Read Online Why I Killed My Best Friend by Amanda Michalopoulou - Free Book Online Page B

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    Is that how Anna would speak if she were a teenager today? There’s certainly no way she would end her text with an exclamation of this sort: People say cities provide freedom of choice. Freedom means doing what you want, not having what you want. Today’s cities are dominated by the logic of advertising. Our biggest source of anxiety isn’t whether or not we’ll have complete access to the sole object of our desire, but how we can consume lover after lover. Society makes sure to give you the distressing impression that, in choosing one person, you lose all others, as if people were coats to choose from, old or new .
    The coat Irini wears is a shiny, silvery old leather jacket, torn and covered with ink stains. Kosmas has a kind of retro air, too: he always has on a red scarf; you’d think it was attached to his neck, like the gold necklace in Gwendolyn’s story. He’s as jittery as a marionette, hands and feet in constant motion. He might leap out of his chair unexpectedly, for instance, and shout, “Why can’t we sell the idea of revolution the same way they sell shoes? Why can’t we make revolution irresistible, like a really stylish winter coat? Don’t you want to bet that if we did, all those spoiled rich kids I went to school with would be falling all over themselves to get a revolution of their own?” Kosmas went to high school at the American College of Greece. He must’ve been one of those kidsplagued by inner dilemmas: I may be rich, but I feel poor. It’s more or less how I felt as the daughter of an oil company executive.
    Kosmas and Irini are the digital brains of Exit , and of our activities more generally. They’re the best hackers I’ve ever met. They can bring the Ministry of Finance to its knees in half an hour, though if you saw them waiting for the bus you’d think they were just two college kids like all the rest, headed to class with textbooks under their arms, whose biggest worry is whether they might get a pimple on their chin.
    â€œOkay, we need to put our heads together here.” I pull my glasses down to the tip of my nose, mostly because I know they get a kick out of my schoolmarm routine. “Speaking of ruins, Irini, we might want to think about the Attic Highway—we haven’t done anything on that front.”
    â€œThe Attic Highway can wait. We’ve got over a month for that. What we really need to talk about is the metro.” Irini blinks her eyes a few times, and I can’t help but admire her perfectly arched eyebrows, her jet-black lashes, which tremble so suggestively. Then again, perhaps it’s just a matter of age. I see in Irini what Diana once saw in me: possibilities.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Maria? Are you daydreaming?” It bothers Irini if my mind wanders even for a minute. Kids of her generation always want things to operate according to schedule: now it’s time to space out, now it’s time to work.
    â€œI met the daughter of a childhood friend of mine this afternoon. I guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic . . .”
    Anna-Maria leaps up into my lap. Cats can tell when humans have become cats, too, when they’ve slipped into a furry pouch of regression. She sinks her claws into my sweater; a single prick and I’m back to my normal self. I clap to get everyone’s attention.
    â€œOkay, people, let’s get to work! Who has the final text for the metro?”
    Irini clears her throat. It’s her day. There are times when certain people shine, take the lead, while others would rather just disappear into their chairs, like me right now. Irini starts to read: “ They presented it to us immaculate, marble, smelling of disinfectant, like an airport bathroom. Cold white fluorescent lighting. Private security guards. The Athens Metro is a moving walkway that transports us home after hours of low-paying, back-breaking work. It feels like the inside of a