Juliana
The best part of a party, thinks , is when it’s over—when the quiet is so thick you can take a bite out of it. Everyone
is gone now: the caterers, the DJ, the bartender. Even Allison, who got invited to an after-party with a couple of locals.
What is the point of an after-party? has never understood this, just as she’s never understood the point of a pre-party
or a pre-game. The students at BC loved their pre-gaming! They couldn’t get enough of it. You didn’t even need a game in order
to pre-game. You could pre-game a party, or a dance, or a trip into downtown Boston. You could pre-game a pre-game.
Allison met her new local friends when she went out on July Fourth, the day before. Should have asked Allison where she was going? No. is not her mother. She’s far too young to be Allison’s mother, and probably too old to be her big sister—there are eight years separating them. She’s happy that Allison is having fun. Their workdays are stressful and busy. There’s so much prep to do for the road show, when will travel around the country and meet with potential investment banks. She’ll visit eight cities in six days, and she’ll pitch the story of LookBook again and again and again, while the banks decide if they’ll put orders in the books. Before the road show comes the regulatory process, and the valuation, and before that comes the constant monitoring of similar public companies, to see how they’re faring in the market.
is tired just thinking about it, but she’s energized too. This is the same kind of energy she used to feel at college,
especially as a freshman, especially in her Portico class, the first-year multidisciplinary business class, which opened her
eyes wider than they’d ever opened in her life. She learned then the connection between doing well and doing good; the philosophical
foundations of business; the importance of reflection. She’d worked so hard. She’s been working ever since, always grinding,
always reaching, never taking a step back. And it’s about to pay off. Once LookBook goes public she’s going to have access
to more financial stability than she’s ever dreamed of.
And now there’s David. She’d been so scared walking over to Nicola’s house. But the world kept turning, as it does, and she
just kept moving, as she always did. Eventually the door from the kitchen to the patio opened, and there was David, looking
as he’d looked nearly five years ago, with some small additions, like little crinkles around his eyes when he smiled. More
substance in the neck, in the shoulders, but also almost exactly the same. Now she knows. She knows that David isn’t happy
with Taylor. She knows she didn’t make any of this up: what they both felt that night was real and true. Taylor doesn’t care
about David or his thoughts and passions, about his inner life. She never has. Look what she’s done to David’s dream of race
car driving: He’d presented it to her, holding it carefully like it was made of crystal. And she’d knocked it to the floor.
Shattered it! She treated David like a bit player in her life. In ’s, he’ll be a costar.
It’s a lot of emotion for four days. Happiness—real, true happiness—is so close she can almost touch it. She has to be patient;
she has to be careful. She can do that. She’s made it through 100 percent of her bad days so far. Just. Keep. Moving.
Right now, though, for just a moment, she’s remembering how to reflect. The moon is entirely invisible: it’s a new moon. The opposite of a full moon. It’s a little creepy sitting out here on her dock in total darkness, but not creepy enough that does anything about it. Where she came from, darkness could be dangerous. Here, as long as she stays away from the water, it’s safe. If she needs a light, she can use the flashlight on her phone, or turn on one of the battery-operated lanterns placed (tastefully) around the seating area by the decorator. But she doesn’t do that, not yet, because there’s also another light she can see: the green light at the end of David’s dock.
Someone is coming toward her down her own long, black dock. sucks in her breath, positive she’s about to get murdered.
It would be an easy job: all the murderer would have to do would be to push her into the water and step back. One murder,
done.
Now she does turn on the flashlight on her phone, angling it toward the murderer, hoping to blind him into submission. Then
she hears, “Hey hey!” A familiar voice.
“ Shelly ?” What is Shelly doing here? sighs and switches on one of the lanterns.
“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere . I don’t even know what happened! I went to the bathroom, and I got so tired so I lay down to take a tiny nap in the tub, really just a catnap. I mean, I closed my eyes not even for a second, and when
I woke up everyone was all gone.”
rolls her eyes. This means that Shelly ventured to the second floor, or even the third floor; there are no bathtubs
on the first floor. She hopes she didn’t leave anything personal in easy reach in her bedroom. She wouldn’t put a little snoop
past Shelly.
“All gone,” repeats Shelly. She palms-ups her hands, sounding exactly like a bemused toddler whose ice cream slipped off the
cone.
“Right,” says . “Maybe it was a little longer than a catnap. The party’s over. There’s a noise ordinance, you know.
We have to shut things down at eleven p.m. ”
“I hate when parties are over,” says Shelly. “It’s the worst part of the night.” She slumps in the love seat, looking forlorn. Then she perks up and says, “Oh, but guess what? I think I fell in love tonight.”
“Yeah?” Not a shock. Shelly fell in and out love with lightning speed in college. It’s an irritating habit, but it’s also
somewhat endearing. Shelly is so—what is it? She’s so open to the possibilities in the world. She’s guileless. She’s hopeful.
Because this isn’t her first experience with Besotted Shelly, knows the next line in the script. She asks, “Who’d
you fall in love with?” She thinks about turning on another lantern but decides to keep the atmosphere as it is. The waters
of Great Salt are still and quiet, and occasionally the cry of a night bird reaches them. Crickets too. There are all kinds
of lovely sounds that come out when the lights go off. This is not how it was where she grew up; sirens were the crickets
of her childhood summers.
“Jack Baker.” Shelly sighs. “The guy I mentioned to you before, who’s staying with the Buchanans. Do you know him? I mean,
did you invite him? Or is he one of those people who just showed up?”
“Hmm,” says , playing it cool. She’s not going to tell Shelly about why she knows Jack Baker, and his connection to
David, or, for that matter, ’s connection to David, or Jack’s connection to Nicola. Shelly claims to be a vault, but
what she really is is a sieve. “Isn’t he a tennis player or something?” Sure, it’s dark, but even in the daylight ’s
poker face is top-notch.
“Golfer,” says Shelly dreamily.
“Oh, right.”
“Who knew golfers were so hot?”
“Not me!”
“I just felt like—God, I just felt like our sexual chemistry was tangible, you know? Visible. I’m sure it was visible.” Shelly might have caught the lantern-lit look of horror on ’s face because
she hastens to add, “We weren’t doing anything. We were just talking. But like very intimately.” After a pause Shelly says, “Is he seeing anyone, do you know?” Shelly shifts her body into prone po sition, rearranging the pillows so that her head is protected from the love seat’s arm.
coughs, feels around inside the moral quandary—and settles on a nebulous “I’m not sure?”
“Well, if I have anything to do with it, the person he’ll be seeing is this girl right here.” Shelly motions to her chest with both thumbs.
They say that Block Island has no native predators, thinks, but looking at Shelly now she might disagree.
“Be careful,” says .
Shelly stretches out. “Careful? Why?”
“No reason,” says . “Just—it’s always a good idea to be careful.”
Shelly unleashes a massive yawn. “Well,” she says. “I’ll be a tiny bit careful. But not too careful. Careful isn’t really
my specialty.”
Facts, thinks .
“The last person I thought I was in love with I wasn’t,” says Shelly to the night sky, to the invisible new moon. “As it turns
out, I was in hate. Which is the opposite!”
“Hate isn’t the opposite of love.”
Shelly pushes herself up on her elbows and peers at . “It isn’t?”
“Of course it isn’t.” This is a piece of wisdom gleaned from The Lumineers by way of Elie Wiesel. But doesn’t everyone know
it? “The opposite of love is indifference.”
“Ahhhh,” says Shelly. She puts her head back down on the pillows. “Indifference. That makes sense. You’re so smart, Jade.”
“.”
“I like Jade better.” Then Shelly’s breathing becomes deep and even. She doesn’t talk any more. Is Shelly asleep?
“Shelly?” says .
No answer.
sighs. She can’t leave Shelly here. Can she? No. It’s too close to the edge of the dock. In just a minute she’s going to wake her up and walk her into the house. She’ll deposit her in a guest room, and in the morning she’ll have Allison drive her home, provided Allison makes it back from her own festivities.
But she won’t wake Shelly just yet. For a little longer, she’s going to sit in the darkness and look out at the green light
at the end of David’s dock. She’s going to think about the past, and she’s also going to think about the future, which feels
so close.
The opposite of a new moon is a full moon. The opposite of love is indifference. What is the opposite of Shelly? Maybe, in
fact, the opposite of Shelly is herself.
***
Thanksgiving loomed that first year, casting a shadow over much of November, as plans started to take shape. Shelly Salazar’s
mom was on a cruise, and her dad was traveling for work, so Shelly was going home with Mary Ann for the long holiday weekend.
Kathleen and Bob, dropping by the dorm room on a November Saturday, pre-tailgating before the Virginia Tech game with their
old neighbors, inquired about Jade’s plans.
“Heading to Lawrence for the holiday, Jade?” asked Kathleen.
Jade, who was packing her backpack for the library, froze. (She loved the library during football games because everyone on
campus was at the game; she practically had the place to herself.) “Maybe,” she said.
“There’s always a seat at our table.” Bob squeezed Jade’s arm. He might’ve done a little pre-pre-tailgating; he seemed a little
wobbly. The squeeze was borderline... well, it was fine. It was probably fine.
“Oh, I don’t know—” said Jade. “My family’s not... we don’t really do Thanksgiving.”
“We insist that you join us,” said Bob.
“Abso lute ly,” said Kathleen. “Don’t we insist, Mary Ann?” Mary Ann was studying her lip gloss with a critical eye in the makeup mirror on top of her dresser.
“Sure, why not?” said Mary Ann.
Mary Ann’s house, obviously, was palatial. All the houses in Weston were palatial, with wide, sloping lawns scraped free from
fall foliage. In Mary Ann’s backyard was a pool with a dark green cover pulled tight around it. A lustrous golden retriever
named Cinnamon greeted them, then repaired to a plush dog bed that looked more comfortable than the beds Jade had had in her
last two foster houses.
Mary Ann’s bed was king-sized and had a daybed next to it with a matching comforter. What would the sleeping arrangements
be? On the one hand, Jade had never slept in a king bed, and it looked amazing. On the other, Shelly and Mary Ann were closer
than either of them were to Jade, despite Jade’s status as roommate. Jade would offer to take the daybed.
“I’m so excited for tonight,” Shelly said. She stood in front of Mary Ann’s built-in bookcases, studying the framed photos of her
high school friends. Tonight? wondered Jade. Nobody had said anything to her about tonight.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life to be a college kid going out with my high school friends the night before Thanksgiving!”
squealed Mary Ann. To Jade she said, “We have to eat pizza with my parents first.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s our night-before-Thanksgiving
tradition. Then we’re leaving at seven, k?”
“I cannot believe I finally get to meet Chris,” said Shelly. “We’re going to his house, right?”
Mary Ann confirmed that, yes, they were going to Chris’s house. The thought of this almost gave Jade a panic attack. She didn’t
know anything about Chris or his house, or these plans, or this world. She took a deep breath.
“Do you mind if I hang here, you guys? I have a headache.”
Mary Ann and Shelly turned to her with identically furrowed brows. “Oh, no!” said Mary Ann. “Is it bad? My mom can get you some Advil.”
“Thanks,” whispered Jade. “That would be great.”
Later, after Advil, after pizza, after Shelly and Mary Ann had tried on multiple combinations of tops and jeans and left Jade,
not exactly without a backward glance, but with only a very small backward glance, she tucked herself into the daybed with
her accounting textbook. She dozed briefly and when she started awake she found she was thirsty. She crept down the stairs
and toward the kitchen for a glass of water. She could hear unfamiliar voices coming from the living room: Bob and Kathleen
had friends over. Everyone was with friends except Jade! Should she have gone to Chris’s with the girls? Who was Chris? It
would have been fine, probably, except if it wasn’t, and then it would have been terrible.
The lights in the kitchen were turned down low. There was a bottle of red wine open on the giant square island, and two wineglasses,
their bowls almost as big and as round as globes, were set beside them. Jade opened a kitchen cabinet, taking care to be quiet—but
no need, because the cabinet closed with a sigh so soft it sounded almost regretful. Jade couldn’t have slammed it if she’d
wanted to. She filled her water glass from the little spout on the outside of the refrigerator door and was turning to make
her way upstairs when she heard the murmur from the living room resolve into a voice, Kathleen’s, and the words resolve into
something recognizable:
“...seems like someone who doesn’t want to take up too much space.” Murmur murmur murmur. “...heart is sort of breaking
for her.”
Then the lilt of a question from another female voice, and after that this:
“I think she was in the system... or maybe sometimes lives with a relative or something? She doesn’t seem to have family...”
Jade froze. They were talking about her. The heat of a deep, deep shame started in Jade’s feet and made its way up her legs, through her torso and arms, all the way to her face. Her cheek, when she put her hand to it, was hot to the touch.
“...goodness she has you all... so generous to include her in your—” Murmur murmur.
“Oh, well. It’s nothing, really,” said Kathleen. “I couldn’t bear for her to be left all alone; you know what an empath I
am.” Her voice was louder now, too loud; it was impossible not to eavesdrop. Jade held tight to her glass of water (chilled, it should be noted, to the perfect temperature) and slunk out
of the room and up the stairs.
Though that humiliation had been grave enough, the next day, Thanksgiving morning, a graver one developed. The girls woke
and ate breakfast together in the kitchen; Shelly and Mary Ann, clearly hungover, dissected the events of the evening before.
(Max had been out of control , ohmygod, so funny Shelly couldn’t even believe it and Jade should have been there. ) Breakfast was a platter of bagels with three different kinds of cream cheese plus a fruit salad, and as they ate, Jade wondered why there seemed to be no meal preparations afoot. No turkey roasting since 5 a.m. , no potatoes in a colander in the sink, ready for peeling. Maybe rich people simply ate Thanksgiving dinner later in the
day.
The answer became clear soon enough, when Mary Ann broke from her repast to walk to the bottom of the stairs and call, “Mom!
What time are we leaving?”
Leaving ?
Two forty-five, came the answer. Cocktails at three, dinner at four.
“Leaving to go where?”
Both Mary Ann and Shelly stared at her and said in unison, “The club.” What club? “Did I forget to tell you? We always eat Thanksgiving dinner at the club.” Mary Ann shrugged and rolled her eyes and said,
“Honestly, it gets old, but what are we going to do, start cooking turkeys all of a sudden? That’s not really my mom’s MO.”
“Ah,” said Jade, in a voice that she hoped conveyed, Oh, yes, the club. “Am I supposed to wear—is there like a dress code or something?” She’d never been to “the club”—to any club. She took a panicked
mental walk through her suitcase: sweats, jeans, a nice-enough sweater she thought she could wear for the holiday meal. “I
didn’t bring anything to wear out to dinner,” she added. Her palms started to sweat.
Kathleen swept through the kitchen just then, refilling her coffee mug and dropping a “Hey, girls!” like a DJ dropping a beat.
“Just, like, whatever, a dress or a skirt or something. It’s pretty casual.”
“Okay,” said Jade.
Upstairs, not so long after this, Jade emerged from the shower in the bathroom that attached to Mary Ann’s bedroom to find
a dress laid out on the daybed. It was a wrap dress, hunter green, with a high-low hemline and a band of silk along each side
of the V-neck. It was a beautiful dress. Next to the dress, on the floor, was a pair of black wedge ankle boots that looked
brand-new. Jade approached the outfit cautiously, like it might bite her.
“Where’d this come from?”
Mary Ann, entranced by her face in the makeup mirror on her vanity, looked over causally and said, “My mom. I told her you
didn’t bring stuff for the club.” Then she walked over, fingered the dress fondly, and said, “I used to love this dress, in
high school. I thought she put it in the giveaway bin.”
High school had been not even a year ago for either of them, but never mind. Jade thought she’d remember forever the flood
of warmth to her cheeks when Mary Ann said giveaway bin. Mary Ann didn’t mean anything by it, unless she did.
Maybe in fact she did.
Probably she did.
She definitely did. If it wasn’t enough that she said it once, when they trooped downstairs, the three of them, dressed for Thanksgiving dinner at the club, Mary Ann said it again: “I thought you put that dress in the giveaway bin, Mom!” For extra, unnecessary emphasis, she pointed at Jade.
Kathleen’s face softened when she looked at Jade; she said, “Don’t you look lovely in that dress, Jade. Doesn’t that color
just make her skin glow? I swear, at this time of year I’m about as pasty as a dinner roll. How I envy you your skin tone.”
Mary Ann and Shelly agreed that yes, Jade looked wonderful, and no, Kathleen did not look like a dinner roll, and then Mary
Ann uttered the phrase giveaway bin for an unfathomable third time, in this context: “If it was in the giveaway bin she should just keep it, right, Mom?”
“Of course,” agreed Kathleen, who was already distracted, looking through her handbag for something. “Jade. By all means,
keep the dress.”
Never again, thought Jade at the end of the long weekend (emphasis on long ) as they packed to return to campus, and she folded the green dress ever so neatly and left it on the pillow of the daybed. Never again would she be at someone else’s mercy like this, wearing cast-off clothes,
trotted out like a charity project. Before she was thirty, in ten years, she vowed, she would own the home. She would dictate the guest list, buy the bagels, have the dresses. She would take up all the space she wanted, wherever she felt
like it. Nobody would ever speak about her in soft, fake-empathetic voices. Nobody would feel bad for Jade Gordon, for anything,
ever again.
The remnants of fall faded; winter arrived. Shorter days, the buzz of midterm studying, final papers. Football ended, and the winter sports began in earnest: hockey, basketball, indoor track. An early snow fell, melted, another snow came. Students from warmer climes may have wondered why they turned down that acceptance to William and Mary, to UC–Santa Barbara, to Clemson or the University of Virginia. But for Jade, who’d been living through a much drearier version of New England winters her whole life—the snow in Lawrence sometimes seemed to fall from the sky in shades of gray—there was nothing so beautiful as a light snowfall over the quad, students bundled against the cold and darkness, moving from the warmth of the dining hall to the warmth of the library to the warmth of the residence halls with the bright squares of light set against the darkening sky. Everywhere was warmth, to someone who had come from such cold. The food in the dining hall that students complained about was an unfathomable feast to Jade; the library where they didn’t feel like going to study was a bastion of safety and reliability.
Once, Jade came back to the dorm on a Saturday afternoon to find Mary Ann stretched out on her bed, on the phone with her
mother. Shelly was there too, lying in the space at the end of the bed not taken up by Mary Ann, scrolling through her own
phone, her feet pressed against the wall and her head hanging over the edge of the bed. “What? Oh, nothing. Jade just came
in... yeah, I’ll tell her. Okay. Sure, I’ll tell her now.” She made a show of removing her phone from her ear. “My mom
says hi,” she said. “Apparently she needs me to say it right now .” She rolled her eyes.
“Tell her I said hi back,” said Jade. She hoped she didn’t sound too eager. “Tell her thank you for the cookies.” Because
the week before Mary Ann’s mother had dropped off a dozen cookies from a bakery near her office in Boston, and on the box
she’d written Mary Ann and Jade. Jade was embarrassed by how happy it made her to see her name written on this box—on any box! She’d never received so much
as a card in her post office box. Mary Ann had rolled her eyes at the cookies and said, “These things have like a trillion calories,” before leaving the box
on Jade’s desk. (Jade ate all of them, one by one, always when she was alone in the room.) “They were so good,” she added
now, and she could tell by the shift in Mary Ann’s expression that she’d gone a bridge too far.
She made herself busy at her desk while Mary Ann finished her phone call, then grabbed her stuff to leave with Shelly. They couldn’t have known that the door hadn’t closed all the way when Mary Ann said, “She’s like obsessed with my mom.” She didn’t mean for Jade to hear her, but knowing that made it actually worse. Jade remained motionless in her
desk chair for a good five minutes, the shame pooling around her feet like hot lava. She tried to forget it—in that moment,
the next day, in the days and weeks that followed—but the memory lodged in the back of her mind, and she couldn’t pry it free.
It popped up at the oddest times, beyond Jade’s control. In the dining hall, maybe, or in the middle of her first-year writing
seminar. She’s like obsessed with my mom.
After dinner one evening, Jade was heading back to her room to gather her books for a study session when she saw a person
near the entrance to her dorm who looked like he didn’t belong. He was older than the student population, for one thing, and
he was dressed differently, in an old denim jacket, not warm enough for the weather. He looked, in fact, at lot like...
“No,” she said aloud, though she was walking alone. “No no no no...”
Her uncle. He was pacing back and forth in a way that suggested something more than impatience—it suggested that he was drinking,
or using, or something.
“Hey, princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” she hissed. And: “What are you doing here?”
“What? An uncle can’t visit his favorite niece?” Jade looked up at the window that was her room—hers and Mary Ann’s, fourth
floor, third from the left. She knew that anyone looking out from her room wouldn’t be able to see them because of the angle,
but what about people in the dorm across the way? What about people coming in and out of the dorm? She’d eaten with a few
people from her class, but had Mary Ann and Shelly and the rest of the crew been at the dining hall at the same time? What
if they were on their way back?
“No,” she said. “You can’t visit me here. I don’t know how you found me, but you have to leave.”
He held his hands out, supplicating. “I need money, Jade.”
“I don’t have money,” she said. Her spending money was carefully calculated to last from now until the end of the year. She
didn’t have extra.
“Just let me come up. We can talk about it.”
“ No . You can’t come up. No. My roommate’s sleeping. You definitely can’t come up.” The thought of her uncle in hers and Mary
Ann’s carefully organized room, the thought of him sitting on her comforter, looking in derision at Mary Ann’s quadrant of
prints of Paris in the rain—no. “Visitors aren’t allowed.”
“Which is it, princess? Your roommate is sleeping, or visitors aren’t allowed?”
“Both.”
“Just a little bit of money. Just to get me through to my next paycheck.”
“I told you, I don’t have any money.”
He snorted and gestured—at the dorm, at the campus as a whole, at the first few brave stars in the newly darkened sky. At
the students walking around her, each of their vests, one of their boots, worth more, probably, than the amount of money Jade’s
uncle was seeking.
“Bullshit. Look at this place. You’re here, ain’t you?”
“I’m on a full scholarship.”
“Exactly.” He rubbed frantically at his chin and blinked rapidly. Using, she thought. Not drinking. “That’s what I mean. That’s
why I know you got some to spare.”
“They don’t give me cash . The scholarship covers my fees.”
“No other money?”
She shook her head. “No other money.”
“Talia needs things.”
Talia was Jade’s cousin. “Talia doesn’t live with you anymore How do you know what she needs?”
“She called me.”
Now she could see that people walking by were beginning to do double takes. It was so clear that her uncle didn’t belong on the Boston College campus. She wanted to sink into the frozen ground. “She called you? From
her foster home? I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Well, she did.”
“And what’d she say?”
“Said she needs things. School supplies and shit. New sneakers. Hers don’t fit.”
The thought of Talia, with her curly black hair and her crooked smile, walking around in shoes that didn’t fit was almost
enough to make Jade bend. She remembered that when Talia was really small she had a pair of sneakers she loved, little pastel
SKECHERS with light-up hearts along the sides. Talia had loved those shoes so much she wouldn’t even take them off to go to
sleep. Jade remembered sharing a bed with Talia when she was wearing a Tinker Bell nightgown and the sneakers. Those were
the days when Talia would start off in her own bed but sometime in the middle of the night she’d migrate to Jade’s bed, pressing
her skinny little body against Jade’s back and issuing her warm breath into Jade’s neck.
She shook her head, ridding herself of the memory. Talia was safe where she was now, and Jade was 96 percent sure her uncle
was lying. She’d call his bluff.
“Well, okay, then. Let’s go buy her some things. I can put school supplies and maybe a pair of sneakers on my credit card.
Where’s your car?”
Her uncle shifted, wouldn’t meet her eyes. He kicked at the ground, shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and said,
“Naw, Jade. You just give me the cash. I’ll do the shopping.”
Bluff called. By now more people were starting to cast surreptitious glances their way, sensing something off. A boy in a
flannel shirt and a vest (the uniform of a BC student) approached and said, “Everything okay here?”
“Everything’s good, man. Just talking to my niece here.” Her uncle stepped between Flannel Boy and Jade, his back to FB.
“Yeah?” Flannel Boy stepped around the uncle and looked at Jade for confirmation. “This your uncle?”
Jade nodded mutely. She imagined Flannel Boy in some well-appointed two-parent home, gathered with flanneled siblings around
a dinner table while one parent delivered a lesson on Why You Need to Intervene When You See a Girl in Trouble. Or maybe it
wasn’t a parent at a dinner table—maybe it was a Boy Scout troop leader or the coach of a rich-person sport, like lacrosse
or downhill skiing. Somebody intent on teaching the future leaders of America how to Do the Right Thing. And even though she
knew that if it really came to blows Flannel Boy wouldn’t stand a chance—he probably wasn’t reared on street fighting, and
she wouldn’t be surprised if her uncle had a switchblade or even a gun somewhere on his person—she still appreciated that
he was trying.
“I told you already that’s my niece. Why you need to ask her too?”
FB held up his hands, palms out; his hands were saying, Hey hey hey, don’t overreact. To Jade he said, “You need me to get campus security?”
She started to shake her head, then she reconsidered, looked her uncle directly in his wicked, bloodshot eyes, and said, “Yes,
please. I’d like you to call campus security.”
Her uncle whistled and said, “Ho-lee shit, princess. You kidding me with this?”
“No.” She folded her arms. “I’m not kidding even a little bit.” She turned to FB. “Thanks so much,” she said. “I think there’s
a campus security phone right over there.” She pointed. She did not, in fact, know where the nearest campus security phone
was.
“You think you’re better than me, princess. But you ain’t. You came from the same damn place.”
I may have come from the same place, she thought. But I am a million times better than you.
“I’ll go call,” said FB.
“Never mind,” said her uncle. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going. You can’t help your little cousin out, that’s okay, princess.”
He turned and walked away. “Stuck-up little—” Something took the rest of his sentence, the wind or the night, but it was pretty
clear what word came next.
“You okay?” FB was looking at her with a furrowed brow. He made Jade think of a shar-pei.
“Yeah.” She nodded, forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m okay.” It was important to act like this wasn’t a big deal, like her legs weren’t
shaking, like her heart wasn’t beating so fast that the heartbeat felt almost visible, even bundled as she was against the
cold. It was important to act like she belonged where she was.
“You sure? What if he comes back?”
“He won’t come back.”
The brow furrowed even more. “How do you know?”
“I just know,” she said. “That was the end of it.”
“I know it’s none of my business, but—the end of what?”
She couldn’t really explain it to Flannel Boy, nor, she was sure, did he actually want to hear. He didn’t have the context
to understand that her two different worlds had just collided, right there in front of her dorm, and that her uncle walking
away the way he was doing now: that was her past moving away from her future, she hoped for the last time.
Sophomore year Shelly and Mary Ann decided to room together. Jade became an RA and remained one for each of the remaining three years. And so college went by. From the outside, Jade learned to fit in. Hair: straighter and smoother. Clothing: more casual—anything other than sweats and you looked like you were trying too hard. Makeup: minimal, tasteful. Voice: modulated. In this way, while most people grow outward during their college years, Jade drew inward.
She played the part. Sometimes she even enjoyed the part. She never missed a class, a paper, an exam, an opportunity. She
upheld the Jesuit traditions espoused by the school; she volunteered at food pantries, at fundraisers. She could handle herself
in the bro culture of the business school; academically, she thrived. But underneath it all—or maybe more accurately, running
through it, like a current through a river—was the deep, deep shame of not having.
She couldn’t believe how supported her fellow students were: by their parents, their extended family, even by their former
teachers at their prestigious prep schools. Mary Ann, rolling her eyes because her mother was calling her again, was not the
exception. Mary Ann was the rule, and Jade and other students like her, students in the shadows, were the exception.
Family Weekend was an exquisite form of torture. Parents filled the quad, the football stadium, the hallways of the residence
halls. Everyone seemed to have a parent, or an uncle, or a sibling, who had graduated in an earlier year. Jade couldn’t believe how many families came—families with two parents, families with rental cars full of siblings, families who dropped hundreds
of dollars in the bookstore for sweatshirts and hats and collars for their purebred dogs. She couldn’t believe how much the
word legacy meant in a place like this. Everyone knew the rules, where to go, what to wear, how to be.
When Jade graduated, when she gave the commencement speech for the business school, she was debt-free, with exactly the education
she needed. But she was tired . She was twenty-two, but she’d been grinding so long and so hard she felt like she was forty.
The only person from Lawrence who was there to see Jade give her speech was Ms. Morin, who somehow found her in the immense crowds of happy families and gave her a bouquet of white roses tied with a maroon-and-gold ribbon. Ms. Morin hugged Jade; they both cried. Ms. Morin wished she could take Jade out to lunch, she really did, but her daughter had a dance recital that she couldn’t miss, and there was something with her costume that took a long time to—
“That’s okay,” Jade interrupted, to save them both the humiliation. “That’s totally fine! I have plans anyway. I’m so glad
you could come.” Smile, Jade. Smile harder, so that nobody knows you’re lying.