“I don’t understand why on earth you would want to miss one of Mark’s parties,” Harper counters, tucking a loose strand of her long, wavy blond hair behind her ear.
“You know my two party rules,” I reply, counting them down on my fingers. “Number one: Drinking Mad Dog 20/20 will make you sicker than eating at a strip club buffet. Number two: No good ever comes from attending a Mark Ricardi party.”
Mark’s gatherings at his parents’ estate outside the New Albany Country Club community were sort of famous. I’ve only been to one of his parties and left before things got totally out of control, but the stories that come out of that house … my God. People always end up going skinny-dipping in the pond or losing articles of clothing (or just their dignity) during tequila-induced twerk-offs. Someone always gets into a huge fight or breaks something or cheats on their girlfriend. People always leave Mark Ricardi parties with the taste of expensive liquor and regret in their mouths.
“We’ll take a vote when Mal gets here,” Harper says and takes a swig of her pop.
“I’ll take a vote right now. All those in favor of not holding your best friend’s hair back while she throws up in the master bathtub, please raise your hand,” I say, throwing my hand straight up into the air. Harper narrows her hazel eyes at me then smiles, exposing the tiny gap in her two front teeth that I love and Harper hates. She says she wishes she would have gotten braces back in middle school when everyone else’s teeth were jacked up. She’s thought about getting one of those clear plastic retainer things to fix it, but I continue to talk her out of it. I think the gap makes her look like a supermodel.
“Hey, that was the easiest party-fail cleanup ever,” Harper says, reaching across the gray laminate table to slap down my hand.
“It was disgusting,” I reply, my arm still high in the air. “I almost threw up next to you and I was stone-cold sober.”
“You’re so the good little mom of the group,” Harper says, batting at my hand again. “I totally H your G’s right now.”
“You totally what my what?” I ask.
“H your G’s,” Harper replies and rolls her eyes. “Hate your guts.”
“No way, you totally L my G’s,” I say and laugh. Love how we both do that. Abbreviate things to the point people don’t know what in the world we’re talking about. We have some regulars, like RTG, which means “ready to go.” PITA means “pain in the ass.” SMITH means “shoot me in the head.” Those are probably the favorites, but we both come up with ridiculous new ones every day that make our friends roll their eyes. But whatever, it’s our thing and we like it so WGAS? Translation: Who gives a shit?
“Hey, MacMillan,” a voice calls at me from the lunch line. I turn around to see Malika carrying a blue lunch tray. “Share my nachos?”
“Always,” I answer and spin back around.
MacMillan. Out of all my Black Angel cover-up last names, MacMillan may be my favorite. I’ve always been Reagan. But I’ve been lots of Reagans. Reagan Moore. Reagan Bailey. Reagan Klein. Reagan Schultz. No one has ever known my real name. Reagan Elizabeth Hillis. It’s been so long since I’ve said my real name out loud that sometimes I have to think about it. It sounds ridiculous that I’d actually have to use any brainpower to know my name, but while it’s only for a fleeting moment, sometimes I do. I’ve heard my mother say the older she gets, the more she really has to think about how old she is. When you’re seven or seventeen, you never have to think about your age. She says as you get older, there’s that split second where she has to ask herself, Wait, am I forty-eight or forty-nine? That’s how I feel about my real name. And the more new last names I get, the longer that beat is in remembering who I really am.
It always happens the same way. As soon as I’m comfortable with a last name, I’m forced to forget it. My parents’ cover will be in jeopardy or we’re being watched and we’ll have to get out of town. And every time we load up the car in the middle of the night and pull down our street for the last time, I feel like a piece of me is stripped away. I’ve never told my parents that. I don’t want to make them feel bad. But it’s like a version of myself—Reagan Moore or Bailey or Schultz or whoever I was there—dies and becomes a splintered shadow for anyone who ever knew that Reagan. When I get my new name and new cover story, it’s like that Reagan—that fractured piece of myself—never really existed. I don’t talk about it. I don’t tell anyone the truth about where we were or what my life was like. I have to make up a whole new set of lies and repeat them over and over again until they become truth. I make the girl I was just a few months ago disappear.
“Hey, girls,” Malika says, setting her tray down next to me. She lifts up her left leg to climb over the bench, forgetting about her very short red skirt.
“Holy inappropriateness,” Harper says, covering her eyes with both hands.