into her pockets, curled her shoulders, and kept her eyes down when they strolled through, as if the real members couldn’t see her if she couldn’t see them and that if she were invisible, no one could call her out (or throw her out) for being an impostor.
Esme checked the time on her phone.
“They’re probably getting drinks before dinner. Come on—I’ll show you.”
Lucas trailed after her like a lovesick puppy, and Gaby giggled a little at the sight.
They strode past the tennis courts, with towering lights just warming up at dusk, and the pool, where a few fortunate toddlers splashed in the shallow end with bored mothers looking on and a few seniors methodically swam laps. Cleo remembered this all so well, the way that MaryAnne would sign her in like they were sisters, the way that in middle school, they would sink into the pool until their fingers pruned, the way that they would linger in the locker room showers, using too much shampoo and conditioner because they smelled like honeysuckle and lemon, and both Cleo and MaryAnne thought such a scent might attract a few suitors. (It did not.) Through all of it, Cleo was grateful for MaryAnne but also always, always aware of that sign-in, that MaryAnne had the entry and Cleo did not. That MaryAnne’s parents could call their principal and demand a retake of the French test because her parents’ names were on a brick outside the school, and Cleo’s parents’ names were not.
But Cleo brought other things to their friendship; she was the alpha in nearly everything else, and MaryAnne seemed fine with it all; they each had their power; they each knew their lane. And then they’d gotten to high school, and the stakes became so infinitely higher, and somehow an unspoken pact arose between them: Do whatever you must at whatever cost. As Esme opened the door to the bar area, Cleo considered that maybe this had never been their pact; maybe it had simply been an agreement she’d made with herself. No regrets. Of which, obviously, she had many: 233.
Cleo’s pulse was throbbing at a near-medical-emergency rate by now.
“They’re usually in the back,” Esme was saying, though Cleo could barely hear her above not just the din of the TVs airing a Mariners game and the clinking of forks and the uncorking of wine bottles and the popping of beer caps but of her own internal voice shrieking, Get the fuck out of here! But she too followed Esme, much like Lucas, and then they were there, in the depths of the bar room, and Gaby had her phone out and aimed like a shotgun, and there was nothing to do to turn back time (to an hour ago, a decade ago, two decades ago, Cleo didn’t know) because MaryAnne, in a pastel dress and soft pink blush and blood-red lipstick, was right in front of her.
Cleo felt a rush of flop sweat streak down her back. Professional confrontations were her forte. Personal confrontations, she realized only at this moment, were not even in her repertoire. Panic was setting in, and though Cleo McDougal never, ever in her life ran from a fight, her instinct was to turn and flee. She glanced toward her old ex–best friend and for just a tiny flicker of a moment was punctured that this was what it had come to. Then she sewed that lament back up.
“Hi, Mom. Look who I found,” Esme said, and Cleo decided immediately that she loved this girl. She was a little bit cunning and also succinct and knew that she was slaying her mom just a bit in her guts.
MaryAnne’s eyes moved from her daughter to Cleo, who was doing her best to contain her adrenaline, and her jaw went slack. Just for a moment. Then it firmed up, as did her steely eyes and her rigid posture. (“I have a backbone,” MaryAnne once snapped at Cleo, after the mayoral internship debacle. She meant it metaphorically, but MaryAnne was also a debutante, so she meant it literally too. No one had better posture than MaryAnne Newman.)
It was only then that Cleo worked up the nerve to take in a wider view. She’d assumed that the “they” in Esme’s remarks had been MaryAnne and her husband, but now she saw that it was a table of eight, all faces she recognized, all faces from her yearbook and probably some of those Facebook comments too.