The Universe Is Expanding and So Am I

  Anaïs shakes her head. “They’re going to have him meet with the lawyer on Thursday and that’s when he’ll find out. Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell Byron or even Mom and Dad that you know. Shit. I’m home two days and I’m already back into the secrets.”

  With that, Anaïs tosses me Mom’s phone. “Can you give this back? I’m taking a walk.”

  I sit on a boulder for a long time before going into the house.

  The fun morning isn’t complete without a few hours of driving practice.

  “Less than two weeks until your road rest,” Dad says as I’m making my way to the parking lot.

  “I know,” I say, sighing.

  “It’s the Friday after next,” Dad says.

  “I know.”

  “And it’s not just about passing the road test,” Dad says. “Driving is an essential life skill.”

  “I know,” I say for a third time. “Like what if I were stranded in the Sahara Desert and the person driving got eaten by a camel?”

  Dad ignores my commentary. “How are you feeling about the road test?”

  “Well, you know. Not great. How much do self-driving cars cost?”

  Dad takes this as an invitation to do some Dadsplaining. As I loop around and around the parking lot, he goes on about using the screen for reverse and who yields to whom at a four-way stop. I nod like, yeah, wow, thanks. The truth is, I know all of this. I aced the test for my learner’s permit. The classroom teachers in driver’s ed loved me. But when it comes to the real thing, I have a total block.

  Today’s lesson is more of the same. As I press the gas and the car jerks forward, Dad says, “I think the problem is that you need to stop thinking and let your instincts take over.”

  “But you said a few weeks ago that I don’t have instincts.”

  “Did I say that? Well, you’ll just have to make up for that with a lot of practice. Let’s go, and this time we’ll add in parallel parking.”

  That evening, we all cram into the car for the drive back to Manhattan. Byron wanted to stay in Connecticut for another week, but my parents told him they have a meeting with Mark Levy on Thursday so he needs to come home. It was weird to realize that I know about the possible weekend jail time before he does.

  I’m in the seat behind Mom. I’m looking out the window and trying to figure out the last time the five of us were in a car together. I think it was the spring before my sister went into the Peace Corps, when we went on a vacation to the Dominican Republic. We were staying at a fancy resort, and my parents and Anaïs and Byron spent most of their time on the golf course. While they were golfing, I walked on the beach or read by the pool.

  I’m thinking about the huge pool with the hot tub and the bar that served virgin piña coladas and I suddenly remember.

  Towels.

  Whenever I wanted a towel from the cabana I would give our room number to a guy in a white polo shirt. He would write it down and record on a piece of paper how many towels I took. But when I returned the towels later, no one asked what room we were in or marked off that I returned them. I questioned Mom about this, and she explained that people’s psychology is such that if they think someone is watching, they will do the right thing. Therefore if a person knows that someone is aware of how many towels they took, they will return that many towels without being asked. In fact, as Mom explained, not only will they do the right thing but they’ll actually feel good about doing it.

  19

  “I love it,” Gerri says to me the next morning. “Basically when we greet people by name we’ll show them that we’re jotting down how many towels they took.”

  “Right,” I say. “But we won’t check to see if they returned them. They can put them in a bin in the locker room or the shower area or wherever they want. That way, they won’t feel tracked.”

  Gerri nods. “We let them feel ownership.”

  “Yeah, I guess. We’ll just throw away the chart at the end of the day.”

  “Resort-style,” Gerri says. “It’s worth a try.”

  As Gerri carries a stack of invoices into her office, I print out blank charts. The left column is to write down the members’ names, and the column on the right is to record how many towels they took. I’m sticking the charts in a clipboard when Mom and Dad walk in the front door.

  “Hello, Mike and Phyllis!” I smile at them as I swipe their IDs. “How many towels would you like this morning?”

  I can see Gerri standing in the doorway of her office, watching us.

  “Two each,” Mom says.

  “Two each,” I repeat. I hand them a stack of four neatly folded white towels, then jot their names and the number of towels on the chart. They don’t ask about it, or even seem to notice a change in the routine. They just wave and Mom goes to her yoga class while Dad hits the machines.

  “So far, so good,” Gerri says, grabbing her hand weights and giving them a few pumps.

  By Tuesday, Gerri is feeling hopeful.

  “I told the laundry service to do a detailed inventory,” she tells me after I get back from my break. “We’ll compare it with the numbers from every day last week. We don’t have any data yet, but judging by the number of towels they loaded into the laundry truck yesterday afternoon it seems like people returned more.”

  I nod happily. I’m feeling all-around happy today. Sebastian and I met at Astor Place yesterday afternoon and explored the East Village. I was worried that things would feel awkward after three and a half days apart, but as soon as we saw each other, we hugged and kissed and were right back to where we were last Thursday. I brought Sebastian’s hat for him, and he surprised me with my very own straw hat. It’s got a wider brim and a thin purple ribbon and I love it. We ended up walking all the way to Strand Book Store where he looked at children’s books and I bought some novels to read this summer like Americanah, which my Humanities teacher told me about, and another novel by the same person who wrote Fates and Furies.

  “I have a good feeling about this,” Gerri says as I print out more blank charts and add them to the clipboard. The evening staff filled up all the ones I put in there yesterday. “I can feel in my bones that this is going to work.”

  I smile at Gerri. I like that she cares about towels so deeply that she feels it in her bones.

  Sure enough, when I get to Whole Fitness on Wednesday, Gerri is beaming.

  “You are a hero!” she says, offering me a high five. “According to preliminary data, resort-style counting has resulted in a thirty percent reduction in lost towels. People don’t feel blamed. They don’t feel accused. They watch their behavior more and listen to their moral compass if they think someone is aware of it.”

  When she says that, I think of Byron.

  If my brother knew that someone was aware of what he was doing to Annie, would he still have forced her to have sex? Or is his moral compass so skewed that when he got drunk he lost all sense of right and wrong?

  Whatever it is, he’s definitely gloomy this week. Monday was the day he was supposed to leave for his summer-study program in Paris. He got a few calls from Columbia friends who were making plans to meet at the airport. I heard him tell them that he was pulling out. Ever since then, he’s been in his room with the door closed and he’s refusing to join us for meals. When he didn’t come to dinner on Wednesday night all I could think was, wait until Thursday. That’s when Anaïs said my parents are taking him to see the lawyer to go over the settlement terms. If not going to Paris is making Byron feel miserable, wait until he finds out about weekend jail.

  When I get out of work on Thursday, I meet Anaïs and Lindsey at Brookfield Place. Anaïs has been staying at Lindsey’s aunt’s apartment in Park Slope since Tuesday night. We decide to meet at Brookfield because there’s a hand-rolled bagel shop there that Lindsey wants to try. I wonder if Lindsey appreciates butter-to-dough ratios. I sort of feel like she might.

  “How’re things at home?” Anaïs asks as we’re sitting d
own with our bagel sandwiches. “Is Byron still sulking?”

  I glance quickly at Lindsey. It’s one thing to discuss Byron with Sebastian, who is obviously aware of the situation. But I’ve only met Lindsey for five minutes in the airport and this is really personal stuff.

  “It’s about the same,” I say vaguely.

  “Don’t worry about talking about it,” Anaïs says, taking Lindsey’s hand. “She knows everything.”

  Lindsey nods and smiles at me. I can tell she’s nice and friendly and that I’ll probably like her a lot. But as of now, she feels like a stranger. In some ways, Anaïs does, too. She and Lindsey are laughing and talking about people from the Peace Corps and about their Burkinabé friends. By the time we toss our bagel wrappers in the trash, I’m exhausted trying to keep up. I’m actually relieved when they head back to Brooklyn. I pop in some gum, pull on my wide-brimmed straw hat, and walk over to the river to meet Sebastian.

  “What’s your school like?” Sebastian asks. We’ve been stretched out on a grassy pier in the West Village all afternoon. He’s sketching and I’m watching the clouds, and we’re talking about whatever random things come up. “You said it’s called Brewster. Is it full of purple-haired Leela superheroes like you?”

  “Hardly,” I say, laughing. “It’s the kind of place where the popular people rule and the rest of us scurry around scared. I’ve got my best friend, Shannon, who’s been away this year, but she’s coming back. And my friend Alyssa. And there are some good teachers, especially when they’re not obsessed with college prep.”

  “How many popular people are there?”

  I squint at him. “How many? Like, in my grade?”

  Sebastian nods. As he adds streaks of silver to his sketch of the Hudson River, I count the main popular people. Brie, of course, and her bitchy core group, which number about five. Then there’s Cole and Josh and Russ and a few other guys who cycle in and out of the royalty circles.

  “Maybe ten key people,” I say. “More come and go. Let’s say twelve for sure.”

  “How many people are in your grade total?”

  “Eighty,” I say. “It’s a small school.”

  “So about fifteen percent of the total people in your grade are popular and yet they rule?”

  I stare out at the river. Even though it’s late afternoon, the sun is still high in the sky. Sebastian is right. It doesn’t make sense. And yet there it is.

  “I’m not saying it’s not true,” he says. “My school wasn’t much different. It just shouldn’t be that way. There should be a revolution. The nonpopular people should take over and subvert the paradigm.”

  “Now you sound like Hamilton,” I say. “Young, scrappy, and hungry.”

  Sebastian grins and tucks his hair behind his ears. I love his grin. I’m going to miss his grin. July Fourth weekend is coming up, and Sebastian’s family is going camping in the Catskills. In fact, he needs to pack up his pastels in a few minutes and meet his parents in Union Square to buy camping supplies. He cracked up when I asked if he’s staying in a campground with a bathroom. He thought I was joking, but I told him no way. I don’t joke about pooping in the woods.

  “What was your school like?” I ask.

  “It’s a big public secondary school. My parents are teachers there, so that gave me some advantages. Then again, I suck at hockey, so that took me down a few notches. Hockey was the big thing. That and snowmobiling.”

  Snowmobiling.

  As soon as he says it, he visibly flinches. His ex-girlfriend, Maddie, was a snowmobiler. She cheated on him with another snowmobiler.

  “How long were you together?” I ask. “You and Maddie?”

  “Over a year. But who knows how much of that year she was cheating on me? All winter, I’m guessing. Snowmobile season.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, it was hard. Especially for a ESFP.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re loyal to a fault. We give someone our one hundred percent.”

  I slide closer to him and lace my hands through his. We stay like that for a long time, our heads touching, our shoulders touching, his leg splayed over mine. I’ve never felt this close to anyone before. I feel like he has my heart. He has my one hundred percent.

  After we say good-bye, I’m walking to the subway when Alyssa calls. Alyssa and I mostly text, so I’m surprised to see her call come in.

  “Can you talk?” she asks. Her voice sounds faint and far away.

  “Yeah … what’s up?”

  “You have no idea how hard this call was to make,” Alyssa says, sighing heavily.

  “What do you mean?”

  Alyssa sighs again. I hear kids shrieking in the background and bugle music playing.

  “Are you at camp?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s pickup time. I got another CIT to cover for me. I can’t talk at my uncle’s house because my cousins are snooping around all the time. And I can’t talk at camp because we’re not supposed to have our phones out. But there’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been holding it inside, and it’s eating me up.”

  Alyssa sniffles like she’s crying. The thing is, Alyssa is one of those perennially peppy people who doesn’t have dark moods. She’s scaring me right now.

  I glance up and down West Eleventh Street looking for a quiet place to talk. The Village is more crowded than the Upper West Side, especially on a warm summer afternoon. “I’m sure it’s okay. I’m sure whatever you have to tell me is—”

  “I kissed Froggy.”

  I stop in my tracks on the sidewalk. Seriously, my legs lock in place.

  “Are you still there?” Alyssa asks. “Did you hang up? I’d understand if you hung up.”

  “No, I’m here.” My legs are wobbly. I sit on the stoop of a nearby brownstone and run my fingers along the rough texture of the stairs. I’m thinking about Maddie and how she cheated on Sebastian. Was Froggy cheating on me while we were together? Were he and Alyssa fooling around behind my back?

  “It was after you guys broke up,” Alyssa says quickly, like she’s reading my mind. “We went for a walk after Field Day that Thursday. Remember how you left early? We were talking for a long time and, well, we kissed.”

  Okay. So he didn’t cheat. Alyssa didn’t sneak around with my boyfriend.

  “Virginia, I promise you that I didn’t even know I liked Froggy until that afternoon. Once we kissed, it all came to me. I liked you guys together because I liked Froggy. He seemed like the perfect boyfriend because I wanted him to be my boyfriend. But honest. I wasn’t thinking about it until that day.”

  I take a deep breath. There’s a line wrapping around the block to get into Magnolia. I bet Sebastian would like to try a cupcake there. He’s always getting excited about New York City food.

  “Are you together?” I ask after a second. “I mean, is he your boyfriend now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I really, really, really like him. He’s in Maine for the summer and doesn’t have access to technology, but we’re writing letters.” Alyssa pauses before adding, “If you hate me for this, then I’ll never talk to Froggy again. It will make me sad, but I’ll do it.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do that,” I say quickly.

  Now that I’m over the initial shock that my first boyfriend and my friend are getting together, I can actually see it. They’re right for each other. Much more right than Froggy and me.

  “Oh my God!” Alyssa shouts all of a sudden. “I’m going to pee my pants! I’ve been so upset that I couldn’t pee all day, but now that I’ve told you I’m going to wet my pants right here in the middle of day camp.”

  “Go pee,” I tell her. “It’s okay. We can talk later.”

  “Virginia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  After we hang up, I go into a store and buy a bottle of water. As I’m taking sips, I realize that Froggy deserves to be really, really, really liked. I never felt that way about him, not like how I feel
with Sebastian. But Froggy deserves it and Alyssa deserves it, and it’s not my place to get between them.

  We drive back to Connecticut on Friday night. On Saturday morning, I’m reading Americanah in the hammock and thinking how, after Lotto and Mathilde’s debacle, Ifemelu and Obinze are renewing my belief in true love. Also, even though Americanah is set in Nigeria and my sister has been very clear that she hates when people lump all African countries together, it’s still interesting to read a novel set in the continent where my sister was living. I’m deep in the book when I hear a shriek from across the yard. At first I think someone is being attacked. As I toss down Americanah and bolt out of the hammock, I realize three things in rapid succession:

  Frances’s ladder is on the ground under the sugar maple.

  Two seconds ago, her ladder was up in the sugar maple and Frances was on it.

  Frances is on the grass, curled in the fetal position.

  My heart is pounding as I run across the lawn and kneel by her side. “Are you okay?”

  I notice that her long clippers are twenty feet away and there’s no blood anywhere. So that’s good, I guess. Except she’s looking really pale and her eyes are scrunched up tight.

  “Ladder was unsteady …” She whimpers and shakes her head. “I fell … my foot … maybe my ribs.”

  I glance desperately toward the house, even though I know that no one’s home. Anaïs is staying with Lindsey this weekend, and Mom and Dad forced Byron to go golfing with them. Ever since the meeting with Mark Levy on Thursday, Byron has descended into an even deeper funk. He’s barely talking, and he has a terrible, hacking cough. I’m not sure what my parents said to convince him to go golfing, but I heard Dad’s chief operating officer voice, loud and firm, and then they got in the car and left two hours ago.

  “Want me to call 911?” I ask Frances. “I can get you some ice.”

  “No phone signal,” she manages to say.

  “We have a home phone,” I offer.

  “Can you just … drive me to the … hospital?”