Summer in the Invisible City by Juliana Romano Page B

breakfast with him before ballet and then they took me to class together. Allan was strange and unfamiliar. He didn’t look anything like the button-nosed boys in my class who everyone thought were cute. But he had a kind of authority that not even my teachers had. It was hard to make him smile, but because of that, when he did, it mattered more.
    We did that for a few weeks, and then Allan volunteeredto take me to class alone. Soon after that, he decided he wanted to use my voice-over for a film he was working on so I started going back to his studio with him after class for weekly recording sessions. He gave me this French philosophy book to read, and I didn’t speak French so I just spat out the words as best I could, and made up
a lot.
No matter what I did, though, Allan loved it. He told me I was doing a great job all the time. He gave me coffee and doughnuts, two things I was never allowed to have at home. I think if I’d asked him for a glass of wine, he would have said yes.
    My favorite part, though, was riding the subway together after class. I loved sitting side by side on the yellow and orange bucket seats of the train. In everyone else’s eyes, to all those strangers on the train, we were a normal father and daughter. Feeling normal felt extraordinary to me.
    â€œIs Daddy coming today?” I asked my mom on the way to my Spring Ballet Recital that March. The sky was a mixture of rain and sleet. The two of us huddled together under her umbrella as we shuffled up 125th Street toward the subway.
    â€œSince when is he Daddy?” she asked, squeezing my hand through her gloves. “Oh, forget it, let’s take a cab.”
    My mom yanked me with her into the street. I had to jump over a puddle to not drench my shoes. Rain sloshed in the gutter. She stuck out her arm until a yellow cab swerved over to us. “Get in.”
    â€œIs he coming?” I asked again, once we were inside the cab.
    â€œI’m pretty sure he is,” she said.
    I smiled, satisfied. I wondered if Allan would bring meflowers. Not that it was that kind of recital; it was just in the classroom. But he might not know that some parents brought flowers.
    â€œ Sadie? ”
    I looked at my mom. Behind her, icy sludge slid across the cab’s window.
    â€œDon’t call him Daddy, okay?”
    â€œWhy not?” I ask.
    â€œ I just don ’t think it’ s appropriate. ”
    â€œWhat’ s appropriate? ”
    She sighed and then, with a forced patience in her voice, asked, “What does the word appropriate mean or what is appropriate in this situation?”
    I wasn’t sure what I was asking either, so I just shrugged and turned back to my own window. I touched my bun to make sure it was still perfectly in place.

Chapter 13
    â€œDo you want to go to the New Museum right now and just get it over with?” Izzy asks as we pack up our bags at the end of class on Friday. Benji is making us go see art over the weekend and write about it for homework. Teachers always make us go to museums when they run out of ideas.
    â€œI was supposed to go over to Willa’s,” I say, biting my lip. “Lemme ask her and see if she wants to come.”
    I text Willa and she writes back:
    ur teacher is making you go to a museum? What is this, fifth grade?
    I write:
    I kno rite
    She writes:
    I’m just gonna stay home and be boring. Have fun tho.
    When Izzy and I step outside, storm clouds are blooming overhead, carving out dark shapes in the summer sky.
    During the school year, Izzy and I were secret darkroom friends who never spoke outside of the photo lab. We alwaysstayed long after the first bell to print. We didn’t talk those afternoons, we just listened to Tom Waits and The Cure and watched our pictures emerge in the chemical baths, using the tongs to gently rock the photos against the plastic walls of the tubs. Sometimes we stayed past the late bell at four thirty, until the lab