They walked together, Maeve’s books clutched to her chest. She felt newly self-conscious, all eyes on her and Wendy, sizing them up, a scarletLpinned to her shirt. She’d lain in bed the night before, unable to sleep, fretting over which was worse—her parents or the kids at school finding out about her. Profound disappointment or relentless scorn? Exhausting questions, wrapped in midnight blue satin, tied with an empire bow.
“You look wiped out,” Wendy said.
Maeve had noticed the dark circles under her eyes that morning but didn’t have the energy to try to conceal them. “Couldn’t sleep.”
The earth sciences teacher slowed down as he approached them. “Girls,” he said, eyes flicking up and down, back and forth.
Maeve groaned. “What was that about?”
“Pervs everywhere.”
The pressure felt like a sack of flour on her chest. She steered Wendy into an open doorway, peeked inside. Empty. “Listen. I think we should cool it. Your mom and everything. And I don’t want to tick off my parents.”
“It’s almost summer break,” Wendy said, her head tilted. “And then mayhem, right?”
Maeve scratched at a patch of dry skin on her forearm. “Mayhem.” That was the plan for summer—have as much fun as humanly possible before senior year of high school. “I don’t think we should be seen together right now. I have my friends. You have yours ...”
“Lots of the same people ...”
“No, I mean. You know, prom and all. Let’s lay low.” Maeve tried to ease her way back into the flow of hall traffic.
Wendy’s mouth fell open slightly, and she tipped her head forward. “Are you breaking—”
“Wendy!” Maeve interrupted, shaking her head. She lowered her voice, talked through her teeth. “Call me when you’re done being grounded or something.” She jump-skipped to get past a throng of freshmen, shoved a scrawny boy for good measure. She felt safer already.
Chapter Fourteen
1979
It had been two weeks since Maeve sat on Wendy’s bed, her bra on the floor at her feet, nine days since they’d spoken. Three days since Wendy walked past Maeve in the hall and hadn’t even looked at her; two days since Maeve saw Brett leaning into Wendy at her locker, not looking like they were “just friends.” The day before, the theater kids came up with an alternative to prom, a dress-up party, misfit style. The theme was simple—dress as your favorite character from a book or play. What the hell. She would go.
Maeve sat on the living room floor, leafed through an old photo album searching for a particular picture to complete her outfit, to remind her exactly who she was. Each page was a part of her family story, starting from the beginning. She had looked at this album often, memorized the photos so that the photos themselves had become memory.
In one, her pregnant mother, sideways to show off her belly in a tented dress. The pine tree next to the house is so small! Her parents on the same day—someone must have purchased a roll of film for this particular occasion—standing next to a silver car they no longer owned, her father in dark pants, mud boots, a solid flannel shirt from the looks of the black-and-white picture. Another, this onewith her grandparents. Maeve inspected it more closely. Her mother’s careful smile, her grandmother’s mouth thin and tight, like she’s holding a watermelon seed between her teeth. Maeve could almost remember her but not quite. She smelled a little like dirt, Maeve thought, though it might have been her cigarettes.
Then she found it. A picture taken from a distance, probably from the back porch of the house, probably taken by her mother. In it, Maeve and her father stand side by side, both in jeans and plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Maeve removed it from the plastic sleeve. There was no writing on the back, though the date was machine printed along the zigzagged edges of the photo. APR 69. Maeve’s hair is so short she could be mistaken for a boy. They are in the garden, and her father is leaning on a shovel. He is hardly a half inch tall in the photo, Maeve even smaller, but still, it is clear that she is happy. They had fixed a fence post together, and he was proud of her. She remembered him singing, his voice cracking. “Please, don’t take my sunshine away.”
She thumbed through the copy ofTo Kill a Mockingbirdher father had given her on her thirteenth birthday. When she found the page she was looking for, she marked it with the photo, then stuck the book in her back pocket.
Her parents were sitting on the porch swing at dusk drinking bottled beer when Maeve came out the front door. As annoying as they were, she couldn’t help but smile. Her dad still put his arm around her mom; she still tapped his chest when he said something silly. They were perfect together. Somehow, even that made Maeve sad. Could she ever be happy like they were, considering how messed up she was on the inside?
“There she is!” her father said. “Glad you decided to go.”
Maeve had been sulking, it was true. She buried herself in her favorite books, moped herself to tears listening to records. She’d snapped so often that even Molly steered clear. But she had to keeptrying. The more she let on, the more her parents pried. She told them she was embarrassed she didn’t get invited to prom. She had to fake everything.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in a costume?” her father asked.
“I am,” Maeve said. She was wearing denim overalls with a star embroidered on the back pocket, flat red sneakers, and a honey-colored checkered blouse.
A brown four-door sedan turned into the driveway.
“And?” her mother asked.
Maeve turned and pointed to the paperback in her pocket.
“Ha! Scout Finch!” William said. “My ray of sunshine in pants.”
Maeve flourished her hands, happy and sad that her dad remembered it like she did. It felt like a thousand years since she’d been his little girl. He’d said Maeve was a tomboy, like Scout, told her the importance of being principled, though Maeve hadn’t really known what he meant by that. “Be honest. Stick up for what’s right.” She was a tomboy. A girl who liked sports. A girl who didn’t like dresses. That was all. She could have said that to Wendy. Her stomach knotted again. How had she let this all happen? She never wanted to be a disappointment to her parents, especially not her father. She choked back tears, faked a cough for distraction.
