“Girl,” the guard said, “if you don’t stand up, I will knock you out and carry you myself.”
I clasped my hands. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” I was begging now. “I can’t.” I grasped the guard’s leg. I was past having dignity.
“Assistance!” the guard called. “Prisoner is noncompliant!”
A second later, I felt a syringe go into the side of my neck. I did not pass out, but my mind went blank, and it felt as if my troubles were behind me. The guard tossed me over her shoulder like I weighed nothing and carried me down the three flights of stairs. I barely felt it when she placed me in the kennel. The cage door had only just closed when I finally did lose consciousness.
When I awoke, every part of me hurt, and my school uniform was ominously damp.
Outside my tiny cage, I could see a pair of crossed legs in expensive wool pants attached to a pair of feet in recently shined shoes. I wondered if I was hallucinating—I had never known there to be any lights in the Cellar. A flashlight beam moved toward me. “Anya Balanchine,” Charles Delacroix greeted me. “I’ve been waiting near ten minutes for you to wake up. I’m a very busy man, you know. Dismal place here. I’ll have to remember to have it shut down.”
My throat was dry, probably from whatever drug they’d given me. “What time is it?” I rasped. “What day is it?”
He pushed a thermos through the bars, and I drank greedily.
“Two a.m.,” he told me. “Sunday.”
I had been asleep almost twenty hours.
“Are you the reason I’m here?” I asked.
“You give me too much credit. How about my son? Or you yourself? Or the stars? Or your precious Jesus Christ? You’re a Catholic, are you not?”
I did not reply.
Charles Delacroix yawned.
“Long hours?” I asked.
“Very.”
“Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule,” I said sarcastically.
“All right, Anya, you and I have always been able to be candid with each other, so here it is,” Charles Delacroix began. He took a slate out of his pocket and turned it on. He turned it toward me. The photograph was of Win and me in the Trinity cafeteria. Win was holding my hand across the table. It had been taken Friday. How long had he held my hand? Less than two seconds before I had pulled away.
“It isn’t what it looks like,” I said. “Win was shaking my hand. We’re trying to be … friends, I guess. It wasn’t even a moment.”
“I do believe you, but unfortunately for both of us, this indiscretion was long enough for someone to get a picture,” Charles Delacroix said. “On Monday, a news story will run with this picture and the headline ‘Charles Delacroix’s Mob Connections: Who He Knows and What That Means to Voters.’ Needless to say, this is not ideal for me. Or for you.”
Yes, I could see that.
“That generous, anonymous donation to Trinity—”
“I had nothing to do with it!”
“Anya, I already know that. Haven’t you ever suspected who did make that donation, though?”
I shook my head. My neck was sore where they had injected me. “The truth is, Mr. Delacroix, I didn’t care. I just wanted to go back to school. I tried to find another school, but none would have me with the weapons charges.”
Charles Delacroix clucked sympathetically. “Our system does make it challenging for parolees to follow the straight and narrow.”
“Who did make the donation?” I asked.
“The donation was made by”—he paused for dramatic effect—“the Friends of Bertha Sinclair.”
“Bertha Sinclair?” The name was familiar, and had my head not been pounding, I might even have been able to place it.
“Oh, Anya, I’m terribly disappointed. Aren’t you following the campaign at all? Ms. Bertha Sinclair is the Independent Party candidate for district attorney. She might even beat me the way things are going.”
“Good.”
“It hurts me to hear you say that. Now you’re just being cruel,” Charles Delacroix said.
“Which of us is the one in a kennel not even fit for a dog?”
“But back to the Friends of Bertha Sinclair. Lovely Bertha’s campaign first started gaining some real momentum after that unfortunate bus accident. Glad to see you’re well, by the way. And do you happen to know from whence this momentum came?”
I nodded slowly. It was as Mr. Kipling had said. “Because the news linked your name and mine and Win’s all over again. And our relationship makes you seem corrupt. And you are supposed to be Mr. Incorruptible.”
“Bingo. You are the cleverest seventeen-year-old I know. And so those Friends of Bertha Sinclair, not being a stupid lot, came up with a plan that would throw you and my hapless boy together again. They were just waiting for pictures of the two of you. A kiss. A date. But you and Win didn’t deliver those so they took what they could get. A second of indiscretion when Win grabbed your hand across a lunch table.”
My cheeks burned with the memory. I was grateful for the low light.
“I am, frankly, amazed he resisted that long. Win is not known for his restraint. The boy is his mother—all heart, no sense. Alexa, his sister, she was the one like me. Brave and sensible. She was like you, too. Probably why the boy finds you so compelling, actually.”
I said nothing.
“So, to conclude. Every time the story of you and Win is reported, the media gets to imply I’m corrupt and the Sinclair people don’t have to say a darn thing.”
“But it’s over now,” I protested. “The picture runs tomorrow. And that’s the end of it. You’ll take a small hit and then everyone will forget about it.”
“No, Anya. It’s only the beginning. They will wait for you every day after school. They will try to get pictures of you in class. Your peers, because they are young and thoughtless, will find ways to provide them. Win won’t even have to be holding your hand for them to run this same story. He can be standing near you. He can be reported to be in the same building as you. This picture is a game changer, don’t you see?”
“But Win has a girlfriend! Can’t you just tell them that?”
“They’ll say that pictures don’t lie and that Alison Wheeler is a ringer.”
“A ringer?”
“A fake. A fraud. Someone my campaign has employed to make it look like you’re not with Win.”
“But I’m not with Win!”
“I believe you. And if the polls were better…” Charles Delacroix looked at me with tired eyes. “I’ve thought about what to do, and I could only come up with one thing that puts an end to this story.”
“Throwing me back in here? But I didn’t violate our agreement! And you can’t lock someone up for dating your son. I’ll have Mr. Kipling go to the media, and you’ll look like a monster.”
Charles Delacroix seemed not to have heard me. “But you have broken several laws since getting out of Liberty, haven’t you?”
He turned his slate toward me. First, a picture of me bartering with chocolate in Union Square. Then, a picture of me drinking coffee at Fats’s. Finally, a picture of me getting out of Yuji Ono’s car. The photo was time-stamped, 12:25 a.m. Past curfew, in other words. All of these were minor infractions. Unfortunately, I was sitting across from the King of Enforcing Minor Infractions.
“You’ve been having me followed!”
“I needed insurance in case you didn’t honor our arrangement. You are, rightly or wrongly, considered a delinquent. And, as you well know, the light, three-month sentence you received only holds if you don’t continue in your delinquency. If I put you in Liberty for a year, say, it solves two of my problems. No one can say I showed you favoritism, and no more stories about you and Win.”