“You have everything?” Ellen asked as we pulled up to the departures curb. I could hear the roar of planes taking off. Cars zipped in and out of the lanes. Taxis, too. People hugged each other good-bye.
“Phone. Charger. Candy bag. Pastels. Books.” All the important stuff. “Check!”
“If you need anything, or if your flight gets delayed, you call me,” Ellen said.
“Will do, chickadee.” I loved Meredith’s mom.
“Mrs. Chickadee to you. And if you use the airport bathroom, turn the faucets off with a paper towel. And the first stall is generally the cleanest.”
“Is that true?”
Ellen shrugged. “I read it on the Internet.”
I leaned over the seat and hugged Ellen, and then I hugged Mer. We’d done this lots of times. We’d done it since my first year at Lower Academy when I was ten when Meredith instantly became my best friend.
“Wait! Mom! We almost forgot.” Meredith bent down, searched around for something.
“It’s right there by your foot, Mer,” Ellen said, and then Meredith popped up with a small wrapped box.
“For you. For tomorrow. Pretend it comes with a cake and candles.”
“Aw! Thanks, guys.”
“May sixteen be amazing,” Ellen said. “And safe. Amazing but safe.”
I smooched each of them hard and loud on the cheek. Big love. I zipped the box into my pack. And when I got out of the car, I felt hopeful. The slamming of trunks, and people hauling luggage onto the curb, and the planes rising in the sky—big things were happening, all around me.
“See you in eight weeks,” I said to Meredith.
“San Francisco, here I come,” she said.
I think a lot about that moment in the car, when we were driving and the music was on loud. How the wind rushed in. How Meredith’s brown hair blew out the window, how she had one foot tucked up underneath her as she sat there in her shorts and her orange polo shirt. How the guy on the radio sang, Hey, it’s a summertime thing. Summertime thing…
How I felt so light. How I felt so lucky. How the future was right there.
CHAPTER FIVE
Exhibit 7: Photo of Giacomo (Jake) Antonetti’s yellow Lamborghini
Exhibit 8: License plate of Giacomo (Jake) Antonetti’s yellow Lamborghini
The flight attendant did the safety dance, and I followed along on the plastic card because I wanted her to know that I was on her side in the event of a water landing. We took off.
Right afterward, in first class, we were offered orange juice and breakfast. Of course you know this, but if you’re seated up there, they give you actual food and a cloth napkin and a real knife. They assume that people with money won’t get violent, given the chance and the right cutlery. Well. God.
In the window seat next to me, there was a woman traveling for business. At least, I guessed she was, because she was wearing navy slacks and a silky shirt and had an efficient air, as if she were equipped to handle anything with calm certainty, even severe turbulence or a drop in oxygen levels. Her napkin was neatly placed on her lap, and she was making tidy cuts into her omelet, her fork in the superior upside-down position.
I felt her eyes on me. I felt the question. She was wondering what I was doing up here. Me, in my shorts and my Bazooka Joe T-shirt, my sandals. Chipped toe polish I painted on myself, which was pretty obvious. Breakfast already finished because I liked to eat on airplanes even if the food was gross.
Our empty trays were taken. The businesswoman tip-tapped on her laptop. I opened my magazine. I flipped the pages casually. And when I did, I saw Charles Falcon, at an event celebrating season four of Gold Light Avenue. I’d gone to his house a few times and swum in his pool before he got so huge, when he’d just been in Nefarious and a couple of beer commercials. I think he wanted to date Lila, but he was probably too nice for her. Naomi Meadows was also in there—a photo of her playing Tinker Bell on Broadway. She was in that failed TV pilot with Lila about the young dancer trying to make it in New York, where Lila was the sexy neighbor in the apartment next door. They were still friends. She’d come over and they’d drink gin and tonics and she’d call my mother Miss Lila.
I could forget about all this stuff when I was studying for finals or swimming with my friends at Matthews Beach or working the register at Jitters those Saturdays during the school year. (Edwina said a job would keep me from becoming an asshole.) Growing up, none of it had been all that important compared to which girl was being mean to me, or my spelling words, or losing my lunch box.
And then I turned the page. The image startled me. I did that confused Hey, that person looks familiar double take, like when you suddenly spot yourself in a department store mirror. It was Lila herself, in a Who Wore It Better? article. She was in a red gown with side cutouts, and her platinum hair had been crimped like a block of ramen. Her breasts (well, she was known for those, too) spilled over the top of her dress like… Okay, it’s hard to avoid fruit analogies. The photo was of her at the Reel-to-Reel Awards, the kind of invitation she rarely got anymore. It was set next to an image of Ursula Tarby. Ursula Tarby had a thumbs-up by her photo, and Lila had a thumbs-down.
The hair was not her best look, but really? Thumbs-up, thumbs-down? On a person? I know, I know, there are ratings—stars and thumbs and bar graphs—on everything, from restaurants to Q-tips, but on actual people?
Nefarious came out when I was two, so I don’t remember much about that time, when fans would mob her and photographers would aim their long lenses to get pictures of her sunbathing. But I knew about the clothes, the hair, the jewelry, the nails, the shoes. The teeth brightening, the wrinkle filling, all the stuff that supposedly made her beautiful enough to look at when she was already beautiful. I knew about the tension in the car before she’d appear in public, the nervous laughter, the vodka sipping, even though she was always careful not to be photographed with a drink in her hand.
I knew she’d hate the Who Wore It Better? piece. She’d feel humiliated, being judged like that. I felt bad for her. Beauty was her power, but what happened when your audience looked away? She’d feel like a failure for that thumbs-down. It would hurt her, but who cared? People forgot she was real. People forget that about each other a lot.
Still, there she was on that page. My very own mother. I left the magazine open on my lap. To send a message to the corporate woman. I ate my Milk Duds. I wiped my chocolate fingers on the real napkin that came with breakfast. I dared the corporate woman to notice the resemblance between Lila and me, though, honestly, I didn’t know if there was one. Her hair was straight-up platinum, and mine was more the brown yellow of honey in a plastic bear. I was her height, and we both had blue eyes, but I always thought I looked more like my father.
Were we similar? Were we different? How much did it matter? (Answers: yes, yes, a lot.) Either way, I left that page open like a bold fact. See? This is what I’m doing up here, I tried to say.
Those were the times I knew I had a little Lila in me. When a sneaky part of me wanted to be regular but not that regular. When I wanted to be seen, too.
Of course, being looked at and being seen are two entirely different things.
And when you are looked at but not seen, you are an object. An owned thing. A napkin. A magazine. A knife.