I pull out the ingredients and assemble a sandwich quickly. I grab a can of sparkling water as well and sit at the tiny table next to the kitchenette. A few magazines sit there. Newsweek and Esquire. No surprise there.
I thumb through Newsweek. I’m determined to keep apprised of what’s going on in the world since I spent the better part of the last decade knowing nothing. We had a TV in the common room, but all it played were old sitcoms from the fifties and sixties. I know all the episodes of I Love Lucy by heart.
When all that is left of my sandwich is a few crumbs, I wash the plate.
Is Luke’s hair not naturally black? It’s so dark, but it doesn’t look fake. It’s not blue black or pure black.
I reach to place the plate inside the cupboard where I found it, when a memory jars me. I grab the counter.
A plate.
A plate sits on the table in the common room. I’ve never seen it before. We’re not allowed to have anything porcelain that can break into anything with sharp edges.
Anything that could be a weapon.
I examine it more closely. It’s definitely glass or porcelain. Not plastic or melamine, even, which we’re still not allowed to have.
We eat off all paper products with food that can be hand held. We’re not even allowed to have plastic flatware that can be made into a shiv.
Yeah, they’ve thought of everything.
So why is this plate here?
I look around. A guard lounges at the front desk, but he’s not looking my way.
I grab the plate quickly and hide it under my shirt, and then I make my way to my dorm room.
I share a room with Emerald. She has green eyes, which is I assume how she got her name, but who really knows? Who really cares? I don’t know her real name. We’re forbidden to use our real names.
I know what mine is, though.
Katelyn. My name is Katelyn. I’m determined I’ll never forget it.
Now, the plate… Should I break it now? Make a weapon?
No. Someone might hear the crash.
Under my mattress. Between the mattress and box springs. Except it’s not box springs so much as it is just a piece of plywood. We change our own sheets. They appear once a week, and we leave the dirties outside the room, so I don’t have to worry about someone else changing the sheets and finding the plate.
I let out a laugh.
What the hell am I thinking?
Sure, I can break off a chunk of porcelain. I might even be able to immobilize someone.
But someone else will be right behind him, and someone else behind him. And so on, and so on, and so on.
I don’t have a freaking chance in hell of doing any significant damage with a chunk of sharp porcelain, and even if I could, how would I get out of here? I’m on an island, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. Without help, I’ll get nowhere.
And I’ll be punished.
I should take the plate back to the common room.
Take it back, put it where it was. Maybe someone else will take it. Someone who’s stronger and more knowledgeable than I am.
I secure it safely underneath my mattress. Good thing Emerald isn’t here. I’d rather not have to make her keep a secret for me. The less the others know, the better.
Perhaps I can give the plate to someone. Someone with more determination than I have. Someone who can raise an army.
I laugh out loud again.
Right. It’ll never happen.
I leave the plate under my mattress, though. It will never be a weapon for me, but I feel a little better just knowing it’s there.
I shoot my eyes open, still grasping the counter in Luke’s kitchenette.
I never made a weapon from the plate.
I never got the chance.
And that plate—that innocuous porcelain plate—turned out to be my undoing.
32
Luke
Pollack gave me a thirty-five percent tip.
Interesting. He’s up to something. Why did he come back to The Glass House if he knew I worked there?
Makes no sense. And now, he gave me a huge-ass tip.
I heaved a sigh of relief that he paid his bill and went on his way.
The rest of the shift went smoothly, and I shared my tip with the bartender. I’m only obligated to hand over twenty percent to the bar, but Pollack’s money seems tainted to me in some way.
I don’t want it. The rest of it I handed to a guy playing guitar when I walked home at eleven-thirty. Some of the musicians play all night. Probably so they don’t have to sleep somewhere and get mugged. They’re much better off sleeping during the day. Manhattan has enough of a nightlife that they do all right at night.
I don’t need the money, anyway. Sure, I may look like a waiter who lives in a studio. That’s what I’m supposed to look like.