After a couple of weeks, Sam senses an evil stare from Alice anytime her hand brushes against Tucker’s, or if he pulls her close to him when they’re waiting in the kitchen for the top-of-the-line Jura GIGA 6 machine to dispense their espressos. Sam’s not totally into public displays of affection, but sure, a certain amount can’t be helped. They’re all living in such close proximity. And she’s so, so attracted to Tucker.
“Does Alice have a thing for you?” she asks Tucker. “I could have sworn she pushed the bathroom door into me when I was coming out.”
“I don’t think so.” Tucker looks adorably perplexed. “Alice is with Nathan. And I’m with you. You’re the one I want to be with.”
She kisses him.
From around the corner, Alice clears her throat. Sam didn’t know Alice was there and she jumps back from Tucker, her heart beating fast.
Her mistake, she thinks later, was falling in love. Was she in love? She doesn’t know. What is love, anyway? What does it look like?
In April, Tink brings Sam and Tucker an endorsement offer for a new brand of chocolate peanut butter energy bars. “It’s a no-brainer,” she tells them. All they have to do is bump into each other on the subway, letting Sam’s chocolate bar fall into Tucker’s open jar of peanut butter. It’s a callback to an old Reese’s commercial, someone tells Sam. Their eyes meet over the jar, and the chemistry is almost palpable. Tucker earns $10,000; Sam earns $15,000, because she has more followers. After the video circulates, the bar sells like crazy. Every twelve-through-fourteen-year-old in the universe wants one.
That’s an exaggeration, of course, but maybe not by much.
“I saw your video,” Alice says one afternoon in the kitchen, when Sam is looking for spinach to put in her smoothie and Alice is looking for champagne to put in her pomegranate seeds.
“Okay,” says Sam uncertainly. Is Alice going to offer a compliment?
“That could have been me.” The implication is clear: Alice feels that Sam has robbed her of something.
“But you’re with Nathan...?” says Sam. She turns on the Vitamix and lets it run for two full minutes. It’s too loud, while the blender is running, for either of them to say anything to the other.
When the blender stops Alice says, “Nathan,” like she’s saying, “diaper rash,” and stomps out of the kitchen, sloshing a pomegranate seed over the side of the champagne glass. Later, Boom Boom explains the situation to Sam; he’s close with Nathan, and Nathan has shared some numbers with him. Endorsement offers for Nathan and Alice are down overall since Sam and Tucker became the newest Xanadu couple, and the offers they are getting are smaller than they used to be. “Sloppy seconds,” Alice calls their offers. Alice is moody and unpredictable more than she is the “super-fun girl” Nathan fell for, Nathan tells Boom Boom, who tells Sam.
Nathan, Boom Boom tells Samin strictest confidence,is thinking of breaking up with Alice. Nathan is wondering if Solo Nathan might do better out there than Coupled-Up Nathan. He hasn’t made a decision yet; it’s just a possibility he’s keeping in mind.
In May, maybe inevitably, maybe not, come the photos.
Sam hears her uncle call her name, but she doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t turn around. She seethes and simmers down the steep driveway, across the street, and onto the shoulder of Spring Street. The moon has risen, and it’s almost full, so it’s not dark, but it’s certainly not light either. She’s regretting the choice of her platform sandals. She’s regretting what she said to her uncle. But she’s mad at him too, for what he said to her. There’s a knot of rage and humiliation lodged inside her rib cage, and she can’t figure out how to get it loose.
Itisa long walk home, and ithasgotten dark, and it’s true that the shoulder on this road is narrow, and not built for a casual nighttime stroll, or really any kind of stroll at all.
You know what? So what. She doesn’t care. Uncle Timmy basically just judged everything she’s ever done—hebelittledher work at the collab house, which was actual, legitimate work. (Just ask her bank account, if you’re not sure.) As though every single thing he’d worked on was worthy of an Oscar. Please! That movie on the navy submarine?
She calls Henry. He answers on the first ring, chipper and energetic as ever.
“Henry,” she says. “Didyouknow I could have stayed in California afterMy Three Daughters? To pursue other acting opportunities? But Mom and Dad made me come back. Only they pretended it wasn’t them.”
“Hello to you too, Sam.”
“Yeah,” she says. “This whole time I thought I had to come home because Uncle Timmy had to go on location and I didn’t have anywhere else to live, but as it turns out, that was just alieMom made him say so that I’d have to leave California. Can you believe it? Uncle Timmy just told me.”
Henry says, “Hmm.” Then he says, “He told you?”
She pauses and considers this. “Yeah,” she said. “Accidentally, sort of, but yeah. Mom and Dad totally lied to me! Can you believe it?”
“I mean, kind of,” says Henry. “You’d been gone for a while when your show ended. I was privy to a lot of conversations. I guess I’m not shocked they thought it was time for you to come home.”
“But it’s so unfair. They weren’t even honest with me. I could be in a whole different place right now!”
There is a pause, and then Henry says, “You know what, Sam? I know you’re going through some things. But maybe expand your tunnel vision.”
“Mywhat?” Sam spits this out, because she can’t believe it: first Uncle Timmy, and now Henry. Is everyone against her? What didshe ever do to any of them? “What are you talking about? What tunnel vision?”
“For starters,” says Henry, “you haven’t asked me a thing about myself or my summer. You haven’t asked about the program I’m doing, or about Ava. You call me when you want something from me—comfort, or reassurance, or company. Other than that, I don’t hear from you.”
“That’s nottrue, Henry.”
