“No, not like them.”
She pushed back the hood so I could see her face more clearly. She grabbed my hands, grasping them hard. “That time I spent spying on you was the last happy time in my life,” she said. “I’ve thought of you often while I’ve been down here. Julia has given me updates on how your life has changed, and that’s offered some rare moments of joy. Wherever I end up, just know that I’m on your side.”
She looked at me for several seconds more and then she walked away, inserting the earbuds and pulling the hood back up. Music blasted, muffled to me but deafening for her. I stared at the back of her, at the outline of her body against the hole in the wall and the light from the Beauty Closet. I’d imagined her for so long. In reality, I didn’t know her, but we lived in each other’s memories, each of us what the other needed us to be.
Julia removed the lamps from the hiding space, so the only light was coming from the other side of the hole in the wall. We helped Leeta into the crate. Once inside, she stepped into her sleeping bag and pulled it up so it rested under her arms like a strapless dress. She lowered herself into the crate and lay on the bottom in the fetal position, her face positioned near one of the air holes. Julia and I dropped eyebrow pencils on top of her and she didn’t flinch. We filled the crate with pencils, all the way to the top, until there was no sign of a person underneath. Julia attached the lid.
After we wheeled the crate out of the hiding space, Julia sealed the hole shut, pushing the boxes back in front of it. We moved down the Blush corridor toward the exit.
“Am I allowed to ask where you’re taking her?”
“New Mexico,” Julia said. “I’ll hand her off to someone there. She has to keep moving.”
We took the service elevator to the parking level and pushed the brown crate to the back of a small white delivery van that Julia had rented. I looked over my shoulders, exposed and scared. “Act normal,” Julia whispered. “There might be cameras.”
There were no windows on the sides of the van or in the back doors. With great effort, we lifted the crate and wrestled it into the hold. Once it was secure, Julia locked the doors. I wanted to say Be careful or Good luck, but nothing I could say would have been adequate.
“Write the book,” Julia said, and I told her I would. When she was in the driver’s seat with the door closed, I placed my palm against the glass and Julia did the same on her side. That’s how we said goodbye.
I followed the signs back to the lobby and rushed to get away before I ran into someone like Kitty. When I stepped outside I wanted to cry or scream or beat my fists against the Austen Tower, but I couldn’t. Other people would see. Wherever I went, I was seen.
After being in the hiding space, I found everything outside to be beautiful, even the concrete barricades and the neon lights. I headed toward Broadway. The white van was out there somewhere, but I didn’t see it. As I walked I stripped off my jacket and scarf and dragged them behind me. I pushed my way through the masses of tourists and began to run faster than I had ever run before.
Leeta was right. It felt good to be free. With unexpected power in my legs, I kept going, racing ahead with the wind and the sun on my face, taking a leap into the wide world, which now seemed too small to contain me.
Burst!
Acknowledgments
Alice Tasman, one of my lucky Alices, was the only literary agent in New York brave enough to take on Dietland. I am grateful for that every day. I am also tremendously lucky to have the other women at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, and all my international co-agents and publishers, in my corner. I cannot possibly thank all these lovely people enough.
Lauren Wein, my editor (and admirer of my Dietland spreadsheets), shared my vision for the novel from our first phone call. Heartfelt thanks to her for helping me give Plum and company the editorial makeover they needed while always remaining true to them. Thanks also to Nina Barnett and Alison Kerr Miller for their help with improving the manuscript, and to the whole team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I am so appreciative of their efforts, I could just burst.
The generous and talented writers I met in the Bennington College MFA program continue to inspire me all these years later and will always be my writing community. In particular, I would like to thank William Vandegrift for his friendship, and Alice Mattison, my original lucky Alice, who encouraged me in the beginning and helped me reach the end.