“You don’t know how to skate.”
“I do know how. I just choose not to.”
“You are such a bad liar!”
Was there a memo going around the city telling people that? “Well, yes, I am,” I admitted. “But I’m not lying about choosing not to skate.”
“Oh, so you know how to skate, then.”
“Um …” I glanced at the ice rink, filled with skaters and impending doom.
“Look,” Jesse said. “I’m really good. I play ice hockey in the winter here. I can teach you.” He came over and held his hands out to me. “See? We get to hold hands the whole time. Kinda romantic.”
“Will it be romantic when I fall and cause a domino reaction that sends thirteen people to the hospital?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a real flair for imagining the apocalypse?”
“They have now.”
“C’mon!” He shook his hands at me. “What’s the worst that can happen? You fall? Big deal. I told you, I’ll catch you.”
“I have weak ankles.”
“I find that insanely attractive in a girl.”
“Fine!” I sighed. “Fine, you win! But you can’t laugh at me if I fall!”
“Not only will I not laugh,” he promised, “but I’ll beat up anyone else who laughs.”
“Not if I get to them first,” I muttered.
Not ten minutes later, I was wobbling out on the ice. “I think these skates are defective,” I told Jesse. “They’re too wobbly. I need the nonwobbly ones.”
“Shut up and skate.” He grinned.
I glanced over at the rink’s edge, where all the newbie skaters were hanging on to the wall and carefully making their way around the ice. “Look,” I said. “That must be where the new people hang out. I’ll go over there.”
Jesse looked to where I was pointing. “I think the average age of those people is five.”
“Don’t be ageist,” I told him. “Go twirl or whatever. I’ll watch and applaud.”
“Okaaaaaaay,” he singsonged as he pushed away, in a tone that told me all too well that he’d be back soon.
Twenty minutes went by and I managed to make it halfway around the rink. I felt sort of sweaty but still managed to smile and wave at Jesse every time he zoomed past. I even watched as he slowed down long enough to scoop up a little girl in a pink snowsuit who had just wiped out. “You okay?” I heard him say, righting her on her feet, and my heart got sort of fluttery.
But that was probably just a sign of the heart attack I was going to have from the stress of skating.
“Hey,” he said, stopping in front of me. “As much fun as it is watching you elbow small children out of your way while clinging to a makeshift wall …”
“That kid was hogging all the space!” I huffed. “He had it coming!”
“… maybe we should skate together now.” He held out his hands. “C’mon. Time to be brave.”
He was right. For a girl who had always tried to blend in with the crowd, I wasn’t doing myself any favors. “Okay,” I said, “but—”
“No falling, no laughing if you do fall. I remember the rules.”
And you know what? Skating was nice. Like, niiiiiice. Jesse went slow, skating backward and holding my mittened hands in his gloved ones. “Push and glide,” he kept saying. “Like a hot knife through butter. Don’t try to walk, push forward. That’s it.” In the time that it took me to go ten feet by myself, we had already gone around the rink twice. “Stop looking down at your feet,” Jesse told me.
“I can’t,” I replied. “If I don’t look at them, then I’m scared they’re going to start zooming in the wrong direction.”
Jesse laughed and tilted my face up so I could look at him. “Well, that is better,” I admitted. “You’re a good teacher.”
“You’re a terrible student.” We both cracked up. “Relax, okay? It’s just ice skating. It’s not brain surgery. I would never take a girl to do brain surgery on a first date.”
“How chivalrous.” I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s glide.”
Eventually I got good enough that we could skate side by side, but Jesse kept my hand tight in his. I wasn’t about to complain. “I’m sorry I was cranky about this,” I told him as we got hot chocolate and waited for the Zamboni to clear the ice. “I’m having a good time.”
“Yes, but are you impressed?”
“I am!” I giggled. (I was giggling.) “I didn’t fall and you’re a great teacher.”
“Check and check.” He pretended to cross things off his list. “Maybe I should have named my dog Zamboni.”
“No, that sounds like a type of pasta.”
Jesse laughed. “You’re funny, Maggie,” he said. “C’mon, another round before our next stop.”
“There’s another stop?”
“I’ve said too much already!”
“You’re such a dork.” I grinned. “Hey, guess what?”
“What?”
“Race ya.”
When we were done, I got my own shoes back, which were wonderfully comfortable and did not have skating blades attached to them. “Okay,” I said to Jesse, “so what’s next? Swimming with dolphins?”
“Let me guess,” he said as he tugged his Converse back on his feet. “You’re scared of dolphins.”
“Nope. Love ’em. Especially that high-pitched squealing thing they do. Can’t get enough of it.”
“Awesome. Because we’re not swimming with dolphins.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a few things up my sleeve. Impressive things.”
“Of course.” I watched as he started to walk back toward where the car had dropped us off. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I thought your chauffeur awaits.”
“My chauffeur is probably enjoying his thirty-fifth cigarette of the evening. And he makes too many wrong turns. Let’s take the subway instead.”
I knew what I was doing. I knew that the Collective wouldn’t approve, and I knew that my parents would probably hit the roof if they found out that I gave my car the slip, but I had to start making some executive decisions. No other single spy in the network had a driver taking them around town, and even though I was young, I was still a spy. This was my job now, no one else’s.
“C’mon, let’s go,” I said. “You love the 6 train, admit it.”
“Better yet, let’s walk.” Jesse held out his hand to me. “You’re not too cold?”
“I’m tough,” I said. “Can’t wait to see the next act.”
Chapter 24
“Are you peeking? You’re peeking.”
“I’m not!”
Jesse’s hands were over my eyes, and my hands were over his hands, and he was doing a craptastic job of leading me through … well, somewhere. I couldn’t see a thing. All I knew is that we were inside and our voices seemed to echo in circles around us.
“I’m not peeking!” I said again as Jesse laughed. “Please don’t walk me into a wall.”
“Okay, you can look.”
I blinked a few times and saw a haphazard drywall in front of us. We were in the middle of what looked like a construction site, surrounded by bare lightbulbs, Sheetrock, and what I hoped wasn’t asbestos dust. “Wow,” I said. “Construction.”
“This isn’t quite the surprise yet,” he admitted. “One question, though. Are you afraid of the dark?”
“You realize that that’s something a serial killer would say on a first date, right?”
He gave me a gentle shove. “Little Miss Apocalypse. So you’re okay if it’s a little dark?”
“Just as long as you’re not planning on murdering me.”
“Great. Follow me.”
I held his hand (seriously couldn’t get enough of that) and followed him through a plastic sheet and into …
“Oh my God.” I gasped. “Oh my God.”
We were standing under a huge glass ceiling that arched into the night sky, reachi
ng toward the stars. Round art deco doorways surrounded us and I hung on to the wrought-iron railing and kept looking up. “What is this?” I asked Jesse.
“It’s an old building that’s being turned into a hotel,” he said, grinning at the obvious amazement on my face. “My dad’s friend bought it, so I asked if we could sneak in. I remembered that you said you missed seeing the sky.” He waved his hands toward the ceiling. “I thought I would just try to get you a little closer to it.” Then he paused. “Too cheesy again?”
“No,” I said. “No, it’s perfect. It’s beautiful, it’s so … what’s the word? Majestic. It’s majestic.”
We stood next to each other, Jesse’s arm around me, and gazed up for what seemed like hours. “You can actually see stars,” I told him.
“I think that’s a plane.”
“No, not that. That one.” I pointed up, which really didn’t indicate anything, but Jesse nodded anyway. “Maybe it’s a planet.”
“Maybe.” He held me a little tighter and I let him. No guy had ever hugged me before, at least a guy that wasn’t my dad or Angelo or someone thirty years older than me. Jesse smelled really good, like shampoo and soap, and I rested my head on his chest and pointed again. “What’s that?”
“The Woolworth Building. Where they make woolworths.” I could hear and feel him laugh at the same time. “Just kidding, I have no idea what they make there.”
“Let’s say unicorns,” I said.
“Sure, why not? Unicorns for everyone.”
“Hooray! Hey, by the way?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m very impressed.”
He smiled and then leaned down to kiss me. “I thought you might be.”
“I just can’t wait for our second date if this is the first one!”
“Well, that’s when we do a tour of the unicorn factory,” he teased. “Spoiler alert!”
“Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“I have a feeling that my answer doesn’t matter.”
“True. How did you know all these buildings? This one, the Woolworth one. You’re like a weird architecture groupie.”
Jesse’s eyes dimmed a little and I saw him go somewhere that I couldn’t follow. “My mom,” he admitted after a few seconds. “She used to take me around after school and show me all the buildings. She wanted to be an architect but then she married my dad and they had me instead.”
I wrapped both my arms around his waist and held on tight. “I’m sorry. I know you miss her.”
“S’okay. Don’t be sorry.”
“Where else did she take you?”
“Everywhere. Public gardens, private gardens, old carriage houses. I just wanted to play video games back then and she dragged me everywhere. I was a stupid kid.”
“You were a kid.”
“She used to take me to Gramercy Park but we could never get in.”
What?
“What?” I said, looking up at him.
“It’s a park that’s completely locked. You can’t get in unless you have a key and—”
“No, I know what it is.” My heart was starting to race. “You couldn’t get in?”
“Nope. Not without the key. And you have to live on the park to get one and we don’t. Wah-waaaahh.” He took his peacoat and pulled it around both of us since it was pretty chilly in the atrium. “One day.”
“Maybe,” I said, then looked back up at the night sky. “Maybe you should make a wish.”
“I thought you could only wish on falling stars.”
“I know, but think about it. That’s sort of bad luck if a star falls out of the sky. Like maybe your dreams are burning through the atmosphere!” I covered my mouth in fake terror. “Quick, wish on the ones still in the sky!”
Jesse just shook his head, then looked up. “I wish …”
“No, you can’t say it out loud or it might not come true.”
“There’s a lot of rules here!”
“Just two.”
Jesse sighed and then closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said after a minute. “Wish wished. You wanna get out of here?”
“Yes,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to kiss him. “And I know just where we should go.”
“What? Not to ruin the surprise, but we’re supposed to have dinner at a restaurant that serves a kind of food that rhymes with mooshi.”
“Awww, that’s sweet. You should cancel the reservation.”
“But …”
“C’mon,” I said, taking his arm. “It’s my turn to impress you.”
Chapter 25
“I think,” I told Jesse as we walked up Irving Place, “that bread is my favorite food group. It should be the whole food pyramid.”
“Do they still have the food pyramid?” he asked, drinking water and carrying our bag from Whole Foods on Union Square. I helped to lighten the load by carrying the baguette and eating it as we walked. “Is that still a thing?”
“I think it’s, like, the food rhombus now.”
He started to laugh. “It’s food geometry. Pick a shape, any shape!”
“They could make it a food dodecahedron and as long as it was filled with bread, I’d support it. Oh look, here we are.”
We crossed the street and stood in front of the Gramercy Park gates. “Um, Maggie?” Jesse said. “I’ve stood at this gate before.”
“Oh, you have? Really? Gee, if only you had said something.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Dork, I know you’ve stood here. You told me half an hour ago.”
“So why is this better than sushi?”
“I liked when you said it rhymed with mooshi. That was cute.” I was so excited that I was wiggling around.
“Maggie.”
“Okay, okay, turn around.”
But he just stood there, eyeing me. “Whyyyyy?”
“Becaaaaause.” I took his arm and started to turn him around. “Just trust me, okay? Have some faith. Don’t eat my bread, though, for real.”
Jesse looked a little nervous, as if it were possible for him to look any cuter, and his turn-around was reluctant. Still, he turned, and when he couldn’t see, I fished my old reliable paper clip out of my pocket and popped the lock with almost zero effort, just like Angelo had taught me all those years ago.
“Okay,” I said, opening the gate. “You can look now.”
Jesse’s mouth fell open when he saw what I had done. I had never actually seen anyone be rendered speechless before. “Is this okay?” I asked. “I’m not, like, making you feel bad about your mom, am I?”
“No!” he gasped. “You have a key?”
“It’s probably better if you don’t ask too many questions,” I told him. “Just know that I have my ways.”
He was looking at me like he had never seen me before. “We can just go in?”
“After you.”
“Maggie.”
“C’mon,” I said, “before we get arrested for breaking and entering.”
He walked through the gate like he was afraid it might reach out and grab him, and I followed and carefully shut it behind us. “We probably have to be a little sneaky,” I murmured, “since technically no one’s allowed in here at night, key or not.”
“Sneak away,” he replied, and we went and sat on the bench where Angelo and I had sat on my first day in the city, back when I thought Jesse was a Manhattan rich-kid jerk and that this job would be easy.
Nothing had worked out the way I thought it would.
I showed Jesse my favorite pagoda birdhouse (“Is that a pineapple on top?” he asked. “Because if it is, that is cool”), and we watched the city move around us, blinking lights and sounding horns and people who looked like shadows as they hurried past us. No one knew we were there, hidden by wrought iron and trees older than anyone in the five boroughs.
“Impressed?” I asked after we spent a few minutes just curled up next to each other. The bench could have been a little more comfortable, but I wasn’t complaining.
“I am,” he said. “Impr
essed and happy. Very, very happy.”
I smiled at him and pretended to fluff my hair. “We make a good team,” I told him. “You and me, running around town, finding cool things to do. We should market this.”
“Nah, let’s keep it our little secret.” Jesse rested his head on top of mine and passed me some strawberries. “Here, eat up. You earned it.”
“You did way more than me,” I admitted. “All I did was bring you here. No big whoop.”
“No, Mags.” He was quiet for a minute, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded shaky. “This means a lot.”
Was Jesse crying? I glanced up to see him thumbing at his eyes and laughing a little, like he was embarrassed.
“Um, I’m not sure I was supposed to make you cry,” I said. I had never seen a guy cry before. It was weird, like seeing your dad cry for the first time, but also so sweet.
“You didn’t make me cry,” he said, clearing his throat. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just been a long time since something made me happy. And now you make me happy every time I see you. I missed it.”
Now I was welling up, too. “No, I know what you mean,” I told him. “I know what it’s like to just sit and wait for something to happen and think that it might not.”
“It’s like, I have all this luck and wealth and privilege, but who gives a shit? People expect me to be some spoiled brat, so then I act like some spoiled brat—I mean, I stole that book, what a dumbass—but it’s not me at all. And then when I try to act like an upright citizen, volunteer and all that, they accuse me of using my dad’s connections to get ahead. But if I don’t do anything, then my dad gets pissed that I’m not doing anything. And then my mom decides that she’s the one who needs a break from her life….” He sighed and looked up through the trees. “It’s like I can’t get out.”
I had to take a deep breath because I had never heard another person say how I felt. “It’s, like, how can you become an adult when everyone wants you to stay a child?”
“Exactly!” Jesse wriggled into his coat some more and I tightened my scarf around my neck. November seemed to be getting colder by the minute, but neither of us wanted to leave. “Oh, shit, are you crying now?”