A Drop of Night Read Online Free PDF

was fifteen. He was fifteen. He had green eyes and floppy hair and liked Vampire Weekend, and if that doesn’t guarantee a life of shared bliss, I don’t know what does. We were going to get married. Move to the West Village and have zero children and drink tea and live a life of bohemian ennui. It didn’t happen. Green-eyed Boyfriend was expelled for pouring lighter fluid all over the bike stands and setting them on fire. Not even to protest anything. Just because. It was okay, though, because he didn’t know we were getting married. I never actually talked to him. The height of our romance consisted of me ignoring him all the way through chemistry, and the instant I heard about the bike stand incident I was over him anyway. People who are dumb enough to light bike stands on fire are not people I want to share a lifetime of bohemian ennui with.
    Exhibit B—Two years earlier, when I was thirteen, I went to the library and checked out all the books I could find on sociopaths and bizarre human psychology. The librarian probably thought I was deranged, but I wanted to be sure. I figured if I had a medical reason to be mean and angry, things would be simpler. It turns out having medical reasons to be mean and angry doesn’t actually help you become less mean and angry. It doesn’t fix you.
    I lean my head against the window of the black Mercedes and watch the landscape rush past. It’s an endless conveyor belt—frosty green fields, gray sky. We’re whooshing along a six-lane highway. Behind us are two more Mercedes—long, low cars with tinted windows. Ahead is another. We’re like a shiny, furiously speeding funeral procession.
    Jules is lying on the seat across from me, staring up at the ceiling. Professor Dorf and a driver are up front behind darkened glass. Will, Lilly, and Hayden are one car behind us. I’m starting to regret this arrangement. Jules is much too effusive for me. He has this way of laughing loudly and then looking at me cautiously, like the only reason he laughed is because he wants me tolaugh, too. I don’t like that kind of pressure. Still, it’s better than being in the other car. Lilly’s trying to drag Will out of his shell, and I don’t know what Hayden’s doing. He didn’t stick with Orangina for long on the plane ride, and his reaction to all the alcohol was to become very slow and buzzy, and speak in short, dramatic sentences about the sky and the tarmac. But maybe he’s knocked out cold by now. I wish Jules were knocked out cold.
    He’s just being friendly, Anouk. He’s just a nice person . It’s possible. But this is where Exhibit B comes into play. I don’t believe in the whole “deep down people are basically good” notion. I think deep down is where people are the worst.
    â€œAnd so for our social sculpting class this one guy got a bunch of horse manure and mixed it with Plasticine until it was this really glossy brown, almost like chocolate, and he put it in a bear-shaped mold and called it ‘Poo Bear,’ get it? It was, like, a commentary on how culture is packaged to look appealing but is basically crap. It was brilliant.” He raises his eyebrows in admiration and looks out the window.
    â€œExcept Winnie-the-Pooh isn’t crap,” I say. “Winnie-the-Pooh is amazing.”
    â€œWhat? It’s not about Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s— You’re missing the point.”
    â€œNo, I’m not. ‘People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day’? That’s brilliant. If Mr. Social Sculptor wanted to be all clever and subversive, he should have made a shampoo bottle out of crap, called it ‘Sham-Poo,’ and it could have been a commentary on all the toxic chemicals in commercial shampoo, and then he could pretend he’s a crusader against multinational cosmetic corporations instead of just skewering children’s books he’s