The Goldfinch

“Now? Tonight?”

I stopped counting and looked at him. “I don’t have anyone out here. Nobody. Nada. They’ll stick me in a home so fast I won’t know what hit me.”

Boris nodded at Xandra’s body—which was very u

“What the fuck?” I said after a brief pause. “What should we do? Wait around until she wakes up and finds out we ripped her off?”

“Du

“Well, don’t. She doesn’t want me. She’ll call them herself as soon as she realizes she’s stuck with me.”

“Them? I don’t understand who is this them.”

“Boris, I’m a minor.” I could feel my panic rising in an all-too-familiar way—maybe the situation wasn’t literally life or death but it sure felt like it, house filling with smoke, exits closing off. “I don’t know how it works in your country but I don’t have any family, no friends out here—”

“Me! You have me!”

“What are you going to do? Adopt me?” I stood up. “Look, if you’re coming, we need to hurry. Do you have your passport? You’ll need it for the plane.”

Boris put his hands up in his Russianate enough already gesture. “Wait! This is happening way too fast.”

I stopped, halfway out the door. “What the fuck is your problem, Boris?”

“My problem?”

“You wanted to run away! It was you who asked me to go with you! Last night.”

“Where are you going? New York?”

“Where else?”

“I want to go someplace warm,” he said instantly. “California.”

“That’s crazy. Who do we know—”

“California!” he crowed.

“Well—” Though I knew almost nothing about California, it was safe to assume that (apart from the bar of “California Über Alles” he was humming) Boris knew even less. “Where in California? What town?”

“Who cares?”

“It’s a big state.”

“Fantastic! It’ll be fun. We’ll stay high all the time—read books—build camp fires. Sleep on the beach.”

I looked at him for a long unbearable moment. His face was on fire and his mouth was stained blackish from the red wine.

“All right,” I said—knowing full well I was stepping off the edge and into the major mistake of my life, petty theft, the change cup, sidewalk nods and homelessness, the fuck-up from which I would never recover.

He was gleeful. “The beach, then? Yes?”

This was how you went wrong: this fast. “Wherever you want,” I said, pushing the hair out of my eyes. I was dead exhausted. “But we need to go now. Please.”

“What, this minute?”

“Yes. Do you need to go home and get anything?”

“Tonight?”

“I’m not kidding, Boris.” Arguing with him was making the panic rise again. “I can’t just sit around and wait—” The painting was a problem, I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but once I got Boris out of the house I could figure something out. “Please, come on.”

“Is State Care that bad in America?” said Boris doubtfully. “You make it seem like the cops.”

“Are you coming with me? Yes or no?”

“I need some time. I mean,” he said, following after me, “we can’t leave now! Really—I swear. Wait a little while. Give me a day! One day!”

“Why?”

He seemed nonplussed. “Well, I mean, because—”

“Because—?”

“Because—because I have to see Kotku! And—all kinds of things! Honest, you can’t leave tonight,” he repeated, when I said nothing. “Trust me. You’ll be sorry, I mean it. Come to my house! Wait till the morning to go!”

“I can’t wait,” I said curtly, taking my half of the cash and heading back to my room.

“Potter—” he followed after me.

“Yes?”

“There is something important I have to tell you.”

“Boris,” I said, turning, “what the mother fuck. What is it?” I said, as we stood and stared at each other. “If you have something to say, go on and say it.”

“Am afraid it will make you mad.”

“What is it? What have you done?”

Boris was silent, gnawing the side of his thumb.

“Well, what?”

He looked away. “You need to stay,” he said vaguely. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Forget it,” I snapped, turning away again. “If you don’t want to come with me, don’t come, okay? But I can’t stand around here all night.”

Boris—I thought—might ask what was in the pillowcase, particularly since it was so fat and weirdly shaped after my over-enthusiastic wrapping job. But when I un-taped it from the back of the headboard and put it in my overnight bag (along with my iPod, notebook, charger, Wind, Sand and Stars, some pictures of my mom, my toothbrush, and a change of clothes) he only scowled and said nothing. When I retrieved, from the back of my closet, my school blazer (too small for me, though it had been too big when my mother bought it) he nodded and said: “Good idea, that.”

“What?”

“Makes you look less homeless.”

“It’s November,” I said. I’d only brought one warm sweater from New York; I put it in the bag and zipped it up. “It’s going to be cold.”

Boris leaned insolently against the wall. “What will you do, then? Live on the street, railway station, where?”

“I’ll call my friend I stayed with before.”

“If they wanted you, those people, they’d have adopted you already.”

“They couldn’t! How could they?”

Boris folded his arms. “They didn’t want you, that family. You told me so yourself—lots of times. Also, you never hear from them.”

“That’s not true,” I said, after a brief, confused pause. Only a few months before, Andy had sent me a long-ish (for him) email telling me about some stuff going on at school, a scandal with the te

“Too many children?” said Boris, a bit smugly as it seemed. “Not enough room? Remember that bit? You said the mother and father were glad to see you go.”

“Fuck off.” I was already getting a huge headache. What would I do if Social Services showed up and put me in the back of a car? Who—in Nevada—could I call? Mrs. Spear? The Playa? The fat model-store clerk who sold us model glue without the models?

Boris followed me downstairs, where we were stopped in the middle of the living room by a tortured-looking Popper—who ran directly into our path, then sat and stared at us like he knew exactly what was going on.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, putting down my bag. There was a silence.

“Boris,” I said, “can’t you—”

“No.”

“Can’t Kotku—”

“No.”

“Well, fuck it,” I said, picking him up and tucking him under my arm. “I’m not leaving him here for her to lock up and starve.”

“And where are you going?” said Boris, as I started for the front door.

“Eh?”

“Walking? To the airport?”

“Wait,” I said, putting Popchik down. All at once I felt sick and like I might vomit red wine all over the carpet. “Will they take a dog on the plane?”

“No,” said Boris ruthlessly, spitting out a chewed thumbnail.

He was being an asshole; I wanted to punch him. “Okay then,” I said. “Maybe somebody at the airport will want him. Or, fuck it, I’ll take the train.”

He was about to say something sarcastic, lips pursed in a way I knew well, but then—quite suddenly—his expression faltered; and I turned to see Xandra, wild-eyed, mascara-smeared, swaying on the landing at the top of the stairs.

We looked at her, frozen. After what seemed like a centuries-long pause, she opened her mouth, closed it again, caught the railing to balance herself, and then said, in a rusty voice: “Did Larry leave his keys in the bank vault?”

We gazed horrified for several more moments before we realized she was waiting for a reply. Her hair was like a haystack; she appeared completely disoriented and so unsteady it seemed she might topple down the steps.