“I never meant for Robbie to get in trouble,” she said to Kelley. She tried to say more before her voice began to crack. She managed to get out, “I just . . . wanted them to leave.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Can we talk about this after school?” she asked. She knew she couldn’t erase Robbie’s record, but maybe she could think of something to say by then.
“I just . . .” Kelley sighed. “I think it would be best . . . if we went our separate ways? And that those paths never again . . . connected.”
Tamra leaned into the table. “He said what?”
“That was the line he used, I swear to God,” Alix said.
Jodi was sincere when she asked, “Was he a little bit off?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Sounds like you’re better off.”
Alix took a long pull of her wine and threw another slice of pizza on her plate. Tamra said, “Ooh, Alix, I’d have to kill that boy.”
“I didn’t think you could beat me,” Jodi told her, “but you absolutely did.”
Alix sat in front of Jodi, Rachel, and Tamra, trying not to be at 100 Bordeaux Lane, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 18102. She could still hear Robbie and his friends outside her back window, hooting and running away from police. Alex’s sister had cried on the floor (“At least you get to graduate. I have to stay here and live with everyone knowing!”) while Alex watched Robbie get handcuffed in her backyard. Claudette stared out the window next to her, whispering, “Devils,” to herself and to them.
The last time she’d seen Kelley Copeland was at a Sunoco gas station the day before graduation. When he got out of his car, Alex theatrically removed the nozzle and sealed up the gas door, even though her tank wasn’t even half full. “Alex, come on,” he said. Alex saw that he was wearing Fila flip-flops and white tube socks, exactly like Robbie wore after his games. “I broke up with you,” he said. “But that’s it. And I’m sorry, but . . . you know? That’s all I did.”
By this point, Kelley was a key member of Robbie Cormier’s clique, and Alex had been officially exiled from all high school activities. While Kelley sat at an elite lunch table and began dating a light-skinned black girl with braids, Alex ate her lunch alone in an empty art room, and she left last period five minutes early so she could get to her car without being harassed. Alex had been dreaming of a moment like this, where Kelley paid attention to her once again and they could try to talk it out. But she read his shitty concession as a move of self-fulfilling pity, and she couldn’t keep her cool.
“That’s all you did to me? No one forced you to go and share a private fucking letter! This was just as much your fault as it was mine, but I’m the one getting punished for it. I had to protect my sister and Claudette. What was I supposed to do?”
Kelley seemed genuinely confused as he said, “You had to protect your sister from Robbie?” Alex got into her car and drove off. She’d wasted six dollars of prepaid gas, which despite everything that had happened with her family still seemed like a large amount of money.
“I was supposed to go to Penn State,” Alix said. “But I’d gotten into NYU and I begged my parents to let me attend. I took out loans to go, which”—Alix held up a finger—“my parents refused to pay for with their millions of dollars because they said it was stupid to pay that much for college when I could go in-state. But I was like, ‘Nope, I’m going.’ And I just waitressed all summer and moved.” When Alix thought of her eighteen-year-old self, and feeling as though she were signing her life away by taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, she wished she could go back in time. She’d tell herself that it would be okay, that she’d meet the best guy at a bar at the age of twenty-five, that he’d have a huge heart and a surprisingly large penis, and that before they got married Peter would pay off all her loans as if they were his, and as if it were nothing. He wouldn’t judge her for the lack of grief she felt when her parents passed away, two months apart. He’d understand that for her, it felt more like relief.
“Well, technically,” Rachel said, “we would have never met you if you hadn’t become a Pennsylvania pariah.”
Alix exhaled and whistled as if she’d barely caught her flight after running to the gate. “Pennsylvania is fine. But I will never go back to Allentown again.”
From inside the partially cracked sliding glass door, Alix heard the familiar raspy voice of her only child saying, “Mama?”
Jodi sang, “Uh-ohh.”
Alix stood. “Someone could tell I was having too much fun,” she said.
Nine
On Friday morning, October 30, Spoons Chamberlain passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, who had no idea. Alix discovered the floating body at 11:34 a.m. and softly whispered, “Shit.” Briar was finishing a lunch of chicken and pears, and Catherine bounced in a Jumperoo in the corner. Alix placed a plant in front of the bowl and reached for her phone.
Briar’s fish just died, she texted. Can I ask Emira to pick up another one?
JODI: Yes.
TAMRA: Yes.
RACHEL: One time Arnetta picked up a Plan B for me.
“You all done?” Alix asked Briar, who nodded with her mouth still full, and Alix set her on the floor.
“Mama?” Briar ambled over to Catherine. She swiped her sister’s blond hair across her forehead, and Catherine beamed. “How does feathers get wet?”
“Umm, in the rain?” Alix said. “Or when birds take a bath? Let’s be gentle with baby sis.”
“But how—because . . . the feathers is . . . how the feathers get wet and fly away?”
“Bri, look.” Alix picked up a pink ball from a bin of toys and tossed it down the hall. Briar gasped, overjoyed, and dutifully pumped her arms as she went running after it.
So it’s not weird if I call her and ask her to grab it on her way over?
JODI: You are so funny, Alix. Not at all. She’s on the clock.
TAMRA: Exactly. One time I had Shelby pretend to be me so I wouldn’t have to talk to a salesman.
Alix texted: Was she mad about it?
Not at all, Tamra replied. She was very excited to do a British accent.
One time, Rachel texted, I had Arnetta tell this creep that I died.
Emira answered on the first ring. When Alix whispered that Briar’s fish had died, Emira laughed and said, “Spoons?”
“I’m so sorry to ask, but can you pick one up before you come here today? I can text you a picture of it in case you forgot.”
After a moment, Emira said, “A picture of a dead fish?”