by Allison Parr
I’d last seen Sophie Salisbury at graduation five years ago, when she stepped on my robe and made me trip as we all walked into the stadium to take our seats. I would have been perfectly happy to let another five years go by without seeing her.
Now, she stood before me in a short blue dress, her heavily highlighted hair flowing free and straight over her shoulders. She was just a little too pretty, too thin, too perfect, enough that she resembled Barbie more than a real person. I wondered if her golden glow was of the sun-cancer or tanning-booth-cancer variety.
David gave me another look that said behave.
Sophie smiled. “Of course I do.” She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me in a delicate, limp hug. “I’m so glad you could come!”
She’d stunned me into immobility. What was that supposed to mean? This was my house. She was the stranger.
“Why don’t you girls set the table?” Mom suggested. “Dinner’s almost ready, and people start arriving at six-thirty. David, go get the drinks from the garage.”
“Of course,” Sophie chirped, already taking the plates out. I tried not to scowl as I removed the silverware. I followed her into the dining room, watching with no little disdain as she lay each plate down with a flourish.
Okay, I had to get a grip. Maybe she had changed. We had both grown up, right? Sophie might be an amazing person.
“Are you going to the reunion?”
And the first thing we talked about was high school. “Yes.”
“It will be so much fun. I loved high school.”
I refused to relive Sophie Salisbury’s glory days, or be drawn into a debate about something we’d finished five years ago.
“So,” she said brightly as we finished setting the table. “I thought you were bringing your boyfriend?”
“A friend.” I determinedly straightened the last set of silverware. “But he went back to California instead. His family’s there.”
“Right. But...David said you were at your boyfriend’s the other night?”
Grapevine win; planning ahead fail. You can’t circumvent Karma. “Uh, yeah. I was. Um—he was busy.”
“What’s this you two are talking about?” Mom joined us, setting candles down on the table.
Sophie cut a glance my way. “Rachael’s boyfriend.”
Damn.
“What boyfriend?” Mom, homed in on me, determined as any missile. “That boy you were going to bring? Are you dating him?”
“No,” I said firmly. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to rescind the boyfriend with Sophie’s eagle eye on me. “Someone else. It’s—totally casual. Not even worth bringing up.”
Mom wasn’t dissuaded. “I want to hear all about him!”
“Yes, do tell,” Sophie cooed as Dad and David came back upstairs with a crate of drinks. “Maybe he’ll be able to come for the reunion!”
I glared at her, wondering what my cursed brother could possibly see in her. “There’s nothing going on! Just drop it, okay?”
Mom looked hurt. “We just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” So happy I stalked across the room to refill my water glass.
Mom leaned in to speak confidentially to Sophie. “Rachael hasn’t had a boyfriend since junior year of college. And while Stephen was a nice boy, he, well...” She shook her head.
David grinned. Sophie looked intrigued, and my stomach tightened. How had she missed this? My entire circle of friends had thought it was the funniest thing in the world. “He left college. To join seminary.”
Sophie looked confused.
“He became a priest,” I clarified, glaring at Mom. Did we have to bring that up?
“No way,” Sophie gasped, shock and glee crossing her face. She shook back her hair and leaned forward. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” I wished I’d poured wine instead of water. “I am.” I hadn’t thought I’d been that bad at sex that Stephen needed to give up girls forever.
Sophie’s mouth fell open. “That’s freaking hilarious. So, no boyfriend, but you live in New York, right? What do you do?” She tilted her head, her hair falling now in a shiny, shimmery waterfall. She smiled at my parents. “Do you follow in your parents’ footsteps? Lawyer? A professor?”
As though she hadn’t creeped on my Facebook, too.
“I work for a publishing house in Manhattan.”
Mom sighed. “They don’t pay her anything.” She gave me a sad, disappointed look, and shook her head. “I just don’t understand why, with your talent, and your work ethics, you can’t get a more lucrative position.”
“Because I like publishing.” Did we have to have this conversation in front of Sophie Salisbury?
“But it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, does it? Rachael, you know we’re glad you’re giving your passions a try, but you can’t afford to do that forever. We told you we’d pay for law school.”
I clenched my hands in my lap. I didn’t want to go to law school. I certainly didn’t want my parents to pay my way through. “I know. But I like my job.” I would not let my family get to me. Instead, I turned a bright, hard smile on Sophie. “And what do you do?”
She smiled, displaying perfect teeth straight out of a whitening strip commercial. “I’m a yoga instructor. And I’m getting my business master’s. I want to open up my own studio.”
My parents smiled as though this were a perfectly charming thing to do. If I had wanted to be a yoga teacher, they would have forged an application to the Ivies. Then again, being a small business owner probably appealed to their entrepreneurial spirits.
Ugh. Successful people hurt my soul.
“And how’s work?” I asked David.
He puffed up. “We’re doing really well. Really great. I’m going out to San Leandro next week to show the CEO of Mertins Industry and his fiancée around. And I’m in talks with a journalist at the New York Times, who’s interested in coming out for a bit and seeing the island. For a piece on eco-tourism.”
“When are they flying us out there?” Dad joked.
San Leandro was a tiny little flyspeck off the Turkish Coast. It was everything clichés are made of—emerald green hills with golden sands, set against sapphire waters. The resort hosted diving and boating and hiking and dancing, and all completely eco-friendly. Part of my brother’s job, as press secretary, was to try to lure famous people to the island. Then San Leandro received tons of money, and the celebrity looked green for their press release—which, in turn, informed the plebs about San Leandro and made them interested in the parent company’s other resorts.
David smiled. “Someday.”
I didn’t really expect David would be able to pull strings and get us a free trip to the Med, but I did hope he’d wrangle a family discount. I was pulling for sometime in March—around the time you really want the weather to warm up and the snow to stop falling, even though you know there’s no chance.
“David and I were talking about going for New Year’s.” Sophie leaned into his side. He wrapped his arm around her and smiled. “Wouldn’t that be sweet?”
My parents made appreciative noises. Green-eyed disappointment gnawed away in my belly.
“We have a bunch of great folk who’re going to be there, and there’s going to be a gala. Corporate wants me out there, but it’s during my holiday time, so I told them I had plans—but that they could be re-arranged, with the right incentive.” David raised his wine glass to his lips, looking smug and pleased.
“That’s my boy.” Dad nodded. “Carve your own path. People’ll respect you more if you don’t cave so easily.”
Kill me now.
I didn’t relax until the Cohens arrived, and then the Sagals, and one or two more of my parents’ friends. David and I, Sophie following, took our place at the “kids’ table.” Twenty-four-year-old Aaron Cohen, twenty-one-year-old Ella Cohen, and the four Sagal siblings joined us, as they had for the past dozen years.
Surrounded by familiar faces, I finally felt at ease
. The familiar, ceremonial scent of hot melting candle wax and burning wick filled my nose, and the taste of cloyingly sweet Manischewitz wine and honey-drenched challah coated my tongue, just as it had every year since I could remember. Ruby red pomegranate seeds burst in my mouth, sharp and bright, while soft songs and laughter hung in the air.
I hadn’t seen the Cohens or Sagals in months, not since Passover, so there were a million events to catch up on. We couldn’t stop laughing throughout the meal, jumping over each other to share stories and remembrances. Molly Sagal, the youngest at sixteen and general pet, shared the woes of high school, while Aaron Cohen taught us how to fold napkins into ducks and pigs.
“So tell us about New York!” Ella Cohen grinned at me, her narrow face spry. I had always really liked Ella. She’d eschewed the regular liberal arts education in lieu of joining a start-up specializing in cellular scavenger hunts, and had been making a real salary for close to three years. “Maples&Co, right? That’s pretty awesome.”
“Rachael’s always been so into reading.” Sophie had been quiet for most of the meal, smiling brightly whenever anyone directed a look her way, but mostly just sidling up to my brother and murmuring in his ear. Now, her words fell out quickly, her tone sharp. “She used to bring these huge, fat books all around school. Like, I remember in middle school, she’d sometimes even be reading at lunch!”
My cheeks started to burn. Yes, I’d been a major dork. But the way she put it, the way she chortled, made it more embarrassing than usual. And sure, I probably should have been developing social skills instead of covering my face with a book, but I hadn’t figured that out yet.
“Once, our freshman year of high school, Rachael was walking down the hall and reading at the same time, and she tripped and fell into the garbage can! It was hilarious.”
That was too much for the Cohens and Sagals, who’d shifted uncomfortably during the first anecdote. Now, they chuckled slightly, as did my traitorous brother. “Seriously, Rach? I never knew you fell into a trash can!”
Sophie leaned forward. “There was a banana peel clinging to her when she got up.”
I recalled the garbage can incident vividly, though I hadn’t thought of it in years. I’d stumbled to my feet, dazed, my head hurting, and there stood Sophie Salisbury and her cronies, Casey and Miranda, and that stupid jock Chris Howell, and they all laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
I stared at my plate, fingers closed tightly around my knife and fork. For God’s sake, why was Sophie bringing up that damnable story? Yes, it was funny in retrospect, but in high school I had found any mention of it absolutely mortifying, and Sophie knew that. Why would she possibly bring it up? What kind of person dug up humiliating memories nine years after the fact? Not the kind I wanted my brother involved with.
After I’d soothed away my dismay and shock, and Ella had changed the topic, I raised my chin to find Sophie’s eyes on mine. She smiled, so sweetly my teeth hurt.
Happy New Year.
Chapter Fourteen
“Maybe,” Kate, my best friend of thirteen years, said the next evening, “Sophie’s plotting revenge against you and it’s all going to blow up at the reunion.”
“Okay, Kate.” We parked in Madison’s driveway and climbed out of the car. I took the plate of cookies she’d baked and she took the wine and we headed across the lawn. Madison lived in her parents’ guesthouse, which allowed us to feel a little more like we were twenty-three, and not thirteen. “I bet that’s it, except I’m the one who should want revenge for how she tortured me. No, I think it has to be David’s money.”
“Which, let’s be honest, is a pretty hefty incentive. I mean, I like getting summers off, but I’m probably going to have to spend them waiting tables.”
“Or maybe they really like each other.” My nose crinkled in confusion. “They coo constantly. But I just don’t understand how that could happen. Why couldn’t he date, like, you?”
“Because that would be like dating my own brother.” Kate pushed the door open. “Ew. Why would you even suggest that?”
Inside, Madison and Carly, the other half of our quartet, jumped up and enveloped us in hugs. To give credit where credit was due, Sophie had done her part in bringing the four of us together. She’d always picked on me, and Kate by association. Carlotta Ruiz, new our freshman year, had been an easy target. Sophie and her cohort had broken into giggles each time Carly spoke in faintly accented English, and cried out, “No habla español!” Madison, on the other hand, should have been safe, but Sophie despised anyone wealthier and prettier than she, especially when they refused to join her gaggle.
By the end of that awful year, we’d been forged into an indestructible circle, and by sophomore year we’d found our own group of friends in the artsy-honors circuit. Now, I couldn’t imagine life without these three. Their rooms felt as familiar as my own, and their woes and dreams tugged at my heart. I knew them as well as I knew my own brother.
Which made it no surprise that they sometimes drove me insane, as only family could. Madison fretted like the world was ending on a daily basis. Nothing could be right. She would never find a job, never afford her own apartment, and her boyfriend—she always had a boyfriend—was always acting strange. Life was very hard for Madison.
Life seemed easier for Carly, who had a full ride to grad school, a shiny apartment in New Haven, and a live-in, long-term boyfriend. So we probably drove her crazier than she drove us. I’d seen her ready to breathe fire when the rest of moaned about real life and wished we were still in school.
Then there was Kate—loyal, funny Kate—with her very peculiar fatal flaw.
We all curled up on Madison’s queen-size bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets. Kate let her upper body flop straight down, her head landing in a poof! of down comforter. “I did it again.”
I grinned, tucking into the plate of cookies.
“How?” Madison asked. “Not at your parents’?”
Kate made a horrified face. “God, no.” She’d drawn her stick straight light brown hair into a ponytail, and now she chewed on it. “Remember how I went up to Boston for the teachers’ conference last weekend? The school put me up in a hotel.”
“So, tell.” Carly stretched an arm across the bed and grabbed the hair from Kate’s mouth. Carly always said that she had to live vicariously through our romantic escapades, since she and Andy had settled into a domestic pattern. “How’d you meet? Was it another teacher?”
Kate shook her head, and adopted her story-telling voice. “I have a lot of college friends in Boston, so I met up with them in the evening. They took me to this club in the Back Bay.”
The three of us groaned. Kate did notoriously badly at clubs.
“And my friend Jo thought it would be a good idea to get those ten-shot things.”
Carly laughed. “You can’t do shots.”
Kate grinned, slightly embarrassed. “And it’s possible we’d already pregamed a little.”
“Bad teacher.” I shook my head. “Bad, bad teacher.”
“Anyway.” Kate shrugged it off. “You know me. When I drink, I like to dance.”
Madison raised her brows. “Yes. We know.”
Most people liked to dance when intoxicated. Kate really, really liked to dance.
“I ended up dancing with this guy,” she continued, toying with her napkin. “And then...you know...”
“You made out in the middle of the dance floor?” I guessed.
“And then he suggested you get some air?” Madison added.
“And then you canoodled all the way home,” Carly finished, with the cadence of “this little piggy went to market.”
I grinned at her. “Please tell me you got his name.”
“Michael Wright. And I already found his profile.”
Carly snagged Madison’s laptop, and pulled up her app page. Three years ago, she’d invented a family tree app that took off exponentially. It wasn’t Farmville, by any means, but most people had heard of it,
and enough people were curious enough that when invited to join, they accepted on the off-chance of meeting distant relatives.
And the great thing about apps was that tricky little message they asked users in the beginning: Allow App Access to Your Profile and User Information?
“He doesn’t have it.” Carly sounded disappointed but not hopeless as Kate helped her locate the right Michael Wright. She clicked “Invite” and turned to Kate. “There. Now we wait. Keep going. Then what?”
“Then the usual,” Kate said glumly. “Oh, wait, I almost forgot. As we were going upstairs, I saw these three other girls from the conference in the elevator! It was super awkward. They were all like, ‘hi!’ and I had to introduce this guy as though I knew him.”
“Were you skanky dressed?” Carly asked.
“Not really. I mean, I had that black going out top on, you know the one? But we were, um, a little too close, so...”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Not a good sign.”
“I know!” she moaned. “Why am I such a disaster?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s catching.” I thought of Ryan. I tossed a glance at Carly. “Except you don’t seem to have it. Maybe you were inoculated at a young age.”
“Thanks?”
“How’d you make him leave?” Madison asked.
Kate ducked her head down and squeezed the words out. “I just said ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’”
We all groaned, and rolled over on the bed in empathetic embarrassment as we broke into laugher. “Then what?” Madison prodded, finally grinning.
Kate’s cheeks flamed even as she smiled. “He went the disbelief route. So I finally had to tell him that I wasn’t comfortable sleeping with a guy I had just met, because I’m waiting for a meaningful relationship, and that I’m a virgin.”
“Which he didn’t believe?” I managed to get out between giggles.
“No!” She sat back upright, looking outraged. “He didn’t! And then he said he couldn’t leave because the T was already closed, and I said, ‘Then take a taxi,’ and handed him a twenty.” She looked absurdly proud of this.