“You’re the big writing star,” I remind her. “You’ll coast through this. Lazlo Literary Anthology, remember? The SATs are the minor leagues for you.”
The tall blond man points extravagantly at the clock and the beige woman says “Shhh” and begins the countdown as solemnly as if we are blasting off at Cape Canaveral, rather than taking a practice test. “In ten, nine, eight…” I glance around the room. Everyone, evidently as driven as Nan, has their blue books and their pencils lined up in perfect symmetry. I look over again at Nan, to see her adjust the sleeve of her sweatshirt in her backpack again, allowing me, from my vantage point to the left and back to see the corner of her electronic dictionary peeking out from the light blue edge of her sweatshirt.
She’s staring at the clock, her mouth a grim line, her pencil so tightly held in her fingers it’s a wonder it doesn’t snap in half. Nan’s left-handed. Her right hand rests on her thigh, in quick-draw reach of her backpack.
Suddenly, I get these pictures in my head of the way Nan’s sat in test after test I’ve taken alongside her, always with her backpack leaned to the side, her hoodie or sweater or whatever draping out. Memories click into place, like frames of a film slowly forwarding one after another, and I realize this is no isolated incident. Nanny, my always-head-of-the-class best friend, Nan the star student, has been cheating for years.
Good thing for me it’s a practice test, because I can barely focus. All I can think about is what I saw, what I know for sure now. Nan doesn’t need to cheat. I mean, nobody needs to cheat, but Nan’s only ensuring a sure thing anyway. I mean, look at her essays.
Her essays.
Those files on Tim’s computer that I looked at, that I…
That I blamed Tim for stealing. The realization freezes me in place. Minutes tick by before I finally pick up my pencil and try to concentrate on the exam.
During break, I splash water on my face in the ugly aqua-tiled bathroom and try to figure out what to do. Tell the proctors? Out of the question. She’s my best friend. But…
As I’m standing there, staring into my own eyes, Nan comes up next to me, squirting antibacterial lotion on her hands and rubbing it up her arms as though scrubbing up for surgery.
“I don’t think it washes off,” I say, before I can think.
“What?”
“Guilt. Didn’t work for Lady Macbeth, did it?”
She turns white, then flushes, freckled translucent skin so quick to show both shades. She glances quickly around the bathroom, making sure we’re alone. “I’m thinking about the future,” she hisses. “My future. You may be happy hanging out at the garage with your handyman, eating Kraft macaroni and cheese, but I’m going to Columbia, Samantha. I’m going to get away from—” Her face crumples. “All of this.” She waves her hand. “Everything.”
“Nan.” I move toward her, arms outstretched.
“You too. You’re part of it all.” Turning, she stalks out of the bathroom, stopping only to scoop up her backpack, from which the sweatshirt sleeve dangles uselessly.
Did that really just happen? I feel sick. What just went wrong here? When did I become just another thing Nan wanted to escape?
Chapter Thirty-eight
The hotel ballroom’s stifling and overheated, like someone forgot to flip on the air-conditioning. It would probably make me drowsy even if I hadn’t gotten up at five this morning, restless, thinking about Nan, and gone to the ocean to swim. Not to mention that we’re in Westfield, the other end of the state, a long, long drive from home, and I’m constricted in my formal blue linen dress. There’s a big fountain in the middle of the room, and tables of finger sandwiches and buffet food set up around that. Out-of-season Christmas lights twinkle around statue reproductions of Venus rising from the waves and Michelangelo’s David, looking as sulky and out of place as I feel at this fund-raising rally. Mom makes her speech at the podium, flanked by Clay, and I struggle to stay conscious.
“You must be so proud of your mother,” people keep telling me, sloshing their fruity champagne cocktails over tiny plastic cups, and I repeat over and over again: “Oh, yes, I am. I am, yes.” My seat’s next to the podium and as Mom’s introduced, I can’t help tipping my head against it, until she gives me a sharp jab with her foot and I jerk back upright, willing my eyes open.
Finally she gives some sort of good-night summary speech and there’s lots of cheering and “Go Reed!” Clay rests his hand in the small of her back, propelling her, as we edge out into the night, which isn’t even really dark, kind of tea-colored, since we’re in the city. “You’re a wonder, Gracie. A twelve-hour day and still looking so fine.”
Mom gives a pleased laugh, then toys with her earring. “Honey?” She hesitates, then: “I just don’t understand why that Marcie woman has to be at just about every event of mine.”
“Was she there tonight?” Clay asks. “I didn’t notice. And I’ve told you—they send her the same way we had Tim out counting the cars at Christopher’s rallies, or Dorothy checking on his press conferences.”
I know this is the brunette woman. But Clay doesn’t sound like he’s trying to pull one over on Mom. He sounds like he genuinely didn’t realize “Marcie” was there.
“Ya gotta ashess”—he pauses, laughs, then repeats carefully—“assess your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.”
Clay trips a little on the pavement and Mom gives a low laugh. “Easy, honey.”
“Sorry—those stones kinda got away from me there.” They halt, leaning together in the darkness, swaying slightly. “You’d better drive.”
“Of course,” Mom says. “Just give me those keys.”
Much chuckling while she searches for them in his jacket pockets—oh erk—and I just want to be home.
Mom starts the car with a roar, VROOM, and then giggles in surprise as though cars never make that sound.
“Actually, sugar, better give me the keys,” Clay tells her.
“I’ve got it,” Mom says. “You had four glasses to my three.”
“Maybe,” Clay says. “I might could have done.”
“I just love your Southern phrases,” Mom murmurs.
Time hazes. I slide down in my seat, stretching my legs out over an uncomfortable pile of Grace Reed signs and boxes of campaign flyers, tilting my eyes against the hard leather padding under the window. I watch the highway lights, my eyelids sinking, then the dimmer streetlights as the roads get smaller and smaller, closer to home.
“Take Shore Road,” Clay tells her softly. “Less traffic. Nearly there now, Gracie.”
The window glass is chilly against my cheek, the only cool thing in the warm car. Other headlights flash by for a while, then fade away. Finally, I see by the glint of the moon on the open water that we’re passing McGuire Park. I remember being there with Jase, lying on the sun-warmed rock in the river, then my lids slowly close, the hum of the engine like Mom’s vacuum cleaner, a familiar lullaby.
BLAM.
My nose smacks the seat in front of me, so hard that stars dazzle against my eyes, and my ears ring.
“Oh my God!” Mom says in a high panicky voice scarier than the sudden jolt. She slams on the brakes.
“Back up, Grace.” Clay’s voice is level and firm.
“Mom? Mom! What happened?”
“Oh my God,” Mom repeats. She always freaks out about dings in her paint job. There’s a sudden whoosh of cool night air as Clay opens the passenger-side door, climbs out. A second later, he’s back.
“Grace. Reverse. Now. Nothing happened, Samantha. Go back to sleep.”
I catch a flash of his profile, arm around Mom’s neck, fingers in her hair, prodding her. “Reverse and pull away now,” he repeats.
The car jolts backward, jerks to a halt.
“Grace. Pull it together.” The car revs forward and to the left. “Just get us back home.”
“Mom?”
“It’s nothing, sweetheart. Go to sleep. Hit a little bump in the road. Go back to sleep,” Mom calls, her voice sharp.
And I do. She might still be talking, but I’m just so tired. When Tracy and I were younger, Mom sometimes used to drive us down to Florida for winter vacation, instead of flying. She liked to stop in Manhattan, in Washington, in Atlanta, stay in bed-and-breakfasts, poke around antiques stores along the way. I was always so impatient to get to the sand and the dolphins that I tried to sleep every single hour we were in the car. I feel like that now. I sink into soft blackness so absolute, I can barely drag myself out when Mom says, “Samantha. We’re home. Go on to bed.” She jiggles my arm, roughly enough that it hurts, and I drag myself upstairs, collapse on my mattress, too weary to take off my dress or dive under the covers. I just embrace nothingness.
My cell buzzes insistently. I shoved it under my pillow as usual. Now I hunt for it, half-asleep, my fingers clutching and closing on bunches of the sheets while the buzzing goes on and on and on, relentless. Finally I locate it.
“Sam?” Jase’s voice, hoarse, almost unrecognizable. “Sam!”
“Hmm?”
“Samantha!”
His voice is loud, jarring. I jerk the cell away from my ear.
“What? Jase?”
“Sam. We, uh, we need you. Can you come over?”
I crawl across the bed, blearily check my digital clock.
1:16 a.m.
What?
“Now?”
“Now. Please. Can you come now?”
I haul myself out of bed, yank off my dress, pull on shorts and a T-shirt, flip-flops, climb out the window, down the trellis. I glance quickly back at the house, but Mom’s bedroom lights are off, so I run through the light rain across the grass, to the Garretts’.
Where all the lights—the driveway, porch, kitchen lights—blaze. So out of the ordinary at this time of night that I stumble to a halt in the driveway.
“Samantha!” Andy’s voice calls from the kitchen door. “Is that you? Jase said you’d come.”
She’s silhouetted in the doorway, surrounded by smaller shadows. Duff, Harry, George, Patsy in Andy’s arms? At this hour? What’s going on?
“Daddy.” Andy’s holding back tears. “Something happened to Daddy. Mom got a call.” Her face crumples. “She went to the hospital with Alice.” She throws herself into my arms. “Jase went too. He said you’d be here to take care of us.”
“Okay. Okay, let’s go inside,” I say. Andy’s pulled back, taking deep breaths, trying to get hold of herself. The little ones watch, wide-eyed and bewildered. The frozen expression on George’s face is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to look at. All his imagined disasters, and he never imagined this.
Chapter Thirty-nine
In the light of the kitchen, all the children are blinking, sleepy and disoriented. I try to think what Mrs. Garrett would do to rally everyone, and can only come up with making popcorn. So I do that. And hot chocolate, even though the air, despite the rain, is stifling as an electric blanket. George perches on the counter next to me as I stir chocolate powder into milk. “Mommy puts the chocolate in first,” he reproves, squinting at me in the brightness of the overhead light.