Hopefuls (Book 1): The Private Life of Jane Maxwell

by Jenn Gott

  Ms. Holloway sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe Christmas. Maybe your birthday.”

  “What’s wrong with Thanksgiving?”

  “Because I don’t want to,” Ms. Holloway snapped.

  Jane jerked back, away from the phone, as if she’d been physically struck. She looked at the phone in her hand: the stubby gray antenna, the buttons already worn down from frequent use. The phone used to belong in the family kitchen, until Jane’s mother had replaced it with a newer set that had three handsets instead of just one. Jane liked having a portable phone, rather than the clunky old corded one that had come with the dorm. She liked to stick her head out the window and imagine that she had a fire escape that she could sit on during cool evenings, her legs dangling through the bars as if she was in a romantic comedy.

  Now, though, she wanted to throw it across the room. The old clunker from the dorm could probably take it.

  “—sorry, sweetie, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jane’s mother was already saying as Jane cautiously put the phone back to her ear. “It’s just . . . it’s been hard. You know that.”

  “I do.”

  “And it’s just . . . Thanksgiving.” She said this with the same weight that someone might say jury duty, or traffic court. Or finals. “And then she’d be all, ‘What can I do to help?’, and ‘Have you been going to church?’, and then you’d want to bring Clair over, and—”

  “Wait, wait,” Jane cut in. “What’s wrong with Clair?”

  There was the slightest pause across the line. “Nothing. Grandma loves Clair, of course. She loves all your friends.”

  Understanding settled thickly, like drying concrete, through her veins. Jane’s free hand clenched into a fist in her lap. “You don’t want her to find out that I have a girlfriend.”

  “Don’t be like this, Janie.”

  The bitter bark of a laugh escaped Jane’s chest. “Like what? Gay?”

  “Stop it. I’m a supportive parent, and you know it.”

  “Until you actually have to stand up for me, apparently.”

  “Oh, like you have any idea what it’s like to defend your daughter’s choices constantly.”

  “My choices?” Jane said. “You make it sound like I got a tattoo on my ass. We’re talking about who I am, Mom, not—”

  “Yes, and forgive me for not wanting to deal with it all on top of everything else right now, all right? I’m getting enough of this crap from the neighbors. I’d rather not bring it into the house when Grandma sees the two of you together.” She sighed. “It’s just easier to avoid it this year. Don’t you see?”

  Oh, Jane saw, all right. She sat up in her bed, anger coursing through her. “Fine,” she said. “You don’t want Thanksgiving this year, that’s fine. I’ll just stay with Clair’s family instead.”

  Jane could practically hear her mother rolling her eyes. “Jane—”

  “Goodbye, Mom,” Jane said. She had already found the off button with her finger, and she hung up the phone before it was even away from her ear.

  Store-bought or fresh, the salsa was pretty good.

  They ate on the back patio—one of the back patios. Stars sparkled above, champagne and Mrs. Maxwell’s diamonds sparkled below. Jane sank deeply into the cushion of a wicker chair. In the heart of their semicircle was a table with a fire pit crackling in the middle; the fire served to keep the evening’s chill at bay, and their dinner warm. The food was served in a come-as-you-are style, spread around the perimeter of the table so that people could dish up and sit back in their chairs as they saw fit. Despite the circumstances, Jane felt a swell of comfort when she spied the familiar spread of Tex-Mex: steak fajitas; warm tortilla chips with guacamole and salsa; chili con carne, thick and gravy-like in a heavy stoneware bowl. Jane’s mother had grown up in the outskirts of Houston, then moved to Seattle, Los Angeles, D.C., and finally Grand City. She’d shed her Texas accent long before Jane was ever born, but always broke out the spices and rich meats of Tex-Mex when she needed to feel like home.

  “I guess the vegan stint didn’t last long,” Allison said. She was standing near Jane, regarding the spread on the table with a critical eye. Her plate was empty—she held it in front of her chest like a shield, her agitated fingers tapping against the back—but she’d glanced pointedly at Jane’s as she sidled by.

  Jane looked up. Her spoon was halfway to her mouth, held where she’d been blowing on it to cool off the contents. A bowl of the chili con carne sat by her elbow on the chair’s wide armrest.

  Vegan? Jane’s eyes flicked to Amy, who gave a subtle nod.

  Jane shrugged. “I got tired of it.”

  “What a surprise,” Allison said, rolling her eyes. She paused over the food again, then darted down and plucked a single square of cornbread from a basket, like a cat pouncing on a laser dot. With nothing else on her plate, she rounded the table and sat as far from Jane as she could.

  Jane put her spoon down. She watched Allison, who was now thoroughly ignoring Jane as she tore tiny corners off of her cornbread and popped them into her mouth one at a time. A fine trail of yellow crumbs grazed her lips and dotted her fingers.

  A sister. Jane still didn’t even know what that meant, not really. Siblings at all were a foreign country to her, but sisters in particular provided an even greater puzzle. Clair had four brothers, but they were all so much younger than her. She and Jane used to babysit them, earning pocket money and changing diapers. Hardly a help.

  So what did it mean, then? Jane wondered. What kind of childhood games had Allison and this world’s Jane played, what kind of secrets had they kept? She thought about the complaints that Marie had about her sisters—stolen makeup and clothes, fights about who got the middle seat of the couch. One of Marie’s sisters was into marathons, and kept trying to convince Marie to join her.

  Try as she might, Jane couldn’t quite put any of these things together with the woman sitting across from her, nibbling on her cornbread. Nobody had warned Jane about Allison, and why would they have? It made sense to assume that she’d have been in Jane’s real life, too. Jane tried to picture it. She brought up a selection of her childhood memories, adding in a fuzzy image of a girl that looked a lot like Jane. Jane knew enough of her family history to understand that her parents had experienced difficulty conceiving—there had even been a miscarriage, about two years before Jane had finally been born.

  Jane froze.

  A miscarriage. She stole another look at Allison, trying to judge the woman’s age, though it was impossible to tell. Certainly she was near to Jane’s.

  As if sensing the attention, Allison snapped her head up. Her gaze was already narrowed. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Jane said hurriedly. She drew the bowl of chili con carne closer, and tucked her legs up in the chair beside her so that she could curl around the warmth of her dinner without it seeming too weird.

  Mrs. Maxwell cleared her throat. She sat to Jane’s left, a plate balanced across her knees. Tiny portions of everything were evenly divided across the plate, pushed around so that it appeared as if she’d been eating. “So, Jane: tell us some of what you’ve been up to lately? It’s . . . it’s been a while.”

  Jane bit her lip. Right—the fight. Mrs. Maxwell had been so warm and welcoming that Jane had almost forgotten that in this version of reality, the two of them had been estranged for more than a year.

  “Oh,” Jane said, shrugging as she dug her spoon through her dinner. “Not much. Just . . . you know, the usual.”

  She took a large bite, the better to avoid answering follow-up questions, but the meal was still too hot. Jane lurched forward, only just stopping herself from spitting the chunk of searing meat back into her bowl. She snatched the glass of water from Amy’s chair instead, downing it in huge gulps that nearly choked her.

  Allison snorted. “Smooth.”

  Jane shot her a look as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Mrs. Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “I see. Well”—she shrugge
d—“if you don’t want to talk about it—”

  “Jane’s just being modest,” Cal said.

  “There’s a first,” Allison said.

  Jane looked up. Amy was shooting her an uncomfortable look, as Cal thumped Jane twice on the back.

  “We’re all very proud of our little star here,” he said.

  Jane forced a smile. Mrs. Maxwell was positively beaming at her.

  “I can’t tell you how happy it made me to read that you’d gotten back to painting,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Though I thought the piece in the Times could have been a bit more positive about it.”

  “Why?” Allison asked. “Her work is shit.”

  “Allison!”

  “What? I’m just being honest. You’d think that being an art dealer would teach her how to recognize good art, but apparently not.”

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Jane, I loved your pieces. They’re very, um . . . expressive.”

  “They’re depressing,” Allison said.

  Jane looked Allison square in the face. “Maybe they’re supposed to be.”

  “Maybe,” Allison said. She tore another corner off of her cornbread. “But who wants to go to a gallery just to see a dead bird? I mean, what’s that about?”

  A loud whoosh swept over Jane, making her head spin. She felt disconnected from herself, like she was only half there. She saw the scene: the gathering on the patio, the posh details of perfectly trimmed grass and expensive furniture; a collection of people that might as well have stepped off a movie set. A mirror of her own face, or close enough, staring back at her across the glow of the fire pit. Allison’s expression had gone slack, like maybe she’d realized that finally, for reasons that she couldn’t understand, she’d stepped too far.

  Jane’s heart was thundering in her ears. All that she could think about was the opening of the Spectral Wars, the dozen sketches that she’d drawn while crouched on a freezing stoop, in the middle of grief so deep that she couldn’t even see the surface above her head. She did not hear the words that Cal said next, though it sounded like he was rising to her defense.

  An awkward silence followed. Just when Jane didn’t think that she could take it anymore, the door to the house opened, and a Hispanic woman stepped out onto the patio, her arms loaded down with two more trays. She wore crisp tan pants, a sharp white blouse. Her hair was woven into a braid that ringed her head like a crown.

  Cal turned, instantly beaming. “Juanita! Your salsa is as amazing as ever.”

  The woman smiled patiently. “Gracias, señor.”

  “De nada!” Cal said proudly, stressing the emphasis of each word longer than was reasonable, as if he was trying to make a point.

  Devin rolled his eyes.

  “See?” Cal said, once the woman had deposited the food and disappeared again.

  “You’re such an idiot.”

  “I think I missed something,” Allison said.

  “No,” Devin said. “Just the usual.”

  Jane shook her head. Her glasses had slipped, and she balanced her bowl in her other hand as she nudged them back up the bridge of her nose with her knuckle.

  “Hey, Allie,” Cal said as he leaned over to scoop up another large spoonful of the famous salsa, “you never did say where Mr. Awesome is this evening.”

  Allison made a face. Jane paused, midchew, trying to remember if there was a character somewhere in the universe of her heroes that she’d given such a horrible superhero alias. She didn’t think so, but . . .

  Allison deposited her plate on the table. The cornbreard, at best half-finished, looked as if it had been gnawed on by mice. She picked a large glass of wine up from where it had been resting on the patio stones by her feet. “Alex and I thought it would be better for the kids if they stayed home for now. At least until . . .” She paused, took a drink.

  Mrs. Maxwell leaned over, stretching far around the side of the table to pat her daughter’s leg. “It’s all right, honey.”

  “It’s not all right,” Allison said. “My father is dying, and we’re trusting in a bunch of trick-or-treaters to sweep in and—”

  Amy whipped her head up. “Wait!”

  Jane was surprised when Allison drew herself short, although perhaps it was just a good excuse to bury her nose in her wineglass again. Allison scowled as she knocked back the last of what had been a good helping of wine a moment ago.

  Amy turned, peering into the bushes near the corner of the house.

  “Amy?” Mrs. Maxwell asked, but Amy only held up her hand. She’d chosen a pale pink for her fingerless gloves, and they blended in with the soft light of the patio.

  There was no warning. One moment Amy was sitting there, pensive, paused, and the next she was on her feet. She’d somehow dropped her plate off in her seat as she rose, one seamless motion, and Jane watched in fascination and dread as Amy dashed across the expanse of patio, Devin and Cal springing up to follow fast on her heels.

  “What the—?” Allison asked, but her question was answered a second later.

  A yelp and a flurry of motion burst out of the bushes as a figure—a camera swinging wildly around his neck—was flushed from his hiding spot. He wore all dark, blending in even now, as he sprinted across the lawn. Jane’s friends were giving chase, shouts of “You asshole!” and “Get back here!” breaking free into the night.

  The Maxwells turned, looking at each other. They were the only ones left on the patio. Too late, Jane realized that Mrs. Maxwell was studying her curiously, and it was only in that moment when Jane realized that her double probably would have gone running after the man as well. Captain Lumen: always the hero.

  A flush crept up on Jane as she looked away.

  “Fuck,” Allison muttered. She got to her feet, grabbing a wine bottle off of the table. “That’s just perfect. That’s exactly what I need right now.”

  “Sweetie—”

  “No.” Allison pointed at her mother, the bottle hanging from the curl of her fist. “This is your fault. You told me that security would take care of them.”

  “They are.”

  Allison snorted. “Yeah, great job they’re doing at it, too.” She stepped around the chairs, the scattered remains of the plates and glasses, as she fished a phone from her back pocket. “I need to call Kylie. We need to get out in front of this thing before it blows up in our faces.”

  Mrs. Maxwell shook her head, but she made no effort to stop Allison. Allison was already holding the phone to her ear as she stepped through the glass doors. Jane watched her go, her head swirling with even more questions than she’d had when they first sat down.

  And then they were alone.

  * * *

  Crickets chirped. The fire pit crackled. Waves made seashell noises against the beach. The whine of a mosquito came and went, and Jane marveled at whatever (no doubt expensive) method was being employed to keep them at bay, because that was the first one that she’d noticed all evening.

  “I’m glad that you felt that you could come back here,” Mrs. Maxwell said, breaking the silence.

  Jane stared at the bowl in her lap. What had Amy said, about maintaining the pretense of this Jane? Haughty disinterest?

  Jane shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s not like we had much choice.”

  “I understand . . . Cal’s text said that—that your other facility had been compromised? Is that true?”

  “That’s overstating it somewhat.” Jane felt herself icing up, the protective walls of obfuscation and deflection rising fast between them. Yes, she thought to herself. This felt right—this felt like the aftermath of an argument with her mother.

  She remembered how awkward it was, when her mother first reached out to Jane after the Thanksgiving debacle. Jane had kept her at arm’s length for months.

  “It didn’t sound like an overstatement. I mean,” Mrs. Maxwell lowered her voice, “UltraViolet, in the command room? How is that even possible? I thought the computers—”

  “If you already kno
w about it, why are we even talking?” Jane asked. She shot her mother a level gaze.

  No, she reminded herself. Not her mother.

  It looked like her mother, though. In the dimming light of the patio, the effects of the plastic surgeries seemed less pronounced. Mrs. Maxwell’s eyes searched Jane, hurt and loss and hope mixing equally in the palette of her face.

  Maybe she deserved to know. That Jane wasn’t really her daughter, that they weren’t really fighting.

  But it didn’t seem to be Jane’s place to make that decision, and anyway, now Mrs. Maxwell was pulling herself together. She brushed it off, as easily as brushing away the stray fleck of tortilla that had fallen onto the seat cushion. “I understand. Cal said that you were taking this all rather hard.”

  “You talk to him a lot, do you?” Jane asked. She had no idea where the question had sprung up from.

  Mrs. Maxwell looked startled. Her hand flew to the base of her throat. “What? No, I—Someone had to tell me you’d be coming. That you would all be coming. I assumed that you told him to.”

  “No,” Jane said. “I didn’t.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Maxwell tucked her perfectly done hair behind her ear, then immediately untucked it, patting it smooth.

  The rustle of grass announced the return of the others. Jane turned to see sour faces, and a small cut near Devin’s eyebrow.

  “He got away?” Jane asked.

  Devin shrugged. “Well, we couldn’t exactly give it all that we’ve got. Not unless you want a front-page headline instead of just some random celebrity gossip.”

  Mrs. Maxwell winced. “You think that he got a photo?”

  “It could have been worse,” Amy said; not really an answer. “It was just a dinner party.”

  “While my husband is being held hostage at City Hall,” Mrs. Maxwell said. Her face was drawn tightly together, a similar expression to what Allison had worn as she’d gone into the house. “Shit. This is going to kill his chances at a senate run.”

  Cal stepped over, and rested his hand heavily on Mrs. Maxwell’s shoulder. He gave it a quick squeeze. “Hey. Olivia: It’s going to be okay. We’ll make it okay.”