me about it.”
“Can you afford it?”
My voice tight, “I’ve managed so far, haven’t I?”
He’d shrug, say, “Just trying to look out for you.” Then he’d reach inside the pocket of the school blazer hanging next to the door. As he’d start to hand over the pocket’s contents, though, he’d slap a palm to his forehead and squeeze his eyes shut, like an idea lightbulb had switched on in his skull and he was blinded by the brilliance of it. “Hey,” he’d say, “have you ever given yoga a shot?”
At this point in the exchange, I’d be getting impatient but would be doing my best to hide it. If he saw it, he’d drag things out even longer. “I haven’t,” I’d say.
“It’s supposed to work wonders on you high-strung types. Keeps you from sweating the small stuff.”
“Then I’ll have to look into it.”
“It’s good for your body, too. Gets you nice and skinny. Not so skinny, though, that you lose your breasts. Man, there’s something about a thin girl with big tits.”
“Yeah,” I’d say.
“There is one thing that definitely won’t work for you, Grace. Know what that is?”
I’d shake my head, but inside I’d be perking up because I knew he was about to say the magic word, the word that meant I was getting what I came for.
“Drugs.” He’d wag a stern finger at me. “I want it on record that I’m anti-narcotics, pro-family values.”
“Noted,” I’d say.
He’d nod, satisfied, then place in my hand several pamphlets, the ones with titles like So Help Me God: Substance Abuse, Religion and Spirituality and Understanding the Agonies of Ecstasy that fill guidance counselors’ offices, and in each of which was folded a clear plastic baggie containing ten pills—Xanax, Valium, or Klonopin, depending on what he had in stock—as I placed in his hand twenty-dollar bills, a twenty per pamphlet. He’d always hold on to the pamphlets for an extra couple seconds, make me really pull before he’d release them.
I’d press my palms together, bow my head, say, “Namaste.” I’d try to say it sarcastically, but usually I’d be so grateful to have my supply for the week that I’d wind up sounding embarrassingly sincere. Then I’d slip the pamphlets into my bag, scurry off, as he called out, “Sweet dreams,” to my retreating back.
A brand-new life was settling around me. It was ugly and it was empty, but I was okay with it because, thanks to the drugs, I wasn’t really in it. Not really being in it, however, had its consequences. I quit tennis team and lit mag. Actually, not so much quit as stopped showing up. Also, I failed all my classes, every single one. In a short six-week period I managed to completely torpedo my GPA. It dropped a grand total of 2.1 points, making it a not very grand 1.8.
So I was surprised but not too when one morning my guidance counselor, Mr. Howell—Shep to the students he advised or was dorm parent to—found me in the hall, told me that Williams had pulled its acceptance offer. He handed me the number of the dean of admissions, urged me to give a call, explain my situation. That afternoon, I went to him, said I couldn’t get through to the dean. But the truth was, I didn’t even try. I lacked the energy: pick up the phone, press the correct buttons in the correct order, wait while a secretary put me on hold, plead my case to a tweedy academic type with a tight mouth, use my sad story to make that tight mouth go loose and blubbery. I felt exhausted just thinking about it, bone tired before I’d done a single thing. I sensed dimly, though, that I might want the option of college in the future; so, right there in Shep’s office, sitting under a homemade poster of a dove with the word peace in its beak, I let the tears come to my eyes, keep on coming.
He fell for the act, reaching for the receiver with one hand, there-thereing me with the other. By the end of the day, Williams had rescinded its rescission.
If I was so done with Chandler and Chandler people, why then did I show up at Jamie’s Fourth of July bash a month after graduation?
A simple chance encounter the day before.
I was standing at the foot of my driveway, opening the mailbox, pulling out the bottle of generic Xanax I’d ordered from some online Canadian pharmacy at a rip-offy price and had been waiting on for almost a week. (The Internet had become my dealer since summer break started and Ruben went home to New York, taking his pamphlets with him.) I turned around and there was Jamie, walking toward me in madras shorts and an inside-out T-shirt, his racket bag swinging loosely from his shoulder. His hands were in his pockets and his head was down.
I was trying to decide how best to avoid him, taking an inventory of my options: shove my head all the way inside the mouth of the mailbox, duck behind my dad’s car or the Wheelers’ hedges, run back into the house. Just then, though, Jamie looked up and our eyes met. Oh, shit, I thought. Oh, who cares? I thought.
I waited for him to reach me. At last he did.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
It was his turn to speak, only he couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. I watched him struggle. He was nice to watch, tall and fair and slender with the kind of delicate, crystalline beauty teenage boys almost invariably grow out of, lose by the time they become men: high cheekbones, flower-petal skin, full lips, intensely red, the borders blurry and undefined. It was funny; it used to be the sheer privilege of talking to him made talking nearly impossible, left me tongue-tied and breathless with nerves, terrified that I wouldn’t be able to hold his interest, while he looked on with those eyes that always seemed on the verge of sleep. Now he was the one who was anxious, and I was the one who didn’t give a shit.
Finally, to help him out, I said, “So, are you on your way to the courts?”
He nodded, grateful. “Well, first I’m on my way to the track to do some foot speed drills, then I’m on my way to the courts.”
“Lesson?”
“Lesson, then a practice match. I’ve been training a lot lately.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear it. As a student Jamie was solid, nothing special, but his squash had been good enough to get him into Cornell and Middlebury. Not quite good enough, though, to get him into Princeton, his dad’s alma mater. When he received his rejection letter in early spring, he decided to do a postgraduate year at Chandler, spend the next six months concentrating on upping his ranking, then reapply in the fall.
“Is the lesson with Mr. Loring or Oscar?” I asked. Mr. Loring was the coach of the Chandler squash team. Oscar was Jamie’s private coach.
“Oscar,” he said. And then, softly, “Geez, can’t someone get that kid to mellow out?”
I noticed, for the first time, that a baby was crying. Guess Mrs. Wheeler had had her little boy. “I thought Oscar taught out of that club in Canton?” I said.
“He does.”
“Then how come the lesson’s not there?”
“Because they’re repainting the courts this week. Actually, just one of the courts. But reserving the other is, like, this major hassle, so—”
I tuned out, letting him pull the weight of the conversation for a bit. It was hard for me to believe how close we’d once been. When Nica dumped Jamie back in February and nobody knew why, not even him, he’d started calling me, nearly every night on my cell. These conversations weren’t a secret, not exactly. I hadn’t mentioned them to Nica, though. And