until he spoke. “Annie,” Win said.

“You look ridiculous,” I told him, but I couldn’t help smiling. “Where’s your cane?”

He walked over to me, and I struggled to sit up in bed and tugged at his ropy wig.

“I didn’t want anyone to figure out who I was.”

“You didn’t want to make things worse for your father.”

“I didn’t want to make things worse for you!” He lowered his voice. “Dad said you were being transferred from the hospital tomorrow. That if I insisted on seeing you, today would be the best day. And that if I needed to behave so foolishly, I should at least wear a disguise. Thus, the wig.”

I shook my head and wondered how many of my plans Charles Delacroix had guessed. “Why would he do that?”

“My father is a mystery.”

He pulled a stool over to the bed. He rubbed at his hip.

“Arsley was the one who took the picture,” I told him.

“I know,” Win said, bowing his head. “I shouldn’t have done that. Taken your hand, I mean. Not in such a public place.” As he said this, he stroked my fingertips with his own.

“You couldn’t have known how it would all turn out.”

“I did know, Annie. I did. I had been warned. By my father. By my father’s campaign manager. By Alison Wheeler. By you, even. I didn’t care.”

“What do you mean, ‘by Alison Wheeler’?”

Win looked at me. “Anya, haven’t you guessed?”

I shook my head.

“I was the one who asked Alison to go to you in the library.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Well, she didn’t want to but she knew I wanted to be near you. And I convinced her that lunch would be safe enough since Arsley and Scarlet and Alison would be there, too.”

I was still confused. “Why would your girlfriend do that?”

“Anya! Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect!”

“Suspect what?”

“Alison is my friend but she also works for my father’s campaign. They asked her if she would pretend to be my girlfriend during the campaign season so it would appear that I had put my relationship with Anya Balanchine—you—behind me. It was July—we weren’t together—and, despite everything, I wanted to help my father. How could I say no? He is my father, Anya. I love him. As I love you.”

Had Anya Balanchine—me—not been handcuffed to the bed, she would have run out of the room. I felt like my brain was exploding and my heart, too. He reached over the bed rail and wiped my cheek with his sleeve. I suppose I was crying.

“You really didn’t suspect?”

I shook my head. My throat was thick and useless. “I thought you had tired of me,” I said in a voice about as intelligible as my uncle Yuri’s.

“Annie,” he said. “Annie, that could never happen.”

“We won’t see each other for a really long time,” I whispered.

“I know,” Win whispered back. “Dad told me that might be the case.”

“It could be years.”

“I’ll wait,” he said.

“I don’t want you to,” I told him.

“There’s never been anyone else for me but you.” He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching us. He leaned over the bed and put his hand on the back of my head. “I love your hair,” he said.

“I’m cutting it all off.” Simon Green and I had thought I would be less recognizable when I was traveling without my mane. Shears would be waiting for me on Ellis Island.

“That’s a shame. I’m glad I don’t have to see that.” He pulled my head closer to him and then he kissed me, and even though it was probably pressing my luck, I kissed him again.

“How can I stay in touch with you?” he asked.

I thought about this. E-mail wasn’t safe. I couldn’t give him the address of the cacao farm, even if I knew it. Maybe Yuji Ono could deliver a letter to me. “In a month or two, go to Simon Green. He’ll know how to get to me. Don’t go through Mr. Kipling.”

Win nodded. “Will you write me?”

“I’ll try,” I told him.

He reached over the bed rail and set his hand on my heart. “The news said this almost stopped.”

“Sometimes I wish it would. What good is it, you know?”

Win shook his head. “Don’t say that.”

“Of all the boyfriends in the world, you are the least suitable one I could have picked.”

“Same to you. Only girlfriend, I mean.”

He rested his head on my chest and we were quiet until the time for visiting was over.

As Win walked to the door, he adjusted his absurd wig.

“If you meet someone, I’ll understand,” I told him. We were seventeen years old, for God’s sake, and our future was uncertain. “We shouldn’t make any promises that are too hard to keep.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I’m trying to,” I said.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

I thought about this. “Maybe check in on Natty every now and again. She adores you and I know she’ll be lonely without me.”

“I can do that.”

And then he was gone.

All I had left to do was wait.

Around 1:55 a.m., I heard nurses and guards running down the hallway. I called out to one of the nurses. “What’s happened?” I asked.

“There’s been a fight in the girls’ dormitory,” she told me. “They’re bringing over a half dozen badly injured girls. I have to go!”

I nodded. Thank you, Mouse. I prayed she wasn’t too hurt.

It was time. I slipped the key out of the mattress and unlocked the handcuff. My wrist was sore, but there was no time for that. Shoeless and still dressed in an open-backed hospital gown, I walked down the hallway and slipped through the door marked Fire Stairs. I ran down the stairs with legs stiff from the prior week’s inactivity. On the ground floor, I poked my head out into the hallway. A guard was directing gurneys down the corridor. It was now or never but I didn’t know how to get past the exit without being observed by the guards or the girls on the gurneys. From one of the gurneys, Mouse poked her head up. She had two black eyes, a gash on her forehead, and her nose looked like it might be broken. With her less swollen eye, she looked at me. I waved. She nodded and mouthed something that looked like “Now.” A second later, she screamed. I had never even heard Mouse’s voice before and here she was screaming for me. Mouse’s body began to writhe and convulse. Her arms flailed in a seemingly random pattern, but from my vantage point I could see her design. Mouse was managing to strike the other girls and anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity.

“This girl is having a seizure!” a guard called.

As all attention turned to Mouse, I was able to slip past everyone.

I ran outside on bare feet. It was late October now and maybe 50° out but I barely noticed the cold. I had to get to the gate. Simon Green had promised to bribe the guard who watched the gate, but just in case, he had given me a syringe with one dose of tranquilizer at the same time as he’d given me the handcuff key. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the syringe, but if I did, I knew to aim for the neck.

I ran through a dark patch of grass, trying not to wince as burrs pierced my feet.

Finally I reached the cobblestoned driveway that led to the gate. Someone had left the gate wide open. I looked in the guard’s station. No one was there. Perhaps Simon’s bribe had worked or maybe the guard had simply been called to the girls’ dormitory.

I was almost to the shore when a voice called my name. “Anya Balanchine!”

I turned. It was Mrs. Cobrawick.

“Anya Balanchine, stop!”

I debated whether to run back and try to tranquilize her or just take my chances and keep moving forward. I looked up and down the shoreline. The rowboat that was to take me to Ellis Island wasn’t there yet, and I must confess that the idea of tranquilizing that woman appealed to me.

I turned around. Mrs. Cobrawick was running toward me. I heard the sizzle of a Taser.

“Stop!”

Her Taser would trump my syringe.

I started running for the water.

“You’ll drown!” Mrs. Cobrawick yelled. “You’ll freeze to death! You’ll get lost! Anya, it isn’t worth it! You think you’re in a desperate situation, but all of it can still be worked out.”

I could see the floodlights of Ellis Island. I knew that it was over a half mile away, and having lived in a time of extreme water restrictions, I was not the most experienced swimmer. I knew enough about swimming to know that a mile in the water was going to feel like ten miles on land. But what choice did I have? It was now or never.

I dove.

Just before my head hit the water, I thought I heard Mrs. Cobrawick wish me luck.

The water was freezing. I could feel my lungs constrict.

The way my hospital gown was billowing out, it felt like it was drowning me. I untied it. With nothing but underwear on, I started to swim in the darkness.

I tried to remember everything I had ever read or heard about swimming. Breathing was important. Keeping water out of your lungs. Swimming straight, too. Nothing else was coming to mind. Hadn’t Daddy ever said anything about swimming? He’d said something about every other subject in the world.

I ignored the cold.

I ignored my lungs and my heart.

I ignored my aching limbs.

And I swam.

Breathe, Anya. Go straight. I kept repeating this to myself as I paddled my arms forward and kicked my legs.

I was almost three-quarters of the way to Ellis Island and completely exhausted when Daddy’s voice popped into my head. I don’t know if this was something he’d actually said to me or if I was just losing my mind. What the voice said was: “If someone throws you in the pool, Annie, the only thing to do is try not to drown.”

Swim.

Breathe.

Don’t drown.

Swim.

Breathe.

Don’t drown.

And what felt like an hour later, I was there.

I coughed when I hit the rocks. But I had to keep going. At this point, I knew I was probably behind schedule and I didn’t want to miss my second boat. I used my rubbery arms to scale the rocky cliff. I could feel my limbs and naked stomach getting cut on the sharp stones, but somehow I made it.

When I tried to stand, my legs were slick and useless. There was a sick, wet feeling in my throat and lungs. And yet I was alive. I ran across the shore until I found the boat that would deliver me—a motorboat with the name The Sea Quill painted on the side.

The sailor averted his eyes upon seeing my partial nudity. “Sorry, miss. There’re clothes for you in the bag. I didn’t know you’d come upon me nekkid, though.”

The sailor started the boat and we headed for New Jersey. “Worried we missed each other,” the sailor said. “I was about to leave.”

In the canvas bag that had been provided for me, I found boys’ clothing—a dress shirt, a newsboy cap, a pair of gray pants with suspenders, and an overcoat—and then I found a large piece of gauze, a pair of round spectacles, a fake ID for one Adam Barnum, some money, a mustache and spirit gum, and finally, a pair of scissors. I put on the clothes first. I twirled my hair into a bun and concealed it under the newsboy cap. It didn’t feel right. I asked the sailor if he had a mirror. He nodded toward the cabin down below. I descended, taking the scissors, the gauze, and the mustache with me.

The illumination in the cabin consisted of a single bulb, and the mirror was only six inches in diameter and pitted from the sea air. Still, it would have to do. I applied the spirit gum to my upper lip and stuck on the mustache. I looked less like myself, but I could still see that my current disguise was unconvincing. The hair would have to go.

I spread out the bag so that it would catch the clippings. I rarely had my hair cut, and I had certainly never cut it myself. I thought of Win’s hands on my head, but only for a second. There was no time for sentimentality. I picked up the scissors and in less than three minutes all I had left was one inch of wavy hair. My skull and neck felt naked and cold. I looked at myself in the mirror. My head looked too round and my eyes too large, and if anything, I looked more babyish. I donned the hat again. The hat, I felt, was going to be key.

In the hat, I did not look like Anya Balanchine. And if I squinted I could even see where I looked a bit like my brother.

I tried on the glasses. Better.

I backed up in an attempt to see more of myself in the tiny mirror.

The clothes were boyish enough, but something was off.

Ah, breasts.

I unbuttoned my shirt so that I could wrap the gauze tight around my chest—the bandage stung against the places where the rocks had lacerated my skin—and then I buttoned myself back in.

I studied myself.

The effect was not awful, but it disturbed me. It might seem silly, but I had spent most of my life as someone people had called pretty. I was no longer “pretty.” I was not even handsome. I was somewhere between homely and ordinary. I thought I would pass as—what was my new name?—Adam Barnum.

I wondered if I should keep this up the whole time I was in Mexico or if I should only try to do this while I was in the process of escaping. I suspected the disguise worked best if you didn’t consider me too closely.

I climbed the ladder back up to the main deck. I threw my hair clippings overboard.

Upon seeing me, the sailor started. He picked up his gun.

“Captain, don’t shoot. It’s just me.”

“My word, I didn’t recognize you! You were such an attractive little thing ten minutes ago and now you’re plain as mud.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I crossed my arms over my chest.

At Newark Bay, there were hundreds of shipping containers and boats. For a second, fatigue set in, and I despaired of being able to find the right ship. But then I remembered Simon Green’s instructions—row three, cargo ship eleven—and I quickly found the shipping vessel that was supposed to take me to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, on the west coast of Mexico.

Simon Green and I had decided on the shipping vessel for three reasons: (1) because the authorities, if they bothered to look for me, would probably go to the airports, the train stations, or even the passenger-ship docks, (2) because my family had many connections with exporters, which made it easy to find a shipping vessel that would harbor me, and (3) security was notoriously lax on cargo ships—I kept my head down and no one even asked to see Adam Barnum’s ID.

The only problem with this plan was that a passenger on a cargo ship was basically cargo. The first mate pointed me to a room set up in an opened rusty metal container with a cot and a bucket and a box of old-looking fruit—still, it was fruit!—and no windows.

“Not exactly luxury,” she said.

I took in the room. It looked slightly more commodious than the Cellar at Liberty.

The first mate eyed me suspiciously. “Have you no luggage?”

I lowered my voice to what I thought was a plausibly boyish register and informed her that my things had been shipped in advance. They hadn’t, by the way. I was a person without a single possession.

“What takes you to Mexico, Mr. Barnum?”

“I’m a student naturalist. There are more plant species in Oaxaca than anywhere else in the world.” Or so Simon Green had told me.

She nodded. “This boat doesn’t actually have docking privileges in Puerto Escondido,” she told me. “But I’ll have the captain stop the boat and one of my crew will row you the rest of the way there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“The journey to Oaxaca is about thirty-four hundred nautical miles, and assuming a vessel pace of fourteen knots, we should be there in approximately ten days. Hope you don’t get seasick.”

I had never been on an extensive sea journey so I didn’t yet know if I was prone to seasickness.

“We should depart in about forty-five minutes. Gets pretty boring out there, Mr. Barnum. If you want to come play cards with us, we do Hearts in the captain’s quarters every evening.”

As you might expect, I did not know the rules to Hearts, but I told her I would try to play.

As soon as she was gone, I closed the door to my container and lay down on the cot. Though I was exhausted, I could not sleep. I kept waiting for the sirens that meant I would be discovered and returned to Liberty.

Finally, I heard the ship’s horn. We were leaving! I lay my shorn head on the flat bag of feathers that must have once been a pillow and quickly fell asleep.