by Alison Grey
Back then we all used disposable cameras to document important moments, but even then it was rare. It wasn’t like today where people can’t go thirty minutes without taking a photo of their avocado toast and posting it for the world to see.
Olivia was the first person I knew who always carried a camera. Always. It was an Olympus point-and-shoot her father bought her when she was nine years old.
“My most valued possession!” she’d squeal as she sat cross legged on the shaggy burgundy rug in the middle of our room. We’d pushed our beds against the wall of the space so we were end to end. There had been just enough room to do it and it opened up the rest of the room so there was more space to lounge around, get dressed, or work at our desks.
“It looks like something a journalist would use,” I said. My bed was in the middle. When all three of us were in the room that’s where I usually was. Olivia liked the floor and Hollis liked sitting in the circular papasan chair near the window and box fan that was always whirling.
“It actually is!” Olivia would say. She always spoke as if every sentence was exciting and a revelation. “Its why my dad got it for me. I used to want to be a photographer for National Geographic.”
“Used to?” Hollis asked. She’d folded her long legs so her knees were against her chest and she’d pulled her oversized t-shirt over them.
“It’s very competitive,” Olivia replied, solemnly. “Besides, I think I want to get into film. I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
That was a common refrain among the girls of Martha Jefferson, especially the privileged ones. Their futures were large, open, blank spaces where there were no real limits to what they could do. They sounded almost exasperated about it.
I envied that.
I, on the other hand, had definite limits. It’s why I was majoring in computer science and only minoring in theater. I couldn’t afford to pursue my passions fully. I needed a degree that would help me pay the bills.
Olivia, from what we’d learned, was more like Hollis and Sheridan. She came from a wealthy family who lived on the outskirts of DC. She had one younger brother and an older half-sister from her father’s first marriage who lived in Los Angeles and worked behind the scenes on the show Friends.
Olivia had gone to high school with Chelsea Clinton. She’d spent her first semester at the University of Virginia, but it hadn’t worked out for whatever reason. She didn’t get into the specifics.
“It just wasn’t the right fit for me,” she said, waving her hand at something imaginary. “I went for my dad because he was so proud I got in, but when he saw how unhappy I was there we agreed I should transfer.”
Her favorite band was Oasis, her favorite actress was a tie between Cameron Diaz and Chloe Sevigny, who none of us had heard of at the time. She’d lost her virginity in 9th grade, earlier than any of us had. Hollis had been very impressed with this.
Olivia’s Napster was full of songs from every indie band you can think of. She loved discovering artists before they were famous, took great pride in it even.
“Listen to this one!” she’d squeal as she jammed a pair of headphones on my head, flooding my ears with the sound of bands like The All-American Rejects, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The White Stripes. She had a preternatural ability to know what would be cool before it was cool.
Someone like Olivia would have ordinarily driven Hollis crazy because she wasn’t used to being the friend who wasn’t the most interesting, but somehow Olivia avoided her jealous wrath.
Maybe it was because Olivia was just so damn nice.
“Hollis, you’re so frickin’ beautiful, it isn’t even fair,” Olivia said the night of our spring formal. “You look like a Delia’s catalog model!”
“Thanks, Liv.” Hollis grinned at herself in the mirror. “I can’t hate you for saying that.”
When I was frustrated with an assignment, she’d be right next to me reminding me how smart I was. We’d talk about our favorite books. Olivia was the only one of us besides me who read for pleasure. She loved to read almost as much as she loved to take pictures.
Every other week I’d find a thick paperback on my desk with a sticky note in her loopy, fat handwriting: Saw this at Books-A-Million and thought of you!!!! It’s SO GOOD.
She was just as tight with Brooke and Sheridan. They had similar schedules so they had lunch together almost every day. She’d talk about horses with Sheridan and Britney Spears with Brooke.
Olivia was the first person to assure you of your power and your greatness. She always knew exactly what you needed to hear when you needed to hear it.
It’s why it was so easy to let her all the way in, even for someone like me who usually took a while to let my walls down. In many ways I became closer to Olivia than I’d even allowed myself to be with Sheridan and Brooke. It just seemed safer.
How truly wrong I’d been to believe that.
PART THREE: BEFORE THE REUNION
Fifteen
HOLLIS
I’ve lived in Atlanta my entire life. The only time I didn’t were my four years at Martha Jefferson.
I still hate that Atlanta traffic and I’ll never get used to sitting in it. As a petulant tween, I once suggested to my mother that we should just take a helicopter everywhere in town rather than just for special occasions. She laughed and said she’d suggest it to Daddy, but it never materialized.
So, there I was on that Friday afternoon, sans helicopter, after a very long work day and an even longer week, stuck in the morass of another Atlanta commute.
And when you’re stuck in one place for too long you start to think about the stuff you don’t want to think about. At least, I do.
I was thirty-six years old the day I received my invite and couldn’t help but notice that reunion weekend fell on my birthday. I’d get to celebrate my thirty-seventh spin around the sun with the girls on the hill.
That’s what the newspapers had dubbed us after graduation night. The headlines were abundant, as you can imagine:
THE GIRLS ON THE HILL: HOW MUCH DID THEY KNOW?
GIRL ON THE HILL, SHERIDAN LEGARE, MARRIES TWO MONTHS AFTER OLIVIA BARRON’S MYSTERIOUS DEATH
GIRL ON THE HILL, BROOKE PAULSON TESTIFIES: “OLIVIA JUMPED”
AMANDA HEFFLEBOWER: WHO IS THIS GIRL ON THE HILL?
DEBUTANTE HOLLIS COBB, ONE OF THE GIRLS ON THE HILL, PASSES THE GEORGIA BAR
Ten years later there had been anniversary headlines:
THE GIRLS ON THE HILL: TEN YEARS LATER
THE GIRLS ON THE HILL: THEIR LIVES NOW
MOVIE STAR AMANDA AMBROSE AND GIRL ON THE HILL, SIGNS DEAL WITH SONY
HOLLIS COBB, GIRL ON THE HILL AND GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT TO HER FAMILY, GETS DUI IN ROSWELL.
Okay, that last one is a lie.
They didn’t include the part about being the family disappointment. Mostly because, I imagine, that wasn’t news to anyone.
* * *
I never really got it. Sure, Martha Jefferson College was on a hill, one that overlooked downtown Staunton, Virginia. But why had it stuck? We were also the fighting Badgers and, according to any smug Sweet Briar girl, the “whores on the hill.”
I preferred that nickname in all honesty.
I guessed it was the GIRL part. Anything with girl on it seems to sell. And that’s what the papers and magazines were interested in. Not us. Not Olivia.
Anyway, were we girls? When did one stop being a girl and start being a woman? Even Britney Spears had asked that and yet here we still were without any answers.
The car in front of me was finally moving. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel of my Range Rover, eager to get home. I’d gotten my license back six months ago and I’d been careful never to get behind the wheel even after a Tylenol much less a glass of wine.
So I did my drinking at home, alone, after work. Like the sensible alcoholic I was.
“Fuck my life, this traffic!” I yelled to myself.
My iPhone buzzed on the soft black leather
of the passenger seat.
It was Brooke.
“Hey,” I said. “Did you talk to Sheridan?”
“I did,” she replied. Brooke sounded like she was talking to me from the bottom of a barrel. “She’s coming!”
“Where are you?” I asked. Someone laid on their horn behind me and I tossed a middle finger their way as they swerved around me. Impatient assholes. Southern hospitality is a myth these days. Everyone’s in a bad mood, even in the south.
“Sorry I was getting clothes out of the dryer.” The barrel sound was gone.
“I feel like you do laundry a lot more than the average person, Brooke.” I opened the middle console hoping there was a pack of cigarettes inside it. There wasn’t. Shit. “Every time I talk to you you’re inside a damn Maytag.”
“It’s a Kenmore actually,” Brooke laughed. “What can I say, my life is the worst. The laundry never ends and no one seems to care but me. Never have kids, Hollis.”
I laughed. “Wow, Brooke. So dark. So bitter. This isn’t like you, but I kind of dig it.”
“No, I’m kidding.” I could hear her shutting the dryer door. “I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my life.”
“Keep saying it and maybe you’ll believe it.”
Poor Brooke. She was living my suburban nightmare. Though if I was living her life my parents would be a lot nicer to me. Having a successful attorney daughter meant nothing if she wasn’t going to give them grandkids. They would have traded me for Basic Brooke any day.
“Just a bad day,” Brooke sighed. “Did you find out anything else about the hotel?”
“I did. Amanda had her people on it. You’ll never believe who bought it.”
“Who? I thought it was just some no-name corporation.”
“The plot thickens,” I said. “Wendi Fucking Rochester-Hodge bought it. Well, she’s Wendi Hughes now. Her husband bought it through their real estate investment firm or whatever. Sick bitch.”
Brooke was silent on the other end of the phone.
“Are you being serious?” she finally said.
“I am.” I flicked my blinker on as I finally got off on my exit after almost an hour in traffic. “I thought it was weird too.”
“Yeah.” I knew Brooke well enough to feel her change in mood, even through the phone. “I need to go. Call me next week?”
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned. This was very unlike her. I hadn’t thought this news would spook her. If anything, I thought it would be a relief.
But she didn’t answer.
She’d already hung up.
Sixteen
BROOKE
Wendi Rochester-Hodge?
I hadn’t thought of her in a while. I’d hoped I’d never have to think about her. Ever. She’d been one of the only girls at Martha Jefferson I had truly hoped never to see again.
I had my reasons.
Now I deeply regretted making an agreement with Hollis to go to the reunion. I’d have to somehow get out of it. But could I really do that? Hollis would be so disappointed. Sheridan too. Amanda, not so much. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, only heard about her through Hollis. There hadn’t been a falling out so much as a growing apart. It happened.
I suspected she was envious that I was Hollis’s closer friend now. I mean, Hollis told me everything. I was there for her when Amanda wasn’t. And Hollis had needed that kind of friend this year and last. I’d been really glad I could be there for her.
We mostly communicated through texts now, but there weren’t many days that passed when we didn’t speak. I felt like that said a lot about me.
I could be counted on.
I was a good friend.
* * *
My husband Will would be described as a good guy. It’s why I married him. Will was who everyone was talking about when they described a man as “marriage material.”
He wasn’t short, but he wasn’t really tall either. Taller than me though, which was all that mattered. He had green eyes and an affable smile. As he aged his expressions had become more cartoonish as the eye wrinkles set in. He had a beaky nose and a cleft in his chin. He was a mix of handsome and unconventional and I’d chosen him because he seemed like the type of guy who no one else had even considered.
I’d never been a girl who liked competitions. I didn’t even enjoy board games, much less romantic games; the kind that women often played against each other.
Will was the real life equivalent of a Hugh Grant character in just about any movie he was in from the ‘90s. Charming, but not really sexy until Julia Roberts wanted him. Then you suddenly got his appeal, you just had to see the approval of another woman to understand it.
Will was not the kind of guy you had to worry about another woman taking, which was the most important part of all.
We’d met in grad school, but we didn’t have a sweet origin story. I’d let him copy my notes one day and after class he’d asked me to lunch. And I honestly don’t remember much else, we just… were.
We instantly became Will and Brooke.
I’d never had that before. Will was my first and last boyfriend. When you’re young that sounds so romantic, but when you’re thirty-seven you realize it’s maybe not how you’d live your life if you could go back.
I’d never tell anyone that, of course. It doesn’t matter anyway, what’s done is done and we’re very content.
Just look at our Facebook page. Yes, we’re one of those annoying couples with a joint one. WillAndBrooke Rivers. We tried to merge our names, Brangelina-style, but neither Wooke nor Brill struck the right chord. Our profile picture has been the same one for a decade. It’s from our wedding day; we’re leaning over our wedding cake, sharing a knife as we cut into the fondant. We’re just posing though; we weren’t really cutting cake slices for everyone. We let the catering staff handle that so we could focus on our guests.
But it’s a cute picture. We look truly happy.
A year almost to the day later I had Evan and eighteen months after that I had Christian. Their early days are just a blur of feedings, anxiety, and pockets of sleep. I had planned on going back to work once Christian turned one, but I just never did. I never expected I would become a stay-at-home mom. What’s that saying? You make plans and God laughs.
Our pastor likes to say that one a lot.
I know I should feel fortunate that I get to stay home with my littles. So many mothers would love that privilege, so I try not to complain too much, even to my friends. I don’t want to seem like a whiner, nobody likes those.
So, I keep my social media focused on the beauty of motherhood. I don’t talk about the first six months of Evan’s life where I slept less than four hours a night and that the sleep deprivation got so bad I started hearing voices. Even when Evan started sleeping eight hours a night I’d stay up, terrified. I’d have panic attacks about home invasions. I read obsessively about child trafficking and SIDs as my baby slept soundly in a pack-n-play next to the bed I shared with my husband. I guess it shouldn’t have come as a shock that our sex life became a just-on-special-occasions sort of thing.
If Will noticed I was struggling, he never said anything. And I didn’t want to bother him, you know? He was working every day so I could have this amazing life as a mom. Also, what if it scared him? I’d always sensed Will was drawn to me for the same reasons I’d been drawn to him— I was safe.
If I told him about the voices or my panic attacks, it would shatter the prism he saw me through. And then what?
After I had Christian it was a little easier. But when Christian was six months old, I found out Will was keeping secrets from me too.
It was nothing super crazy, just your typical porn addiction. I feel like it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s part of the reason we have the joint Facebook. Our pastor suggested it. It keeps us accountable to one another. I mean, I won’t lie, at first it was hard! Here I was at home with two little babies under two years old and I find out my husband is spending a lot of time i
n his office not working but instead watching barely legal girls scissoring each other. Girls with belly button rings and tattoos in cursive coiling up their rib cages and across their concave, perfect bellies. Meanwhile, I had nary a tattoo, body piercing, and my perfect belly disappeared forever during my first trimester carrying Evan.
I mean, the porn wasn’t something I handled well, I admit it.
But with God, all things are possible, and we’re okay now.
Really. We are.
I mean, just look at our Facebook. It tells you the whole story.
* * *
I never thought about my past with Will if I could help it, but after hearing about Wendi buying The Brentmore it was impossible not to.
Our marriage was propped up by my guilt over a past no one knew about, after all.
Not even Will.
I’d hung up on Hollis, something I’d never done before.
But I didn’t know if I could pretend with her.
I’d held it together a long time, but there were still had days where I had my moments. I could usually push the past back where it needed to be, but after hearing about the new owners of The Brentmore, it was too hard.
There had been a time in my life before Will, after all. And Wendi had been a part of that. Even more than anyone knew.
Even Hollis, Sheridan, and Amanda didn’t know everything about me. They couldn’t. Just like Will wasn’t allowed to know everything either. My relationships depended on no one ever finding out about what really happened the night Olivia Barron died.
It wasn’t even about protecting my own interests, it really wasn’t.