Which is why, when my mom barged into my bedroom far too early that morning, I knew exactly what had gone wrong.
“Sasha!” she yelled. “School!”
“It’s LATE START!” I bellowed miserably.
“Oh no.” She made a face, realizing. “Wednesday.”
“Wednesday,” I confirmed.
“Since you’re up,” she said, opening the curtains with far too much cheer, “how about breakfast at Coffee Bean?”
“Afraid to venture in there without a chaperone?” I teased.
She shot me a look, but she also didn’t deny it.
I had complicated feelings about Coffee Bean. It was the only place in town to get a decent latte, but the college-age barista was completely in love with my mom. And he really wasn’t subtle about it.
Sure enough, when we appeared that morning, in desperate need of caffeine, Barista Todd lit up the moment he spotted us. He lifted a hand self-consciously to his messy man-bun.
I rolled my eyes. My mom was thirty-seven and unfairly gorgeous, with long dark hair and exactly the kind of tall, thin frame that was made for vintage Levi’s and gauzy blouses. Trust me, Todd wasn’t the first chambray-wearing hipster to notice.
“Morning, Alice. Mini-Alice.” He beamed, leaning across the counter. “What can I do you for?”
My mom reeled off our usual order with a smile.
“Awesome, I’ll get started on that dirty chai,” he purred, making it sound like she’d ordered a porno instead of an extra shot of espresso.
“You really need a new coffee order,” I observed as we sat down at the table by the front window.
“Next time I’ll order Kopi Luwak,” she promised.
The fact that the world’s most expensive cup of coffee was brewed from beans pooped by a weird tree cat never ceased to amaze me.
Not like our town was the kind of place that served rare imported coffee beans. It was the kind of place where tourists driving past on their way to Palm Springs stopped to pee.
The worst part was, we weren’t even the most popular bathroom pit-stop town between Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley. That honor went to Cabazon, which boasted a casino, a luxury outlet mall, and enormous concrete dinosaurs that loomed over the highway. We weren’t anything—just box stores and tract homes and the occasional tumbleweed blowing through. Drive a little farther north and you’d hit the resort town of Big Bear. A little farther south and you’d pick up California’s historic Mission Trail.
We’d moved here before I was old enough to remember living anyplace else. Back when my dad was still in the picture. Before he had a bullshit existential crisis and took off with his guitar and the car he was always tinkering with in the garage. The car had seemed like another of his selfish, expensive hobbies. We’d never imagined he was building an escape vehicle.
After he left, my mom and I had stayed. She said it was because she was a hairdresser and couldn’t leave her clients. But really, I think the idea of starting over somewhere else scared her, even though my mom was the bravest person I knew. So we were stuck here, together, in a fractured version of what once was.
Barista Todd slid over our drinks with a dimpled smile.
“How come you ladies always order to-go?” he teased. “My company that bad?”
“Actually,” I mumbled, and my mom elbowed me.
“You know what they say about too much of a good thing,” she replied airily.
“I’m a good thing?” Barista Todd looked hopeful.
“I meant coffee,” my mom explained, her grin dazzling. Barista Todd’s man-bun actually seemed to deflate, just for a second.
We took our breakfast outside and parted ways, me to school and my mom to the salon. She called over her shoulder that she’d pick up a veggie pizza for dinner.
“Stranger Things,” I yelled back, since we had a rule that if one of us picked the pizza toppings, the other chose the entertainment.
That was the last conversation we ever had, by the way. The last time I saw her, vibrant and alive and wearing her favorite boots from that weird vintage store in Joshua Tree.
What else should I tell you? I spent lunch in the library at one of the tutoring tables, helping freshmen with their Romeo and Juliet essays. The yearbook crowd had waved me over, like they always did, but I’d pretended to misunderstand and just waved back without stopping. I always felt nervous sitting with them, like no one actually liked me and they only tolerated my presence because we had the same sixth period. Like they were secretly relieved on the days when I didn’t show up.
That afternoon, in yearbook, I put on my headphones and sat at the back table in the computer lab, editing the pictures I’d taken for the class superlatives.
I don’t even know why we had sophomore superlatives. It wasn’t like, years later, anyone would reminisce about the time they got voted most athletic tenth grader. At least, I hoped not.
The list was full of the same kids who always seemed to win things, who would probably win the same awards again next year. I wondered idly if I could make everyone redo the same poses, lining the identical pictures up on the yearbook pages when we were seniors, showing how nothing had changed.
Shana Diaz and Sean Howell would always be the cutest couple. Tyrone Thompson, the star athlete. Jason Worth, the perpetual class clown. I was editing his picture, which he’d wanted to do with his eyes closed and mouth open, as though caught in mid-sneeze.
I applied a layer mask, making the midtones pop. This was why I loved photography. Because with the right angle and the right light, you could capture people exactly how they wanted to be seen instead of how they truly were. Their ugliness or sadness could be hidden, swept out of frame, until you’d never know they were anything other than the class clown or the cutest couple.
I added Jason’s photo to the layout, then clicked to the next page. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t. Best Personality: Tara Angel stared up at me. I wished it were a joke, but I’d long ago learned that the universe didn’t have a sense of humor.
Tara and I used to be friends. We used to have sleepovers and marathon The Vampire Diaries, shrieking so loudly when Stefan took his shirt off that her mom would rush in to see what was the matter. And then, in the seventh grade, catastrophe struck.
That year, I was the first girl in our group to get a boyfriend. We were twelve, so it was adorably tame. Notes tucked into my locker. Plans to attend the Valentine’s Day dance together. And then one morning I saw Tara talking to him.
He wouldn’t look at me in the hall that day, and I had no idea why. “I broke up with him for you,” she explained at lunch. “And now that you don’t have a boyfriend anymore, sorry, but you’re not cool enough to sit with us.”
My friends abandoned me there, next to the vending machine, laughing like it was a silly prank. I’d stared at my reflection in the glass, trying not to cry. I couldn’t tell anyone. What would I say? It was the perfect crime.
But Tara kept going. She made up rumors about me to anyone who would listen. Once, when she couldn’t find her glue stick, because it had rolled onto the floor: “Sasha probably took it to get high.” Another time, when I made the mistake of wearing purple socks: “You know that wearing purple means you’re gay, right?” she’d said loudly, leaning across the aisle in homeroom. “Do you want everyone to know you’re gay, Sasha?”