Rose grins at that. “Not the universe!” she promises. “Just me.”
Gabe and his instructor jump first, there one second and gone a heartbeat later; they’re followed by Ian and Ralph, Ian blowing me a kiss before he goes. By the time it’s Imogen’s turn I can barely beat back the panic: God, what made me think I could do this? There are too many unknowns here. There are too many risks. Once upon a time, this might have been a thrill for me, an adventure, a lark. But not anymore.
Finally it’s just Rose and me left in the hold, Rose looking at me carefully; I think she can tell that I’m about to chicken out. “You with me, love?” she asks.
I hesitate. Jumping out of this airplane feels impossible. But so does turning around now. I swallow. “I’m with you,” I promise.
“That’s a girl,” she says, smiling like maybe I’ve done something to be proud of. “Then let’s go.”
So. We jump.
At first all I can register is the racket, the rush of the air speeding by as we plummet through nothingness like the worst kind of dream: it’s too loud and terrifying to think of anything, my mind white with panic in the long moments before Rose pulls the ripcord and the parachute thumps open. I gasp at the snapback, then again at the endlessview: suddenly it is so, so quiet.
“You okay?” Rose asks, grinning like it’s just another day at the office—which, for her, I guess, it is.
I manage a nod, then a hoarse, croaking “yes” that barely travels the distance between us, but the truth is I’m better than okay. I’m windburned and shaky but I’m not afraid anymore, I realize abruptly; I feel peaceful and euphoric and calm. For the first time in a year I’m not frantically calculating for every possible outcome. For the first time in a year I feel free.
I stretch my arms out as we slip through the deep, endless blueness, keep my eyes wide open as we float down toward earth.
That night Imogen wants to take us out in the village; she and I cram into the cottage’s tiny bathroom for hair and makeup, cranking some ancient Dixie Chicks up on her phone. It’s been a long time since we got ready together, filling in each other’s eyebrows and picking out each other’s clothes: “Here,” she instructs, pulling a screaming red dress with a low neckline and a short, flouncy skirt off a wire hanger and tossing it in my direction. “Wear this.”
“Imogen...” I shake my head. “That’s, like, a little much for a night at your local, no?”
Imogen makes a face. “It’s just a dress, Molly. And it’s going to look amazing on you.” She plugs a curling iron into the outlet above the sink, waves at me with it. “Now put it onand come here so I can give you party hair.”
“You know, somehow I can’t picture you talking to Steve Jobs that way,” I grumble, but I do what she tells me, pulling the dress over my head before sitting down on the toilet seat and holding still as she gently separates my hair into thin sections, pinning them back with claw clips. “My mom sent me one of these at school,” I tell her, nodding up at the curling wand, “but every time I try to use it I wind up looking like a poodle.”
“How is dear Diana Barlow these days?” Imogen asks, a hint of a smile in her voice. “Cannibalized the romantic histories of any close family members lately?”
“Not that I know of,” I report. “She’s good, though. She’s finishing up revisions for her new book, the one about the carnival family with all the incest. And actually, now that I say that out loud, Ireallyhope it isn’t about anyone we know.” I pause. “Also, I think she might have a girlfriend.”
Imogen almost yanks a hank of my hair clean out.“What?”she squawks. “Shit, sorry. But since when does your mom have girlfriends?”
“I don’t know for sure!” I say. “I’ve never known her to date anybody, honestly, man or woman. I mean, I’m sure she did. But when I went and stayed with her in New York back in May after school ended somebody had sent flowers to her hotel room, and I know it wasn’t her publisher because of how she grabbed the card and put it in her jeans pocket like a big secretive weirdo. And then we had dinner with thiswoman Corina, who’s a publicist, who kept calling her Di and touched her on the back while we were walking to the table. Andthenwhen my mom was peeing, Corina told me like fifty times how dynamite she is.”
“Wow,” Imogen says thoughtfully. “Get it, Diana.” She pauses for a moment. “I’ll be honest with you, Mols, if anybody’s mom was going to turn out to be a late-in-life lesbian, my money would have been on mine.”
I think of Imogen’s mom, with her tarot cards and crystals andThe Future Is Femaletote bag, and laugh. “I don’t even know if it’s late in life, though!” I point out. “Once I started thinking about it, it actually occurred to me that she might have been dating that woman Joanne who was her assistant when we were in middle school.”
“Joanne with the nose ring?” Imogen asks, twisting a few last pieces of hair around the iron. “She was hot.”
She was, kind of, I remember now; she always smelled like juniper and secretly taught me how to put on mascara even though I was only in fourth grade. “We never really talked before this year,” I point out. “Me and my mom, I mean. Like, I don’t think that’s necessarily a thing I would have known about her.”
Imogen considers that—she and her mom are preternaturally close, the kind of mother and daughter who know each other’s every thought and bodily function. It’s always seemed foreign to me, though lately it isn’t as unimaginable as it used to be. “Does it feel weird?” she asks.
“Not really,” I tell her honestly. “I mean, probably it would feel way stranger if I’d actually grown up with a dad. But mostly I just want her to have somebody, you know? It’s gotta be kind of lonely, living out there all by herself.”
“That’s a good point,” Imogen concedes, nudging at my back until I flip my head over and reaching for the can of hairspray on the shelf above the toilet; the massive cloud she aims in my direction smells chemical and sweet. “I guess maybe that’s one good thing that came out of this year, huh?” she asks. “You guys, like, actually have a mother-daughter relationship now.”
I smile as I stand upright, thinking of it. “Yeah,” I say. “I think we kind of do.”
Imogen nods, fluffing my hair a bit and turning me by my shoulders until I’m facing the mirror. “There you are,” she says, sounding satisfied. I stick my tongue out, hide a grin.
I make Imogen wear a sparkly top and sky-high heels so I’m not the only one dressed up for what I’m assuming is going to be a dive bar; still, Ian’s eyes widen when we come out into the living room. “Wow,” he says quietly.“Hi.”
“Good wow or bad wow?” I ask, smoothing the dress down. I don’t remember the last time I wore something this bright.
“No no, good wow,” Ian says quickly. “Great wow, even. You just look... you know. Different.”
