“Thanks,” Alice said. Maybe that was why. Maybe he was right, and this was the best she ever was, and even though this version of her dad hadn’t seen her barely graduate from art school, and have dumb boyfriend after dumb boyfriend, and never really make art, and still work at Belvedere, he knew that this was the apex.
Leonard grabbed Alice’s elbow and pulled her back from the curb. A boxy gray sedan swung close, taking the corner tight and fast. “Not on my watch,” he said. They walked until they got to French Roast, the coffee shop that was open twenty-four hours a day, and then turned left, toward the park.
21
There were a few people standing outside Belvedere. Alice was so used to the route, and the block, which had hardly changed, except for the hairdresser that had become a dog-grooming parlor and the frame shop that had become a Pilates studio, that she didn’t actually feel anxious until she and her father were close enough to recognize the faces of the people assembled on the sidewalk. Alice froze. She had thought about seeing Sam, who would still be just Sam Wood, without her married hyphen, but Alice hadn’t thought about seeing everyone else. Her life was so full of Belvedere that she hadn’t thought about all the people who had vanished from it. Leonard tossed his cigarette to the sidewalk and stepped on the filter.
“What’s going on?” he asked, though Leonard had never needed a reason to avoid people.
There was Garth Ellis, who played soccer and had the cutest, roundest butt. Alice had kissed him one time, her freshman year, and then pretended that it never happened. There was Jessica Yanker, who curled her bangs into a perfect tube every morning—Alice and Sam used to prank-call her, pretending to be representatives from a hair spray company, but then *69 came along and you couldn’t take the risk. There was Jordan Epstein-Roth, whose tongue was always hanging out of his mouth just a tiny bit; there was Rachel Hymowitz, whose name sounded too much like “hymen” for her to escape unscathed. Everyone was gorgeous and gangly and slightly undercooked, like they’d been taken out of the oven a little bit too early, even kids that she’d never really looked at too closely, like Kenji Morris, who was taking the SAT class a whole year early, like he was Doogie Howser or something. Some people’s arms and legs looked too long, some noses looked too adult. They were people Alice hadn’t thought of in twenty years, and whom she hadn’t given much thought to even at the time. She cringed a little, thinking about what these forgotten classmates would think of her now, still at Belvedere at forty, still alone, still weird. Alice looked up at the building, and to the window of her office. Leonard leaned against a parked car and lit another cigarette.
“Just high school, I guess,” Alice said. It wasn’t Time Brothers, whatever was happening to her, and it wasn’t Back to the Future. It was Peggy Sue Got Married. Alice tried to remember the plot. She’d fainted? No, that had been a dream, hadn’t it? Mostly? Kathleen Turner had woken up in the hospital, still married to Nicolas Cage.
The front door pushed open, and Alice watched as her boss, Melinda, attached the little metal hook to the side of the building so that the door would stay open. Alice’s breath caught in her throat, the same way it had when she saw her father at the kitchen table. She’d known Melinda for so long that she hadn’t thought of her as having changed—she looked the same, she wore the same clothes—but no: Melinda, like her father, had been young. Alice had just been too young herself to notice.
The other kids started to funnel in. Alice walked over to her father and leaned beside him.
“If you could go back in time, what would you do?” Alice asked. “Back to high school, I mean. Or college.”
“Oh, no, thank you. Wouldn’t want to change too much, because then I wouldn’t have you. And if you’re not going to change it, you don’t want to see it, trust me.” Leonard elbowed Alice gently.
“Mm-hmm.” Alice had to get back to Matryoshka. They probably didn’t open until at least five o’clock. She couldn’t think of anything she would ruin, anything she would lose, but she also did not want to live her entire life over again starting at sixteen. She had to figure out how she had ended up here, and how to shake herself out of it.
“Happy birthday, Al,” someone said behind her. Alice turned.
Tommy had his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a ringer T-shirt and had a plain brown cord tied around his neck, a homemade choker. Most of the boys at Belvedere had already moved on from the Jordan Catalano school of fashion, but not Tommy. His hair was long, and he tucked it behind his ears. He was a senior, still trying to get better SAT scores, even though his were almost perfect. Parents at Belvedere were still like this, willing to spend time and money focusing on almost instead of perfect. He looked better than she remembered, and what she remembered was heavenly. Her stomach squished in a way that it hadn’t when she’d seen him as an adult. It was like there were two of her, the teenage Alice and the grown-up Alice, sharing the same tiny patch of human real estate.