Felix comes alive. “Thornfield.It’s aJane Eyreretelling, but, like, edgy. Think Jordan Peele. I’m playing the lead role, Mr. Rochester, this sophisticated recluse who keeps bringing in new governesses. But come to find out, there’s no child to teach. Then he traps their souls inside books. Whenever he wants to interact with one of them, he opens one of the books. But get this: it’smodern day. Not historical. And the latest trapped governess, Jane, is rewriting her story from inside the book, altering the fabric of Rochester’s reality.” He looks pleased with himself. “We’re pushing the limits of cinema. Some films are afraid to get too dark or weird, to reallygo there, but I say, what’s life without risk?”
“What’s Jane like?” I ask, unable to help myself. I know what word he’s going to use as a descriptor.
“Oh, a strong female character for sure. She’s feminine, but resilient. A real ingénue. And she dies at the end.”
There it is.Ingénue.Felix is obsessed with that word.
Felix stares at me for a moment, waiting expectantly. His expression clouds. “Congratulations, Felix,” my brother says in an imitation of my voice.
“Congratulations, Felix,” I echo robotically.
“You could at least pretend to mean it.” He stands up, shaking his head. “You know, I work really hard. At least I’m making something of myself.”
My face burns. “I’m making something of myself, too! I’m a social media influencer. Where’s my congratulations?”
As he stalks away, I catch snatches of Dad’s baritone questioning, followed by Felix’s “nasty all the time,” and then a round of murmuring from others. Must be cozy to be my relatives, united in their annoyance at me.
When I glance at Hall again, he’s got Band-Aids on his forehead and nose. “What are you doing?” I loud-whisper.
“Blending in!” he whispers back.
I throw up my hands. “Into what? A hospital?”
“This is what humans do! They wear Band-Aids. They get scraped up a lot and don’t have self-healing powers. How don’t you know that?”
I peel them off him. He winces.
The many iterations of my grandmother gaze photogenically down at us from a hundred angles. Movie stills, professional headshots with bedroom eyes and a smirk, playbill posters, interspersed between portraits of other silver-screen stars she admires. Her offspring have been relegated to hallways. Black-and-white family candids of my grandparents in the grass, playing with my mother, a young, white-haired Madeline. According to Grandma and Grandpa Watson’s house, I haven’t aged past ten. I’m in the den and the hallway between a guest bathroom and one of the guest bedrooms, dolled up in a poodle skirt next to my still-brunette sisters. There are no pictures of me after my departure from the polka dot stage, even though Kaia’s gig posters are framed next to her headshots and Athena has multiple weddings blown up in eight-by-eleven frames. Felix evidently isn’t that interesting to Grandma, as he’s only up on the wall twice (both are graduation pics).
“You’re angry,” Hall ventures. It doesn’t sound like an accusation, but I bristle anyway.
“No, I’m not.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “I just don’t care.”
I care so little, in fact, that I meander toward the sound of those voices, closer and closer until I can hear what they’re saying. I know what it’s going to be.
She ruins everything. Such a disappointment.
Except, they’re not talking about me at all.
“I told him to pick up the thin-sliced kind,” Mom’s saying. “Lunch meat. But he brings home an entire turkey! So now he can’t be trusted to do the shopping by himself.”
“He did it on purpose, to get out of shopping from now on,” Kaia suggests, and they all laugh. She and Athena haven’t walked in to say hello to me and Hall. Who, I might add, is the first man I’ve ever brought to Grandma’s house. You’d think Dad would be grilling him on his job and his past, weighing whether Hall deserves me. But no! My fake boyfriend and I are loitering awkwardly like uninvited guests.
I can’t decide what’s worse, animosity or indifference.
“Hall,” I say quietly but urgently, leading him into the laundry room/bathroom and closing the door. A load is tumbling in the washer, masking my words. It’s such a normal, innocuous room, smelling of Downy white tea and peony fabric softener. The sunset is broken up by a kaleidoscopic privacy film covering the window, smattering the linoleum with rainbows. The toilet seat has a soft lavender cover over it to match the lavender rugs and washcloths. An old-fashioned washboard hangs on the wall. This room is for normal, innocuous grandparents, right up until you get to the Tony award wedged between a box of detergent and a goat’s skull.
“I want a do-over.”
His head lists to the side as he studies me. “Are you certain? Remember how we both threw up the last time.”
“I want to make a better impression. Look at me, I’ve only been here a few minutes and I’m already being ignored. I want to come in blazing.”
“Me, too. It’s embarrassing that I passed out in front of Bettie Watson.”
