And all on another level than the other families of Edgewater. The Remingtons know everyone, and everyone who doesn’t know them wants to. There are libraries named for them, think tanks that defer to them, government officials begging for their approval. I’ve never known what it’s like to have that much power.
For me, though, it would feel like begging, begging for something I already earned. That’s one thing I can’t do again. But if there was the right opportunity, if an invite was offered in such a way that I was just given a way to prove myself again… then, maybe.
“When would that even be possible, Toni? And don’t say the luncheon, because I’m not going.”
Toni leans in and whispers, “The bonfire.”
I give her a warning look. “Toni.”
“You can talk to him there. I’ll even set you up at the luncheon. Mention you so that you’re front of mind,” Toni says. She’s already eagerly forming a plan, more optimistic than I could ever be.
“She’ll be there. They’ll all be there,” I warn.
Toni scoffs. “Fuck them, who cares.”
She cares. I care.
I wasn’t like Toni, whose parents were D9 chapter presidents and Ivy-educated descendants of the Black elite from the Gilded Age. I was the daughter of the help, in the eyes of everyone else.
Still, the idea of showing everyone up one more time before I fade into obscurity is more tempting than it should be. To be invited to the Finish and win would show them all that I wasn’t the pitiful little upstart that cracked under pressure. And besides, I have nothing left to lose. With a long-suffering sigh, I say, “Come over at seven so we can get ready. Bring vodka.”
I’ll need a shot to be brave the way I’ll have to be to go where I’m unwelcome one last time.
* * *
“Do the shot and let’s bounce,” Toni insists, rocking back and forth in her excitement, a few hours later.
I grimace over my shoulder at her before I turn back to examine myself in my vanity. I look tired. I try to smile, to arch my neck, but give up quickly, reaching instead for the clear liquor next to the yearbook that I had a hand in making—the one that no one but Toni signed. I look at the pharmacy-developed photos of Toni and me tucked into the mirror frame as I pour. There were more but some are missing since March, ones that were full of the girls from the life I thought I had, a life that never quite belonged to me.
I throw the shot back and the burn wakes me up as it travels down my throat, not quite fire, but something close. Without the excuse of my former social calendar, I’m out of practice. I cough once, then twice, and Toni takes it as permission to swing a heavy fist at my back. I glare at her but her laugh softens everything inside me.
“You look nice,” I say. She does, ethereal in all white to match her feathered lashes.
“I’ve got to look better than nice,” Toni insists, her fingers curling into fists.
“Why? Do you have plans tonight?” I ask, surprised, leaning back against the vanity.
“I’m going to have sex with someone tonight. Maybe Franco,” Toni declares.
I fight to keep from rolling my eyes. So, this is just another extension of Toni’s crusade against her virginity. In some ways, it’s nice that something feels semiregular.
“Well, you’re going to be the prettiest girl there,” I declare.
Toni scoffs to herself, like she doesn’t believe me. “Not there,” she says, and it’s times like these that I remember the grit she buries under glitter. I recognize that kind of pain, one in conversation with mine.
Toni smiles through it, though, baring her teeth in a grin. No wonder they’re secretly terrified of her.
“Finish your eyeliner,” she commands. She pretends her mask didn’t slip as she stows the half-sized bottle in her duffel and shoves it into the corner of my room, tucked carefully underneath three of my sweaters. It’s unnecessary—my parents aren’t in the habit of sneaking around my room, even after my massive fuckup—but I don’t say anything.
I swipe the black liner on, the only makeup I know how to apply semiexpertly, before I grab a jacket and tug it around the champagne-colored corset top Toni wrapped me in earlier, declaring, “It picked you.” She’s right. There’s something about its fine-boned elegance that draws me in, a borrowed thing that I want to make my own, like my life.
“Come here, your hair,” she says, fluffing it.
There are girls who have touched my hair before. I remember even when I was just a kid, all of six years old, a girl burying her fist in my curls because she wanted to know if they felt like dog fur. But when Toni touches my hair, it feels reverent, like I’m loved, the way it was with my aunt’s hand in my hair, with my grandmother’s fingers twisting my ends, with every ancestor who has ever touched me and ever will.
“Dangly earrings. Gold, I think,” Toni murmurs, pressing a quick kiss to the top of my head before breaking the moment. She bounces back, clapping her hands. “Oh my God, they’re going to be so pissed. You look so good.”
She cackles at the flash of my middle finger, and I grab the earrings, then my boots, holding them by the laces. We stomp down the stairs, into the living room, and I call, “Hey! We’re going now!” without stopping as we move to the door. But my parents are right there on the couch, curled around each other, and their soft conversation creaks to a stop.
Dad looks over Mom’s head with a little smile. Mom tries to echo it, but it looks more like a grimace. She’s always been more readable.
“All right, girls. If you need me to drive you home—”
“We’ll call,” Toni promises.
“Are you sure, Adina? You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”
She’s wrong.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“Bye, Mrs. Walker. I’ve got her,” Toni says proudly, and I roll my eyes but Toni locks arms with me and tugs me out the door.
“You’re on aux, bitch,” she insists as we climb into her car. “You have the best playlist for this moment.”
This at least is the truth. I plug my phone in and scroll through my playlists until I land on “pov: you have the aux and you have something to prove.” When I press play, Toni crows loudly.
“God, you always make me feel like I’m the main character in a movie. Fuck, just music-direct my life,” Toni screeches over the bass.
“I live to create ambiance.”
For a moment everything is okay. It always is, driving in cars like this, speeding through the dark, our way lit by the neon-blue glow of the dashboard and the sharp orange of the streetlights reflecting off Toni’s silvery eyelashes. It’s the palette of an A24 movie made flesh, and it feels powerful. I am the main character, whom things are taken from, won then irrevocably lost, but while the open ending isn’t quite hopeful, at least it’s still about me. I’m not an asterisk or a footnote in my own life. I don’t have to hold my tongue here, because I’m the fucking star.
But as we drive through my neighborhood, if I look to the right or left beyond the lights, I see each cookie-cutter house. Every single one is the same, all two compact stories, wooden planks with navy-blue shutters and forest-green doors. Each lawn is perfectly manicured, modest, unassuming. And behind it are the boring lives of boring people.