by Alex Flinn
Mrs. Steele shook her head. “I know you’re right. It’s a shame, though. Neighbors should help each other.”
Kate nodded. She knew it was true. And she was helping, she realized. She was an actually good person. Sort of.
After lunch, Kate let Ray-Ray watch the rest of the episode before telling him they had to leave. Ray-Ray gave Mrs. Steele an extra-long hug, and she said, “You know you can come over whenever you want. Just be sure to tell someone before you leave.” To Kate, she said, “Think about it.”
Kate knew she would.
Kate got Ray-Ray settled onto the sofa at his own house, watching SpongeBob (the cable worked, thank God), and Kate texted Colin.
You can tell everyone I’m fine. I’m up in the mountains trying to get away at this awful time. That doesn’t mean I’m a criminal. Thank them for their concern.
She sent it, along with a photo of the Websters’ house, to Colin. Then, she muted the conversation.
40
Britta
BRITTA LOVED CROWDS. Her middle school drama teacher told them to use the opportunity to people-watch, and Britta always tried to imagine people’s stories. Despite the long walk from their parking space at a church to Canada Street in Lake George, where they’d gone to see fireworks, most people seemed happy, with little kids waving flags, old people shuffling along with their families, couples holding hands, dogs. Britta wondered if the dogs would freak out from the noise. She petted quite a few dogs, hoping it would help.
Spider trailed behind, shooting footage of the crowd with her camera, which Britta guessed was her own way of people-watching. In honor of the holiday, she was wearing blue instead of black jeans and a T-shirt that said “Meet me in Montauk” with red hearts.
“I miss the Fourth of July in Miami,” Britta said to Meredith as they waited on line for takeout pizza. “Every year, we get together at my grandmother’s house, all fourteen of us cousins. We watch the fireworks at the Biltmore.”
“Fourteen cousins?” Meredith said.
“Some of them are second cousins. My grandmother roasts a pig and makes the Cuban stuff, and we have apple pie and hot dogs too.”
“That sounds nice.” Meredith didn’t elaborate on what she usually did.
Britta didn’t ask, in case it was nothing. “I guess when you grow up, you stop doing some stuff. It’s sad, though.”
They started back toward Shepard Park, where a band was playing. Ruthie had saved seats. Lake George was probably more “American” than Miami, but it was also a little tacky. Okay, a lot tacky. Thousands of tourists milled around in front of T-shirt shops and the House of Frankenstein Wax Museum. Britta studied the Jack and Sally tattoos on a couple ahead of them.
“Can you hurry her up?” Kate gestured at Spider, who was crawling along, still peering at her camera.
Britta shook her head no. No, she wouldn’t piss off Spider at the beginning of a long evening when she was finally being pleasant. “We should wait for her.”
Kate sighed. “The pizza will get cold.”
Britta fell back beside Spider. “Whatcha doing?”
Spider waved her hand to silence Britta. She panned down the street. Finally, she turned off the camera. “Just taking some crowd footage. Never know when I might need it.”
“You’re very serious about filmmaking.”
Spider actually perked up. “Yeah. I won a contest online for a suicide prevention video I made. And I just entered a short-film contest. I should hear soon.”
“That’s so cool.” Britta hoped she didn’t get bad news. It would ruin her slightly improved mood. “You should put me in a movie.”
Uncharacteristically, Spider laughed. “Okay. What would it be about?”
Ahead of them, Kate and Meredith were gesturing for them to hurry up. Britta ignored them. “Well, someone very beautiful, of course.” She stepped over two Chihuahuas, resisting the urge to pet them. “And talented and funny.”
“And a little full of herself,” Spider said.
“Oh, definitely. Hey, they could be in this too.” Britta looked for Kate. “Hey, Kate! Meredith! Control your FOMO and come back!”
Kate looked back. “Shush!” She waited for them to reach the crosswalk. “Didn’t your mothers tell you it’s rude to yell a lady’s name in public?”
Britta looked at Spider, who nodded that, yeah, that was nuts. Britta said, “Nope. That must be a Georgia thing. As is calling people ‘ladies.’”
“Well, I’m from Georgia, so don’t do it, please.” Kate sailed across the street.
Britta followed. “Kate, don’t you want to be in Spider’s movie? You could be the mysterious young maiden.”
Kate began to answer, then stopped, a stunned expression on her face, like Britta’s cat, Scooby, when Britta sang a high note too close. She backed up a bit, crouched down behind Meredith, and held the pizza box closer to her face.
“What’s wrong?” Meredith said.
“Just walk faster,” Kate said.
They did. And Kate got ahead of them when they finished crossing, walking in the opposite direction of Shepard Park, taking the pizza with her. Britta started to say something, but she felt Spider’s elbow in her ribs. They kept going in their original direction.
When they reached the park, they found Ruthie, ensconced in the perfect location at the top of the hill in sight of the band and with an unobstructed view of the lake.
“How’d you manage this?” Spider asked. “We weren’t that early.”
Ruthie patted the ground beside her. “I am a woman of considerable charms. These young men . . .” She gestured toward a group of college boys nearby. “They were more than willing to share their space with me, especially once I told them I had four young ladies with me.”
“Good job!” Britta held up her hand for Ruthie to high-five.
Ruthie did even as Spider said, “You didn’t, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Ruthie said. “They were just being nice. Where’s the pizza?” She surveyed the bags the girls had brought, full of canned soda and garlic rolls.
“Kate absconded with it,” Meredith said.
“That doesn’t sound like her,” Ruthie said.
Just then, Kate showed up. “There she is,” Spider said.
“And the pizza,” Britta said, “not necessarily in order of importance.”
Kate was still holding the pizza close to her face. She gestured to Britta’s Miami Heat cap. “Can I borrow that?”
“Sure. My hair looks bad, though.” Britta took off the cap and fluffed her hair.
“It’s fine.” Kate tucked her hair up inside the cap as best she could and glanced around.
“Is everything all right, Kate?” Ruthie asked.
Kate must have decided the coast was clear, because she calmed down. “I’m sorry. I thought I saw someone from home.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Kate glanced around again as Britta cracked open the pizza box. “It might be. See, no one knows I’m here, and the woman I saw was one of my mother’s friends, Mrs. Scott. She’s a huge blabbermouth who always brags about her daughter who lives in New York City.”
“You mean you lied to your parents about coming here?” Britta asked. How weird if they both had.
“No. No, of course my parents know where I am. It was my father’s idea, actually, to get me away from Peach Springs.” She lowered her voice more. “I left town because of a scandal.”
A scandal! Britta’s ears perked up. “Are you pregnant? Is it a political opponent’s son?”
“No!” Kate looked so sad that Britta abandoned hope of it being anything juicy. “It’s my father. He took some money he shouldn’t have.”
Spider and Ruthie both said, “Like Bernie Madoff?” at the same moment Britta said, “Like Caroline’s father on 2 Broke Girls?” She used to love that show. Kate even sort of looked like Caroline, all classy and blond.
“Oh, no.” Kate glanced around again. “Nothing as big as
that. He didn’t steal from people. They say he took a bribe, and it’s in the papers, so he sent me away for the summer so I wouldn’t have to deal with the whispers or be hounded by reporters. No one knows where I am, unless Mrs. Scott tells them.” She stopped speaking and sat a little awkwardly.
“That sucks,” Spider said. “I hate people.”
So she’d sort of lied when she said it was her decision to come here. No wonder she’d been so cranky when they met. Britta wanted to reach over and give Kate a hug, but she worried Kate would rebuff her. “Yeah. That does suck.”
Ruthie had no such compunction, for she reached over and wrapped her arms around Kate. Kate hugged her back, saying, “It’s all right. I’ll be fine.” But Britta heard a catch in her voice. “It probably wasn’t even her. Let’s have the pizza before it gets cold.”
She slipped away from Ruthie and fumbled for the pizza box.
“Good idea.” Britta looked around for the paper plates. “It’s getting dark. Uh, anyone do anything interesting today? Spider and I went hiking. It was beautiful.”
“I went to the lake,” Meredith volunteered.
“Um . . .” Kate took a slice of pizza. “The little boy I babysat for scared me to death today. He went on the roof because he likes to pretend he’s a rocket.”
“That’s crazy,” Britta said, appreciating the change of subject. “What if he fell?”
Spider was silent, pushing herself up to her feet to pan the crowd with her camera again. Britta tapped Spider’s leg and gestured to the pizza, so as not to annoy her by talking.
Spider turned off the camera. “Oh yeah, thanks.”
They sat, eating pizza, listening to the cries of children mixed with the strains of the marching band playing John Philip Sousa. Britta again tried to figure out the stories around her. Was the young couple nearby, him with a long, red ponytail, her with a punk haircut dyed blue on the sides, on their first date, about to become engaged, or on the verge of a breakup? She wondered what people thought about them, an old woman with four clearly unrelated girls.
“This music is so cheesy,” the punk-rocker girl said to her boyfriend.
The red-haired boy answered, “Of course it’s cheesy. That’s what the Fourth of July in Lake George is about. I like it.”
Finally, the band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever” (exactly as the band in Miami would have) and the first red, white, and blue fireworks filled the night sky.
41
Kate
KATE CLOSED HER eyes, hearing the silence of the night. Back home in Georgia, there would still be fireworks, homemade or store-bought, going off all night, set off by neighborhood boys, riling up the dog. Here, it seemed like that one display was enough for people. Now, it was silent, fireworks still dancing under her closed eyelids.
She’d confessed her deep, dark secret to girls she’d known less than a week—and they hadn’t cared. Or, if they did care, they hadn’t blamed her for it. Why had she told them?
She thought of poor Ray-Ray, whose mother was a drug addict. He’d suffer for that, as Kate would suffer for her father’s conduct. Yet there, too, people wanted to help. Kate did. And Mrs. Steele next door. Spider had said she hated people, but they weren’t all bad.
Maybe when the thing you dreaded most actually happened, it was a relief because it meant things could start getting better. It felt good, telling them the truth.
Kate decided to call her mother back tomorrow and find out what was happening with Dad, what she could do. Weirdly, she missed her mother.
With fireworks still behind her eyes, she fell asleep.
The next morning, she woke early, walked up the hill, and called her mother.
Her brother, Blake, answered the phone.
“Wait, why are you home? I thought you were at your computer thing.” Her brother had left days before her for some fancy “program” at a college in Boston.
“Yeah, I ditched that.”
“Oh, wow. Was that a mistake!”
“Nah.” Hearing his voice, Kate could picture him lying on the floor, feet up on his labradoodle, Simon, in his mess of a room—he chased the maid off when she tried to clean it. Who knew if they had a maid anymore? “It was super boring, all these kids who thought they were geniuses. What kind of weirdo wants to go to school in the summer? It was just something for Mom to brag about me doing, and now, that’s sort of shot, right?”
Good point.
“So, what are you doing at home?” she asked, feeling guilty that she wasn’t there suffering with him. “And is Simon there?” For some reason, she wanted to make sure.
“Of course Simon’s here,” he said, and then, clearly talking to the dog, he added, “Aren’t you, boy? Aren’t you?” In his normal voice, he said, “The usual. Gaming, and I went to the Springs with Hamill and Trey yesterday.”
Kate stretched her calves. “Mom let you? Their moms let them?”
“Yeah, Mom let me. If anything, she’s happy they aren’t kicking me out of their houses, with Dad being a criminal and all.”
“Don’t say that!” Kate stopped stretching. “So, should I come home?”
A pause, and she heard Simon moving around. “Quit it, boy.” Finally, Blake said, “Why?”
“I don’t know, because our family’s in crisis, and our parents are suffering?”
“And you coming home would somehow make it suck less?”
He was such a jerk. “Make me feel better?”
“Or make everyone else feel more guilty. God, Kate, Dad screwed up, maybe Mom did too. Why should you suffer?”
Which totally pointed up the difference between older and younger siblings, Kate thought. Younger ones felt like everyone owed them. Older sibs felt responsible. But Blake wasn’t wrong. If she couldn’t do anything, why suffer, especially since Dad had paid for her to be here?
“Mother says people think I had something to do with it.”
Another pause, and Blake muttered something Kate couldn’t understand. Kate tried to take a deep breath. The air was cool and smelled like pine trees.
“People are gonna think stupid things no matter what you do. Better to live your life.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Kate did some lunges to keep warm. “Good talk, Blake.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Tell Mom I’m good.”
“Okay.”
Kate hung up and jogged down the hill before she was tempted to call Colin.
42
Spider
INT. SPIDER’S BEDROOM — MORNING
Spider is lying in bed, unable to will herself to move. If she died, would anyone notice?
STIFF. LEGS STRETCHED out ahead of her in place, not because she wanted them there but because they wouldn’t go anywhere else. They felt like they were bound by a kidnapper’s rope.
Arms, slightly better. Slightly. Sitting on the ground last night—or, rather, going hiking on a day when she knew she’d be sitting on the ground at night—had been a rookie move. Now, she lay still one minute, two, rotating her ankles, stretching her shoulders, preparatory to rolling out of bed. At home, she’d have texted Mom to bring ibuprofen. As it was . . .
“Alicia!” Ruthie, overly cheerful, knocked on the door. “Are you awake? What do you want in your omelet?”
Ruthie had boundless energy for someone in her seventies. Omelets. What was next, running a marathon?
But Spider tried to keep her voice level. She didn’t want to sound pathetic. “Ruthie, hi. I’m not hungry yet. Can you bring me my pills? And some water? Please?”
Ruthie cracked open the door. “Too much hiking?”
Spider waffled between saying she was okay and the truth. “I’m okay.”
“Do you need help?”
Spider reached over to her nightstand and tried to push herself up even though she couldn’t bend at the waist. “Drugs will help.” But not enough. They just dulled it.
“I can bring up breakfast if you want
.”
“I’ll come down later.” Though she dreaded the stairs. Walking down stairs wasn’t bad, a controlled fall. But then she’d have to walk up. Probably she should have taken the downstairs bedroom but, she realized, she didn’t want to be isolated no matter how much she complained about the noise.
Speaking of noise . . . two minutes later, Britta was at the door. She didn’t knock. She held out water and a bottle of pills. “Ruthie says should you take this with food?” Britta’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, like someone visiting a cancer patient.
“It’s fine.” She held out her hand. Screw Ruthie for sending Britta up to feel sorry for her when she’d just wanted a few minutes to herself.
“Sure.” Britta placed the glass on Spider’s nightstand. “Should I open the bottle?”
“I can do it.” Some days, childproof caps were difficult, but today, her hands were okay. It was knees and back, mostly. She opened the bottle with what she hoped was a normal amount of effort. But, probably because Britta was watching, she took twice as long as usual.
Britta turned away. “I can leave. I just wanted to ask you something. It’s about Ruthie.”
Spider shook out the pill and dry-swallowed it, one of her talents. She wanted Britta to go. But it seemed even more pathetic to send her away.
“Shoot,” she said, which was a Ruthie thing to say.
“Every time I’m in a crowd, like last night, I think about who else is there. There are so many people. Anyone could be there, like how Kate saw that woman from Georgia.”
“Thought she saw.”
“Thought she saw. But she might have seen her, all the way from Georgia. For all I know, the love of my life could have been there last night, like dragged by his parents.”
“Uh-huh.” Trying really hard not to tell her to go away. Britta had been nice yesterday. Spider could be nice for two more minutes.
“Or the love of your life,” Britta continued.