by E. Lockhart
She said, “Sorry, that was dumb. Or insensitive. Something. I just— It’s not my business how you look. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said anything.”
Adelaide felt herself spiraling into a turbulent mix of desperation and fury and love. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t want the last thing I said to you to be terrible stupidity about facial hair. I’m not trying to make you into someone you’re not.”
She knew that wasn’t quite true, though. She would have liked Toby to be
definitely, permanently sober, and
she would have liked him to
look pulled together and to be
happy and to
make jokes and just to
be the Toby he used to be instead of this new, terrible, closed-off, damaged Toby.
But it seemed like the right thing to say.
“I love you and your facial hair,” she said. That was true, oddly. “I’m sorry if I’m a rotten sister.”
Toby fingered his wispy mustache. “To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed it,” he said finally. “I’ve been kind of living inside my head and not looking in the mirror.”
He got up and went to the bathroom to see it. There was a long pause.
“It’s studly,” he called.
She followed him and looked in the mirror too.
“Don’t you think?” Toby said. “It’s kind of folk-singer-who-gets-laid-a-lot. Like, a guy who takes his guitar to parties and strums it in the corner. Girls come up and want to make out. It’s a damn fine look, Adelaide.”
“Toby.”
“What? You said you love me and my facial hair. You said it.”
He smiled. Into the mirror.
“It’s extremely ugly facial hair,” she said. “But if you’re proud of it and you want to look like a folk singer, then I support you and your nutjob aesthetic.” I support you was something both their parents said a lot, ever since they had started family therapy.
“Thank you,” Toby said, preening. “I plan on rocking this look all through ninth grade.” He turned and headed back to the kitchen. He opened the fridge and got himself a seltzer.
“Just kidding,” he said eventually as he threw himself back in his chair.
“Oh, thank god.”
They watched the rest of the movie. Adelaide fell asleep with her head on the table. When she woke, Toby had gone off to bed.
* * *
—
The next morning, Adelaide and Levi left for Alabaster. They drove north, listening to podcasts. Adelaide began her junior year.
She played Ultimate Frisbee and went to a capella concerts. She made friends with Stacey Shurman. She met Mikey Lewis Lieu and fell in love.
And in November, Toby relapsed.
Yes.
All the work,
the anguish,
the money,
the therapy,
the lines on her mother’s face,
the extra fifteen pounds on her father’s frame,
and he relapsed. Her mother had realized Toby was high one night. Just knew it, suddenly, from his gait when he got up off the couch. Rebecca had asked him directly: “Are you on something?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “I’ve got it under control.”
How could he think he had it under control? After all the therapy and group work and sober living, how could he actually say that?
Rebecca called Levi that night, and Levi waited for Adelaide outside Wren Hall in the morning, standing in a woolen coat with a hat pulled over his eyebrows and tears streaming down his cheeks. He hugged Adelaide and sobbed out the news. Then he told her it would be okay. They’d make it okay. Toby would figure out how to be okay.
Adelaide knew her father was lying. How could he know? It wasn’t possible to know.
Levi left her at school. He drove to Baltimore, seven hours in the rain, and together he and Rebecca managed to get Toby back to Kingsmont the following week.
Adelaide told Stacey S, but she didn’t tell Mikey. She didn’t want to weigh down her first love with her family unhappiness. With Mikey, she wanted to be a shiny, bright girl.
So she became shinier, brighter, whenever he was around. And when he wasn’t, she thought constantly of Toby. That sentence was on repeat in her skull: My little brother is an addict.
Toby was still at Kingsmont when Adelaide went home for winter break. She slept in her old room that was now his room, knowing he’d probably gotten high in there. She stalked around and kicked things that belonged to him. The room seemed contaminated, even though Rebecca had cleaned it and put Adelaide’s old quilt on the narrow bed.
Eventually, Toby graduated from the rehab program at Kingsmont and returned to Future House to live for a while.
The Buchwalds had faith in this second go at rehab. Toby would stay clean, they said. He could, and he wanted to. The relapse was a setback. Lots of addicts had setbacks, but still, their overall movement was forward, toward recovery. The journey was never going to be easy.
But Adelaide had no faith anymore.
* * *
—
Toby came home again in April, but she decided not to be there for spring vacation. She was too disgusted and furious and creeped out to even try to talk to Toby. She went to Mikey’s instead.
At the Lieus’, people ate fresh apricots at breakfast and sat around at night watching baking shows. No one was high. People were normal and liked themselves; and they liked Adelaide. They went to the mall sometimes in the afternoon, to run errands or get coffee drinks. Adelaide visited Mikey’s old elementary school. She walked with him on the seashore in the evenings.
They found the swing set he’d loved as a little boy. Mikey kissed Adelaide as she sat on the swing, and she felt dizzy and off balance, with the whoosh of the ocean in her ears.
The evening after Jack brought her the present of the bacon, Adelaide was back at the dog run. The Great God Pan came up, wagging. You were kissing Jack this morning! I saw you.
EllaBella came over and flopped on the ground. I love you, Adelaide.
Rabbit asked, Would you throw a stick for me?
So Adelaide threw a stick.
Pretzel asked, Could I have a dog treat?
And she gave them each a dog treat.
Tired of listening to podcasts, Adelaide took pictures of the dogs on her phone.
One of each. Face-on. She made squeaky noises and talked baby talk at them till they looked at the lens.
She figured she could try harder with her brother. The two of them texted, now and then, now that Toby was allowed to have a phone again. Adelaide would write, “Happy Spring!” or “Good luck on your finals!” And Toby would text back with a thumbs-up.
The thumbs-up just made her sad.
She edited the dog portraits. Cropped them. Did a little filtering. Then she texted them to Toby.
* * *
She wrote,
Hanging out with these guys. Jealous?
An hour later, he sent back a thumbs-up.
* * *
She wrote,
Hanging out with these guys. Jealous?
He didn’t reply.
She texted the same thing to Jack.
Hanging out with these guys. Jealous?
He didn’t reply either.
* * *
She texted the photos to Toby:
Hanging out with these guys.
He wrote back right away:
Jealous.
* * *
She texted the pictures to Toby.
She wrote,
I miss you, little brother.
She almost deleted it.
She almost didn’t send it.
But then she did.
He wrote back:
I miss you too, Adelaide.
Jack didn’t show up at the dog run the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after that.
He didn’t answer texts either.
“So he doesn’t like you back,” said Stacey S, on video chat.
“But he brought me meaningful bacon and then he kissed me.”
“It’s really okay, Adelaide. Not everyone is going to like you. I remember him from when he went here,” said Stacey. “He was very short back then. Is he taller now?”
“He’s gloriously tall. Well, medium height. Why would anybody kiss someone and then disappear?”
“I kissed Tendai and disappeared.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot that.”
“I literally hid from her one time in a supply closet,” said Stacey. “I saw her around a corner and just ducked in there like a jerk. But I couldn’t really disappear full-on because it was the school year. We had classes together and stuff. But I stopped looking her in the eye, didn’t talk to her, avoided any group she was in, all that.”
“But why?”
“The kiss was like an impulse,” said Stacey S. “We were at a track meet. She absolutely smoked everyone in her four hundred heat, and she seemed magical, when she was running. I think I’m into people who are really good at something, you know? Talent. Or skill, is maybe what I mean.” Stacey shoved a handful of cashews in her mouth. “We were all on the bus home and she and I ended up next to each other in a seat. So we talked. Then we walked back to Wren. It was a pretty night out, and honestly, I think I kissed her four hundred win, not her. And then the next day, when I saw her in the cafeteria, and she was toasting her English muffin, I was just like nope nope nope.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong?”
“She was just being Tendai. I don’t know, spreading jam on a muffin. And I literally skipped eating and went straight to class so I wouldn’t have to see her.”
“Was she upset?”
“Yeah, I think so. But I just couldn’t. I had no interest at all.”
“But you should have talked to her, Stacey.”
“Yeah. Well, I have guilt.”
“Do you think Jack was kissing my metaphorical four hundred win?”
“Maybe. Did you have a metaphorical four hundred win?”
“No. Actually I had a meltdown about Mikey.”
“Maybe he’s one of those guys who likes a challenge. He liked you better when he didn’t think he could have you.”
“Oh, yuck.”
“Some people are like that. Or maybe he likes damaged girls, realized you were basically functional, and took off to look for a more mentally unstable person.”
“I’m damaged.”
“Don’t say it like you want to be damaged. Gross.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not that damaged, Adelaide. You are, like, a loyal good friend, plus you had a seven-month relationship with Mikey Double L, which is super mature compared to most people we know.”
“Seven and a half months. Me and Mikey.”
“People who glamorize damaged other people are blech. If that’s Jack’s deal, you don’t want him anyway.”
“I don’t like any of these answers,” said Adelaide. “I prefer to think he got run over by a bus and that’s why he disappeared.”
“Yes!” said Stacey. “We can hope.”
* * *
—
As the Jack-less days stretched into a week, and then another week, Adelaide began going back to sleep in the mornings, after running the dogs. She dozed in her shirt and underwear with the fan blowing on her legs under the thin sheet. She could feel the morning’s coffee still pushing through her veins, but she sank into sleep with relief and gratitude.
At the Factory museum, in one of the outlying buildings, there was a new installation exhibit by a woman named Caroline Ximenes titled “Where You Are Is Around Where You Are.” Adelaide went with Levi on a Saturday afternoon.
Entering the exhibit, you walked into a long hall. It had black floors, and mirrors on both sides of the walls. The ceiling was very high. You could look at yourself, reflected over and over. The mirrors were hung with fairy lights. Tiny white bulbs on green wires. The lights reflected each other too; lights and then lights and then lights.
Step through a door and you found yourself on a balcony overlooking a
space that
stretched out
below and above you.
Staircases ran up and down the space. There were
mirrors across the
ceiling and the floor.
Furniture was bolted to walls, all of it
painted gold.
That gold furniture was
reflected in
mirrors along the walls, and in the
mirrors on the ceiling.
The undersides of the
staircases looked like
staircases too.
Adelaide dropped into this exhibit. Something was there, something about her
own life that she could not put words to. Suddenly, she didn’t know
where the floor was, or
where the walls were.
The repetitions in the reflection offered no exit.
This wasn’t a room you could enter or leave.
It was the inside of a mind, both
infinite and
constrained into repetition.
Maybe that was the point.
* * *
—
After looking at the installation, Adelaide and Levi ate lunch together at the Factory café. Adelaide ordered a cream cheese sandwich that came on date-nut bread. Levi had black coffee, kale salad, and spice cake.
“Ms. Kaspian-Lee is kind of inappropriate,” said Adelaide. “She keeps talking about her lover. And how attractive people are. To me.”
“Oh god, some people are like that,” said Levi.
“Like what?” asked Adelaide.
“No boundaries, narcissistic.”
“Isn’t she your friend?”
“I think she’s smart. She cares about the theater, and the school, and she tells good stories. She has a terrible boyfriend, though. And she gets on my nerves. Please keep that in the vault.”
“Mr. Schlegel is terrible?”
“Yeah. Well, a little bit terrible. Not dangerous.”
“Do you have any real friends?” Adelaide asked. “Here at Alabaster?”
“Maybe,” Levi said, scratching his chin. “I like this guy Jeffrey who’s head of admissions. He and I have played tennis a couple times. And I think the other theater teachers are fun. They’re cliquey, though. And no one’s here in the summer.”
“Are you lonely?”
Levi nodded. “I should probably try to make some full-on friends, shouldn’t I? Since we’re going to live here for at least another year. And maybe longer. Mom and Toby could come up and live here after that. If Toby is, you know, able to go here.”
“Friends would be good,” said Adelaide.
“I might start with one,” said Levi. “One would be a bite-size project.”
* * *
—
Adelaide finally read Fool for Love. It only took two hours. The play was very sad and odd. It was about a couple, May and Eddie, who fell in love in high school and then broke apart for very good reasons—disturbing reasons—but now they can’t stop circling each other, longing for each other. Torturing each other.
She started by googling sets that had been designed for professional productions.
A motel room boxed in by a neon sign.
A motel room with shredded ceilings and wa
lls.
The bed on one side of the stage.
The bed on the other.
The bed in the center.
The room with one wall sliced open.
A raked stage.
A production in the round.
A patterned floor.
She read some articles about set design. She looked at designs for other plays she had read for school: King Lear, Death of a Salesman, Fences, M. Butterfly, A Doll’s House. One set was nothing but a brown velvet room and a few chandeliers, no furniture at all.
She decided to make a motel room of solid gold. In it, May and Eddie,
those obsessive lovers, would live out their
toxic relationship.
The gold, she would tell Kaspian-Lee, creates a mood of
sensuality that is also somehow
depressing.
Fake and cheap.
Underneath the weird gold motel room would be
a layer of dirt. The audience could see
skeletons in the dirt, and old tin cans,
things rotting.
Adelaide put the bed on the wall, literally on the wall,
impossible to sleep on but
symbolic—a place that would never be restful for May and Eddie, not ever. It loomed over them.
Okay, it was a little wild. But she hadn’t seen it before. There was no way Kaspian-Lee would think she’d snatched an idea off the internet. She could cite influences from shows at the Factory, so she’d get through that part of the defense.
Day after day, as she gave up waiting for Jack to get in touch, Adelaide lived a life of wood and cardboard. She squeezed paint from tubes into plastic ice cube trays.
She built a tiny four-poster double bed with a bare mattress and no blankets. She built tiny, cheap-looking table lamps that would hang, all wrong, from the ceiling.
Her life became this box she was building, a box to house a play about sad, obsessive love.