In late March, as cold rains washed the snow off the city streets, Jack and his father moved back to New York. Their apartment on Riverside Drive and 104th Street was half the size of the one they’d occupied in New Haven, but it felt twice as much like home. In the tiny living room, his father hung a framed photograph of his mother. On their first night there, as they sat on packing boxes and ate Chinese food out of cartons, his father told Jack everything he’d always wanted to know about his mother. Even though he knew she was no longer in New York, she came to life through his father’s stories.
But just as his father had predicted, Jack’s ability to see ghosts disappeared. Ever since he had returned from the underworld he looked for them after dusk, but he never saw anyone fly or pass through walls or look any way other than completely alive. The evening after he and his father moved back to New York, Jack took the subway to Grand Central and ran down to the whispering gallery. As crowds of commuters dashed around him, he leaned into one of the marble columns. “Euri,” he whis-pered. There was no response. Squatting down, he took a Ouija board out of his backpack and put his hands on the indicator, refusing to care how silly he looked. But it wouldn’t budge. He put it away and stood back up. “Euri!” he shouted into the column. “Please!” He leaned his forehead against the cold marble and recited the Donne poem about catching a falling star, pausing frequently to give her a chance to fill in the next line. But no one answered.
He slowly walked up to the main hall and stood by the clock, staring up at the constellations painted on the ceiling. He thought about what his father had said, how coming back to life wouldn’t have made Euri happy. But as the rest of the world moved in a dizzying circle around him, he couldn’t help missing her.
The following Monday, his father woke him up early for his first day of classes as a freshman at the George Chapman School, Dr. Lyons’s alma mater. Although the school normally didn’t admit new students so late in the year, Dr. Lyons had convinced them to make a special exception for Jack. “They have an excellent Latin program,” he had explained.
Latin program or not, Jack had slept fitfully. A few weeks earlier, he had toured the school. His guide was a tall, spiky-haired sophomore named Austin, who shook his hand heartily and then introduced him to a bunch of broad-shouldered boys in loafers as “Jim.” After taking him to a chemistry class and an English class, Austin led him to the cafeteria, where he gave back rubs to a trio of pretty, blond girls while Jack struggled not to spill his sloppy joe on himself. (Everyone else, he noticed, was eating food they had bought at a deli and carried in.) After lunch, Austin walked him back to the admissions office and gave him an enthusiastic handshake good-bye. “This is a really great school, Jim,” he confided, but Jack suspected that he just thought this because everyone at Chapman seemed to like Austin.
As he packed his backpack, Jack figured that life at his new school wouldn’t be that much different from how it had been at his old one. But his father had greater expectations.
“I’m sure you’ll make friends,” he told him as they walked to the crosstown bus stop.
The Chapman School was located between Fifth and Madison Avenues, just a block away from Central Park. As Jack exited the bus and walked toward the school’s cross street, he was tempted to turn into the park. The sun had come out and mist was rising behind the stone wall that separated it from Fifth Avenue. He imagined Bethesda fountain, how secluded it would be at this hour, the ghost rush hour over and only a few dog walkers and joggers to interrupt him. But he trudged dutifully away from the park, down a quiet street lined with foreign consulates, toward a red brick three-story building. A few kids were sitting on the steps in groups. He dashed around them and yanked open the heavy door to the school. There were more kids hanging out in the hallway, but luckily Jack had been instructed to go to the headmaster’s office when he arrived, and did not have to stand there with them.
After a brief painful introduction by the teacher and a few curious stares from the other students, he joined his first class of the day—Algebra I. In his biology and American history classes, the orderliness of assignment sheets and new notebooks calmed his nerves. But then lunch period arrived, and he felt worse than when he had climbed the stairs to the school that morning. Holding his tray, he scanned the cafeteria, but he had no idea where to sit. He finally spotted an empty table and sat there alone, translating lines from the
Metamorphoses
, or at least pretending to, so he wouldn’t have to look up. He left after a few bites of his macaroni and cheese, and arrived at his next class, Advanced Latin, before anyone else.
He was surprised to see Austin wander in. A few studious girls he had already seen in his other classes came in next and began to compare notes on a translation. A man with a thick beard and a heavy brow limped into the room, closing the classroom door behind him.
“Salve,”
he said.
“Salve, magister,”
said the students in unison. Jack, who was familiar with the greeting “Hello, teacher,” said it as well.
Suddenly the door flew open and a dark-haired girl Jack hadn’t seen before scrambled into the seat beside his. Her jaw was furiously working a piece of gum, but as soon as she locked eyes with the teacher, she spat it into her hand.
“Salve,”
she panted.
While the teacher began to read a passage from Virgil, Jack watched her write a message in the margin of her textbook to the girl sitting next to her. “I’m so fat!” it said.
“Cora,” said the teacher, whose name was Mr. O’Quinn. “How about the next verse?”
“‘Deep in the palace, of long growth there stood/ A laurel’s trunk, a venerable wood/ Where rites divine were paid,’” Cora said, while writing another note to her friend.
Jack was impressed. A few other students translated next with almost no mistakes, but none of them quite as effortlessly as Cora. Then Mr. O’Quinn turned to him. Even though he had not acknowledged Jack or introduced him to the other students, he called on him by name. “Next verse, Jack?”
Jack nervously cleared his throat. “‘Beneath a shady tree, the hero spread/ His table on the turf, with cakes of bread/ And with his chiefs on forest fruits he fed.’”
When he finished, he noticed that Cora had looked up to listen. She nodded once, as if in approval, and then turned back to her note.
When the bell rang, Mr. O’Quinn dismissed the class but asked Jack to stay. “You won’t be the best Latin student here,” he said sternly.
“I can tell,” Jack said. It was the first real thing he’d said to anyone all day.
Mr. O’Quinn nodded. “But you definitely belong.”
Jack watched the teacher gather his books and limp out of the classroom. For the first time that day he felt happy. The feeling followed him through English, where the teacher talked about alliteration and even read part of a poem, “Fern Hill,” by Dylan Thomas.
Just after three p.m., he pushed open the doors of the school. But his good mood vanished as soon as he saw the groups of kids hanging out on the steps. Keeping his eyes down, he squeezed past them. As he hurried toward the bus stop, Jack tried to cheer himself with the memory of the Latin class, but outside, Latin seemed unimportant. It had turned into a mild, breezy day, and all along Fifth Avenue, nannies and carriages were cruising in and out of the elegant apartment buildings facing the park. He watched as packs of teenagers, just out of other schools, gave each other piggyback rides and shrieked for no reason at all. The faint, tinny music of an ice-cream truck beckoned from the park, and Jack followed it in. He wandered past the playground where the ghost children had played, its tire swings and slides now crawling with living kids, and past the big granite sculpture of Mother Goose. He strolled down a long walkway, flanked cathedral-like with flowering elm trees and lined with benches. Then he ducked into a tunnel that echoed with the mellow strains of a cello, and hid deep inside its shadows, the cellist himself. He emerged into the sunshine on the other side and found himself staring up at Bethesda fountain.
The fountain wasn’t the way he remembered from his trips through it at night, or even from being there with his mom. People of all ages sat on its rim, sunbathing, chatting, and reading. Water cascaded from under the angel’s feet and into the green pool below. He began to walk toward the fountain when he heard a shout from behind him.
“Jack!” said a girl’s voice.
For a moment he thought it was Euri, and his heart jumped. But then he realized the voice was lower.
“Hey, Jack!”
This time he recognized who it was. It was Cora. Perhaps she had forgotten the Latin assignment? But maybe she just wanted to talk. What would he say to her, though? There wasn’t much he could come up with about the one Latin class they had shared. Who cares? he suddenly thought. He took a deep breath and turned around.
Cora jogged down the steps of the terrace toward him. “Jeez, I thought you were deaf,” she said with a smile when she reached him. “What are you doing here?”
“Just walking home. I live on the West Side.”
Cora gestured to the crowd sitting around the fountain. “I should have cut school and spent the whole day out here.”
“Me too,” said Jack.
She rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a couple pieces of gum. “Here,” she said, offering him one. “First day that bad, huh?”
He opened his mouth, intending to say it had been just fine. “It was horrible.”
Cora grinned. “It’ll get better. And Latin class couldn’t have been that bad.”
“No,” Jack admitted. “Everyone was really good. Especially you.” He blushed slightly, but Cora didn’t seem to notice.
“Hey! That’s really nice. It’s the only class I can stay awake through without like ten cups of coffee. But that’s probably because of Mr. O’Quinn. He’d kill me if I fell asleep.”
“Not if you could still translate.” Jack closed his eyes, made a snoring sound, and raised his hand. “‘Hercules decided to take a pass on the other labors/ And take a nap instead.’”
Cora laughed, and Jack realized that he was comfortable with her.
“Where are you from, anyway?” she asked. “No one new ever shows up this late in the year.”
Jack thought about the long story he could tell her, but he decided the shorter version was better for now. “My dad’s a professor of archeology. He changed jobs from Yale to Columbia, so we moved here. How about you?”
“I’ve always lived in New York. I’ve never even left the city, except for one summer in Massachusetts. Pretty boring, huh?”
“Are you kidding?”
He was about to ask her more about herself when she pulled her phone out of her bag and stared at it. “I need to go.”
Jack tried not to look disappointed. “Well, I’ll see you in class, then.”
He waited for her to walk away, but instead of leaving, she stood in front of him and snapped her gum awkwardly. “Listen, a bunch of us have this Latin club. We translate funny things into Latin.
Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo.
”
Jack gave her a quizzical look. “I’ll have a pizza with everything on it?”
“Exactly! I know it sounds dorky, but it’s sort of a social thing too. We meet in different parts of the city. If you’re not interested, that’s fine—”
“No,” Jack interrupted. “It sounds great.”
Cora looked pleased. “So you’ll come, then?”
Jack nodded.
“Well, I really better go. But I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Jack watched her jog off. Then he walked over to a vendor’s cart and bought himself two hot dogs, a pretzel, and a soda. He took his feast back to the fountain and joined the crowd perched on the rim. He didn’t mind eating alone this time because he felt more hopeful about Chapman. Perhaps he had made a friend.
He stayed in the park until it was almost dinnertime. His father was teaching, so there was no hurry to get home. He did his homework, nearly losing a page of it to the wind, and then finished his translation of Book Ten of the
Metamorphoses
for the head of the Yale Classics department. Finally he left Bethesda fountain and headed home, past the rough-hewn wooden shelter at Wagner Cove and the word IMAGINE embedded in black-andwhite mosaics in Strawberry Fields. As he approached Central Park West, the cacophony of rush-hour horns reminded Jack of an orchestra as it warmed up. As the sun began to set and the trees of the park became silhouetted against the darkening sky, Jack thought about the club.
He wondered who else was in it and where they met. But neither of these questions really mattered. The important thing was that he had looked back when Cora had called him, and he had been invited in.
He was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost missed her. He almost walked by, like a real New Yorker, not really seeing the most extraordinary things hidden among the everyday. But the skinny knees, the pleated skirt, the ponytail, the small mouth, the light eyes, were unmistakable. Euri was perched on the wall between the park and the sidewalk, and Jack realized, to his astonishment, that he could see her as well as he could see anyone living. She was kicking her heels against the wall, waiting, perhaps, for the real darkness to come and the haunting time to begin. At first she didn’t seem to see him either— distracted by some memory or thought from the past— but then their eyes met.
Jack opened his mouth to apologize. He wanted to explain how he’d never meant to look back, to tell her how he wished he could have given her the chance at life she had wanted. But she shook her head and put her finger to her lips, and, at that moment, Jack understood that she already knew.
Many talented and generous people helped bring Jack and Euri’s story to life. From the beginning, Lyda Phillips and Jen Rasmussen provided the perfect mix of critical insight and encouragement. I had the great fortune to meet Alex Glass in ninth-grade Latin class; his contributions to this book are incalculable, and as an agent he’s been my guiding star. Jennifer Besser both understood my vision and knew how to improve it—the hallmarks of a great editor. Sarah Self’s enthusiasm for the story and imaginative suggestions were invaluable. Donna Barnes provided a middle-grade teacher’s perspective; Deborah Friedell, a literary critic’s eye; and MaryLiz Williamson, a Latin scholar’s expertise. Jeremy Nussbaum provided wise legal counsel. Alyssa Reiner gave her constant encouragement as both a reader and a friend. When I started writing for young people, Dara Tomeo and her daughters, Olivia, Sophie, and Julia, served as model readers. Franklin Foer and Peter Scoblic generously enabled me to balance editing political journalism with writing for children, and my talented colleagues at
The New Republic
inspired me every day. My late grandmother, Natalia Milosh, gave me an appreciation for storytelling; she lives on in my memory and through her tales of East tenth Street. My father, Ken Marsh, always encouraged me to risk leading a creative life.
The Night Tourist
owes an enormous debt to my mother, Elaine Milosh, and her native city. The lessons she taught me about history and human nature are at the heart of this story. Finally, I could never have written
The Night Tourist
without the inexhaustible patience, support, and creative contributions of my husband, Julian E. Barnes. He is the real hero of this book.