by Emily Gould
She signaled for the check but then didn’t even feint toward it when it came. Callie could afford to pick it up. Callie had no idea what anything really cost.
* * *
Walking back to the subway Laura felt numb, and not in a good way. Callie’s offer made it seem like the universe was trying to tell her something, but for the moment at least she was determined to ignore it. The universe could go fuck itself.
She got a seat to herself on the F train when it came. Even better, the seat next to hers had a pen mark on it that looked like dirt, so no one sat down next to her. She spread out into the unaccustomed space, took out her phone, and prepared to lose herself completely in a stream of images of other people’s happy lives.
Sunsets, succulents, babies, pets, and food usually soothed her, but right now the magic wasn’t working. She had an echo of the same thought she’d had about the window boxes that morning—someone had fanned out that avocado, planted those succulents, given birth to that adorable baby, and picked out the organic cotton onesie and then buttoned it up despite his thrashing. All of that labor, all for what? So that Laura would have something to immerse her tired brain in on the way home to her less picturesque life? She had the impulse to add her own photo to the top of the feed, and she scrolled through her camera roll looking for something to add, but there was nothing there that might make her life seem desirable to any imagined outside observer. She should have taken a selfie with Callie. That would have gotten a ton of likes, but it wasn’t the kind of thing she would ever do. It would feel wrong, for the same reason accepting Callie’s offer would seem wrong. She was determined to succeed or not based on her own merit, not her proximity to Callie’s fame. Part of her knew this was dumb. If you really wanted to succeed, you’d use everything in your arsenal.
But what would “success” mean, then? What would constitute success for Laura? It was too late to replicate what Callie had, and anyway, that was a level of fame she wasn’t even sure she wanted. Just being able to make music, and perform for people who liked it, would be enough, she thought. Not having to listen to flat scales played on the recorder by bored eight-year-olds anymore would be a bonus.
But she was too scared, or too busy, or too distracted, or just too tired, to do what was necessary to make her dreams come true. And also, if she devoted her entire mind and heart to making music, who would expend the mental energy required to keep Marie and Kayla safe and alive?
She found a photo of them that she’d taken a few weeks earlier, in a rare moment when they were both smiling about something, over a plate of french fries at the diner near their apartment. They were both such beautiful girls, and still so young; they hadn’t forced their faces into the angles they used for their own selfies and were caught in natural expressions, unselfconscious, almost like they were still children. She tagged it #tbt, even though it wasn’t Thursday, and used the last bit of signal before the train went under the East River to post it, so that it seemed like at least she had accomplished something today.
* * *
Marie and Tom’s high school was tucked into a banal non-neighborhood behind Lincoln Center. They had two classes together, which were the high points of Marie’s days. As a non-prodigy, she flew under the teachers’ radar in most of her classes. She showed up and did her work, and she played in the jazz band, making up part of the sound that made it possible for the genius students’ solos to sparkle in a competent setting. If you reliably did that, no one really cared what else you did.
They were allowed to go off campus, which still felt thrilling. You had to get back for your next class, so you couldn’t go far, but just going to the unfamiliar stores on Broadway or even dipping into the park for a few minutes, watching rich old ladies walk their small dogs quickly past someone sleeping under a pile of trash bags, gave Marie a thrill of independence.
Today she went farther, skipping her afternoon classes and then, for something to do, getting a sandwich at a sad office-lunch place on Columbus and taking it to the park, where she sat on a bench next to twentysomething girls in ballet slippers and J.Crew print dresses. The sky above them was spectacular, full of perfectly shaped clouds that seemed to hover just above the tops of the changing trees. Marie ignored the leaves and the clouds and looked at her phone.
She’d already found the one interview Daisy had ever given about Dylan, from soon after he’d died. Daisy had been rude and aggressive with the reporter, and had tried to make her feel guilty about prying into Dylan’s life. Marie could see why her mother had described Daisy as awful—but then, who wouldn’t be angry at a reporter, in that situation? She tried to find anything more recent about Daisy, searching her name plus the town where Dylan had grown up, and she found almost nothing, except for an email address for info at the candle shop where the article had said she’d worked in 2003. She decided to hold off on writing until she could talk to Tom about what, exactly, she was supposed to be asking Daisy for.
When she got bored of sitting in the park, she went to go try on clothes at Urban Outfitters, trekking up Broadway till its giant sign loomed over her. They were still pushing nineties-throwback pretty hard, with some ye olde rave culture accents. She took an armful of dresses into the dressing room and watched herself carefully as she tried them on. She took photos of herself in the ones she found especially cute, but didn’t post them anywhere in case her mom was snooping; she didn’t want to get caught cutting class. She liked stripping off one outfit and putting on another and seeing herself as a potentially different person. Maybe a person who wore a shiny crushed-velvet baby-doll dress would be incapable of feeling sad or bored, or of being boring.
She didn’t buy it, or any of the other ones. She left and headed back toward school to see if she could arrange to be there just as Tom was walking out, at which point they would naturally take the subway home together.
As she reached the intersection next to the school’s imposing front stairs she saw him standing on the bottom stair, scanning the horizon, and thought with a ripple of gratification that he’d been waiting for her. But then he made eye contact with a senior boy she didn’t know. Tom gave him one of those awkward macho half hugs and handed him something, then quickly crossed the street and kept walking, fast. It was almost as obvious as the deals they’d witnessed in the decrepit goat area of the park, where sometimes people would stand there counting out change aloud. She decided to try to catch up with Tom.
Marie hadn’t done a lot of drugs, but she knew that she liked them. She also knew, because of her dad, that she should stay far away from anything addictive, even candy, probably, but there was plenty of time later in life to be virtuous and clean. Ever since she’d popped her first prescription benzos and felt the vise around her sternum loosen, she’d felt entitled to pursue other paths toward that same feeling. She never got fucked up, she just did enough to access a looser, more carefree version of herself. So far she’d done this only with small quantities of pills, her own and other people’s, and with weed, which often made her feel bad in a different, novel way, and with quantities of beer and wine so tiny that her parents or whoever’s parents would never think twice about their having gone missing. She wasn’t stupid about any of this. She felt the same way about it as she did about school: basically, once you understood the system and how the rules worked, you could break whichever ones you wanted, within reason.
Tom turned and looked up just in time to make eye contact with Marie, who was still across the street. She waved and gave him an eyebrow raise to indicate that she understood what had just gone down. He raised a fingertip to his lips. He thought he was so cool, but he also sort of was cool. She crossed the street to meet him, and he greeted her by holding out his hand, which was almost as good as a kiss. Inside his hand was a little plastic bag full of brown twigs.
“Want to come over and eat mushrooms?” Obviously, she said yes.
* * *
Tom’s parents weren’t home, and his entire house was empty. He li
ved in the attic, the highest floor of his parents’ mind-boggling brownstone on State Street in Brooklyn Heights. The ground floor had a kitchen and a den and the informal feel of a normal home—it was about the same size and shape as Marie’s parents’ entire apartment—but the parlor floor had high ceilings and large paintings on the walls and immaculate, light-colored furniture and carpets. That floor seemed intended only for display. Then the next floor was bedrooms, and the top floor was Tom’s. It had slanted roofs, a worn-out but comfortable leather couch, a large TV, and an elaborate shelving system where Tom stored his record player and records and his books about music. It was about three times the size of the room Marie shared with Kayla, and it was immaculate. They sat on the couch, and he poured her a glass of red wine from a bottle he’d grabbed nonchalantly from a rack in the kitchen as they’d passed through it.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, and of course she had other friends who lived in nice apartments, but for some reason knowing that Tom’s family was superrich made him less appealing. It was easy to be cool if you could afford all of coolness’s trappings without having to think too hard about how you’d get them. She drank all the wine that he poured for her almost immediately and then refilled her own glass as Tom shuffled through his records, deciding what to play. The doorbell rang downstairs.
It turned out that what Tom had planned was more of a party situation than a romantic thing with just the two of them. He’d invited his best friend, Jamie, and horribly, he’d also invited Sara K.
If Marie was unremarkable, except for the unwanted remarkableness of her mood disorder, Sara K. was the opposite. She was the shining star of their class, a true virtuoso who could pick up any instrument and play. She could sing, too, in a lilting, unobtrusive, but beautiful contralto that made it impossible to imagine casting anyone else as the lead in school musicals. And while all of that was undoubtedly nerdy, and could have made it impossible for Sara K. to be cool, she was also so attractive—in an interesting Olivia Munn way, not a straightforward-blond way—that she was rendered cool automatically. She was nice to everyone and got good grades, but it was also possible to imagine her daintily nibbling the brown twigs in the packet that Tom had pocketed earlier. She could probably do that and still play a concerto without missing a note. And if Tom had invited her, that meant he liked her.
Marie tried to greet her with blasé equanimity, but Sara K. was genuinely, maddeningly nice. “Oh my God, I’m so glad another girl is here. It’s usually such a sausage fest when Tom has people over. What did you say your name was?” She didn’t even bother to introduce herself; it would have seemed silly, like Beyoncé saying, “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Beyoncé.”
Everyone had a glass of wine and it seemed like they were pretending to be adults, sipping from their glasses and talking about the nuances of the record they were listening to. Jamie and Tom sat on the couch, and Sara K. perched on the end of Tom’s bed with one long leg tucked up under her and her other foot, in a striped cotton sock, tapping on the floor in time to the music. Marie would never have thought of sitting on the bed; it seemed much too intimate. Sara K. sat there in a way that made it seem like she’d done it before.
Marie had to do something to make it clear that she was the one who deserved Tom’s attention, that she had a firmer claim to him. Her thoughts were already getting a little bit dulled by the wine. It was impossible to compete with Sara K. via any of the obvious metrics: hotness, talent, popularity. But Marie was Dylan’s daughter, and probably the way to make Tom choose her over Sara K., who was now leafing through the stack of magazines on his bedside table, was to make it clear that she was her dad’s true heir.
“So, about those mushrooms?” she interrupted loudly, in the middle of an unrelated conversation.
Tom looked up at her in surprise. “Yeah? Are you sure? I had thought you were chickening out.”
“I’m sure! Bring on the drugs! I love drugs!” said Marie, trying to defuse the heaviness of the situation by acting like it was hilarious. She wasn’t sure what mushrooms did, or were supposed to do.
Tom smiled at her. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m just buzzed. I’m just silly,” she said, smiling at him in a way she hoped was winsome, or sexy, or sophisticated.
“What drugs are we talking about here?” Sara K. said. “On a Tuesday?”
“ ‘Got the club goin’ up on a Tuesday,’ ” sang Jamie. He refilled his wineglass to the brim and put the empty bottle on the floor, then pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes.
* * *
In the immaculate subway-tiled bathroom one floor downstairs from Tom’s attic bedroom, Marie puked and puked and puked. Then she felt fine—better than fine, actually. She felt better than she ever had in her life. She felt like she had been given some kind of Advil for the soul. Everything that had ever bothered her no longer did. She was excited to never refill her antidepressant prescription ever again. It was clear that she no longer needed any kind of drug except this one.
She made her way up the stairs again. The banister felt soft in her hand. Even the stairs themselves felt soft under her feet. She grinned at everyone as she reentered the room, and they smiled back at her. The room revolved around her, but slowly and gently, the way the record on Tom’s turntable was twirling, making a low, raspy hum. The side had finished, but no one had flipped it over. She went over to do so and marveled at the grain of the black vinyl caressing her fingertips; it felt like the gentle lick of a cat’s tongue. She lowered the needle with infinite care and gentleness, the way her mother had taught her to do when she was a little girl.
Her mother. Marie hadn’t texted or called to say where she would be after school. It would be better to do that sooner rather than later. It would have been better to have called an hour ago. But now she didn’t know where her phone was, and almost couldn’t imagine the effort of finding it. She decided to rest for a while before she undertook that project, and maybe have another glass of wine. She poured one and sat down next to Sara K. on the bed. Sara K. hadn’t eaten the mushrooms, and she was walking around a lot, creating a blurry streak wherever she moved. She looked like she was trying to find something, and then it seemed that she had found it: her shoes. She tied them on.
“Okay, well, I’ll see you guys around. Try not to get in too much trouble,” she said, seeming to be talking to Tom specifically, and then on her way out the door she touched his head and ruffled his hair with a gesture that seemed lovingly possessive. But it didn’t matter, because Marie had won. Sara K. was leaving, and she was still here. Tom waited a moment after the door closed, and then came to sit down on the bed next to her. He looked up at Jamie.
“Hey, will you go downstairs and grab another bottle of wine?”
“Aren’t your parents coming home soon? I don’t want to run into them and have to, like, have a conversation right now.” He giggled slightly and did a little half twirl.
“They’re at some dinner or gala or something, they won’t be home for hours yet. Don’t worry about it. Make yourself at home down there, if you want. Like, watch some TV or something.”
Jamie laughed again. “Ohhkay. See ya.” Marie’s reaction time was so slowed down that it took the click of the door closing behind Jamie for her to realize what had happened, what was about to happen. Involuntarily, she tensed up all over as Tom turned to her and leaned in for a kiss.
The edges of Tom’s face blurred as it moved closer to hers. His body, too, was close, and for a second this was wonderful—cozy and warm, exciting but not in a heart-pounding, panic-inducing way. But then something in the way that he clutched at parts of her started to feel impersonal and claustrophobic. They still had on all their clothes and she was trying to kiss him, and in a way he was kissing her, too, sort of haphazardly, his mouth off to the side of her mouth.
He began pressing her down harder and harder into the bed. She tried to just roll with it, focusing on the parts of the experience that were enjoyable and
trying to relax and become smaller, so that it wouldn’t feel bad when he pressed down. But she was too fucked up to talk herself into thinking that this was fun. It was time to make him stop. She gave him a gentle shove and rolled out from under him, over to the side of the bed.
“Okay, that’s enough for now.”
To Tom’s credit, he didn’t protest. He even sort of apologized. “I’m really out of it,” he said. “We should try this again when we’re more sober.”
He helped her find her shoes and even used her phone to get an Uber, which she would not have been capable of doing. The phone seemed so small, and the icons on it blurred under her fingertips. He waited with her downstairs till the car came, and opened its door for her, and kissed her gently, in the way that he should have kissed her on his bed.
The ride home wasn’t good, but at least she didn’t throw up in the car. She was hoping that somehow she would be able to sneak in, but it was still relatively early, and when she opened the door of the apartment (using keys, and deeply ingrained muscle memory), her mom and Matt and Kayla were sitting at the dinner table, eating taquitos from Trader Joe’s.
* * *
Marie’s drunkenness was so egregiously obvious that at first Laura wasn’t sure whether to be angry or concerned. They made eye contact, and then Marie slurred something about having food poisoning and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Matt turned to Laura as though expecting her to go do something, so she got up out of her seat but then just stood there, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do.
Marie was only fourteen. Laura had thought she had more time before this kind of thing would start to happen, more time to figure out how to be stern and parental but yet understanding and cool enough to keep lines of communication open. But all she could muster right now was anger, muted by exhaustion. The tipsiness from her drink with Callie had shaded quickly into a bone-achy tiredness—hence the half-assed dinner. Why was Marie doing this to her right now? Without saying anything to Matt, she eye-contact-pleaded with him to handle it, but he shook his head. Marie was her daughter; she was the first line of discipline. That had always been their deal.