Chapter 1

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content…it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion.

—René Daumal (1908–1944), French poet and critic

I open my eyes to see the morning sunlight slanting across the Renoir hanging above my bed, and for a few seconds, I don't know where I am.

Then I remember.

And my heart swells with giddy excitement. No, really. Giddy. Like, first-day-of-school-and-I've-got-a-brand-new-designer-outfit-from-TJ Maxx giddy.

And not just because that Renoir hanging over my head? It's real. Although it is, and not a print, like I had in my dorm room. An actual original work, by the Impressionist master himself.

Which I couldn't actually believe at first. I mean, how often do you walk into someone's bedroom and see an original Renoir hanging over the bed? Um, never. At least if you're me.

When Luke left the room, I stayed behind, pretending like I had to use the bathroom. But really I slipped off my espadrilles, climbed onto the bed, and gave that canvas a closer look.

And I was right. I could see the globs of paint Renoir used to build up the lace he so carefully detailed on the cuff of the little girl's sleeve. And the stripes on the fur of the cat the little girl is holding? Raised blobby bits. It's a REAL Renoir, all right.

And it's hanging over the bed I'm waking up in…the same bed that's currently bathed in sunlight from the tall windows to my left…sunlight that's bouncing off the building across the street…that building being the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART. The one in front of Central Park. On Fifth Avenue. In NEW YORK CITY.

Yes! I am waking up in NEW YORK CITY!!!! The Big Apple! The city that never sleeps (although I try to get at least eight hours a night, or my eyelids will get puffy, and Shari says I get cranky)!

But none of that is what's making me so giddy. The sunlight, the Renoir, the Met, Fifth Avenue, New York. None of that can compare to what's really got me excited…something better than all of those things, and a new back-to-school outfit from TJ Maxx put together.

And it's in the bed right next to me.

Just look how cute he is when he's sleeping! Manly cute, not kitten cute. Luke doesn't lie there with his mouth gaping wide with spit leaking out the side, like I do (I know I do this because my sisters told me. Also because I always wake up to a wet spot on my pillow). He manages to keep his lips together very nicely.

And his eyelashes look so long and curly. Why can't my eyelashes look like that? It's not fair. I'm the girl, after all. I'm the one who is supposed to have long curly eyelashes, not stubby short ones I have to use an eyelash curler I've heated with a hair dryer and about seven layers of mascara on if I want to look like I have any eyelashes at all.

Okay, I've got to stop. Stop obsessing over my boyfriend's eyelashes. I need to get up. I can't lounge around in bed all day. I'm in NEW YORK CITY!

And okay, I don't have a job. Or a place to live.

Because that Renoir? Yeah, it belongs to Luke's mother. As does the bed. Oh, and the apartment.

But she only bought it when she thought she and Luke's dad were splitting up. Which they're not now. Thanks to me. So she said Luke could use it as long as necessary.

Lucky Luke. I wish MY mom had been planning on divorcing MY dad and bought a totally gorgeous apartment in New York City, right across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that she now only planned on using a few times a year for shopping trips in the city, or to attend the occasional ballet.

Okay, seriously. I have to get up now. How can I stay in bed—a king-sized bed, by the way, totally comfortable, with a big white fluffy goose-down-stuffed duvet over it—when I have all of NEW YORK CITY right outside the door (well, down the elevator and outside the ornate marble lobby), just waiting to be explored by me?

Copyright © 2007 by Meg Cabot.