Angela was putting on lipstick when Cassie pulled into the driveway and started beeping her car horn, the sound echoing down the street. She waved to her from her bedroom window and went downstairs.
Her mother was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee and texting someone. “Have fun,” she said, not even looking at Angela. “Make sure you’re back by five. We have the Young Alumni Awards at Walcott tonight.”
Angela didn’t bother answering. She’d been thinking a lot about her family’s traditions lately, and how Westview and Walcott seemed entwined in all of them. This was yet another, an annual reception her mother hosted to celebrate the accomplishments of young alumni. Her parents were both involved in selecting the honorees, and Angela had been going to the receptions for as long as she could remember.
She got into Cassie’s car, where everything was familiar, almost a ritual itself. Cassie with her long, wavy hair and the turquoise bracelet she wore on her wrist every day like a tattoo. Her car, clean with a pine tree scent. She was scrolling through her phone, making a playlist.
Cassie had the most extensive music library of anyone Angela knew. She listened to everything and knew how to match songs perfectly to every feeling or occasion. At the start of every year, she made playlists for all of their friends, carefully selected lyrics against the clean slate of a new calendar. A soundtrack for their memories. Angela always kept them and listened to them months, even years later. Music always took her back to a certain moment. There was an electropop ballad that reminded her of the coziness of winter snowfall even on the hottest summer day, of being stranded inside with the scent of cinnamon while the world whirled with white. A beat that fizzled like sparks in her blood and made her want to dance to city lights while rain crashed from the sky. A chorus that took her back to summertime, when she felt most alive with the sun on her face, wind dancing with her hair, driving with the windows down and ocean–blue everywhere. She felt like she could settle into the songs, breathe in bass lines and melodies until they were part of her bloodstream, the closest thing she had to going back in time.
“Look in the bag,” Cassie said as they drove out of town to the train station, an upbeat song playing in the background. “I got us some things for Spirit Week. I was thinking we could all go shopping for everything else sometime this week.”
Angela peered into the bag at her feet. Everything inside was red, rolls of tulle and long strands of metallic beads.
“I like these,” she lied, holding up a set of sparkly bows she would have loved last year.
Cassie smiled. “I thought you would.”
Everyone knew their friends always had the best Spirit Week outfits. They’d wear group costumes to correspond with each day’s theme and Cassie was always the one to plan and coordinate them.
The pressure to be perfect, to be everything that Westview wanted, never seemed to bother Cassie. She loved almost everything about this town the way Angela used to. She was in the crowd of every Westview sporting event and she always ran their annual class fundraiser. She was excited to go to Walcott next year and she was going to run for Town Council as soon as she was old enough. Angela wondered how their lives could be so similar but only she felt like she was suffocating here.
“Can you tell me where we’re going now?” she asked once they were standing on the railway platform, waiting for the train that went to Cherwell. When they’d made these plans last week, all Cassie would tell her was that she had a surprise in the city.
“Okay,” said Cassie. “Don’t be mad but I’ve noticed you looking at emails from Harcourt a lot lately. They have a prospective student day today so I thought we could go. I know your parents are set on Walcott for you but it doesn’t hurt to look at other options, right?”
Nerves erupted inside Angela’s brain but she couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks,” she said, twisting the hem of her sweater with trembling fingers. She and Cassie had spent so many afternoons last year talking about being at Walcott with Dillon and Adam. They’d eat all their meals together in the old, wood-paneled dining hall. Spend hours on the perfect green quad, get all dressed up for parties. It made her feel a little better that Cassie was holding the door open to a future that was different from that.
“How was your Walcott interview?” she asked as they boarded the train and found seats together, feeling bad that she hadn’t thought to ask before.
“It went really well. I’m so excited. I already submitted my application.”
The train started moving. Patterns of rooftops and power lines whisked past, quick glimpses into backyards and autumn-kissed town squares. Cassie took out her phone, showed her the rest of her ideas for Spirit Week costumes, the dresses she was still trying to decide between for the gala. Once in the city, sunshine all over the sidewalks, they took a bus from the train station to Harcourt’s main campus and Angela realized that her nervous fingers had worn a tiny hole into the hem of her sweater. She took a deep breath and felt a rush of excitement as she took in everything she’d seen on glossy flyers and phone screens.
They bought smoothies from the café in the student center. Sweet and pink, flecked with crushed berries like confetti. They sat down and watched students filter through the building. Angela admired their clothes. So many different styles, showing off their personalities through colors and cuts and prints and the items they paired with them. Maybe here, she could wear something she’d made without being afraid of the way other people would see it. Maybe she’d spend less time judging her reflection, slide softer words onto her skin like silk.
She let herself imagine it: here, next year, surrounded by new friends, thoughts of Westview tucked far away. Getting lost in designing, the exhilaration of bringing pieces of her thoughts to blank pages and shaping spools of fabric into something to share with the world. There was so much opportunity. A chance to figure out who she was outside of Westview. She could be whoever she wanted if she could just get here.
Lately, she’d been dreaming so vividly about other places she could taste them. Every time she woke up, it took a moment to realize she was in bed in Westview at the end of a cul-de-sac surrounded by trees and the disappointment would hit her like a car crash. She built cities in her sleep, found all the secret corners of Cherwell and mapped out places across oceans. In the hazy space between dreaming and waking, Westview didn’t exist but every time she opened her eyes all its shades of blue and green and white came into focus, jewel tones and muted hues saturating her cerebrum. She’d never wanted to hide in her dreams so much before.
“The tour starts in a few minutes,” Cassie said. “Are you ready?”
Angela nodded, feeling more confident now. Cassie linked arms with her as they walked to the meeting point.
She knew this was what she wanted as they shuffled through buildings alongside eager strangers. And afterward, listening to presentations at the information session, those feelings persisted. A sense that this was a place she belonged. The way she used to feel in Westview on nights she’d walk into a party, gazes turning toward her, and over the smell of beer and crowded bodies, she could remember the house’s soft scent from childhood summers and from years of sleepovers; she knew which steps would creak beneath all their shoes even if it didn’t matter now because the music was loud and their parents weren’t home.
“So what do you think?” Cassie asked later as they walked through the bookshop.
Angela paused to look at an endcap of faculty publications. “I like it here.” She picked up one of the books, feeling its weight in her hands. “Thanks for doing this.”
“Are you going to apply?”
Angela sighed and put the book back on the shelf before following Cassie into the apparel section. “I want to but I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents. I don’t think they’ve ever considered anything other than Walcott.”
“I know.” Cassie unfolded a T-shirt with the word Harcourt spelled out in boxy collegiate letters. She held it up to Angela.
Angela looked in the mirror at their almost-twin reflections and smiled.
“Maybe if you just talk to them, they’ll understand,” Cassie continued.
“I don’t know. You know how they are. Going to Walcott is such a big deal to them.”
“Maybe they’ll surprise you. Give them a chance.”
Angela took the T-shirt from Cassie, folded it up. “Did you know I used to be friends with Owen Emory?”
Cassie looked confused. “When?”
“When we were kids. It happened by accident. They’d just moved back here and my babysitter knew both of our families, and one day his mom needed help while she was with me, so she just brought me over there. We ended up becoming friends and I spent almost every day that summer at his house. And then my mom found out. She told me I couldn’t be friends with him and she didn’t really explain why. But I’ve heard a lot of different stories.”
She still remembered the weeks after that. A new babysitter, Juliet, tall and freckled with long hair that she always pulled back into a blonde ponytail. She was quiet, uninterested. While Angela played alone on the living room floor, crafting dream worlds in a dollhouse, Juliet sat on the couch, eyes fixed on her phone or the TV. Whenever she left, Angela watched her fold crisp new bills into the back pocket of her denim shorts, slide her feet into the white leather sandals waiting by the door. She didn’t like her, but she didn’t like when she left, either. Something about her reminded Angela of her own mother. Closeness that felt so far away.
It had taken weeks of pleading into late fall to convince Juliet to bring her to the local playground, a large area that stretched from the top of a tree-shaded hill to a track where yoga pant-clad mothers jogged in pairs. Angela liked running so that day she started with the track, footsteps uneven and joyful in the sunlight. She ran past a couple pushing a stroller and a group of chattering teenagers. Tired afterward, she slowly began to make her way through the playground, swaying from monkey bars and pretending that the swings could take her high enough to touch her toes to the sky’s brightness.
She climbed up to the top of a canopied fort overlooking a group of picnic tables, and when she looked out between the worn wooden beams, she saw Owen seated at a table with a small group of chattering children. Her classmates, but not the ones she spent time with after school. The table was covered with a white paper tablecloth, edges fluttering, red balloons and curly yellow streamers taped to the corners. A plastic pitcher of lemonade sat at its center and a small stack of brightly wrapped boxes was positioned on the ground.
Angela wanted to propel herself down the slide in her sparkle-skirted dress to sit with Owen. She looked over at Juliet. She was inattentive as always, dragging her sandaled feet through the woodchips as she swayed on a blue-seated swing. Angela hesitated, remembering how angry her mother had been as she told her not to talk to Owen anymore.
She watched Owen’s mother lift the lid from a container, revealing a circular cake. She poked candles into its smooth surface, lit them. The tiny flames flickered like tangerine teardrops.
She kissed the top of Owen’s head and smoothed his hair, then moved to the opposite side of the table to face him and began to sing. The voices of Angela’s classmates joined her, pitchy.
Owen closed his eyes, filled his cheeks with breath. He exhaled, extinguishing the dancing lights. His mother clapped; the light from her camera flashed golden.
“Angela!” Juliet called suddenly. “It’s time to go home.”
Reluctant but obedient, Angela moved toward the slide and released her grip, static clinging to her dress. The soles of her shoes left a set of black stripes against the yellow curve of plastic. She was standing in the woodchips, so close to the picnic table and Owen was looking at her.
“Angela!” His face was filled with excitement. Like she hadn’t spent every moment of school recess ignoring him.
“Angela, come sit with us, have some cake,” his mother said, smiling.
Angela froze for a moment, taking in the bright balloons leaping on curled strings against the evergreen background. And then she did what she was supposed to do: spun around in a whirl of glitter and tulle, and ran toward Juliet.
She found the invitation later, illustrated by Owen, crumpled among a stack of old magazines while her mother was on the phone planning playdates for her with people in their neighborhood, picking who she’d be friends with.
She’d gone upstairs, found the tiny toy car from Owen still hidden in her bedroom. Wished for summer all night as she slid it across her mattress, wheels spinning faster and faster like they were approaching places she could only dream of.
“I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal,” she said now, realizing that Cassie was looking at her, waiting for a response to whatever she’d just said. “Things like that happen all the time in Westview. But that’s the problem. They’re both so concerned about how everything looks to other people. They have this whole life planned out for me. That’s the person I’m supposed to be. Doing something different isn’t an option.”
“I know what you mean,” sighed Cassie. “But maybe they can change. Maybe they’ll be open to you coming here.”
“People don’t change,” said Angela. “Not in Westview.”
She bought the T-shirt. At home, she’d bury it in the bottom of her dresser, under all the shirts she slept in.
She wished she could tell Cassie everything else. How she knew that Dillon didn’t like who she really was, how even though today she wanted busy streets and city lights, she still spent so much time wanting to go back to last year. When Westview was everything and she hadn’t noticed all its imperfections.
Everything about today was already starting to feel distant. It all seemed closer in her sleep.
***
The reception for the Young Alumni Awards was held in Kent Hall, Walcott’s original academic building. Angela’s parents immediately left her alone, her mother hurrying over to chat with the other organizers, her father greeting a colleague. Angela stood awkwardly by the doorway for a moment, then took a seat at the back.
Portraits of every former Walcott president hung on the wall, all men. Her mother approached the white podium decorated with the college crest. She looked like she belonged in a portrait herself, dressed in navy and pearls.
“Welcome,” she said. “It’s an honor to be here tonight to celebrate the achievements of our young alumni…”
Realizing that no one would notice if she left, Angela slipped outside into the main hall. There was a long glass case along one side of the wall and for the first time, she studied the objects inside carefully. Black–and–white photographs of students who were long gone and buildings that were still standing. There was a class banner on sun-stained fabric, a century-old campus map. Old objects stamped with the Walcott crest.
She walked until she reached the heavy front door and pushed it open to wrap herself in lamplight and October twilight. She walked past the fountain all Walcott students went swimming in the day before graduation, the same one she and Cassie had splashed around in as toddlers. Across the perfect stretch of emerald quad where generations of students had studied, played games and forged friendships, where she used to find shapes in the clouds from a picnic blanket. There was the white chapel where her parents were married, with a gold owl weathervane on its steeple. Every year, on the night before classes started, the seniors gathered there to tell ghost stories to the incoming freshmen. She knew the Walcott traditions she hadn’t even lived yet as well as she knew her own memories here. This place had always been part of her, the same sort of familiar as the house she’d grown up in, the Westview backroads she could wander in her sleep.
It just wasn’t the place that burned bright in her dreams.
When she went back inside, her mother was conversing with one of the honorees, a woman in her late twenties in black trousers and a white cardigan.
“Angela!” she said, gesturing her over as soon as she saw her. “Have you met Lila Newbury? Lila, this is my daughter, Angela.”
“I’ve heard so much about you. It’s nice to meet you,” Lila said, shaking Angela’s hand. She was one of those people who Angela recognized from around Westview but because of their age difference, their lives had never overlapped in any way.
“You too,” she answered. She curved her lips upward, realizing for the first time how much her fake smile must look like her mother’s. “Congratulations on the award.”
“Lila founded a nonprofit for children’s literacy,” her mother said, looking at Lila as if she were her own daughter.
Angela suddenly imagined Owen here, smugly pointing out that Lila, despite not leaving, was doing something that made an impact. Not everyone in this town is as bad as you think they are, he’d say. She tried to get his thoughts out of her head.
Before Angela had a chance to answer, Nora Buckley, Angela’s neighbor and member of the Alumni Committee, swept over in a swirl of honey perfume and champagne.
“You’re growing up so fast,” she said. “You’ll be here too next year, won’t you, Angela?”
They were all smiling at her. Angela’s fingers toyed with the hem of her sweater, making the hole bigger and bigger.
“I will.”
“How exciting! Have you submitted your application?”
“I haven’t finished yet,” Angela said, not exactly a lie. She’d opened the website once, wondering what would happen if she didn’t fill out the application.
“Do you know what you’re going to major in yet?”
“I haven’t decided. There are so many great choices,” she said brightly but it didn’t even matter because Mrs Buckley had stopped listening. She was busy beckoning Angela’s father over from where he was surrounded by people, somehow engaging with all of them like always.
“Scott, let’s get a picture of all three of you. This will be perfect for the alumni magazine.”
As Angela smiled between her parents, making sure the way she was standing would capture her best angles, she knew this would be the picture they sent out on holiday cards, posted to social media like an advertisement for a perfect family. All smiles surrounded by portraits of Walcott’s past presidents.
No one would know that pretending to be perfect could slowly tear you apart.
She could still feel the hole in the hem of her sweater. In the final pictures, the ones slipped through mail slots all over town, it wouldn’t be visible, either hidden by text or edited out. But she would know it was there, just like every other flaw she couldn’t unsee.
***
Dillon was already a few drinks in by the time Angela arrived at Paige’s party. He kissed her sloppily and she pulled away, making sure she smiled and didn’t flinch in case people were watching.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked, shoving a cup into her hands without giving her a chance to answer.
“Thanks.”
She put the cup to her lips, pretended to take a sip. She didn’t feel like drinking tonight. She went over to talk to Naomi and Rose, who were making drinks with a group of their classmates. Everyone turned to greet her when they heard her voice. The music was loud, throbbing at her head.
“Angela!” Paige called her name eagerly from across the basement. She rushed over to give Angela a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
The expression on her face was familiar. Part relief that so many people were showing up, part panic that everything would get out of hand.
“Here, have a drink,” Angela told her, giving her the drink from Dillon.
She sat down on the couch and pretended to listen to two sophomore girls who settled in next to her. They were dressed exactly the way she was, like they’d seen a picture of her and tried to copy it. She hoped Cassie would be here soon; she was probably out somewhere with Adam.
When she couldn’t pretend to be interested in all the conversations around her anymore, Angela went upstairs to the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror. She frowned. Under the harsh bathroom light, her shirt was a little too sheer, lipstick too bright.
She shut off the light, erasing herself. She could hear laughter in the kitchen but everyone else was downstairs so she slipped out the back door.
Like the houses, every backyard in the Witney Estates neighborhood was identical. A fire pit encircled by teak Adirondack chairs, a patio area for grilling and outdoor dining. An inground pool and hot tub.
The pool was covered up until next summer but the lounge chairs were still out on the deck around it, so Angela stretched out on one, looking up. The sky was clear tonight, dark at its apex and fading to a bluish purple around the tree-tops. It was easy to locate the bright stars of the constellation she used to spend so many nights staring at from her bedroom window. The wide W shape of Cassiopeia, the vain, beautiful queen chained to the heavens.
Once again, she wondered what her life would be like if she had different friends in Westview. Her mind wandered to Owen. What was he doing right now? She imagined him in the corner of a late-night coffee shop, listening to music. Or maybe at a bonfire in one of his friends’ backyards, orange embers floating up in glittery slow motion to join the same stars Angela was sitting under now. All of them breathing in the same early fall air that made her think of red leaves and cinnamon, fog on the reservoir. The way the air felt in her lungs made her sad that summer was so far away, like her body knew the difference in the way each season breathed.
Their social circles never interacted so she barely knew his friends. It seemed like the members of his group were constant, though, unlike hers. If Angela had to guess, it was likely that she would no longer be speaking with at least two people at this party by the end of the fall semester. That was how it had always been. It was so easy to fall from the top.
And if she wasn’t perfect, everyone would have her all figured out and she would be the one falling.
Sometimes that was her biggest fear. And other times she wondered if all of this was still worth it. If falling really wasn’t the worst thing.
If Owen ever thought about her, he would have never imagined that she’d be sitting alone in the dark by a closed pool while a party went on inside. And neither would the people downstairs.
Did he ever feel like this around his friends? He always looked so at home around them. The way she used to feel here.
She heard the door open and she recognized the sound of Dillon’s footsteps against the deck.
“Angela? What are you doing out here?”
She lifted her face and smiled. Moonlight all over her skin.
“Hey,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Just getting some air.”
Dillon lit a cigarette and climbed onto the lounge chair with her, placing his cup on the ground. He exhaled and smoke filled Angela’s lungs.
“Do you have to do that right now?”
He dropped the cigarette into the cup. Rolled onto his side and leaned in close, his voice at her neck. “You look perfect tonight,” he said. The words were warm against her skin. She could feel his thoughts all over her. He pressed his smoky lips to hers.
She didn’t say anything. Didn’t kiss him back. Just stared at the starry W in the sky. He moved away and she missed when this all felt real.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
She knew nights like these by heart. After a few drinks, Cassie would start dancing out of sync to whatever song was blasting from the speakers. Adam and Rose would make up a new drinking game, their competitive streaks surfacing for a few minutes before they abandoned all the rules. Naomi and Paige would flicker back and forth between giggly and sentimental on the bathroom floor. The start of a new relationship between two of their other peers, the end of another. And then, somewhere in the dark with Dillon, their lips together again.
She knew who she had to be on nights like these. Tonight’s thoughts didn’t belong inside big, beautiful houses with beautiful people. So she left them outside, under the stars, and rejoined the party with Dillon, smile on her face.