Read Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick for Free Online Page B

that sent the cop ducking for cover. I caught a glimpse of flame in the side-view mirror and saw the exterior of the 40/40 Club plume outward onto the sidewalk in a churning horizontal cloud of smoke and dust. People scurried like rats out into the street, and cars swerved and slammed on their brakes to dodge them. When I looked up again, the cop was running back to his car, shouting something to his partner. Car alarms were yelping up and down Broadway in all directions, the noise rising up through the debris.
    "What the hell was that?" I shouted.
    Gobi tugged my arm. "The light is green. Go."
    Cranking the wheel, I swung out onto Broadway, weaving my way downtown, hardly aware of what I was doing. I kept looking back until I couldn't see the club anymore.
    "What happened back there?"
    "Semtex. I left it in the alley outside the club."
    "What? You did that too?"
    "No one was hurt. Just a distraction."
    "Just a distraction? That was a bomb!"
    "Only a little one."
    "Only—" I blasted through a red light, yellow cabs hitting their brakes, blaring their horns and missing our back bumper by centimeters. "I can't believe this."
    "Watch the traffic." She was working the BlackBerry again. "We need to get to West Street, Battery Park. Stay on Broadway. It should only take ten minutes."
    The delayed shock was hitting me now, the combined effect of everything that had just happened collapsing over me in a blinding, numbing wave. Studying for the SAT was one thing; this was some thing else. My skull was going to blow apart if I let it, but I forced myself through grim determination to keep it together.
    Gobi glanced at me. "You are upset?"
    "Upset? Am I upset?" Here all I needed was some hack cartoonist to reach down and draw steam shooting out of my ears. " I never should have taken you to prom! "
    "Perry, listen to me. Tomorrow morning I will fly out."
    "I thought it was next week—"
    "It is tomorrow morning. Before that I have four more appointments I need to make here in the city. You drive me to these, everything will be all right."
    "Four appointments. You mean four more people you have to kill?"
    "Please pay attention to your driving."
    I shook my head. "You know, it all makes total sense now why you weren't good in math. Every single foreign exchange student I know is good in math. You sucked in math because you're actually a hired killer. "
    "Red light."
    Slamming on the brakes, I stopped just short of getting T-boned by a bus heading east on Fourteenth Street. Gobi was still typing on the BlackBerry. I caught a glimpse of digitized information, photos, a Google map scrolling upward.
    "So the whole time you were living with us, that was all a cover?" My mind flicked back to the nights where I'd heard her talking in Lithuanian, the hours she'd spent in front of her laptop. "The last nine months you were just getting the assignment together?"
    "It is not an easy process." She lifted the BlackBerry. "The research was extensive."
    "Who are they? The people you're killing?"
    "Light is green."
    That was when my cell phone started ringing. Gobi's eyes flashed down.
    "Who is it?"
    I picked up the phone, checked the number, and felt a slick dark cloud of nausea swooping down over me, eclipsing all thought.
    "It's my dad," I said.

9
Describe a disappointment in your life and how you responded. (Notre Dame)
     
    "What ... what do I do?"
    We were coming into Union Square now, traffic looking worse than bad, and all I could think was that my father would never have wanted any of this for his car, or for his son, but mainly for his car.
    "Get in the left lane," Gobi said. "Take Fourteenth Street around the park, pick up Broadway the next block down."
    "No, about my dad."
    "What will you do if you don't answer?"
    "He'll probably just keep calling."
    "Then you need to pick it up and talk to him."
    "I can't—" The phone slipped out of my hand and Gobi caught it midair, switched on the speaker, and held it up to my face so that I could keep