Mirror in the Sky (23 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

I tried to keep myself distracted, I really did.

There were still days when I watched them from a distance: Nick with his arm around Halle, Veronica with her glasses on and her binder balanced on her knees, studying for a test, Ariel and Hunter trying to make everyone laugh.

I watched Halle as she explained something to Alexa and Jimmy. She was impenetrable, a complete mystery. Maybe she liked it that way. Then again, maybe she really wasn't affected by everything that happened between all of us, or even outside, in the real world.

On most days, Nick still waited for me after class, or sat down next to me in the student center in the mornings. I began to avoid him, leaving campus for lunch. Something about his perpetually cheerful disposition irritated me now. When I saw him approaching, I turned the other way. I avoided eye
contact. I purposely didn't laugh at his jokes if I was sitting at a table with a group of people. He didn't know me. He didn't understand me or my life. How could I have once believed that he did?

But occasionally, I'd see him watching me in class, out of the corner of my eye, and I'd feel a pang of despair in the pit of my stomach, a precursor to the tears that I would force myself to hold back. I missed him. But I was so humiliated that I didn't want to be near him. And I felt guilty even thinking about him when my mother was possibly in danger.

I thought endlessly about Tod's Point, that day on his deck. I thought about his picking me to be Michelle to his Barack. I thought about his phone calls, the way he leaned his elbow on my shoulder. The jokes he made, the crush he had on me in the seventh grade. I thought about Halle making out with Amit in the pantry of my father's restaurant, about her sucking up to Treem and planning a spring getaway for us. I thought about the fact that my mother and I never even had a chance to eat cake for breakfast together. I was exhausted with the upsetting things that raced through my mind at all hours of the day, and yet, I couldn't escape any of it.

“She's so faux virtuous, like with this stupid committee that she's on,” Alexa piped in.

“Did they catch whoever was pulling those alarms?” Veronica asked.

“No, but at least we're not hauling ass out of class every five minutes now,” Alexa said. It was true—the alarms had stopped.

“I wonder if it was Laurie Hoffman,” Veronica asked.

“That stoner chick? Yeah, I bet it was her,” Alexa said, breaking a tortilla chip into three pieces.

“It's like Stockholm syndrome, being friends with Halle,” Veronica said to Alexa and me. “I can't wait to graduate and get out of here.”

We were sitting at a Mexican place on Greenwich Avenue, sharing a basket of tortilla chips, an unnaturally green-hued guacamole, and virgin margaritas. I could barely eat. Just the sight of food made me sick to my stomach.

“I've just . . . I've had enough of Halle. You guys . . . you're my real friends,” Veronica said. “She's never been a real friend. Tara feels the same way, don't you, Tara?”

I didn't respond, but I had a cynical thought. Veronica was rallying the troops. We were the troops—Alexa and I. If the three of us broke away from Halle, she would be alone. This was the simple truth about democracy. The majority always won. All you needed was one more than your enemy, and even if Halle didn't know it yet, Veronica was no longer her friend.

“I think she can be difficult, and I don't think she's always honest with herself. But she's never wronged me, or you . . . or Nick, even,” Alexa said.

I felt a tortilla chip scrape down my trachea, making me cough. They turned to look at me.

“What about that guy over the summer? She was seeing Nick when she was visiting tapas bars and going to concerts with that dude,” Veronica said.

“Whatever, so she went to a concert with another guy. That
was nothing. You're fishing, Veronica.” Alexa was too kind to tell Veronica what she was really trying to do. She was deposing Queen Halle, or at the very least, trying to strengthen the bonds between us so that she could depose her, if she ever wanted to.

“Seriously, why aren't you saying anything, Tara? You have total reason to be mad at Halle.”

“I do?” I asked. I was barely listening to the conversation. But mostly, I didn't care.

I still resented Halle, but the truth was . . . I resented all of them. Their lives were so simple. How could they even understand what was going on with my family?

“She can be really . . . just insensitive toward other people,” I said, feeding the flame, but all I was thinking about was my own hurt feelings, my own worries. Even in that moment, I knew that Halle wasn't the one responsible for hurting me. Nick was. My mother was. The Church of the New Earth was. But not Halle.

“Exactly! She's totally insensitive,” Veronica said. “You see the way she treats you, don't you?” Veronica asked. “She doesn't see you as . . . one of us.”

I looked at Veronica now, trying to wrap my mind around what she was saying, but I knew what she was saying.
Halle treats you differently because you're brown and you're poor.
What about the other things that made me different, the things they didn't even know? That my mother had joined a cult in California. That my father had gone there to get her out. That I was staying in my house by myself while I waited for them
to come home. That I worried every night that my mother wouldn't return.

I didn't know if what Veronica was suggesting was true or not, but maybe it was. I thought about Amit, why Halle hadn't told anyone about him. Could it be because she was ashamed? Ashamed to be kissing a waiter at a restaurant? Someone who was brown and poor too?

And yet I also knew that Veronica was looking for a reason to throw Halle under the bus. That was how high school alliances worked. You didn't need an outright reason to cut someone. Years of resentment and jealousy and a false reason could suffice. I could have told them right then about what I had seen at the restaurant. It wasn't a real reason to hate Halle, to oust her from the group. It was a fig leaf of some sort, just as I was beginning to realize the dog had been with Sarah Hoffstedt.

I was fairly certain that there was still something going on between Halle and Amit. Halle's car was parked at the restaurant a few times when I rode by on my bike, and once, I saw them getting coffee together at the bagel place on Sound Beach Avenue on a Saturday morning.

She still acted normal around Nick—happier, even. Whenever I saw them together, they were either kissing or making plans for the upcoming weekend. Maybe people were happier in a world of lies. Then again, I was living in a world of lies and I was miserable.

Next week, we would go to Cape Cod together. We would all drive up in Halle's SUV to a clapboard house with four
bedrooms and a chef's kitchen. We would bake cookies and eat lobster rolls and birthday cake and hang around in our pajamas and take pictures.

They would show those pictures at our graduation: Veronica and me in our glasses. Alexa wearing her retainer. Halle with her hair in two pigtails. They would play the song “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan in the background.

The four of us would notice how young we looked in those pictures—so much younger than we remembered feeling in so long. We would notice how content we looked, even though if you had asked us any of us then, we would have told you that we were resentful, filled with mistrust for one another, about to go our separate ways.

Still, as miserable as we all were, we would look back on those snapshots as a happy time, in that way that the past always appears happier than the present. That's the odd puzzle of time: It's a shoreline that keeps eroding. Every time you look, you're struck by the realization that once upon a time there was more—the more that you never really saw, because all you ever saw was the past.

THIRTY-EIGHT

“
I'M
staying at a hotel not far from the compound. There are a number of family members staying here, and the authorities have been alerted. I have a feeling they're planning a stakeout of some sort, but they're keeping it under wraps right now.”

“Have you heard from her, Dad?”

“No. Her cell phone still goes to voice message. Calling the church is pointless. There's a receptionist who puts me on hold for hours on end. The FBI interviewed a number of us about what we know. Tara, a lot of people are on this, okay?”

“But you haven't spoken to her?”

“We'll get her out of here.”

“How do you know?” I began to sob. I didn't want to say what I was actually thinking.
How do you know she's still alive?

“I just know. Please trust me.”

I thought about backing out of the trip, but then reconsidered, imagining myself alone at home for the entire duration of spring break, thinking about my mother.

And so on March 18, Halle, Alexa, Veronica, and I climbed into Halle's SUV and began the drive out to Cape Cod.

“I got you guys breakfast sandwiches and coffee. Oh, and oatmeal for you, Alexa, because I know you don't like egg sandwiches,” Halle said, handing us each individual Starbucks bags, a crate of coffee cups sitting at our feet.

“Seriously, I can't wait!” Halle was wearing black jeans and boots and a Brierly track T-shirt. You could see her eyes smiling, even through her Prada sunglasses.

“How long is the drive up?” Veronica asked from the passenger seat. She was still in her pajamas. “I might take a nap.”

“Four and a half hours, I think. You nap away. We'll chat.” Halle turned to us. “And I put together a great playlist.”

It was seven in the morning. I wouldn't have thought to put together a playlist, much less get everyone coffee or breakfast sandwiches (egg and cheese for me, egg and ham for Veronica; cream and sugar in my coffee, black for Alexa). This was Halle, thinking of every detail, as she always did.

The snow had melted, and snowdrops and daffodils were beginning to appear on freshly green lawns, tumbles of uncut forsythia painting the landscape yellow as we drove down 95, listening to an odd mix of early '90s grunge and Britpop.

“You guys are going to love this place! It's got a huge kitchen. I brought a ton of groceries and wine—I thought we
could cook dinner at night. We'll stop at the local fishmonger and see what's fresh.”

“This feels very grown-up,” said Alexa, leaning back on her pillow. She had brought it with her, and her aristocratic curlicued monogrammed initials intertwined with the strands of her dark hair.

“It
is
very grown-up. I suspect adulthood will be like this,” Halle said.

“What, full of five-day trips to the Cape?”

“You're always making fun of me, Veronica.” Halle frowned.

“Not making fun. Just trying to understand what your concept of adulthood is, you freak.” She added the last part with affection, but I tensed at the undercurrent of Veronica's hostility, knowing that this trip could be like a canoe ride down a particularly steep rapid.

“I hope it'll be more about doing what you love, with the people you love.”

For us, adulthood was just as much another world as Terra Nova. It was something we couldn't see, something we could only speculate about. Kind of like that story I had once heard on the news about the Aymara tribe in the Andes. They believed that the future was behind them, the past before them. They were blind to the future, but the past they could see with open eyes. But what about the present? I know now that we don't often see the present as clearly as we think either.

“I don't think that's what adulthood is supposed to be,” Veronica scoffed.

“You think it's a continuation of the misery we've suffered at Brierly?” I asked.

“Do you really hate Brierly that much, Tara?” It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that question point-blank.

I was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond. But it was Halle asking the question, and I felt like I couldn't tell her the whole truth. There were surface reasons why Brierly had been hard for me: My family was lower-middle class. I was the only brown person on campus. These were merely words, and they couldn't convey the discomfort I felt when I looked at the annual photograph of the swim team in the yearbook. When people assumed I was smart not because they knew anything about me, but because of the color of my skin. I had spent so many years feeling like I spoke a different language than everyone else, feeling like I existed on a tiny and remote island of my own. I ate different food, I had different stories, a different history, I spoke of different things, or I didn't speak at all. Mostly, I just watched and listened. I had spent so much of my time at Brierly feeling lonely. I felt desperate to connect, desperate to share, but I was afraid that no one would ever understand me. I was too different, and with each passing day, I became even more unalike.

“Brierly isn't the real world” was all I said in response to Halle's question. And I felt certain of it, for the first time, and also relieved, full of resolve: The rest of my life would be nothing like Brierly.

“No. Brierly's a holding pen,” Alexa said.

“I just mean . . . I think it gets better as you keep going, I mean . . . I hope,” I said.

“Not for everyone,” Veronica said.

“I think adulthood is going to be way lousy for someone like Hunter,” Halle said. “Have you seen the way swimmers look after they stop swimming? No offense, Tara.”

“None taken.”

“You're right. He's too handsome. It's all downhill for him,” Veronica said.

“Maybe it's not about handsomeness,” Alexa offered. “Maybe he'll be fat and happy.”

We were all quiet for a minute, all of us wondering if Alexa was projecting her deepest wishes on Hunter.

“Maybe we'll all be fat and happy,” Halle said, and even if she didn't mean it literally, I hoped she was right.

As we continued to drive, the tension between us seemed to dissipate for a while. Maybe Halle was right; maybe this was a coming together, an opportunity for us to recharge our friendship rather than tear it apart.

“I have a surprise for you, Tara,” she exclaimed just after we crossed the Connecticut state line.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We're stopping to stretch our legs.”

“That's a surprise?”

“We're stopping in Providence. I know you want to go to Brown. I wasn't sure if you've ever visited the campus . . .”

I shook my head. “No. I barely ever go . . . anywhere, really.”

“Well, we'll get to walk around. I hear there's a great crepe place on Thayer Street. Anyone up for crepes?”

La Creperie was a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a cheerful yellow facade and what seemed to be a perpetual Bob Marley soundtrack. We ordered a handful of crepes to share and walked down Waterman Street to Faunce Arch. It was a bright and sunny New England day, the first in months.

“Let's sit for a bit,” Halle said, spreading out the picnic blanket she had brought. “What do you think?” she asked me.

I can't describe how I felt, but it was a little like falling in love, my heart soaring at the sight of kids sprawled out on the main green, playing Frisbee or blowing bubbles into the air. There was a class going on, a professor sitting cross-legged among a circle of his students.

I was speechless. “This is it,” I told her. “This is where I want to be,” I said, and I heard the excitement in my own voice. It was frenetic, unbounded, almost like the euphoria people describe when they've just somehow escaped death.

It wasn't just the place I was describing, but a feeling, one that stayed with me the rest of the drive up to Cape Cod and the entire evening as we prepared a lobster dinner together, shrieking at the sight of live lobsters trying to escape the enormous pot we had located in the kitchen to cook them in. It stayed with me as we toasted each other with glasses of rosé at sunset, sitting on a porch that overlooked the bay. It stayed with me as we walked barefoot through the mud and sea grass
and onto the shore, swatting away insects at our ankles and laughing.

I dove into the freezing sea with Alexa and Veronica and emerged to see a sliver of a new moon above us. The tide was high, but the ocean was fairly calm. I watched Halle, a lone figure sitting in the sand. She waved at me, and I waved back.

Somehow, Halle had been able to set the tone of our vacation, rather than Veronica. Veronica actually seemed to be having a good time, and so was I, a realization that surprised me. All I had needed was a good day, and my mistrust, my anger, seemed to have evaporated. I realized I wasn't even thinking about my mother or my father in California, and for a moment, I felt guilty. For the first time in months, I wasn't thinking about Nick either.

After a little while, I came back to the sand to join Halle while Alexa and Veronica walked across the beach. She handed me the joint she had been smoking, and I took a puff. I was shivering, and she put a blanket over my shoulders.

“Thank you,” I told her. “It was nice of you, really nice, to plan this. And the trip up to Brown.” I meant it too. Halle seemed different when she was out of the context of school. She felt like a real person, not the goddess of the Brierly campus.

She smiled. “You guys really are my best friends, you know that? You're like . . . family. And Tara, I know we only started hanging out this year, but . . . you three, you're like sisters to me. I'd really do anything for any of you,” she said.

And then she did something I had never seen Halle do. It
was the kind of thing you saw children do with their mothers, a sign of vulnerability and affection, such a small gesture, and yet, for some reason, it transformed her into a different person, a real person. She put her head on my shoulder, and we sat there, together, watching Veronica and Alexa swim in the moonlight.

Maybe I understood it at that moment—the cult of Halle, why people loved and revered her. Why they forgave her, why, despite themselves, they wanted to be around her.

The endless discussions of time felt contrived at moments like this, only because they never touched on that most elusive and magnificent characteristic of it: that it had the ability to stop, to cease to exist. These were the moments when we were surprisingly, astoundingly happy.