The Geography of You and Me

1

On the first day of September, the world went dark.

But from where she stood in the blackness, her back pressed against the brassy wall of an elevator, Lucy Patterson had no way of knowing the scope of it yet.

She couldn’t have imagined, then, that it stretched beyond the building where she’d lived all her life, spilling out onto the streets, where the traffic lights had gone blank and the hum of the air conditioners had fallen quiet, leaving an eerie, pulsing silence. Already, there were people streaming out onto the long avenues that stretched the length of Manhattan, pushing their way toward home like salmon moving up a river. All over the island, car horns filled the air and windows were thrown open, and in thousands upon thousands of freezers, the ice cream began to melt.

The whole city had been snuffed out like a candle, but from the unlit cube of the elevator, Lucy couldn’t possibly have known this.

Her first thought wasn’t to worry about the violent jolt that had brought them up short between the tenth and eleventh floors, making the whole compartment rattle like a ride at an amusement park. And it wasn’t a concern for their escape, because if there was anything that could be depended on in this world—far more, even, than her parents—it was the building’s small army of doormen, who had never failed to greet her after school, or remind her to bring an umbrella when it was rainy, who were always happy to run upstairs and kill a spider or help unclog the shower drain.

Instead, what she felt was a kind of sinking regret over her rush to make this particular elevator, having dashed through the marble-floored lobby and caught the doors just before they could seal shut. If only she’d waited for the next one, she would’ve still been standing downstairs right now, speculating with George—who worked the afternoon shift—about the source of the power outage, rather than being stuck in this small square of space with someone she didn’t even know.

The boy hadn’t looked up when she’d slipped through the doors just a few minutes earlier, but instead kept his eyes trained on the burgundy carpet as they shut again with a bright ding. She’d stepped to the back of the elevator without acknowledging him, either, and in the silence that followed she could hear the low thump of music from his headphones as the back of his white-blond head bobbed, just slightly, his rhythm not quite there. She’d noticed him around before, but this was the first time it struck her how much he looked like a scarecrow, tall and lanky and loose-limbed, a study of lines and angles all jumbled together in the shape of a teenage boy.

He’d moved in just last month, and she’d watched that day from the coffee shop next door as he and his father carried a small collection of furniture back and forth across the gum-stained sidewalk. She’d known they were hiring a new superintendent, but she hadn’t known he’d be bringing his son, too, much less a son who looked to be about her age. When she’d tried getting more information out of the doormen, all they could tell her was that they were somehow related to the building’s owner.

She’d seen him a few more times after that—at the mailboxes or crossing the lobby or waiting for the bus—but even if she’d been the kind of girl inclined to walk up and introduce herself, there still was something vaguely unapproachable about him. Maybe it was the earbuds he always seemed to be wearing, or the fact that she’d never seen him talking to anyone before; maybe it was the way he slipped in and out of the building so quickly, like he was desperate not to be caught, or the faraway look in his eyes when she spotted him across the subway platform. Whatever the reason, it seemed to Lucy that the idea of ever meeting him—the idea of even saying something as harmless as hello—was unlikely for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate.

When the elevator had wrenched to a stop, their eyes met, and in spite of the situation, she’d found herself wondering—ridiculously—whether he recognized her, too. But then the lights above them had snapped off, and they were both left blinking into the darkness, the floor still quivering beneath them. There were a few metallic sounds from above—two loud clanks followed by a sharp bang—and then something seemed to settle, and except for the faint beat of his music, it was silent.

As her eyes adjusted, Lucy could see him frown as he pulled out his earbuds. He glanced in her direction before turning to face the panel of buttons, jabbing at a few with his thumb. When they refused to light up, he finally hit the red emergency one, and they both cocked their heads, waiting for the speaker to crackle to life.

Nothing happened, so he punched it again, then once more. Finally, he lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It must be the whole building,” he said without turning around.

Lucy lowered her eyes, trying to avoid the little red arrow above the door, which was poised somewhere between the numbers 10 and 11. She was doing her best not to picture the empty elevator shaft below, or the thick cables stretched above them.

“I’m sure they’re already working on it,” she said, though she wasn’t at all sure. She’d been in the elevator when it got stuck before, but never when the lights had gone out, too, and now her legs felt unsteady beneath her, her stomach wound tight. Already, the air seemed too warm and the space too small.

She cleared her throat. “George is just downstairs, so…”

The boy turned to face her, and though it was still too dark for details, she could see him more clearly with each minute that passed. She was reminded of a science experiment her class did in fifth grade, where the teacher dropped a mint into each of the students’ cupped palms, then switched off the lights and told them to bite down hard, and a series of tiny sparks lit up the room. This was how he seemed to her now: his teeth flashing when he spoke, the whites of his eyes bright against the blackness.

“Yeah, but if it’s the whole building, this could take a while,” he said, slumping against the wall. “And my dad’s not around this afternoon.”

“My parents are away, too,” Lucy told him, and she could just barely make out the expression on his face, an odd look in her direction.

“I meant ’cause he’s the super,” he said. “But he’s just in Brooklyn, so I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“Do you think…?” she began, then paused, not sure how to phrase the question. “Do you think we’re okay till then?”

“I think we’ll be fine,” he said, his voice reassuring; then, with a hint of amusement, he added: “Unless, of course, you’re afraid of the dark.”

“I’m okay,” she said, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, her elbows resting on her knees. She attempted a smile, which emerged a little wobbly. “I’ve heard monsters prefer closets to elevators.”

“Then I think we’re in the clear,” he said, sitting down, too, his back against the opposite corner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, and in the dim light, his hair glowed green as he bent his head over it. “No signal.”

“It’s usually pretty iffy in here anyway,” Lucy said, reaching for her own phone before realizing she’d left it upstairs. She’d only run down to grab the mail, a quick round trip to the lobby and back, and now it felt like a particularly bad moment to find herself completely empty-handed.

“So,” the boy said, tipping his head back against the wall. “Come here often?”

She laughed. “I’ve logged some time in this particular elevator, yes.”

“I think you’re about to log a lot more,” he said with a rueful smile. “I’m Owen, by the way. I feel like we should probably introduce ourselves so I don’t end up calling you Elevator Girl whenever I tell this story.”

“I could live with Elevator Girl,” she said. “But Lucy works, too. I’m in 24D.”

He hesitated a moment, then gave a little shrug. “I’m in the basement.”

“Right,” she said, remembering too late, and she was glad for the darkness, which hid the flush in her cheeks. The building was like a small country in and of itself, and this was the currency; when you met someone new, you didn’t just give your name but your apartment number as well, only she’d forgotten that the super always lived in the small two-bedroom flat in the basement, a floor Lucy had never visited.

“In case you’re wondering why I’m on my way up,” he said after a moment, “I’ve figured out that the view’s a whole lot better on the roof.”

“I thought nobody was allowed up there.”

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and pulled out a single key, which he held flat in his palm. “That’s true,” he said with a broad grin. “Technically speaking.”

“So you have friends in high places, huh?”

“Low places,” he said, returning the key to his pocket. “The basement, remember?”

This time she laughed. “What’s up there, anyway?”

“The sky.”

“You’ve got keys to the sky?” she said, and he knitted his fingers together, lifting his arms above his head in a stretch.

“It’s how I impress all the girls I meet in the elevator.”

“Well, it’s working,” she said, amused. Watching him over the past weeks, studying him from afar, she’d imagined he must be shy and unapproachable. But sitting here now, the two of them grinning at each other through the dark, she realized she might have been wrong. He was funny and a little bit odd, which at the moment didn’t seem like the worst kind of person to be stuck with.

“Although,” she added, “I’d be a lot more impressed if you could get us out of here.”

“I would, too,” he said, shifting his gaze to scan the ceiling. “You’d think the least they could do would be to pipe in some music.”

“If they’re planning to pipe in anything, hopefully it’s some cool air.”

“Yeah, this whole city’s like a furnace,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like September.”

“I know. Hard to believe school starts tomorrow.”

“Yeah, for me, too,” he said. “Assuming we ever get out of here.”

“Where do you go?”

“Probably not the same place as you.”

“Well, I hope not,” she said with a grin. “Mine’s all girls.”

“Then definitely not the same one,” he said. “But I’d already figured that out anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, waving a hand around. “You live here.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows. “In the elevator?”

“In this building,” he said, making a face.

“So do you.”

“I think it would be more accurate to say I live under this building,” he joked. “But I’m betting you go to some fancy private school where everyone wears uniforms and worries about the difference between an A and an A-minus.”

She swallowed hard, unsure what to say to this, since it was true.

Taking her silence as an admission, he tilted his head as if to say I told you so, then gave a little shrug. “I’m going to the one up on One Hundred and Twelfth that looks like a bunker, where everyone goes through metal detectors and worries about the difference between a C and a C-minus.”

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” she said, and his jaw went tight. Even through the darkness, something about his expression made him seem much older than he’d looked just moments before, bitter and cynical.

“The school or the city?”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re too thrilled about either.”

He glanced down at his hands, which were resting in a knot on top of his knees. “It’s just… this wasn’t really the plan,” he said. “But my dad got offered this job, and now here we are.”

“It’s not so bad,” she told him. “Really. You’ll find things to like about it.”

He shook his head. “It’s too crowded. You can’t ever breathe here.”

“I think you’re confusing the city with this elevator.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but then he frowned again. “There are no open spaces.”

“There’s a whole park just a block away.”

“You can’t see the stars.”

“There’s always the planetarium,” Lucy said, and in spite of himself, he laughed.

“Are you always so relentlessly optimistic, or just when it comes to New York?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she said with a shrug. “It’s my home.”

“Not mine.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to play the sullen new guy card.”

“It’s not a card,” he said. “I am the sullen new guy.”

“Just give it a chance, Bartleby.”

“Owen,” he said, looking indignant, and she laughed.

“I know,” she told him. “But you’re sounding just like Bartleby from the story.” She waited to see if he knew it, then pushed on. “Herman Melville? Author of Moby-Dick?”

“I know that,” he said. “Who’s Bartleby?”

“A scrivener,” she explained. “Sort of a clerk. But throughout the whole story, anytime someone asks him to do something, all he says is ‘I would prefer not to.’ ”

He considered this a moment. “Yup,” he said finally. “That pretty much sums up my feelings about New York.”

Lucy nodded. “You would prefer not to,” she said. “But that’s just because it’s new. Once you get to know it more, I have a feeling you’ll like it here.”

“Is this the part where you insist on taking me on a tour of the city, and we laugh and point at all the famous sights, and then I buy an I♥NY T-shirt and live happily ever after?”

“The T-shirt is optional,” she told him.

For a long moment, they eyed each other across the cramped space, and then, finally, he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I know I’m being a jerk.”

Lucy shrugged. “It’s okay. We can just chalk it up to claustrophobia. Or lack of oxygen.”

He smiled, but there was something strained about it. “It’s just been a really tough summer. And I guess I’m not used to the idea of being here yet.”

His eyes caught hers through the darkness, and the elevator felt suddenly smaller than it had just minutes before. Lucy thought of all the other times she’d been crammed in here over the years: with women in fur coats and men in expensive suits; with little white dogs on pink leashes and doormen wheeling heavy boxes on luggage carts. She’d once spilled an entire container of orange juice on the carpet right where Owen was sitting, which had made the whole place stink for days, and another time, when she was little, she’d drawn her name in green marker on the wall, much to her mother’s dismay.

She’d read the last pages of her favorite books here, cried the whole way up and laughed the whole way down, made small talk to a thousand different neighbors on a thousand different days. She’d fought with her two older brothers, kicking and clawing, until the door dinged open and they all walked out into the lobby like perfect angels. She’d ridden down to greet her dad when he arrived home from every single business trip, and had even once fallen asleep in the corner as she waited for her parents to come home from a charity auction.

And how many times had they all been stuffed in here together? Dad, with his newspaper folded under his arm, always standing near the door, ready to bolt; Mom, wearing a thin smile, seesawing between amusement and impatience with the rest of them; the twins, grinning as they elbowed each other; and Lucy, the youngest, tucked in a corner, always trailing behind the rest of the family like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence.

And now here she was, in a box that seemed too tiny to hold so many memories, with the walls pressing in all around her and nobody to come to her rescue. Her parents were in Paris, across the ocean, as usual, on the kind of trip that only ever included the two of them. And her brothers—the only friends she’d ever really had—were now thousands of miles away at college.

When they’d left a few weeks ago—Charlie heading off to Berkeley, and Ben to Stanford—Lucy couldn’t help feeling suddenly orphaned. It wasn’t unusual for her parents to be away; they’d always made a habit of careening off to snow-covered European cities or exotic tropical islands on their own. But being left behind was never that bad when there were three of them, and it was always her brothers—a twin pair of clowns, protectors, and friends—that had kept everything from unraveling.

Until now. She was used to being parentless, but being brotherless—and, thus, effectively friendless—was entirely new, and losing both of them at once seemed unfair. The whole family was now hopelessly scattered, and from where she sat—all alone in New York—Lucy felt it deeply just then, as if for the very first time: the bigness of the world, the sheer scope of it.

Across the elevator, Owen rested his head against the wall. “It is what it is…” he murmured, letting the words trail off at the end.

“I hate that expression,” Lucy said, a bit more forcefully than intended. “Nothing is what it is. Things are always changing. They can always get better.”

He looked over, and she could see that he was smiling, even as he shook his head. “You’re totally nuts,” he said. “We’re stuck in an elevator that’s hot and stuffy and probably running out of air. We’re hanging by a cord that’s got to be smaller than my wrist. Your parents are who-knows-where, and my dad’s in Coney Island. And if nobody’s come to get us by now, there’s a good chance they’ve forgotten about us entirely. So seriously, how are you still so positive?”

Lucy slid out from the wall, folding her legs beneath her and leaning forward. “How come your dad’s in Coney Island?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“That’s not the point.”

“For the roller coasters?”

He shook his head.

“The hot dogs?” she asked. “The ocean?”

“Aren’t you at all worried that nobody’s coming to get us?”

“It won’t help anything,” she said. “Worrying.”

“Exactly,” he said. “It is what it is.”

“Nope,” she said. “Nothing is what it is.”

“Fine,” he said. “It’s not what it isn’t.”

Lucy gave him a long look. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Or maybe you’d just prefer not to,” he said, sitting forward, and they both laughed. The darkness between them felt suddenly thin, flimsy as tissue paper and even less substantial. His eyes shone through the blackness as the silence stretched between them, and when he finally broke it, his voice was choked.

“He’s in Coney Island because that’s where he first met my mother,” Owen said. “He bought flowers to leave on the boardwalk. He wanted to do it alone.”

Lucy opened her mouth to say something—to ask a question, perhaps, or to tell him she was sorry, a word too small to mean anything at a moment like this—but the silence felt suddenly fragile, and she could think of nothing worthy enough to break it.

His head was bowed so that it was hard to make out the expression on his face, and she felt useless, sitting there without any idea of what to do. But then a faint knock sent her heart up into her throat, and his eyes found hers in the dark.

The sound came again, and Owen stood this time, moving over to the door and pressing his ear against it. He knocked back, and they both listened. Even from where she was still sitting numbly in the middle of the floor, Lucy could hear the muffled voices outside, followed by the scrape of something metal. After a moment, she rose to her feet, too, and without a word, without even looking at each other, they stood there like that, shoulder to shoulder, like a couple of astronauts at the end of a long journey, waiting for the doors to open so they could step out into a dazzling new world.

2

The day had started in darkness, too. Owen had woken before the sun was up, just as he had for the last forty-two mornings, jolted out of sleep with the feel of something heavy on his chest, a weight that pressed down on him like a fist. He blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling, the faint cracks that formed a sort of map, and the fly that roved between them, like an X marking some unknowable spot.

In the next room, he could hear the clink of a coffee mug, and he knew his father was awake, too. The last six weeks had turned them into bleary-eyed insomniacs, their days as shapeless as their nights, so that one simply bled into the other. It seemed fitting that they were living underground now; what better place for a couple of ghosts?

His new room was less than half the size of his old one back in their sprawling, sun-drenched house in rural Pennsylvania, where he’d been woken each morning by the sparrows just outside his window. Now he listened to a couple of pigeons squabbling against the narrow panel of glass near the ceiling, where the protective metal bars made what little light there was fall across his bed in slats.

When he emerged into the hallway that separated his room from his father’s and led back to the small kitchen and sitting area, Owen caught a whiff of smoke, and the intensity of it, the vividness of the memory, almost took his knees out from under him. He followed the scent to the living room, where he found his father sitting on the couch, hunched over a mug that was serving as a makeshift ashtray.

“I didn’t think you’d be up,” he said, stabbing out the cigarette with a guilty expression. He ran a hand through his hair, which was just a shade or two darker than Owen’s, then sat back and rubbed his eyes.

“I didn’t really sleep,” Owen admitted, collapsing into the rocking chair across from him. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. He couldn’t help himself; they’d been his mother’s cigarettes, and the scent clenched at something inside him. There’d been eight left when she died, the crumpled pack recovered from the accident site and returned to them along with her wallet and keys and a few other odds and ends, and though his father didn’t usually smoke, there were now only two. Owen could chart the bad days in this way, by the tang of smoke in the mornings, the best and worst reminder of her; one of the only ones left.

“You always hated these,” Owen said, picking up the nearly empty box and spinning it in his hands. His father smiled faintly.

“Terrible habit—it drove me crazy,” he agreed, then shook his head. “I always said it would kill her.”

Owen lowered his eyes but couldn’t help picturing the police report, the theory that she’d been distracted while trying to light a cigarette. They’d found the car upside down in a ditch. The box was ten yards away.

“I thought I’d head out to Brooklyn today,” Dad said, a forced casualness to his voice, though Owen knew what that really meant, knew exactly where he was going and why. “You’ll be okay on your own?”

Owen thought about asking whether he might like some company, but he already knew the answer. He’d seen the flowers resting on the kitchen counter last night, still wrapped in cellophane and already wilting. It was their anniversary; the day didn’t belong to Owen. He ran a hand over the pack of cigarettes and nodded.

“We’ll have dinner when I get back,” Dad said, then picked up the ash-filled mug and padded out into the kitchen. “Anything you want.”

“Great,” Owen called, and then before he could think better of it, he slid one of the last two cigarettes from the pack, twirled it once between his fingers, and tucked it into his pocket without quite knowing why.

In the doorway to his bedroom, he paused. They’d been here nearly a month now, but the room was still lined with boxes, most of them half-open, the cardboard flaps spread out like wings. This sort of thing would have driven his mother crazy, and he couldn’t help smiling as he imagined what her reaction would be, a mix of exasperation and bemusement. She’d always kept things so tidy at home, the counters sparkling and the floors dust-free, and Owen was suddenly glad she couldn’t see this place, with its dim lighting and peeling paint, the mold that caked the spaces between bathroom tiles and the dingy appliances in the kitchen.

Whenever Owen used to complain about cleaning his room or having to do the dishes the moment they were finished with dinner, Mom would cuff him playfully on the head. “Our home is a reflection of who we are,” she’d say in a singsong voice.

“Right,” Owen would shoot back. “And I’m a mess.”

“You are not,” she’d say, laughing. “You’re perfect.”

“Perfectly messy,” Dad would say.

She used to make them take off their shoes in the laundry room, only ever smoked on the back porch, and kept the pillows on the couches from getting too squashed. Dad said it had always been this way, from the moment they bought the house, the two of them thrilled to finally own something so permanent after so much time on the road.

They’d spent the previous two years traveling around in a rickety van with all their worldly belongings stashed in the back. They’d crisscrossed the country, camping out under the stars or sleeping curled in the backseat, whittling away their meager savings as they made their across every state but Hawaii and Alaska. They’d seen Mount Rushmore and Grand Teton, driven up the California coast and gone fishing in the Florida Keys. They’d been to New Orleans and Bar Harbor and Mackinac Island, Charleston and Austin and Lake Tahoe, traveling until they ran out of land, and money, too. It was only then that they returned to Pennsylvania, where they’d both grown up—and where it was time to grow up for a second time—and settled down for good.

But in spite of all the stories he’d heard of their years on the road, Owen had never been much of anywhere. His parents seemed to have gotten it out of their system by the time he came along, and they were content to be in one place. They had a house with a porch and a yard with an apple tree; there was a swingset around the side and a neighboring field of grazing horses. They had a round kitchen table just big enough for three, a door the perfect size for a wreath at Christmastime, and enough nooks and crannies for long and drawn-out games of hide-and-seek. There was nowhere else they ever wanted to be.

Until now.

Alone in his bedroom, Owen heard the front door fall shut, then waited a few minutes before grabbing his phone and wallet and heading out, too, jogging up the stairs from the basement to the lobby, which he passed through quickly, his head bent. It wasn’t that he had anything against the residents of the building, but he didn’t belong here, and neither did his father. Owen was just waiting for him to realize that, too.

All morning, he walked. This was his last day of freedom, the last day he wouldn’t be bound to show up for classes in a school that wasn’t his, and he found himself pacing like a restless animal along the edge of the Hudson River. He left his earbuds on, drowning out the sounds of the city, and he kept moving in spite of the heat. For lunch, he bought a hot dog from a street vendor, then cut over to Central Park, where he sat watching the tourists with their cameras and their maps and their round, shiny eyes. He followed their gazes, trying to see what they saw, but all he could see were more people.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that he made his way back to the corner of Seventy-Second and Broadway, to the ornate stone building that was now his home. He paused just inside the lobby, reluctant to go back downstairs, where there was nothing to do but sit alone for the next few hours and wait for his dad to return. Instead, he felt for the key in the pocket of his shorts.

He’d taken the master set from his dad’s dresser during their first week here, a wildly uncharacteristic move for him. Owen had always been overly cautious, not prone to breaking rules, but after only a few days here, the claustrophobic feel of the place had become too much to take, and he found a locksmith to make a copy of the key that unlocked the door to the roof—the only peaceful place, it seemed, in this entire city.

As he stepped into the elevator, he was already imagining the vast, windblown quiet forty-two stories above, his music loud in his ears and his thoughts far away. He punched the button and stood waiting for the ground to lift beneath his feet, still lost in thought, and he hadn’t even bothered to look up when someone caught the doors just before they could close.

But now, less than an hour later, he felt suddenly too aware of her, a presence beside him as prickly as the heat. As they listened to the sounds on the other side of the door, he glanced down, noticing that her right foot was only inches away from his left one, and he curled his toes and rocked back on his heels and looked away again. He realized he was holding his breath, and he wondered if she was, too.

Just before the door was pried open, he narrowed his eyes, expecting to be greeted by a sudden brightness. But instead, the faces peering down at them from the eleventh floor—which started halfway up the length of the elevator, a thick slab of concrete that bisected the doors—were mostly lost in shadows, and the only light came from a couple of flashlights, which were being pointed directly in their faces, causing them both to blink.

“Hi,” Lucy said brightly, greeting them as if this was all very ordinary, as if they always met in this way: the doorman above them on his hands and knees, his face pale and moonlike in the dark, and beside him, a handyman sitting back on his heels and wiping at his forehead with a bandanna.

“You guys okay?” George asked, passing down a water bottle, which Owen grabbed from him and then handed to Lucy. She nodded as she untwisted the cap and took a long swig.

“It’s a little toasty,” she said, giving the bottle back to Owen. “But we’re fine. Is the whole building out?”

The handyman snorted. “The whole city.”

Owen and Lucy exchanged a look. “Seriously?” she asked, her eyes widening. “That can happen?”

“Apparently,” George said. “It’s chaos out there.”

“Traffic lights and everything?” Owen asked, and the older man nodded, then clapped his hands, all business.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you guys out of here.”

Lucy went first, and when Owen tried to help her, she waved him away, hoisting herself up over the lip of the floor, then rising to her feet and brushing off her white dress. Owen followed much less gracefully, flopping onto the ledge like a fish run aground before hopping up. There was an emergency light at the far end of the hallway that cast a reddish glow, and it was a little bit cooler up here but not much; his palms were still sweaty and his T-shirt was still glued to his back.

“So when do they think we’ll have power again?” he asked, trying to keep the nervous edge out of his voice. He couldn’t help thinking of his father. No electricity meant no subways. No subways meant there was no way he could get back anytime soon. And in a situation like this, his absence would not go unnoticed.

“No idea,” George said, stooping to help pack up the tools. The clanging metal rang out along the walls, interrupting the eerie silence. “The phone lines are all jammed and the Internet’s down, too.”

“No cell-phone reception, either,” the handyman added. “It’s impossible to get any kind of information.”

“I heard it’s the whole East Coast,” George said. “That a power plant in Canada got struck by lightning.”

The handyman rolled his eyes. “And I heard it was an alien invasion.”

“I’m just telling you what they were saying on the radio,” George muttered, standing up again. He put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder, then looked from her to Owen. “So you guys are okay?”

They both nodded.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve got to go door-to-door and make sure everyone’s all right. You both have flashlights?”

“Yup,” Lucy said. “Upstairs.”

“Have you heard from my dad at all?” Owen asked as casually as he could manage. “He’s—”

“Yeah, I know,” George said. “He picked one hell of a day to beg off. I haven’t heard from him, but I wouldn’t be worried. Nobody’s heard from anyone.”

“He had to go out to Brooklyn,” Owen said, trying to think of some kind of excuse, an explanation to follow this, but the handyman—who had been walking toward the stairwell—paused and turned back around.

“Subways are down,” he said. “It’s gonna be a long walk over the bridge.…”

Owen felt another pang of anxiety, though he was no longer sure if it was for the fact that his father wasn’t here to help or the idea that he might already be crossing the length of Brooklyn to get home. It seemed far more likely that he was sitting on the darkened boardwalk, lost in memories and oblivious to the whims of the electrical grid. Even so, there was something odd about being separated like this, on opposite ends of the same city, a whole network of roads and rivers, bridges and trains between them, but still unable to make it across the miles.

“You two be careful,” George called back to them, as he stepped into the stairwell behind the handyman. “I’ll be around if you need anything.”

The heavy door slammed shut behind them, and Lucy and Owen were left alone in the quiet hallway. Their gazes both landed on the gaping black hole of the empty elevator, and Lucy gave a little shrug.

“I kind of thought it’d be cooler on the outside,” she said, reaching back to twist her long brown hair into a loose ponytail, which quickly unraveled again.

Owen nodded. “And maybe a little brighter.”

“Well, at least we have our freedom,” she joked, and this made him smile.

“Right,” he said. “You know what they say about the inside of a cell.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “That it can drive a person mad.”

“I think that’s solitary confinement.”

“Oh,” he said. “I guess ours wasn’t solitary.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It definitely wasn’t.”

He leaned against the wall near the open elevator. “So what now?”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at her watch. “My parents are in Europe, and it’s already late there. I’m sure they’re out to dinner or at a party or something. They probably have no idea this is even happening.…”

“I’m sure they do,” Owen said. “If it’s the whole city, this has got to be pretty big news. They let you stay home by yourself?”

“They travel way too much to worry about always finding someone,” she explained. “It was usually me and my brothers, anyway.”

“And now?”

“Just me,” she said. “But it’s not like I’m not old enough to be left alone.”

“How old is that?”

“Almost seventeen.”

“So sixteen,” he said with a grin, and she rolled her eyes.

“Quite the math whiz. Why, how old are you?”

“Actually seventeen.”

“So you’re gonna be a senior?”

“If we have school tomorrow,” he said, glancing around. “Which I sort of doubt.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fixed by then. How hard is it to flip a power switch?”

He laughed. “Quite the science whiz.”

“Funny,” she said, but the word was hollow. Her smile fell as she regarded him, and Owen found himself straightening under her gaze.

“What?”

“You’ll be okay on your own?”

“You think I need a babysitter?” he asked, but the joke landed heavily between them. He lifted his chin. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “And I’m sure my dad’ll find a way to get back here soon. He’s probably worried about the building.”

“He’s probably worried about you,” Lucy said, and something tightened in Owen’s chest, though he wasn’t sure why. “Just be careful, okay?”

He nodded. “I will.”

“If you need a flashlight, I think we might have extras.”

“I’m fine,” he said as they started walking down the hall. “But thanks.”

“It’s only gonna get darker,” she warned him, waving a hand around. “You’ll need—”

“I’m fine,” he said again.

When he opened the door to the stairwell, the sealed-in heat came at them in a fog of stale air. From somewhere above, they could hear muddled voices, and then the slamming of a door, the sound of it crashing down flight after flight until it reached them.

They stepped inside, where the little white emergency lights along the edges of the stairs gave off a faint glow, and for the first time, Owen could see her face clearly: the freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, and the deep brown of her eyes, so dark they almost looked black. She climbed the first step so that she was even with him, their eyes level, and they stood there for a long moment without saying anything. Above her, there was the seemingly endless spiral of stairs leading up to the twenty-fourth floor. Behind him, there was the long descent to his empty apartment in the basement.

“Well,” she said eventually, her eyes shining in the reflection of the lights. “Thanks for making the time pass, Elevator Boy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll have to do it again the next time there’s a massive citywide blackout.”

“Deal,” she said, then turned to begin walking, her sandals loud against the concrete steps. Owen watched her go; her white sundress made her look like a ghost, like something out a dream, and he waited until she’d disappeared around the corner before he began to walk himself, moving slowly from one step to the next.

Two flights down, he paused to listen to her footsteps above him, which were growing fainter as she climbed away, and he thought again of the dismal apartment below, and the chaotic city outside, the sense of possibility in a night like this, where everything was new and unwritten, the whole world gone dark like some great and terrible magic trick. He stood very still, one hand on the railing, breathing in the warm air and listening, and then, before he could think better of it, he spun around and went flying back up the stairs.

He made it only three flights before he had to pause, breathing hard, and when he lifted his head again, she was there on the landing, peering down at him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling up at her. “I just changed my mind about the flashlight.”

3

Upstairs, they spilled out into the darkened hallway—identical to the one thirteen floors below—both out of breath. Lucy had taken her sandals off somewhere around the eighteenth floor, and she let them dangle now from one hand as she used the other to feel her way along the wall, aware of Owen a few paces behind her, his footsteps light on the carpet. At the door to 24D, she fished the keys from the pocket of her dress, then fumbled with the lock as he leaned against the wall beside her, squinting.

“It’s not easy in the dark,” he said, but she didn’t respond. She’d been opening this door for nearly sixteen years. She knew the incremental movements by heart: the way the key stuck so that you had to jiggle it to the left and the noisy click of the bolt as it finally turned. She could have done this blindfolded. She could have done it in her sleep.

It wasn’t the dark. It was him.

As the lock finally gave and the door swung open, Lucy hesitated. She realized she’d never had a boy in her apartment before. At least not like this. Never alone. And certainly never in the dark.

There had always been friends of her brothers around, cleaning out the refrigerator and playing music so loud it thumped through the walls. But Lucy’s school was all-girls, so she’d never really had any guy friends of her own.

Of course, she’d never really had very many girl friends, either.

Last year, while making a rare and mandatory appearance as a chaperone at the winter formal, her mother had noticed that after a few obligatory dances, Lucy had disappeared into the hallway with a book. After that, she’d suddenly started paying attention to her daughter’s lack of a social life. If Lucy wasn’t hanging out with her brothers, she was usually just wandering the city by herself, neither of which were apparently productive uses of her time. And so she’d begrudgingly agreed to attend a basketball game, where a junior named Bernie, who went to their brother school, approached her at the snack booth to say that he liked her skirt. It was the exact same plaid skirt that every single other girl at the game was wearing, but he seemed nice enough, and she had nobody else to sit with, so she let him buy her a popcorn.

They started meeting behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day after school, doing their homework together just long enough to maintain the illusion that they weren’t only there to make out. But never once had he invited her over to his Fifth Avenue apartment, and never once had she considered inviting him back to hers. Theirs was a relationship built on neutral ground and impartial geography: park benches and stone fountains and picnic blankets. Bringing him into her home would have given the relationship a weight that it was never meant to bear, and it seemed to Lucy that there was no faster way to sink something. Especially something that would so easily sink on its own just two short months later, when Bernie met a different girl in a different plaid skirt at a different game.

But this was a unique situation, an emergency of sorts, and that changed everything. An ordinary afternoon had given way to an evening that felt hazy around the edges, tinged with recklessness and a kind of unfamiliar abandon. This was the first time she’d been left entirely on her own; no parents, no brothers, nobody at all. And now here she was, swinging the door wide open, a boy she barely knew waiting at her back.

From the front hallway, she could see all the way down past the kitchen and into the living room, where at this time of dusk, the windows were usually beginning to reflect the many lights of the city, a seemingly endless grid of yellow squares. But now it was empty, just a pale blue rectangle at the end of a long, black corridor.

Behind her, Owen cleared his throat. He was still standing just outside the door, apparently unsure whether or not he was being invited inside.

“So did you want to just grab the flashlight for me, or…?”

“No,” Lucy said, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

The fading light from the windows didn’t reach this far back into the apartment, so Lucy kept her hands outstretched as she moved tentatively into the kitchen. Owen had wandered into the living room, and she heard a scrape followed by a thud as he tripped over something.

“I’m okay,” he called out cheerfully.

“I’m so relieved,” she yelled back as she reached the pantry. On the bottom shelf, she found the enormous blue crate that held all the misfit items that never seemed to belong anywhere else. It was the one disorganized place in the whole apartment, a treasure trove of broken umbrellas and sunglasses and an assortment of pens from various hotels around the world. She rummaged through the debris until she found a single flashlight, and when she clicked it on, she was glad to discover that it worked.

Stepping out of the pantry, she swung the beam around the kitchen so that the light made shapes that lingered across the backs of her eyelids. In the living room, she found Owen standing at the window, his hands braced on the sill. When he twisted to face her, the cone of light fell directly across his face, and she lowered it again as he blinked.

“It’s so strange out there,” he said, jabbing his thumb behind him. “It seems so quiet without all the lights.”

Lucy moved to the window beside him, her nose inches from the glass. The sky was a deepening blue, and the checkerboard of windows, which were usually filled with glowing scenes of family dinners and flickering TVs, looked hunched and forsaken tonight. From where Lucy and Owen were standing, they could see dozens of buildings stretched across Seventy-Second Street, all of them made up of hundreds of windows, and behind them, thousands of people hidden deep within the folds of their own separate homes. It always made Lucy feel small, standing here on the edge of something so vast, but tonight was the first time it felt a little bit lonely, too, and she was suddenly grateful for Owen’s company.

“There was only one flashlight,” she said, and he glanced down at it. She waited for him to make some kind of joke about being afraid of the dark, and when he didn’t, when he simply remained silent instead, she added, “So maybe we should just stick together.”

He turned back to the window and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “But it’s already getting warm in here. Want to go for a walk before it’s too dark?”

“Outside?”

“Well, this is a pretty big apartment, but…”

“I just meant… I mean, do you think it’s safe?”

“This is your city,” he said with a smile. “You tell me.”

“I guess it’s probably fine,” she said. “And it wouldn’t hurt to pick up some supplies.”

“Supplies?”

“Yeah, like water and stuff. I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in these types of situations?”

He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a few crumpled bills. “You can get as much water as you’d like,” he said. “I think a night like this calls for some ice cream.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’ll just melt,” she said, but he was undeterred.

“All the more reason to rescue it from such a sad fate…”

Before they left, they checked their cell phones, but neither had any reception, and Owen’s was nearly out of battery. Lucy used what little power was left on her laptop, which had been sitting unplugged on her bed all day, to try to send an e-mail to her parents, telling them everything was fine. But there was no connection, not that it probably mattered anyway; it was six hours later there, and if they weren’t still at some stuffy party, they were likely asleep.

Downstairs, Lucy and Owen burst out of the blazing heat of the stairwell into the lobby, which was nearly as humid. They almost ran over a beleaguered-looking nanny, who was paused with one hand on a stroller, steeling herself for the climb. A few other people were milling around near the mailroom, but it seemed as if most of the residents were either upstairs in their apartments or else still trying to find their way back home.

The handyman who’d helped rescue them was sitting at the front desk, his arm propped on his toolbox as he listened to a handheld radio, and he waved when he saw them. “How were the stairs?”

“Better than the elevator,” Owen said. “Any news?”

“No power until tomorrow at the earliest,” he reported, his mustache twitching. “They’re saying it goes all the way down to Delaware and all the way up into Canada.” He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “It must be quite a sight from up in space.”

“We’re going to pick up a few things,” Lucy said. “You need anything?”

The man was in the middle of requesting a six-pack of beer—which Lucy was about to tell him would be tricky to procure, given that they were both well under twenty-one—when Owen tapped her on the arm.

“Look,” he said, and she turned toward the front doors of the building, which faced out across Broadway. But instead of the usual herds of yellow taxis and black town cars and long city buses, she was shocked to see that the entire road was choked with people, the whole massive crowd moving uptown with a kind of plodding resolve.

Together, she and Owen stood in the doorway, their eyes wide as they watched the sea of bodies move past. Many of them were barefoot, their shoes tucked like footballs under their arms, and others had wrapped their shirts around their heads to try to keep cool. They wore suits and ties and dresses, and they carried briefcases and laptops, all of them taking part in the world’s strangest commute. There were no traffic lights to guide them, and no police in sight, though somewhere up the road, Lucy could see the faint throb of blue and red, unnaturally bright in the darkening sky.

“This is unbelievable,” she breathed, shaking her head. On the corner, one of the bars was jammed with people, many of them spilling out onto the sidewalks. Whether they’d given up on their way home or simply wandered outside to join in the camaraderie, there was a festive air to the gathering. High above them, perched on their balconies, people were using magazines for fans as they watched the scene unfolding below. Others hung out of their open windows, the apartments all dark behind them. It was like the whole city had been turned inside out.

“Come on,” Owen said, and she followed him out to the corner, where a guy wearing a dusty construction vest was helping a man in a pin-striped suit direct traffic, holding up the throngs of people to let a few cars slip through the intersection, then motioning for those on foot to continue their long treks homeward.

Lucy and Owen kept to the sidewalk, and when they reached the little bodega on Seventy-Fourth Street, which sold everything from cans of soda and dog food to toilet paper and lottery tickets, she grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. There were only a few bottles of water left, and they lined them up in a row on the counter before going back to grab a lighter and some candles, plus extra batteries for the flashlight.

When Lucy pushed some money toward the man behind the register, he gave her what seemed like an unlikely amount of change.

“I don’t think…” she began, but he flashed her a toothy smile.

“Blackout discount,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Who knew?” Owen said with a laugh. “Think that applies to any of the ice-cream shops, too?”

The man nodded as he packed their items into two plastic bags. “I heard the place on Seventy-Seventh is giving it away for free. It’s all melting anyhow.”

Owen turned to Lucy. “I think I like this city better in the dark.”

Outside, they stood for a moment with the plastic bags hooked around their fingers. The last streaks of pink had been erased from the sky over the Hudson, and an inky black had settled over the street. As they walked uptown to join the line for free ice cream, there was still a feeling of celebration to the evening. The price of beer at the bar next door was plummeting as the kegs grew warmer, and on the other side of Broadway, a restaurant was serving a makeshift dinner by candlelight. A few kids ran past with purple glow sticks, and two mounted policemen steered their wary-eyed horses through the crowds, surveying the scene from above.

As the line inched forward, Lucy glanced over at Owen, who was looking around with a dazed expression.

“You’d think there’d be looting or something,” he said. “In a place like this, you’d think it’d be mayhem. But it’s just a big party.”

“I told you it’s not so bad here,” Lucy said. “Give it a chance.”

“Okay,” he said with a little smile. “As long as you promise every night will be like this.”

“What,” she asked, “dark?”

“That’s the thing,” he said, looking up. “It’s not that dark. Not really.”

She followed his gaze to where the sliver of moon hung above the shadowy outline of the buildings, a thin curve of white against a navy sky that was dotted with stars. In all her years here, Lucy had never seen anything like it: a million points of light, all of them usually drowned out by the brilliant electricity of the city, the billboards and streetlights, the lasers and sirens, the fluorescent lamps and the neon bulbs, and the great white noise of it all, which left no room for anything else to break through.

But tonight, the world had gone quiet. There was nothing but the black canopy of the sky and the wash of stars above, burning so bright that Lucy found she couldn’t look away.

“He was right,” she murmured. “This must be quite a sight from up in space.”

Owen didn’t answer for a moment, and when he finally did, his voice was hushed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s even better from down here.”

4

By the time they made it back up the twenty-four flights of stairs—red-faced and panting and holding their sides—the apartment was like an oven, and there was nothing to do but collapse onto the cool tiles of the kitchen floor. There was no cure for this kind of heat, no fans and no air-conditioning and no breeze from the window, and even the ceramic tiles grew warm beneath them as they lay there in silence, still breathing hard.

Eventually, Owen sat up and reached for one of the water bottles, handing another over to Lucy, who was sprawled out beside the refrigerator, her white dress pooled all around her. She wiped at her forehead with the back of her hand, then propped herself up on her elbows to take a sip.

“That’s it,” she said when she was done.

Owen lay back again. “What is?”

“I’m never going downstairs again.”

“Until the elevator’s fixed…”

“Maybe not even then,” she said. “That elevator and I go way back, but after tonight, I’m not sure I can ever trust it again.”

“Poor old elevator.”

“Poor old me.”

There was a ceiling fan above them, and Owen stared at the outline of the blades through the dark for so long that he could almost imagine it spinning. His whole body was spiky with heat, even his eyelids, which felt heavy and thick. He reached absently for the flashlight on the floor between them, then clicked it on, shining it around the kitchen like a spotlight: circling the sink and zigzagging across the cabinets.

“There’s pretty much nothing in there. My mom doesn’t cook,” Lucy said, following the beam with her gaze. “None of us really do.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “You’ve got a great kitchen.”

“Do you?”

“Have a great kitchen?”

“No,” she said, lying back again so that their heads were inches apart, their bodies fanned out in opposite directions. “Do you cook?”

“Yup,” he said. “And I clean, too. I’m a regular Renaissance man.”

He flicked the light over the dishwasher, then the oven, and finally up to the refrigerator, which was covered with postcards, each one pinned by a brightly colored magnet. He sat up to take a closer look, focusing the light so he could read the names scrawled over them: Florence, Cape Town, Prague, Barcelona, Cannes, Saint Petersburg.

“Wow,” he said. “Have you been to all these places?”

Lucy laughed. “Do you think I’m sending myself postcards?”

“No,” he said, his face burning. “I just figured—”

“They’re from my parents. They go to amazing places, and I get a piece of cardboard,” she explained with a shrug. “They always bring one of my brothers a magnet and the other a snow globe. It’s kind of a tradition. Apparently I asked for a postcard once when I was little, and I guess it sort of stuck.”

He scooted closer to the refrigerator, holding the flashlight in his fist. “So where are they now?”

“Paris,” she said. “They go there all the time.”

“They don’t ever take you?” he asked without turning around, and her voice behind him was quiet when she answered.

“No.”

“Oh,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “Well, who needs Paris when you live in New York, right?”

This made her smile. “I guess so,” she said, then pointed at the fridge. “I haven’t gotten one from this trip yet. That’s actually why I was downstairs before. I was checking the mail.”

There was a note of sadness in the words, and Owen cast around for something to say in response, something to fill the quiet of the kitchen. He glanced again at the mosaic of photographs. “Postcards are overrated anyway.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I mean, what’s the worst thing you can say to someone who isn’t on some beautiful beach with you?”

Lucy shrugged.

“ ‘Wish you were here.’ ” He rapped his knuckles against a scene from Greece, which was hanging near the bottom. “I mean, come on. If they really wished you were there, they’d have invited you in the first place, right? It’s kind of mean, if you really think about it. It should say: ‘Greece: Where nobody’s all that upset you’re not here.’ ”

There was a long pause, and as the silence lengthened, he realized his mistake. He’d only been joking, but it had come out sounding harsh and somehow too specific, and he was gripped now with a sudden fear that he’d managed to make things worse.

But to his relief, she began to laugh. “ ‘Rome: Where it’s so beautiful, we’ve pretty much forgotten about you,’ ” she said, sitting up. Her arms were looped around her bare legs, and her mouth was twisted with the humor of it. “ ‘Sydney: Where you’re really missing out.’ ”

“Exactly,” Owen said. “That’s a lot more honest anyway.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said, her face growing serious again.

“But I bet your parents really do wish you were there.”

“Yeah,” she said, but her voice was hollow. “I bet.”

He switched off the flashlight, then pivoted so that his back was against the refrigerator, the postcards fluttering above his head, and he thought of the notes his mother used to leave for him around the house, little yellow Post-its scrawled with blue ink, reminders to clean his room or to heat up the casserole she’d made. Sometimes she left them before running out to do errands, or going to dinner with Dad, but other times she wouldn’t be far, just out in the backyard, weeding the garden. It didn’t matter whether she’d see him again in two minutes or two hours or two days; the notes always ended the same way: Thinking of you.

“I have an idea,” he said, and Lucy let her head fall to one side so she could look at him, her eyes dark and searching. He reached into his pocket and held out the keys to the roof. “It’ll be a hike,” he told her. “But I think it’ll be worth it.”

They loaded a backpack with water and snacks, candles and a blanket, and then Owen led them back toward the stairwell, flashlight held before him like a sword. The hallway was still quiet, and he wondered what he’d be doing now if his father were home. He would probably just be waiting while he went door-to-door through the building, pretending as best he could at this new role of caretaker, as Owen sat alone in the basement, pretending not to notice that he could hardly even take care of himself these days.

They started up the stairs at a brisk pace, but their footsteps soon slowed, and by the time they passed the thirty-fifth floor, they were walking side by side, hauling themselves up on opposite railings, one sweaty hand at a time. When they finally reached the metal door at the top, Owen gave it a push, but it didn’t budge.

“A lot of the time, they leave it unlocked,” he explained. “Which is why I don’t feel too bad about the key.”

“Aha,” she said. “So you’re not as much of a badass as you would first appear.”

He laughed. “I’m not a badass at all. I’m just a guy with a key.”

When he unlocked the door, they stumbled out onto the darkened roof, their eyes focused on the ground as they picked their way across the tar-covered surface.

“Over there,” Owen said, pointing at the southwest corner, and Lucy walked over to the ledge that ran along the perimeter, where she stood looking out.

“Wow,” she breathed, rising onto her tiptoes. Owen dropped the backpack before joining her, positioning himself a few inches away. The wind lifted her hair from her shoulders, and he caught the scent of something sweet; it smelled like flowers, like springtime, and it made him a little dizzy.

They were quiet as they took in the unfamiliar view, the island that was usually lit up like a Christmas tree now nothing but shadows. The skyscrapers were silhouettes against a sky the color of a bruise, and only the spotlight from a single helicopter swung back and forth like a pendulum as it drifted across the skyline.

Together, they leaned against the granite wall, invisible souls in an invisible city, peering down over forty-two stories of sheer height and breathless altitude.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been up here,” she murmured without taking her eyes off the ghostly buildings. “I always say the best way to see the city is from the ground up, but this place is amazing. It’s—”

“A million miles above the rest of the world,” he said, shifting to face her more fully.

“A million miles away from the world,” she said. “Which is even better.”

“You’re definitely living in the wrong city then.”

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “There are so many ways to be alone here, even when you’re surrounded by so many people.”

Owen frowned. “Sounds lonely.”

She turned to him with a smile, but there was something steely about it. “There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.”

He was about to say more but was reminded of the postcards just downstairs, dozens of monuments to one or the other—loneliness or solitude—depending on how you looked at them.

“Then I guess you’ve come to the right place,” he said, watching her fingers drum an unconscious rhythm on the rough stone of the ledge. “Even though you’re not technically alone at the moment.”

“No, that’s true,” she said, fixing her gaze on him again, and this time the smile was real.

They spread the picnic blanket on the uneven surface of the roof, then spilled out the contents of the backpack. The sun was long gone, but it was still warm out, even up here, where the wind made it difficult to light the candles. After a while, they gave up and dined in the dark instead, sharing an assortment of cookies and crackers and fruit, and Lucy’s eyes kept straying back up to the sky between bites, as if she couldn’t trust the unfamiliar stars to stay put.

When they were full, they dragged the blanket over to the wall so that they could lean against it, sitting side by side, their heads tilted back, their shoulders nearly touching.

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?” Lucy asked, and Owen felt a flash of recognition; it was a question that was always on his mind, and the first thing he usually wondered about other people, even if he never got around to asking.

“Everywhere,” he said, and she laughed, the sound light and musical.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Sure it is,” he said, because it was true, possibly the truest thing about him. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was an exercise in waiting; not waiting to leave, exactly, but simply waiting to go. He felt like one of those fish that had the capacity to grow in unimaginable ways if only the tank were big enough. But his tank had always been small, and as much as he loved his home—as much as he loved his family—he’d always felt himself bumping up against the edges of his own life.

New York City wasn’t the answer. What Owen wanted was something wider, something vaster; he had applications ready for six different colleges that ranged up and down the West Coast, from San Diego all the way to Washington, and he couldn’t wait for the day when he could take off to start a new life out there, crossing through states heavy with vowels beneath skies flat as paper, through the impossible bulk of jagged mountains, all the way to the silvery ocean.

For as long as he could remember, he’d felt the pull of the road, an itinerant streak that chimed from somewhere deep inside him, perhaps inherited from his once-restless parents. One day, he hoped to find their kind of peace, too—a home that was nothing special until they’d deemed it so—but that would come later, and for now there were thousands of places he burned to see, and next year would just be the start of it.

He could feel Lucy’s eyes on him, and when he turned to face her, she dipped her chin. “Okay then,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everywhere.”

“What about you?” he asked, and she considered this a moment.

“Somewhere.”

He grinned. “How is that a better answer than everywhere?”

“It’s more specific,” she said, as if this should be obvious.

“I guess that’s true.” He looked down at his folded hands. “You know, I’ve never really been anywhere. New York, obviously. And Pennsylvania. We went to the Delaware shore once when I was little. And crossed through New Jersey a few times. That’s what? Four states.” He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Pitiful, huh?”

“What about next year?” she asked. “College seems like a pretty good excuse to get out of here.”

“It is,” he agreed. “I’m looking at a lot of places out west. California, Oregon, Washington…”

She raised her eyebrows. “Those are all really far.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s kind of the point. They’ve all got pretty good science programs, too.”

“Ah,” she said. “So you are a science whiz.”

He shrugged. “Whiz might be taking it a bit far.”

“What about your dad?”

“What about him?” Owen asked, but he knew what she meant, and he felt something go cold in his chest at the thought. There were so many parts of this—this lonely next chapter—that he dreaded now, most of them having to do with his mother: that she wouldn’t be there to watch him walk across the stage at graduation, or to help him pack, or to make the bed in his new dorm room the way she always did at home. But the worst of it was actually this: that, after dropping off his only son, his dad would have to come back to this miserable basement apartment on his own.

That was the part that knocked the wind out of him every single time.

He swallowed hard and raised his eyes to meet Lucy’s.

“Won’t he miss having you nearby?” she asked, and he forced himself to shrug.

“He’ll come visit,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He felt beside him, where there was a small piece of gravel, and then used it to scratch absently at the black surface of the roof. “What about you?”

“Will I miss having you nearby?” she asked with a grin, and he smiled in spite of himself.

“No,” he said. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

“Well, New York, of course,” she said, holding out a hand to tick off her fingers as she counted. “Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida. I was hoping to get to California when my brothers left for school a few weeks ago, but they ended up just driving out together. My cousin’s getting married there in a few months, though, so I guess I’ll be able to add it to the list then.”

“Pretty good list,” he said with a little nod.

“Oh, and London,” she said, her face brightening. “Almost forgot about that. Just twice, though. It’s where my mom’s from, so…” She shrugged. “But that’s it for me. Not all that impressive, either.”

He sighed. “When my parents graduated from high school, they bought a van and saw the whole country. Two years on the road. They went everywhere.”

“I’m more interested in going abroad,” she said, her voice unmistakably wistful. “I want to see all the places on those postcards. Especially Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All those beautiful buildings and cathedrals…”

“You mean all those postcards.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “All those postcards. They’re very selling.”

“What do you want to see most?”

“Notre Dame,” she said without hesitation.

“Why?” he asked, expecting to hear something about the architecture or the history or at least the gargoyles, but he was wrong.

“Because,” she said. “It’s the very center of Paris.”

“It is?”

She nodded. “There’s a little plaque with a star in front of it that marks the spot: Point Zero. And if you jump on it and make a wish, it means you’ll get a chance to go back there again someday. There’s something kind of magical about that, don’t you think?”

“It’d be nice if every place came with that kind of guarantee.” He leaned over to draw an X between them with the piece of gravel, then rubbed it out with the heel of his hand and replaced it with a crooked star.

“Does that mean we’re in the exact center of New York?” she asked, nodding at it, and he felt momentarily unsteady beneath her gaze.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that we’re in the exact center of the whole world.”

She held out a flattened palm, and it took a moment for him to realize that she was asking for the rock, not his hand. He passed it over, and she drew a circle around the edges of the star, then scratched the words Point Zero along the outside.

“There,” she said. “Now it’s official.”

“See? No need for Paris.”

“Not for tonight, anyway,” she said, handing back the stone. “But I’d still like to go.”

“How come they never took you along?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s hard to travel with three kids. My brothers are awesome, but they’re twins, and when we were little, they were complete nightmares. The first time we went to London, I remember them running up and down the aisles of the plane, locking themselves in the bathroom.” There was a hint of a smile on her face, but then she shook her head. “That’s not really it, though. The thing is, I think my parents just really like traveling alone together.”

“Alone together,” Owen said. “Oxymoron.”

“You’re an oxymoron,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But really, it’s always been their thing, traveling together. It’s partly his job, but they also just really love it. Some people shop. Some people fish. My parents travel.”

“What does he do?”

“He works for this British bank. They met in London, but he’s had jobs in all these other places, too, Sydney and Cape Town and Rio. When my brothers were born, he took a job in the New York office, since he’s from here, and I think the plan was to settle down, but that part never really took. Instead, they were always just jetting off and leaving us with the nanny.”

“Sounds glamorous.”

“For them,” she said. “But I would have loved to go, too. I still would.” She swept a hand through the air, scattering a few mosquitoes. “Sometimes I think they liked their lives a whole lot better before they had kids.”

Owen thought of his own parents, putting down roots the moment they found out they were pregnant. “It’s probably not that it was better,” he said. “Just different. My parents did the same thing, settling down when I came along, and they were happy.” He paused, blinking fast. “We were all happy.”

Lucy was sitting with her arms resting on her knees, and when she turned to look at him, her leg bumped against his. Right then, he had a sudden urge to inch closer to her, to close the space between them, and the force of it surprised him; it felt like a very long time since he’d wanted anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching over to put a hand over his. “About your mom.”

The warmth of her palm cracked at something inside him, that hard shell of hurt that had formed over his heart like a coat of ice. She was watching him intently, her eyes seeking his, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Because the numbness was the only thing keeping him going, the only thing preventing him from falling to pieces in front of his dad, who was falling to pieces enough for both of them.

He turned his eyes back to the sky. “They look almost fake,” he said. “Don’t they?”

Lucy followed his gaze. “The stars?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He was thinking of the ones on the ceiling of his bedroom back home, little pieces of plastic that glowed green in the dark. His mother had put them up when he was little, when Owen first became obsessed with the sky, spending summer nights on his back in the front yard, staring up at the scattering of lights until his eyes burned. They bought him a telescope, and they bought him binoculars; they even bought him a globe that showed all the constellations. But, in the end, the only way to convince him to go to bed were those glowing plastic stars, which his mother tacked up on the ceiling herself.

“They’re not in the right places,” Owen had said that first night, his eyes pinned above him as he climbed into bed.

“Sure they are,” she told him. “It’s just that these are very rare constellations.”

He frowned up at them. “What are they called?”

“Well,” she’d said, scooting in next to him and pointing at the ceiling. “That’s Owen Major.”

He let his head fall to the side, so that it was resting on her shoulder, and in the dark, his voice was hushed. “Is there an Owen Minor?”

“Sure,” she said. “Right over there. And that’s Buckley’s Belt.”

“Like Orion’s Belt?”

“Even better,” she said. “Because you can always see it. Every single night.”

Now, beside him on the roof, he could feel Lucy smiling. “They don’t look fake at all,” she said. “They look real. Really real. They might be the realest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Owen smiled, too, letting his eyes fall shut, but he could still see them, glowing bright against the backs of his eyelids. For the first time in weeks, he felt all lit up inside, even on this darkest of nights.

5

When she woke, everything was blurry. As soon as she opened her eyes, Lucy brought an arm up over her face to block out the blazing sunlight. But several seconds passed before she remembered where she was—high up on the roof beneath a whitewashed sky—and several more went by before she realized she was alone.

She rubbed her eyes, then propped herself up on her elbows, staring at the blanket beside her, where just last night Owen had fallen asleep, and which was now only an Owen-shaped indent, like a plaid flannel snow angel.

They hadn’t planned to sleep up here, but as the night had deepened and their voices had grown softer, slowed by the heat and the weight of the past hours, they found themselves lying side by side, their eyes fixed on the stars as they talked.

Owen had fallen asleep first, his head tipping to one side so that his hair fell over his eyes, and he looked peaceful in a way he hadn’t when he was awake. His hair smelled faintly of lemons from the cleaning solution on the floor of their kitchen, and Lucy listened to him breathe, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Being there like that, so close to him, she had to remind herself that this wasn’t real. It wasn’t a date but an accident. It wasn’t romantic, only practical. They were just two people trying to make it through the night, and it didn’t mean anything beyond that.

After all, hours didn’t necessarily add up in that way. Time didn’t automatically amount to anything. There was only so much you could ask from a single night.

Still, Lucy hadn’t expected him to disappear completely. It was true that they’d made no plans for the morning, no promises for the next day. They’d shared nothing more than a blanket and some food and a little bit of light. But somehow, it had seemed like more than that—at least to her. And now, as she glanced around the roof—empty except for a few pigeons milling about on the far side—she couldn’t help feeling wounded by his absence.

She rose to her feet, still squinting from the brightness of the morning, and shuffled over to the ledge. In the daylight, the city looked entirely different. The sky to the east was splashed with orange, and below it, Central Park was stretched out, a vast and manicured swath of wilderness interrupted only by the occasional pond, like dabs of blue-gray paint on a palette. Lucy stood with the breeze on her face, wondering whether the city had power again. It was impossible to tell from this high up.

Downstairs, when she pushed open the door to her apartment, the answer quickly became clear. She held her breath against the wall of heat that greeted her—so dense it almost felt like something she could touch—and moved down the sweltering hallway and into the kitchen, where she stood staring at the place they’d been lying just last night, their heads close so that their bodies formed a kind of steeple.

On one of the gray tiles, something thin and white stood out even in the dim lighting, and when she stooped to pick it up, Lucy was surprised to find a cigarette. She wrinkled her nose as she examined it, trying to square this new fact—that Owen was a smoker—with her memory of the night before. Once again, she felt jolted by the realization that she didn’t actually know him at all, and that those long hours together seemed to have lost something in the light of day.

She was about to toss the cigarette into the trash when something made her stop. It was all that was left of this night. So instead, she grabbed her wallet from the kitchen counter, unzipping the little pocket that held all the coins, and slipped it inside.

On the refrigerator, there was a small piece of paper with the number of her parents’ hotel in Paris. By now, Lucy guessed they must have heard what had happened. She lifted the portable phone from its cradle on the wall, ready to dial the long string of numbers, but there was only silence on the line—no power meant no charge, which meant no dial tone—and so she hung up again with a sigh.

The water wasn’t working, either. When she twisted the faucet, there was only a slow dribble that quickly petered out altogether. Without electricity, there was no way to pump the water up to the twenty-fourth floor. So she wiped at her forehead with the back of her arm and stood with a hand on either side of the sink, trying to figure out what to do next.

There was a stillness to the apartment that she usually enjoyed when everyone was gone. But now, without even the hum of the appliances, the huge vaulted rooms felt strangely foreign, like it was someone else’s home entirely.

Lucy had never minded being alone. She was plenty used to it, with parents that traveled so much and brothers that weren’t usually around. Unlike Lucy, who participated in absolutely no school-related activities, they had played basketball and lacrosse and were involved in student government; they led clubs and volunteered on weekends and had even joined a band last year, though it was a largely earsplitting affair that fell more into the category of noise than music.

Lucy, on the other hand, had always drifted along unseen at her school; she had a knack for making herself invisible that had always felt like a kind of superpower, something that belonged only to her. Being on her own had never been a burden. Instead of weighing her down, it buoyed her up; when she was alone, she was lighter. When she was by herself, she felt untethered and free.

But this morning, she was left with an uneasy feeling as she paced the empty apartment. A few years ago, on their first weekend without any supervision whatsoever, her brothers had turned to each other with matching grins the moment the door fell shut behind their parents.

“What should we do first?” Charlie had asked, and Ben pretended to think about this, tapping his finger against his chin.

“Well, we should probably eat a sensible breakfast.”

“Definitely,” Charlie agreed, laughing as he grabbed a frozen pizza from the freezer, and after that, it had become a tradition. Pizza for breakfast. Just because they could.

Now Lucy stood in front of the freezer, the last of the cool air leaking out, and ran a hand over the damp and wilting box of the frozen pizza she’d bought in preparation for her first time entirely on her own. After a moment, she closed it again with a sigh, frowning at the calendar on the door. It was the first day of school, but the city was still stuck, dark and gridlocked, and she was certain it would be postponed. This knowledge was neither welcome nor disappointing; it only meant that the countdown to the end of her junior year—to the end of high school, really—would begin tomorrow instead of today.

Lucy had always enjoyed her classes and endured her classmates, and these two things canceled each other out, resulting in a generally neutral attitude toward the whole endeavor. She’d been at the St. Andrews School since kindergarten, and it was always exactly the same: the same girls and the same uniforms. The same dramas and fights and scandals. The same catty conversations and ruthless jostling and mystifying objectives. Every year was like a rerun of the same boring show, everyone else moving fast all around her, a blur of people and plans and conversations, while Lucy remained alone in the middle of it all, standing absolutely still.

She wandered into her bedroom and stood in front of the open closet, where her plaid skirt and white blouse hung, pressed and ready to wear. But instead, with some amount of relief, she grabbed a pair of red shorts and a T-shirt, suddenly in desperate need of a walk.

The now familiar temperature of the stairwell stung her eyes, and she wound her way down the steps again, passing neighbors too tired and sweaty to do more than raise a hand in greeting. They all wore the heat like a kind of weight, and Lucy, too, couldn’t help feeling like something inside her was wilting.

With each flight, the red numbers flashed by on the gray doors, but it wasn’t until somewhere around the sixteenth floor that she realized she was no longer sure of her destination. Her intention had been to spend the rest of the morning wandering the neighborhood, but by the time she passed the tenth floor, she understood she wasn’t headed outside after all, and she was all the way down to the eighth floor before realizing she was actually on her way to the basement.

She was going to see Owen.

But when she stepped out into the lobby—which needed to be crossed to reach the door in the mailroom that led downstairs—she was greeted by Darrell, one of the newer doormen, who was sitting at the front desk, drenched in sweat.

“I feel like it’s only fair to warn you,” he said, mopping his forehead with a paper towel, “that it’s hotter than hell out there.”

Lucy paused halfway between the elevator and the front desk. “Can’t be worse than my apartment,” she said, stealing a glance at the mailroom.

“I don’t know,” Darrell was saying. “I walked in from the Bronx, and—”

Lucy turned back to him with wide eyes. “You did?”

“Well, halfway,” he admitted. “The subway’s still down, and the buses were all packed, but I hitched a ride on the back of a fruit truck for part of it.”

“So everything’s still a mess then,” she said, and something about the tone in her voice made Darrell’s expression soften.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” he said with an encouraging smile. “I heard they got power back upstate, and Boston, too.”

Through the mailroom, she could see the far door swing open, and she caught her breath, surprised by the sudden quickness of her heart. But it was only the handyman from last night, who waved as he turned the corner.

Lucy sighed. “Hopefully we’re next,” she said, and Darrell nodded.

“Where’re you off to now?”

“Nowhere,” she said, a bit too quickly, and he laughed.

“Sounds nice,” he told her. “Be sure to send me a postcard.”

Once again, something seized inside her chest, and she hesitated a moment, looking from the lobby doors back to the mailroom, hoping that Owen might come loping out. It would be so much better to run into him here. She was terrified of knocking on his door only to find that he didn’t want to see her. Even now, she could imagine the painful awkwardness of such an exchange, his face going red as he made some sort of excuse because he was too polite to tell her as much.

After all, he was the one who’d left this morning.

Lucy was normally a firm believer that things worked out for the best, and she usually had no problem being optimistic, but now she felt her legs go weak as she stood weighing her next move, her cheeks pink at the thought of showing up unannounced. Something about Owen had thrown her off, twisting her into uncertain knots, and so before she could do anything she might regret, she headed for the revolving doors that led to the street.

Outside, it was clear that last night’s celebration had officially ended, and all that was left was the hangover. The streets, which had seemed like one big party just hours before, were now full of sweaty and miserable-looking people, everyone fanning themselves with day-old newspapers.

As she walked, Lucy saw a few kids chasing each other along the sidewalk, but otherwise, everyone seemed listless and beaten down by the weather. There were policemen stationed at the major intersections to direct traffic, but it was a haphazard affair, slow and grinding. All the energy seemed to have been sapped right out of the city.

She pressed her way up the street, heading in no particular direction, as she had a thousand times before. The ice-cream shop from last night was now closed, along with most of the other stores, which were all shuttered and silent. A few blocks farther uptown, she passed by her school, an imposing stone building, where a handwritten sign on the door announced that classes would begin tomorrow as long as the power was back, though there was no way to know if the note had been written yesterday or today.

Finally, having covered most of the neighborhood, and with nowhere else to go, she made her way back home again. As she climbed the stairs, she considered heading back up to the roof, in case Owen was there, and the thought propelled her up the next six flights before she reconsidered it for the same reason she’d walked away earlier.

She’d lived in this city her whole life, had gotten lost countless times at night, survived two muggings, and once broken her arm while climbing the rocks in Central Park. But it was finally Owen—who wasn’t scary in the least; who had, in fact, been nothing but nice to her—who had somehow managed to turn her into a coward.

Back in the apartment, she closed all the blinds and tried to nap on the couch, but the heat was oppressive and stifling. Wide-awake and miserable, she paged through her well-worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye—the ultimate guide to losing yourself in New York City—but the words swam in front of her, blurry as everything else from the heat. Finally, she gave up and returned to the kitchen floor, which was only marginally cooler. As the afternoon sank deeper into darkness, the kitchen grew dimmer and she pressed her bare arms and legs on the tiles and tried not to think about the fact that this was where they’d been lying just last night.

She wondered if there was a word for loneliness that wasn’t quite so general. Because that wasn’t it, exactly; it wasn’t that she was feeling lonesome or empty or forlorn. It was more particular than that, like the blanket on the roof this morning: Here in the kitchen, there was an Owen-shaped indent.

She drifted to sleep there, her cheek pressed against the tiles, and when she woke, it was once again to a blur of light. Only this time, it was coming from the bulb in the ceiling fixture, which was blaring down on her, harsh and unnatural and much too bright.

She sat up so fast she felt dizzy, spinning around to see that it was back now, all of it, the blinking green lights on the microwave clock, the red numbers on the answering machine, the churning of the overhead fan, and beyond the doorway, the lamps that had flickered on across of the rest of the apartment.

All of the clocks were wrong, so she had no idea what time it was, but she shot to her feet and hurried from room to room, greeting each appliance like an old friend. Even the air-conditioning had powered back up, and the stagnant air felt cooler already, all of it conspiring to make the apartment seem recognizable again.

In her room, Lucy plugged in her computer and her phone, and while she waited for them to charge, she dashed over to the bathroom to test the water, which trickled out slowly but enough for her to splash her face. She looked around, feeling giddy, wondering what to do first: take a shower or try to contact her parents or just simply sit in front of the fan, now suddenly a luxury.

But on her way out of the bathroom, she paused in front of the living room windows, where the blinds were still drawn. She walked over and tugged on the cord, pulling hand over hand as the skyline revealed itself inches at a time, all lit up in a brilliant patchwork of glowing windows, a checkered ode to the power of electricity.

Lucy stood there for a long moment, taking it in, the city once again warm and bright as it was in her memory of it. But when she glanced up, she was surprised to feel an ache in her chest. High above the buildings, the sky had shifted, and there was now only a deep, unsettling darkness, as if last night’s version of the skyline had been turned upside down. And the stars, every last one of them, had disappeared.

6

Owen was standing in the middle of Broadway when the lights came back.

The plastic bag he was carrying had just split open as he crossed the street, and the three lukewarm water bottles he’d finally found at a hot dog cart near the park had gone rolling toward the curb. As he scrambled to collect them, he glanced sideways down the darkened alley of the avenue, and it was just as he straightened up again that it happened.

It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Just like that, the city was plugged in again. Owen stood there, blinking, as the street lamps came to life, the windows and signs along Broadway all switching on just after them, once again bathing the street in an artificial glow.

There was an almost reverential pause as everyone stared, slack-jawed, and then the heat-weary crowd stirred into action again and a great cheer went up. People whooped and clapped as if discovering rain after a long drought, and even the policemen who stood stern-faced at the corner couldn’t help grinning, their eyes sweeping over the restored reds and greens of the traffic lights.

A few people ran past Owen, eager to get home, and a man with a dog tucked under his arm did a little jig on the corner. Everyone wore the same expression, halfway between relief and amazement, and all of them were squinting; in just over twenty-four hours, they’d become unaccustomed to the brightness of their own city, and, faced with it now in all its intensity, they cupped their hands over their eyes as if staring into the sun.

Owen tucked the water bottles into the crook of his arm, letting the crowd surge around him, and he thought about what Lucy had said the night before, about how you can be surrounded by so many people here but still entirely on your own.

He saw the truth in it now, but it felt lonelier than what he’d imagined, and he lifted his gaze to the building on the corner of Broadway and Seventy-Second, wishing he was someone different, the kind of guy who would run up twenty-four flights of stairs just to see her again, even for a minute.

He hadn’t meant to abandon her this morning. But when he’d woken up with the sun on his face and Lucy curled beside him, her eyelids fluttering in sleep, he was gripped by a sudden worry about his dad, who might well have returned by then to an empty apartment with no idea where his son could have disappeared to on such a muddled and hectic night.

His plan was to run downstairs, check the apartment, leave a note if Dad wasn’t there yet, and then climb the forty-two stories back up to the roof before Lucy woke up. Even as he clamored down the long flight of steps, he was already thinking of that space on the blanket, where he’d lie down again and wait for her eyes to open so they could start the day together.

But when he made it down to the basement, it was to find his dad slumped in the front hallway of the apartment, clammy and shivering in spite of the heat. There was a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead, and his eyes were bright and feverish.

Owen’s heart was already thumping hard as he slid to the floor. “Dad?” he said, his voice full of panic, shaking him a little. “Are you okay?”

His father had nodded and attempted a feeble smile. “Just a little tired,” he said, his tongue too thick in his mouth. “I walked.…”

“You walked? All that way?”

He swallowed, as though steeling himself to speak, then changed his mind and simply nodded instead.

“It’s okay,” Owen said, repeating the words dumbly as he tried to figure out what to do. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

Dad muttered something else, but his words were slurred, and his face had a grayish tinge to it. He must have walked all night, all the way from the very end of Brooklyn; he was clearly dehydrated, and he probably had heat exhaustion, too, if not worse. Owen’s thoughts were slow and hazy. There was no water pressure, no way to cool him off. He felt frantic as he looked around the apartment without knowing what exactly he was looking for; something to help, something to make this better.

“Look, Dad,” Owen said, stooping so that they were at eye level. “I’m going to get you to bed, then go out for some water, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispered through cracked lips.

“I’ll be right back,” Owen assured him. “You’re okay now.” He sat back on his heels, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you walked all that way.”

“To get back home.”

Owen tilted his head toward the ceiling, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. But all he could think was: This isn’t home.

“Okay,” he said after a moment, snaking a hand under Dad’s arm and around his back. “On the count of three.”

Once he managed to get his father up and into his bedroom, bearing most of his weight as they shuffled along, he helped lower him down on top of the sheets, and then promised he’d be back, grabbing the keys and heading for the lobby. He thought of asking one of the doormen for help, but after his dad had disappeared yesterday in the middle of one of the biggest crises the city had seen in years, he decided it would be better not to draw any more attention to themselves.

He slipped through the lobby, then went sprinting around the corner to the same bodega from last night, but they were out of water, and so were the next two shops he tried. His heart was hammering in his chest as he thought of his father. He didn’t know much about heat exhaustion other than the importance of water, and as he moved from store to store with no luck, he could feel a widening panic inside him. Finally, he found a pretzel cart with only two bottles left, and he practically threw a five-dollar bill at the man before taking off down the street at a jog.

All day, he watched over his father. He sat in a chair beside the bed, keeping a damp washcloth pressed to his forehead and fanning the stuffy air with an old issue of Sports Illustrated. Dad only woke once, and when he did, Owen helped him take a few sips of water. But he fell asleep again almost immediately, and there was nothing to do but sit there, looking on helplessly. It wasn’t until mid afternoon that the color slowly began to return to his cheeks, and Owen finally allowed himself to sit back with a sigh, realizing for the first time how tense he’d been all day.

When dusk crept in through the window, dipping the room in shades of blue, Owen had decided it was safe to venture outside again for more water, and he circled the neighborhood for what felt like forever before stumbling across a hot dog vendor who was charging ten bucks apiece.

Now he stood across the street from their building, juggling the bottles in his arms and watching the giant clock above a department store, which had just come back to life along with everything else, the slow ticking completely at odds with the urgency he felt as he waited for the signal to cross.

The lobby was still unbearably hot, but there were a few people standing around the front desk, and Owen bent his head and hurried toward the mailroom, hoping to go unnoticed, eager to return to his father. But just before he could disappear through the door, he was pulled up short by the sound of his name.

“Owen Buckley!”

His first thought, strangely, was of Lucy. That something might have happened to her today—that he shouldn’t have left her on the roof, that he should have come back for her, like he’d meant to—and his chest flooded with fear. But when he swiveled to look, he realized it wasn’t that at all, and his shoulders slumped.

Striding toward him was Sam Coleman, his father’s second cousin and the owner of the building, the one who had given him the job here.

The only time Owen had ever seen him was at his mother’s funeral, where after the ceremony, in the midst of all the handshakes and kisses, the hugs and condolences, he’d noticed a man handing his father a business card. Dad had taken it with numb fingers, nodding mechanically, and Owen watched as he slipped it into the pocket of his suit. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that he brought it up.

“I don’t know if you met my cousin Sam at the…” he trailed off, unable to say the word funeral. In the days leading up to it and the days that had followed, he’d somehow managed to avoid it altogether, talking around it, the word a black hole that had opened up in the very center of their lives.

Owen shook his head. They were sitting at the kitchen table, an untouched casserole dish between them, one of dozens that were stacked like bricks in the fridge.

“He offered me a job. In New York,” Dad said, raising his eyes from the table, where a column of light from the window spotlighted a thin layer of dust. Already, the house no longer felt like the same one they’d lived in just ten days before.

“New York City?”

Dad nodded. “He owns a few buildings there,” he explained. “He wants me to manage one of them.”

“Why?” Owen asked, and Dad was silent for a moment. The question wasn’t a necessary one. He’d been out of work for almost a year now, a contractor in a town where there was nothing new to be built. He’d picked up work as a handyman here and there, enough to keep them going, but it wasn’t permanent. He’d needed a job long before the accident, and he still needed one now.

“Because,” Dad said quietly. “Because I’m not sure we can stay here.”

It wasn’t the answer Owen had been looking for; it wasn’t even a response to the right question. He didn’t know whether his father meant for financial reasons or emotional ones, whether he’d given this a lot of thought or was just saying it out loud for the first time now, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet himself.

But even so, he understood.

“Let’s go out west then,” he said, sitting forward at the table. “Let’s just get in the car and drive, like you and Mom used to do.”

Dad’s eyes flashed with pain at the memory, and he shook his head. “This isn’t just some lark, O,” he said. “We have to be logical about this. There’s no work for me here. If we sell the house—” He paused, his voice cracking at this, then pushed on. “We’ll have the money for whatever’s next. But who knows how fast that’ll happen, and for now he’s offering us an apartment with the job. And I just can’t…”

“… stay here,” Owen had finished. He breathed out, then raised his eyes to meet his dad’s. “I know,” he said finally. “Me neither.”

It was true. Too much had changed. His mother was gone, and the house didn’t feel like theirs anymore. Even his two best friends were different. At the funeral, Owen had watched the pair of them—who had said all the right things and been nothing but supportive—begin to laugh helplessly when one tripped over nothing at all, his arms windmilling before he managed to right himself again. They were trying their best to hold it together, their laughter threatening to bubble over, and from across the lawn, Owen just stood there—alone and apart, solemn and heartbroken and hopelessly, endlessly, miserably sad—and it was then that he felt the first pinpricks of doubt that things would ever be normal again.

It had always been the three of them: Owen, Casey, and Josh: a steadfast team, a solid unit. They’d grown up playing hide-and-seek and then tag, soccer and then football; they’d studied together a thousand times and found a thousand ways to avoid studying at all; they’d talked about girls and sports and their futures; they’d teased each other mercilessly and had been there for one another in the most surprising of ways. But in that moment, everything was different. They were over there, and he was over here, the space between them already too big to cross.

And as it turned out, Owen and his dad left town before he even had a chance to try, his best friends becoming just two more items on the list of things they left behind.

Now his knees felt unsteady as he watched Sam approach him from the other side of the lobby. He was short and dark and broad-shouldered, the opposite of Owen and his dad in every way, and he offered a hand when he was close enough, which Owen shook warily.

“Nice to see you again,” he said, though they hadn’t actually met before. “Quite a night, huh?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ve been doing the rounds today, checking on all my buildings. Obviously, this thing has caused a lot of hiccups. Any chance your dad’s around?”

Owen opened his mouth, then closed it again, unsure what to say. But it didn’t matter anyway. Sam barreled on without giving him a chance.

“Because I gotta tell you, I’ve got a boatload of problems here, too many for the doormen to be handling on their own.” He reached out and put a beefy hand on Owen’s thin shoulder. “Listen, I know you guys are going through a rough time, but the whole reason to hire a building manager is so there’s someone to manage the building, you know? And on a day like this, it doesn’t look too good when he’s nowhere to be found.”

“I think maybe he called in—”

“Sick?” Sam said with raised eyebrows. “No.”

Owen shook his head. “Then it was a vacation day.…”

“After only a couple of weeks?” Sam asked, then flashed a smile that came off as more of a leer. “I don’t think so. No way I’d have cleared that even if he’d bothered asking. Which he didn’t.”

“I’m really sorry.…”

Sam waved this away. “Is he back now, or is he still sipping mai tais on the beach?”

Owen glanced over at George, who was now at the front desk and who gave him a helpless shrug.

“He’s back,” he said through gritted teeth. “But he’s not feeling well.”

“Well, give him a message for me, will you?” Sam leaned in a little closer. “Tell him the water’s back but not the pressure. And since he’s already on fairly thin ice,” he said, demonstrating with his thumb and index finger, only the tiniest sliver of space between the two, “he might want to see about fixing it tonight. Okay?”

There was nothing to do but nod. Sam gave him a little pat on the shoulder before turning to walk back over to the desk, and as soon as he did, Owen hurried through the mailroom and down the stairs, biting back his anger at Sam and his frustration at Dad.

It was impossible to know what he’d been thinking, simply taking off for the day without asking after only a few weeks on the job. It was stupid and completely shortsighted.

But when he opened the door to the apartment, his eyes fell on the kitchen counter, where he’d seen the bouquet of flowers just a couple of nights before, and something about the memory made him feel like crying.

He thought about what Sam had said. There was no way his father would have gotten the day off even if he’d asked.

But Owen understood why he had to go.

He went out there for Mom; to stand in the place where they’d first met, the rough wood of the boardwalk beneath their feet and the salty smell of the ocean at their backs. He’d gone to relive that day. And he’d gone to say good-bye.

He’d gone there for her.

And then he’d walked all the way back for him.

From down the hall, Owen heard Dad call his name, his voice hoarse. In the bedroom, he was sitting up now, propped against a couple of pillows. When he saw Owen, he reached over and switched on the bedside lamp with a grin.

“Ta-da,” he said. “Electricity.”

For a moment, Owen thought of not telling him about Sam, of letting the night pass without fixing the water pumps. He knew what it would mean—they’d have to leave the building. They’d probably even leave New York. The two of them could drive out west, find some place better suited for them, a place with more sky and fewer people. Maybe they’d even retrace the route his parents had taken all those years ago. Maybe, in that way, Owen would be able to say good-bye, too.

But standing there in the doorway, he knew he couldn’t do it. He had to give this a chance, if only for his dad. It was what his mom would have wanted. And it was the right thing to do.

Besides, after last night, Owen wasn’t so sure he was ready to leave New York behind anyway. At least not yet.

Instead, they would haul the heavy red toolbox into the utilities room, where Dad would sit on the cool concrete floor with a glass of water and show Owen what to do. Together, they would figure out a way to make it work. They would figure out a way to make this work.

Owen crossed the threshold of the room, stepping into the pool of light from the lamp, and handed over one of the water bottles.

“So,” he said, his voice bright. “Now that we’ve got electricity, think you’re up to conjuring some water, too?”

7

For the next two days, Lucy got herself out of bed and went to school. She sat through her classes and tolerated her classmates. She looked for Owen each morning and then again each afternoon. And when she didn’t see him, she returned to her apartment, trying not to be disappointed, and ate dinner alone.

Then, on the third day, George appeared at the door to help carry her suitcase downstairs and hail her a cab to the airport.

Just before midnight on the day the lights came back, her parents had finally gotten through to her. Lucy had been asleep already, and when she reached for her phone and saw a jumble of numbers too long to be local, she picked it up.

It was morning in Paris, and her parents were on two separate extensions, wide-awake and talking over each other.

“Lucy,” her dad kept saying. “Luce, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said groggily, sitting up in bed. “Just sleepy.”

“We’ve been trying and trying,” Mom said, her usually clipped accent softened by worry. “You gave us such a fright.”

“I couldn’t get through,” Lucy explained, fully awake now. “The circuits were all busy. But it’s fine. I’m okay.”

“Listen,” Dad said, his voice brisk and businesslike. “We want to hear all about it. But first, you should know that I called the airline.…”

Lucy waited for them to say they were coming home early, that they’d fought tooth and nail to get a flight back. She’d heard on the news earlier that the airports were all overrun with stranded travelers who had been stuck there since the power went out, living on pretzels and sleeping at the gates, and that it would take days for the schedules to return to normal. But her father must have figured something out, must surely know the type of people who could help, or at least the type of people who knew other people, and Lucy felt a sudden rush of gratitude for her parents, who must have been trying to get home to her this whole time.

“… and I’ve got you on a flight to London on Friday,” Dad was saying, and Lucy’s mouth fell open as she pressed the phone closer to her ear. “I know you’ve got school that day, but how much do they actually cover in the first week anyway, right?”

“London?” she said, her voice cracking.

“Yes, London,” Dad said impatiently, as if this were a ridiculous question. “Your mother and I are going tomorrow, and you’ll meet us there on Friday.”

Lucy was torn between the impulse to simply agree—in case they might change their minds—and the urge to ask a thousand more questions. “Uh, why…?”

“We want to see you, darling,” her mother said. “We want to be sure you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” she said again. “I just—”

“Coming home was out of the question,” Dad said, once again businesslike. “So we’d like you to meet us there.”

Lucy felt like laughing. On the scale of worldwide emergencies, nothing could have given her a truer sense for where the blackout ranked: not urgent enough for her parents to interrupt a trip but just alarming enough for them to buy her a plane ticket.

The details were discussed and the rest of the plans arranged. Lucy would miss two days of school, but she’d be getting a cultural experience, which seemed like justification enough. She thought of her earlier trips over, once when she was five and once when she was eight. The first time had been during Christmas; they’d visited her grandmother in the stately town house where her mother had grown up, and all toured the city together: the ornate parliament buildings and the giant clock that towered over them, Oxford Street with its garlands and wreaths, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, where Lucy had sung carols, her voice loud and warbling beside her mother’s more melodic one.

They went again two years later, just after her grandmother had passed away, a more somber trip that was spent mostly in the living room of the old town house, nodding politely to black-clad strangers and playing cards on the floor with her brothers.

Still, she had loved it there. It was the thing that—even more than the postcards—had sparked her obsession with travel. When she was little, she’d believed the whole world—or at least all its cities—would look exactly like New York, tall and jagged and imposing. She had no other basis for comparison, and it seemed only logical that a city was a city, just as a farm was a farm, and a mountain was a mountain. But London was completely different from what she’d imagined; it was regal and charming, stately and enchanting, and she’d fallen under its spell from the moment she arrived.

So she was excited to be going back now. It wasn’t Paris and it wasn’t Cape Town. It wasn’t Sydney or Buenos Aires. And it wasn’t anywhere new.

But it was definitely Somewhere.

And there was nobody she wanted to tell more than Owen. But she still hadn’t been able to bring herself to knock on the door of the basement apartment. And as often as she’d lingered in the lobby, making small talk with the doormen, she still hadn’t run into him again.

Even now, as she waited on the curb while George tried to flag down a cab, she couldn’t help glancing back toward the lobby one last time, hoping he might appear. But there was no sign of him, and there hadn’t been in three days.

It was almost as if she’d made him up entirely.

At the airport, she sat at the gate and watched the planes taking off out the window, trying to decide whether it was nerves or excitement that was making her stomach churn. This was what she’d wanted, of course, but it wasn’t how she’d pictured it happening: being sent rather than invited, summoned rather than whisked away.

On the plane, she sank low in her seat, looking out the window while the other passengers boarded. Her thoughts drifted to Owen again, the way his eyes had flashed when he spoke about traveling the country, and she was so focused on this, so lost in the memory of him, that when someone sat down heavily beside her and she turned to find that it wasn’t him—that it was, instead, an old Englishman with red cheeks and whiskers in his nose—she was more surprised than it made sense to be.

She slept the whole way across the Atlantic, the night passing as the ocean slipped by beneath the plane, and when she woke, it was to discover that they’d caught up with the morning, the light streaming through the oval windows all up and down the length of the plane. She rubbed her eyes and squinted out at the clouds that tumbled over the city, and the fine mist of rain that clung to the plane as they landed.

There was a car waiting for her just outside the arrivals area, and she sat in the backseat and tried to keep her bleary eyes open as it glided through the rainy London streets. She realized how much she’d forgotten in the last eight years; it was half a lifetime ago that she was here, and only now did she recall the quirky details of the place: the colorful doors and the painted signs on the pubs, the roundabouts and the lampposts, the buildings that stood shoulder to shoulder along the winding streets.

The town house had long ago been sold, so her parents now stayed at the Ritz whenever they were in town. Lucy couldn’t help staring as they pulled up to the grand old building wreathed in lights, and a bellhop appeared out of nowhere to help her with her suitcase. When she told the man at the front desk that she was looking for her parents, he gave her the room number, and then pointed to the doorway behind her.

“The lift is just around the corner,” he said, and Lucy smiled all the way up to the sixth floor, wondering if there would be much difference to getting stuck in a lift instead of an elevator.

Upstairs, she knocked on the door to her parents’ room. When it opened, they were both standing there as if they’d been waiting; her mother, tall and willowy, her hair dark as Lucy’s, and her father, sandy-haired and enormous, with glasses and a haircut that made him look every inch as serious as he was. They were both generally reserved, not prone to huge amounts of affection, but before the door had even closed, Lucy found herself folded into a hug, tucked between the two of them in a way that felt so safe, so overwhelming, and most of all so surprising that she began to cry without meaning to.

“We’re so sorry,” Mom said, letting go and looking at her with concern. “If we’d known…”

“No, it’s fine,” Lucy said, wiping her eyes. “It really wasn’t a big deal. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m just… I guess I’m just happy to see you.”

“We’re happy to see you, too,” Dad said, bringing her suitcase in from the hallway and then closing the door. “Because of—well, because of some scheduling things, we couldn’t get back. But we felt terrible that you were all alone through an ordeal like that, and we just really wanted to see you.”

Lucy felt a little dazed by all the attention. “I’m fine,” she said for what felt like the thousandth time as Mom guided her over to the bed, where they sat together on the edge, knees touching.

“So what was it like?” Dad asked as he pulled out the desk chair. Once seated, he crossed his legs and gave her a long look, the kind she’d seen him give lawyers and bankers when they’d come for dinner; it was a look that meant she had his full concentration, and it wasn’t one she was used to seeing.

“It was dark,” she said, and Mom laughed. “I was actually in the elevator when it happened.”

“We heard,” Dad said. “The boys told us.”

Lucy had called her brothers the very next day, first Charlie and then Ben, and she’d told them about climbing out of the elevator and walking up and down the stairwells; she’d told them about the doormen running around with flashlights and the masses of people moving through the streets; she’d told them about the free ice cream and the stars overhead and the heat. But she hadn’t told them about Owen. Part of it was self-preservation—she knew Ben would tease her endlessly and Charlie would get overprotective—but part of it was instinct, too. It would have been like blowing out the candles on a birthday cake and then immediately announcing what you’d wished for; logical or not, saying it out loud made it seem less likely to come true.

“Was it awful?” Mom was asking, her eyes wide with worry.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Lucy said with a smile, hoping they didn’t notice the pink that crept into her cheeks. “We were only in there for, like, half an hour.” She paused, realizing for the first time that it was true—it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes. How had it felt like so much more? “The worst part was the heat,” she continued. “That was pretty horrible.”

They both nodded, like they wanted to hear more, but she thought she noticed Dad sneak a glance at his watch, and Mom’s foot had started to bob in the way it did sometimes when guests at their dinner parties were still there even after the coffee cups had been cleared.

“You should have seen it, though,” Lucy pressed on. “The whole skyline just blinked out. And all the streets were completely full of people. It was unbelievable.”

This time, Dad didn’t bother to disguise it when he looked at his watch, and Mom cleared her throat. “Listen, darling,” she said. “We want to hear a lot more about all this at dinner tonight, but we figured you’d want to nap, so we thought we’d head out for a little while.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “Where?”

Dad looked up, his face a picture of confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Lucy said, raising her eyebrows, “where are you planning to go?”

“We made some plans before we knew you’d be here, too,” Mom said, giving Dad a sideways glance. “I’m getting my hair done, and your father has… a meeting.”

Lucy turned back to him, but he seemed suddenly interested in his shoes. “Well, where is it? Maybe I’ll tag along, go explore a new neighborhood…”

He coughed, his face reddening. “We just assumed you’d be tired.”

“I slept on the plane,” she said, and they exchanged a look. “Okay, seriously,” she said, glancing from one to the other. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Dad started to say, but Mom rolled her eyes.

“Let’s just tell her now.”

“Tell me what?” Lucy asked, suddenly anxious.

Dad was playing with his wedding ring, a nervous habit of his. “We were going to wait for dinner.…”

“Listen,” Mom said, taking one of Lucy’s hands in hers. “You know how much I miss it over here.”

Lucy nodded, frowning.

“And you know that we’d always planned to live abroad again once the three of you were off to university, right?”

This was true. Ever since she was little, Mom had spoken dreamily of returning to London. She’d never really been at home in New York, where she found the summers too hot and the people too rude, the garbage too visible and the culture too limited. It had only ever been a matter of time before they moved back to London, where they’d first met all those years ago, and Lucy and her brothers had always known this. But they’d promised it wouldn’t be until all three kids had left for college. Now, however, Mom was giving Lucy a pleading look, though whether for understanding or forgiveness, she didn’t know.

“Well,” she was saying, her voice a bit too bright, “an opportunity has come up a little early.”

“They called me about an open position in the UK office,” Dad jumped in, his eyes shining behind his glasses. “I’d heard rumors about it, but it’s very, very high level, so I didn’t think I’d have a shot.…”

“But it looks like he might,” Mom finished, looking at him proudly. “And it won’t be long now until we find out for sure.”

“Right,” Dad said. “Just a few more meetings today, and then we’ll see.…”

Lucy stared at him. “So we’d be moving to London?”

“Yes,” Dad said, beaming.

“Next year?”

Mom shook her head. “Next month.”

“Next month?” Lucy asked, reeling a bit. She could feel that her voice had risen an octave and her eyes had gone wide, but she couldn’t help it. Next month, she thought, astonished by the nearness of it.

“It wouldn’t be—” Dad began, but Lucy cut him off.

“What about the apartment?”

“Well, we’d keep it, of course,” he said. “In case we wanted to go back for the summer, or if the boys ended up with internships there…”

Lucy stared at him. “What about school?”

“I’ve looked into it,” Mom said with a hint of a smile, “and it seems they have those over here as well. And since you’ve never exactly loved your old school…”

She was right, of course, but Lucy still wasn’t sure what to say. After sixteen whole years in New York, it almost didn’t matter what she loved and what she didn’t; the city was a part of her, and she a part of it. The idea that she could be living in London in just a few short weeks struck her as wildly unimaginable. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, blinking at them.

“I know this is a lot of information all at once,” Mom said gently, her brow furrowed as she looked over at Dad. He leaned forward, steepling his hands together.

“And it’s not for sure yet,” he said. “Though I’m hoping we’ll have something to celebrate soon…”

“London,” Lucy repeated, and Mom smiled encouragingly.

“You love it here.”

“I love New York, too.”

Dad waved this away. “We’ve done New York,” he said. “It’s time for a change, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, fumbling for the words. “I—”

“Why don’t we pick this up over dinner later?” Dad suggested, clapping his hands on his knees and then standing up. “You can take a nap while Mom gets her hair done, then you two can meet up and do some shopping or something.”

“I’m not—” Lucy was about to say tired, but there didn’t seem to be a point. Dad stood there smoothing his tie, while Mom rose to grab her purse. “That sounds fine.”

They left in a flurry of noise—reminders that if she needed anything, Lucy could call the front desk, and that she should feel free to order room service if she was hungry; they gave her some cash and promised they’d see her soon; they told her not to think too much about what they’d discussed until they all knew more—and then they were gone, and Lucy was alone again.

London, she thought, the word sinking inside her.

She waited only a few minutes before grabbing her bag and heading out the door, too restless to stay put. As she walked, her mind spun furiously, and she found herself gawking at everything she passed, the white columned buildings and the striped crosswalks, the pharmacies and fruit shops, the cafés and pubs: the whole world suddenly seen through a whole new lens.

Everything was so different here, which had—only hours before—been precisely the point. But now it felt foreign and strange, the unusual street names and the squat buildings; the shops were unfamiliar, and the traffic was heading in the wrong direction, and it was only the first week of September, but everyone was already wearing winter coats.

Lucy wasn’t sure where she was exactly, but she kept moving anyway, too anxious to do anything but walk. A low fog hung over the streets, making everything damp and silvery, and she tugged the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands and pushed on.

It wasn’t until she found herself approaching Piccadilly Circus—the huge electric signs burning through the mist—that she paused. It was the very first thing that reminded her of New York, and she stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking of Times Square, the panic loosening its grip on her. She took a deep breath as she scanned the plaza. There were huddles of tourists peering in windows, brightly colored billboards, a few pigeons poking around near a fountain, and of course, the enormous stone buildings that formed a kind of cavern all around her.

It was beautiful, in a way. In its own way. And she thought it again—London—only this time, there was something lighter about it, a word like a sigh, like a possibility.

Just as she was about to turn back for the hotel, she spotted a small souvenir shop up ahead, the windows filled with little red buses and teacups with pictures of the queen. She walked over to take a closer look, drawn by the display of postcards just outside the door, and she spun the rack so that the images whizzed by in a blur of color: Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and a series of red phone booths.

Finally, she came to an aerial shot, the city spread out from a distance, the River Thames woven through it like a gray ribbon, and there, written on top of it all in bold blue letters, were the words: Wish You Were Here.

Inside the shop, she slid a five-pound note across the counter.

“I’ll take this,” she said, waving the postcard. “And a stamp as well.”

The clerk, a young woman with purple hair and a nose ring, rolled her eyes when she saw it. “Wish you were here,” she said, snapping her gum. “Right.”

Lucy only smiled. “Can I borrow a pen, too?”

After writing her note, she walked back out into the street. The fog was starting to lift now, the sun coming through unevenly. Lucy clutched the postcard in one hand, running a thumb along its edges as she looked around for a mailbox. She was halfway back to the hotel when she finally spotted one, and she realized why it had taken her so long. She’d been searching for the familiar blue. But here, the mailboxes—like the buses and phone booths—were a brilliant shade of red.

For a moment, she stood holding the little piece of cardboard over the open mouth of the chute. She was thinking about the mailroom back home in her apartment building, the wall of brass squares etched with numbers, and just beside them, the door leading down to the basement. But what she was really imagining was Owen—his blond head bent over the postcard, smiling as he read the words—and in spite of herself, she realized she was smiling, too.

Just as the sun broke through the clouds, she let go.

8

On Sunday, Owen and his father took the subway down to Times Square.

“A day out to celebrate surviving your first week of school,” Dad said cheerfully as they emerged from belowground, finding themselves immediately surrounded by a sea of tourists, their faces all hidden by maps or cameras.

“Surviving being the operative word there,” Owen said under his breath, though it was apparently still loud enough to make Dad roll his eyes.

“It can’t be that bad,” he said, tilting his head back to take in the blinking signs all around them. There were huge television screens and tickers with scrolling stock quotes, billboards and advertisements all lit up so that even in the middle of the day, the whole strange, electric landscape gave off a whitish glare.

“Actually, it is,” Owen said without looking at him. A crowd of tourists brushed past, bumping into him, and he was shoved forward a step.

“You’ve got to stop acting like such a country mouse,” Dad said, clapping him on the back. “You’re a New Yorker now.”

“Hardly,” Owen said quietly, but if Dad heard him this time, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he looked left and then right before stepping forward.

“This way,” he said, starting to walk down Broadway with all the confidence of a man headed in the right direction.

“Where are we going?”

“Wherever,” he said, his voice bright. “We’re seeing the sights. Taking it all in. Enjoying the city. Getting to know the place. Making the best of it.”

They paused at an intersection to let a red tour bus pass, and Owen jabbed a thumb at it. “You should really be working for them.”

“I might just get the chance,” Dad said, but to Owen’s relief, he was still smiling.

Ever since the night the power came back, he’d gone about his superintendent duties with a quiet doggedness that was unlike him. Even when he’d been unemployed for all those months, he’d still started each morning by proclaiming that this might be the day, the one where everything turned around. He was a believer in fresh starts and second chances, and even in the throes of his grief this summer—a fog of sadness so thick he couldn’t seem to see around it—he’d still been heartened by the idea of a new job. He’d wanted to get back to work. It didn’t matter whether it was building houses or fixing clogged drains; work had always been a tonic. But this week, it had seemed like just another burden.

It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. Owen had no doubt that Sam Coleman had been in touch, and he hated to think of that boxy little man yelling at his father, warning him in the same way he’d warned Owen. They’d managed to get the water pumps working that night, the two of them crouched on the floor of the utilities room until late, his father holding a flashlight while Owen worked the wrench with gritted teeth, following instructions as best he could. But he knew enough to know that wouldn’t be the end of it, and watching his father now—his face alight with the reflected glow of the billboards all around them—he understood not everything would be so easily fixable.

“What should we do first?” Dad asked, as the light turned green and they were swept across the street by a tide of people.

Owen shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, looking around. “We could go see a show?”

“Um…”

“Or a play?”

Owen made a face.

“Fine,” Dad said with an exaggerated groan. “Then you pick something.”

He was about to refuse. He was about to point out that this whole excursion wasn’t his idea. He was about to suggest simply going home. But they were approaching an enormous gift shop, the whole window filled with green foam crowns shaped like the Statue of Liberty, Big Apple pens and pencils and paperweights, Yankees jerseys, and I♥NY shirts like the ones he’d grumbled about to Lucy.

“Let’s check this place out,” he said, veering to the right, and though Dad gave him a mystified look, he followed without comment.

Inside, the shop was crowded, and while Dad wandered over to check out a display of old subway tokens, Owen slipped by a family trying on matching T-shirts and wove his way over to the enormous racks of postcards.

Every day this week, he’d looked for Lucy. Every day, he’d thought about knocking on the door of her apartment. At first, because he wanted to apologize for leaving the roof that morning. And then later, simply because he was anxious to see her again. But something kept stopping him. He couldn’t let go of the worry that the night hadn’t meant the same thing to her. For him, it had been a kind of oasis—not just the elevator, and not just the roof, but the simple fact of being with her. And as soon as he’d seen the gift shop, he was right back there again, lying on the floor of her kitchen and talking about faraway places.

As he flipped through the postcards, he came across one where a series of bright pink letters spilled out the words Wish You Were Here in a banner across the Manhattan skyline. He felt a strange electricity go through him at the sight of it. They’d laughed together at the slogan that night, at the halfheartedness of the words, but standing there, he couldn’t remember why he’d found them so ridiculous only days ago.

Wish you were here, he thought, closing his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again, there was a clerk standing in front of him, an older man with unruly sideburns and a bored expression. “Can I help you?” he asked, not sounding particularly excited about the prospect.

“I’ll take this,” Owen said, surprising even himself. “And can I get a stamp, too?”

From across a sea of miniature yellow cabs and red apples, he could see his father wandering back in his direction. Before he could think better of it, he reached for a pen shaped like the Empire State Building and scrawled a few words across the back of the postcard, then grabbed the stamp, slid a couple of dollars across the counter, and thanked the clerk.

“Find anything?” Dad asked as he joined him at the counter, but Owen only shook his head.

“This stuff’s for tourists,” he said with a shrug. “We live here.”

Though he tried to hide it, Owen could see the grin that crept onto his dad’s face, which remained there all the way out of the shop and into the street. They turned back down Broadway, moving toward the lights like a couple of moths, but just before the next intersection, Owen hesitated, letting Dad—who didn’t even seem to notice—move on without him. There was a blue mailbox beside a lamppost near the edge of the sidewalk, and before he could think better of it, he stepped over to it, opened the chute, and let the postcard go sailing away from him.

Later, they took the subway back home, tired and sunburned. As they walked the last few blocks, Owen noticed for the first time an edge of coolness in the air, the first hint of the shifting season. His first thought was of home—not so much the house in Pennsylvania as his mother—and his second, of course, was to recall that it didn’t exist anymore. At least not the way he remembered it.

Beside him, Dad seemed lost in thought, too, but when Owen looked over, he offered a smile “Not a bad day, huh?” he said. “Maybe we should do something tonight, too. Go see a musical or something?” He laughed at the expression on Owen’s face. “I’m only kidding. Maybe just a movie… or hey, what about the planetarium? That’s probably more up your alley.…”

As they walked up to the revolving doors, Owen was momentarily lost for words. He didn’t know whether to be cautious or hopeful. Every night since they’d been here, Dad had simply disappeared into his room after dinner. He’d always been a morning person, so going to bed early wasn’t unusual, but ever since the accident, it seemed that all he did was sleep, like it was some sort of drug and he couldn’t get enough of it. All this week, it had been even worse, worn down as he was by the lingering effects of the heat exhaustion, and Owen had assumed tonight would be no different.

But now it seemed possible he was starting to wake up again.

As they swung through the doors—Dad first, followed by Owen in the next compartment—he readied his response. “That sounds great,” he would say, as they spilled out onto the other side. “I’d really like that.”

But when he stepped out of the carousel and into the lobby, he stumbled straight into Dad, who was standing stock-still in front of the doors. Owen looked around him to see the broad back of Sam Coleman, who was leaning on the desk and talking to a man in a blue shirt with a cap that said EMK Plumbing.

For a moment, Owen considered bolting. He thought about shoving his father through the doorway to the mailroom and straight downstairs, where they could order a pizza and turn on a movie and act like none of it had happened: the accident or the move or the blackout, the trip to Coney Island and the sad and weary aftermath.

But instead, he simply watched as Dad squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Everything okay there, Sam?” he called out, and both men turned in their direction.

Sam smiled—a smile that felt like its opposite—and the plumber lowered his clipboard. “That him?” he asked, and Sam nodded, stepping forward.

“Hey there, Buckleys,” he said, all friendliness and teeth. “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” Dad said shortly. “What’s happening?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up, like he was surprised Dad wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. “You have a real knack for picking your days off,” he said with a short laugh. “We had a little issue with the pipes this afternoon.” He turned to Owen. “Hope you don’t get seasick, cause you practically need a boat to get around down there.”

“We’ve got it sorted out now,” the plumber said, scanning his clipboard. “It’ll be just fine.”

Sam nodded. “Yup,” he said. “He’s got it sorted out now. But what I’d like to know is why he found the valve still loose on the pump.”

Owen had been standing there listening with clenched fists, but now his heart plummeted. He cast a wild glance in Dad’s direction and saw that his face had drained of color. But he didn’t move a muscle; he stood entirely still, his eyes fixed on Sam.

“I guess I must not have tightened it up enough last weekend,” he said, his words slow and measured.

“Well, somebody sure didn’t,” the plumber chimed in, looking up. “That wasn’t real smart.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Sam said. “Not real cheap, either.”

The plumber shook his head and gave a low whistle.

Owen stepped forward. “Listen,” he said, but Dad held up a hand, and he was pulled up short, falling abruptly silent.

“It’s my fault,” Dad said to Sam, who bobbed his head.

“You bet it is,” he agreed, the false smile wiped from his face. “And look, I know you’re family, and I know you’re going through a rough patch here, but I can’t have this kind of sloppy work in one of my buildings, especially not after what happened the other day.”

Dad said nothing, but he kept his back very straight as he listened.

“I don’t feel good about this, Patrick,” Sam was saying. “I don’t feel good about it at all. But I’ve got to find someone I can rely on.”

“I understand,” Dad said, his voice tight.

Sam rubbed at the back of his neck, his eyes cutting over to Owen. “You can take your time getting out of the apartment, okay? Take all the time you need.”

“That’s good of you,” Dad said. “But we’ll be out by the end of the week.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

“Okay,” Dad said.

“Okay,” the plumber said, tearing off a bill and handing it over to Sam.

Owen was still staring dumbly at the scene before him, but when Dad began to cross the lobby, heading for the basement door, he snapped back, hurrying after him.

Dad said nothing as they walked down the stairs, nothing as he led them through the concrete hallways, ducking his head below the pipes that ran across the ceiling like a maze. It wasn’t until they were inside the apartment with the door closed behind them that he let out a long breath, his shoulders slumping. He leaned against the wall, the same place where he’d been huddled when he’d come back from Coney Island the other night, visibly shaken.

Owen was the first to speak. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I was the one who didn’t close the valve all the way.”

Dad smiled wearily. “I was the one who should have reminded you.”

“You were sick.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You couldn’t possibly know how to do something like that. It was my job and my responsibility. So it’s my fault.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hey,” he said, looking up sharply. “It’s fine. We’re going to be fine.”

Owen said nothing, only watched as Dad pushed himself off the wall, walking over to the kitchen, where he opened one of the drawers and pulled out the box of cigarettes. He held it for a moment, just looking at it, then opened the lid with great care. But when he saw there was only one left, he set it gently back in the drawer.

He glanced over at Owen, who was hovering in the doorway, and his face was entirely expressionless. “I’m gonna go lie down for a bit,” he said. “We’ll figure it out later, okay? Wake me when you’re ready for dinner.…”

Owen nodded, then retreated back down the hallway to his own room, where he sifted through an overgrown pile of laundry, fishing out the pair of shorts he’d been wearing a week ago, the day the lights had gone out. He reached into one pocket, then the other, then turned each one inside out. But the cigarette—his mother’s cigarette—was no longer there.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt a great weariness wash over him, and rather than fight it, he let it carry him out to sea. He curled up and closed his eyes, and he knew then that he wouldn’t wake his father later, that he’d let him sleep, and that he’d sleep, too, and with any luck, tomorrow would be better.

In the morning, when the column of sun reached in through his tiny window, he hauled himself out of bed and back down the hallway, where he found his dad bent over a map at the kitchen counter. It was faded and curling at the corners, and there were small rips along the seams.

“How old is that thing?” Owen asked, stifling a yawn.

“Older than you,” Dad said without looking up. He was tracing a finger along a thread of highway, and when Owen leaned in, he could see the direction it was moving: west.

“Was California even a state then?” he joked, and Dad shot him a look, but there was something good-natured about it, something almost joyful, and Owen sensed that some curtain had been lifted since last night, some weight they’d both been carrying.

“I was thinking we might take a little drive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I was thinking we’d head out on the road, see how far we get.”

Owen tried to hide his smile but failed completely. “That sounds like a pretty good plan.”

“You’d be fine with it then?” Dad asked. “Not staying here, not going back?”

“Yes,” he said with a decisive nod, and the word echoed through his head: Yes, yes, yes. His chest felt light and expansive, his heart lifting at the thought, and it seemed so sensible, so obvious—that they would go west, that they would move forward, because where else was there to go?—that it almost felt like a trick, like at any moment, Dad might tell him it was all some terrible joke.

But he didn’t. Instead, he folded up the map, giving Owen a searching look. “You’d be missing some school.…”

“I’ll survive,” Owen said, nodding at the map. “You can use that thing to teach me geography.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I don’t want you falling behind because of this.”

“I have enough credits to graduate now, if I wanted to,” Owen said. “And I can do my applications on the road. It won’t be a problem. Really.”

Dad smiled, but it didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes, which remained solemn. “So we’re doing this.”

Owen nodded. “We’re doing this.”

“Okay,” Dad said, and he lifted his coffee mug, nudging another toward Owen. They raised them at the same time, the clink of the ceramic ringing out through the drab kitchen and along the halls of the little apartment.

Owen floated through the school day in a haze, daydreaming about the road ahead of them. They could end up in Chicago or Colorado or California. It didn’t matter. It would be a new start. Not in the dungeon of some great city castle but out west, where there were more mountains than people and where the skies were lousy with stars.

After school, he walked home with his head still buzzing, his thoughts several time zones away. He crossed the lobby and hurried through the mailroom, eager to get downstairs and see what other plans his dad might have come up with while he was at school, pausing only to unlock the little cubby that belonged to the basement apartment. He threw the two catalogs and the envelope full of coupons directly into the bin, and was just about to slam the door when he noticed something in the back.

Even before he reached for it, he knew what it was. He had no idea where it was from, or what it would say, but he knew it was from her. He just knew.

The scene on the front was an overhead view of the city of London, and he stared at it, stunned that she could be an ocean away without him even knowing. He was still puzzling over this as he flipped it over, and his heart began to beat quick as a hummingbird.

There, on the back of the postcard, were the exact same words he’d written just yesterday.

I actually do.

He blinked at it, stunned, and he felt his mouth stretch into a slow smile.

She’d sent him a postcard, too, and with the very same message he’d sent her. It seemed impossible, yet here it was, and as he stood there gaping at it, his mouth hanging open, he sensed someone in the doorway.

“It’s because of what it says on the front,” she said, and it took Owen a moment to wrench his eyes from the message in his hand. When he finally looked up, there she was, leaning on the handle of her suitcase, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. “The whole ‘wish you were here’ thing.” She shook her head, and a few strands came loose from her ponytail. “It’s stupid. I didn’t expect—I didn’t think I’d be here when you got it.…”

“No,” he said, holding it up like an idiot. “It’s great. Really. Thank you.”

“I’m just getting back, actually,” she said, pointing at the bag. “My parents flew me over there a few days after the blackout.”

“I looked for you,” he said, then shook his head, wishing he could think of something better to say, wishing his mind would keep up with his heart, which was thundering in his chest. “I guess that’s why.”

She nodded. “Guess so.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about—about the roof that day,” he said in a rush. “I was coming back, but then—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“It was just that my dad—”

“It’s okay,” she said as their words crossed like swords in the air between them.

Owen glanced down at the postcard, the small blocky letters on the back. Then he flipped it over again, and the words went tumbling around in his head: wish you were here.

He had. And he did. And now he was leaving.

He raised his eyes to meet hers, pulling in a breath. “There’s actually something—” he began, but once again, she had started to speak as well.

“I need to tell you something,” she was saying, and he nodded. Her mouth twisted to one side. “I think,” she said, then paused and began again. “I think we’re probably moving.”

Owen stared at her. “You are?”

“It’s still not completely for sure, but it looks that way, yeah.”

“Where?”

“To London, actually. My parents are still over there, working out the details.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “That’s… wow.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s crazy. And really fast.”

“How fast?”

“Next month, probably,” she said, and he must have looked surprised, because she hurried on. “But we’d be keeping the apartment here, and my dad promised we could still come back for the summer, or at least some of it. So maybe…”

Owen forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

Lucy sighed. “I’m still not sure how I feel about all this.”

He nodded numbly; he wasn’t sure why this news should be hitting him so hard—why he should be feeling left behind—when he was leaving, too. “Well,” he said, “it’s a lot closer to Paris.”

“And Rome.”

“And Prague.”

She grinned. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t play the sullen new girl card.”

“Not at all,” he said, twisting the postcard around in his hands like a pinwheel. “You can complain to me anytime you want.”

“I might just take you up on that,” she said, and he took a deep breath, trying to work up to his own news, to explain that he would be leaving, too, that they’d been brought together again only to go pinballing off in opposite directions.

But he couldn’t find the words. And so instead, they just stood there, regarding each other silently, the room suddenly as quiet as the elevator had been, as comfortable as the kitchen floor, as remote as the roof. Because that’s what happened when you were with someone like that: the world shrank to just the right size. It molded itself to fit only the two of you, and nothing more.

Eventually, a woman with a baby on her hip inched her way around Lucy’s suitcase, scraping her key against the lock of her mailbox, and they stepped aside to give her room. When she left, the spell had been broken.

“So,” Lucy said, turning her suitcase around so that it was facing the other direction. “I should probably go unpack.” She nodded at the postcard he was still clutching. “I know it’s kind of cheesy.…”

“No, it’s great,” Owen said, and a laugh escaped him. “Actually, you should keep an eye on your mailbox, too.”

She tilted her head, eyeing him like she didn’t quite believe it. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, then,” she said with a smile.

He nodded. “Okay, then.”

He watched as she wheeled the suitcase back through the lobby and over to the elevators, the place where they’d first met. As soon as she punched the button, the door opened with a bright ding, but just as she was about to step inside, he called out to her.

“Lucy,” he said, and she whirled around, looking at him expectantly. Behind her, the doors eased shut again, and he jogged over with no plan at all, no words in mind, no brilliant speech, no idea at all what he might possibly say next. But something urgent had bubbled up inside him at the sight of her walking away, something desperate and true.

“If you’re about to suggest the stairs instead…” she said, teasing him, but he only shook his head.

“I was just going to say…” He trailed off, looking at her helplessly. He wanted to tell her that he was leaving, too, even sooner than she was, and that this might be good-bye. He wanted say let’s keep in touch or I hope we’ll see each other again or I’ll miss you. But none of it seemed quite right. Instead, he just stood there, tongue-tied and faltering, unable to say anything at all.

But it didn’t matter. After a moment, she leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder, and then, to his surprise, she rose onto her tiptoes and kissed him. His eyes widened as their lips met, and the nearness of her made the world go blurry, the lights hazy and the room muddled, until all at once, it wasn’t; all at once, it came into focus again, and the clearest thing of all—the truest thing of all—was the girl right in front of him. And so he closed his eyes and kissed her back.

Too soon, she broke away, and when she stepped back again, he could see that she was smiling. “Don’t worry,” she said, just before stepping into the open elevator. “I’ll send you a postcard.”