by Leila Sales
Then the doorbell rang.
“My goodness, I wonder who that is!” Mackler said, readjusting his bathrobe and heading for the front door.
“Who is it?” I asked Corey.
Corey looked studiously at the Gatorade bottle in his hands and didn’t reply.
“Corey,” I said, kicking his sneakered foot.
“I don’t know?” he said unconvincingly.
My skin tingled. “Please tell me you didn’t—”
“Oh, hey, look who’s here, guys!” Mackler said with exaggerated surprise as he reentered the kitchen. “If it isn’t Jason Bono Shaw!” The “Bono” was part of Mackler’s ongoing campaign to learn Jason’s middle name. It wasn’t happening. Certainly not today.
“Winter. I didn’t know you’d be here.” Jason looked past my shoulder, toward the refrigerator.
“I was just on my way out,” I said, but Mackler blocked my path to the door.
“Hell no,” he said. “You two are both being big babies, and Corey and I are sick of it. Shake and make up. If not for yourselves, then for us. We feel like the children of divorced parents, don’t we, Corey?”
“I actually am the child of divorced parents,” Corey said, “so I guess—”
“I’m leaving for college in two days,” Mackler interrupted, looking between me and Jason. “Do you get that? We might never see one another again.”
“But we probably will,” Corey said.
“But we might not. Let’s start this new chapter in our lives with a clean slate, and other literary imagery like that. We’ve been friends for too long for your issues to ruin everything.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Like an ostrich, I heard Rodrigo’s voice in my head.
Maybe Mackler was right: we’d been friends for too long, and shared too much, to let something like this fight come between us.
“Can you guys please get over this?” Corey asked as Jason and I stood at opposite ends of Mackler’s kitchen, a collection of Gatorade bottles between us.
I’d tried that night at Jason’s house, but I would try again. If not for the people we were today, then for the debt I owed to the fourteen-year-old versions of ourselves. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have posted that joke. I know I shouldn’t have. It was insensitive and thoughtless. I understand why you felt hurt. I wish I’d never done it, and I wish I could make it up to you.”
Jason nodded. “Thank you for apologizing,” he said formally. “I appreciate it.”
“Perfect,” Corey said. “Now we can be friends again.”
“Not perfect,” I objected. I widened my eyes at Jason. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say for yourself?”
He blinked at me.
“Jason, come on. Meet me halfway here. You can also say sorry. I get that you’re mad about the post, but that should have stayed between us. You didn’t also have to make some big public statement about it. ‘I’d say best friend is a stretch,’” I quoted him. “‘Even if I trusted her before, I definitely don’t anymore.’ Seriously? At least when I hurt you, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it. I know that doesn’t make my behavior okay, but still. You, on the other hand, you set out to hurt me. What about that? How exactly are you planning to take that back? Do you even want to?”
“Damn,” Mackler whispered. Corey looked back and forth between me and Jason, wide-eyed, as if witnessing a high-stakes tennis match.
Jason at least had the decency to look ashamed. He bit his lip and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t know you read that,” he muttered.
“Is that a good enough excuse? Because in that case, I didn’t know you were going to read my post, either! I didn’t know that anybody was going to read it. And if stupid Lisa stupid Rushall hadn’t stepped in, then nobody would have.”
“Who’s stupid Lisa stupid Rushall?” Corey asked, confused.
“She’s the asshole reporter who has it in for me. She’s the one who reposted my comment to her thousands of followers. She’s the reason anyone even found out about it in the first place.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jason said. He didn’t look ashamed anymore. He didn’t look formal and detached, either, and he certainly did not look apologetic. He looked mad. “You’re still not taking responsibility for what you did. You’re still acting like this whole situation is somebody else’s fault and you’re the helpless little victim. That’s your apology—blaming someone else?”
“What’s your apology?” I shot back.
He swallowed hard and said in a low voice, “I’m not sorry.”
I couldn’t speak for a long moment. I was going to start to sob, which I never did in front of my friends, because then they would all realize that I wasn’t one of the guys, after all. I was a girl, and the worst kind: the kind of girl who believed that she actually mattered to Jason Shaw. The kind of girl we made fun of.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Corey muttered to Mackler.
Then I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. I ran out of the kitchen, out of the house, and away. Jason was an athlete, and of course he would have been able to catch up to me easily if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t come after me. So I guess he didn’t want to.
And that was the last time I saw my friends before they left for college.
14
I found something that promised to fix me.
I don’t even know what convoluted chain of Google searches led me there, but somehow I wound up watching a video about a reputation rehabilitation retreat in Malibu called Revibe.
Of course it was called Revibe. If you told me you had a business named Revibe, I’d pretty quickly guess it was either a reputation rehabilitation retreat or a spin-studio-slash-juice-bar.
But as silly as the name was, the place sounded like what I needed. It wasn’t like Personal History—instead, Revibe was there to repair “the whole person.” The video mostly showed shots of the ocean and, like, kites in the breeze and flowers and stuff, and it was narrated by voice-overs telling their stories.
“I’d been fired from my job for inappropriate sexual conduct.”
“I got expelled for threatening a classmate. I was kidding, but my school has a zero-tolerance policy.”
“Everyone knew I was a liar.”
“Even my fiancée couldn’t look me in the eye.”
“When I picked up my daughter, I had to park around the corner so no one would see us together and know she was related to me.”
“I was afraid to leave the house.”
“I was so ashamed.”
“Revibe helped me when no one else could.”
“I can honestly say Revibe saved my life.”
“Valerie and Kevin understood what I was going through in a way that no one else could—not my husband, not my closest friends. They understood, and they didn’t judge.”
“I’m forty-eight years old, and until I attended Revibe, I never really understood how to apologize.”
“Revibe, for me, is more than a retreat, a program, or a series of steps. It’s almost a religion.”
“After Revibe, I got a new job, in a field that matters to me, and I’ve never felt more fulfilled.”
“I was able to make amends with my fiancée.”
“Revibe got my life back on track.”
“Revibe made me a better person. Not just better than I’d been since my scandal—better than I’d been ever.”
“Thank you, Revibe.”
“Valerie and Kevin, thank you for everything you do.”
“Thank you from the very bottom of my heart.”
And if all of those endorsements sound kind of bullshit to you, don’t be so smug. That just means you’ve got the luxury of never having been truly desperate.
But I didn’t suggest it to my parents, at least not right away. Because I looked at the price tag, and it made Rodrigo’s services seem cheap.
How much did it cost?
Well, how much do you think it costs to save y
our life?
* * *
Soon enough it was time for Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is the most-observed Jewish holiday of the year. Its English name is the Day of Atonement, meaning it’s when you’re supposed to apologize for all your misdeeds and indiscretions of the past twelve months and vow to do better going forward. You celebrate it by spending all day praying at temple, and you don’t eat or drink anything, including water, for twenty-five hours.
Even on a good year, Yom Kippur is never a “fun” holiday, but at least in the past I’d had Emerson there for company, and other kids from my elementary and middle schools. Now basically everyone I knew was away at college. The Jewish calendar moves around in relation to the solar calendar, which meant that this year Yom Kippur fell on a Wednesday in the middle of the semester. No one was traveling home for that.
Also, every other year, I’d been apologizing for things like “disrespecting my elders” or “making fun of Jason’s girlfriends.” So on a lot of levels, this was a particularly unpleasant Yom Kippur.
My family’s temple is huge. It’s like the Jewish equivalent of a megachurch, especially on the High Holidays. Even people who don’t show up for services any other time of the year come out of the woodwork on Yom Kippur. You can’t find a parking spot within four blocks of the temple, and police are stationed at every intersection to halt traffic so still more worshippers in suits and ties and kippot can make it across the street and into the synagogue.
There are not that many Jews in the world. This was something I didn’t realize when I was little and went to Jewish day school and assumed the whole world was like my world. In fact, I learned when I was older, only about two percent of the United States is Jewish, and only one-fifth of one percent of the world’s population is. So there is something kind of empowering about our being out on the street together, like we are strong in number after all, or at least we are on that one day.
Because so many people turn up for the High Holidays at my temple, they open up the back of the sanctuary and fill it with folding chairs. But my family has reserved seats in the actual pews, twelve rows back from the bimah, on the left side. We angled for those seats for a long time. We’d started out in the folding chairs, and it had taken years of maneuvering before we got moved up, at which point Mom said that she’d achieved her life’s work, though I’m fairly sure she was kidding.
I sat between my parents, as I always did, and I stood when everyone stood and sat when everyone sat and read responsively or silently as each prayer called for.
But I had trouble believing any of it.
Every year, Yom Kippur goes like this: all the Jews of the world spend hours and hours praying that the wicked will be vanquished and that evil will evaporate from the Earth. Now, for the first time in my life, I felt bad for the wicked. What if they didn’t want to be vanquished, even though that would be better for the world? What if they didn’t want to evaporate?
Between afternoon and evening services, my parents and I went for a walk around the lagoon. There’s not much you can do on Yom Kippur: you can’t watch TV or use the computer or your cell phone, you can’t eat or do any work. (Not that this stopped me from quickly turning on my phone while in the temple bathroom stall, unable to wait until the holiday was over to check the internet to see if my life had been torn apart yet again.) Basically your Yom Kippur options are praying, napping, and walking. As we walked, my parents argued about whether the new rabbi’s sermon was better or worse than the old rabbi’s sermons had been, while I looked at the lagoon and tried not to imagine drinking it all down.
Just a week and a half ago, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, my parents and I had come out to this very spot for tashlich, a tradition where you cast your sins into the sea—or for my family, the lagoon, because it was closer. For tashlich you take pieces of bread and assign to each one a bad deed that you’ve committed over the previous year. Then you throw them out to the water, where the birds swoop in and eat them. The birds of the Bay Area must be filled with sin.
I’d gone through nearly a loaf of bread, throwing out bad deed after bad deed long after my parents were ready to go home. Yet here I was still. Why couldn’t my sins stay at sea? Why did they seep back into me every time?
At a break in my parents’ conversation, I said, “I have an idea for what I should do,” and they both fell silent.
One of the greatest atonements I needed to make this Yom Kippur was to my mother. The summer was gone, and with it was any excuse she might have had for slow work. The school year was back in full swing, and this should have been her busiest time for speaking engagements and consulting gigs, but it wasn’t. She didn’t say a word about it, never blamed me, never even mentioned there was a problem, but it was plain that, day after day, we were both just sitting at home. And unless somebody did something, maybe we would be forever.
How do you atone for ruining the livelihood of one of the people you love most in all the world? Can you even atone for that? Or should you just evaporate?
“That’s great, Winter,” Mom said carefully. “What’s your idea?”
“It’s a reputation rehabilitation retreat down in Malibu,” I said. “It’s called Revibe.”
“What does that mean, ‘reputation rehabilitation retreat’?” Dad asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
I nodded. “It’s pretty new, and it’s one-of-a-kind. The idea is that victims of public shaming go through a five-week program together, with the help of qualified professionals, to overcome their circumstances and forge a path forward.” That was word-for-word what their website said. I added, “It’s a lot of volunteer work and personal reflection, and it’s supposed to really make you become a better person, from the inside out. It’s the only thing I’ve seen that seems like it maybe has a shot of bringing me back some approximation of my old life.” I wanted that. My old life. I’d never wanted anything more desperately. “They have a new session starting at the end of November. If you think it’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a terrific idea,” Mom replied immediately, and I could see the relief in her eyes, the hopeful glint, that we were no longer going to take this lying down, we were doing something.
“Hold up,” Dad said. “We don’t know anything about this place. What kind of ‘qualified professionals’ are we talking about here? What exactly qualifies them? And who are these other ‘victims of public shaming’ you’d be there with? I’m not sending you off to spend five weeks hobnobbing with criminals and sociopaths.”
“Do you think I’m a criminal or a sociopath?” I asked quietly.
“Of course not.”
“These are people like me, Dad. They’re people who made mistakes, and they can’t get past them, and they need a second shot.”
Dad rubbed his eyes. “This is a hard decision to make on an empty stomach, Winter.”
“Sorry.”
“How is this any better than that Google results fixer your mother tried to hire?”
Mom gave an aggrieved sniff.
I answered, “Because Revibe cares about the whole person. Their goal isn’t just to make you appear better; it’s to make you feel better and be better.”
“Is it a cult?” Dad asked bluntly.
“Oy gevalt!” Mom exploded. “Why are you so suspicious? Your daughter has found something she’s excited to do, and these are people who want to help her. What’s the problem?”
“Mom said I had to find a solution,” I reminded him. “And I did. This is it.”
“I don’t understand how it works,” Dad insisted. “And I don’t understand their motivation. Why would they want to help Winter?”
“Why would anyone want to help anyone?” Mom asked rhetorically. “Why do they need a selfish incentive to do a mitzvah?”
“Money,” I answered Dad. “They want to help because they get paid for it. Is that enough of an incentive for you?”
Dad harrumphed. “I’m assuming it’s expensiv
e. Since it’s one-of-a-kind. And in Malibu.”
Malibu is down in Southern California, and it’s known for being the beach where rich people have second or third homes. Like, anyone you can think of in Hollywood probably has a Malibu house.
“We’ll make it work,” Mom said quickly. Dad gave her a look, and I knew she was speaking from her feelings, not from practicality; she had no idea what this cost and was confident she could do it anyway. She would go bankrupt trying to save me, if she had to.
“I’m going to pay for it myself,” I told them, the words bitter on my tongue.
“How?” Dad asked reasonably.
“I’m going to use my prize money.”
“From the spelling bee?” Mom asked. “Oh, honey, you can’t do that. That’s your college money.”
“I’m not going to college,” I reminded her.
There was an awkward pause. Then Mom said, “Not right now, no, but you will. You’re going to reapply this fall…”
“We’ll be looking at a different sort of school from where we were looking last year,” Dad conceded. “Okay, Kenyon’s off the table, but there are literally thousands of other options.”
“And what if none of them will take me?” I asked.
“You’re being defeatist, and you’re getting way ahead of yourself,” Dad said. “You will go to college. It doesn’t have to be fancy, or private, or out-of-state, or a four-year program. Frankly, I don’t care where you go. But you will get a degree, Winter; that’s not negotiable.”
“Fine,” I said, not because I believed him, necessarily, but because I needed to win this immediate battle before fighting a future battle. “But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s not going to be the sort of college that I need my prize money to afford.”
They didn’t say anything, as they pictured, perhaps, the places I could now wind up as compared to the places we had for so long imagined.
“I need to go to Revibe,” I said. “And I need to pay for it myself. Otherwise I’m never going to get better.”
“Okay,” Dad said wearily, “we’ll consider it.” And I got the sense that if he had not been fasting, and there had been any fluid in his body right then, he might have cried. But I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes fixed firmly on the distance, on the birds that were swooping around, always scanning for just one more crumb of sin.