Don’t ever change.
Next is Deacon Samuels, full head of hair and a hundred-watt smile. It’s what he’s used to become a real estate magnate, apparently—well, obviously—and it’s also what he flashes on the cover of all the golf magazines whose covers he graces. Jade scoffs in her head. Holding hands with Deacon Samuels is his famous ex-model of a wife, Ladybird, the “first lady of style” or something vapid like that, though Jade does have to appreciate how smoothly she navigates the bleacher steps in those impossible heels. When Deacon gets to the seats Terra Nova’s workers have been saving, he makes a show of passing discreet but not too discreet bills to each of them, which is their dismissal.
Hundreds, probably. Good work if you can get it.
When the construction grunts start to try to squeeze past the Terra Novans flowing in—the papers have been calling them the “Founders,” since they’re founding a new community— Macy Todd, somehow with just her eyes, informs them that they’ll be going the other way, the long and awkward way down and out, thank you.
While they’re retreating, cowed, their yellow vests practically glowing with humiliation, two or three of their slouching manners familiar to Jade, Llewellyn Singleton makes his timid entrance up the bleacher stairs, smiling with embarrassment from all the eyes on him and his wife, Lana.
He’s not used to public scrutiny, probably, would rather be in the office at his chain of banks, or franchise of banks—they’re like eggs the Aliens mother laid all across America, careful to leave one in each town. No, actually in, as the ad used to famously say, “every single town, ” ha, ha, ha. Ha. But either Llewellyn or Lana must have a cool bone somewhere in their body, or at least their sordid past: their son, six years old, is “Lemmy,” which has to be after Mot?rhead’s frontman, as there can be no other Lemmys.
After them is Theo Mondragon and his shiny-new wife, the aptly-named Tiara. Theo holds Tiara’s elbow as she balances on her even more impossible heels up the aluminum steps, and with his other hand he sneaks a single wave into the wall of graduates—to Letha. As near as Jade can tell, and not counting her own dad, who’s just Indian-dark and already skulked back into deeper and danker shadows anyway, Theo’s the only Black person in the bleachers at all. But he’d stand out anywhere, she’s pretty sure. His college-football shoulders tapering down to a thirty-year-old’s waist, the short work he’s making of the stairs, and just the fact that he’s the headliner, here. Not that it’s a bank-account pissing contest, but it kind of is, Jade suspects. And in today’s world, a media empire trumps banks and law firms and real estate brokerages, maybe even social media.
The five couples take their seats, and, because this is what kings do at these kind of functions, Theo Mondragon, the alpha of this group of alphas, stands and rolls his right hand in a sort of restrained amusement, kindly telling everyone they can proceed. Carry on, carry on.
Jade does, or tries to, but… it’s like gravity was explained to her, sophomore year: each planet is a bowling ball on the trampoline that spacetime is, and all smaller bodies roll downhill to it, just naturally, helplessly, the same way all eyes at this graduation, including hers, keep finding these Founders and their wives. It’s why Brad Pitt doesn’t eat at Burger King, she knows—all the eyes, all the attention—but bowling balls are going to do what bowling balls are going to do, aren’t they? People in Proofrock have never even seen anyone like these Founders, and now they’re literally, physically rubbing shoulders with them.
Which is to say, all of Mr. Holmes’s prophecies about Terra Nova’s disastrous impact are coming true.
Jade manages to look away from Theo Mondragon, find her history teacher now in the speaker area kind of off to the side —because this is Mr. Holmes’s last go-round, Principal Manx is giving him the mic to say his farewells, lay down his final pronouncements and prognostications, deliver one last lecture, who knows. His left hand is patting his jacket pocket over and over, like being sure his cigarettes are going to be there the moment this ceremony is done. To get over what’s happening right now up in the bleachers, though, Jade bets he’s going to have to chainsmoke the whole pack, crushing the butts underfoot until he’s standing in a pile of dead soldiers. And maybe that won’t even be enough.
To add to his woes—and delay his retirement—Jade’s got a petition in with him to let her please please please complete her coursework for his class. All the other teachers were happy enough to let her slide on the last couple months’ work, but Mr. Holmes is Mr. Holmes, and so far he’s not letting his last act as a teacher involve sacrificing the “no excuses, no forgiveness” policy he’s always been known for. What that means for Jade is that this ceremony is a sham, as she still doesn’t have her last history credit done, and now, with Mr.