by Alison Grey
Amanda and I exchanged looks. Holy hell.
“So, I took those photos that night, for insurance,” Olivia explained. “In case I ever needed to use them. It was never to hurt you for fun. I don’t enjoy this.”
“Right,” I snapped. “I’m sure you just hate this. Clearly.”
Olivia bit her lip. “I do hate this. I mean, not because of you. But because of Brooke. Those photos would destroy her; you know?”
“I do know,” I said. “And Brooke has never done anything to you. So why?”
“I know you’ll protect her.” Olivia looked at Amanda. “You’ll do anything for each other. Friends first. Right?”
I seethed.
“What. The fuck. Do you. Want?” I asked.
“I need you to get your parents to talk to the dean,” she said slowly. “I lost my scholarship last year due to the stress all of you put me under.”
I laughed. “Sure, Olivia. We’re the bitches here.”
“You are!” Olivia yelled. “You’re nasty, Hollis. A nasty, vile, rich girl who has no idea what it’s like to live in the real world. But I do. So does Amanda. And Brooke. When we mess up, we don’t have anyone to bail us out.”
Amanda stepped back from her and closer toward me.
“You get your parents to cover my tuition,” she explained. “Financial aid didn’t cover all of it, I still owe the school over ten grand. They won’t let me graduate until I pay it. Or they’ll let me graduate maybe, but they won’t release my transcripts. Unlike you, it would take me a long time to get that kind of money. I didn’t spend four years faking my way through the bullshit to lose out on the only reason I came to college in the first place. I need you to take care of this.”
“Or what?” I asked, even though I knew.
“I mail these to Brooke’s parents. First class.” Olivia smirked. “Imagine what the Mennonites would think of their precious girl. I’ll mail them to your parents too. And the dean. I’ll print them in the fucking newspaper if you force my hand. I don’t care. That’s how important it is that you make this happen.”
I was speechless.
As much as I wanted to call her bluff, I knew that would be a dangerous move.
It always is when it comes to people like Olivia Barron.
They never have anything to lose.
Fifty-One
SHERIDAN
For me, senior year was one of the best years of my life.
Heath and I were as inseparable as you could be when you went to colleges almost an hour away from each other. We made it work, and every time I got to be near him I felt so special. Like he’d chosen me.
And there’s nothing better than the feeling of being a special person to someone like Heath who never had many nice things to say about anyone.
I was focused on graduation and getting my senior project done. Brooke and I were getting along really well. We missed living close to Amanda and Hollis, but it had been kind of nice to have some space and meet some new friends in the senior dorms.
Although our foursome would always be the tightest, of course. No matter what.
My parents were flying in for commencement and I’d also invited Heath’s parents to join them. I’d met them over the Christmas holidays and sensed that if things were going in the direction I thought they were going that it was the right move. Heath’s graduation was the day before mine, so it worked out well.
It was going to be a wonderful weekend.
Graduation would be during the day and that night Martha Jefferson was throwing a huge graduation celebration for the class of 2003 at The Brentmore, the beautiful downtown hotel where my parents always stayed when they visited.
The four of us had rented a suite for the occasion and since we were all twenty-one now, we could also enjoy legal drinks to celebrate.
Part of me was sad of course. It was the end of such a huge chapter in my life and I wasn’t sure what happened from here on out.
But I was excited to find out what the future held.
It was the last time I would be optimistic about much of anything for quite a long time.
The day of Heath’s graduation, after he’d accepted his diploma, he immediately got down on one knee in front of his entire class and proposed to me. I’d been genuinely surprised and shocked. I cried as soon as I saw the ring.
It felt like all my dreams were finally coming true.
Fifty-Two
HOLLIS
I can still smell the Christmas tree scent of the cheap gin we’d all been drinking that night.
It was supposed to be the best night of our lives. Or if not the best, the beginning of the best ones. We were college graduates, after all. We’d finally finished something that would ferry us into our assured destinies.
Only a college graduate in 2003 would be so naïve, but it was just another sign of the times. We felt like we had the world at our high-heeled feet.
We did, in a way. I’d been accepted to law school at Emory. Amanda had gotten a job at the Saldado Agency in Atlanta, which was one of the top advertising agencies in the country. We were going to be roommates, but this time in a luxe apartment that overlooked downtown with our own, separate, bedrooms.
And Olivia would be far away from us in Los Angeles where she claimed to have gotten a job as a production assistant for Miramax. Who knew if that was even true, but whatever.
Brooke was going to graduate school at George Mason and Sheridan was engaged to Heath, which to her was an accomplishment, even if it wasn’t to us.
Graduation night was going to represent so much.
The beginning.
And an end.
* * *
Olivia hadn’t contacted me since her extortion attempt, which of course had been successful. I hadn’t even had to call my parents for the money. I’d just wired it from my own bank account to Olivia’s and confirmed she’d received it. I never heard from her, so I assumed it was a yes.
Amanda and I agreed not to tell Brooke or Sheridan about the visit from Olivia or the money. It would only upset Brooke, and anyway, we hoped it was all behind us. We felt a bit icky keeping it from them, since we’d always shared everything, but this was better left buried.
She’d blocked all of us on instant messenger, so wherever she was, we weren’t aware, nor did we care at this point. Graduation night meant more than being done with Martha Jefferson.
It meant being done with Olivia Barron too.
She was the last thing on my mind on graduation day. She’d taken enough from me in the last year, I refused to allow her to impede on this milestone. Besides, I figured she should be enjoying her own triumph. She’d successfully manipulated and plotted her way into a degree from Martha Jefferson. She could now go out into the world and bother someone else.
She wasn’t my problem anymore.
Fifty-Three
AMANDA
For a long time, I assumed I’d dread the day I graduated.
I knew my dad wasn’t going to be there, not that I cared. I preferred his nonexistence in my new life. Still, it reminded me of another absence— the one that mattered.
I had promised my mother that I would graduate from college and that I’d get out of West Virginia. That promise had been the fuel that had kept me going, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do. That promise and her memory sat on my shoulders through every exam, every paper, every painful moment.
And every triumph.
The great injustice of my life would be that she hadn’t lived to see me make our dreams come true.
But that morning I didn’t wake up sad. There were no regrets.
I woke up early, with a profound and true joy in my heart. I grinned as I saw my cap and gown hanging on the chair across the room, ready for me to finally put on.
My best friend, Hollis Cobb, snored in the bed across from my own and I took in the sight with amusement. This would probably be the last time I ever shared a room with her. Yes, we’d share an apartment starting
in two weeks, but we’d never be this close again. I’d spent four years listening to the sound of her sleeping. I’d yelled at her a thousand times to stop hitting snooze on her alarm, to get her ass up. I’d watched her shoulders shake as she cried herself to sleep first semester from being so homesick. I’d witnessed panic attacks, hysterical laughter, and drunken missteps.
I knew where she kept her hair ties. Her Dave Matthews CDs. Her birth control. For four years I’d woken up to that same stupid Dukes of Hazzard poster on her wall. Four years of “Amanda, are you up? I need to vent.” She always needed to talk at 2 am.
I always let her though. Even when I was tired.
She did the same for me.
Four years of cycles syncing up so that we had PMS at the same time. Four years of arguments. Apologies.
Mistakes.
You see, when you live with someone, you can’t hide who you are. Not for long anyway. You learn that forgiveness is a must. Grace is your default. Because it’s hard to stay mad at someone who sleeps six feet away from you. It’s impossible to ignore a life and a universe evolving within your own.
I watched her for a few minutes. I knew I was living on the inside of a memory in real time. When I became a very old lady, looking back on the highlight reel of my life, Hollis would be in it. This brief instant of a sleeping girl who I loved so much would be something I’d think of.
And I’d remember her this way. No matter who she became.
And I’d always love her.
Fifty-Four
SHERIDAN
My parents took all four of us out to breakfast at The Brentmore the morning of graduation.
“Where’s Olivia?” Mama asked. I’d forgotten she didn’t know about the drama of the last two years. She assumed we were all still friends.
None of us looked at each other, but no one said anything either.
“She wasn’t feeling well,” Hollis said after a long, awkward pause. “Nerves, I guess.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” Mama had forgotten about Olivia’s absence almost the instant Hollis answered. Her disinterest and boredom in anything that didn’t revolve around her was convenient sometimes.
“Congratulations, ladies.” My father grinned at us. “You made it.”
We nodded. It would be the first of a thousand times we’d hear that.
You made it. What did that mean? I guessed for each of us, you’d get a different answer. The obvious one being that we’d done what it took to get the degree. We’d finished something. We now had something to show for ourselves, though I didn’t feel especially qualified in any measurable way to do anything.
The sound of our heels click-clacked across the mosaic tile of The Brentmore lobby. Other Martha Jefferson girls were sprinkled around us with their own families and their own circles of friends.
I couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been so altered had I been placed with different girls as roommates. Would I have met Heath? Would I be happier?
Would I be different?
Brooke elbowed me out of my introspection.
“Are you okay?” she whispered to me as we followed my parents to our reserved table, the one my father always insisted on when he visited me. It was a table in the back corner by a large window that overlooked the train tracks and away from the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. My father hated the sound of manual labor, especially while he was eating.
“Fine.” I gave her a thin smile. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything else.
I could feel my mother’s eyes on me as I perused the menu.
“Remember, you have your fitting in two weeks,” she clucked. “Go easy on the carbs.”
I could feel my cheeks turning hot. But I didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t worth the fight it would cause or the forced apology I would have to make in front of my friends.
Brooke spoke up. “Actually, want to split the French toast with me? I’ve heard it’s fantastic.”
I smiled and nodded. “Sure. And you can have some of my omelet.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “Make sure they only use egg whites, darling. Especially…”
“Mrs. Legare!” Hollis interjected. She was sitting across from her and my mother jumped a bit at the sudden intrusion. “Sheridan tells me you’re going to New York next week! Where are you staying?”
“Oh! Yes, of course. We’re staying at our usual place, the Plaza…”
Mama talked for at least ten minutes about her trip and I gave Hollis a grateful kick under the table. She smiled, her eyes still on my mother, faking interest in Mama’s sermon on Bloomingdales versus Barneys.
She didn’t notice when the French toast came.
Or that I ate every bite of it.
Fifty-Five
BROOKE
After breakfast, I had to pee. I’d drank too much orange juice, wishing they’d been mimosas. When I was around Sheridan’s family I always wanted to drink. They were a lot to deal with.
My own parents were at the Econo Lodge and they told me they’d see me at the ceremony later. I couldn’t help but wish they were more interested in meeting my friends and getting to know them. It was strange to feel like you were split between two worlds. My family never asked me questions about anything other than my grades and if I’d been studying for the GRE.
They weren’t exciting people. My parents had both grown up in Mennonite families not far from where they’d raised me in Northern Virginia. They’d met in college and decided not to raise me or my two brothers in the religion, though we’d still been raised in church. I’d visited their families a handful of times when I was a kid and each time had been grateful for my parents’ small act of rebellion.
Still, their upbringing had stuck with them and they were not people impressed with the things most of the world was impressed by. They’d raised me to focus on hard work and clean living. I’d never been allowed to watch television or to go to the mall. I didn’t wear handmade clothes or anything, but my mother would never have allowed me to wear anything name brand. She thought it was wasteful.
Looking back, I can see how this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it always made me feel so uninteresting next to the large personalities of the other girls. I resented my parents for not letting me have a little freedom to forge my own identity, but I don’t anymore. They were good parents and I was loved and cared for.
I thought of them as I entered the bathroom in the lobby of The Brentmore, my bladder close to bursting. They’d probably never eaten at a restaurant as fancy as the one I’d had breakfast in just now. As a matter of fact, I had no memory of us ever eating in a restaurant at all. Even on road trips, we never stopped at a fast food place. My mother packed brown bag lunches and snacks and we never stayed in hotels. We always drove straight through, even when the destination was hours and hours away.
I wondered what life would be like back at home. To save money I was moving back in with them while I went to graduate school at George Mason. It had seemed like the thing that made the most sense at the time.
Now I realized how difficult it was going to be for me.
I wasn’t the same girl they’d raised, after all. My four years at Martha Jefferson had changed me.
And there was no going back from that.
Fifty-Six
HOLLIS
I can’t help but be amused that sometimes the worst days of our lives have the best kind of weather.
Graduation Day was one for the books. The Staunton Chamber of Commerce would have bottled it if they could. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky, and it had been warm, but not too warm, and just breezy enough to be refreshing, but not to play havoc with anybody’s hair. I’d been worried about sweating under our graduation gowns and the hose my mother had insisted I wear under my cobalt sundress.
“But I’m wearing opened toed shoes,” I’d whined as she looked me up and down in our apartment after breakfast. Amanda was in the bathroom trying to pin her mortarb
oard to her head. Even with what seemed like a thousand bobby pins, it kept sliding off.
“You are certainly not wearing open toed shoes!” my mother gasped. Her overreactions were legendary, but this was ridiculous.
“I certainly am,” I snapped back, and I slipped the Steve Madden heeled sandals on right then and there just to spite her. “Hose would look ridiculous. And I just got a pedicure to match my dress.”
My mother looked at my father expectantly as if he was going to be able to convince me to wear different shoes. But he wasn’t paying attention to us. He was looking out the window, doing his best to pretend he wasn’t really there.
“I didn’t pay over one-hundred-thousand dollars in tuition for you to graduate in beach attire!” she screamed. “You will wear closed toed shoes and nude hose. And that’s final.”
“Are you going to force them on me?” I goaded. It was a ridiculous battle to fight. “Have Daddy hold me down? Really?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Amanda cracked open the door to see what was going on and then swiftly closed it again.
Smart girl.
“I’d love to see that!” I laughed as I walked over to the full-length mirror that leaned against the wall next to Amanda’s unmade bed. I smoothed down the front of my dress and smirked at my mother’s reflection in the mirror. She was frowning behind me.
“If you don’t obey me,” she stepped closer, “You won’t be going to Europe with your cousins in June. I won’t pay a dime.”