They Wish They Were Us

by Jessica Goodman

  When it became clear that I would have to share Shaila as a best friend, I tried to stomp out my jealousy. I was determined to navigate their newly shared tastes (“Bravo, not Netflix”) and catch up after they drank for the first time at the cast party (“beer before liquor, never been sicker!”). It worked, mostly, and by eighth grade, we were fused together.

  But throughout Shaila’s last year, Nikki and I silently battled for Shaila’s attention, orbiting around each other. It was stupid though, because Shaila didn’t play favorites. She was loyal to us both. When she died, Nikki and I went from frenemies to inseparable. Our link to one another had been severed, so we forged a new one. It was like all that tension evaporated and we were left with just each other and the hungry need for intimacy. Ever since then, Nikki became my Shaila. And I became hers.

  “Red bean’s my favorite,” she says now, unwrapping a bar and popping it into her mouth. I reach for the box and tear into a bright pink one. It’s sweet and sticky in my palm.

  “Nuh-uh,” I say. “Strawberry forever.”

  “Only when it’s paired with matcha.”

  “Pfft. Snob.”

  “It’s called having taste!”

  “What about dark chocolate?”

  Nikki chews, mulling over the suggestion. “Simple. Classic. I’m down.”

  “It’s iconic.”

  “Just like us.” Nikki flashes her megawatt smile then swipes a lavender-colored wrapper. “Life’s too short to have just one.”

  “Too real.”

  Behind me, the buzzing hum of the cafeteria becomes a roar. I turn to see the boys amble toward us. Freshmen and sophomores scatter, making a path for them. Robert’s a few steps ahead of the others, barreling through the room. Henry’s not too far behind. His backpack is slung over one shoulder and his thick sandy hair flops neatly to one side. His tie hangs loose around his neck and he fist-bumps Topher Gardner, a stocky, acne-prone junior Player thirsty for his attention. Quentin brings up the rear, winking at some cute sophomore on the baseball team as he strides by. The kid turns the color of a tomato. Robert crashes into his seat first and rips the cap off a soda, chugging half the bottle at once.

  “Hey, babe,” Henry says, sliding into the seat next to me. He presses his lips to the little triangle where my neck meets my collar bone. It sends a shock through my limbs and I hear a gasp from the table behind us. A group of wide-eyed freshman girls with their skirts hanging a bit too long have grabbed front row seats. If they think they’ll lay claim to that table for the entire year, they’re wrong. That one’s reserved for us, too. We’ll give it to the freshman Players like a present. They’ll see.

  But for now, the girls break into giggles, whispering behind cupped fingers, their eyes darting in our direction.

  Marla collapses into her seat and, like that, we’re all together again. It’s roomy since the tables are made for eight. Shaila and Graham made us fit. But we’ve learned to spread out and take up more space than we should. It helps. And now since all of us Players are here, the game is on.

  The air between us is frenetic with fractions of conversations meant to propel us toward the weekend, always the weekend.

  “I heard Anne Marie Cummings will give you a hand job if you say you like her shitty band.”

  “Reid Baxter promised he would bring a handle tonight. Don’t let him in if his connect pulls out.”

  “Well, if you didn’t want to get Sharpie all over you, don’t get so wasted next time!”

  Little clips of conversation float over our heads and disperse throughout the room, carrier pigeons, sharing the most important news with the rest of the school. Some days, we lean in so close, I imagine our heads look like they’re going to touch from overhead. But other times, we curl inside ourselves, forming partnerships and alliances. Who is on my side? Friend or foe?

  “Ahem!” Nikki smacks a knife against her can of seltzer.

  Robert groans but smiles in her direction. If it’s a good week, they usually spend lunch mouthing filthy phrases to each other over their trays. If it’s a bad week, she pretends he doesn’t exist.

  “Turd.” Nikki sticks her tongue out and presses her arms to her sides, making her chest perk up so her boobs sit right under her chin. Robert leans back and raises his eyebrows, impressed. Already, this week seems to be excellent.

  “Fine, Miss Wu,” Quentin says. “Spill.”

  Nikki leans in and lowers her voice so we have to crane to hear, although none of what she says will be new information. She will throw tonight’s party. (No shit.) Her parents are gone, jetting off to Paris for the weekend. (Sounds about right.) There will be a keg. (Of course.)

  Henry turns to me and his hand finds my thigh under the table. His thumb rubs my bare skin in small circles. “I’ll pick you up at eight thirty,” he says.

  I fit my mouth into a smile and try to ignore the heat between my legs. His skin glows like summer, and I swear I can still make out the tan line his sunglasses left on the bridge of his nose the day he asked me to make it official. It was one of the hottest afternoons in June, sweltering on land but cool on his parents’ boat in the middle of the Sound. The group text was dormant. Everyone else was on vacation before their elite summer programs began. I still hadn’t started my counselor stint at the local planetarium. We were the only ones around.

  You like stars, right? Henry texted off-thread.

  Everyone knew I was obsessed with astronomy. Well, astronomy and astrophysics to be exact. It had been my thing for so long. I became fixated with everything up above when I was five and Dad started taking me out to Ocean Cliff after every rainstorm, when the sky was the clearest, to point out constellations, galaxies, planets, and stars. It was the highest point in Gold Coast, an enormous stone formation that extended out over the water. “This is how to make sense of the chaos,” Dad would say as we sat on the rocks. He said he had always wanted to be an astronaut, but instead became an accountant for some reason I could never really understand. When we got home that first night, he stuck a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling in spiral configurations.

  Being able to spot things up there, little miracles that have been around forever and ever, puts me at ease. It makes the nightmares go away, the darkness easier to deal with. Well, sometimes.

  Duh, I responded to Henry.

  Sunset ride on the boat?

  I waited a beat before typing back. Henry doubled down.

  I have a telescope we can bring.

  Henry had been chasing me like this since school let out, dropping by the house, offering to give me rides to parties, sending me bizarre news clips that he thought would make me laugh. I was sick of saying no, sick of waiting on someone else. So I said screw it and agreed.

  I’m there. But I’ve got the hookup. No scope needed.

  The travel-size Celestron Dad got me for Hanukkah last year sat tall on my nightstand.

  A few hours later, we were halfway to the Connecticut shoreline, aboard his small runabout, Olly Golucky, named for Henry’s twelve-year-old golden retriever. The sun had gone down and the heat was finally starting to let up. A breeze puckered, and the first little stars began to break through the clouds. I breathed in the salty air and lay down on the damp deck. Waves crashed around us as Henry delighted me with surprisingly funny stories about his first week as a summer intern at CNN. His face grew flushed when talking about seeing his idols in the halls. It was totally adorable. Then he grabbed a bottle of rosé and a tin of Russian caviar he found in the little hideaway fridge. He presented them to me with the question, his eyes wide and hopeful. “So, do you want to do this? Us?”

  The answer was obvious. He was the captain of the lacrosse team and anchor on the school news channel. More eloquent than most of our teachers. Sweet when he was drunk, that awful time when most of the other guys became monsters. It didn’t hurt that he was also beautifu
l in a totally obvious Nantucket J. Crew model kind of way. Thick blond hair. Green eyes. Nearly perfect skin. He was bound for greatness. He was a Player. Being with him would make everything so easy.

  Plus, the person I really wanted to be with, the guy who had inadvertently led me to this exact place, was hundreds of miles away. It was a no-brainer. Henry was here and willing. Adam Miller was not.

  “Of course,” I said. Henry dropped the tin and wrapped his sticky hands around my waist. Fish eggs clung to my bare back. He never could have known that while his tongue was in my mouth I was willing Adam to see me, to know what he had let go.

  The bell rings and Robert kicks Henry under the table. “C’mon, man. We’ve got Spanish.”

  “English,” I say, turning to Nikki. She throws her head back in despair but links her arm in mine and pulls me out the double doors and into the quad. The sun shifts as we walk, and if I squint, I can see past the staff parking lot behind the theater, and all the way to the oyster stalls pulling down their canvas curtains and packing up crates, closing up shop for the day.

  Nikki and I make it across campus just as the bell rings and slump into our side-by-side desks. I pull out my copy of The Great Gatsby, a classic, Mr. Beaumont promised in his summer reading assignment.

  “Hi, girls,” Mr. Beaumont says as he walks by our desks. “Good summer?”

  Nikki cocks her head and looks up mischievously. “Great summer.”

  “Excellent.” Mr. Beaumont smiles and pushes his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. He looks more bronzed than last year, like he spent the entire summer swimming in the Hamptons, like he’s a grown-up version of one of us, which, I guess in some ways, he is.

  He came to Gold Coast three years ago, starting just after Thanksgiving when Mrs. Mullen left on maternity leave. He had Nikki, Shaila, and me for freshman English, right when we learned about the Players. On the first day of class, he won us over with a dare.

  “Don’t screw with me and I won’t screw with you.” He said it with a smile. A joke. He said screw so he must be cool. He must get it. My phone buzzed with a text from Shaila right in the middle of class. OBSESSED, she wrote with a few red hearts. I looked up and caught her eye.

  “Dreams,” I mouthed.

  After he arrived, it only took a few days before we all found out he grew up in Gold Coast. Graduated ten years ago now. He’s goofy as hell on his yearbook page, with a wild mop of dark hair and a dirt-stained lacrosse jersey. Henry thinks he used to be a Player. There were even rumors that he started the whole thing. I never quite believed them, though.

  Headmaster Weingarten was so pleased with his work that year that he hired Beaumont full-time and gave him the AP English Lit class, reserved only for seniors. Now he calls our class his “firstborn.”

  As he launches into a monologue about East Egg and West Egg, I scribble furiously trying to take down everything he says. “I don’t know why you do that,” Nikki whispers, pointing at my notebook with a ballpoint pen. “It’s not like you need notes.”

  She’s right, obviously. There’s a fat stash of Gatsby info in the Player Files, alongside hundreds of insanely thorough study guides for Gold Coast midterms and finals. There’s also a slew of past SATs, copies of AP exams, and off-the-record college essay advice from the deans of admissions at Harvard and Princeton. I saw those little manuals last spring sandwiched between a bunch of college-level organic chemistry finals, sent back from a Player whose name I didn’t even recognize.

  They never change the questions! he had written. Get that fucking A!

  The Files are our entry into the elite within the elite. A way for us to excel, even if we could have on our own. They are passed down as a reward for our loyalty, a way for us to enjoy everything that comes with being a Player. The parties. The fun. The privilege. They alleviate some of the stress, the pressure. The Files make everything easy. Golden. Never mind the crushing guilt and shame that creeps into my stomach whenever I open the app that houses them. The Files are our insurance.

  Especially for those of us whose parents can’t afford the fancy private tutors and the private college counseling that cost nearly as much as Gold Coast Prep tuition. Or who have to maintain a 93 average to keep our scholarships. The others don’t need to know that little detail, though.

  “Miss Wu,” Mr. Beaumont calls out to Nikki. “What is Miss Newman writing about that is so interesting to you? I’m surprised to see you looking at something other than your phone.”

  Nikki sits up in her seat, her straight dark hair falling over her shoulders. “Mr. Beaumont, you know I loved this book so much, I was just seeing what Jill thought about it.”

  “And Miss Newman, what do you think about Gatsby?” He asks me like he really wants to know.

  “Well—”

  The bell sounds.

  “Another time, Miss Newman. Have a good weekend, everyone. Be safe.” He says it to everyone, but I feel his eyes on me, like he knows our secrets, like he knows what happens to the Players. Everything we had to sacrifice. Everything we had to do to survive. Especially the girls.

  TWO

  “JILL!” HENRY LEANS against his car, a nearly new Lexus that he lovingly calls Bruce. “Let’s get outta here.” Warmth blooms in my chest and I make my way to him, feeling every pair of eyes follow us.

  I climb up into Bruce and set my bag at my feet, next to a stack of hardcovers.

  “Oops, don’t mind those,” he says, waving his hand at the books. “New haul.” They look bleak as hell with words like war and democracy printed on their covers. Henry flicks the radio to NPR, his favorite, and I bite back a smile. It’s too cute when he nerds out on journalism.

  “We invited some freshmen to come to Nikki’s tonight.” Henry turns sharply out of the school parking lot, waving goodbye to Dr. Jarvis, the elderly physics teacher who always has food on his tie but low-key adores me.

  “Already?” I ask. “Isn’t it too early for new undies to be hanging around?” I try to remember when I first started going to Player parties, when Adam told me to come along with him. It smelled crisper, more like crunchy leaves than leftover sunscreen. We’re still firmly planted in SPF season.

  “Robert started scouting the little dudes at lax preseason,” Henry continues. “He says we got some winners already.”

  I chew my lip. “It’s still too soon, though, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” Henry says carefully, like he’s actually thinking it over, like my voice matters. “But we gotta start thinking of pops early. That’s what every senior class always says, right?”

  Ah, the pops. Also known as pop-quiz-like challenges. Also known as the bane of my existence. I was sentenced to my first one a week after being tapped to be a Player. That asshole Tommy Kotlove instructed me to break into the middle school chem lab after tennis practice and swipe a beaker for his girlfriend, Julie Strauss, to use as a flower vase. I almost started crying on the spot. I didn’t know then that would be one of the easier ones.

  “Still seems early,” I say.

  “You know, Bryce Miller could be pretty good.”

  “He would,” I say slowly.

  “Adam say anything to you about it?”

  The truth is that Adam had texted me this morning before school. It was short, but stuck with me all day: Watch out for my bro, will ya? I know you’ve got my back, Newman.

  “I’m sure he’s expecting it,” I say.

  Henry rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, Bryce will have to get in on more than his brother. Being related to Adam Miller doesn’t just guarantee you the world.”

  “True,” I say, willing the conversation to stop. Adam’s name always sounds chewed-up and poisonous in Henry’s mouth.

  “We’ll see if it’s a fit. We always do.” Henry pulls to a stop in front of my house.

  My skin is crawling and I’m itching to get away from his ques
tions about Adam. I plant a quick kiss on his cheek. “See you later, babe.”

  “Jilly! Is that you?” Mom says as I push the door open. “I’m in the kitchen. C’mere!”

  She does this often, greeting me at home in boxy linen tops and wide silk scarves, her artist hands always pulling something out of the oven or her paint box. Today, she wraps a generous tray of lasagna in tinfoil. She makes it every year as a back-to-school tradition. “How was it? First day of senior year!” she nearly squeals. Her excitement turns her blossoming wrinkles into craters.

  “Great!” I say, smiling wide so she has no reason not to believe me.

  “That Henry’s car?”

  “Yep.”

  She shakes her head and laughs. “What a guy.”

  On the depressing side of fifty, Mom is still the most dazzling woman in the cul-de-sac, active in three book clubs, the temple sisterhood, and Gold Coast’s various community service projects—all while throwing elegant pots and twisty-turny vases that land her in the pages of Vogue and Architectural Digest once a season. Her cool factor makes it seem like we can keep up with everyone else at Gold Coast Prep, but the reality includes long hours teaching ceramics at the community college and giving private lessons to the uber-privileged Mayflower crowd. She says it’s all worth it, to do what she loves and give us the childhood she never had. Her parents were hippies, strung out at the end of the seventies, selling merch for B-list bands while driving around in an RV. Being able to send Jared and me to Prep is a badge of honor for her, even if the whole situation makes me feel like I’m carrying her and Dad’s hopes and dreams around like a precious 8,000-pound weight.