“Ooh! Look at these cute notebooks!” Lia picked one up and showed it to Alex. “Glitter! How many colors? I need a different color for each class.” She’d already bought her school supplies, but there was no chance she was passing up on glitter.
As Lia dropped sparkly spiral notebooks into her basket, Alex scanned the list on his phone. “Okay, I need Principles of Economics, fourth edition.”
Acting as his guide in their orienteering expedition of the Brown University bookstore, Lia tugged on his t-shirt and led him to the right area. He scanned the shelves, found the book, reached for it, and froze.
“Jesus fuck, Lee. It’s two hundred bucks! The calculus book was a hundred-forty, and I’ve still got three classes to go!”
Lia lifted a decent-looking used book with a price of sixty-five dollars and flipped through it. The previous owner or owners looked like they’d been good highlighters. “You know you don’t have to worry about the money, but get a good used one. The right used book is better than a new one. It might have good notes in it. Bonus study aid.”
“I don’t need study help, but yeah, definitely a used—wait, there’s a note here.” He read from his phone for a second. “I need the new one, with the online module access code. What a fucking racket.”
Lia put the used one back and picked up a new one. She set it in Alex’s basket. “It’s no big deal. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“It is a big deal. I do have to worry about it. What your dad’s doing for me—I still can’t believe it. And what he did for my mom? I don’t ever want to act like I’m taking advantage. I’m not gonna throw your father’s money around like it’s mine.”
Lia arched an eyebrow at him. “Do you think I do that?”
He paled. “No! No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just—you’re used to having money. And you’re his kid, so you’re supposed to be spending it. I just … this is a massive, impossible thing that’s happening to me right now, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”
Relenting, Lia grinned and rose unto her toes to kiss his cheek. “I was teasing, babe. Relax. While we’re in the Es, let me get the books for my English class. Then we’ll do your next one. That would be what?”
“Philosophy, I guess. That’ll be cheaper, right? Just reading the works of some dead navel-gazers?”
Lia laughed at his naïveté and pulled him toward the English section.
“LIA!” two feminine voices called in unison, and Lia turned to see Harriet and Kayla trotting toward them, each carrying her own plastic basket of books.
“Hey!” Lia answered with a grin.
Both her friends grabbed her and mauled her in a group hug. “Yay! You’re back!” Kayla cheered.
They’d kept in touch, of course, while Lia was in the Cove, and in the late spring, after the danger was over and before Kayla and Harriet returned to their respective homes for the summer, they’d even gotten together again a few times. It hadn’t been terribly long since they’d seen each other. Still, though, this was different. This was Lia, reclaiming her life.
Lia, not Leah. She was registered as Lia Pagano now, and this spring she’d told her friends who she really was.
No more making herself too small to see. This life was hers to live. Good or bad, happy or sad, weak or strong. This was hers.
“Hey there, handsome,” Harriet purred at Alex.
He grinned. Harriet could be annoyingly forward, but she was all hat and no cattle, and he knew it. “Hi, ladies. How was your summer?”
“Ugh,” Harriet answered. “Dull. We spent the whole thing at the house on Sanibel. Who goes to Florida in the summer? The pathetic, broken Wellesleys, apparently.”
Harriet’s parents had split up earlier in the year, and the divorce had gotten nasty right away. Her mom had been sleeping with her yoga instructor, and her dad was in full revenge mode.
Lia gave her friend’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “You okay?”
Harriet shrugged and put on her fuck-it-all-love smile. “Of course. I drank our combined weight in rum Collinses, met a cute boy, and had lots of illicit fucking in the pool house. I made it work.”
Kayla and Lia both laughed, because that was what Harriet needed them to do. She was not someone who appreciated pity.