And then it was lunchtime.
Zoe moved quickly through the cafeteria, grabbing a tray and joining the line. Alone. When the cashier spat her out the other end with a carton of potato wedges, she headed toward Emily in the back corner. She couldn’t give her the silent treatment forever, Zoe told herself. And if they could just speak privately, Zoe could explain everything.
Zoe walked purposefully toward her, but just a few paces away she pulled up sharp. Emily was sitting with Lucy Barker.
“Hey!” came a voice behind her, a guy with dreadlocks. “Are you just gonna stand there? Move along!”
Zoe jumped out of the way, and straight into someone else’s way. Finally she pulled up a seat at the nearest table and sat, trying to disappear. She crossed her legs so only one foot was on the ground. When she looked up, she noticed Harry, in the far corner of the table, hunched over what looked like another homemade sandwich. Did he always bring his lunch from home?
“Oh.” Her chair screeched as she stood again. “Sorry.”
You couldn’t just go and sit with anyone in high school. That wasn’t how it worked. Some people would be polite about it—just give you major side-eye and exchange glances until you went away. Other people would be more vocal about it. Zoe didn’t know which type Harry was, and she wasn’t willing to take the risk.
“Zoe?”
Zoe blinked. Emily was standing at the end of the table. “Em, hey,” she said pathetically.
“You could at least have had the decency to come and say you’re sorry. And a text message isn’t the same.” Her voice was mortifyingly loud.
“I’m sorry.”
“What is wrong with you anyway?” Emily stared at her for a long minute. “Why can’t you just be normal?”
“Normal is overrated,” Harry muttered.
Zoe and Emily both turned to look at him, but he kept his head down as if he hadn’t spoken. Maybe he hadn’t?
Emily looked back at Zoe. “Do you know what else is overrated? People who can’t inconvenience themselves for one night to help out a friend. People who are so selfish they can’t see how their actions affect others. People who call themselves your best friend, when really their best friend is themselves.” Horrifyingly, Emily’s voice was climbing. Three or four people at the next table spun in their chairs and listened unashamedly. “People who spend so much time thinking about what other people think of them that it escapes them that no one thinks about them at all, because no one has a clue that they exist!”
At the next table there was a gasp, and a snicker. Someone said, “Bitch fight.”
The air in the room started to vanish. I can’t breathe, Zoe thought. Spots of purple and red appeared in front of her eyes, and her heart—it felt like it might burst. I am in a safe place, she told herself. I’m in control.
But she wasn’t. And Emily was still talking.
“Hey,” someone said. “Zoe? Are you all right?”
Breathe, Zoe told herself. You know what this is. Just breathe and you’ll be all right.
“Zoe!”
“I have to go,” she said, and stood so fast her seat flew backward. She ran across the cafeteria, swerving to avoid someone and slamming instead into the wall.
As if she weren’t humiliated enough.
17
As Sonja fed her prepaid ticket into the machine and the boom gate opened, she was thinking about Alice Stanhope. More specifically, she was thinking about Alice’s daughter. Supporting the patient’s family fell under Sonja’s job description as hospital social worker as well, and Alice had seemed, well, cavalier to say the least, when Sonja had asked about her daughter staying home by herself.
This concerned Sonja. Teenage brains weren’t yet fully formed, at least that’s what George always said. He should know. When he’d been in private practice he’d seen adolescents almost exclusively. In the state of California, there was no law that stipulated the age at which you could leave a child home alone, it come down to whether the child was considered ‘fit.’ And so Sonja determined it would be prudent to do a home visit, to determine how ‘fit’ Alice’s daughter was.
As she drove out of the hospital parking lot, Sonja’s phone began to ring. She tried to answer it, but it was harder than it sounded. George, who was far more technologically inclined than she, had paired it up to her car’s blue-tooth something or other, which in theory, made it “hands-free,” but in practice just made it unusable. She jabbed uselessly at the phone, which sat in its holster, taunting her.
“Answer,” she said, feeling foolish. She remembered George saying something about voice activation. But surely saying “answer” couldn’t connect a call?
“Sonja?” George’s voice filled the car.
“George?”
“Guess what?” he said.
“What?” Although the air conditioner was blasting, Sonja’s hands were suddenly sweaty on the wheel. She wondered if it was strange that her husband could make her feel that way.
“I’ve got an appointment with the student counselor at Westleigh,” he said. “She sounded very keen for my input on their young-people-in-crisis program.”
“Fantastic,” Sonja said, even though, in truth, she didn’t really understand his desperation to volunteer in the community. He wasn’t a student trying to get experience; he was a renowned psychologist who was asked to speak at functions all over the country. And he’d already done some work with two other high schools in Atherton. But if George was happy, everything was better.
“Tonight we celebrate!” he said.
“Can’t wait,” she said.
Sonja didn’t know how to hang up the call, so she was relieved when it disconnected of its own accord. She stopped at a crossing to let some schoolkids pass. Sonja didn’t want to celebrate. She’d be happy if they never celebrated again. It was probably just that she was exhausted. She thought about last night.
She and George had been eating oysters—oysters!—and drinking champagne outside on the deck. Shallow as it was, Sonja enjoyed the extravagance of it. Until she’d met George she’d never eaten an oyster. And she’d certainly never drunk real champagne.
“You’re easily pleased, Sonja,” George had said when she’d told him, again, how nice everything was. He liked being the one to provide her with nice things.
Afterward, they moved to the couch, ostensibly to watch a movie, though Sonja fell asleep within minutes—champagne always had that effect on her. But she was startled awake when she felt George’s hands on her hips. The sky outside was dark and the credits of the film were rolling on the TV. He pulled her to her knees.