It was the first week of summer vacation, a warm evening in June. I was sixteen. Bethany and Nola and I were sitting out on the abandoned bridge overlooking the river, passing a joint around. Or really, they were passing it back and forth while I sat between them, every now and then taking a sip from an old water bottle I had brought along, filled with cranberry juice and vodka—my current favorite drink. I still didn’t like getting high, but drinking was a different matter.
We had gone to see a movie—the latest Twilight installment. None of us had seen the earlier films, so we just ate popcorn and heckled the screen loudly until others in the audience got annoyed and told us to be quiet. We left early.
After last summer and “the Albany incident,” as it came to be known in our house, for a while I was afraid that my mom would never let me go out unattended again. I would have deserved it. But nothing like that happened. “I’m hoping,” she had told me, a few months into the school year, “in my clichéd, naive way, that you learned something from all of it, and that you grew.” Moreover, she had reasoned, the whole thing had started online, without me even leaving my room. That’s where most of it had taken place, so what good would grounding me do?
Not that she let me roam free, or anything. I had a strict curfew and had to check in with her every hour. Really, though, it hardly mattered, since I didn’t have much of a desire to go anywhere. My only friends were Bethany and Nola, and they liked to come to my house anyway, probably because it was one of the only places they could see each other. We hung out a lot in my room over the winter, doing our homework together and watching stupid movies. My mom was okay with it because I was there, a natural impediment to my friends getting overly intimate with each other, and I didn’t much mind being the third wheel. In some ways, it gave me a strange sense of superiority—I wasn’t dumb and in love like my two idiot friends.
Now, as we sat on the bridge, my idiot friends leaned out in front of me to share a quick peck on the lips. “Ugh,” I said in mock revulsion, “why do you two always pick the most inopportune moment for displays of affection?”
“Ah!” Bethany cried, grabbing my shoulder. “Is Laura feeling left out?” She kissed me on the cheek. “Laura, please don’t be mad! And please don’t go! P-p-p-please!”
“Bethany, you promised,” I said.
“No, you’re not going. I won’t let you.” Bethany put her head on my shoulder. “It’s just not going to happen.”
But we both knew it was. I was moving to Florida. My mom had taken a job at the nonprofit my aunt Sarah worked for. By next month, we would be saying goodbye to Grover Falls. My mom had told me she was going to wait—not think about moving until I finished high school. But after she’d talked with me about it, I told that she shouldn’t wait, that I wouldn’t mind moving somewhere new, starting in a new town at a new school. Of course, I would miss Bethany, miss her more than anything. And I realized, over the winter, that I would miss Nola, too.
“You’ll come visit,” I said to Bethany. Though I wasn’t sure she’d be able to—things weren’t going well with her parents, and they didn’t give her a lot of leeway. The only way she even got to go to my house was in the aftermath of a horrible fight where she screamed and even threatened to kill herself if she couldn’t. I don’t think it was an entirely empty threat. They had given in, but they wouldn’t have if they knew she met Nola there. Mostly, Bethany lived these days in a constant state of tension with her parents—tension that often erupted into outright war. A lot of days, she looked tired and sad. Sometimes, I caught her looking off into the distance with a vague expression on her face.
“It’s up to you to take care of her now,” I said to Nola, patting her on the back, and we both knew I was only half joking. Bethany loved Nola. No matter what her parents put her through or what she had to give up, that wasn’t going to change.
“Are you kidding?” said Nola, taking a long drag. “We’re hitchhiking down to Florida to live with you. We’ll hide in the U-Haul van.”
“If only,” said Bethany after a moment, sounding very serious, “if only there was a way we could all be rich and famous and never have to leave each other.”
We laughed.
“We could start a band,” Nola suggested. “Sometimes that works.”
“Hey, yeah!” said Bethany. “The three of us on tour forever, traveling across the world!”
“What would we call ourselves?” I asked.
“I always thought a great name for a band would be Everlasting Gobstopper,” said Nola, looking dreamily off into the dark.
“Seriously,” said Bethany, “that’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, what’s your amazing suggestion, then?”
“I don’t know, something cool and classic. Something with ‘the,’ you know? Like … ‘the Royal Bitches’ or something.”
“The Royal Bitches?”
“It’s better than Everlasting Gobstopper.”
“You say that with such certainty.”
“Anything’s better than Everlasting Gobstopper.”
As my friends argued beside me, I suddenly thought of something. “Hey,” I said, “can any of us even play an instrument?”
Bethany and Nola stopped arguing and looked at me. They shook their heads. Then we all burst out in hysterics.
“Who cares? We’ll learn,” Bethany said, but she was shaking so hard with laughter, she could hardly get the words out. We all were. I tried to take a drink from my bottle, and cranberry juice and liquor spilled down my chin. I was tearing up, and my side hurt from shaking so hard.
I don’t know what got into us; it really wasn’t that funny. But I swear, no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t stop laughing.
I am deeply grateful—
To my wonderful agent, Nell Pierce, who took a chance on me. To Michael Carr, whose patience and sharp eye were invaluable during the editing process. To Haila Williams, Lauren Maturo, Jeff Yamaguchi, and all the fantastic people at Blackstone Publishing.
To all the teachers who have encouraged me through the years, especially James Allen Hall, who gave me the courage to take the plunge; Luis Jaramillo and everyone at the New School; Helen Schulman, whose keen insights and advice helped me hit the ground running; and Darcey Steinke, whose continual guidance and unfailing generosity leaves me stunned.
To all my friends who have supported and put up with me, especially those who read this book in its early stages: Paul Florez, who reassured me so many times I’m sure I drove him nuts; my sister Leslie Ann, who probably didn’t realize how relieved I was when she told me she liked it; Kyle Lucia Wu, who never let me give up, who let me complain her ear off, and ask her question after question, and send her draft after draft. I don’t know how I got so lucky.
To my family. To my parents, who built me. To my wife, Alissa, who supports but never indulges me, keeps me driven, and makes me better. I owe you big.
Another Life Page 38