PARTY TIME
CAM has no idea how to dress for a family gathering to celebrate the unexpected return of a possibly fraudulent prodigal, so she wears the same thing she always wears: faded old jeans more hole than denim, a pilled sweater, and a new raincoat that Irene got her for an early Christmas present. The winter weather in northwest Washington is not generally conducive to chic ensembles.
Blair has done her best, as she always does. Under her shapeless winter puffer, she’s wearing a blue dress that sets off the color of her eyes. She’s put on mascara and lip gloss, and her hair is curled.
Blair’s cranked the defrost in her ancient Ford Focus, but the windshield is a steamy mess anyway. The wipers screech back and forth at a frantic pace, no match for the pouring rain. Blair hunches over the steering wheel, peering out at the road.
“Is this a metaphor?” Cam asks from the passenger seat.
“Is what a metaphor?” Blair’s distracted, trying to read the house numbers. It’d been dark already when she dropped Mattie off on Friday afternoon. She can’t tell in the rain-soaked gray afternoon light which driveway is the right one.
“You can’t see where you’re going,” Cam says.
“I can see,” Blair says, against the evidence.
Last year, Cam would’ve argued. Obviously Blair can’t see. This is a matter of fact, not opinion, and Cam’s whole life up until Clarissa revolved around the immutability of the provable.
This year, she doesn’t push it. Facts, she has learned, do not always figure into human relationships. She doesn’t want to argue with Blair—not about Mattie, and not about something as dumb as Blair’s field of vision in inclement weather—because Blair almost stopped being friends with her last year when she got too fast with the facts, and losing Blair is one of the most terrifying things she can imagine.
Cam doesn’t know what it is that Blair’s keeping back from her. Did she do something bad again without knowing about it? Is she supposed to apologize? For what? Does she have to ask Blair what she did? Is Blair sad about something else? What could Blair be sad about?
Cam knows Blair’s been in touch with her ex-boyfriend, James, who graduated last year and is now playing basketball across the country at Duke and doing whatever else it is that James does. Beer drinking, Cam thinks. James is playing basketball and drinking beer. Does Blair miss this? How could anyone miss a person who plays sports with a ball and drinks beer? Does Blair want a different boyfriend? James always wore a lot of cologne. Does Cam need cologne? Does Cam smell bad?
Cam surreptitiously sniffs her sweater. It smells like the biodegradable laundry detergent Irene buys in bulk at Costco. No, Cam decides, she doesn’t smell bad. The problem is something else. Maybe Cam is—
“Here we are,” Blair says in relief, putting on her turn signal. “Look, we’re right on time.”
“We don’t have a plan,” Cam says as Blair crunches down the long gravel driveway. “No way is the mom going to believe we’re Mattie’s—”
And then she sees the house at the end of the drive and stops short.
Mattie’s house is a monster, architectural angles sprouting out of the ground like a colossal fungus, self-conscious gravel landscaping features scabbing over the denuded earth—one of the countless fungible McMansions that’ve sprouted like weeds on the outskirts of humble Oreville thanks to tech money. All those rich white idiots thronging to the peninsula, buying up land that rightfully belongs to the Coast Salish people with their millions of dollars that rightfully belong to real working people.
This is not a line of thought Cam would’ve spent much time on before last year either, but Sophie is an ecofeminist socialist abolitionist and has had a marked effect on her politics.
Mattie’s terrible house looms over them like a bad idea.
“Wow,” Blair says, parking her car in the immense circular driveway, where it stands out among the luxury vehicles like a parakeet in a raptor exhibit. “I guess we have motive for kidnapping.”
“Or for coming home,” Cam says.
“This much money would be hard to walk away from,” Blair agrees.
“Maybe Mattie’s lying about the whole thing,” Cam says, eyeing the house.
“Why would Mattie lie to us?”
“Maybe they want to be podcast famous too. Maybe they think the world still cares about us enough to pay attention.”
“Maybe the world does still care about us enough to pay attention,” Blair counters.
That’s worse, Cam thinks.
Cam heaves a sigh and gets out of the car, her heart sinking. Blair’s already scurrying toward the front porch as fast as she can, her puffer held awkwardly overhead to keep off the rain. Cam trudges after her. The massive front door swings open, Mattie peering out at them with wide eyes. Someone, presumably their mother, has put poor Mattie in a pink dress with a protuberance of ruffles at the collar.
Cam, who understands very well the utter indignity of such a horrifying costume, does not laugh. She can tell from Blair’s expression that Blair is thinking the same thing.
“Come in,” Mattie whispers, smoothing their palms down the front of the dress as if they’re trying to make it disappear.
Mattie leads them through a cavernous foyer, past a formal living room with vaulted ceilings and skylights and pristine furniture that looks as though it’s just been unwrapped, down a long hall lined with oil portraits of people Blair assumes must be family members, to an open-plan kitchen and family room the size of a hospital lobby where fifteen or twenty white people are already gathered, leaning on the immense marble-topped island that divides the space and waving around crystal glasses full of champagne. A handful of small children dodge in and out between adult legs. A brown woman in an actual maid’s uniform is circling the room with a tray piled with hors d’oeuvres on tiny china plates, neatly evading the children.
“Oh my god,” Blair says.
“Sorry,” Mattie says.
A regal-looking woman in a natty black-trimmed pink wool skirt suit and pearls is holding court in front of a huge fireplace, where a gas fire burns prettily.
And next to her is the girl.
Lola.
She’s wearing a long, modest, rose-pink dress that drapes gorgeously over her enviable form. Heavy dark hair falls nearly to her waist in waves. Her skin is flawless porcelain, her cheekbones sharp as the razor edges of the Olympics silhouetted against a sunset. She’s laughing at something someone’s said to her, her head thrown back to show the elegant line of her white throat.
“That’s her,” Mattie says unnecessarily.
There’s no one else at the party close to Lola’s age, Cam notes with interest. Nobody who looks like a friend. The guests are all adults and toddlers.
One of the little children, dressed in a sailor suit, his mouth smeared with hors d’oeuvre, catapults across the white carpet.
“Brandon,” snaps the woman next to Lola. “We do not run in Aunt Ruth’s house.”
Her voice is savage, pitched to carry. A man drinking beer out of a can across the room leans away from his circle of jolly uncle types whose bellies strain against their button-downs.
“Aw Ruth,” he says. “He ain’t doing nothin’. C’mere, Bran.” He holds one hand out to the sailor suit, who reels away, shrieking.
Ruth looks after the child with a predatory gaze. “I do not want stains all over my carpets, Stephen,” she thunders. “I just had them all redone.”
“And that’s our mom,” Mattie says. “Mine and Luke’s mom,” they add.
“Oh, wow,” Cam says. “Let’s go meet her.”
“Cam, should we think of an angle—?” Blair asks. But Cam’s already marching toward Ruth and Lola with an expression of resignation, like she’s walking to her own execution.
Mattie scrambles after her. Blair, filled with misgivings—Cam is perhaps not the best hand to lead with when playing out their investigation—follows.
“Hi,” Cam’s saying loudly, sticking her hand out at Lola. “You must be Lola. Mattie’s told us so much about you.”
Up close, Lola is so stunning that Blair’s nerve fails her totally. Her uncanny green eyes are amused as she daintily shakes Cam’s outstretched hand. “Thanks so much for coming,” she says, her voice low and musical. “Are you friends of Mattie’s?”
“I’m Cam,” says Cam. “This is Blair. We’re Mattie’s Big Sisters. At school. Since you’re Mattie’s big sister at home.”
Ruth’s head swivels on her long, stalklike neck. Her blond hair is arranged in a kind of stiff halo that moves along with her head. She stares at Mattie. “You didn’t tell me you were in an after-school program, Matilda,” she says accusingly. Ruth’s beautiful too, but not all of her heavily made-up face moves when she talks, and her neck looks about twenty years older than the rest of her.
Contouring, Blair thinks. That is a lot of Botox and a lot of contouring.
“You didn’t ask,” Mattie mumbles at the floor. They seem painfully uncomfortable, though whether it’s because of Lola, their mother, or the combined forces of both, Blair can’t tell.
“You picked a gem,” Lola says, smiling at her sibling with real warmth. Mattie won’t look up.
“Mattie is very intelligent,” Cam says staunchly. It’s the highest compliment Blair can imagine her giving.
“Lola is already a wonderful mentor to her sister,” Ruth says, with a hard cold emphasis on “sister.”
Mattie flinches.
Blair suddenly has an idea of how much it must’ve cost Mattie to bring her and Cam here, to show them the inside of this house, their mother, their perfect sister. The categorical humiliation of the awful, misgendering dress.
Cam’s wrong. Mattie doesn’t want fame. Mattie wants to find their sister. There’s no way they would have exposed all this to Cam and Blair otherwise.
But now that she’s here, Blair’s sure that this Lola is Mattie’s sister. How could a stranger possibly fool all these people? Especially the dragon-eyed Ruth?
This girl went somewhere, Blair thinks. She went somewhere, and then something happened that made her come back and lie about it.
Why?
Lola gives Ruth a strange, freighted look that Mattie doesn’t catch and rests one hand on Mattie’s shoulder protectively. Mattie flinches again but then settles, wild-eyed and bristling, like a feral animal that knows it’s been trapped.
“It’s good for them to have more friends,” Lola says, with her own emphasis on the “them.”
Ruth looks briefly pickled.
Lola smiles at her, radiant and guileless, and Ruth can’t help it: She smiles back. Lola turns back to Blair and Cam. “Have they talked your ears off about classic noir yet? I’ve been on a Chandler kick because of them.” She laughs, bright and lovely. It’s impossible to look away from her perfect face. “Mattie, I’m so sorry. You’re right here, and I’m talking about you like you’re in the other room. Do Blair and Cam know about—”
“Oh, DAAA-yid,” sings out the sailor suit. “Cousin Jesse called you a butthole, Daa-yid.”
“You’re a butthole, Brandon,” sobs Cousin Jesse, yanking his clip-on bow tie from his neck and flinging it to the ground in a rage. “You, you, you.”
Ruth’s head swivels again. “STEPHEN!” she barks.
“C’mon,” Lola says smoothly. “Let’s go outside. Brandon!” she calls to the sailor suit, who’s grinning evilly and advancing on a wailing Cousin Jesse. The sailor suit turns, sticky mouth dropping open, to gaze up at her in rapt adoration. Lola holds out her hand. He runs toward her and takes it in his own filthy one. Cam shudders.
“Want to go outside with us?” Lola asks Mattie.
“Yes,” Cam says.
On the far side of the living room, a pair of French doors open out onto a colossal terrace and a pristine swath of lawn. Lola leads Brandon toward them. Cam, Blair, and Mattie follow. Cam catches the other guests’ eyes snapping toward her and Blair. Cam does not look down at her decrepit Converse, held together at the toes with duct tape. She is not going to let rich people make her feel self-conscious.
Blair, she can tell, is not immune to the smell of money moving through the room either. Her shoulders are drawn in, and she keeps touching her hair, which the humidity has stripped of its hot-iron curls.
Cam resists the urge to scratch her armpits and hoot like a monkey. She wishes Mattie had never found them. She wishes she had never heard of Clarissa Campbell. She does not like these stupid adults or these dreadful children in their snap-on bow ties. She does not like Lola. She does not like mystery. She wants to go home to her own shabby kitchen, Irene cursing under her breath at the stove and then digging out her phone to order pizza instead, tea steaming comfortably on the weathered table in chipped thrift-store mugs with corny slogans like FIFTY AND LOVING IT or, Irene’s favorite, WORLD’S #1 DAD.
Cam runs a hand through her hair, which she cut herself last week with a pair of kitchen scissors and which, she knows without checking a mirror, is sticking straight up in the back, because it always does. Maybe she’ll get Irene to shave her head for her.
Lola opens the French doors enough for Brandon to barrel through, shrieking with glee. Cam, Blair, and Mattie slither through after them and Lola shuts the doors tight against the chilly air.
Once they’re outside, they can see what was invisible from the living room: a young man in his late teens or early twenties whose face is a careworn carbon copy of Lola’s and who is smoking what even Cam recognizes as a joint.
“Hey, Luke,” Lola says. He looks up at them, registering his younger sibling and small cousin—who is barreling toward a mud puddle in the broad expanse of the yard with reckless abandon—with slow-moving alarm.
“Shit,” he says, a cloud of smoke escaping from his mouth. He pinches out the joint between his thumb and forefinger, stowing it in his pocket.
“You’re good,” Lola says. “They wouldn’t notice in there if you came in on fire. Ruth’s got the cavalry out.”
“That bad, huh?” Luke says.
“I wouldn’t want to be Uncle Stephen,” Lola says merrily. “These are Mattie’s friends from school.”
“Cam,” Cam says curtly.
“I’m Blair,” says Blair, with less attitude and more warmth. She’s looking at Luke in an appraising sort of way.
Cam looks at him again.
Is he hot?
Oh no, Cam thinks. He is hot.
Blair is touching her hair again. This could be bad.
Brandon is bathing himself in puddle water, screaming wordlessly with transcendent joy. The front of his sailor suit is covered in mud.
“Should we…” Luke says, gesturing vaguely.
Lola’s grin is infectious. “Uncle Stephen’s the one who let him have four pieces of cake,” she says. “And I want to see what the little monster does to Ruth’s carpets.”
Flicker-quick, she’s a completely different person than the demure, humble Lola at Ruth’s side: funny, sly, mischievous, feigning wide-eyed innocence with a sultry wink for the lucky few in on the joke. Luke is laughing. Even Mattie can’t hold back a faint twist of a smile, gone so fast Blair wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking at them.
“You must be so happy to be home,” Cam says to Lola. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like.”
“Mmmm,” Lola says. And like that, she’s someone else again. Shy, reserved, unwilling to talk about herself.
“Kidnapping,” Cam persists. “You must have been so scared.”
“I don’t remember much,” Lola says.
“Five years is a lot to forget,” Cam says in disbelief.
“You writing a book?” Luke asks. Blair flinches. Cam doesn’t notice; her attention is focused on Lola.
“And then you escaped,” Cam says.
“I’ve been very lucky,” Lola says. Her gaze goes distant, as if she’s pondering the great mysteries. Her dreamy green stare lands on Brandon, who is industriously lathering his once-blond hair with mud. “I met him for the first time today,” she says. “All of them. My little cousins.”
“Now what?” Cam asks bluntly. “What are you going to do next? Live here forever? Don’t you have to get a job or something?”
“She’s only been back for a few days,” Luke says, moving in to protect his sister. “Right now, we’re happy to have her home.”
Luke’s eyes are deep, haunted hollows. His nails, Blair notices, are bitten to the quick. She has never seen a less happy-looking person in her life.
And he’s looking at Lola like he’s afraid of her.
Afraid of her? Blair wonders. Or afraid of what she’ll say?
“But when you were in this van—” Cam begins, relentless. The patio doors swing open again, and Luke’s panicked, bloodshot eyes move toward someone coming out onto the terrace.
“Oh, no,” he says. “Lo, did you invite Becca?”
“No,” Lola says.
The white girl walking toward them is about Lola’s age, small and curvy and solid. Her short hair is dyed black, her eyes ringed with heavy eyeliner, her ears studded with piercings. A silver barbell bristles in her lower lip.
“Lola?” she says in disbelief. “Are you seriously—oh my god, Lola?”
Lola’s composure falters. Her eyes widen, and she takes a step back. “Becca,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t invite—”
“You’re sorry?” The girl’s voice is climbing to a frenetic pitch. “You disappear for five years and all you can say is you’re sorry? Where have you been?”
“Becca, you shouldn’t be here,” Luke says helplessly, reaching out for her.
“Did you know?” she screams at him. “Did you know? Did you know all this time and not tell me? Is that why you stopped talking to me?”
“No, Becca, I swear—” Luke babbles.
Becca falls to her knees, sobbing, never taking her eyes off Lola’s face.
“You’re dead,” she wheezes, her voice giving out. “You’re dead, Lola.”
“I’m sorry,” Lola says again, her face pale with panic.
Luke drops to his knees next to Becca, heedless of the wet concrete, whispering in Becca’s ear. She looks away from Lola with a wrenching sob, buries her head in his chest. His arms steal around her as she shudders. Adults pour out onto the patio, Ruth marching at their head like a general.
“Lola!” Ruth barks. “What is the meaning of this?”
“I didn’t invite her!” Lola cries.
“Sorry I showed up to ruin your perfect new life,” Becca snarls.
“Becca,” Luke says desperately. He’s still holding her, but now he looks like he wants to shake her. “We’ll talk, okay? I’ll—we’ll talk. I’m sorry, I should’ve—listen, maybe right now isn’t the best time for this—”
“Not the best time? Is that seriously all you have to say for yourself?” Becca shrieks.
Blair looks at Cam, who’s watching the astonishing scene with big eyes. Mattie looks just as stricken. Somebody should do something, Blair thinks. But who? And what?
“I’m calling the police now,” Ruth says loudly.
“Don’t do that, Mom,” Lola says, the mask snapping back into place so seamlessly Blair wonders for a second if it ever faltered. “It’s my fault. I’ll take care of it.”
“We agreed this party was a celebration,” Ruth says. “Of your new start.”
Luke is pulling Becca gently to her feet, one arm still around her shoulders. He whispers something into her ear again. She pushes him away, still crying. “Get off me,” she mumbles. “Don’t you dare touch me.” But the fight’s gone out of her. She looks like someone who’s just been in a car accident, stunned and disoriented.
“Everything’s fine, Mom,” Luke says, loud enough that they can all hear him. “Just a misunderstanding. She’s going home now. Right, Becca?”
“How is she here?” Becca’s voice cracks. “How did she get here?”
“Everything’s been so crazy,” Lola says, her voice light and even. “I’ll call you this week. We can catch up. I promise.”
“Catch up,” Becca spits, the words ugly. “You ruined my life, and you want to catch up? You’re both—” She’s breathing hard, but she’s stopped crying. “There’s something wrong with both of you. Both of you. How you can just—”
“Becca,” Luke says. He reaches for her.
She slaps his hand away. “Forget it. Forget I was ever here. That’s what you’re both good at, isn’t it? You’re right. I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t ever want to see either one of you again.” She turns and stumbles toward the door. Luke gives the assembled partygoers a helpless half shrug and turns to follow her. Becca looks up, sees his reflection in the patio doors as he moves toward her.
“Stay away from me!” she screams without turning around, and she breaks into a run. Cam and Blair can hear the thump of her booted feet as she moves through the house and then, more distant, the slam of the front door.
“Bet that was bad for the rug,” Cam mutters under her breath.
The adults stand around them in a stunned silence.
“Sorry, everyone!” Lola says brightly. “It’s been a strange few days. It’s freezing out here. Why don’t we all go back inside? Luke, can you help corral the kids? Uncle Mark, your glass is empty—let’s get you something to drink. Aunt Brenda, can you ask Maria to check the fridge? I think we might need to get more beer out of the garage.”
The spell of Becca’s dramatic departure is broken as Lola briskly delegates tasks. The adults stir, chatter among themselves, trickle slowly back indoors with toddlers in tow. Cousin Brandon lets out a wail from his mud puddle.
“Aw, shit, Bran,” Uncle Stephen says, catching sight of his child. “You had to go and—” He strides over to the puddle, hauling out his offspring by the scruff. Brandon’s wails intensify as Stephen half drags, half carries him across the patio, muttering invectives.
“Not through the house,” Ruth snaps. “Take him around.”
Uncle Stephen looks mutinous, but he drags Brandon shrieking off the patio and toward the side of the house. Ruth marches after them to supervise their movements.
“Mattie? You coming inside with your friends?” Lola’s paused in the doorway, flashing her movie-star smile at the three of them.
“That—what was that?” Cam asks. “What just happened?”
“Why didn’t you tell Becca you were home?” Mattie asks accusingly.
The mask is back in place. Lola looks untroubled. “It’s an emotional time,” she says. “I haven’t told a lot of people that I’m home.”
“Why did she think you were dead?” Cam asks.
Lola turns that serene green gaze on Cam with mild reproach. “Everyone thought I was dead,” she says. “I have to get back to my party now. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Blair says faintly, watching her go.
When Lola’s back inside and the doors are closed behind her, Blair turns to Mattie. But Mattie’s already talking before Blair can open her mouth.
“See?” they say eagerly. “See what I mean? You’ll help me, right?”
“See what?” Cam counters. “All I saw is an entire roomful of people—your relatives—and your brother and your mother—who think that girl is your sister.”
“Becca was her best friend!” Mattie protests. “If that was Lola, why didn’t she call Becca as soon as she got back?”
“Her best friend, who also thought she was Lola,” Cam says.
“But she didn’t—”
“Your brother didn’t call her either!” Cam interrupts. “Your sister was just returned to her family after she escaped a bunch of kidnappers! Probably she’s been busy the last couple of days!”
Mattie glares at Cam. “It’s not her,” they say.
“You keep saying that,” Cam says. “But you haven’t shown us a single thing that gives us a reason to believe you.”
“Cam,” Blair says.
“Cam, what?” Cam snaps. “Come on, Blair! You saw the same thing I just saw!”
“There’s this kind of bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds,” Mattie says. “It pushes one egg out when the parents aren’t looking, and lays its own, and flies away. Its egg hatches first and knocks all the other baby birds out of the nest. The parents think the chick is theirs. It eats all the food the parents bring for their own babies.”
“You think your sister is going to push you out of a tree?” Cam asks.
“The parents don’t even know it’s not theirs!” Mattie yells. “Nobody knows! But I’m telling you, that girl is not my sister, and if you won’t help me, I’ll find somebody who will!”
“I think we should all take it down a notch before Ruth really does call the cops,” Blair says. “Mattie, do you have any kind of proof that that’s not the real Lola?”
“Cuckoo chicks don’t look like the baby birds they’re replacing,” Cam says. “By the time they leave the nest, they’re bigger than their host parents.”
“Jesus, Cam,” Blair says tiredly. “You know everything.”
“How do you know anybody is the person you love?” Mattie asks. “How do you know Blair is Blair?”
“Because that is Blair,” Cam says.
“That’s what I mean,” Mattie says helplessly. “You just know. You know it’s her, the same way you’d know if it wasn’t.”
“The odds of someone who looks exactly like Blair—” Cam begins.
“Let’s say we say yes,” Blair says, cutting her off. “Let’s say we agree to help you. Where would you tell us to start?”
“Blair,” Cam says, just as tiredly.
“Talk to Darren,” Mattie says immediately. “He was Lola’s boyfriend. He was really nice. He used to bring me lollipops from the gas station every time he came over. Once I fell down outside and he spent all this time bandaging up my knee. He was great.”
“He’s not here?” Cam asks.
“She didn’t call him either,” Mattie says.
“Why not?” Blair asks.
“You’d have to ask her,” Mattie says. “Maybe she’s afraid he’ll know she’s a liar.”
“Does he know Lola’s back?” Cam asks, interested despite herself.
“I don’t know,” Mattie says. “I haven’t talked to him.”
“Since when?” Blair asks.
“Since Lola got kidnapped,” Mattie says.
If he was such a great guy, why didn’t he stick around? Blair wonders. But she doesn’t say it. “Do you have his number?” Blair asks instead.
“Blair,” Cam says.
“No,” Mattie says. “But I know he’s a park ranger in Olympic National Park. I google him every few months.”
“Blair,” Cam says again. “It’s raining even harder now. Can we go home?”
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Cam says in the car.
“I know,” Blair says. “But you have to admit, something is going on there.”
“Something that’s none of our business.”
“Clarissa was none of our business,” Blair says without thinking.
“Yeah,” Cam says. “And look where Clarissa got us.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” Blair counters.
“Yes,” Cam says fervently. “Yes, it was.”
Cam scowls out the window at the sheeting rain.
Blair considers her next angle of attack.
“Don’t you want to know where she was?” Blair asks.
“No,” Cam says.
“Or why she came back?”
“Money,” Cam says.
“What if Mattie’s in danger? Wouldn’t it be our job to protect them?”
“No,” Cam says.
“Come on,” Blair says.
Why is Cam fighting her so hard? Cam can’t possibly know about Meredith Payne-Whiteley. Finding Clarissa was Cam’s idea. She was the one who dragged Blair into it.
What’s changed? Why is she so resistant now?
“You think the brother’s hot,” Cam says.
“He’s not hot,” Blair says, blushing. Cam rolls her eyes. “Come with me. Talk to Darren. One more conversation.”
“No.”
“I’m going to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because!” Cam shouts, exasperated. “Because that kid is crazy! That’s their sister! They’re in denial!”
“Why, though?” Blair asks.
“I don’t know!” Cam says. “I don’t know, and I don’t care!”
Blair stays quiet. She eyes the speedometer. If she slows down just a bit, she can prolong this car ride without Cam noticing. Let the silence do its work.
“I don’t want to talk to somebody’s stupid boyfriend!” Cam says.
Blair says nothing.
“I don’t care where that girl went!” Cam insists.
Blair nods, keep her mouth shut.
“I don’t care if her best friend showed up and flipped out!”
Silence.
“Are you seriously going to interview this boyfriend without me?”
Blair flicks her gaze to the rearview mirror, meets Cam’s eyes, says nothing.
“What’s he going to tell you? He’s not going to tell you anything!”
Silence.
“The not-talking trick doesn’t work on me!” Cam yells. “I know what you’re doing! I’m not that gullible!”
“I know,” Blair says.
Silence.
“One conversation,” Cam says. “And then when it turns out to be nothing, we drop it.”
Blair smiles.
“Wipe that smirk off your face.”
“It’s not a smirk,” Blair says innocently. “Something’s stuck in my teeth.”
“No podcasts.”
“No podcasts,” Blair says.
“You’re a monster,” Cam says.
“I know,” Blair says again.
“What’s a Chandler?” Cam asks. “Lola said Mattie’s into Chandlers.”
“He was a noir writer,” Blair says. “He invented one of the most famous fictional private investigators.”
“So Mattie’s into detective stories,” Cam says. “You two have so much in common already.”
Blair, having won the battle, will not be distracted by stray shots fired. “Do you want to call Darren, or should I?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’ll do it,” Blair says.
SOPHIE OFFERS COUNSEL
Cam video-calls Sophie after Blair drops her off at her apartment. It’s almost midnight on the east coast, but Sophie never seems to sleep.
To her relief, Sophie answers right away.
“Hi, sweetheart. Hi, Kitten.”
Sophie’s in her dorm room, lying across her floral-print bedspread in a vintage dressing gown Cam knows she probably scored in some out-of-the-way upstate thrift store whose location she’s unearthed through careful research and guards with her life. Her dark hair is piled on top of her head in an elegantly messy topknot, and her brilliant turquoise cat eye is immaculate.
Since she’s left Oreville, Sophie’s style has changed. She wears neon eyeliner and brighter colors: pink and coral, rose and gold, jewel-bright hues that pop against her brown skin. In the selfies she sends Cam she’s often added nods to her Filipina mom: a vibrant satin bolero with rich embroidery along the placket, a sheer gold alampay, a vintage kimona hand-painted with huge pink peonies. Cam thinks she looks like a movie star.
Now, her heart gives its inevitable lurch at the sight of Sophie’s beloved face. Sophie is so beautiful! Sophie is so stylish! Sophie is so smart! Sophie is so cool! Sophie is her girlfriend!
“Is your roommate there?” Cam asks.
“No, thank god. She’s at a Kool-Aid keg event for on-campus Christians.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell if the Kool-Aid drinking joke is deliberate,” Sophie says. “It seems in bad taste for the followers of the Lord.”
Sophie’s roommate, Zoë Bavelle, is a real bitch. Spawned from a rabidly wealthy evangelical megachurch franchise family, she pitched a fit when she found out she’d have to share with Sophie. Whether this outrage was due to Sophie’s being a lesbian, biracial, on scholarship, an aspiring underground abortion provider, or some combination of the above remains unclear.
At Vassar, Sophie has also become a literal card-carrying Communist (she sent Cam a laminated membership card of her own, which Cam gave to Irene, who hooted with glee), a labor organizer, a Land Back activist, an abortion fund volunteer, and a contender for the throne in both the women’s center and the LGBTQ+ center despite being only a freshman. Cam is in firm support of Sophie’s worldview, which she finds perfectly reasonable, but she does sometimes wish her now extremely overbooked girlfriend was a bit easier to pin down for video calls.
“How’s lacrosse?” Cam asks. This is a joke. Sophie would not set foot on a lacrosse field if all the scions of all the megachurch fortunes in the world paid her to do so.
“Cutting,” Sophie says. “How’s orbital mechanics?”
“Dynamic,” Cam says. “Do you feel like giving me advice?”
“Uh-oh,” Sophie says.
“Just you wait,” Cam says. “You’re not going to believe it.”
Cam tells Sophie about her visit from Mattie. Mattie’s story. The party. “And Blair thinks … I don’t know what she thinks. But she wants us to interview Lola’s boyfriend.”
There is a prolonged silence in Poughkeepsie.
“Cam,” Sophie says finally.
“I know. Believe me. I don’t want anything to do with it. But Blair won’t let it go.”
“Have you told Irene?”
“Are you kidding?”
“What about Mr. Park?”
“Mr. Park would tell us to drop it. Or he’d tell Irene. Or Blair’s parents. Or, I don’t know, the police.”
“He wouldn’t tell the police,” Sophie says.
“Is that supposed to be helpful?”
“Don’t be so impatient. I’m thinking. Why is Mattie so sure this person isn’t their sister?”
“It’s a ‘feeling’ they have.” Cam makes scare quotes with her fingers around “feeling.”
“But what about proof?”
“No telltale birthmarks, if that’s what you mean. Not that anybody other than Mattie is looking for them.” Cam shakes her head. “The whole family believes this girl is the real Lola. Her friend who crashed the party believes this girl is the real Lola. There’s nothing Mattie can show us to say that she isn’t. Just this … feeling.”
“We all know how you feel about feelings.” Sophie grins.
Cam scowls.
“But you’re right. Five years is a long time,” Sophie says. “Especially at that age. And especially if she was really kidnapped. It’s no wonder she seems like a different person.”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Cam says miserably. “But for whatever reason, Blair believes Mattie.”
“She thinks the sister is a fake?”
“I don’t know if she thinks that,” Cam says, “but she thinks there’s more to the story.”
“Well, sure,” Sophie says. “The kidnapping is pretty far-fetched. But that doesn’t mean it’s not her. And it definitely doesn’t mean that whatever really happened is any of Blair’s business.”
“That’s what I said.”
“But she won’t listen to you?”
“Blair’s on a tear.”
“She really thinks the sister is an impostor?”
“She thinks there’s something to what Mattie says.”
“But even if some random person looks so much like the missing girl that she could fool Lola’s own family, which is a stretch, why would anyone do that? How would this girl even know Lola was gone in the first place?”
“The mom didn’t get the police involved when she disappeared, but Mattie did their best to publicize it,” Cam says. “It’s not like Clarissa, though. No magazine stories or anything like that. And the family’s superrich. It seems a lot more likely that the real Lola came home because she got tired of being broke. Maybe she has a trust fund or something.”
Ask Mattie about trust fund, Cam notes to herself in her brain, and then realizes what she’s doing.
Remembers the notebook she carried around last year when they were looking for Clarissa.
Remembers where those kinds of questions got her.
“Money would be a good motive for kidnapping,” Sophie says.
“As far as Mattie knows, nobody asked for ransom.”
“Why else would you kidnap someone and keep them alive for that long?”
“Torture, I guess,” Cam says.
“I think that happens on TV a lot more than it happens in real life. Does she look tortured?”
“She looks like she spent the last five years at a spa,” Cam says.
“Do you want my honest opinion?”
“That’s why I called you.”
“That’s not why you called me,” Sophie says, laughing. “You’re going to do whatever you want, no matter what I say.”
“You think this is a bad idea,” Cam says.
“I mean…” Sophie pauses. “I was going to try for diplomacy, but—”
“It’s me,” Cam says.
Sophie smiles at her. Cam’s heart flip-flops in her chest. “It’s you. Cam, this is a terrible idea. You can tell Blair I said that.”
Cam puts her head in her hands. “How many times can one person get sued for libel?”
“I don’t think there’s a limit,” Sophie says.
Cam groans. “Why is Blair so obsessed with this?”
“Have you asked her?”
“No,” Cam says miserably.
“You have to talk about—”
“I know. I don’t want to talk about my feelings.”
“Well, then,” Sophie says.
“What if she stops wanting to be my friend?” Cam asks in a small voice.
“Oh, Cam,” Sophie says. “Blair’s not going to stop wanting to be your friend. She loves you.”
“I don’t know about that anymore,” Cam says. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“You wanted to talk about this,” Sophie says patiently.
“I changed my mind. I want it to go away.”
“You can’t make things go away by not talking about—”
“I know,” Cam says. “Let’s pretend I can for a minute.”
“Okay. I’m changing the subject now, although I want it noted for the record that you called me to talk about this. I wish you were here,” Sophie says.
Not, Cam notes, I wish I was there.
Which is fair. Cam wouldn’t wish Oreville on her worst enemy, let alone someone she loves.
“I wish I was with you too,” Cam says. “I can’t wait to see you at winter break. Check out those lacrosse muscles.”
“Pervert,” Sophie says affectionately, flexing one arm. “It’s only two weeks. Don’t do anything crazy until then. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“And make Blair be careful.”
“Blair is the careful one.”
“Just promise me.”
“I’ll try.”
“I love you,” Sophie says.
“I love you too.”
Cam feels obscurely better when she hangs up.
Sophie is right. Helping Mattie is a terrible idea. She will go talk to Darren the boyfriend with Blair, and she will make sure they don’t offend him so much that he tries to sue them, and then when he has nothing to tell them she will convince Blair to drop it.
And in two weeks Sophie comes back to Oreville, and next year Cam will go to MIT, and Cam and Sophie will take turns visiting each other every weekend—it’s only six hours from Cambridge to Poughkeepsie by train, Cam’s already memorized the route—and Blair will travel around the world and become a famous author and drop in on them from time to time, and Irene will be rich and never have to worry about money again or go to work if she doesn’t want to, and Mattie will—Mattie will patch things up with Lola and leave Cam and Blair alone.
Everything is going to be fine, Cam thinks, determined to believe it.
“That’s right,” she says out loud, scratching Kitten behind the ears. “And they all lived happily ever after.”
Kitten yawns and bites her hand.