Amos pulls down the sun visor on his side. A little mirror reflects the top half of his face. Since Bethany last saw him, his hair has grown past his eyes in a flat black flap, and he keeps moving it to the side with his fingers. Bethany notices for the first time how thin and careful these fingers are. Most of his teenage acne is gone, and the forehead in the mirror is smooth and pale.
“I just hope it hasn’t jumped the shark,” Rebekah continues. “Last year there were a lot of posers, you know? Guys just looking to drink beer and hook up. But that’s so not the scene, you know?”
Bethany does not know, but nods her head.
From the back, Rebekah’s hair looks different, thicker and darker. “Did you do something to your hair?” Bethany asks.
“I haven’t been washing it. Look,” she says, and shows Bethany the matted beginnings of a dreadlock.
Rebekah has returned from her sophomore year with a wise, fugitive glint in her eye. As many questions as Bethany has asked and as factually as Rebekah has answered them, her friend’s new universe remains shut to her. Bethany suspects that Rebekah is enjoying this bit of mystery, taking it as license to treat Bethany like a sweet, dim younger sister.
The community college was supposed to be a stopgap before Bethany’s launch as an actress. It was her choice to forgo the prototypical American college experience—that halfway house to autonomy—in exchange for intensive auditions. But the auditions have been as fruitless as they are relentless. It has proven impossible to stand out among the pert, practiced girls who have done this since toddlerhood, and it has already begun to seem that her role as Holly Golightly in the high school play will be the pinnacle of her career. All the talk of her precocious talent—a junior snaring a leading role—now seems miserably unfounded. She was cast as Liesl Von Trapp in The Sound of Music her senior year, and nothing since. Fear of failure has begun to puddle cold in her chest. She is a community college student now, surrounded by hairsprayed girls and dull boys earning vocational degrees.
Rebekah had auditioned for Holly, too, but ended up in the chorus. While some of the seniors resented Bethany for stealing a part they considered theirs, Rebekah hadn’t cared. Instead, she’d been impressed with Bethany’s mettle. They went to the diner after rehearsals and Rebekah elaborated in hushed tones about her new, older boyfriend. She’d found him outside the Coffee Bean, on break in his apron. He’d been sitting cross-legged on the pavement smoking an Indian beedi cigarette and reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Rebekah was breathless when she talked about him, about the high-minded discussions they had, about his global awareness, his zest for experience. He was, she whispered, twenty-five years old.
As it turned out, this zest for experience had included a complete survey of opioid and psychotropic drugs. Rebekah swore him off when she left for college, then took him back when he was hospitalized for an overdose. “He said he’s a better person when he’s with me, even if it’s just summers and vacations,” she said with a sigh on the phone, “which I think is true. And he’s gotten more spiritual. He’s been working with this guy in town. He’s kind of his protégé.”
As they approach the festival grounds, the traffic slows, and they find that they have joined a parade of allied vehicles with overlapping car stereos. Passengers smile and wave at one another. Rebekah thrusts her arm out the open window and gestures universally, triggering a series of whoops and hollers. She bounces in the driver’s seat.
“I can already feel the vibe. Everyone’s so happy to be here, that’s the thing. A lot of these people have been waiting all year for this. It’s like the highlight of their year.”
They park in a vast field and emerge into battering heat. Serpentining on foot through the grid of cars, they are assaulted by the slap of sun on metal. It is predicted to be in the nineties all weekend. Bethany squirts sunblock onto her arms while walking. Her hair is already damp on her neck, but she doesn’t want to tie it up without a mirror. This, she recognizes with a dip of embarrassment, is because of Amos. He walks in front of her, taller than she remembers, slimmer in his jeans. It’s as if, while he was away, some inner crank has lengthened his body and rotated its cells so that the boy she looks at now has no relation to the boy she has known, indifferently, since kindergarten.
“Aren’t you hot?” she calls. “I mean, in those jeans.”
Amos looks back and smiles. “Nah, I’m okay. There’s no other option for guys, anyway. What am I supposed to wear, shorts?”