57
You have to eat, my dear.” Mr. Chen leaves the steamed dumplings, my favorite, on the nightstand. It sits there, next to an ever-growing pile of dirty dishes with barely-picked-at food and half-drunk drinks.
I’ve fallen apart. Broken into pieces like a plate thrown at a wall. Spending as much time as I can in bed, I stare up at the ceiling fan as it spins lazily over my head. I’m getting bad grades, ruining my chance to be valedictorian and any hope of being accepted into an Ivy League college. Those dreams have blown away like dandelion seeds on the wind.
I can’t even bother to be upset by it. Everything feels distant. My life is a dream that someone else is having—or, more likely, a nightmare. Idly, I wonder if the police are ever going to come to arrest me. I almost hope they do. My guilt over Stewart and how I used him demands payment. If I go to jail, it will all be so simple. No more worrying about school or looking over my shoulder waiting for the handcuffs.
But no flashing sirens pull into the apartment parking lot. No one comes for me. How did I get away with it? Surely they have discovered the empty safe by now? The only answer seems the least probable, that someone covered for me. The person with that kind of access and power is Stewart, but he wouldn’t protect me after the way I’d treated him. Would he?
I’ve kept an eye on the newspapers, waiting to see my name in the headlines. There’s been no mention of the robbery. The death of Johnny the Shark has been widely reported on, however. His killer, the older man I saw, died in a shoot-out with the police when he tried to escape the penthouse. I imagine that long hallway with mirrors in the ceiling and the marble floor covered in blood.
Apparently, the murderer was a leading member of a rival mob. The newspapers report that the fight was over disputed territory in New York, where the gangs and mobsters each wanted their own piece of the drug trade.
“Tiffany, eat,” Mr. Chen chides again.
I don’t bother to answer. Pulling the covers over my head, I roll away from him and shut out the world.