Pierce and Penthesilea have been dating since fifth grade, when it wasn’t even called dating. They’d kissed on the Green, on May Day, near the flagpole, and never stopped. It was more common to see them walking together than apart, both long-limbed and moneyed, pale in the winter and freckled in the summer. They seemed happy. Happier than anyone. Tonight—not so much. It sounds like a fight, an old one. I want to lean in, curious, but I deliberately turn my back. It’s best if I can keep close without seeming like I’m eavesdropping, ready for any moment of opportunity that might reveal itself.
I tune back in to Toni and Charles’s conversation.
“You think I can convince Mom to add another session?” Toni asks. “It’s my last summer at camp and they’re doing Cabaret the second session.”
“No, it’s too much to coordinate that, your move-in at Tisch, and me to UPenn,” Charles says. He takes another long pull of Grey Goose, light eyes hazy.
I sneak a peek back at the car and see Pierce’s eyes widen and the tendons in his neck strain against skin. He moves his hand down as if he’s physically cutting Penthesilea off from saying any more, and then he climbs out of the car and stalks away from her. Away from me. Meanwhile, I can feel Esme’s eyes looking my way more and more.
“This isn’t working. I need to find a way to run into him,” I hiss in Toni’s ear.
Toni nods, guilt making tears well in her eyes.
I hurry away in the direction Pierce headed, clutching my White Claw and shaking off her misplaced remorse, determined before it’s too late to at least attempt my Hail Mary plan for correcting everything that went wrong. What I did wrong—not Toni.
Even if she was involved, ultimately it was my fault. Everything that went down was because I broke the rules. For others, those rules were more like guidelines, but for me, they were absolute. Suburbia, for all its faults, was forgiving. Edgewater was not. I had no business testing those rules. Except, I did.
Rule one: Wealth is power. If you don’t have it, keep your head down. I thought I’d gotten that one down to a science over the past twelve years.
Rule two: Knowledge is too—now that power I had in spades. But with knowledge comes the responsibility to know when to keep your mouth shut and when not to （see rule one）。 I chose not to and I chose wrong.
Esme has reminded me of how wrong I was every day since.
I can feel the weight of her stare again as I slip past. I want to glare back, not slink away with my tail tucked between my legs to avoid her ire. But here, and everywhere really, she has the upper hand and the rules are still in place, her entire clique ready to enforce them. The clique that Toni and I were once part of too.
* * *
I’d spent my entire life at Edgewater under the radar, and Esme had liked that. She knew she wouldn’t have to fight me too hard for attention. She could be the best at whatever she chose to be without worry of any of her “friends” eclipsing her. I’d chosen yearbook and student government, mockable electives in terms of social clout but good for college applications. I’d known her cruelty and her callousness, but always through the thin veneer of protection that being on her side allowed. All that attitude had always been directed at her enemies. And I was fine with that, ignoring what she did to others, because she became one of the few who didn’t have anything to say about the neighborhood I’d grown up in. Nothing good, but not anything particularly bad, either. Where I came from every day didn’t matter to her at all.
That all came to an end in mid-March. Spring was burning out our nostril hairs, pollen stinging violently at our eyes. It made Ivy Day easier for some. When they didn’t get into their top choice for one reason or another, the excuse of seasonal allergies hid their tears. But not me. I’d gotten into Yale, early action. All the acceptances that followed were my victory lap.
And then a month later, they were all gone.
Mistake one: I wasn’t paying attention.
Esme had been deferred from Yale in the early action round. In the midst of my win, I hadn’t been sympathetic enough. I hadn’t downplayed anything. I’d been blinded by my own shine.
It started with a quiet, “You’ll fill out their quota nicely,” over lunch.
I didn’t know how to respond, blinking at Esme as she said it through a wide smile. She’d been accepted to Dartmouth, after all. Johns Hopkins was her safety. But that wasn’t enough for Esme—things were never enough if they didn’t go her way, and worse if they went someone else’s.
The table held their breath and only released it when Esme turned to Toni and congratulated her on Tisch—which Toni hadn’t told anyone yet. Toni hadn’t even had the chance to share her own good news. Esme took that from her, after finding out from Charles, whom she’d started hooking up with. She was reminding her whose side to choose. Not that Toni listened.
Then, isolation. I wasn’t invited to Esme’s second house upstate for spring break. I found out about it on the Monday after, when the other girls, including Toni, came in halfway through the day with handwritten notes from Mrs. Alderidge excusing them. I only forgave Toni for it after she explained that Esme had lied to her and told her that I was too sick to go and wouldn’t be responding to text messages—that explained her Get well, bestie before she’d gone radio silent.
Cruelty that had never been aimed at me suddenly dogged my every step in the most subtle ways. “Dropped” invitations, “forgotten” hangouts, the biting laughter that stopped whenever I entered the room. Eventually, Esme kept laughing even when I sat right there in front of her, back rigid as she asked pointed question after question about my college application, about my family, about my parents’ income, about fucking Suburbia.
“Toughen up, Adina,” she’d say when she saw my expression falter as she got a rise out of me. “The girls and boys of Yale will be far more inquisitive. They won’t be as nice as me. We have to find something.”
“Find what?” I’d asked.
“Something that makes you interesting enough to have gotten in… besides the obvious.”
The obvious.
Mistake two: I fought back.
“Don’t listen to her,” Toni said later that night, lying on her back on my bed, staring at me as I tore down every photo of our friend group, all except for the ones of just the two of us. “She’s just feeling insecure.”
“Insecure about what? She got into Dartmouth,” I snapped. “I earned my spot at Yale. Why should I have to hide that?” I was frantic, moving with a frenetic energy that was unlike me. Control was all I’d known.
And Toni. Sweet, well-meaning, slightly nosy Toni said, “I don’t think her parents are doing well. Financially, I mean. I heard her talking about it with Charles the other day, saying she’d have to hide her necklace before the Feds could find it. She played it off like she was joking, but also you know… was she? She has been nastier than usual.”
Knowledge is power and right then I wanted some, badly.
Rumors are easy, especially at a place like Edgewater, where everyone knows or wants to know one another’s business. I started with a “The Alderidges’ donation this year was low. Yeah, lower than it usually is. Getting cheap, aren’t they?” Dropped in the middle of a yearbook meeting, over a discussion with the layout editor. Then a whispered “I might’ve overheard in the main office that Esme’s parents were late on her little sister’s tuition payment for the semester. But… don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger” in the bathroom. And finally, the most damning—“I hear they’re going broke. Yeah, broke. And the Feds… yeah, the Feds. Heard there was something about embezzlement.”