I was black inside and so I took everything black.

Toast.

Coffee.

Clothes.

Heart.

It was the end of October, and a few leaves were still clinging onto the trees, all bright yellow, red, and orange. These leaves were suckers, I thought, tricking themselves into thinking that this fall would be different, that they wouldn’t have to let go and turn brown and make room for snow.

That’s what I had done. Before I was black, I was like them. I had tricked myself, at the end of summer, into thinking that starting high school would somehow make everything different. That I would be reinvented. That I would find my true friends. But it was almost Halloween and I was still lonely and friendless, and that made me see everything with a dark point of view. 

Everyone in my family could tell I had a black cloud over me. I wore it like an extra sweater. 

“We’re worried about you, Rose,” my mom said across the table while I barely ate my toast.

She said it all the time, and every time it made my chest tighten. I felt bad that she was worried, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it but mumble that I was doing just fine.

“What?” she said. “I can’t hear you.”

“I’m fine,” I said again. But I knew she was unconvinced. 

My dad dealt with it by sinking deeper behind his New York Times. My brother Todd tried to make jokes, but he seemed to be the only one who ever laughed. 

Maybe he just wasn’t funny. 

“Come on, let’s rock and roll,” Todd said this time, grabbing an extra banana for the walk down to the bus stop. 

“Have a good day at school,” Mom said. As I passed her to leave, she squeezed my shoulder. She wanted to give me a little encouragement, but I couldn’t let anything in. 

“Rose,” she said, pulling me back into the kitchen. She put the palm of her hand on my face and cupped it. 

Her hand was warm and I could feel something. I could feel that she was trying to send me some love. 

In science class, Mrs. Merrick said that in outer space if you move one inch, you could end up a million miles out of your way. 

And that’s what had happened to me. 

“Mom,” I said, shaking her off. 

It was a good thing, my mother’s warm hand on my face. Standing at the front door with the cold nip in the air, I could still feel it 

As soon as I got outside, I motioned at the two men in suits who always hung out on the street corner in front of our house. They were like overgrown, well-dressed delinquents. 

“What do you think -- KGB or CIA?” I asked Todd. 

It was no secret that our neighborhood in Riverdale was crawling with KGB and CIA agents. You’d think the Bronx would be the farthest thing away from the Cold War, but across the street from us was the Soviet apartment compound. 

Here, on a daily basis, I was reminded that the world was acting like a couple of stupid kids on a playground. Only they were messing with the whole world.

“You can tell who’s who by their eyebrows,” Todd said, his usual goofy self. But then he stopped dead in his tracks, like he always did whenever the girl next door walked down her front steps. 

She was a vision. I’ll give him that. Her legs were impossibly long and lean, and when she walked, it looked as though she were gliding. Her steps were so impossibly sure of itself. Regal.

“Oh my Goddess,” Todd said. 

Todd really did think that the girl next door was a Goddess. He had even rolled up a Deity that looked just like her to use as a Non-Player Character in the Dungeons and Dragons game he ran in our garage every Friday night. 

I swear he wanted to bow to her. 

I didn’t say anything, though. I waited for him because I knew he always waited for me no matter how much I dragged my feet, or gave him dirty looks, or lived under the black cloud. Every morning he still walked me down the hill to the bus stop. 

He did it out of love. He did it out of a brotherly sense of chivalry. We both knew that if he didn’t go with me I would have to stand at the bus stop alone, and even if we didn’t talk to each other, I must admit that it was a comfort to have him there. 

“They have a school in the Soviet compound,” Todd said, and he pointed over to the large white apartment building down the street on Fieldston Road. “That’s where she’s going to school. She doesn’t have to live in the compound because her dad’s a Communist bigwig. That’s why they get to be in the townhouse next door.”

Todd’s obsession with the girl next door knew no bounds. One could even say that he spied on her, because he accumulated what information he had and told it to me whenever he was reminded of her existence.

“She’s sixteen. From Kiev. She just got her hair cut. She speaks French as well as she speaks English. She’s a ballet dancer like you. She likes strawberry ice cream. She listes to The Police.”

My room looked out into hers – the townhouses we lived in shared a garden path. I’d seen her brush her hair, read a book, talk on the phone. I’d noticed that we had the same ballet poster hanging on our wall. I had never seen her pull down the shades, have friends over, or sit at her desk. Or. Or. Or…

Just last year, half the neighborhood had been emptied of those with special privileges, because a bunch of them turned out to be bona fide Soviet spies, caught in the act of stealing state secrets. But not our neighbors. They seemed to be the only ones who hadn’t been deported. She was as Soviet and Communist as they come.