People Like Us

by Dana Mele

  I hear a muffled laugh behind me and whirl around so fast, I almost lose my balance. The congestion from the cold has given me vertigo and sudden movements yank the earth out from under me. But a door slams across the hall before I have time to see who’s behind it, and I’m so disoriented that I can’t tell which one it was. The one straight across, or two down, or even echoing all the way from the end? Maybe it’s good that I’m still a person of interest in a murder. At least they’re too afraid to say all of this to my face.

  I escape into my room and crawl under the covers still dressed, shivering from fever and cold and being completely alone. I don’t want to call Nola. I can’t help feeling like this is partly her fault, even though I asked her to be a part of it. I bribed her to unlock that first password.

  I roll over in bed, kick my shoes off, and then blow my nose until the skin around my nostrils is tender. My instinct, as always, is to call Brie, but there’s nothing to say. I can’t apologize and I can’t demand an apology. What she did was unforgivable and it also put me on notice that I’m not forgiven. I check my email to find a slew of last-minute reminders about the pre-Thanksgiving exams coming up this week. One good thing about Bates is that they break up the first semester midterms and give you half of them before Thanksgiving break and the other half just before winter break, so you don’t have to spend the entire week ignoring your family and studying.

  Of course, I don’t spend Thanksgiving with my family. The year Todd died, we spent it in Mom’s hospital, which was sad and gross and gave me slimy-turkey-and-cranberry-flavored-hoof-treat-related food poisoning. I stayed with Aunt Tracy for the rest of the weekend while Mom and Dad did intensive couples grief therapy. We watched Days of Our Lives while drinking pumpkin spice coffee and eating low-calorie vanilla ice cream in quantities sufficient to cancel out the benefit of the calorie count.

  Since I enrolled at Bates, I have spent every Thanksgiving with Brie’s family in their Cape Cod mansion pretending to be an equally perfect, beloved second daughter. They do things like yearly family football matches on the enormous back lawn overlooking the ocean as the sun melts down into the evening sky, ghost stories next to a fireplace that takes up an entire gigantic wall, and family movie nights with stove-popped caramel corn and homemade hot chocolate. For dinner the cook prepares enormous fresh-caught lobsters swimming in butter, roasted chestnuts, acorn squash with a hard little crust of burnt sugar like crème brûlée, almond asparagus, and garlic smashed potatoes. It’s the same every year, and it’s delicious.

  Being there makes me feel better than I am. More important, more worthy. They are a real family. I feel separate from my parents when I sit on the sofa between Brie and her mother under the enormous cathedral ceiling watching classic comedies. At home, even if my parents were around, we would be eating something like cold turkey sandwiches in the darkened living room in front of a football game none of us cared about. I would be texting or pretending to text so that it wouldn’t be too awkward not to talk to them. Dad would be asleep or pretending to sleep for the same reason, and Mom would be digging through her purse for a sedative, because that game on the television that none of us cared about? It would be Todd’s favorite team. And they’d probably be losing.

  This will be the first year I won’t be invited to Brie’s. I don’t want to know what she’s going to tell them. For some reason, I feel ashamed, like I’ve let her family down. Like they took a chance on me, they took the abandoned puppy in, the dangerous breed everyone knows is predisposed to attack babies and harmless old ladies, and I repaid them by biting their daughter.

  I decide not to tell my parents at all. It’s too late to tell the school I have nowhere to go, but I’ll figure something out. I scroll past the exam notifications and see that I have an email from Justine. I open it reluctantly.

  Stay away from my girlfriend, bitch.

  Lovely.

  I forward it to Brie, with the following message:

  Let your girlfriend know I have no intention of speaking to her girlfriend ever again.

  I click send.

  Then I can’t help adding an addendum.

  Thanks for the décor.

  I snap the light off and slide under the covers and open my Facebook page. I have forty-three notifications. My wall has been plastered with notes and my inbox is full of messages similar to the ones scrawled on my door. At least these aren’t anonymous. My eyes mist and I blink hard as I read every word, study every name and face, and mentally add them to the growing list of people who may have wanted to screw me over. This was much simpler when it was just a question of who might have wanted to hurt Jessica. There are so many names here. Tai. Tricia. Cori. Justine. Holly. Elizabeth. Brie’s name isn’t there. Thank God for that. I see that most of the comments have several likes and strings of their own comments, and, cringing, I click on one of them to reveal the threads. My throat closes up.

  Justine wrote, “Watch your back, bitch.”

  Under it, Nola replied, “Got it. Who’s got yours?”

  I click on the others. Nola has responded to nearly every single one, jumping to my defense.

  I check my phone. She hasn’t sent me a text or called. She’s just quietly run damage control on each of these comments as they’ve been posted. As I’m reviewing the page, a new comment pops up at the bottom from Kelli, and Nola replies within seconds. I turn my phone off, sighing. I’m going to have to take a break from people—online, in person, and even in my memory—if I’m going to pass my exams.

  * * *

  • • •

  I BURY MYSELF in bottles of Nyquil, boxes of tissues, and stacks of textbooks for the next week and a half. I have an exam in every class except French before Thanksgiving break, and with my congested and (legitimately) doped-up brain moving at a snail’s pace, it takes every spare moment I have to catch up on my readings and prepare for the tests. The messages don’t stop coming, via email, Facebook, my door, which is so covered in graffiti I can barely see the wood anymore, and now, phone. I tried to make an appointment with my dorm housemother to talk about it, but she was very distant and said she was all booked up until after the break. I even put a phone call through to good old Officer Jenny Biggs at campus police, but she blew me off.

  “I’m being harassed,” I told her. “Can I file a report or something?”

  She paused for a long time. “To be honest, Kay, there have been so many harassment reports against you over the years, I don’t know that I want to do anything about it.”

  She hung up on me.

  Nola and I make outlines and flash cards and take turns quizzing each other and using Pavlovian conditioning to try to force information into our brains. When she gets an answer correct, she gets a Skittle. When I get an answer correct, I get a cough drop. I unhook my campus phone and put my cell phone on silent. No one calls me anyway, except with vague threats. My weekly calls home have become even more torturous than usual. They begin with an interrogation on whether games have resumed yet and devolve into ranting (Dad) about the unfairness on the part of the administration of taking sports away from grieving children and fretting (Mom) over how distant and unresponsive I’ve become. I end up shouting that I can’t do anything about the administration, Dad yells that I could start a petition or write an editorial in the newspaper or something, and Mom says she doesn’t know me anymore and when did I become so angry and aggressive? Then I hang up and try to put my phone on silent before I receive a threatening phone call from some random townie promising to kick my ass (yes, the townies are at it, too, now). I will not be spending Thanksgiving with my family, Brie or no Brie.

  So it’s an automatic yes please when Nola unexpectedly asks if I’m interested in going to her family’s place in Maine.

  She looks surprised when I say yes. “Oh. Really?”

  “My family doesn’t do Thanksgiving. I was planning on hiding under my bed and eati
ng pretzels and applesauce.”

  She pauses. “Well, we don’t usually do anything fancy, but it’s a step up from pretzels and applesauce.”

  “Deal.”

  Nola has not only been the sole person to stand by me through all of this, she has also been fiercely protective. I wouldn’t have had it in me to defend myself. Maybe if I didn’t deserve at least some of the hate being thrown at me, I could. But I know people are using the murder as an excuse to vent pent-up anger because of things I did or said to them, maybe years ago. Little things that didn’t seem to matter at the time. It’s impossible to disentangle that. It makes it so hard to fight back. I don’t know what I’d do without Nola. I was pretty horrible to her and she forgave me, proof that I’m not beyond saving. A part of me keeps hoping people will notice this and think, “Oh, look! Kay was a total bitch to Nola and now they’re like BFFs. I should follow her example and forgive Kay, too. How glorious the high road is! Come back to us, repentant Kay! All is forgiven!”

  I guess redemption doesn’t work that way.

  20

  We leave for Nola’s on Sunday evening. The train to her house cuts across the same landscape Brie and I used to take to the coast and then juts up north along the rocky shore where we used to hop on a bus to head south to the Cape. I have always adored the New England shore. My parents used to take me and Todd to the beach in New Jersey every year. The New Jersey beach is down the shore. The sand is a burning golden blanket, and the water is a warm, murky green. I loved our summers down the shore, digging for sand crabs in the frothy surf, chasing the ice cream truck down the hot pavement, and spending hours boiling in the water, forgetting to reapply sunscreen, and emerging at the end of every day burned bright red and untouchably tender.

  After he died, though, it was unthinkable to return.

  New England beaches are nothing, nothing like any of that. You don’t go down the shore, you go up the coast. The sand is large and prickly and granular and sticks uncomfortably to the bottom of your feet, and the cold, translucent water rinses up over pebbles. If you stay in too long, you start going numb. The colors are gray and bone and a muted medley of sea glass; the only golden you come across at the Cape are the purebreds trotting around the dog parks or at beaches that allow them to frolic in the surf. At least, that’s Brie’s Cape. There are always parts you don’t get to know when you become acquainted with a place through the lens of a specific person. But when we travel up the coast, or bus south to the Cape, that’s all we see. That pastel palette of bone and sea glass, shark-eye gray and ghostly white.

  That’s mostly what I see heading up toward Nola’s house, too, only the coast is rockier, and the sea seems angrier, slapping against the sides of cliffs. The sun sinks down into the watery horizon too quickly to put on much more of a show than a couple of brilliant tangerine ribbons, and then we’re left with a sliver of moonlight and the occasional lighthouse sweeping its thin beam back and forth over the water.

  Nola is curled up in a ball with a satin, lace-trimmed eye mask over her face, her coat pulled over her like a blanket, earbuds blocking out the sounds of the train and our fellow passengers. I try to close my eyes, but the overhead light is too bright and the sound of a woman crying into her phone behind me is too distracting.

  I look over at Nola and wonder how far we are from her stop. It can’t possibly be that much farther. The whole trip was only a few hours. I touch my forehead to the window, trying to see past my own reflection. We’re slowing down, about to enter a station. I kick Nola’s feet and she growls and removes her mask, squinting at me with one eye.

  “Are we there yet?”

  She glances out the window, one eye still squeezed shut, giving her an odd pirate look, especially with the mask still half on and her hair gathered into a loose, messy braid. “Unfortunately, yes.” She yawns, heaving her bag onto her shoulder as the train grinds to a halt and the conductor announces the station name. “Prepare.”

  I follow her out into the dark parking lot, a little nervous to meet whatever bizarre humans spawned Nola Kent, but as she walks under the bright parking-lot lights, her Mary Janes clicking on the slick pavement, an energetic gray-haired man bounds toward her and attempts to lift her into a bear hug. “She returns!” He beams.

  She wriggles away and gestures to me politely. “This is Katherine Donovan. Katherine, this is my father.”

  He looks surprised and very pleased. “Well, that’s wonderful.” He reaches a hand out to me at a wide angle, so I’m not sure whether he’s going for a shake or hug.

  I go for the shake. “Kay is fine. I’m sorry, Mr. Kent, I thought you were expecting me.” I cast Nola an uncertain glance.

  She shakes her head vigorously. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s more than fine. And call me Bernie,” Mr. Kent booms. He ushers us into the backseat of a gleaming Jaguar and jumps into the front seat. “Next stop, Tranquility.”

  “Dad,” Nola says through gritted teeth.

  I look at her questioningly.

  She just shakes her head.

  When we get to the house, I understand.

  Her house is not a house. It’s a mansion. Next to it, Brie’s family lives in a shack, and next to that, I live in a shoe box. Nola’s house makes mine look like a diorama. It’s one of those traditional pastel seaside manors with dozens of rooms that you couldn’t possibly do anything with except decorate and hire someone to constantly clean while you wait for guests, possibly guests who never come. In Nola’s case, I suspect I might be the first, although for all I know her parents are avid entertainers. They’re definitely talkers. Tranquility is the name of the house. It’s posted on a charming little white sign with red-and-white-rope trim at the mailbox and again inside the foyer, which is the size of my living and dining room combined. There, a framed, calligraphied sign WELCOME TO OUR HOME hangs over a leather-bound guestbook, a feather quill and inkwell set next to it. I run my fingers over the rows of names in the open page of the guestbook, wondering if Nola made the sign. The handwriting is much neater than the practiced script I remember from her notebook and the lines of verse on her dorm walls. The ink on this page is fresh and there are plenty of names, all of them pairs. Couples, no singles or families.

  Nola shuts the book on my finger and I step back guiltily, feeling like I’ve been caught snooping in someone’s underwear drawer. “It’s not for us; it’s for them,” she says dismissively. She waves me down the hall.

  The floor is polished hardwood and the walls are lemon cream. Enormous bay windows beside the front door reveal a front yard enclosed by a wrought-iron security gate and bordered by balsam firs. Through gaping arches on either side of the foyer are curved hallways leading on one side to a cavernous library where walnut shelves stretch from floor to ceiling. At the end of the other hallway is a glass solarium filled with an array of exotic-looking plants.

  A woman even shorter than Nola with her same dreamy eyes and elfin features floats down a spiral staircase in a silk nightgown. Her hair is dyed bright red and tied in a tight bun on top of her head, and either she’s had some masterful work done on her face or the gift of eternal youth has been bestowed upon her. “Sweetheart,” she says in a breathy southern accent, “you are wasting away.”

  “I am exactly the same weight as I was September first,” Nola says, standing politely still as her mother pecks the air beside each of her cheeks.

  She turns her glittering eyes on me. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Katherine.”

  Once again, my teeth sort of itch at the sound of my full name. I don’t go by Katherine. Nola knows I don’t go by Katherine. It’s starting to annoy me. “Kay,” I say, pressing my lips into a smile.

  “Will you be joining us for the weekend?”

  I look to Nola.

  “Mother, the weekend’s over. She’s staying with us for the week.”

  Mrs. Ke
nt blinks. “Well, that’s just perfect! There’s room for everyone. I want to hear all about your classes, sweetheart, but if I don’t take my migraine pills and lie in bed with a washcloth over my eyes right now, I will be out of sorts for the duration.” She kisses the air again. “There’s leftovers in the kitchen. Marla made quiche and potatoes au gratin, and there’s always the usual small dishes if you want some nibbles.” She nods toward me. “It’s nice to meet you, Katherine.”

  Bernie winks at me. “The crab quiche is not to be missed,” he says. Then he kisses Nola on the cheek and follows his wife up the stairs. Beyond the staircase is the kitchen, at the back of which is a pair of glass doors leading to a thin sandy strip and a border of rocks, and beyond that, a sudden drop to the sea.

  I wait until they’re gone and then turn to Nola curiously. “Room for everyone?” I want to ask about her mother’s bizarre question about the weekend, but I wonder if the answer isn’t as simple as “alcohol.”

  She shrugs. “It wouldn’t be Tranquility if it weren’t teeming with obnoxious well-wishers and rando acquaintances leeching off you, would it?”

  I follow Nola into the kitchen. I feel self-conscious walking on the spotless white tile floor and I slip my boots off and dangle the laces over my fingers.

  She eyes me almost with contempt. “It’s just a floor. It’s used to being walked all over.”

  “I can’t help it. It’s cleaner than the dining hall dishes.”

  “Because Bates’s kitchen staff is lazy.”

  I’m actually a little appalled at this blatant display of elitism. Nola doesn’t say things like that at school. I guess everyone acts differently at home. I’m as guilty of that as anyone else. But no one’s even around to see it. She piles a plate with seafood salad and cold potatoes and grabs a Diet Coke, then leaves me alone with the enormous refrigerator. It’s difficult to know what to do with it. It’s two feet taller than I am and about as wide as my arm span, and every inch is packed, probably in anticipation of the coming holiday feast. I don’t know what’s off limits, so I follow Bernie’s suggestion and make myself a plate of quiche and potatoes. When I turn around, I see Nola calmly pouring two generous servings of rum into quaint little glasses shaped like mason jars.