“I doubt you,” KK says. “Does that mean you’re getting rid of me?”
Caspian nods. “Absolutely.”
KK sighs. “Kicked to the curb by a sock! I guess that’s what it’s come to.” She glares at Ilsa. “There—I tried something different. Happy? Never again.”
“You really can’t pin this one on me,” Ilsa replies flatly.
“Why not? But I digress—your widdle bwother asked a question, and it would be rude for me not to answer.”
I try to tell her she doesn’t need to bother, but she shushes me.
“Oh no! This is all so very interesting. Do you know what I learned? I learned that leaving is bullshit. Because you always take yourself wherever you go.”
“What a revelatory thought!” Parker interrupts. “I think you might be the first person to ever discover that.”
“All I’m saying, Sam, is that the problem isn’t here—the problem is you. Say what you want—I have everything I need in this city. I don’t need to go anywhere.”
“Because you have money,” Parker points out.
“Yes, because I have money.”
“What about the rest of us?” Parker asks.
“Well, I’d suggest you get more money.”
“That’s not helpful,” Parker says.
“Actually, I think it is,” Li puts in. “It just goes to show why you need to leave your fortress every so often. Otherwise you can be tricked into thinking it’s the whole world.”
“What?” KK asks with mock innocence. “It isn’t?”
“Build a wall!” Parker says. “That’s the way to do it! Build a wall around your comfort zone so you never have to leave it! Build a wall between yourself and the things that scare you the most, the things you don’t want to look at. Oh, and while you’re at it, build a wall to hide the things that scare you the most about yourself—that way, you’ll never have to look at them! Build a wall to keep your friends trapped with you, even though—I have a little secret for you, KK—they always find a way to leave, don’t they?”
KK doesn’t launch a counterattack. She doesn’t laugh at him. She doesn’t say anything. She’s silent, trying to stare him down, then looking to Ilsa for support that Ilsa doesn’t give.
Parker turns to me. “This is your chance,” he says. “You’ve never had a chance before to make your own way, not like this, not a completely blank slate. Just go for it. What you did to that glass—it can’t be undone. But heading off somewhere when you’re eighteen—that’s not necessarily permanent. You’re not choosing a path, just a few steps. And you go from there. We’re all improvising to some degree. But you have to leave the house to find a path.”
I wish he hadn’t mentioned the glass, because now I am feeling sorry about the glass.
I turn to Ilsa. “How about you? What are your thoughts on the matter?”
I’m asking her thoughts because I can tell there are plenty of them going on in her head at the moment. I can tell she’s quiet not because she’s disengaged, but because she’s fully engaged. I want to know what those thoughts are. Because I want her to find an escape route, too. Not the same escape route—I know that. But any escape route.
“You want me to tell you how to leave?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head. “What do I know about leaving, Sam? The only times I’ve left, I’ve been with you.”
My instinct is to say, That’s not true. But when I think about it…is it possible that it’s true? Except for that separation at camp—is it possible that every time we’ve left the fortress, we’ve done it with each other? I’ve had a solo trip or two—but Czarina’s never been one to give Ilsa a solo trip just because I got one. (Especially not if one of the “trips” was to get help.) Even the excursions within New York have felt like joint excursions. Like the time we went down to this club to see Rufus Wainwright sing from the Arthur Russell songbook (my choice), and when I went to the unisex bathroom, I found written on the stall, Sam, if this is what it’s like to go south of Houston, let’s just stay uptown and order in. Or the time she wanted to go to Queens to see some Christmas decorations and I decided it would be better to have a Bring Your Own Light dinner party, and create our own display. Because Queens was far, and it was cold out.
When Maddy let slip that Ilsa was going to be her new live-in nanny, at first I was jealous—not that I wanted to spend any more time with Maddy, but that Ilsa had found an angle that would allow her to stay. But the more I thought about it, the more depressing it felt. I wanted to call Ilsa on it, to tell her she was sacrificing her future to cling to her past. Then I imagined her lobbing the same accusation my way…and I couldn’t think of an effective way to deny it. It would have been one thing to stay in Manhattan to study music. But to stay in Manhattan because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to be…that, I see now, is not a great plan.
I really wanted this party to be our last hurrah, for it to make me ready to pack up and go. I guess, without admitting it to myself, I invited Jason to help me say goodbye to the past, Parker to help my sister say goodbye to the past, and Johan to help me see what could be up with the future. Only…it’s not as simple as that. Caspian’s right, in a way—things can only be as simple as the emotions we bring to them.
“We’re on the cusp,” I tell Ilsa. “Don’t you want there to be something different on the other side?” Then I worry I’ve made it sound like we both have an appointment with
