Ultraviolet

CHAPTER ONE

Frannie was right about the train.

I could see a thin slice of black sky and a swirl of snow, the first wave of the coming nor'easter. Below that, the steps from the G platform up to Greenpoint Avenue yawned before me, glistening and ominous. It was hard to tell from that vantage point whether they were wet from snowmelt or slick with ice. I pulled my coat tight at the collar and gripped the handrail—so cold I thought my hand might stick to it—and wondered idly if I'd remembered to throw that bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse. You do not want to even, like, contemplate the array of bacteria and infectious disease lurking in the NYC subway system. We definitely should've taken an Uber.

"Let's go, bitch," Frannie teased, dashing effortlessly up the steps and then turning to glare at me, impatient as always. "You move slower than my nonna."

Frannie is Italian. Not that she was born there or anything; her family is Italian. And not that you would know by looking at her. She dyes her chestnut hair nearly platinum-blonde. She wears color contacts (which I thought nobody did). And despite her given name—Francesca Maria Fabiana Bartolocci—she's always been just "Frannie" to me. Still, she likes to pepper her speech with Italian words and turns of phrase, and God help me, she over-enunciates the name of every kind of Italian cuisine, just like Giada de Laurentiis from the Food Network. (It's Jah-da, she told me with an eye-roll when I'd made the mistake of pronouncing it Gee-ah-dah, as three distinct syllables.) I try not to hold this against her, but truthfully the habit is really grating.

"Yeah, well, your nonna probably doesn't wear four-inch Louboutins," I hollered up to her.

Of course, neither do I—at least not usually. For one thing, I could never in a million years afford them. For another, I'd been wearing the shoes for all of twenty-five minutes and already my feet were on fire. My pinky toe was smashed so tightly into the front of the boot that I figured it was only a matter of time before the circulation was cut off; my toe was probably going to turn black and die, and then I'd be left with nine toes and a permanent limp or whatever.

But Frannie had insisted.

"Seriously, bella," she'd said, drawing out the second "l," letting it linger on her tongue. I'd been sitting on the floor of her bedroom, curling my hair in front of this giant framed mirror she has, when she brought the shoebox over to me, balanced atop her upturned palms. "Everybody deserves to feel special on their birthday."

Look, I'm not going to lie. The shoes are beautiful. Black leather round-toe ankle booties with the iconic red sole. And the truth is that I like dressing up in her clothes. One of the things I love about Frannie is that she doesn't hold the fact that she's rich against you, she doesn't make you feel small, even if you did come from this tiny-ass town in New Jersey and your entire tuition is being paid for with government loans and shopping at, I dunno, the GAP feels extravagant. I'd just been worried that I'd spill something on them or slip and scuff them up, and there was no way I could pay her back if that happened. (I'd glanced at the sticker on the side of the box when she wasn't looking: eight-hundred ninety-five dollars. For shoes.)

"You know, I could never afford to replace these if..."

Frannie was already waving me off with a flick of her wrist. "Don't worry about it."

"They're way too expensive."

Suddenly she was leaning down and taking my face in her hands. "Violet, you know that shit doesn't matter to me." I watched her walk out of the room, this kind of sly smile spreading across her face, and went back to curling my hair.