The angle of the sunlight across the dining room made Angela pause as she walked into the house. There was a coating of dust all over the chandelier, she noticed, standing alone in the doorway. She could imagine the way a single footprint on the floor above it could send all that dust flying through the air. Break all the crystal, make the ceiling collapse. Everything falling apart like petals wilting from a flower.
The house was silent now, like it had been for months. She still didn’t understand how you could live in the same space as someone but live in different worlds. All winter, while she was busy trying to be invisible, her parents had been painting their name even louder all over Westview and Walcott. They hosted fundraisers at the country club, red dress and red tie bright against all the snow outside the windows. They gave money to sports teams and community projects, putting their names on even more plaques across town. They tried to smile their way back into this town’s heart as the ground thawed, cut ribbons to return to its inner circle.
It was slowly starting to work.
There were people in this town who would never let them forget what happened, keep their reputation forever tarnished, but others were getting bored, moving on to the latest scandal. It was only a matter of time until the Witneys were close to the top again. It made Angela feel sick.
But she knew this was all happening less quickly than her parents would have liked.
Angela still only talked to Owen. Outside of school where no one could see them. In places where no one could overhear her secrets.
She thought about him while she did her homework in her room, filling up the silence with one of Cassie’s old playlists as usual. The fact that they were each other’s secret again. All the places they knew where no one would ever find them. All over Cherwell, all the small towns that surrounded them. They spent hours by the reservoir, in cozy coffee shops, wandering the city, and none of the Westview whispers followed her around. No expectations. For a while, she could feel less sad, ignore everything she was uncertain about. It was almost perfect.
The only problem was that he seemed so quiet lately, as if constantly lost in his thoughts. She wished she knew what he was thinking about because it seemed so unfair that he had to carry all her secrets, too. But whenever she asked, he just smiled and said everything was fine.
She was hungry by the time she finished her homework so she went downstairs to the kitchen. Her father was sitting at the table, working on his laptop. She hadn’t heard him come home over the sound of lyrics that took her back to summer nights of sparks and starlight and the taste of saltwater on her lips.
“Hi,” he said, glancing up from his laptop. “How was school?”
“Okay. I had a math test,” Angela answered, not sure why she was even telling him this. But at least he was trying a little. More than he had in a long time. She thought of Dillon and Owen’s families and the way everyone laughed and chattered as they prepared meals and kept each other company in all the in-between moments and felt a little sting of jealousy in her chest.
“Do you think you did well?”
“It was fine.” Angela opened the refrigerator and took out the food she’d made yesterday. “Do you want dinner?”
“Sure.” Her father closed his laptop and walked over, taking out two plates from the cabinet. “Do you have some time to talk right now?”
“Okay,” she said nervously, wondering what this was about. She ran through all the possible scenarios in her head as she watched the food circle around in the microwave.
“So I want to apologize,” her father said once they sat down. “I’m sorry that we just assumed Walcott was what you wanted and made you feel like that was your only option. We didn’t realize how much pressure we were putting on you. And I’m sorry we didn’t have this conversation earlier.”
Angela didn’t even know what to say. This was not the conversation she was expecting. She didn’t know how to explain it, that it was more than her parents putting pressure on her. Sometimes she couldn’t tell where her thoughts ended and Westview began.
“That being said,” her father continued, “you have to make a decision about next year soon. What do you think you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get into Harcourt,” Angela admitted. She still hated hearing those words out loud.
“Did you apply anywhere else?”
She shook her head, feeling her face burning. She’d been so confident, so sure she’d get into Harcourt because she never failed anything. She always got what she wanted.
“I think it’s too late to apply anywhere else,” she said quietly, not looking at him.
“Do you still want to do something with fashion?”
“Yes.” She could feel herself getting defensive, remembering how dismissive he’d sounded when she first told him, how her mother’s eyes had flickered across the clothes she’d made, wordless.
But he opened his laptop again and turned the screen to her. “What about this? They’re accepting applications until the end of this month so you still have some time.”
Angela looked at the website, feeling her pulse quicken. It was a two-year fashion design program at a school she’d never heard of, the Kennett Institute. She scrolled through the course offerings, internship opportunities, photographs of current students, then clicked to see where the campus was located. It was on the opposite side of the country, all the way on the West Coast.
Ever since the day she’d been rejected from Harcourt she’d felt her world shrinking again. Everything smaller and duller as blizzards wept white and gray all over town and sent silver whispers through the wind to remind her that she would always be anchored to this place.
This made everything feel brighter. Full of possibility. It was the same feeling she had when she’d realized how much she wanted to go to Harcourt.
“You really think I should do this?” she asked.
“If you want to. I think it would be a good opportunity to get some experience and then see where you want to go from there.”
She hesitated, feeling an uncomfortable combination of relief and nervousness. “How does Mom feel about this?”
“She’s warming up to the idea,” her father answered. He sighed. “We just don’t want to lose you.”
“Having a life outside of this town doesn’t mean I’m going to disappear forever.” She wished people could understand that. She felt like she lost another part of herself with every fake smile. If she spent her life in this town trying to be perfect, she’d be slowly drained away until she was just a paper doll. She thought about the infinity of Angelas in studio mirrors. The girl who practiced perfection in the silence of her bedroom. The girl who always smiled at parties, talked to the right people. She wished she could go back in time and tell her to stop.
“I know,” her father was saying.
She didn’t answer.
“Do you really hate it here that much?” He looked sad. And she could understand that a little. That it was hard to fathom that someone you gave everything to could hate the place so intertwined in their family’s story.
But she hadn’t always felt that way. She’d loved Westview for a long time.
“Sometimes,” Angela said. “I don’t like that I always have to be perfect.”
“You don’t have to be perfect. It’s okay to make mistakes. We all do.”
But she remembered how it felt to have all those eyes and voices on her. How she and her friends did the same thing. How they made it so easy to fall for being less than perfect, constantly pruning out their social circle the way all the adults did here. She thought of her parents, still trying to climb back to the top, how they could get close but probably never all the way back to where they once were. And the question that had been nagging at her for months.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Did you know the truth about the reservoir all along?”
He sighed again. “I knew something wasn’t right. I used to think a lot about whether it was worth trying to find out the truth. I decided I was better off not knowing.”
“Do you think you would have told anyone if you had?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
She let his words hang in the air for a moment, a little uncomfortable, even though she knew she didn’t really have a right to be. Because she hadn’t told the truth for the right reasons, and if she’d learned it any other year, she knew she would have figured out a way to destroy Owen’s reputation instead so that no one else would ever learn the real story.
She hoped that part of her was gone now.
“Anyway, if you decide to do this,” her father continued once they’d sat there in silence for slightly too long, “there would be some conditions. First, you need to get a job from now through the end of the summer to help pay for the program and living expenses.”
“I can do that,” Angela agreed.
“And we’d like you to rejoin the Tricentennial Committee.”
She sighed. She didn’t know how she could face them. She could imagine what they all must think of her now that the truth was out.
Her face must have given away her thoughts. “It’s just a few months,” her father added. “It’s important for you to remain involved in the community, especially now. I spoke with Jan and she said you can take the lead on the time capsule project this summer.”
“Okay,” Angela said. “I’ll think about it.”
Later, she spent midnight at Gracie’s with Owen again. Looked around at all the photographs on the wall. For the first time, she didn’t feel trapped by it all.
Their hands touched as they both reached for the door at the same time. She thought again about telling him everything she felt. About how it would feel to kiss him again. But the words were frozen at her lips. Alone in her car, she let out her breath, her thoughts like dandelion wishes.
As she drove home past sleeping shops and old houses lit up by green lights and street lights, she drew a map in her mind of all the places these roads continued on to. At their intersection, one traveled past old fields and painted curves along the coast. The other crawled west, all the way across the country, weaving through cities and state lines to eventually trace the footprints of the gold rush. Both of them stretching miles and miles away from white signs that welcomed people to a place they either lived in or drove through. Tonight she could imagine herself driving away, leaving those welcome signs behind.