“Like Mom has.” The realization sinks through me like a stone. “That’s why you wanted to find her. Not to save her or anything. Not like she needed it. Dad . . . you lied about the curse,” I say gently. “My whole life, I’ve been doing things . . . the way I thought she wouldn’t. Because I didn’t want to be like Mom, and I thought if I tripped one time, I’d just keep falling, like she did.”
“I shouldn’t have put that on you.” His breath hitches.
“But if you told me the truth about how bad it was for you, maybe I could’ve helped you.”
“I don’t know how. I don’t know how I expected your mother to help me. I don’t know how I could be helped.”
It’s the illness talking, I tell myself. It’s not like I’ve never heard this before during the bad times. And Dad’s right, I don’t know what it’s like to be sick that way.
But yeah, I get fear. I get being afraid that you don’t have anything to say to people, so you never talk to people. I get never going to parties because you’re afraid you won’t fit in at the party. I get loving the same boy for eight years and never doing anything about it, but that’s okay because part of the reason you love him is that he’s always around for you to not do anything about. I get closing up your heart because you’re afraid to look inside and find out it’s hollow. I get choosing to be alone because you’re afraid that if the choice is out of your hands, you’ll simply be lonely, and alone is okay, it’s almost cool, in a way. But loneliness isn’t just being alone.
That’s what my bedtime story taught me, anyway. Except I’m not so sure. I think maybe fear is worse, the useless kind that doesn’t help you cram for a test or jazz you up before bungee jumping, but sneaks in and strangles you. My mom was so afraid her own daughter would reject her, she never tried to find me, so she sat alone with her sketchbook.
If she had been less afraid to be lonely . . . If Dad hadn’t let me believe it was the most awful thing possible . . . If, if, if.
Whether it’s dead or alive, we can’t change the past.
There are a million more questions I could ask, the whens and the hows and the whys. But whatever facts I might collect, however I might chip away at the pain of this past week, there’s only a single “because” that really matters. Because Dad isn’t well right now, and there are reasons for that, but no one perfect answer. So all of the truths in the world aren’t as important as this one:
“I want you to come home,” I tell him. I thought knocking on my mom’s door was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but as I sit up and look up at my dad and he stares back at me, damp-eyed and wilting, I think this might be it. “And I want you to take your meds and get help again, for me. I know it’s like . . . if you could fix whatever was wrong by pouring dry cement . . . I’m not saying it right. Just, I know it’s really hard. But . . . I’m a kid. You have to be around for me and take care of me. ’Cause you’re my dad. And I love you and whatever.”
“And whatever.” He sniffles. “I’m not right, bou bui.”
“I know. You’ll come with me?”
“I’ll come.”
“Okay. Oh, except I don’t exactly have a car, in the technical sense.” Before he can change his mind or mine, I smudge the tears out of my eyes, pick up the telephone on the lampless nightstand, and dial our home number.
“Hel-lo?” a high-pitched, un-Lindy-ish voice answers cautiously.
“Jessa?”
“Imogene-fucking-Scott!” she screams into the speaker. “Where are you? You know everyone is going batshit over here?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Uh, your stepmother, for one? And your actual mom? And my mom? And me?”
She tells me the story of last night. How Lindy came home to an empty house around nine and knocked on the Prices’ door right away, assuming I’d skipped out to see Jessa. Chad was staying overnight with Omar Wolcott in his dorm room at BU, and Jessa was on a date with Jeremy; still pissed after our fight, she’d officially gotten back together with him, to spite me (or so she says). They had gone to the movies in Framingham, and by the time they emerged from the theater and answered their phones, it was after ten. Under the pressure of Lindy’s Authority Voice, Jessa folded like a paper airplane. She told my stepmother we’d been searching for Dad since the start of vacation, and in the process had found my real mother. After giving Lindy my mother’s number, Jessa was promptly grounded for aiding and abetting.
It was midnight when Lindy called Sidonie, and by then I definitely should’ve made it back to Sugarbrook station. They compared notes and figured out pretty quickly that I was headed to Victory Island. This is when Lindy called the police.
“Ugh,” I groan.
“As if she wouldn’t,” Jessa points out. “You’re lucky there’s not, like, an Amber Alert about you.”
Who was called out of bed but Officer Griffin. She showed up in the early a.m. to interview Jessa and Lindy and assure them I couldn’t have gotten as far as the island. Not a seventeen-year-old without a car, not in this weather. I was probably stuck at a station in between—probably in Boston—and they would notify the police right away to look out for me. Lindy was to stay by the phone. When Officer Griffin left to set things in motion, it was after five, and I was just about to board the early train from North Station to Newburyport.
Lindy did not stay by the phone. After a restless few hours, she asked Dr. Van Tassel to babysit the landline at 42 Cedar Lane, with Jessa keeping her mother company. Lindy was presently headed east to Victory Island to cruise along the beach.
“Huh.” I struggle to take this all in while keeping an eye on Dad, now pacing back and forth in front of the curtained windows. “And where’s your mom?”
“In the bathroom. I’m in your room. I was freaking out and just waiting, so I’ve been reading that book by your bed. Rebecca? Not super romantic.”
“No, that’s the cool thing! It’s not about love, it’s about obsession. Rebecca-the-person was horrible, but Rebecca-the-mystery was this fixation that almost kept this girl from loving and being loved. It’s like a mystery about the dangers of a mystery and—” I notice Dad watching me. “Never mind. Not the time for this. Can you tell your mom we’re okay? I should probably call Lindy ASAP.”
“Wait, we? You found your dad? You actually found him?”
I smile, though she can’t see. “I did. Look, Jessa, I’m sorry I was so horrible and you were all going batshit. You’re a really great friend.”
“Me too. I am also sorry that you were so horrible.”
“Hmm. See you when I’m not grounded?”
“Yeah,” she says, and laughs. “We should be in our late thirties by then. I love you, Im.”
After that, the only thing left to do is call Lindy’s cell and ask for her help, so I do, and she yells a little and cries a little and so do I, and then I ask her to come get us and take us home.
NINETEEN
Because you can’t lie to your stepmother over and over again, break into a hospital records storage room, drive all across the state with ill-gotten funds, skip town on a Greyhound without telling anyone, spend the night in a Boston train station, strike out for the coast all on your own, and face zero consequences, I am indeed grounded for quite a while. School is allowed, as are trips to a family therapist with Dad and Lindy, and, shockingly, visits with Jessa once her own punishment is lifted. But aside from seeing the ex–Sugarbrook Sandpipers as they filter in and out of the Prices’ home, my first brush with the public comes over three months later. Prom night.
The theme turns out to be “A Night Among the Stars.” Except the prom committee must’ve reached a stalemate when trying to decide which stars we’d be spending the night among. Exhibit A: when we pull up to Crystal Peak, a big glass banquet hall that’s the second-nicest in Sugarbrook, cardboard cutouts of paparazzi are propped outside the entrance, crowded around the faux-crystal columns, hunched behind cardboard cameras. Meanwhile, gold and silver stars dangle from the ceil
ing of the portico overhead.
“This”—Chad twists around in the driver’s seat of his mom’s Solstice—“is the classiest goddamn soiree I’ve ever seen. You think they’ll serve Grey Poupon?”
“I bet that joke would be funny if we were old and uncool.” Jessa stands in the backseat beside me, sliding gracefully over the side without using the door, floor-length dress and all. A block back, she asked Chad to pull over and put the convertible top down for our big entrance, than coast fifteen miles per hour the rest of the way so we’d arrive unruffled. I follow through the actual door and join her, my low heels clomping on the pavement.
Chad flips his sunglasses up onto his head to look at us. “You girls are heartbreakers,” he says, sweetly and sincerely.
I blush; old habit. Jessa is beautiful, right at home among the paper paparazzi. Her plum-purple dress has a deep neckline, with a drop waist that hugs her body all the way down till just above her knees, where it flares gently out and pools around her pale gold pumps. I don’t know how she can dance in it, but as Jessa demonstrated to the seizing beats of Nicki Minaj in her bedroom, dance she can. A knotted gold chain glitters below her collarbone. Her red-gold hair, parted deep to the side, floats in finger waves over her shoulders.
I’m wearing my Suzanne’s Dress for Less purchase, wine red, with its full knee-length skirt swinging. Fabulous Aunt Annette, enlisted as our stylist for the evening, gave me a coiled updo pinned into a side bun, a dark red lip, and a light smoky eye. And because we didn’t know the etiquette for corsages versus boutonnieres when your prom date is in fact your best friend, we’re both wearing matching corsages with white roses.
“Can you pick us up at midnight? At Mackenzie Winn’s?” Jessa asks her brother. Mackenzie’s throwing a post-prom bonfire, to which the elite of mock trial—and probably half the class—have been invited.
“Anything for you two.” Chad winks and flips his glasses down. They’re mostly unnecessary now that the sun is setting, but he’s still handsome and blond and almost as perfect as ever.
“Nerd!” Jessa shouts affectionately as he drives off through an obstacle course of sparkling and tuxedoed seniors. Chad’s our extra-generous chauffer tonight. Maybe because he’s grateful we never implicated him in our schemes. Maybe because he felt guilty/thankful/confused (or disappointed?) when I relieved him of his prom duties. Maybe because we are heartbreakers. I could spend hours unpacking Chadwick Price’s motives, but that’s another habit I’m trying to kick. It’s getting easier. Like, Omar Wolcott asked me to come out with him to the Friendly Toast once I was ungrounded and released back into the wild, and when I breezily informed Chad, I did not pause to dissect the arc of his eyebrow or analyze the downward curve of his full mouth, millimeter by millimeter. And when he and Pari split awkwardly apart after two months of winky faces, I didn’t even gloat.
Progress! Personal growth!
Beyond the big glass double doors of Crystal Peak, inside the big glass foyer, an actual photographer in a white tux starts to take our picture. “Wait!” Jessa says. Looking deeply bored, he lowers his camera while Jessa turns to me, patting her hair smooth with one palm. “How do I look?”
I give her the compliment I think will mean the most to her. “You look just like Taylor Swift.”
“Seriously?” She beams.
“What about me?”
“Perfect. You’re so elegant! Like a sexy Asian Kate Middleton!”
We wrap our arms around each other’s bare shoulders, shivering a little in the overcool air-conditioning inside the hall, and smile through our goose bumps.
“One more!” she cries, folding one slim, perfectly spray-tanned arm around the back of my neck and the other around my waist to dip me. I lift my lacy black kitten heel off the floor like I’m so flustered by the butterflies of love, I can’t keep both feet on the ground.
The flash pops. “Okay, okay,” the photographer dismisses us.
We head into the main hall, where Exhibit B: a plush red carpet stretches from the entrance across the parquet dance floor to the buffet table in back of the long room. Over the table a Welcome, Sugarbrook High banner hangs from the ceiling, midnight blue, painted with planets.
Puzzling theme decorations aside, Crystal Peak is actually beautiful. Set away from the road on a wooded hill off Acorn Drive, it’s surrounded on all sides by towering pin oaks, and the sun slanting through the trees casts green leaf light through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Out back is a patio where kids are taking pictures. “Want to go see?” I ask. We make our way across the dance floor, still sparsely populated because it’s early. Jessa pauses to say hello to loads of people—mostly drooling boys—and I wave to a few of them. I even accept a hug from Katie Rodriguez in her sparkly, sky-blue ball gown.
“You’re like an Urban Outfitters model, Imogene!” she assures me.
“You too, definitely. But prettier.”
“Oh my god, that’s so sweet!”
I don’t really know her. I don’t know many of them, even after twelve years in the same small schools, twelve years of going to the same pizza parties and joining the same extracurriculars. But I kind of love them in the fuzzy, glowing, Barbara Walters camera filter of graduation and permanent good-byes. I wish I’d known it would be like this. I wish I’d gotten to know them, let them get to know me.
I’ll do better at college, I promise myself. I’ll have to—at the end of August, while I’m moving into my dorm room at Emerson College in Boston, Jessa will set out for the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. She hasn’t picked a discipline yet, but she’ll figure it out. She’s her own kind of genius, my best friend.
Stopping at the buffet to grab plastic flutes of “champagne” that tastes spot-on for ginger ale, we slide open the glass patio doors and go into the flushed early June air. Flattening our dresses under our butts, we perch on a bench facing west, where the evening sun bobs pink and orange over the silhouetted treetops.
A few yards away, Lee Jung and his sophomore girlfriend, Cassidy Meyer, lean against the railing, holding their phones with outstretched arms and snapping pictures of themselves kissing with the sunset behind them. Her hair is braided in a stiff, bejeweled halo; his is gelled into a black slick. Between tonguing and posing, Lee catches sight of me. He flushes, looks away, and hurries Cassidy back inside.
“Like, there but for the grace of god goes you,” Jessa snickers.
“He was nice. Sweaty hands, though. No taste in music. He put Chris Brown on my mix CDs.”
Shaking our heads, we gulp our champale.
My cell phone vibrates inside the impractically small and beautifully beaded clutch Lindy gave me. One of the conditions of my freedom is I have to check in frequently. I don’t really mind. I mean, I know I’m supposed to think it’s annoying and overprotective, but Lindy says family isn’t blood, necessarily; it’s a thousand little choices we make every day. We choose to trust each other and forgive each other and go to the pasta place for dinner even though some of us would rather eat sushi. Dad didn’t choose to be sick, but he chose to go back to therapy and take his meds and to be there for us. And maybe I didn’t choose to have an around-the-corner-from-average family, or to get a new stepmother when I was in high school, but I can choose to stick by her while Dad’s getting better. I’m trying to let her in, like I know she wants me to. When I opened the door of the Tiki Motel room to see Lindy standing there, I thought she’d run straight to Dad. She loves him, after all. But the first thing she did was pull me in and crush me against her for a long moment, muttering into my ear, “If you ever scare me like that again, Imogene Mei Scott, I will have you surgically attached to me.”
I’m glad she and Dad have each other.
The text is a picture message from Dad, clearly taken by Lindy. He sits in his big red armchair, toasting with a wineglass full of fruit punch (the carton is clearly visible beside him). Below is the caption: Enjoy your big night, Immy. Be smart. Tell the boys you’re saving all yo
ur dances for Jesus.
I text back: Safe at the prom. Enjoy your Hitchcock marathon, party animals. Love you.
Jessa leans in to read over my shoulder. “Aww!”
“Yeah, we’re precious. What’s Jeremy doing tonight?”
“Probably staring at my picture for hours without blinking.” She smiles and bats her eyelashes.
I want to say he couldn’t possibly, unless it was taped to his mirror. Except making fun of Jeremy is such a low-hanging fruit, it’s practically a potato. What matters is that he makes her happy (even when he makes her miserable, I guess).
As the sun flares in our eyes, Jessa swats away a small cloud of gnats—it’s a fact of life that Sugarbrook is beset by them every time the weather warms—then hooks her arm around mine. “I’m gonna miss you, Im.”
“Me too. A lot.”
“But I’ll be back for every single vacation.”
“And until then, every painting you make can be of my exquisite face.”
“Yeah, and, like, your first literary masterpiece can be all about me!”
“Oh, definitely.”
She pries her iPhone from her own tiny purse and aims it at me. “Want to take a picture to send to your mom?”
I shrug. I don’t know if we’re at a selfie-sharing phase in our relationship. I’ve seen her once since February: the week after Dad came home, when she drove up to Sugarbrook to see him. I don’t know what they talked about—they went into the office and shut the doors behind them—but it wasn’t a long visit, and he seemed okay when she left. He came out and patted my cheek, then took his pre-dinner pills. While he brewed his customary six o’clock coffee, I finally got around to asking why he’d lied about he and Mom being married.
He watched the coffee trickle down into the pot. “I guess I wanted you to think you’d had a perfectly normal family once, even if you couldn’t remember it. Pretty dumb, huh, bou bui?”
The Mystery of Hollow Places Page 19