She’s practically straight now, for fuck’s sake! February yelled at the door.
She could hear Mel scoff on the other side.
February went back downstairs to work, but couldn’t concentrate. She shoved her laptop back in its case. When it was clear Mel wasn’t going to come down for round two, she went to her mother’s room. It was risky to disturb her this late in the evening, when she often mistook February for her favorite sister, Phyllis. If her mother didn’t recognize her, she’d just feel worse. But February heard the muffled Family Feud theme song seeping through the door and decided to take her chances.
Does Mama need us?
February sighed.
No Mama, I’m your daughter, February.
Her mother removed her glasses, as if her vision was the problem, rubbed the bridge of her nose. When she put them back on, she smiled.
Right. February. Sorry!
Sorry to disturb. I just needed to grab a book.
February walked over to the bookshelf on the far side of the room and selected something at random, which turned out to be If You Don’t Feed the Teachers, They Eat the Students! a gift from Mel when February was officially named headmistress. Before they’d moved her mother in, this had been their home office. They’d had a pair of desks and had often worked late into the night without saying a word to one another, but it’d felt nice to be side by side.
February held up the book halfheartedly. Her mother patted the bed for February to come sit beside her.
I just love this show.
I thought Wheel of Fortune was your favorite.
Nah, too much English. Was your father who had the hots for V-a-n-n-a.
The mention of her father in the past tense filled February with relief. Her mother was back, at least for a few minutes.
Where’s my Mel?
She’s up in the bedroom. She’s a little angry with me.
Your father used to have a temper.
I remember, February said, though at the moment she could not think of a time she’d made her father truly mad.
He mellowed out when you came around. Can we still go to the farmers market this weekend?
Sure, if you want. Saturday morning?
Oh good. Mel, too, of course.
If I can win her over.
She signed it big and sweeping, like she was kidding, but then that was the thing about jokes.
Morning is smarter than night, said her mother.
It was just like her mother to offer up the exact opposite advice everyone else did. What about “never go to bed angry”？ Then again, her parents almost never had the kind of big argument she and Mel were prone to. February pulled up a chair beside her mother’s bed and turned her attention to the TV, where the next Feud rerun was about to start.
if there had been such a thing as homecoming at River Valley, Austin Workman and Gabriella Valenti would’ve been king and queen. He didn’t feel conceited when this thought occurred to him. Some things were just true.
Gabriella was widely agreed to be pretty—strawberry blond hair with a delicate spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose—and Austin was good-looking, at least good-looking enough that Gabriella would have him. They had played opposite each other as Curly and Laurey in last year’s run of Oklahoma! despite an unspoken rule that leads were reserved for upperclassmen. But the real source of their popularity, he knew, had little to do with looks or talent; it was embedded in each of their last names. The Valentis were no Workman clan, but Gabriella and her little sister were second-generation Deaf, and the privilege of signing parents heaped on yet more privileges—Austin and Gabriella were strong students because their parents had read to them when they were small; they were solid performers because they had grown up attending Deaf theater exhibitions; their fluid, confident signing only made them more admired by their peers.
So everyone knew Austin and Gabriella, and everyone knew they were supposed to be together. Technically they had been together since preschool, when Austin had proposed at the top of the slide one afternoon. The fact that he had no memory of the occasion did little to unstick it from its place in the Ohioan Deaf gossip archives, and even though they had not actually dated in the decade between their engagement and Austin’s suggestion last year that they go out for ice cream, their togetherness had been considered a foregone conclusion. Which was why it had come as a shock to everyone, Austin included, when he found himself in the middle of a very public breakup at the community pool on Freshman Day.
This part he felt bad about—he hadn’t wanted to ruin the end-of-year celebration they had both been looking forward to. And he’d certainly never meant to embarrass her, never mind in front of their entire class. But the other thing about Gabriella was, she wasn’t very nice. More often than not she was angry with Austin—she considered each moment he wasn’t actively doting on her a slight. She was also deeply vain, which had certain benefits: she was always dressed to impress, had an Instagram-ready body, and allowed him frequent access to its pleasures. But her obsession with looks extended beyond the bounds of her own person, and disparaging others was a go-to pastime Austin found both in bad taste and very boring. He was routinely taken aback by her willingness to slice right through someone they’d known their whole lives, the casual way insults glided off her fingers. For his part, Austin couldn’t care less who was wearing what, or who had received an unfortunate haircut, or who—as had been the victims that day—looked lumpy in their bathing suits.
He and Gabriella had been in the pool, leaning against the wall in the shallow end, Austin enduring her gleeful tabulation of unsightly thigh dimples and feeling the back of his neck begin to sunburn when, finally, he blurted: Oh my god would you shut up!
Here was his regret: he should have requested that they go somewhere private to talk. Instead, they’d stayed out in the open and the number of eyes on them grew as Austin told her he didn’t think this was working anymore. Gabriella redirected all the energy she normally spent on berating their peers toward him—he was inattentive, withholding, had bad breath. He had taken her virginity and cast her aside like used goods. Austin stood stunned through most of the tirade, but the last accusation shamed him into action, and he tried to reach for her hands to stop her, or at least get her to sign smaller, and she slid from his grasp and let out a scream that scared the lifeguard. The guard, only a few years older than they were, and already on edge about a pool full of deaf kids, came running and threw the rescue can toward Gabriella, cracking Austin in the back of the head instead. Then it was Austin’s turn to shout, and another lifeguard appeared. As he and Gabriella were dragged up onto the concrete, he felt he should say something, but the only thing that came to mind was You were a virgin?
School had let out two days later; the pool incident was the last time they’d spoken. Part of Austin believed she was biding her time to execute an elaborate revenge plot, but when they’d seen one another at dinner the first night back, she’d only sat down at the far side of their table and stared.
Then Headmistress had asked him to show the new girl around. It was no big deal at first. He went over and introduced himself without much fanfare, but found that for the rest of the day he could not stop thinking about Charlie, her eyes, in particular—the furtive way she cast them about the cafeteria, the warm hickory color that enveloped him when she finally looked up at him.