And then she started browsing through the pictures of Dill, looking distant. Lost. Haunted.
Lydia felt a familiar pang of guilt and sadness that she couldn’t use the photos on her blog. When she’d gone to New York Fashion Week, there’d been a meet-up of teen fashion bloggers. A bunch of thirteen-to seventeen-year-olds talking about content and brand preservation.
“It sucks when your friends have a look that’s off-brand and you can’t talk about them or show them on the blog. It’s so awkward to explain. What? Are you going to say ‘Hey, sorry, but your style sucks so I can’t tell people I hang out with you?’ But that’s the reality,” a thirteen-year-old from Johannesburg said with a world-weary air, the others nodding sagely.
Lydia had just sat and listened. Oh, I could tell you a thing or two about having friends who are off-brand.
Travis was hopelessly off-brand, and he couldn’t care less.
Dill? He was another story. He was tall and had these dark, brooding eyes with high, sharp cheekbones; thick, shaggy dark hair (that she cut for him); gaunt, angular features; and full, expressive lips—all of which placed him outside of the vanilla beauty standards of Forrestville but would make him a great Prada or Rick Owens model.
She did her best with him. And even though she dressed him as what he was—a musician from the rural South—his look wasn’t what made him off-brand. In fact, he’d probably be a big hit with her audience, not that she needed to spend her time dealing with people crushing on Dill (not possessive, just busy).
His name was the problem. Her readers were inveterate Googlers. The last thing she needed was for them to see a picture of Dill, get curious, find out his name (They had ways. Oh how they had ways.), and Google it. Because guess what came up on a search for “Dillard Early.” Very bad for the Dollywould brand.
People, Dahlia included, already treated Lydia with a sort of benevolent condescension (You’re so intelligent and open-minded for a Southerner! You have such sophisticated taste for living where you do!). They imagined her living in a house…well, like Dill’s. My house is probably nicer than yours, she’d murmur to herself while reading their well-meaning comments. My parents met at Rhodes College. There are two Priuses and a hybrid Lexus SUV in our driveway. I have a hundred gigs of music on my brand-new Mac laptop and Netflix and high-speed Internet. I’m not chasing raccoons around a trailer park barefoot, folks.
She skipped through the pictures of Travis, Dill, and the three of them; picked out the best pictures of herself and some of the pictures of her with April (who was on-brand); and dragged them to her computer desktop to use. She still didn’t feel like working on her blog post, so she texted Dahlia. Hey. What are you doing right now? Can you talk?
Sorry, darling, not at the moment. Just sitting down to dinner with Peter Diamond. Text me later.
Peter Diamond was the latest up-and-coming Brooklyn wunderkind literary sensation. He was two novels into a Proustian four-novel cycle that dealt, semiautobiographically, with the day-to-day (sometimes hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute) travails and ennui of being an early-twentysomething creative in Brooklyn. Captivating stuff, no doubt.
This is a good preview of what I have to look forward to in New York, Lydia thought. She loved Dahlia, but.
Maybe this is the universe telling me to stop putting this off. After a few false starts, she began her post about the first day of school.
Here’s what I’m thinking about as I drive to Nashville today, my last day of summer before I begin my senior year: nothing makes you feel like you’re trying to grab and hold on to a handful of sand like first days of school. And by “sand,” I mean time.
The first day of senior year is when you realize that summer might never again mean what it used to. Before you even enter a classroom you learn that life is composed of a finite number of summers, passing us by in a haze of ice cream, fireflies, chlorine-scented hair, and skin that smells like coconut sunblock. We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story. Maybe first days of school are to give us lines of demarcation, to make sense of these childhood moments and the life cycle of friendships and—
As she typed, a warm wave of excitement about her impending new life swept through her.
Dill surveyed the parking lot with glum resignation, watching his fellow students file in. But this year, I don’t even get to wish for the year to be over quicker, because that means no more Lydia. Al Gore was parked in the rear of the lot, Lydia’s preferred spot for quick after-school escapes. She even had a track of fast banjo music that she played on her iPod for these getaways. Somehow, they’d arrived with time to kill before class began. The hatchback was open and Lydia and Dill sat on the bumper.
Ms. Alexander, the cheerleading coach, walked past.
“I never thought she was as hot as everyone else does,” Lydia said, after she’d gone.
“Me neither,” Dill said.
Lydia looked satisfied, as though he had passed a test of some kind. “I’d bet twenty bucks she ends up arrested for banging some thirteen-year-old student.”
Lydia kicked her legs gently. She wore tights woven in an intentionally chaotic pattern with purposeful rips. They would have been a disaster on anyone else. Her calf tapped the A HEALTHY SMILE IS A HAPPY SMILE bumper sticker. Her dad had offered to remove it. “Why didn’t you let him?” Dill had asked once. “Because it’s still as true as when he drove it,” Lydia had told him. “Plus, it’s both creepy and hilarious.” “What hotness discount do you give her?”
Dill thought for a moment. “Seventy-five percent hotness discount.”
“Oh damn. That’s Dollar General pricing.”
“People at this school confuse a tan and perfect teeth with hotness.”
“But not you.”
“Not me.”
Lydia gave him the you-passed-the-test smile again. Her teeth were as chaotic and imperfect as her tights. And like the tights, Dill thought she pulled them off in style. She refused to let her dad fix them, just like with the bumper sticker. She explained to Dill once that it was similar to the way makers of Persian rugs would intentionally leave a flaw in their work, as a reminder that only God is perfect.
They kept up their red-carpet commentary until it was almost time to head inside.
As Dill was about to ask Lydia what she had first period, he heard laughter off to the left. He saw Tyson Reed and his girlfriend, Madison Lucas, approaching. His heart sank. Here we go.
“What up, Dildo? Senior year!” Tyson said with mock excitement, raising his hand for a high five. “Come on, player, don’t leave me hanging!”
Dill went into defensive mode. He shut off and turned away, ignoring Tyson. He prayed in his heart. Bless them that curse you, bless them that curse you, bless them that curse you. And another thought ran parallel: God is punishing me for dishonoring my mother and going to school. He won’t allow me even an hour’s peace.
Lydia laughed a braying, sarcastic laugh. “Wait a minute, hang on…I see what you did there! You said ‘dildo’? Like his name! But you add ‘-do’ to the end! This is fun with these good jokes.” She applauded.
“Glad you appreciate my joke, Lydia Chlamydia,” Tyson said. Madison snickered from behind him.
Lydia’s mouth dropped open. “Wha—Lydia Chl—You did it again! You made an extremely hilarious joke by rhyming my name with a funny sex disease! Tremendous!”