PartOne
Prologue
Betty
December 13th
Betty didn’t mindworking the dead shifts while the Columbia students were all huddled in their libraries studying for finals. Graveyard slots meant she got paid time and a half, and frankly, she liked being unbothered. Also, she planned to quit next week, with the money she had earned from the laundry detergent commercial safely in her bank account. It had been a risk, the commercial, but she could dye her hair, get some colored contacts, find a way to blend into the New York City masses now that it aired, and the paycheck had been worth it. It was nearly time to move on. She’d been here for two years, too long really, and she knew she’d probably been lulled into a false sense of security. Not that there was any other sense of security for her. But she had to admit, even if it was just to herself, how comfortable her new little tribe had made her; how maybe this was something akin to happiness, not being so entirely on her own, not being so wholly anonymous.
Tonight, she sent the line cook home at one thirtya.m.because he had a kid who would wake him up in about five hours,and if anyone came in and ordered something she didn’t know how to make, she’d just lie and tell them they’d sold out tonight. She preferred being alone anyway, even if that, too, like the commercial, was a risk. But with four years behind her since she left, she’d learned to rely on her instincts, and in this diner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where her bleached blonde hair and hipsterish clothing helped her blend in, she felt safe. Well, safe enough.
She grabbed the Lysol spray and a rag from the supply closet and wiped down the tables. She worked in silence, eschewing the Christmas music that they had to start playing the day after Thanksgiving when the diner was busy because she hated Christmas music and barely tolerated Christmas. Growing up, her mother decorated the outside of their house as if she were Michelangelo and their ranch home were the Sistine Chapel. Not that Betty had ever been to Italy. Not that she had ever studied art. She thought of her brother Levi, how he had traveled the country from tip to toe, and felt a palpable pang at the distance between them. Anyway, back then, the exterior of their home sucked up enough electricity to nearly blow the local power grid. Of course, no one within the community would dare complain to Betty’s dad. They probably didn’t even bill him. Or if they did, he probably never paid it. Everyone was in his debt in one way or the other. Ironically, his church, not their house, did indeed eventually blow. No one decorated Betty’s childhood home now.
It had started to snow, so Betty eased into the booth she was cleaning and allowed herself to appreciate the beauty of the fat flakes illuminated by the streetlights, of the way that the city actually felt still, silent. She’d come to New York after a stint in Baltimore, then Philadelphia, without a plan, without much of anything, and it was nice, she thought, to have a quiet momentto appreciate that she was still on her feet. She checked her phone to see if Caleb had texted, but he worked around the clock and usually turned his phone off while doing so, so she couldn’t be disappointed. Low expectations. Betty had settled into those.
She jolted at a loud clatter coming from the alley behind the back door where the line cook went to smoke. Her heart rate accelerated out of habit, but she reminded herself that it was probably just the rats who were on a nightly buffet schedule by the dumpsters. She pressed her palms flat against the table and pushed herself up. She knew she shouldn’t feed them, but part of her pitied the family of rodents who dwelled back there. In this weather, the least she could do was give them some leftovers. There was expired bread in the pantry that the line cook would toast to seem less stale for customers, so she grabbed the bag.
Betty unbolted the back door, and the frigid air blew in, her entire body turning to gooseflesh. She’d expected to see the garbage cans knocked over or some wee rat footprints in the snow, but the trash cans were upright, and the flakes hadn’t yet stuck back here, so that was no help. She slipped outside, then crouched down, looking for the little family. But the alley was hushed.
She laughed aloud, because not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
A memory of her sister easing out of her own bed and into Betty’s one Christmas Eve—how old was she? Eight? Patience, then maybe seventeen, still lived at home, so Betty couldn’t have been older. She remembered the two of them listing all the things they hoped to unwrap under their tree the next morning. A delusion. A fantasy. But at eight, Betty hadn’t yet stopped dreaming.
Patience wanted a science kit, one of those make-your-own-battery things, because she was a closet nerd and, in a different life, aspired to go to college to become a doctor. Betty wanted some jeans and hoodies from a boutique at the mall, clothes that the other third graders were wearing, because she resented having to always wear woolly, itchy dresses. Neither of them would find such gifts the next morning.
She reached into the bag of bread and grabbed a slice, tearing it into morsels and scattering them on the concrete.
“Bon appétit,” she said to the nonexistent rats. They’d come out eventually.
Maybe she could go to Paris next, she thought. Though she needed a passport for that, so it was probably out of the question.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Sybil.
“Hey, Sybil, still up?” Betty watched the mist from her breath disappear into the air. Of course Sybil was still up. Betty angled her neck, heard a vertebra pop. Her body felt about a hundred years old from the lack of sleep, slow and creaky and worn down, all an injustice upon her youth.
“Betty,” Sybil said, her voice serious and shaking. Betty had never seen or heard Sybil anything less than stalwart, less than unflappable.
A long pause hung between them. Betty wondered if the line had been disconnected.
“Hello? Sybil? Are you still there?” She squinted down the alley. Where had the rats disappeared to?
“Something’s happened to Julian.” Sybil’s voice cratered.
Alarm rocked Betty’s gut, and her fingers clutching the phone began to tremble. She held a hand up against the exterior of the building as if she were propping herself up. She breathed in, breathed out. She could handle difficult things. She’dhandleddifficult things, but that didn’t mean she had the spine tohandle any more. She was so tired. Just so fucking exhausted. It didn’t seem fair, this weariness at twenty-two.
“One second,” she said finally. “Just give me a second to sit down, before you tell me. Let me get inside.”
“Take your time, honey. I’m here.”
Betty spun around to head back into the diner, the chill from the air or maybe Sybil’s forewarning tone seeping into her bones. She’d been here for two winters now; you’d think she’d be sort of used to it, but she wasn’t sure she ever would be. Georgia had gotten cold but never like this.
And that’s when she saw it.
Tacked against the back door, a sign that could be meant only for her.
RUN
If she stopped breathing, she wouldn’t have been surprised. She allowed herself three beats for her ears to ring, her mind to spiral. She knew she was lucky to have been warned, though how they’d found her, what mistakes she had made, she didn’t know those answers yet.
