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“Vete pal carajo, Georgia! Concho hijo de la gran Yegua!”
I curse this godforsaken state at the top of my lungs and beat the steering wheel. I drum my heels on the floorboards. I scream curses over and over until my voice is hoarse. And then I wipe the mascara out of my eyes, blow my nose, take one deep breath, pull back onto the road. “Coño.” Damn. There’s nothing left to say, so I glare at the obstinate sun, and go...home.
God, it would feel good to spill my guts to Mom the way we used to, Lorelai and Rory–style, but the time for sitcom mother-daughter banter is long gone. When I look back at all the times I assumed she was doing something awesome, like tutoring one of her struggling students, and realize she was, in fact, doing something skeevy, like flirting with a married dude, a bone-crushing feeling of betrayal presses onto me. It’s as if I was waiting at Luke’s with my giant mug of coffee, but my mother never showed.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at her and forgive her for selfishly and systematically ruining my life. Ruining our life. All because of a skinny, kinky weirdo with a weasel face and my mom’s very, very poor tech skills.
Word to the wise, kids: don’t be a fat-fingered idiot when you’re sexting with your married coworker. Because you just might accidentally send a pic of your naked ass to the HR secretary instead of your paramour. And said secretary just might be your weasel-faced sex partner’s wife’s yoga buddy. And then you and your innocent daughter will be unceremoniously exiled to the sweltering marshes of Nowhere, Georgia.
TWO (#u4b8ddb2a-06a8-5550-9d97-0fa8601bb316)
In the quiet sanctuary of my temporary home, all I want to do is forget the total disaster that was the first day of what’s probably the biggest mistake of my life so far. Mom’s teaching a class and won’t be home for another two hours, so I have unsupervised time to kill.
There are very few perks that come with living in Georgia, but a big, refreshing one is the pool in the backyard. I can practically hear the pool pump hissing, “Come swim in me, Nes.”
I tear to my room and rip open a box labeled Summer Clothes, then a box labeled Vacation, then, in a desperate last-ditch effort, I peel back the tape on one labeled Random Fun Stuff. I find a pair of denim overalls I don’t remember buying, some really old family pictures from the summer we went on vacation to some hokey middle-America theme park, and three yo-yos from my brother’s obsessive yo-yo-collecting days back when he was a nerdy middle schooler (instead of a nerdy college sophomore). I get nervous because I’m not sure where else to look for my lone piece of missing swimwear. I own exactly one bikini.
There’s not an especially long swim season in New York, so one will do. But it’s January here. January. The time of post-Christmas blizzards and sticking to resolutions you made for New Year’s, if you’re all about that. And it’s now hotter than it was when we arrived this hellish December.
I may need more bikinis. In the dead of winter. Unbelievable.
Our Realtor said this was an “unusually hot one” as she fanned her sweaty face and bemoaned every house we looked in that hadn’t switched on the central air. I expect bikini shopping and sweltering heat in Santo Domingo over summer break; this is just madness.
I continue to frantically pick through the cardboard box ziggurat in my room and finally snag the stretchy material of my lone bathing suit in a box labeled Underwear. Fair enough. And I can’t even blame the movers’ crazy box identification because I packed that one myself. Just as I’m about to change, my phone rings and I realize I may have to pick up and talk intelligibly to another human being when all I want to do is dead man’s float around the pool and feel sad for myself. The groan I bite back is a knife of guilt that twists in my gut.
Ollie wants to FaceTime.
My bleary, makeup-smeared image reflects back at me on the screen, and I want to sob. Again. But then I’ll look even worse. It’s all pretty chicken-and-egg.
“Olls, I look like a gargoyle!” I screech the second she connects.
Her gorgeous face, moon round and ethereally peaches and cream, takes up the entire screen, and my throat feels all clawed down both sides because I’m not sitting in her parents’ modern, artsy apartment, gorging on the Vietnamese sizzling pancakes Ollie is a genius at whipping up and sneaking sips of rice wine from her parents’ enormous collection before we get down to our homework and daily two-person merengue party.
“Shuddup! You look like a goddess.” She gnaws on her lip. “Hey, I checked your Insta this morning...”
“Right.” I shrug. “Call me melodramatic, but it was surprisingly hard to scroll through all those pictures of everything and everyone I was leaving behind.” I take a second to steady my voice, the same way I steady my raw heart every time I flip through my winter photo folder—which is full of pictures of people and places that are a thousand miles away. “I promise I’ll get a new one going soon.”
I guess Ollie hasn’t checked Snapchat yet, or she’d be calling me out about that too. I deleted my account late last night after getting shocked by another surprise Lincoln cameo in a mutual friend’s post-winter-break video. If pictures are hard for me to look at, there’s no way I can handle seeing and hearing video footage of everything I’m missing back home... Plus Lincoln would be like a ghost haunting every Newington clip.
“You really should. Your Insta pics were goals. Plus I want to know what things look like down there. Are there all those mossy trees like in Scooby-Doo? And plantations everywhere? Are they haunted? Did your mom buy you the Mystery Machine to drive around in? Are you wearing ascots and miniskirts? Did you get a Great Dane?” Before she can yell zoinks, Ollie’s eyes dart over my shoulder and go wide with worry. “Wait. You still haven’t unpacked?”
“It’s ‘asylum chic.’ Like it?” She shakes her head and sighs, so I confess. “Truth? It’s a reminder that I won’t actually have to live here forever.”
I wave a hand at the mattress on the floor, covers and pillows piled on it. That, my docking station, and a few choice boxes with the flaps permanently open make up my entire bedroom decor. The movers put all my boxes in my room for me, but I declined when they offered to put my bed frame together. That felt too permanent. Mom made several passive-aggressive comments about how she wouldn’t have bothered to pay an arm and a leg to move all my furniture if I wasn’t even going to set it up, but I stared at the ceiling until she left me to my misery. She was excited to finally have a space bigger than a couple hundred square feet to decorate, and she didn’t get why I wasn’t revved up to be in a new room that’s almost triple the square footage of my old room.
Because I miss my tiny, cramped, perfect old room.
“I miss your old room,” Ollie admits, echoing my internal thoughts with her freakish bestie ESP. Her shoulders slump, and my heart follows their lead.
“It’s okay.” No one brings out my reluctant optimist like Ollie. I hate seeing her down, so I put on a good game face no matter how crappy I feel. “Mom and Dad had been planning to sell our place when I moved to college anyway, and it went for way over asking price, like, the first week it was on the market. They were pretty psyched about it, and I...I’m trying to accept my fate at this point. You know I’m a ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ type when it comes to dealing with emotional stuff.”
“Um, yeah you are!” she laughs. Then gets dead serious. Lecture-time serious. “Speaking of college...”
“I got all my applications in by the deadlines, I swear to God.” I don’t tell my best friend that I hit Send on my SUNY application literally two minutes before midnight on the last possible day. And I don’t elaborate on the fact that I never took my brother up on his offer to proofread my personal essay. I didn’t have the patience to be ridiculed on my native-tongue grammatical failures by my own trilingual flesh and blood.
“You’ll tell me when you hear back?”
“Of course.” I cross my heart with the hand that’s still clutching my bikini, and Ollie freaks out.
“Are you going swimming?” The screen goes down for a second and her shocked voice floats through the speaker. “WeatherBug says it’s eighty-five in Savannah. How is that possible?”
Her face pops back on the screen, and I roll my eyes. “Because Savannah is actually an outer ring of hell. Don’t be jealous. I spent all day with sweaty pit stains. It’s gross.”
“It’s actually not frigid here. Like we could have watched those hot Puerto Rican guys play basketball from your fire escape if we’d had a blanket. Or three.”
“Are you trying to drive me to suicide?” My voice wobbles like the ankles of a first-time ice-skater.
“Sweetie.” Ollie says it on the longest sigh. I know exactly what direction her lecture is going to take, because she’s given it to me a few dozen times before. “Why didn’t you stay here in the city? With me? My parents love you. Or with your abuela. Even if she would have welded one of those chastity belts on you...it maybe would have been better than getting trapped in Georgia. Right?”
“It’s not chastity-belt bad here.”
“No...?”
I think about how I can go to an Episcopal, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Nazarene, or Seventh Day Adventist church if I walk five blocks from my house, but an Americano is an unknown species around here. I haven’t found a single decent coffee shop.
“You have a point...”
“You could come back.” She makes her voice small, like she’s trying to disguise the hope so that I won’t even notice it. Fat chance.
Not only do I notice it, big and comfy and bright as it is—it makes me ache.
“I know.” I do. I made a huge, complicated pro-and-con list on butcher paper in my room and stayed up for a full twenty-four hours contemplating it the night before I made my final decision. “But she’s still...”
“Your mom.” Ollie nods.
“Yup.” The word swings like a wrecking ball.
She chews on her lip and gives me space to be angry. I’ve needed the geographical equivalent of Russia and most of China in terms of anger space. But all that roaming anger is getting narcissistic.
“And he’s still...” She lets the words hang.
“Olls,” I beg, but she’s relentless in her quest to make me face my emotions.
“He was your first love, Nes. And he broke your heart. He’s a dog, but you can’t beat yourself up because you miss him. You need to let yourself feel everything. Don’t clam up.”
The tears coat my eyes like a hot, glistening windshield. When they plop out and make their pathetic slide down my cheeks, I know Ollie won’t say, “Don’t cry.” I tend to squeeze my emotions into a bitty ball I can ignore. Ollie is a “cry it out” advocate.
“I do miss him.” It’s hard to be honest when honesty makes me feel so weak and stupid.
“That’s okay.” The sound of her voice is a balm to my frayed emotions.
“I mean, he was my best friend other than you. I can’t think about him without remembering how good the good times were—it’s bizarre how it changed so slowly. How did he go from being the guy who could always make me laugh to the guy who pulverized my heart?”
“I know,” she says.
“I was scared, really scared to leave home and Newington and you,” I say as I lick a few salty tears off my cracked lips. “But I was more scared of staying and facing him every day, because what he did to me is unacceptable—but sometimes I forget because I’m busy remembering how sweet he can be. How can he be such a snake in the grass and legitimately one of the most interesting, caring people I’ve ever met? He messed up so badly, but I know he still cares about me. That’s dangerous.” I take a deep breath and look at Ollie’s face, just a screen away. “I was scared of falling for him again after everything he put me through. Because a little part of me is always going to love the goofy, smart, sweet guy I fell in love with two years ago.”
“Oh, Nes.” I know Ollie would hug me if we were together, and I want to cash in on that hug more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
“I’m a coward.” I close my eyes.
“Stop it. Right now. You’re the bravest person I know. I love you.”
“I love you, Olls. And I’m going to be okay, promise. I’m letting all the gross feelings come out, just in little drips and drabs. Did I produce enough tears for you today? Can I go back to pretending I’m hard-hearted and cool?” I joke. Or half joke.
I know Ollie still wants a full rundown of my first day of school, but I don’t have any energy to tell her about all the crazy crap that kind of threw me for a loop today. It’s childish, but I want to pretend I started the second semester of our senior year at Newington Academy with her. We met in the friendly halls of our Quaker school when we were in second grade and she yelled that she loved my glittery stockings and I yelled that I loved her heart necklace and our teachers shushed us as we tried to yell more compliments back and forth. We found each other at recess, and we’ve been madly, completely best friends in love since then.
“I miss you like butter misses popcorn,” she mourns, and the sight of her tears firms up my backbone.
“Stop crying! Did Parson give you permission to run your bead-and-bracelet biz in the front hall?” I change the subject fast, and it works. Sort of.
“Yes! The middle school girls were all primped out in their Christmas/Hanukkah duds... Nes, they’re crimping their hair! Why didn’t I ask Santa for a crimper too? I both want to scorn them and buy a crimper with all the fat moneys I’m making weaving little unicorn beads into their hair. Advice?” She wipes the tears away with the tip of her fingers.
“No scorn. They’re littles. Remember how much the scorn of the cool upper-class girls hurt our souls back when we were tiny? Also, no crimper. If you want your hair to look like Bride of Frankenstein’s, just braid it when it’s damp.” I tap my finger on the screen, over her face. She opens her mouth like she’s going to bite it.
Our laughs are sadder than I want them to be.
“And, I almost forgot to tell you... No, I’m going to make you guess. Guess how else my life is turning to crap,” Ollie orders.
Her words stab more than a little. I know I’m one of the main reasons the tail end of her senior year is going to look nothing like what we’d been planning since elementary school.
“Thao is moving back across the hall.” She rolls her neck the way she always does after a grueling bassoon session to get the tension out.
“And I’m not even there to help you booby-trap your house like we did in fifth grade! What kind of crap friend am I?” I laugh around the next words because the idea of Thao being anything but a nose-picking cretin is hilarious. “Maybe he’s changed since you last saw him? Or maybe your parents won’t make you two hang out every time they get together. I mean, you’re not little kids anymore. You have a life. Thao probably does too. If you count sneak-attack farting on people a life...”
“That’s right.” Ollie nods enthusiastically. “I do have a life. A life that does not involve disgusting boys who think it’s cool to squirt milk out of their eyeballs.”
I gag at the memory. “I’m telling you, I became lactose intolerant right after that.”
We both crack up remembering gross Thao.
“You know I want to talk to you for a jillion hours, but Darcy gave us a paper assignment. Already. I can’t believe him. Will you be able to talk later?” She eyes the phone hopefully.
Darcy. My favorite teacher. Ollie’s too. She’s pissed because she can’t charm him out of giving actual work-based assignments instead of the fluffy busywork so many other teachers tend to assign during the last half of senior year. Well, giving her actual, work-based assignments. I live in a Darcy-free world now. All I have is Ma’am Lovett.
“Love you, doll. We can chat all night if you call later.” I don’t cry when I disconnect with Ollie, I don’t cry when I look around at the institutionally bare walls of my room, and I don’t cry when I struggle to get into my complicated, strappy bikini, which is as frustrating as playing Chinese jump rope.
I walk through the echoey house. It’s got all the mundane architecture and lack of character you can expect from a last-minute rental in suburban Georgia. The tiny amount of furniture we brought from New York didn’t begin to fill this place, so Mom set up an order from the local furniture store. Even with a truckload of brand-new couches, coffee tables, rugs, and paintings, it’s surprisingly hard to fill three thousand square feet of house with stuff when you’re used to living in an apartment one-sixth that size.
Even though I know I could never call this place home, I wonder who might someday. And I feel bad for them. Though the future owners do get a pool. That’s pretty rad, to just walk out of your house and—blam—there’s a pool.
That you can swim in.
In January.
I guess this place isn’t all bad.
It still blows my mind, because private pools are like unicorns where I come from. Mom tried to use the pool as incentive to get me to like the idea of coming here. Because leaving a city full of culture and art and beauty and ferocious ambition can so be made better with a concrete hole filled with chlorinated water.
I expect the backyard to be serenely empty when I turn the corner, and nearly have a heart attack when I run into a random stranger holding a hose.
“What are you doing in my backyard?” I yell, taking an aggressive stance and gripping my phone hard in case I need to chuck it at his head. Or call 911. I scan the yard for weapons and notice a pool skimmer the cleaning service left on the patio. Maybe I could smack this guy into the water if he tries anything funny?
“’Scuse me. So sorry. I didn’t realize the renters already moved in.”
The voice drawls rough, quiet...familiar. Where have I heard it before? The half-naked male attached to it is practically ripping new armholes in his T-shirt in an attempt to cover up.
I relax my stance and realize he’s not some hulking intruder, but a freaked-out guy about my age, and the T-shirt he’s putting on backward reads Rahn Lawn Care and Maintenance.
“Most days my grandpa and cousin’d be out here during the day, so as not to disturb y’all. I jest head out to the places where there’s no renters in yet. Your house was on my list. Sorry ’bout the inconvenience, ma’am. And about working with my shirt off. Rahn Lawn Care and Maintenance strives to provide professional service, and I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, ma’am.”
He sounds like he’s reciting lines from the HR handbook I had to sign when I worked at the local Y last summer.
“I promise I won’t report you to your boss if you promise to stop calling me ma’am.” When my joke leaves him looking extra terrified, I snort, pull out my sunscreen—SPF 50—and plop onto the nearest lounge chair. “Dude, chill. Seriously, it’s cool. I took my first life-drawing class when I was twelve. Trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of naked guys. I’m not a prude.”
He manages to yank the T-shirt—neck all stretched from his crazy flailing—right side around and get both arms through the sleeve holes. “Uh, cool. I’m Doyle Rahn. Pleased to meet ya.” He holds out a hand.
I shake it, and dirt from his fingers muddies my sunscreen. “Doyle? I’ve never met anyone with that name before. I like it. I’m Agnes. Agnes Murphy-Pujols.”
“Pujols?” His wide, white grin contains just the slightest twisted tooth here and there, and it sends an electric pulse through me. Unexpected, but definitely nice. “Like Albert Pujols?”
“I don’t have any Alberts in my family.” I squint up at him, his head haloed in the sun. He has blond hair that’s just this side of being strawberry, and freckles that have almost melted into a tan.
“Too bad. He’s pretty much the best pure hitter of all time.” Doyle squats down next to what I guess is supposed to be one of the many “shade trees” the real-estate woman kept squawking about. I hate when people say one thing when they mean another. Like, if you mean shriveled, leafless sticks, don’t say shade trees.
“Ah. Baseball. My father is a Caribbean studies professor who lives in France, and my brother is hard-core into soccer. Like, he insists on calling it football when he’s in the States even though he knows it’s confusing.” I think on that for a second. “Huh. I wonder if he does that because it’s confusing. Jasper’s a weird guy like that. Anyway, not much baseball watching going down at my place. But my dad’s where the Pujols part of my name is from, and the DR is pretty famous for baseball players, so, who knows? Maybe I should pay more attention to baseball.” Doyle’s examining the dried-out stick so intensely, I swear he’s doing it to avoid examining me.
“You should. Watch baseball, that is. Actually, you should play baseball. We get a killer game goin’ most Friday nights in the far field back there. You could come ’round if you like. Your brother too.” He nods over his shoulder, and, even with my amazing internal compass, I have no clue where “back there” could be. Someone’s backyard? The empty woods that line the neighborhood? The community office lawn?
“Actually, my brother lives in Paris with my dad,” I blab. It’s weird how sweet it is to talk to a normal person about normal things in my life. Like what a jerk my irritating brother, who I miss a ton, can be. “My brother is one of those guys who ties a silk scarf around his neck like Freddie from Scooby-Doo because he thinks it’s fashionable. He enjoys eating animal organs and watching really depressing documentaries—basically he’s more Parisian than most French citizens.”
“Yeah?” Doyle’s gaze settles on me with a laid-back comfort. Like he could look all day.
I flap my hand in front of my face like a makeshift fan. Was there some kind of sudden solar flare?
“Yeah.” I reach back and lift my hair, damp with sweat, off my neck.
“You ain’t wantin’ to move to Paris too?”
