Page 93 of Two Truths and a Lie
“Not your mother, or your sister, or anybody else,” said Sherri. “Swear.”
“I swear. I haven’t told my mother or my sister.” One truth. “I will never tell a living soul, Sherri, I promise.” Two truths. “I would never share something like that. With anyone.” One lie.
Sherri’s face relaxed, and Alexa felt that for once she had done the right thing.
Some years hence, when the celebrity Alexa Thornhill has a child of her own, a little boy named Max who has a cowlick and a freckle on his ear and the biggest brown eyes you could imagine, a boy who is growing up in the dazzling Southern California sun, she will look back on this conversation. One day Max will get in an altercation with a bully at a playground. Alexa Thornhill will feel an innate, unquenchable urge to lift the bully up by the straps of his overalls and throw him into next week.
She will never do that, of course. It wouldn’t read well on her social media feed, to her fans and followers, which number in thehundreds of thousands. But she will remember the intensity of Sherri Griffin’s eyes as she said, “I’ll do anything to keep Katie safe.” And she gets it. She totally gets it.
But that is in the future. In the raw, unpasteurized present, the New and Improved Alexa, the nice Alexa, asked Sherri Griffin, “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? Anything at all?”
Sherri thought for a minute. Alexa watched her eyes travel over the marshes of Plum Island, the piece of turnpike visible from the bar, the grasses dancing in the light wind.
“There is one thing,” Sherri said finally. She looked around the bar, because it was a small town, and you never knew who you might run into.
“Anything,” said Alexa eagerly. She polished off her seltzer and noticed that the bartenders had changed shifts.
She told Sherri, “Whatever you say, I’ll do.”
One truth, no lies.
90.
The Squad
Monica and her husband, who were celebrating their thirteenth wedding anniversary the night before school started, had a seven o’clock reservation at Mission Oak. You’ll never guess who was coming out as they were going in. Well, you might guess. It was Rebecca, Daniel Bennett, and...Morgan Coleman!Daniel was holding open the door for Rebecca and Morgan, and Morgan appeared to be giggling at something Daniel Bennett had said.
We had also heard, from Brooke, via Monica, who heard it from Dawn, who heard it directly from Gina, that Gina was in the process of breaking off her friendship with Daniel’s ex-wife, Veronica the Cheater, out of loyalty to Rebecca.
On the first day of the new school year the girls had all planned to walk to school together, those who weren’t on the bus route, which is how they’ve always done it. Always. Naturally Morgan was part of this plan. After the dressing-down at Brooke’s party, Katie was too. We made sure of it.
Then! Early on the first day of school something surprising happened! Morgan texted the rest of the girls on their group chat and said that she and Katie wouldn’t be walking with them after all. No explanation.
Esther had driven Audrey in from Plum Island. The buses are sometimes late on the first day, getting used to new routes, andAudrey didn’t want to take the chance of being tardy at the beginning of middle school, when there were so many new things to figure out: homerooms and lockers and the changing of classes and all of that. So it was Esther who told us thatAlexadroveMorgan and Katie to school in her Jeep. And she didn’t leave them at the drop-off on Low Street the way parents were supposed to. No. She parked in the parking lot and she walked them to the front door of the school, in full view of everyone.
We had heard that Alexa had deferred Colby because she was so heartbroken about Cam. We had also heard that she’d never gotten into Colby in the first place. We’d heard that she’d been signed by a talent agent and was moving to L.A., and also that she was moving to New York City, and also that she was reapplying to colleges in the Midwest to get away from it all. We’d also heard she might be buying the Cottage with her Silk Stockings money and would be staying local to run it.
It was reported by Gina, who works for the upper elementary in the same building and was helping to usher the students off the buses, that Alexa said,really pretty loudly,to the girls, “Take care, bitches. You go kill it in sixth grade, okay?” Then the three of them did some sort of complicated secret handshake which Gina, when pressed, could not re-create.
And off Alexa went into her future, glowing with youth and beauty and vitality and fame, and something more complicated but somehow also beautiful—something that had to do with grief. She left in her wake a bunch of scrawny, clumsy middle school boys, fresh off the school bus, whose bar for beautiful women had been radically and irrevocably set very, very, very high.
