All These Beautiful Strangers

by Elizabeth Klehfoth

  Eugenia had finally given in to the fact that I was going to marry Margot. I think the thing that helped her to get over it was her love of planning an event where the Calloways would be the main attraction. Wedding planning gave my mother plenty to focus on besides her dislike of the bride.

  When I woke up the next morning, I found my mother and Margot sitting side by side at the breakfast table. Fabric samples were spread out in front of them.

  “What are my favorite two women in the world up to?” I asked.

  “Hey,” Olivia said, offended. She was sitting a little ways down the table with a fashion magazine and glass of OJ in front of her. I ignored her.

  “We’re picking our color palette for the wedding,” Margot said brightly.

  “Oh, can I see?” I asked, reaching for one of the swatches in front of them on the table.

  My mother swatted my hand away. “You’re a man; you don’t get an opinion,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because you’re color-blind.”

  “I am not color-blind,” I said.

  My mother sighed and held up two swatches of white fabric. “What color are these?” she asked.

  “White,” I said.

  “Precisely what I’m talking about,” she said. She pointed to the swatch on the left. “This is egg cream,” she said. “It has a yellow base.” She pointed to the swatch on the right. “And this is moonlight. It has a blue base. Honestly, it’s like night and day.”

  I squinted at both of them to get a better look. “They look the same to me,” I said.

  “Precisely,” my mother said, and clucked her tongue. “Color-blind.”

  “Fine,” I said, conceding. I picked up the pitcher of coffee and poured myself a cup. “I’ll just get my coffee and be on my way then.”

  Margot and my mother ignored me, already tittering away about the color of the tablecloths. That’s when I glanced out the window and saw them: Teddy and Grace on the front lawn. They were snowshoeing. Grace had on a pale cream peacoat and a wool hat pulled low over her ears. The tip of her nose was red with the cold. Teddy pushed her down into the snow. She laughed. She looked ridiculous lying there on her back with the giant webbed shoes strapped to her feet, sticking up. She pulled on Teddy’s leg and he fell down next to her.

  Grace started to move her arms and legs back and forth, forming a snow angel. It was like a fucking Hallmark card or something.

  Then, Teddy leaned over, tucked Grace’s hair back behind her ear, and kissed her. Something tugged in my gut, and I looked away.

  Fifteen

  Charlie Calloway

  2017

  It was tradition at Knollwood for upperclassmen to spend the first weekend in October at a retreat at Camp Wallaby in Maine. I had never been to camp as a kid, but I pictured melting marshmallows over an open campfire, and singing “Kumbaya” with a long-haired hippie with an acoustic guitar, and spending the day canoeing and braiding friendship bracelets. Cheesy, harmless stuff. But Harper Cartwright was quick to set us all straight on the bus ride up: this was no relaxing weekend retreat we were headed to.

  “It’s more of a ‘get your shit together’ wake-up call,” Harper said, leaning back in her seat.

  Apparently, everyone was forced to meet one-on-one with a guidance counselor, who reminded you that you were about to make one of the biggest decisions of your life.

  “They basically remind you there are only, like, ten schools worth going to, and statistically how unlikely it is you’ll get in, and if you don’t get in, how you might as well just kill yourself. They get bonuses for making students cry,” Harper said.

  “It’s not that bad,” Dalton said. “They help you strategize. You know, what extracurricular might round you out, or what classes you should take to stand out as an applicant.”

  “They brought in someone from the admissions office at Harvard last year to speak,” Crosby said, flicking Drew playfully on the knee. Somehow, Drew had finagled her way into sitting next to him and Ren was glaring at her from across the aisle.

  “I’m feeling kind of carsick,” I told Leo, who was sitting next to me. “I think I’ll go lie down in the back and try and take a nap.”

  “Feel better,” he said.

  I found an empty bench at the back of the bus and lay down, using my messenger bag as a pillow. But first, I got out the old 1990–1991 Knollwood Augustus Prep yearbook I had stolen from the library the other day. After the conversations I’d had with Claire and Uncle Hank, I’d gotten to thinking about my father. There must have been snippets of his time there, glimpses of who he had been when he was my age.

  I cracked open the hard cover of the book, which was in classic Knollwood colors: navy blue and gold. The pages were slick and glossy inside. The first one was an “In Memoriam” page for a student who had passed away.

  Jake Griffin

  July 8, 1973–December 21, 1990

  Beloved son, brother, friend, and an invaluable member of the Knollwood Augustus Prep family.

  It didn’t say how Jake had passed away. (Was it some sort of chronic illness? A car accident? Or something more sinister, like suicide?) There was a large school portrait of Jake in the middle of the page. He was wearing the Knollwood school blazer and tie. He had been a handsome kid, with dark hair and kind features. His wide smile seemed genuine and infectious.

  Around the portrait was a collage of pictures of Jake at Knollwood—Jake presiding over the student council, gavel poised to signal the beginning of a session; Jake standing on a foldout chair to hang streamers for the homecoming dance; Jake extended in the air, racket raised over his head as he delivered the winning serve at a tennis tournament. I was about to turn the page when I noticed it—a picture of Jake on Healy Quad, his arm slung over the shoulder of another boy. Beneath the picture was a caption: Jake Griffin and Alistair Calloway. I almost hadn’t recognized the seventeen-year-old version of my father standing next to him, but when I really looked at him, I could pick out his familiar features—the blond hair, cut short; his blue eyes; his long forehead and sharp chin. Yes, that was my father.

  My father often talked about his time at Knollwood and the friends that he had made there; he remained close with many of them. They were the people he golfed with on Sunday, the families we dined with in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard—even, occasionally, the people we vacationed with. But he had never mentioned Jake Griffin. That wasn’t a name I recognized. And yet, here the two of them were, arms around each other, beaming at the camera.

  But perhaps it wasn’t that strange that my father had never mentioned Jake. Maybe they weren’t as close as the picture suggested, or perhaps they were close, and the memory of Jake was painful, so my father preferred not to bring it up.

  I turned the page. The senior portraits came next, in alphabetical order. I quickly found my father’s portrait near the front. Alistair Calloway. He had been voted “Best All-Around” by his classmates. His quote was from an unknown source: “Never look behind. What’s done is done. Be wise and look ahead.”

  Flipping through the pages, it was easy to see the kind of boy my father had been: good-looking and well liked, smart and athletic. Captain of the tennis team, head of crew, president of the senior class, valedictorian. But then again, what other story was a yearbook supposed to tell but the happy one, the one that everyone wanted to remember?

  One of the great joys of Camp Wallaby—and there were many, including the cabins that lacked A/C, and the intensive nonstop team-building exercises in which everyone jockeyed to be the leader, and the forced fireside chats in which students passive-aggressively complained about other students’ passive-aggressiveness—was the fact that we were forbidden to bring our cell phones or any other technology that would connect us to the outside world. So, not only was I cut off from hearing about any progress my uncle Teddy may or may not have made into tracking down the PI’s files on my mother’s case, but I was also cut off from talking to Greyson, the
only person who had an inkling of the mind-fuck I was going through on a daily basis.

  At the moment, the group of twelve I had randomly been assigned to was at the volleyball court. Our counselor, Kirk, was a twentysomething who was overly enthusiastic about his lot in life.

  “Okay,” Kirk sang, clapping his hands together. “This afternoon, we’re gonna play some volleyball. I’m going to assign two team leaders. These are two people who really excelled at trust falls this morning.”

  I raised my hand to ask how it was possible to distinguish oneself at something as passive as falling, but Dalton was standing in front of me, and his height blocked Kirk’s view of my hand.

  “Sheila and Zachery, come on up here and pick your teams,” Kirk said. “And let’s give them all a hand for their performances this morning.”

  I slow-clapped while others around me applauded.

  “Let’s hear it for gravity,” I said. “To be honest, it did most of the work.”

  Dalton turned his head and chuckled at me. At least I amused someone.

  “I’ll take Crosby,” Sheila said.

  Crosby jogged past me to stand next to Sheila on her side of the net. They high-fived each other.

  Zachery called Dalton. Sheila called Harper Cartwright. When it was Zachery’s turn, Dalton leaned down and whispered something in his ear.

  “Come on, man,” Zachery whined. But still, he raised his hand and pointed at me. “We’ll take Charlie.”

  I couldn’t blame Zachery for his reluctance in choosing me. I had never been into sports, really. I just never got the appeal of sweating, or shortness of breath, or the way it made your body ache. It had never been fun to me, and I had never been particularly well coordinated.

  “All right, Calloway,” Dalton said as I made my way up to them. He raised both hands above his head in the air and I had to raise myself onto my tiptoes to reach them.

  “Yeah, um, go team,” I said.

  “It figures,” I heard Harper say over my shoulder, and I turned to see her rolling her eyes and making a kissy face, which was annoying, but nothing I would have really cared about if Sheila hadn’t laughed right along with her, as if they were in on the joke together.

  When the teams were picked, I stood next to the net in front of Dalton, who was serving. Across from me, on the other side of the net, was Harper. She was nearly as short as I was, so we were fairly evenly matched in that regard. She flipped her curly blond hair over her shoulder and dubiously toed the dark sand court.

  Dalton delivered a razor-sharp serve that sliced over the net and landed on the other side of the court, untouched in a cloud of dust. My team applauded.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Sheila said, trying to rally her team. “We’ll get the next one.”

  “Anyone awake over there?” Zachery chided as Harper tossed the ball back to Dalton under the net.

  “Send the next one my way, Dalton, if you think you’re so fierce,” Harper said.

  “Whatever you say, Miss Cartwright,” Dalton said with a smile.

  His next serve whizzed through the air, just over the net, and Harper jumped up and spiked it back over.

  I realized too late that the ball was coming directly toward my face, and that I was not positioned correctly to be able to take a step back in order to hit the ball. So I ducked out of the way. The ball hit the court behind me with a dull thud.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Harper yelped, and Sheila gave her a loud, smacking high-five.

  “You know you’re supposed to hit the ball, right?” Zachery asked me.

  I suddenly found myself wishing that volleyball was a contact sport. “Can I pretend your face is the ball and practice?”

  “Easy, tiger.”

  Sheila served next. She scored a point before turning the ball over. I realized with a sinking feeling as my team rotated that I was up next to serve. I had the upper-body strength of an eight-year-old boy.

  I tried the underhand serve. The ball didn’t make it over the net, but it did nail Zachery in the back of the head, which was a small, if humiliating, victory. Across the court, Harper let out a loud snicker. My only consolation was that it was an ugly through-the-nose snicker that kind of sounded like she’d snorted.

  “It’s okay, good effort!” Kirk yelled, and clapped his hands loudly, which, of course, only made things a million times worse than I already thought they were.

  I was determined to redeem myself. I bent my knees and leaned forward. I watched Dalton on the next play, the way he didn’t clasp his hands together until he reached the ball, the way he leveled his forearms before he bumped it. I could do that. When the next ball came over, I was ready. It was coming toward my section of the court and I prepared myself to hit it.

  “Got it!” Dalton said, and I barely had time to step out of the way before he barreled into the very spot I had just been in and popped the ball into the air. Zachery spiked it over.

  “Hey,” I said.

  But Dalton only gave me a little wink, like he had done me a favor. “Don’t worry; I’ve got you.”

  I scoffed but he was too busy bumping chests with Zachery and making some sort of caveman hoot to see it.

  I knew my performance thus far hadn’t done much to give him any confidence in my abilities, but still.

  When the next ball came my way, I catapulted myself to it.

  “Got it!” Dalton and I yelled at the same time, right before we collided. Dalton fell and I fell right down on top of him.

  “You okay?” Dalton asked when the dust had settled around us.

  I swatted his chest.

  “Ouch,” Dalton said.

  “That was my ball,” I said.

  “I was just trying to help,” he said.

  “Well, don’t.”

  I picked myself up and dusted off my knees, which were covered in sand.

  “You okay, Dalton?” Zachery asked. “Did she hurt you?”

  “Hey, he’s the one who ran into me,” I said.

  “When Dalton says he’s got it, you get out of the way,” Zachery said. “He’s our LeBron James. You always let LeBron James take the winning shot.”

  “You really don’t want to take another step toward me right now, Zachery,” I said.

  “Control your girl, Dalton,” Zachery said.

  “What did you just say?” I asked, but Dalton held out his arm and caught me around the waist.

  “Just ignore him,” he said.

  At that point I didn’t really have much of a choice, because the next ball was coming over the net. This ball wasn’t coming remotely toward me; it was going to fall just over the net. But I didn’t care. I launched myself across the court. Right before I leapt into the air and pulled back my hand to spike the ball over, I saw her. There, on the other side of the net, waiting, was Harper Cartwright. As I my palm made contact with the ball, all I could think was, Dive, bitch. Dive. I hit that ball like it was Zachery’s face.

  Harper did dive, but she wasn’t quick enough. The ball smacked the floor of the court. Score.

  I hollered in a very unsportsmanlike manner that I’m sure thoroughly horrified Counselor Kirk. Meanwhile, Dalton picked me up and threw me over his shoulder and spun around in a victory dance.

  “What now, Zachery? What now?” I yelled.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt the revelry,” came a voice. Dalton slowed and set me down. That’s when I saw her—my guidance counselor, Mariah.

  Every student was assigned a guidance counselor when they entered Knollwood, and Mariah was mine. We were required to meet with our counselors at least once a semester to go over our class schedules and talk about our “goals” and what we “wanted to accomplish,” which would have been annoying enough as it was, but Mariah felt her guidance should extend beyond the academic and extracurricular realm. She was always asking me about my family, and how I was holding up, and—I swear I’m not just imagining this—elbowing the tissue box across her desk in my directi
on, as if at any moment I might explode in a torrential downpour of tears. I’d seen the undeniable twinkle of glee in her eye the last time I was in her office and asked for a tissue, and then the sheer disappointment when I used it to blot my lipstick.

  Mariah was middle-aged and always dressed business casual—chinos and loafers, a blazer over a collared shirt. She was the type of person who insisted on all the students’ calling her by her first name, and she liked to put her hands in her front pants pockets and nod when she was deep in thought. People who put their hands in their front pants pockets bugged me.

  “I’m scheduled to meet with Charlie next,” she said. “Is it okay if I steal her for a bit?”

  “Please, take her,” Zachery said.

  “I got us that last point if you didn’t notice,” I said.

  “Yeah, congratulations. You also cost us several and almost injured our star player. So you’re still in the negative, if you hadn’t noticed,” Zachery said.

  “Oh, Zachery, I’m really going to miss this very special time we’ve shared together,” I said. And I reached up and patted him on the head as I walked past him.

  On the sidelines, Mariah hugged me.

  “So good to see you, Charlie,” she said. “I’m so glad we have a chance to talk. I feel like we didn’t get to accomplish all that we could in our last visit.”

  Give it up, lady, I wanted to say. I’m not going to cry.

  We started walking toward the lake. Mariah buried her hands in her front pockets and started to nod.

  “So, regardless of what you might have heard from your peers, the real purpose of this session is not to scare you, but to help you get where you want to go,” Mariah said. “I think the best place for us to start is for you to tell me where you’d like to end up in a year and a half. For most Knollwood Augustus Prep students, that means college, but some seek out other opportunities for personal or intellectual growth—such as Outward Bound, or a year of travel, or a year of volunteer service.”

  “My plans haven’t changed,” I said. “I’m going to UPenn. To the Wharton School.”