“WHO’S GOING TO BE there?” Mom asks from the passenger seat. The sun isn’t yet setting, the sky the gray-blue of the hours before dusk. It’s Friday night, the night of the bonfire. I’m driving to the beach because Mom insisted I needed the practice, what with my driving test in only weeks, and I feel out of place in Mom’s sleek SUV when I’d gotten used to Hector’s small sedan. Despite the differences, though, I can’t deny parts of driving are starting to come more easily to me.
“There are going to be teachers, if that’s what you’re asking,” I reply.
She makes a dissatisfied sound. “I don’t mean supervision. I mean, like, people you’re interested in seeing,” she says leadingly. When we pull up to the stop, I glance right and find her eyeing me inquisitively. She’s wearing her black blazer and skirt from the office, having come home early, the way she often does on Fridays.
“You mean guys,” I correct, slightly annoyed.
“There’s a guy you’re interested in seeing?” Mom asks immediately.
I recognize the witness-stand trick she’s pulling on me. “You’re putting words in my mouth.” My phone vibrates in the cup holder, where it rests on an empty granola bar wrapper and the collection of change my mom keeps for meters. The interior of my mom’s car reflects her perfectly, professional in its clean cream-colored leather, yet with over-it details of empty water bottles and a hectically packed glove compartment.
“You going to get that?” Mom asks.
“No, Mom. I’m driving.”
She nods, looking satisfied. “Good answer.” She eyes the phone with an interest, even an eagerness, I really don’t like. “Besides, you probably don’t want to read your hot hookup plans for the night right next to your mom.”
“I do not have hot hookup plans.” I flush. It’s just like my mom, openly wishing her daughter would have an enthusiastic sex life. When she only smiles knowingly, I gesture to my phone. “I don’t. Really. Here, read me the message.” Hopefully it’s from Adam. We’ve been trading emails on updating the reunion website, which Adam refuses to give me the login for.
Mom needs no more invitation. She grabs my phone and keys in the password. I don’t dwell on how she knows it. While the light changes and I drive into the intersection, she reads the message. “It’s from Dylan,” she says. “She’s leaving in ten minutes, and she wants to know if you have a towel.” Mom looks up. “Why would you need a towel?”
“I don’t know.” I rotate in my seat to check for cars, then change lanes. It feels harrowing, but no one honks. “I’ll ask her when I’m not driving.”
“I’ll just ask her now,” Mom says. I don’t have the chance to protest. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch her type and send the message. When Dylan responds a moment later, Mom looks up. “There’s going to be skinny-dipping,” Mom informs me excitedly. “Did you know there was going to be skinny-dipping?”
“No, and I don’t care.” We’re close to the coast now, on residential streets of houses with tennis courts. I’m not surprised there will be skinny-dipping. While it’s not like I’ve been to plenty of bonfires over the years, the experience I’ve had throwing them for student government has taught me they have two parts. First there’s the school-spirit part, with cheerleading, red and white beaded necklaces, and of course, teacher supervision. Once the teachers leave, the bonfire turns into a regular party for whoever wants to stay. I guess this time with skinny-dipping.
“Oh, come on,” Mom chides. “Don’t be like that.”
“You’re welcome to go if you want.”
Mom rolls her eyes. “It could be fun. For you, not your fifty-seven-year-old mother.”
“Is Jamie going to be picking me up tonight?” I ask sharply, having had enough skinny-dipping encouragement.
“I think she has band practice,” Mom says. I’m grateful she let me change the subject, and grateful I’m out of the house instead of running the risk of further conversation with Ted and Mara.
I make a face. “Is it called band practice if no one ever plays an instrument?”
“Fair point.” Mom returns my phone to the cup holder. “Although I’m not complaining. I know I’ll miss her when she leaves, but right now her guitar is driving me bonkers.”
“Oh, we think she’s leaving?” I don’t conceal the skepticism in my voice.
Mom shrugs. “Eventually.”
For reasons I can’t identify, her empty response irritates me. I try to put the feeling into words. “Don’t you think it’s just a bit weird she’s behaving like a teenager?”
Mom crosses her arms over her white blouse. “What do you mean?”
I reach for the thoughts echoing in my head the past weeks of having Jamie home. “Remember Jamie in high school? And college? She earned top grades. She was on the newspaper and got a good job and everything. She had her plan. She had her life figured out. I just . . . I don’t understand what she’s doing right now. She keeps wanting me to walk to get coffee, or watch some Netflix show, or just . . . I don’t know.” I hear my own exasperation. “Like, what, she’s going to stay in the house for however long she wants, doing nothing? Shouldn’t you be worried?”
I hit my turn signal and guide Mom’s SUV into the drive down to the beach parking lot. Following the gravelly pavement surrounded by painted wooden posts, I find a parking spot next to a Mini Cooper where girls heft bottles of Coke from the open trunk. I’m unbuckling my seat belt when my mom speaks. “You leave the parenting to me.”
I look up, surprised to hear the seriousness in her voice.
She continues, watching me unwaveringly. “I know you’re seventeen going on thirty-five and you think you have everything figured out, but guess what, baby girl?” I grit my teeth at the nickname. “You’re a teenager,” she says. “I know you don’t like to admit it, but you are. In this, be the teenager. I’ll be the parent. Me, a woman with multiple degrees and an excellent career, who’s raised two wonderful, intelligent, independent girls. Jamie just needs time and space, and that’s my call. Not yours.”
Stunned by my mom’s rare reprimand, I say nothing. I don’t like being told my opinion’s worth less because it has only seventeen years behind it. Nor do I like conceding defeat in an argument. Most of all, I dislike the reminder that my plans and aspirations could crumble the way Jamie’s have and my mom wouldn’t push me to pull myself together. I know it intuitively, of course. It’s why I’m hard on myself. If I’m not, no one will be, and then what’s to keep me from being in the exact same place I am now in ten years? Life feels like a tightrope walk, but I want to reach the end, not lounge in the net.
“Sound good?” Mom’s words refocus me sharply.
“Yeah.”
When she next speaks, her voice softens, if only slightly. “Text me when you want me to pick you up.”