“You’re going to get a shit ton of money,” she said. “Your life will be so fancy.”
“I’ll buy you a pony,” I said. I was still holding her hand.
“Taylor?” Heather turned to face me. Our noses almost touched.
“Yeah?”
“Not that this isn’t something you don’t already know,” she said, “or that it even matters, but Susan isn’t smart. In fact, she’s kind of an idiot. You need to forget about her.”
Heather’s breath smelled like alcohol and peppermint Altoids. She kept a tin of them with her at all times.
“I have herpes,” I said.
“Well,” Heather said, smirking. “Now I’m definitely not making out with you.”
“It’s on my you-know-what, not my lips.”
“Not convincing, Garland.”
It felt good, telling someone about the disease I had. Since it was Heather, that meant everyone else in Hopuonk would know soon too. Surely, once the whole town found out, that information would mean that my reign was over—if I hadn’t already ended it at prom.
“I am going to California,” I said. “All this time, I didn’t really believe it. The weirdest part is that even though he sent me a letter, I’ve never even spoken to him.”
“I always knew you would go somewhere else,” she said.
“How?”
“This place is too small, and everyone expects too much. They can’t help it. It’s how they’re wired.”
“If I can’t be here, which I can’t, then why am I scared to go?”
“How could you not be?”
“Why do I feel so guilty?”
“You have to go,” she said. Miraculously, she put her arm around me. “You’d make a terrible dental hygienist.”
“Heather?” I turned and pressed my nose into her neck. It smelled like Clinique Happy and sweat.
“What?”
“I really love you,” I said. I realized this only as I was saying it, but I meant it in a different way than I did when I’d said it to Susan. Heather was someone I respected. She was strong.
“You’re a dildo,” she said.
I felt like we were floating, like my Volvo was a submarine and the parking lot was the ocean. Heather fell asleep, and I listened to the sound of her small, shallow breaths. Her body relaxed into me. Her hand, still in mine, twitched. I didn’t move.
Through the window, the moon looked like a coffee stain in the sky.
The Shrinking
A few days after prom, I got a phone call from Veronica Michaels, Johnny Moon’s assistant. I sat at the kitchen table squinting at the empty notebook in front of me, which I was trying to fill with an essay about Gulliver’s Travels.
“It’s for you,” Sandra said, handing me the phone. I hadn’t heard it ring—I’d been daydreaming about changing sizes, changing personas.
I looked at the paper in front of me and saw doodles of starfish and octopi surrounded by hearts, which I hadn’t been conscious of drawing.
I took the phone from Sandra.
As Veronica Michaels explained to me that Johnny Moon wanted to visit Hopuonk the following week for a photo shoot of us in Vanity Fair, I looked around the kitchen and noticed how shitty my house was. The windows let in cold air, the countertops were water-damaged and lumpy, and the refrigerator gasped like it was exhausted from running a marathon. I didn’t want him to see this house, even if he did buy it.
“He’ll be flying from Vancouver on his two days off, which are Tuesday and Wednesday,” Veronica explained, “and they’d like to shoot you both on Humming Rock Beach, and several other locations around town, for a reunion piece on the two of you. They’ll also want to interview you beforehand. It’ll be great publicity.”
“But,” I said, playing with my pencil, “we haven’t even reunited yet.”
“It’ll be wonderful!” said Veronica, ignoring my comment. “He’s so looking forward to meeting you. He doesn’t want to wait until June.”
My heart started pounding a little, and I thought of my secret plan to convince him to let me move in with him. I needed more time to figure out how to make myself more charming than I was, more like a daughter someone as famous as Johnny Moon would want to keep.
I looked down at the plane ticket, which sat in front of me on the table. I still had to wait until after graduation to use it.
When I was little, maybe three or four, Sandra used to take me to Logan Airport for lunch, to watch the planes take off while we ate.
We sat by the window, and while I took bites of a burger that was too big for my mouth, she would say, “That one could be going to London, or Florida, or California.”
I realized now that it was a weird thing to do, to take your kid to the airport for lunch, then drive home.
At first, I didn’t understand that people went on the airplanes— I thought they were just big metal toys. One day, though, I saw people waiting in a line outside, to board a particularly small plane—one that was too small to board from the terminal. I realized that the planes were full of people, that they were not toys but vessels that brought people from one place to another. This was terrifying to me.
I watched the tiny plane take off, my hamburger uneaten on the paper plate in front of me. Just like the others, the plane got tinier and tinier, until it was invisible.
Sandra noticed the look on my face—pure fear—the expression I’ve seen on children’s faces, or even my friends’ faces, when they finally get around to understanding something new.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
I looked at her. Then I pointed to a line of people waiting to board another plane.
“Those people—is this when they shrink?” I asked Sandra.
That fear I felt back then, when I watched those people shrinking into the sky, was how I felt right now as I listened to Veronica rattle off a bunch of logistics: Where Johnny Moon would be staying—a hotel in Boston, because Hopuonk only had one motel and it was dingy, though she didn’t say that. The name of his agent. The kinds of questions the Vanity Fair reporter would be asking me. She didn’t ask me if I had a biology final on that Wednesday, which I did, not that I cared.
“But we haven’t even met,” I said. I wanted to ask if I could talk to him. I wanted to know when he would start loving me. If he would start loving me.
“This will be great for both of your careers,” Veronica continued. “You’ll be on the cover, and of course, there will be a significant center spread.”