Chapter 9
16 years old
MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH.
Maria’s and my birthday.
Well… It definitely was Maria’s.
Mine… I mean, maybe?
Unlike her, I’d never been able to get a hold of my documents and paperwork, so I didn’t know my birthday. We were kids when we decided to simply share the same date.
We were still celebrating together tonight, like we did every year.
She was turning fourteen while I was turning sixteen. In September, she’d finally join me as a freshman at our local high school.
I was waiting for her at our favorite spot in Little Italy, a restaurant called Il Piccolo Moretti.
I’d first brought her here a couple months after she arrived at the orphanage, and the adults had their eyes off her since she stopped trying to run away. We sneaked out one night, rode the Line 6 subway and got off a couple blocks down.
I always managed to get a table since I was a regular. I’d been coming here at least once a month since I was a kid. I would never run away from the orphanage; that didn’t mean I didn’t sneak out every once in a while.
I didn’t remember much of my life before the orphanage, but I remembered my mom liked this restaurant. The reason? I wished I knew.
Coming here, a place she loved… Made me feel closer to her.
Maria knew all of this. And she loved coming here just as much as me. The food was good, authentic and cheap. Fifteen dollars each, including tip.
It was our little indulgence and a tradition we stuck by.
While I held a part-time job down at Bloomingdales on the Upper East Side, in the women’s luxury department – after lying about my age and experience – Maria worked at a gym downtown. She’d been into boxing and street-fighting for years, so for her, this was more like a hobby that paid.
I’d gotten to the restaurant early, waiting for Maria to meet me from her shift.
Glancing at the door, I watched a family enter the restaurant. The woman was holding onto the man’s hand while two girls came up behind them, maybe slightly younger than me. The father, I’m guessing, was smiling and talking to the waiter at the front, when a shatter broke the air.
I turned to see two boys, same height and in identical outfits – twins, though the different hair colors gave their differences away – standing near the sliding doors of the kitchen. By their feet, a broken wine glass. Both, pointing a finger at the other.
The father shook his head, causing the boys to turn to the waiter – who looked terrified. Though I couldn’t hear them over the music, I could tell the boys sincerely apologized. Moments later, the family was taken back to the larger tables on the other end of the restaurant.
I smiled and turned back to my table, seeing Maria approaching with a Nike gym bag over her shoulder. Her outfit – tight jeans, Timberland boots and a cropped puffer coat – in true Bronx fashion.
“Hi!” I got up and opened my arms, pulling her in.
“Am I late?” She asked, worried.
“No. I’m early.”
“Happy birthday, Nat,” She muffled against my hair, squeezing me tight.
“Happy birthday, Em.”
Just as we pulled away and sat down, Gloria, a waitress at Il Piccolo Moretti , who always took our table, came over.
“Happy birthday, girls.”
“Thank you, Miss Gloria,” Maria and I replied with sweet smiles.
“You’re getting so big now.” She sighed with a motherly smile, wiping her hands on her black apron. “Your regular?”
“Yes, please.”
“All right. Be back with your drinks, then food in twenty minutes.”
“I swear the food here gets better every time.” Maria turned to me after Gloria left, and I nodded, approvingly.
Two hours later we were full of pasta, laughing, gossip, and homemade Sicilian lemonade.
Maria raised a brow. “So, how’s life on the Upper East Side?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “I’m getting good at this selling stuff. Made a nice commission today, too. Which brings me to…”
Pulling the small box out of my handbag, I set it on the table in the space between us, and pushed it towards Maria. “Happy birthday, Em.”
She opened it excitedly, pulling out the folding knife with a gold engraved handle. She flipped it open, keeping it close to the box so no one else could see it. It was almost identical to the one she’d obsessed over in The Godfather last year.
“Nat… I love it. Thank you.”
I’d been saving a little every month since to afford it. It was small, and only worth a hundred bucks, but the sentimental value was at millions.
“To keep you safe,” I clarified. We lived in the Bronx our whole life. We knew how it was. Even I carried.
“My turn.” Maria clapped her hands, putting the knife back in the box and away in her bag, and instead pulling out a different blue box.
“Em…”
“Just open it.”
I flipped the Tiffany’s package open, and gasped.
Diamond earrings.
Tiffany’s diamond earrings.
Maria giggled while I stared, mouth open.
My eye caught onto something that was poking out from underneath the cushion supporting the jewelry.
“Who is Amanda, and why are we congratulating her?” I asked, pulling the personalized card out.
“Shit.”
I pressed. “Well?”
“I may have stolen it off some guy at Sacks on fifth…”
“Maria!”
“What? It’s not like he couldn’t afford the replacement. You should’ve seen this guy’s car and watch. Loaded.”
“You can’t just go around robbing people.”
“Why? The rich do it to us all the time.”
It was true. The system was trash.
Regular people worked day and night, their whole life, for a paycheck that barely supported them. All while the rich made their wealth off our backs, just to pay their kids’ way into private and Ivy League schools, only for them to snort cocaine the whole semester before partying it up in Miami on a yacht.
It wasn’t fair.
But that was life.
“You don’t like it?” Maria asked me, slightly nervous.
I breathed in deeply, before smiling. “I love them.”
She smiled back and reached across the table to interconnect our hands. “Twin flames?”
“Forever. Just promise me you won’t steal anything for me again.”
She sighed. “Promise.”
“Good.”
“I just had to go out for you this year, you know? It’s your sweet sixteenth.”
I squeezed her hand. “You have to be careful, Em. You don’t want to end up fucking with the wrong person.”