5. Dallas #2
Lucy hated giving toasts, but she stood up anyway and clinked her glass.
“So,” she said, “this isn’t the day or the weekend we expected, but the important thing is we’re a family and we’re together to support Jack through this tough time.
We love you, Jack, and we aren’t going anywhere.
” Heartfelt , she thought, but lame . Mason would have done better.
“Hear, hear,” said Henry. “But just as a reminder, I am going somewhere. My flight’s at noon tomorrow.”
“Ours is at two,” said Graham, “is that right, Ellen?”
“I don’t think that’s the point Lucy was trying to make,” Irene said.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” said Rex. “This is a really tough situation.”
“But you never know,” said Ellen, “something good may come of it.”
What good, Lucy thought, could possibly come of this clusterfuck? She could not imagine a silver lining.
Lucy turned to look at Jack. He was staring off into space, his teeth clenched, a scowl on his face. Lucy had a feeling he’d gone from the denial stage of grief to anger in the course of the day.
As the catering staff milled around, refilling water glasses, they all picked at their food. Tank got on his hind legs and stole a steak off Zoe’s plate, and no one even bothered to reprimand him.
After the dishes were cleared, Lucy tipped the servers and sent them home, telling them to take the extra-large sheet cake with them.
In the middle of the night, Jack came into her room and handed her his phone, open to a Dallas Morning News article: An empty chair at Rockwell’s graduation , the subheading read, represents Gen Z’s failure to form healthy friendships .
Lucy sat up to read the article while Jack flopped on his back.
“What fresh hell…?” she said, spotting an image in the article of the very list Jack had created.
“Rockwell’s least popular senior,” Jack recited, “serves as an example of the breakdown in adolescent socialization. Apparently, my generation can’t forge platonic bonds or relate to peers in a way that isn’t transactional.
This phenomenon is a result of isolation during Covid, overindulgent parenting, excessive use of social media, and violent video games. And porn.”
Lucy glanced at him, noticing little spots of Clearasil dotting his face.
It was a good sign, she thought, that he still cared about his skin at a time like this.
“The article seems like a psych analysis rather than a news piece,” Lucy said, scrolling through it, feeling oddly relieved. “Hey, you aren’t named.”
“Right,” Jack said dryly, “my identity in this scandal is a total mystery.”
“This article’s bullshit. You formed very solid friendships.”
“It doesn’t matter. MIT will never let me come.” He put an arm over his face and took a shaky breath.
“We don’t know that,” she said, and handed him his phone. “What I really don’t understand is why everyone is jumping to think the worst about you.”
“Everyone listens to Cynthia,” he said quietly. “So now they all think I’m an asshole.”
“But why?” she said. “And how did Cynthia even get the list?”
“I wish I knew.” He curled away from her on Mason’s side of the bed.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, feeling the hollowness of her words.
“I don’t see how.” He was completely still. “I’m really sorry, Mom.”
Lucy felt her heart break into a million pieces.
She couldn’t go back to sleep.
While Jack was breathing quietly on the other side of the bed, she read the Dallas Morning News article again, wondering how many people had seen it already.
She googled Jack’s name, scared to find what else might be closing in on them, and then she checked Cynthia’s TikTok.
There she was in a new post, her pretty, tear-streaked face up close to the screen. Lucy put in her earbuds.
“I’m healing, y’all,” Cynthia was saying, blinking her fake lashes, “but it’s so hard.
I know I was given, like, a really high value on that list he made, but that’s not even the point.
To find out there’s a guy in our class who thinks he gets to decide what we’re worth?
He thinks he can put a price on me? On any of us?
It’s so messed up. Where does he get off judging us ? Fuck that asshole loser.”
The story was not blowing over; it was gaining steam.
Lucy opened Instagram next, where she saw post after post of graduation pictures, caps, gowns, and bright smiles. She clenched her teeth, hating the bitterness she felt.
She scrolled past, stopping short when she saw a reel from a German woman she hadn’t seen since she was in college and hadn’t thought of in years.
Bettina had written: “ My sister and her husband need a place to live in Dallas, Texas—ASAP! Hoping for a one-year arrangement. In exchange: her swanky apartment in Berlin. Check out her post! —”
Lucy did and read the caption that ended with the line Perfect for anyone in need of an escape!!!
Lucy stared at her phone. There was not a person on this earth more in need of an escape than Jack was at that very moment.
Berlin! She had not been in almost twenty years, and she felt flushed at the thought of it, the scale of the city, the energy, the fun.
Berlin’s motto had been “Poor but sexy,” which fit the city (and Lucy and her friends at the time) perfectly.
She glanced over at Jack; no one would know him there.
And Berlin was, most definitely in fact, a city Jack should know.
Lucy went to the woman’s profile, her finger hovering over the message button.
What would Mason think if she packed up all three kids and fled this snake pit?
Would leaving be an act of cowardice? Or an act of courage?
Courage, she decided. It would not be easy to leave the comfort of their home.
She couldn’t fathom how Mason had done it.
She was proud of him, but she could not understand how he could be away from them and miss out on six months of their kids’ lives.
When she’d asked him, he’d said it was about the betterment of humanity.
“What about the… worserment of your family?” she’d said. “We’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too. Terribly,” he’d said. “But this is so much bigger than us.”
Lucy could never in a million years muster the willpower to live in a small, enclosed habitat with strangers, to be separated from her family, to give up access to regular pleasures like good food, sex, and hot showers.
She knew she wouldn’t last a week. But Mason had given up all of that and then some—even handing Lucy his phone and wallet before leaving—to test out whether his trademarked DustBunnies, the robots he invented to clean dirt off solar panels, might have a role in a future colony on Mars.
Mason couldn’t even talk about the possibilities without getting flustered with excitement.
When she and the kids had said goodbye to him, he’d waved and blown kisses so fervently, it was as though he actually believed he was about to board a rocket ship and blast into space. Instead, he’d climbed into the back of a gray van that jolted off in a plume of dust.
He may not have been on Mars, but Lucy was on her own nonetheless. And some part of her felt lit up by the idea of taking the kids and blasting out of this hellscape.
She looked at the pictures again on the Instagram post. There was a balcony!
Lucy loved a balcony. She wanted this escape so badly that it surprised even herself.
It was the one thing she could do: give Jack the gift of time away from a community that had not granted him the slightest benefit of the doubt.
Lucy clicked.