“Oh, sure, yeah,” Alice said. She felt like an imposter, like she was wearing a costume made with her own face. The wind stirred up a pile of leaves near them and twirled them into a tiny cyclone, and Alice watched. Maybe she’d just gotten loose somewhere, slipped through a crack. There was one episode of Time Brothers where Jeff had fallen through a portal in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge, and Scott had to go after him to bring him back, time travel within time travel. That was what happened when TV writers got bored of solving the same problems over and over again. Alice could be lost, or she could be stuck, or she could be lost and stuck. The one thing she was sure of, finally, was that whatever this was, it was really happening. It was the wobbly nerves in her stomach, like the drop on a roller coaster; it was the hyperawareness of everything around her. Alice felt like Spider-Man, except all of her powers were just being a teenage girl.
She and Tommy were friends. They had never been boyfriend-girlfriend, not even close. There were a few solid couples at Belvedere: Andrew and Morgan, Rachel Gurewich and Matt Boerealis, Rachel Humphrey and Matt Paggioni, Brigid and Danny, Ashanti and Stephen. Alice had always thought of them as several levels beyond her, in terms of human development. They kissed on the mouth in the hallways, knowing everyone could see them. They held hands in public, on the sidelines at soccer games. They freaked during school dances, knees clamped together like extras in Dirty Dancing, and nobody started whispering. Alice had had a few boyfriends, but none of them lasted longer than a month and they were all variants of the Canadian boyfriend scheme, except instead of being pretend humans in Canada, they were real humans whom she hardly knew in her math class. All it took was several weeks of negotiations between various lieutenants and then one awkward phone call. It was basically exactly like the sixth grade, except that sometimes, rarely, she and a boy were alone and they clumsily reached into each other’s pants.
Alice and Tommy were different. He had girlfriends sometimes. Fellow upperclassmen, girls who weren’t virgins. He was the cutest boy in their grade, and so when the older girls got bored of their options, they all picked him. He’d even gone out with girls from other schools, girls who would walk across the park in their uniforms to pick him up, girls who lived on Park Avenue and whose parents owned whole islands. Alice was his friend, and she was in love with him. Sometimes he would sleep over at her house and they would spoon all night and Alice wouldn’t sleep at all, just listen to his breath and sometimes, sometimes, in the middle of the night, they would start kissing, and Alice would think, Oh, it’s really happening, he’s going to be mine now, but in the morning, he would always act like nothing had happened, and so nothing ever changed. It wasn’t that different from all the men she’d met in bars in her twenties and on dating apps in her thirties.
Tommy held out the pack, and Alice slid out a cigarette. “Thanks,” she said.
“So, what’s up?” Tommy asked. “Who’s coming to the party?”
“I have no idea,” Alice said, truthfully. “Sam’s in charge.”
There were things that Alice remembered from her birthday party: She remembered helping Sam throw up, and half-heartedly trying to clean up after people while the party was still going. She remembered Tommy sitting in the corner of the couch, his head back, eyes closed. She remembered taking whatever it was that Phoebe’s brother got them, tiny little pills that looked like aspirin, and she remembered sitting on Tommy’s lap and his hands going under her shirt. She remembered Danny leaning out of the window so far that he fell four feet to the ground, fracturing his wrist. She remembered closing the blinds so that Jim and Cindy Roman wouldn’t call the police, and then wishing they had.
“Did I tell you that I’m going to write a screenplay?” Tommy said. “Brian and I were talking about it yesterday. We’re going to write a screenplay, kind of like Kids but without it being just skaters, you know, and less depressing, and then we’re going to star in it, too, and direct it.”
“What about college?” Tommy had gone to Princeton, just like his parents.
“No way,” Tommy said, and took a drag. “I’m not going to do just what my parents want me to do. No way.” Something buzzed, and Tommy unclipped his pager from his belt. “It’s Sam, at the pay phone at school.”
“I’ll go back in a second. What’s up?”
“Is Lizzie coming? To your party?” Lizzie was a senior and not remotely Alice’s friend except for the one time she had gone with Alice and Sam to buy weed at a bodega that wasn’t really a bodega. Tommy and Lizzie would have sex at Alice’s birthday party, right in her bed, and after that, Tommy and Alice would never speak again, not until he walked into his office with his wife and his child.
“I have no idea,” Alice said. She stood up and dusted off her pants. “Let’s go back.”
25
Sam was standing in the phone booth at Belvedere, biting her fingernails. The phone booth was on the first floor, next to the teacher’s lounge at the back of the building, its wood well carved with decades of students’ initials and various profane messages. The little door was shut, but when Sam saw Alice through the scratched glass, she slid it open, and Alice squeezed in.
“What did pretty boy want? Just to have you admire him for a little while?”
“To know if Lizzie was coming to the party.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “He asked you that on your birthday? That is so irritating. I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I have other things to worry about right now.” Alice picked the phone up off the hook and stared at it. “How do I call information again?”
Sam showed her, and handed Alice the phone.
“Hi,” Alice said. “Can I have the number for Matryoshka Bar, please? In the subway station?” After she made the call and set the receiver back in its cradle, Alice turned to look at Sam, whose face was pale.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.” Alice felt her eyes starting to well up with tears.
“Fuck,” Sam said. “So you’re, like, old?”
“I’m not old,” Alice said. “I’m forty.”
Sam laughed. “I respect the fact that you think there’s a difference.”
“It’s just all relative. Like, my dad . . .” Alice wasn’t sure how to explain how young Leonard was, today, in 1996. But she had to admit that Sam was right—forty did suddenly sound ancient. Twenty-five sounded old, and forty was too much to comprehend. Twenty-five was a guy who might hit on you at a bar, and you’d be both flattered and creeped out. Forty was strictly parental. Authority figure. The president.
“Did he, like, Time Brothers you here?” Sam made a hand motion like a car zooming through space. In the credits, which were ridiculous, Barry and Tony drove in front of a background of asteroids, their rust-colored sedan bouncing over the stars.
“No,” Alice said. She pictured Leonard in his hospital bed. “Definitely not. But let’s go, I have an idea.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Just tell me something, okay? Just tell me one thing so I know you’re not making this up. You know I fucking hate pranks.”
Alice thought about it. Sam wouldn’t care about sports statistics or which famous person was actually gay. She would care too much about her own wedding, and that seemed dangerous, in terms of Back to the Future–ing things.
“The thing with your dad,” Alice finally said. They hadn’t talked about it until they were in college, miles away from each other, relying on the phone to stay in touch. Walt had always traveled a lot for his job, to DC and back, DC and back, and he’d often stay for a few nights. Lorraine had finally divorced him when Sam went to college, which was when they told her that he had another woman. A whole other life. Sam had been suspicious for years, but she’d never said a word to Alice. “It’s true. I’m really sorry. But it is what you think.”
Sam swallowed a mouthful of air. “Damn, man. I thought you were going to say, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger is president or something.”
Alice pulled Sam in for a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Sam cried into her shirt, but when she took a step back, she smiled.
“I fucking knew it,” she said. “Okay, let’s go.”
* * *
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