New York City

New York City is Jessica Mastriani’s temporary home and the setting for a period of shared expenses, summer work, and an unexpected reunion. Its high cost and urban rhythms stand in contrast to her life in Indiana, while the city becomes the point of departure for her decision to return there and help find a missing girl.

Setting and Daily Life

Jessica lives with Ruth in Hell’s Kitchen, splitting the rent on their one-bedroom apartment as well as the grocery bill and other expenses. The arrangement makes city life manageable, though Jessica describes the rent as high and New York City as the most expensive place in the world. Her summer job pays little, so she also relies on her FBI pension, investment interest from a television show, and money her parents send from home.

New York City’s scale changes the ordinary business of getting around. Jessica contrasts it with her Indiana hometown, where people generally do not walk to places; Ruth is a notable exception, walking when she wants to lose weight. The comparison presents the city not simply as a new address but as a place organized around a different everyday pace and set of habits.

Work and Shared Household

Jessica’s summer job helps children, a purpose that echoes her earlier efforts to find missing people through her lightning-related ability. She reflects that this work once helped her save children, but that helping had also led to children’s lives being damaged when their fathers were arrested. The resemblance between the job and her former work is therefore complicated by the harm she associates with her past interventions.

Ruth has found her nonprofit position through a summer-employment board at school and later attends Columbia after being admitted to every school to which she applied. Her parents and twin brother, Skip, think her education could lead to a better-paid summer job. Skip is in New York City for the summer, interning at a company on Wall Street and saving money while sleeping on the apartment’s couch. The crowded household’s plans turn toward finding a summer share so they can escape the Manhattan heat for weekends at the Jersey Shore.

The City as a Turning Point

During one of those conversations at the apartment, Ruth discusses the summer share while Skip and Mike Mastriani call out to the television. Jessica answers a knock expecting a pizza delivery, but instead finds her former boyfriend at the door. The surprise underlines how little warning her life in the city gives her: she no longer has her psychic ability, which might once have alerted her to an arrival like this.

The reunion soon redirects Jessica away from New York City. When the man asks whether she wants to find his sister, she makes clear that she will need to return to Indiana with him. The city thus serves as the setting for her independent life and the point from which a new obligation pulls her back toward home.