Suddenly, they are a house divided. Nathan takes Alice’s side, of course. Boom Boom too, which smarts. Tucker takes Sam’s, and Cece does too. Kylie is hard to read. Scooter tries to toe the middle line but Sam can sense that he is distancing himself from the whole mess, even though he must know—he must!—that Alice is in the wrong. When she approaches Scooter to talk about it he raises both his hands and says, “I can’t, sweet girl. I can’t help.”
Scooter grew up in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx. He wants to make money so his mom, raising four kids on her own, can afford an apartment in a better building. Sam can’t really blame him for protecting his online image, but still. It hurts. It hurts a lot.
Maybe, thinks Sam, Tink will help, if Sam tries again with her. She always tells them she’s there if they need her.
Sam asks Tink to meet her somewhere away from the house, away from the cameras. They meet at a Starbucks on Seventy-fifth and Amsterdam and they sit at a tiny table in the corner. Sam faces the wall, because she wants to, and Tink faces out into the Starbucks, because Sam sat first and she doesn’t have another option. Sam tells Tink the whole story and then sits back expectantly, waiting to see what Tink will say or do. Tink is incredibly powerful. She must know a way to fix this. Tink is looking down at her straw wrapper, making tiny knots in it. After atime (a long time), she looks at Sam, but not actually meeting her eyes; she seems to be looking at a commotion near the barista. Two customers have reached for the same triple foam latte.
Finally Tink says: “I’m not sure how I can help you with this, Sam. I mean, it’s not the best look for you, obviously. But everyone’s follower counts are way up. Way, way up.”
“Well, I know it’s not the best look for me, Tink! It’s not a look I was going for! I didn’t do it. The photos aren’t me. I’m asking for your help to make it go away. You always said you were in it for the long-term for us. So I need you to help fix this, for the long-term. I need you to do something about Alice. I need you to undo what she did.”
Tink’s phone buzzes and she draws it out of her shoulder bag and looks at her text. She begins typing a reply.
“Tink,” says Sam. “We’re in the middle of a conversation here.” (This is something Sam’s mother has said to Sam countless times. Now she gets it.)
“Sorry,” says Tink, looking intently at the screen. “Just something I have to deal with here.”
“But I’m something you have to deal with,” says Sam. “And I’m right here, right now. Deal with me.”
Tink looks up and says, “You know what though? I think I’ll make another reservation for you all to go to Tao. Any place you and Alice go together now—people are going to go bananas. It’ll be Content with a capitalC.” Tink rises. “I really have to go do this thing now.”
At Tao, Sam hides in the bathroom most of the night. She’s miserable. When shegets back to Xanadu, Sam posts once more, saying goodbye to her fans and followers. She’s closing her TikTok account for now. She’s leaving social media. She needs a giant reset.
She packs her bags and she makes her bed neatly for the very last time. She empties her little garbage can into the kitchen garbage—it’s mostly full of tissues, from crying. She says goodbye to Tucker, who’s sleeping. He wakes up and begs her not to go, but even Tucker looks a little worn out. Still hot, obviously, but a little worn out. Tucker, she decides, whenshe closes the door to her bedroom, is already a part of her past, not her future.
On her way out she steps over... ew, is that a taco shell? Next to Murph’s dog leash? She doesn’t want to know. She just wants to get out. She wants to go home.
“Oh, honey.” Sam’s mom looks like she’s going to cry. She takes a sip (more like a gulp) of her wine and says, “Why didn’t you talk to me about any of this? Why didn’t youtellme?”
They’re sitting on one of the wide flat rocks not far from the bottom of Mohegan Bluffs. The walk down the steps was fine—all 141 of them—but the real challenge will be walking back up. Amy bought a screw-top bottle of pinot grigio at the liquor store, and two plastic cups, and, for good measure, a package of fancy crackers, which they’re eating with gusto. It’s almost four o’clock, and there are only a few people scattered across the rocky beach. One brave soul is in the water. How that person maneuvered over the rocks to get into the water is anybody’s guess.
Sam shrugs. “Well, for one thing, it was embarrassing. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was humiliated.”
“But it wasn’t your fault! It was nothing you did.”
“Still.Humiliating. Also, I didn’t want you to feel bad for me. And I didn’t want you to say I told you so, that I shouldn’t have gone there in the first place. I didn’t want you to say I would have been better off in college.”
“I wasn’t going to say I told you so.”
“I knew you just wanted me to be normal, a regular college kid. I knew you wanted me to be... Henry.”
Amy laughs. “Oh, Sammy. You think that. But I don’t want you to be Henry. And Henry isn’t normal.”
Sam sniffles and swipes her arm across her nose. Her mother, ironically, does not seem to have a tissue to offer, even though she’s an actual mother. Fair enough, she supposes. Amy can’t think of everything. “He isn’t?”
“Of course not. My dear child, he’s studyingphilosophy. Do you think that’s a ‘normal’”—she makes air quotes with the index finger of each hand—“thing to do? Or do you think that’s Henry’s own way of trying to make sense out of his own chaotic inner world?”
Sam sips from her own wineglass. She’d rather, given the choice, be drinking a Red Bull and vodka, but she’s trying to enjoy the wine: it’s better than nothing, and this conversation would be way too awkward with nothing. “Henry has a chaotic inner world? I thought he was totally zen. I thought he was the Golden Child.”
Amy laughs again. “No more than you.”
“Oh, please,” says Sam.
“I mean it. You’re both the Golden Children. And of course Henry has a chaotic inner world. Everybody does. And nobody is normal. Normal doesn’t exist.”
“Come on. That’s not true. You? Dad? You guys aresonormal. You still give each other valentines. You have Friday-night date night. And look at your pants. The fact that you’re wearing pants at the beach is not normal, but the pants themselves areso normal.”
“I’m wearing pants because I’m working! And I’ll have you know these pants came from an exclusive boutique!”
