“You heard me.” Rebecca selected an onion ring from her basket and met Alexa’s eyes. “Silk Stockings. I watched it.”
“How’d you know about it?”
“From Morgan. Apparently all her friends watch it.Andat leasthalf the Mom Squad.”
“Theydo?Are you serious?” Alexa looked the way Peter had after the WWII plane ride.
“I am very serious. You’re a big local hit, apparently. Morgan told me about it that day we saw you and Cam on Pleasant Street, but I wasn’t sure then how to bring it up. So I’ve just been watching. Catching up. Waiting, I guess.”
There was a long pause during which Rebecca watched a lot of emotions cross Alexa’s face: surprise, anger, stubbornness, a little bit of pride.
“Did you like it?”
Rebecca was touched by how eager Alexa sounded; she was for an instant the eight-year-old bringing home her self-portrait from art class and presenting it to Peter and Rebecca.
Rebecca poked through the onion rings to find another winner, and she spoke carefully: she’d been preparing for this.
“You have a great presence in front of the camera, and a way of condensing the topics into a digestible, educational format.”
“Thank you,” said Alexa.
“But that isn’t the point. My liking it isn’t the point.”
Alexa kept her eyes on Rebecca. “What’s the point?”
“Honey, you’re seventeen years old, and you have a very public online personality. Sixteen thousand subscribers?”
“Almost seventeen thousand,” corrected Alexa. “I’ve picked up a bunch of new ones recently.”
“But people don’t have to subscribe to watch, right?”
“Right.”
“Soanybodycan find you. Anybody can watch those videos, and do—whatever they want with them. To them.”
“Ew.Mom.”
“Not just people who want to learn about the stock market, but any old pervert or freak.”
Alexa sighed, exasperated.“I know,Mom.”
Rebecca felt her voice take a turn toward sharp. “You mightnotknow, Alexa. I know you think you’re all the way grown up, honey. But you’re not grown up. You’re not even eighteen yet.”
“Almost.”
Rebecca had done what Daniel had advised. She’d sat on the knowledge of Silk Stockings while she watched a lot of the videos and read through many of the comments. But now she had to speak up. Alexa was about to step into Rebecca’s shoes at Colby—she was about to go off on her own! When Rebecca had matriculated at Colby she’d hadn’t been just wet behind the ears; she’d been positively sopping. She cringed when she thought of some of the mistakes she’d made. And that was pre-social media, when kids had the luxury of anonymity while they were bungling their young lives.
“Listen, when you go to college I want you to take a break from this. I’m not saying stop it forever, but promise me for at least the first semester you’ll concentrate on school, and making friends, and all of the things you’re supposed to be doing in college.”
Alexa said nothing.
“Alexa? I need you to promise.”
In a very tiny voice, so tiny it could have been coming from a far corner of the eating area, or even from the outer reaches of the marshes, Alexa said, “I’m not going to college.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. “What?”
“You don’t owe that first tuition payment. Don’t pay it. We don’t owe it. I’m not going.”
