All Fall Down

We walk through the glow of antique streetlights that are still — even in the twenty-first century — fueled by gaslight. And, suddenly, I realize that the city hasn’t changed in three years; in fact, it hasn’t changed in three hundred. So I walk down cobblestones that are slick with the damp night air. I wish I’d brought a sweater.

“Thanks, Noah.” I stop beneath a streetlight. “This has been the most enjoyable-yet-totally-redundant tour I’ve ever been on. Truly. It was swell. But it’s late and I’m jet-lagged, and now you can tell Ms. Chancellor that you have done your duty, and go back to doing whatever it is you do when you aren’t busy kidnapping the new girl.”

I slowly back away, toward the embassy and my mother’s bed and whatever bad dreams await me.

Noah looks slightly hurt as he calls, “Where are you going?”

“Back to the good ol’ U. S. of A.”

“You can’t leave,” he tells me. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” I ask.

Noah points to the end of the row, to a dark, winding path that leads straight up a steep incline and then disappears into blackness. In the stillness of the night, I hear music, a pounding bass keeping beat like the crashing of the waves. It’s a sound that knows no language. It is the same in every place in the world. And I know what awaits us long before Noah tells me.

“No.” I shake my head.

“Come on. You’ve got to come.”

“No, thank you,” I try again in my most diplomatic tone.

“Hear me out,” he says as I start to turn. “Grace, wait.”

“No.” I move out of the glare of the streetlight, going back down the long, sloping street.

“Come on. You’ve got to meet people eventually. Everyone is there and —”

“You don’t have to tell me about the party, Noah. I know that party. I’ve been to that party. In Fort Sill and Fort Benning. You should have seen the bonfire they did at Fort Dix. I got second-degree burns from that one.”

“Come on, Grace,” he says, but I walk on. I’m almost to Italy when he calls, “Are you chicken?”

Noah has been my best friend for twenty minutes. Already he knows me too well.

The path is overgrown and winding and steep. Thorny bushes scrape my legs. Low-hanging branches catch in my hair. Noah tries to be chivalrous and hold the branches and vines out of my way, but the poor guy just ends up half eaten by a bush, and I have to rescue him. I wish I’d brought a flashlight. In the dense overgrowth there is no moonlight. We stumble, practically blind.

“So what’s the occasion?” I ask him. Despite the rough terrain and steep incline, I’m not even a little out of breath. “I hope it’s something special to be worth all this trouble.”

“It’s the last day of school, first day of summer; full moon; you’re here — take your pick.”

“Me?”

The brush is a little thinner overhead, and the moon slices across his face. It’s the first good look I’ve gotten at him. I can see his freckles.

“New blood, Grace,” Noah explains, his voice soft beneath the ever-stronger pulse of the music. “The sharks can smell it. Now come on. It’s time for the real tour.”

When Noah takes my hand it’s all I can do not to pull away. Not to run down the hill, back to the embassy and the canopy bed, not to lash out again for reasons he can’t possibly understand. But he’s looking at me like I’m a normal girl, and that stops me. No one has looked at me that way in a long, long time.

He leads me up the winding path. It grows wilder with every step, and I know the smart thing would be to turn around and go back to the safety of the embassy. But the sense of déjà vu that has been haunting me for hours is slowly fading. I realize Noah might be leading me to the only place on Embassy Row where my mother’s memory will not follow.

“What is this place?” I ask when I realize just how high we’ve climbed.

“Technically? It’s nowhere. I mean, once upon a time it was the grounds of one of the embassies, but then the country sold the land back to Adria and this happened.”

Noah gestures to the overgrown path that surrounds us.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” I say in my best Ms. Chancellor voice.

Noah laughs. “Just you wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until you see this.”

He pushes aside one last branch and steps from the moss-and-leaf-covered ground onto solid stone. Overhead, the canopy of the trees disappears, and I look out onto a plateau that stretches for thirty yards in front of us. Beyond that, there is nothing but the deep-blue sea and the largest moon that I have ever seen. It’s as bright as any of the streetlights, there at the top of the city.

“Welcome to the secret side of Embassy Row,” Noah tells me as I ease forward to take in the scene. The music is louder, but so is the crashing of the waves against the rocky shore. I inch forward and look straight down over a cliff that is at least a hundred feet high. Probably higher.

“Easy, there,” Noah says, taking my arm and pulling me gently back.

I feel the mist in the wind coming off the water. The air is damp and salty. My hair clings to my forehead, and even though I haven’t slept in two days, I am wide awake in the middle of the night, standing on a cliff with a boy who, technically, broke into the US embassy and absconded with the ambassador’s granddaughter.

“Bet you didn’t see that when you were a little girl,” Noah says with a smirk. He seems entirely too pleased with himself. He doesn’t know the half of it. I look back to the overgrown path, waiting for my mother to follow, but, for once, she’s not there.

I scan the cliffs and the sea and then let my gaze fall onto the land beneath us, the massive wall that encircles the city, the flags that rise above the mansions on the row, waving through the spotlights that streak through the night sky. And then a cold chill seeps into my bones.

“Wait, if that is the US” — I point toward the familiar flag that flies in the distance — “then that’s Russia, Japan, Italy, and” — I look down at the embassy closest to the cliffs — “that makes this …”

I shift my gaze onto Noah, who shoves his hands deep into his pockets. He rocks back on his heels. “Iran.”