The Girls On the Hill

by Alison Grey

  “I’m surprised you’re not.” Her voice was muffled now, as if she was inside a well.

  “Sorry I was pulling stuff out of the dryer,” she continued. “It’s the only time I see y’all. And I need the escape, it’s been brutal over here lately.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, curious. As far as I knew Brooke had the perfect life up there in the DC suburbs.

  “Just stuff with Will and the boys,” she sighed. “I feel invisible in my own home. It’s enough that I’m invisible to the world.”

  “You are not invisible to the world,” I assured her, but I knew what she meant, and I knew she was right. Brooke had peaked in her early 20s, like most of us do.

  “I don’t even mind that,” she claimed. “But I’m getting tired of being invisible in my own home.”

  “I can understand that…” I trailed off thinking of my own husband. These days I wasn’t just invisible to him. I barely existed.

  “So, despite the weirdness of the invitation, I’d still like to go to the reunion and see everyone,” Brooke said. “I mean, even if it’s just to see the three of you, we don’t even need to go to the events or the hotel. I just want to be in Staunton again.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “Obviously I’d love to see everyone too. But I can’t go to The Brentmore. It’s too much.”

  “Then we won’t!” Brooke exclaimed. “We’ll just have our own little get together. I’ll tell Hollis you’re a yes!”

  Wait, was I a yes?

  What had I just agreed to?

  Before I could object and clarify what maybe meant in my world, she had hung up.

  For the first time, maybe ever, Brooke had been in a hurry to get off the phone with me.

  My intuition was screaming at me that this was all a bad idea.

  That I shouldn’t agree to go anywhere near The Brentmore or Staunton.

  But Brooke knew me too well. She knew I’d never be an outlier in our group. Because even though our lives had scattered us and we didn’t speak as much, one thing was still very true.

  We always showed up.

  Even when it was the last thing we’d ever want to do.

  Seven

  AMANDA

  Here’s the thing about fame.

  It starts out being about the validation— the love you never got. Ask almost any artist about their childhood and you’ll hear a story about never feeling seen. Whether that’s true or not, doesn’t matter. From their perspective they were always itching to be looked at, understood, and loved.

  So, they seek it from outside.

  And no matter how many people love them, it’s never enough.

  Fame is a drug and it’s just like the worst kinds of addictions— there’s always something to chase. There’s no finish line. You can never be too rich or too famous.

  It’s easy to see how that could drive a person to the brink if they weren’t careful.

  If they weren’t self-aware.

  Fame for me was a stepping stone. Once I understood it was mostly bullshit and hype, it wasn’t enough anymore. Not for me.

  Money wasn’t enough either. Not that I don’t enjoy money.

  I grew up about as poor as you can be in the United States of America without being homeless. I really am from the hollers of West Virginia. My father was an alcoholic coal miner and my mother was a maid at a motel, who did tailoring and seamstress work on the side for what passed for the well-to-do people in our shit town.

  I know what it’s like to be poor. I haven’t forgotten what desperation tastes like. I never will.

  The worst part about being poor isn’t the lack of stuff. Stuff is for the uninventive and the people with limited ambition.

  The worst part about poverty is the lack of power over your own life and destiny. Power and freedom are the things money is most useful for.

  Fame brought me money.

  Money brought me influence.

  And now, at thirty-seven years old, I have power.

  Because fifteen years ago, Olivia Barron tried to take mine. And for that I’m grateful.

  It taught me to never allow it to happen again.

  Some lessons you only need to learn once.

  * * *

  “Fucking Wendi.”

  Hollis coughed on the other end of the line and I laughed. I hadn’t even bothered to say hello.

  “Wendi Rochester-Hodge?” Hollis finally spoke. “What about her?”

  “Wendi and her husband are the ones who bought The Brentmore,” I said. “They saw it as a good investment opportunity, apparently.”

  There was nothing I couldn’t find out these days. I’d tasked my executive assistant with tracking down (by any means necessary) the person or corporation who had purchased the hotel.

  And more importantly: why they had bought it.

  “That’s so bizarre.”

  “Agreed,” I continued. “Her last name is Hughes now. And her ass is wider than ever if that gives you any satisfaction at all.”

  “You know it does,” Hollis said. “I guess that solves the mystery of reunion, though it’s still tacky as fuck.”

  Wendi Hughes, formerly Wendi Rochester-Hodge, was a former classmate of ours.

  One none of us liked. And for good reason.

  She was also president of the alumnae committee and organized reunion weekend every year.

  “I’m impressed you found out so quickly,” Hollis conceded.

  “Be impressed with my assistant,” I replied. I didn’t know how to be proud in front of Hollis, even after all this time.

  No matter who I’d become, I’d always feel inferior to her.

  Even if I pretended otherwise.

  Eight

  HOLLIS

  “Are you still going?” Amanda asked.

  “To the reunion?” I replied. “Probably. I’m supposed to host a luncheon for the other discontented lawyer alumnae. I agreed months ago, but that was before this weird shit with the hotel.”

  “If you hate law, why are you still doing it?”

  This was a conversation we’d had a million times over the years since I’d graduated from Emory. Amanda wasn’t someone who could wrap her head around my reasons.

  “I’m on the edge of forty. I’m a partner. We’re past the point of no return here,” I replied. “Also, I like money.”

  “You have enough money,” she pointed out. “How about you stop bullshitting me?”

  I laughed the genuine laugh of a person being called out by someone who really knows them.

  “I don’t know, I fantasize about quitting every day,” I admitted. “But for some reason… I just don’t. It’s like I continue just to spite myself.”

  Neither one of us said anything for an uncomfortably long moment.

  “I should probably go.” Amanda always broke silences. She couldn’t stand them. Emotion might seep in, and she couldn’t have that. “If you go, I’ll go. But I’m not staying at The Brentmore. The place is cursed. It should be burned to the ground.”

  “Now that we can agree on,” I said.

  When she hung up, I thought of a million things I could have told her.

  The old me would have told her what was really going on with me.

  But that’s the thing about old friends— you always hesitate to reveal the parts that contradict the old you and your time together in the past.

  None of us ever want to let go of the idea of who we were once were.

  Even when we’re not that person anymore.

  * * *

  That night I could only think of one person.

  Olivia Barron.

  I was restless. By midnight I gave up on tossing and turning and walked downstairs to my office.

  I lived in Buckhead still, down the street from my parents in the same neighborhood I grew up in, but in a bigger house because I’m just petty like that.

  My home office is more of a shrine since I don’t work when I’m at home, not if I can help it. I give enough of my life to
my firm, home is my sanctuary.

  In the office there are placards and awards from work. Shelves filled with books; novels, non-fiction, every single one of my yearbooks. I have framed photos everywhere, most of the pictures recent, almost all of them from the few vacations I take that aren’t work trips.

  But there’s one picture I keep on the shelf from the past.

  It features five girls. All of them twenty-one or twenty-two years old. They’re all grinning, their arms wrapped around each other. It’s graduation day and they’re all in their black cap and gowns, their excitement and unbridled optimism so overwhelming that it seems staged, even though I know it’s not.

  We really were that happy.

  Olivia is among us. It was the last picture she ever took.

  By the end of that night, she was dead. This photo was the one every media outlet used. They’d zoom in on her laughing face, cropping the rest of us out.

  Just like she would have wanted.

  I’m not sure why I keep the photo. It doesn’t bring me joy to see it. It only reminds me of a painful night, followed by an agonizing year of unanswered questions, swirling rumors, and scathing articles about the girls on the hill.

  Us.

  And Olivia Barron, our friend.

  The one who died.

  I picked up the picture and cradled it in my hands for several minutes. I’d looked at that picture a million times, but once again I searched it for something, anything, a detail, no matter how small, that might have predicted the events that took place only hours later.

  I found nothing. Nothing but five beaming smiles.

  I set the photo back on my bookshelf behind a copy of Dante’s Inferno— the first in The Divine Comedy about a journey through the nine circles of hell.

  It seemed appropriate.

  PART TWO: COLLEGE DAYS

  Nine

  SHERIDAN

  Olivia Barron showed up the Sunday before second semester started, weighed down by enough luggage and crates to fill two dorm rooms.

  Neither Hollis nor Amanda had come back yet. Hollis was still in St Bart’s with her family and the rest of Atlanta’s well-to-do. Amanda was in Morgantown— she’d instant messaged me that morning to say she wouldn’t get into Staunton until pretty late.

  “Don’t let her mess with my stuff,” she’d typed. “I still can’t believe we have to live with her.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Of course, that was easy for me to say. I only had to deal with one roommate.

  Three was definitely a crowd.

  * * *

  Brooke was taking a nap after driving seven hours, so I was the only one around when Olivia showed up. Two friends of her, boys I would later learn both went to Shenandoah Military Institute, or SMI as we all called it, had helped her bring her things in. They were on their way back to SMI after their own holiday break.

  SMI was about an hour south of us on 81 between Lexington and Roanoke. They were tall and angular with short haircuts and they finished every sentence with “ma’am” or “yes ma’am.”

  The boys— men— were strapping young guys with imposing physiques. Olivia couldn’t have been more opposite if she tried. I towered over her and I was only 5’5 on my best day. She was a pocket-sized pixie with eyes that were much too large for her narrow face.

  “Hello!” she said. Her accent was raspy, which I hadn’t expected. Olivia looked like someone who would have a very high pitch to her voice. Like Tinkerbell.

  “Hey, you must be Olivia,” I replied, holding out my hand. She waved it away and immediately embraced me.

  “I am!” she replied. “And you?”

  “I’m Sheridan,” I explained. “Sheridan Legare. I live in the room across from you.”

  “Oh great!” Olivia grinned, showing perfect teeth, straight without even a hint of an overbite. It was an expression bigger than the rest of her and it knocked me off kilter a bit.

  She was stunning, but in a way I’d never seen before.

  Of the four of us, I’d always imagined most people would consider Hollis the more traditional and conventional beauty. She was blonde and tall with long legs and penetrating blue eyes framed by naturally long lashes. At parties, guys immediately gravitated toward her and the rest of us tended to get her leftovers.

  Amanda was just as beautiful, maybe more so. But she lacked Hollis’s hubris. Hollis had a charisma that lent herself well to being noticed.

  I was more bohemian, I guess. This was the year 2000 and everyone was wearing low rider jeans, their thongs peeking out above the frayed belt loops over their bronzed, narrow hips from daily tanning bed rituals. I was fair skinned and tended to wear a lot of long skirts and tank tops without bras, my wavy brown hair either down and all over the place, or up in a braid crown.

  Brooke was all about the temporary crazes and she tended to be late on the fashion trend train. She was the plainest of all of us with dirty blonde hair the color of dishwater and small brown eyes. She had a very good figure though in those days, naturally thin and boyish.

  And here was Olivia, so different from all of us already.

  I wasn’t sure if that would bode well for her or not.

  Ten

  AMANDA

  I finally arrived in downtown Staunton around 10 pm that night, exhausted from my almost 4-hour drive. I was tired and far from being in the mood to meet my new roommate. I just wanted to get my sheets on my bed and collapse into it.

  The holiday break hadn’t been great. My father had introduced me to his new girlfriend, his third in two years. She’d moved in weeks after meeting him, along with her three snotty kids who were all under seven. They’d taken over my bedroom, so I’d spent most of the holiday sleeping on the couch in our basement or getting stoned at my high school friends’ houses.

  I tried not to be home as much as possible.

  My mother died when I was a sophomore in high school. Cancer. Isn’t it always? She’d barely been warm in the ground when my father had started shacking up with some woman he’d met at the pool hall.

  Every time I was home, I itched to run away from it. It didn’t feel like the place I was supposed to be and my mother dying only solidified that.

  As far as I was concerned, I had just spent the last Christmas I would ever spend in Morgantown, West Virginia.

  * * *

  All freshman at Jefferson live in Hutchinson dorm. It’s a four-story building with a Greek revival ambiance at the entrance with its columns surrounding a circular veranda that juts out from the main entry. It’s also where the smokers matriculate, and as I sauntered up, dragging my one-wheeled suitcase behind me, I noticed there were half a dozen girls out braving the freezing January night. They all wore pajama pants and North Face down jackets. I couldn’t tell the difference between smoke and breath.

  As I wandered into their circle, I recognized who they were.

  “Hey, Amanda.” That was Wendi Rochester-Hodge. She was the daughter of the Senator from North Carolina and she’d come out as a lesbian over Christmas. I’d seen her vague away message on her instant message profile: Told my parents I’m gay.

  It had been followed by lyrics to an Ani DiFranco song that I was evidently too senseless and shallow to understand the correlation with her news. The song didn’t jive with any reference I could think of to coming out of the closet to one’s parents.

  It felt performative, like all things with Wendi.

  But that’s how I tended to feel most of the time with these girls. As if they were on the cusp of a reality and universal understanding that I was always missing.

  I pretended anyway. I was very good at that.

  “Hey, Wendi.” I smiled. “How’re you hanging in there?”

  She flipped her sandy blonde hair over her willowy shoulder. That’s how thin Wendi was. She could look lithe in a parka. “It’s going. You know how it can be to be an other.”

  I cringed inwardly, my cheeks warming as everyone stopped their conversation
s to focus on me.

  The black girl. That’s how they all saw me.

  Who is Hollis Cobb’s roommate?

  You know, the black girl. Amanda? I think that’s her name?

  I didn’t doubt that Wendi might have struggled with her inner demons growing up in conservative North Carolina, the daughter of a very famous politician who was infamous for being against everything progressive, most especially gay rights. (This was 2000 after all and another time for all intents and purposes.) But I somehow doubted Wendi could quite relate to being a black girl growing up in a coal town in West Virginia. Her struggles, or whatever she perceived as her repression, was still on the inside where no one could see it.

  I could never hide who I was, at least outwardly.

  Inwardly though? I was world champion of that shit.

  “Yeah.” I pretended to concede, as I always did with these chicks. Jesus, I hoped Olivia Barron wasn’t a Wendi.

  Wendi who had realized she was a lesbian at a Washington and Lee party when she kissed a girl while the wholesome boys of SAE cheered her on, her cheeks flushed from the attention and forbidden fruit of a young girl’s mouth. That Wendi was now apparently an expert on everything queer.

  “I’d never like felt gay before,” she’d apparently said to Hollis. “But like, it was hot, you know? And now I understand.”

  What she understood no one quite knew.

  Wendi Rochester-Hodge would end up reneging on her lesbian status years later after she married her future husband, also a burgeoning politician, and after having her three sons. She would use herself as an example of sexuality clearly being a choice.

  “I chose my morals.” I remembered seeing her on the news a decade later when her father made a run at the Republican nomination for President. “I chose what was intended for us all. And I’m so grateful for that.”