She finished editing the vlog entry and watched it through twice more to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. Satisfied, Max hit Publish and held her breath as it loaded over her ever-slowing hotspot. When it gave confirmation, she exhaled and clicked off the site. A commotion of laughter by the front door caught her attention. Looking up, she saw three Milford classmates and immediately regretted not choosing a midtown or even Hell’s Kitchen Starbucks. Max sank lower in her seat and turned her body toward the wall. When, three days earlier, she’d donned the required white dress and accepted her diploma, Max imagined that the whole of Milford Academy—the city block it occupied between Park and Madison and its entire student body, clad in its matching tartan plaid uniforms—would vanish. Poof! Gone from her life forever. And yet, here they were.
“Hurry, guys, we’re going to be late!” the tallest one, Lucy, a gazelle-like girl with long, graceful limbs, called out. She was a nationally ranked fencer. Very sweet. Not the brightest, but clearly Carnegie Mellon’s competitive fencing team didn’t care. With her were Josephine (Stanford), whose father was a billionaire, and Anne-Marie (Cornell), who had both a hyphenated first name and an exotic accent, despite having been born and raised on the Upper East Side.
“Oh my, look at these!” said Anne-Marie, holding up a package of chocolate-covered graham crackers like they were rare, delicate butterflies. “Must. Have.”
Max glanced over at the counter and noticed the cute barista was watching Anne-Marie, too. Shocker.
“Wait—is that Max?” Josephine asked, pointing in Max’s direction. “Ohmigod, it is! Hey, Max!”
Lucy led the charge toward Max’s chair. Was she wearing a crown braid? Was it professionally done? And how did she pull it off so well? Max touched her own wild curls and wondered when the last time was she’d gotten so much as a trim, never mind a Coachella-inspired updo.
“Hey,” Max said.
“So crazy! What are the chances of seeing you here?” Lucy asked.
Oh, I don’t know. Like close to a hundred percent, since I was stupid enough to pick a Starbucks equidistant between my apartment and our school?
But instead Max said, “Right?” drawing out the “i” in an effort to sound friendlier.
Anne-Marie leaned closer. “What are you reading? I think my mom is reading that book.”
Max held her hardcover nonfiction on Alexander Hamilton aloft. “Oh, this? It’s pretty good. I’m actually meeting some friends here. We’re heading to the beach today, but I needed some caffeine first.” The moment the words left her mouth, Max felt a tsunami of shame. Why did she care so much what they thought of her?
“Totally.” Lucy nodded. “We’re heading out east, too. Looks like the weather is going to be great.”
“Mmm,” Max murmured. And then, remembering her effort to be friendlier, she said, “Hope the traffic isn’t too bad.”
“Okay, well, it was nice seeing you,” Anne-Marie said, yanking on Lucy’s arm. “We have to run. Bye, Max!”
“Have fun today,” Lucy called over her shoulder.
Max watched the girls as they grabbed their drinks from the counter, adjusted their milks and sugars, and walked out, laughing. Only then did she notice their outfits: short skirts, cut-off denim, bikini straps peeking out of cute linen cover-ups. They were actually heading to the beach.
Fuck it, she thought, returning her attention to her book. But Max couldn’t get the thought out of her head. Who graduated high school with virtually no friends? Had anyone cared when Max insisted that Milford Academy was the wrong school for her? That its relentless focus on grades and STEM curriculum and the Ivy League at all costs created an environment of Stepford preppy robots who would kill one another for a leg up? Of course not. Did anyone listen when she had asked—no, begged—for years to transfer to LaGuardia or St. Ann’s or Friends, all incredible schools with more creative offerings? Not even a little. Well, that wasn’t fair exactly. Her dad had listened, but her mother always overrode him with what she called “the irrefutable facts”: Milford was the most prestigious school in the city and Max would have to be certifiably insane to voluntarily give up her spot, which, incidentally, had been secured for her in kindergarten. It was that emphasis on “the” that needled Max the most. The most prestigious. The hardest to get into. The one and only. As though all of life was a linear path, and each direction or decision or opportunity had a clear and undeniable value ranking—so long as you were the one in charge of deciding the values.
Whatever, Max thought as she returned her eyes to her book. All that high school bullshit was finally behind her. She’d move in with Aunt Skye for the summer, something she looked forward to all year long, and right after that she would head to college and start her new life.
Max pulled out her phone and WhatsApped Brynn:
i’m a loser. just ran into lucy, josephine, and anne-marie. At STARBUCKS.
She waited a minute and then remembered the crazy time difference with Hong Kong. Max tried to return to her book but couldn’t concentrate, so she packed up her stuff and headed out. The cute barista called, “Have a good day!” and she gave him a shy wave.
It was warm for early June, and people were bustling up and down Lex, getting ready for the summer Friday. If she went home now, would her mother still be at the gym? She just couldn’t handle a long Peyton chat at that exact moment—her mother was always extra worked-up after finishing a show. Debating this as she walked, Max almost didn’t notice her phone beep.
ugh you can’t do better than starbucks? Brynn had written.
there you are, Max pecked in reply.
what up?
just realizing I have exactly zero friends since you moved
friends are overrated, Brynn wrote.
Max smiled. Totally.
She checked the time. Her mom didn’t usually get back from the gym until ten-thirty, so she could probably get into her room without risking a run-in. Her dad might still be there, either on the Peloton or making calls, but he didn’t get on her nerves the same way. Max meandered a couple of blocks toward her building and stopped to sit at a bench outside a nearby florist. The sun was warm and the florist, an elderly woman with a cool punk haircut, gave her a thumbs-up. Swiping open her phone, Max logged into Instagram before she could stop herself.
First up in her feed was a photo of Lucy and Anne-Marie clutching each other in the backseat of a likely chauffeured SUV, pretending to kiss. Caption: happy graduation to my other half, love you more everyday thanks for doing life with me
Josephine, Lucy, and Anne-Marie together at a highway rest stop, each holding a bright blue Icee and cheering. Caption: FRIENDS FOR LIFE.
Another of the three of them, this time on top of the SUV in the parking lot, each hysterically laughing and flipping off the camera. Caption: Going to miss these girls so much cuuuuuuuuuties!!!!!!!
Fuck it, she thought, and angrily clicked off the site and over to the admin page of her YouTube channel, where Max was surprised to see dozens of new comments.
Loved this one!!!
Can you tell me what camera you’re using?
Hi from the West Coast! You don’t know me, but I’m a fangirl!
Max replied to each and every one of the people who DM’d her. She’d been proud of the entry, had a sense that it was one of her best yet, but she hadn’t expected this level of enthusiastic feedback. Everyone was so supportive, so encouraging! Max knew she was talented. She instinctively understood how to capture emotion with a camera, and when there was none to capture, she could create it. Imagine what she could do with the right resources! She felt a brief pang that she wouldn’t be starting at the Film Institute in L.A. this fall. Not that Princeton wasn’t incredible—it was. As her parents reminded her on a second-by-second basis, just about every living, breathing rising college freshman on planet Earth would sacrifice a body
part to matriculate there. She felt supremely bratty thinking of the reasons why it wasn’t her first choice—too preppy, too conservative, too close to home—especially when she’d been the one who’d finally caved to her parents’ relentless pressure to apply early decision last year.
“See what happens,” her dad had urged. “I had the best four years of my life there.”
“Go to a dedicated film school for graduate school,” her mother had crooned. “But don’t miss out on a world-class education first.”
“The Film Institute is most definitely world-class,” Max had argued, but in a rare showing of parental agreement, both Peyton and Isaac had held firm.
“Just apply,” they said. The acceptance email had pinged into Max’s inbox on a cold, blustery Tuesday last December, and Max knew there would be no further discussion of additional applications, film school or otherwise.
“You don’t throw away a chance at a degree from the Ivy League.” Her mother had declared this as an inarguable, scientific truism, akin to “Vaccines save lives,” or “The earth revolves around the sun.”
And, despite all his support of Max over the years, all his encouragement of her creative pursuits and his insistence on thinking independently, her father had agreed.
Max’s phone rang. Mom, she immediately thought. Calling to tell me that she’s on her way home and ask where I am. Max was about to silence the ringing when she saw that it was Brynn calling.
“What time is it there?” Max asked. “Wait, it’s not even ten at night. I’m not sure why I thought you were already—”
“Max.” Brynn’s voice was tight, urgent.
“I’m here. Can you hear me?”
“Where are you? Turn on the TV right now.”
“I can’t, or I risk running into my mother and having to listen to how great she feels after—”
“Max, you need to get on CNN right this second. I’m sorry, I don’t want to…”
“Okay, okay, give me a minute.” Max put the call on speaker, opened her CNN app, and clicked on the “Watch Live TV” icon. It loaded almost instantly, but it took Max a couple seconds to understand what she was seeing.
“Oh my god,” she murmured, leaning in close to the screen, just as her mother had done minutes before on the treadmill.
“Is that your dad?” Brynn asked.
“Oh my god. What’s going on? Wait—that’s our building. Oh my god. It says it’s live! But I’m only a few blocks away. I don’t understand.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“I—I don’t know. Home? He was there when I left two hours ago, I think? I can’t remember. Oh my god. Brynn! He’s in handcuffs!”
“This must be a mistake,” Brynn said. “Your dad would never get arrested for anything. He’s such a…dad. Wait—is that your mom?”
Max watched in horror as her mother, wearing one of those ridiculous and much-too-young-for-her sports-bra-and-legging combos, ran up to the gaggle of people who surrounded her father. The cameras were too far away to pick up the sound, but she saw her father lean close to her mother’s ear.
“I gotta go,” Max said, jumping off the bench so fast she nearly knocked it over. She ran the remaining blocks to her building, and by the time she arrived, the crowd was beginning to disperse. There was no sign of either parent. She raced into the lobby.
“Peter!” she shouted. “What’s happening?” She could see some of the people on the sidewalk turn to watch her.
The elderly doorman she’d known for years looked pained. “Maybe ask Mrs. Marcus,” he said, glancing down at his feet. “I just put her in the elevator myself. She should be on her way up.”
Max couldn’t move. It wasn’t until the elevator doors closed around her that she realized she’d stepped inside, and she held her breath as the floors fell under her, one by one, as she rose to an unknown future.
4
Overworked and Underpaid
“I’m dying,” Skye moaned, kneading her right thigh through her drenched leggings. “I don’t think I can stand up.”
Esther laughed. The women sat on wooden benches outside the studio. “Remind me never to drag you to the regular Bikram,” she said.
Skye wiped away a stream of forehead sweat. “Didn’t we just do regular?”
“No, that was restorative. We barely moved.”
“Skye!” exclaimed a petite and extremely fit woman in high-waisted leggings and a crop top. “I’ve never seen you here before!”
“First time,” Skye croaked.
The woman nodded and kept walking.
“Who’s that?” Esther asked.
“Belinda Daniels. She has one in fifth, one in third, and one in K, I think? She oversees the parent volunteers for the school library.”
Two more women emerged from the studio. They were chatting like they’d merely strolled down the block and not just contorted their bodies in suffocating heat. Again, each wore coordinated designer athleisure. The one in neon pink said, “Oh, Skye, I’m glad I ran into you. Did you get a chance to go over the food for the Writers’ Tea? I know the email suggested scones, but these kids get so much junk! Maybe we should do something carb-free? I was thinking that fruit skewers with some healthy dips could be cute? And maybe batch up some smoothies—with paper straws, of course.”
“Sounds great, Mal,” Skye said with a thumbs-up. “I love it.”
“And her?” Esther asked under her breath, as the woman and her friend headed toward the boutique.
“Mallory Salinger. She has twin girls in third and a special needs kid in first who’s in Aurora’s class this year, and we’re both room parents. I’ve never officially met the woman she was with, but I see her at everything. Jane Benedict. I’m pretty sure her youngest is in fifth and then she has older ones, maybe one each in middle and high school? I hear she’s planning to run for the board of finance.”
Esther mopped herself with a hand towel. “I’ve been coming to this class every Saturday for nearly a year, and I don’t know a single person.”
As if on cue, a man in a black tank and black shorts noticed Skye. He sat down next to her, wrapping his sweaty, muscular arm around her shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
Skye tried not to think about their commingling sweat. “Hey, Kenny. This is my friend Esther. It’s her fault I’m here.”
The two exchanged pleasantries before Kenny said, “I have to run, but I’ll text you later so we can get a date on the calendar for the next Museum Morning, okay? Mrs. Harney is all over me for the schedule.”
“Definitely. We do need to get on that.” Skye waved as he trotted off.
Esther raised her eyebrows.
“Kenny Goldberg. Goldman? Goldstein? Something Jewish,” Skye said. “Stay-at-home dad. His husband travels constantly for work—like three out of every four weeks. It’s got to be brutal.”
Skye realized her slip the moment the words left her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Esther waved her off. “I wouldn’t trade Trish for all the husbands in the world. She cooks, cleans, parents my children, and I don’t have to sleep with her. She’s the best.”
Skye laughed. “Hey, you want to grab a coffee? Iced, obviously.”
“Shouldn’t we get back? I did dump both my kids on your husband.”
“Please. I’m sure he plugged them all into a movie the second we left,” Skye said, finally cool enough to pull on a lightweight sweatshirt as they crossed the street.
“Still, it was really nice of him to watch mine, too,” Esther said. “Everything comes completely unhinged when Trish goes back to Trinidad.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Skye said. “I’m overwhelmed with one kid and no job. Which I know is ridiculous, but I can’t understand how you manage two kids and a full-time job, all with n
o partner.”
Esther shrugged. Her body was a straight line—no curves, nothing rounded—but her face was the exact opposite: heart-shaped with soft, indistinct features, like they’d been blurred by Photoshop. Naturally pink lips. Apple cheeks. Even her dark hair was thick and shiny, thanks to her beautiful Filipino mother. “You just do it. I mean, it’s not like any of it was a surprise, you know? By the time you’re shopping for sperm online, you usually have a pretty good idea what you’re getting into.”
“Still, you don’t give yourself enough credit. Having one baby on your own is incredible. But two, while working fifty hours a week? That’s superhuman.”
They collected their coffees from the end of the counter and tucked themselves into a corner table.
“Whatever. You’re the most involved parent I’ve ever met! Aurora is lucky to have you,” Esther said, like a good working mom friend who had memorized the script.
“Me?” Skye rolled her eyes. “I’m basically a professional volunteer. I serve at recess duty, help kindergartners learn composting, break up squabbles in the cafeteria, alphabetize books in the school library, act as president of the PTA and treasurer of the newcomers’ club, run the water slide station at Field Day, oversee the class scheduling at the Scholastic book fair, act as troop leader for Girl Scouts, and peddle school logo wear at the Election Day bake sale. The flip-sequined shirts are our bestseller, in case you’re wondering.”
Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty Page 4