You Are One of Them Read Online Free

dog,” she said. “But my dad won’t let me get one.”
    “I live across the street from you,” I said, and pointed at my house. It was pebbled stucco, charcoal gray with white shutters and a mansard roof. From the outside it looked normal.
    “I’m Jenny,” she said. “I’m from Ohio. The Buckeye State.”
    “Sarah,” I said. “I’ve never lived in a state.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “This isn’t a state,” I said.
    “My dad says Washington, D.C., is the most important city in the world.” She had the zeal of a convert.
    I shrugged. Washington was always more impressive to newcomers: the aspiring politicians at Georgetown University, the freshman representatives who traded state legislatures for the U.S. Capitol, the idealistic reporters determined to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, the tourists who sweated outside the White House hoping to spot the president. For those of us who lived there, Washington was not glamorous. It is a swampy city of wonks, a factory town where everyone—the lawyers, consultants, think-tank strategists, journalists, and diplomats—works in the same business. And the languid pace of life in the leafy enclaves of northwest Washington is so far from urban bustle that it’s hard to believe you’re in a city at all. Even then I knew I wanted to live in New York. I’d been there just once, but before my father had even hailed a taxi outside Penn Station, I remember thinking,
Now,
this
is a real city.
    Jenny had turned eight in June; I would be eight in November. We were both entering third grade at John Eaton. And when school started the next day, Jenny and I were in the same class. Our teacher, Mrs. Haynes, was a woman in her fifties who wore a pearl choker and blew her nose into monogrammed handkerchiefs. When she discovered that I had already met “the new girl,” she let us colonize adjoining desks. Jenny and I spent that first recess on the swings, where we exchanged information about our lives as we flew higher and higher.
    Your sister died?
she said as she moved through the air, her white kneesocks extending straight out over the blacktop.
    Why did you move?
I asked as I pumped my legs as hard as I could.
    We covered the basics: Her father had been transferred from his consulting firm’s Dayton office; her mother was a nurse who hadn’t found a job in D.C. yet. Jenny had always wanted a sister; I had been cheated of mine. And so that’s it: we were friends. Jenny invited me to her house after school.
    The Joneses had moved in only three days before, but already the boxes were unpacked. Books were on shelves, paintings were on walls. At my house there were boxes that my mother had not opened for years. Her dressing room was so cluttered that she had to climb over stuff to get to her closet. Our house was like a museum, filled with relics. She kept all of Izzy’s clothes stored in a trunk in her bedroom. There were piles of paper on every surface. The floors were covered with Oriental rugs that trapped dog hair and dust. My mother kept the curtains drawn—she felt safer that way—so our house was like a tomb. And the slightest provocation (a ringing phone, the arriving mail) was enough to send Pip into a frenzy.
    Jenny’s house was bright and modern. Although it had been built at the turn of the century like ours, it had been renovated in the 1960s, and the kitchen opened into a spacious family room with lots of windows and skylights. The ceilings were high, and the rooms were sparsely furnished with midcentury pieces. It was a house that seemed to look forward, not back. The floors were polished wood, and Jenny slid around pretending to surf.
    We went swimming that afternoon, and I can still remember my first glimpse of Jenny underwater. We sank beneath the surface in unison and sat cross-legged on the bottom of the pool in a breath-holding contest. She wore a canary yellow bathing suit and green goggles, and I could see her eyes open wide and staring at me,