“There you are. Finally.” A tall black girl peeled herself off a lounge chair and pressed Friya into a hug. Her hair was twisted into two long braids, and with her gold hoops and gauzy, printed maxi dress, she looked like the kind of girl who got style snapped at Coachella. She introduced herself as Whitney. It was clear that she was in charge, and that Friya, for all her glamour and confidence, was eager to impress her.
Then there was Whitney’s twin brother, Ryland, who was the prep to her boho in a pair of round glasses and ankle-length khakis. He barely glanced up from his phone, and I couldn’t tell if he was permanently sour or if he just didn’t find me all that interesting. And finally, there was Ethan, a surprisingly eloquent surf bro, who said it was, and I quote, “an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance,” with zero traces of irony.
“Same,” I said, wondering how on earth anyone would ever think I belonged here.
I felt about seven years old, with my soda and my borrowed dress, staring at five of the most sophisticated teenagers I’d ever encountered.
They chatted about classmates I didn’t know and teachers I’d never heard of. I smiled, crunching the ice in my glass and watching without comment as Ethan slipped his arm around Whitney’s back. She snuggled into him, her face lit up in the glow of her phone screen. She was tapping through stories from someone’s house party, and she kept tilting her screen so he could see.
Cole pulled out a JUUL, passing it around. I took a pull, even though I never vape, just so I didn’t look totally pathetic. Ryland wandered upstairs after a while and didn’t come back. I sat down on his abandoned chair, barely saying a word, letting myself fade more and more into the background.
As I listened, I learned that over the summer, while I had moped around the house reading and feeling sorry for myself, Ethan had built houses in South America, and Cole had interned at a tech startup, and Whitney had done a pre-college program, and Friya had volunteered with an animal rescue. Somehow, they’d also found the time for family vacations to Europe and SAT courses and music lessons and off-season sports.
Their lives sounded stressful and overscheduled, and I got why they were hiding out here, drinking and smoking. And why they all seemed low-key pissed that their parents had dragged them out on the last weekend of summer, instead of giving them a night off.
Thankfully, I wasn’t nearly as interesting as the drama that was unfolding on some girl’s Insta stories. And so I was forgotten as they all leaned forward, watching the volleyball team play Never Have I Ever in someone’s living room.
They were still engrossed in it when an elementary-school-age surf bro came down the path, cupped his hands around his mouth, and bellowed, “Ethan! Mom said to tell you we’re leaving.”
My shoulders sagged in relief.
“Thanks for the red alert, little man,” Ethan called back, amused.
“Guess we should get back up there,” Whitney said, stretching.
“Nice meeting you guys,” I said politely.
“Same,” they all said.
And just like that, they dissipated. I was the last one up the steps to the clubhouse, and when I glanced back down at the pool, I felt as though, if I closed my eyes and disappeared right then and there, no one would notice.
Chapter 7
MOST OF THE TIME, MY NIGHTMARES weren’t so bad, but that night, they were relentless. I dreamed I showed up at my new school, except somehow it was twenty years ago. I chased my mother’s ghost through the hallways, screaming at her to wait, to stop, to help me. And then I was lost, and suddenly my old middle school classmates surrounded me. Their laughter rang cruelly as Tara came forward, looming impossibly tall, with a dark horrible void where her mouth should have been.
“It’s just a dare, Sasha,” she crooned. “It’s just a kiss.”
I was dragged forward, powerless, and then my mother’s body fell from the sky. Except it wasn’t her, it was me, and the ground was shaking, crumbling, and then—
I pushed myself up in bed, horrified.
At least I hadn’t screamed. That was my goal, to never, ever scream, because that would just make it worse: my startled grandparents rushing in to check on me, instead of my mom.
My phone, when I reached for it, said 4:53. Too early to get up, but I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. So I switched on my light and got an old fantasy novel down from the shelf, reading until the sun came up, and filling my head with magic instead of monsters.
Later that morning, I was squeegeeing the shower, my eyes scratchy from lack of sleep, when I saw Adam and his girlfriend in the backyard. They were sprawled across an enormous trampoline two houses down, reading thick paperback novels. They had sunglasses and headphones on, and a box of donuts sat between them.
It looked like a scene from one of those indie movies about sad white boys and the quirky girls who rescue them. Or maybe one of those aesthetic Tumblr photos I would have reblogged in middle school. Except this wasn’t staged, and it wasn’t fiction. It was two people, in real life.
I stood there for a minute, transfixed by the tiny, perfect universe of that backyard trampoline. By a girl who had said literally one word to me. A squeak from the squeegee against the shower door brought me back to reality.
Tomorrow was the first day of my junior year. The definitive end of my hiding out here and pretending none of this was really happening. Tomorrow, I’d become a student at the same high school my mom had attended when she was my age.
It was like I’d fallen into a story that wasn’t mine, and was living the life of the missing main character, waiting for someone, anyone, to notice that I wasn’t supposed to be here. Except I was here. This was my life now, and my mom wasn’t coming back to claim it from me, and that was just how things were.
She’d never make me her special cheese omelet or proofread my essays or help choose an outfit for a first day. She’d never sit in the stands at my high school graduation. She’d never help me move into the dorms at college. I hated that my grandparents were the ones who would do those things now, stepping into every chapter of my life where my mom should have been.
Which is why, when my grandmother insisted on taking me back-to-school shopping at the last possible moment, I told her that she really didn’t have to. But Eleanor seemed so excited about a “girls’ outing” that I gave in and let her drive me to the mall.
I was expecting something indoors, with a Macy’s and a food court. Instead, what I got was an upscale outdoor lifestyle center. It was all Spanish tiles and palm trees and elegant fountains and designer boutiques. A store selling two-thousand-dollar stationary bikes had a shirtless male model riding one in the window display. I stared at him in fascination, confused at how that was an actual job.
I couldn’t imagine that my classmates actually shopped here. But then I saw girls my age ducking into Free People and Brandy Melville and Sephora, their arms loaded with bags, so apparently they did. I watched a group of blond girls cluster around a pink cupcake ATM, taking selfies.
One of them had on the exact Reformation dress I’d stalked on Instagram until I saw the price tag and quietly died. I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it. I’d thought only influencers and models dressed like that. Not suburban teenagers hanging out at the mall.