“This is the Garment District,” he tells me. “We’re heading toward Midtown.”
I’m vaguely paying attention to him, hearing his words but not exactly taking them in immediately. My eyes are being drawn to the towering buildings surrounding us, and the trees that line the sidewalks, and the fact that a lot of the streets are one-way. I lean forward so that I can get a better look out the windshield at everything above us. “Your apartment’s on the Upper East Side, right?”
I focus on Tyler again, so I notice his smug smirk. We come to a stop by some traffic lights. “Did you expect anything less from my mom?”
“No,” I admit. “There’s no way she would have put you somewhere like Harlem.”
He tuts and shakes his head at me playfully. “Oh c’mon, Eden, I thought you wouldn’t be so stereotypical. East Harlem isn’t actually that bad, but that’s probably because I can speak Spanish, so I totally fit in. It’s these Hispanic genes, seriously.”
“Tyler, you’re, like, 25 per cent Hispanic. You don’t even look it.” I try not to pay attention to the crowd of people gathered on the corner of the sidewalk waiting to cross the street who are snapping a quick picture of Tyler’s car as we wait, but it’s almost impossible not to see what they’re doing. Tyler ignores it.
“Still Hispanic genes,” he says defensively, “which is awesome, all thanks to Grandma Maria. And my dad, I guess.”
For a moment, I don’t say anything. I’m a little surprised that Tyler even brought his dad up, and I’m waiting for his jaw to tighten or his mood to shift, but he just keeps on smiling as he points out the windshield. He must be okay with talking about his dad by now. He’s been doing it for a year.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Times Square is right there.”
“What?”
The lights flash green just as my eyes are flickering over to the street ahead of us, and Tyler immediately floors the gas so that the car shoots off around the corner, leaving a plume of exhaust fumes behind us, which will no doubt impress our audience back on the curb. I snap my eyes back over to Tyler.
“We’re taking a detour,” he explains, grinning at my bemused expression. “I don’t want you to see it yet. Not until tonight.”
“Really? You’re really going to tell me that Times Square is right in front of me and then drive off before I get to see it?” I fold my arms across my chest and turn to look away from him, dramatizing my irritation but smiling too.
“It looks better at night,” Tyler says.
We’re heading northbound along Eighth Avenue, passing hotels and stores and restaurants and, of course, hundreds of tourists. It’s easy to differentiate between the locals and the tourists, mostly because the latter have this fascinated expression playing on their faces and seem to be taking pictures of almost everything. If I weren’t hidden behind Tyler’s tinted windows, I’d blend straight in with them.
“Crossing Broadway,” Tyler murmurs almost immediately after turning off onto Fifty-seventh Street. “Central Park is two blocks to your left. Carnegie Hall is about to be on your right.”
“Stop it!” I throw my hands up in exasperation as I try to fire my eyes around, hoping to catch everything at once. I glance to my left, hoping to see a flash of green, but there are still two blocks of leaning buildings in the way, so I focus back on the street we’re crossing over: Broadway. It doesn’t run parallel to the rest of the city streets but rather runs diagonally, which looks pretty cool. But other than that, it looks like every other street we’ve passed, so I shift my eyes to the road ahead and wait for Carnegie Hall to appear, although I’m not even sure what it looks like. I only know what it is: famous and prestigious.
“There,” Tyler says, and nods to the building on our right as we pass it. I only get to look at it for a few seconds, but it’s enough for me to realize that it pretty much just blends in with everything around it. Maybe if I were into classical music I’d find it more exciting.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
We keep heading east along Fifty-seventh Street, stopping every few minutes at traffic lights. There are so many stores that I’ve never heard of before and soon I’m struggling to remember even half of them. It must take people forever to go shopping in Manhattan.
We’re stopped at some lights again when I glance to my left and can finally see green: Central Park. Just the edge of it, but it’s enough to get me feeling excited again. The initial rush of being here has worn off over the twenty-five minutes that we’ve been navigating through Manhattan, but it’s coming back again. Central Park is the place I’ve been looking forward to most. It’s supposed to be an amazing place to run.
“Fifth Avenue,” Tyler informs me. He nudges my arm, noticing that I’m not quite paying attention to the luxury stores that are within meters of us. I couldn’t care less about them.
I finally avert my eyes from the trees to Tyler. “Is that Central Park?”