The Carrie Diaries Complete Collection by Candace Bushnell

Author:Candace Bushnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter Two

Help!

I’m suffocating, drowning in taffeta. I’m trapped in a coffin. I’m . . . dead?

I sit up and wrench free, staring at the pile of black silk in my lap.

It’s my dress. I must have taken it off sometime during the night and put it over my head. Or did someone take it off for me? I look around the half darkness of Samantha’s living room, crisscrossed by eerie yellow beams of light that highlight the ordinary objects of her existence: a grouping of photographs on the side table, a pile of magazines on the floor, a row of candles on the sill.

My head throbs as I vaguely recall a taxi ride packed with people. Peeling blue vinyl and a sticky mat. I was hiding on the floor of the taxi against the protests of the driver, who kept saying, “No more than four.” We were actually six but Samantha kept insisting we weren’t. There was hysterical laughter. Then a crawl up the five flights of steps and more music and phone calls and a guy wearing Samantha’s makeup, and sometime after that I must have collapsed on the futon couch and fallen asleep.

I tiptoe to Samantha’s room, avoiding the open boxes. Samantha is moving out, and the apartment is a mess. The door to the tiny bedroom is open, the bed unmade but empty, the floor littered with shoes and articles of clothing as if someone tried on everything in her closet and cast each piece away in a rush. I make my way to the bathroom, and weaving through a forest of bras and panties, step over the edge of the ancient tub and turn on the shower.

Plan for the day: find out where I’m supposed to live, without calling my father.

My father. The rancid aftertaste of guilt fills my throat.

I didn’t call him yesterday. I didn’t have a chance. He’s probably worried to death by now. What if he called George? What if he called my landlady? Maybe the police are looking for me, another girl who mysteriously disappears into the maw of New York City.

I shampoo my hair. I can’t do anything about it now.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

I get out of the tub and lean across the sink, staring at my reflection as the mist from the shower slowly evaporates and my face is revealed.

I don’t look any different. But I sure as hell feel different.

It’s my first morning in New York!

I rush to the open window, taking in the cool, damp breeze. The sound of traffic is like the whoosh of waves gently lapping the shore. I kneel on the sill, looking down at the street with my palms on the glass—a child peering into an enormous snow globe.

I crouch there forever, watching the day come to life. First come the trucks, lumbering down the avenue like dinosaurs, creaky and hollow, raising their flaps to receive garbage or sweeping the street with their whiskery bristles. Then the traffic begins: a lone taxi,

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