“Mexico,” I said. “I’m a city girl, Yuji.” A Mexican farm sounded so far from everything and everyone I had ever known.

“Don’t you think your father would have wanted you to see where cacao is grown?” Yuji asked. I had no idea what Daddy would have wanted and I wasn’t even sure that I cared.

“Would you yourself not like to know what the source of all this misery is?” Yuji waved his gloved hand around the gray hospital room.

I told him I had never thought much about it.

“Do you trust me, Anya?” He took my handcuffed hand. “Do you believe that I, of all people, want what is best for you?”

I thought about this. Yes, I decided, I did trust him as much as I trusted anyone.

“I trust you,” I said.

“Then know I do not say this lightly when I tell you that this is where I want you to go. You will be better able to run Balanchine Chocolate someday if you know a bit about how cacao is grown. And this will make you a superior partner for me. A superior business partner, I mean.” He dropped my hand and moved in even closer to me. “Don’t be frightened, Anya.”

“I’m not.” I looked him in the eye. “Nothing frightens me anymore, Yuji.”

“The warmth and sunshine will be good for you, and you will not be lonely, as Sophia’s family is very kind. If it matters to you, it will be easy for me to invent reasons to come and see you.”

What difference did it make where I went, really? I was leaving the only home I had ever known. “I don’t speak Spanish,” I said with a sigh. I had taken Mandarin and Latin in school.

“Many people will speak English there,” Yuji said.

And so it was decided. I would take my leave in the predawn hours of Sunday morning.

Tuesday afternoon brought Scarlet and she was crying again. I told her that if she wept every time she saw me, I wouldn’t want her to come anymore. She sniffled and declared dramatically, “I’ve had to end things with Gable!”

“Scarlet, I’m sorry,” I said. “What happened?”

She held up her slate. On the screen was the picture of Win and me in the dining hall underneath the headline Charles Delacroix had shown me two days earlier: “Charles Delacroix’s Mob Connections.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Annie. Gable took this picture, and worse, he sold it!” “What do you mean?”

“He got a long-lens camera phone for his eighteenth birthday,” Scarlet began. (NB: You may recall that minors weren’t allowed to have camera phones.) “And when I saw the picture yesterdaymorning, I knew someone from our school had taken it. And I doubted it was one of the teachers, so that only left the kids over eighteen. I turned to Gable. ‘Who would do such a thing to Annie?’ I asked. ‘Who would be so low? Doesn’t she have it hard enough?’ And he wouldn’t really answer me. And I knew, I just knew! And then I pushed him as hard as I could. So hard he lost his balance and fell to the ground. And I stood over him, screaming, ‘Why?’ And he’s saying, ‘I love you, Scarlet. Don’t do this!’ And I’m like, ‘Answer the question, Gable. Just tell me why.’ And finally, he sighs, and he says it wasn’t anything against you or Win. He’d done it for the money. Someone had approached him weeks ago, saying they would pay big bucks if he could deliver a picture of Anya Balanchine and Win Delacroix in a compromising situation. And then Gable tried to justify his actions by saying that you owed him this money because of how much he’d lost because of you, like his foot and his good looks and such. And then he said someone else would have taken that picture anyway, if not him.”

At this point, Scarlet started to cry again. “I feel like such an incredible fool, Annie!” I told her that it wasn’t her fault. “I wonder how much money he got.”

“I don’t know. But I hate him. I hate him so much!” She was by the door, bent over and sobbing. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t have much mobility on account of the handcuffs.

“Scarlet, come over here.”

“I can’t. I disgust myself. I let that snake back into your life. You warned me about him. I just never thought you would be the one to get hurt.”

“The truth is, Scarlet, I shouldn’t have let myself get into that situation with Win.” “What situation? You were eating lunch.” Scarlet always took my side in everything.

“Win shouldn’t have taken my hand, and I shouldn’t have let him. I should probably never have gone back to Trinity either. And Gable is right about one thing. Someone else would have taken that picture, trust me. It was coming with or without Gable Arsley’s involvement. Someday, I’ll be able to explain all of it better.”

Scarlet approached my bedside. “You have to know I had nothing to do with this.” “Scarlet, I wouldn’t even think that!”

She lowered her voice. “I never told him about what we did for Leo.” “I didn’t think you would have.”

Scarlet smiled weakly. Suddenly, she ran across the little hospital room to the bathroom, where she threw up. I heard the toilet flush and the water come on. “I think I’m getting the flu,” she reported once she’d returned.

“You should go home,” I told her.

“I’ll come see you as soon as I’m feeling better. I love you, Annie. I’d kiss you but I don’t want to get you sick.”

“I don’t care. Kiss me anyway,” I said. In case she didn’t make it back to Liberty before Sunday, I wanted to know that we had said a proper goodbye.

“Okay, Annie. As you like it.”

She kissed me, and I grabbed her hand. “Don’t blame yourself for any of this, Scarlet. I am only sorry that the tragedies that dog me have caused you grief, too. What I said after the party … You really have been the most loyal and true friend anyone could ever ask for. When I think about these last couple of years, I can’t even imagine how bleak things might have gotten for me without you.”

Scarlet flushed the color of her name. She nodded, and then she was gone.

The rest of the week passed quickly, with visits from just about everyone and with plans for my escape.

By Thursday, Simon Green and I had settled the arrangements. I was to be released from the hospital on Sunday morning. On Saturday night / early Sunday morning, well after the last nurse had checked on me, I was to get out of my bed and improvise a way out of the hospital, then past the fence that encircled Liberty Island. At that point, a rowboat would transfer me to Ellis Island. On Ellis Island, I was to be met by another boat that would take me to Newark Bay, where I would take a shipping vessel to the west coast of Mexico. In the morning, when the nurses came to transfer me back to the dormitory at Liberty, I would be long gone.

Simon had left me with a copy of the handcuff key, which I stuffed into the side of the mattress under the sheet. The only thing we hadn’t figured out was how I was to get past the guards at the end of the hallway. “Do you have anyone here who can provide a distraction of some sort?” Simon Green asked. Reluctantly, I thought of Mouse and her assertion to me that she could do “hard things.” Even though I needed her help, I didn’t want her to get into more trouble on my account, and yet I lacked other options.

I got a message to her to come see me, and that afternoon, she did. She had a black eye. I asked her what had happened.

She shrugged. Then wrote, Elbow to the face. Rinko.

I told her what I needed. She nodded. Then she nodded some more before putting pencil to pad.

I’ll come up with something. I am honored that u came to me, A.

“Once I’m gone, they’ll probably figure out you helped me. You understand that means you won’t get out in November, right?”

I do. Don’t care. Nowhere to go. Better to have friends in a year or 2 than b friendless, homeless, & penniless in Nov.

“I feel selfish asking you to help me,” I said. “Asking you to stay here longer when I’m trying to avoid the same thing.”