Читать книгу: «Lone Star», страница 2

“I think they should investigate,” Mason said, running up. “Investigations are fun.”

“There’s danger in it.”

“Danger is good,” Hannah said from behind. “Danger is story.”

No, Chloe wanted to correct her uncorrectable friend. Danger is danger. It’s not story.

Blake went on ruminating. “What if asking too many questions of the wrong people puts them in mortal danger?”

Chloe wondered if there was any other kind.

“Someone needs to shut them up. But who?”

“Obviously those who separated the head from the body.”

“But why would someone separate the head from the body?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know yet. But I really think we got us something here. Haiku, what do you think?”

“I say keep working on it.” Chloe used her most discouraging tone.

“Wait! I got it!” Blake exclaimed. “What if they find a suitcase? Yes, a mysterious suitcase! It’s blue. Oh my God, I got it. That’s my story.” Blake stopped and turned to the girls, beaming, his whole face flushed and thrilled. “The Blue Suitcase. What do you think?” He clapped. “It’s flipping awesome!”

Hannah smiled approvingly.

Chloe caught herself shrugging. “It’s a good title for a mystery,” she said. “But a title is not a story. What’s in the suitcase? Once you figure out that part, Blake, then you’ll have yourself a story.”

Blake laughed with characteristic lack of concern for details. He was a big picture guy. “James Bond always goes to a foreign country to solve mysteries and catch the bad guys,” he said. “Some fantastic exotic locale full of drink and women and danger.”

Chloe made a real effort not to rub her forehead. She had a lot of practice hiding exasperation from her mother, but this was on a different scale altogether. “James Bond is a government spy. He kills for money. He doesn’t rummage through the trash for severed heads.”

“Foreign country!” Mason exclaimed. “Blake, you’re a genius.”

Blake’s entire peacock tail opened up in kaleidoscope green.

“But wait,” Mason said. “You and I have never been to a foreign country.”

Blake blocked the girls’ way, smiling meaningfully at them. “Not yet,” he said.

The girls remained impassive. Only Chloe twitched slightly. Oh no! she thought. He doesn’t mean …

“We’ll go to Europe with you,” Blake said. “Mason’s right, I am a genius. The answer to our mysterious suitcase is in Europe. Oh man, this is going to be fantastic. And we’ve only been at it for five minutes. Imagine how good it’ll be when we spend a few days on it.” Blake thumped his flannel plaid chest. “We could win the book prize.”

“What book prize would that be, Blake?” Chloe said.

“I don’t know, Chloe. The prize they give the best book of the year. The Oscar for books. The Grammy, the Emmy.”

“The Pulitzer?”

“Whatever. That’s not the important part. To write something people will love, that’s the important part.”

Chloe leaned in to Hannah. “Did your crazy boyfriend just say he wants to go to Europe with us?”

“I’m sure that can’t be right,” Hannah, her expression frazzled, whispered back. “I’ll talk to him—”

Blake pulled Hannah away from Chloe. “Hannah, when are you two flying to Barcelona?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah replied. “Chloe, when are we flying?”

“I don’t know,” mumbled Chloe.

“Mason, that’s where we go, bro. Barcelona! Our story will climax there.” Blake laughed. The brothers high-fived and bumped shoulders.

“I thought you said it wasn’t that kind of story,” Chloe cut in.

“If it ends in Barcelona, Haiku, it’ll have to be a story for all seasons. Isn’t that where they have the running of the bulls?”

“Oh dear God. No. That’s Pamplona.”

“Wait,” Hannah said. “Blake, you’re not seriously thinking of coming with us?”

“We’re done thinking. We’re coming, baby!”

Mason looked shocked. “We’re going to Europe? You’re bullshitting me.”

“Mason, do I come up with the best ideas or what?”

Mason was at a loss for words.

“Blake …” Finally Hannah became actively engaged in the conversation. “Think about it for a minute. You’re not serious about writing a story, are you? The contest is open to all Maine residents. That’s a lot of competition. Just from our school, there’ll probably be at least a hundred entries. Everyone on our literary magazine is submitting a story.”

“Hannah, have you read the literary magazine?” said Blake, swinging his arms around, bouncing down the road. “It’s called Insanity’s Horse, for heaven’s sake.” He laughed. “Just for that title alone, those fools should be disqualified from participating. Do you remember the magazine’s April thought of the month? The pastiche of the pyramids implementing primal passion is a prolix representation of all phallic prose. I got your phallic prose right here. Yeah,” he said, merry and intense. “I’m not worried.”

How did this happen? One minute ticked by, and before it was up, Blake and Mason had climbed aboard the girls’ slow-chugging teenage dream.

Hannah stopped listening. She pulled on Chloe to slow down. “Now I really have to talk to you,” she said. “Come by before dinner?”

“Is it about Barcelona?” Chloe looked up into Hannah’s flat expression.

Hannah blinked. “No and yes. Do you have your passport yet?”

Chloe didn’t reply.

“Chloe! I told you—it takes two months to get a passport. Come on. Do you want to blow it?”

“Of course not. But that’s easy for you to say—you’re eighteen. I have to ask my parents to sign for my passport.”

“So?”

“Well, I’ll have to tell them I’m going first, won’t I?”

“I can’t believe you haven’t told them!”

“Yeah, well.” Chloe couldn’t believe a whole bunch of things.

Blake was in front of them, panting, eyes blazing, his body heaving. “So what do we have to do to get a passport?”

“Go to the post office,” Hannah said. “But take Chloe with you, because she doesn’t know how to get one either.”

“I know how. I just …”

Hannah batted her lashes. “Are you guys really going to come with us? Because don’t get our hopes up and then not come. That’d be mean.”

“I never disappoint you, pumpkin, do I?” Grabbing the slender Hannah, Blake pretended to dance with her and stepped on her feet. She yelped.

“Blake, you do know where Barcelona is, right?” Hannah said, her arms around his neck. “In Spain. And you know where Spain is, right? In Europe. As in—on another continent. As in, you need not just a passport, which costs upward of a hundred bucks, but also a plane ticket, and train tickets, and maybe, oh, I don’t know—some lodging and food money.”

Mason began to look doubtful, but Blake shrugged with gleeful indifference. “You know what they say, babycakes.” He squeezed her. “You gotta spend money to make money. It’s like the ten grand I’m getting for my story. We can’t start our own business till we win this thing. And we can’t win this thing till we do this other thing.”

“This other thing,” said Chloe, “meaning horn in on my lifelong dream?”

“Exactly. Mase, let’s jet. We gotta go get ourselves some passports. We have no time to lose.” As they sped up, their boots kicked up dust in a bee cloud. “Where’s this post office, anyway?” Blake called back.

“Are you joking? You’ve never been to the Fryeburg post office?”

Hannah poked Chloe. “You’ve never been there either, missy.”

Chloe poked Hannah back. “Yes, I have, stop it.”

Blake pulled on his brother. “Let’s hoof, bro. Should we pick you up, Chloe?” The Hauls lived three houses up from Chloe, around the pond through the scraggly pines and birches.

“Yeah, Chloe,” Hannah said, sticking a finger into Chloe’s back. “Should they pick you up to go get your passport?”

“It’s okay,” said Chloe, swatting Hannah’s fingers away. “I’ll have my mom take me.”

The girls gazed after their young men, and then resumed walking. Hannah shook her head—in distress? In wonderment? Chloe couldn’t tell. “I guess I’ll be going to Spain with my boyfriend and your boyfriend, but not with you.”

“Har-de-har-har.”

“You think I’m being funny? You can’t start your adult life being such a chicken, Chloe. What are you afraid of? Be more like me. I’m not afraid of anything.” She said it as if she didn’t mean it.

But all Chloe heard was be more like me. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth, she thought, stiffening. They were almost at the clearing in front of Chloe’s green bungalow. Hannah slowed down, as if she wanted to linger, but Chloe sped up as if that was the last thing she wanted. “I have to be diplomatic,” she said. “I need their permission to go. I can’t just present them with an I’m-going-to-Europe vaudeville routine.”

“If you don’t start acting like an adult, why should they treat you like one?”

How much did Chloe not want to talk about it. It wasn’t that Hannah was wrong. It was that Hannah always said obvious things in such a way that made Chloe not only think her friend was wrong, but that she wanted her friend to be wrong.

“I’ll talk to them tonight,” she said, hurrying across her pine needle clearing.

“I wouldn’t tell them about Mason and Blake just yet.”

“Ya think?”

Since Mrs. Haul and Lang went shopping on Fridays, Chloe had a feeling that her silence on the subject might be short-lived.

“Okay,” Hannah said, “but start slow. Don’t make your mother go all Chinese on you. You always make her nuts. First dangle our trip, then wait. The boys might be pie in the sky anyway. Where are they going to get the money from? It’ll pass, you’ll see.”

Chloe said nothing. Clearly Hannah had no idea who her boyfriend was. There was no talking Blake out of anything. Short fiction indeed! And as if to prove Chloe’s point, Janice Haul’s Subaru came charging toward them from around the trees, Blake rolling down his window, slowing down, honking.

“We’re off to get our passports!” he yelled. “See ya!”

Chloe turned to Hannah. “You were saying?”

“All right, fine. But don’t tell your mom about them yet.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Chloe asked. Only a flimsy screen door separated Chloe’s mother’s ears from Hannah’s troubles.

Hannah waved her off. “Just you wait,” she said, all doom and gloom.

2
Sweet Potato

“I’M IN THE KITCHEN,” HER MOTHER CALLED OUT AS SOON as Chloe opened the screen door. A statement of delightful irony since they lived in a winterized cabin that was one room entire, if one didn’t count, which Chloe didn’t, the bathroom, the two small bedrooms and the open attic lost where Chloe slept.

I’m in the kitchen, Lang said, because this month she was baking. Last winter, her mother was scrapbooking so every day, when Chloe came home, she would hear: I’m in the dining room.

The previous fall, her mother decided to become a seamstress and told Chloe that from now on she was sewing all of her daughter’s clothes, in the craft room.

When she was tracing out the family tree on her new Christmas-present software, Lang was in the computer room.

During the summers, Lang said nothing, because she was outside, fishing and tending her vegetable garden, voluminous enough to supply tomatoes to all eight homes around their part of the lake. Bushels of zucchini and cucumbers went with Chloe’s dad to work.

Chloe’s mother Lang Devine, née Lang Thia of Chinese descent from Red River, North Dakota, reinvented herself constantly into something new. She had wanted to be a dancer when she was young, but then she met Jimmy and wanted to be a wife. After many years as a wife, she wanted to be a mother. And after many years as a mother of one, she wanted to be a mother of two.

Jimmy’s favorite, he said, was when Lang took up tap dancing. He built her a wooden platform; she bought herself a pair of black Capezios size 5, some CDs and taught herself how to tap dance. That was noisy.

And not as delicious as baking, which was the current phase, and Chloe’s favorite after gardening. Jimmy Devine liked it, too, but groused that he was gaining two pounds a week because of Lang’s buttery hobby. Chloe thought her dad might teasingly mention the extra pounds Lang herself had put on around her five-foot frame, now that she wasn’t tap dancing. But no. Just last week, Jimmy said as he dug into Lang’s cream puffs (made with half-and-half, not milk, by the way), “Sweet potato, how do you bake so much and yet stay so thin?”

And Chloe’s mother had tittered!

How to explain to both her parents that it was unseemly for a grown woman of advancing years, married for nearly thirty, to titter when her husband paid her a half-hearted compliment by calling her the name of a red starchy root vegetable?

This afternoon Chloe walked in slowly, set down her school bag, pulled off her boots, and walked down the short corridor, past her parents’ bedroom, past the bedroom that no one ever went into anymore, past the bathroom, into the open area to put her lunchbox on the kitchen counter where it would be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Something smelled heavenly. Chloe didn’t want to admit it, because she didn’t want to encourage her mother in any way. What her mother needed was a tamping down of enthusiasm, not a fanning of the fire. Her mother and Blake shared that in common.

“Doesn’t that smell divine?” Lang giggled, turned around, and with floury hands, patted Chloe on both cheeks. “I only make divine things for my divine girl.” One of the few things Chloe tolerated about her mother was that she was short, making even Chloe seem tall by comparison.

Chloe brushed the white powder off her face. “Whatchya makin’?”

“Linzer tarts.”

“Doesn’t smell like Linzer tarts.” Chloe glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.

“Raspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”

Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”

“Full from lunch four hours ago?”

Lang got out some orange juice, a yoghurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warm jam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. She had to admit it was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”

“I’m thinking ratatouille.”

“What?”

“You’ll see. It’s a vegetable stew, I think. But it could be a condiment.” She chuckled. Honestly, why did Chloe have to be the only serious one in her house?

“Dad needs meat.”

“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll feed the carnivore some pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”

Chloe desperately needed to talk to her mother. She didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair straw straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absent-minded and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good,” she said.

That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, the hobby called. Jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.

Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.

“Are you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Mrs. Mencken told me about the Acadia prize. Ten thousand dollars is amazing. I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at anything. You will too, of course. Right?”

Now who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe managed to contain her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.

“You discussed it with Hannah and your boys?”

“Not necessarily,” Chloe replied. Disgusted is what she was. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”

Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not going to do it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”

Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the silence the ominous shadows of hollowed-out fangs essential for a story were abundantly obvious.

“I mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I? Because I didn’t go. Maybe you can write that story. I don’t think there’s an age limit on entrants.”

When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft. Their trip formed the foundation of much, if not all, of the resentment of Chloe’s teenage years. A blown-up photo in a heavy gold leaf frame of the Castlecomer glens hung prominently in the hallway.

Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe.

“You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” Lang said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”

“Make it up from what? I’m going to make up a story about something so dramatic that it will win first prize?”

“Why not? Blake is.”

How did her mom know this!

“I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—” She stopped herself from saying used condoms.

“You have an imagination, don’t you?”

“No, none. I need a story, Mom. Not musings about what it’s like to live on a puddle lake in Maine.”

“Puddle lake? Have you glimpsed the stunning beauty outside your own windows?”

In the afternoons, the glistening lake, blooming willows and birches trimming the shoreline, the railroad rising on the embankment did occasionally shine with the scarlet colors of life. That wasn’t the point.

“I can’t write about skiing or bowling, or learning to drive,” Chloe continued. “I need something substantial. And I have nothing.” Why couldn’t she talk about herself without allowing a whiff of self-pity to waft through her smallest words? The one ashen tragedy in their life she could never write about. And Lang knew that. So why push it? Besides, her mother had once informed her that the Devine women were too short to be tragic figures. “We can be stoics, but not tragics,” Lang had said a few years ago, when it seemed to everyone else that the very opposite was the only thing true. “Make it up, darling,” Lang repeated, unperturbed by her daughter’s tone. “You’re a very good writer.”

“Mom, I don’t want to be a writer.”

“Neither does Blake. Yet look at him.”

Chloe watched her mother walk to the printer in the computer room behind the sofa and peel off several sheets of paper. Lang slapped the rules of entry for the Acadia contest on the table.

“You have five months to come up with a story and write it. It must be original. It must be fiction. And after it wins, it will be published by the University of Maine Press. Properly published! In book form and everything. That’s very exciting, isn’t it?”

“Did you not hear me?”

“No. By the way, I got you the pens you wanted.” Lang produced three packages of blue pens, gel, ballpoint, and fountain, and laid them in front of Chloe.

“I also took the liberty of getting you a notebook. Several different kinds to choose from. I thought you might need one if you’re going to write a story that’s going to win first prize. The Moleskine is very good. Has soft paper. But you try them all.”

Chloe stared at the pens, at the four notebooks. Had she actually mentioned that she needed a pen? One blue pen!

“Mom, listen to me.”

Lang sat down, elbows on the table, staring at Chloe with complete attention. She looked so pleased to be told to do what she had already been doing.

“I want to write something, I do. I just don’t think I have … look, here’s what we were thinking.”

“Who’s we?”

“The four of us.”

“The four of you were thinking all at once?”

“Well, discussing.”

“That’s better. It’s always good to be precise if you’re thinking of becoming a writer.”

“Which I’m not, so.”

“What are you four up to now? Let’s hear it.”

“We’re thinking of going to Europe.”

Lang stayed neutral. She didn’t blanch, she barely blinked. No, she did blink. Slowly, steadily, as if she was about to say …

“Are you crazy?”

There it was. “First listen, then judge. Can you do that?”

“No.”

“Mom. You just said you wanted me to write.”

“You have to go to Europe to write? Did Flannery O’Connor go to Europe? Did Eudora Welty? Did Truman Capote?”

“Actually, he did, yes.”

“When he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms, his first novel, he’d been to Europe?”

“I don’t know. We’re getting off topic, Mom.”

“Au contraire. We are very much on topic.”

“Mason and Blake need to do research.”

“So they’re going to Europe?”

Chloe made a real effort not to facepalm, a real, true, Herculean, McDonald’s supersize-sandwich effort not to facepalm, because there were few things her mother hated more than this brazen gesture of exasperation and frustration.

“Hannah and I have been talking about the trip for a while.”

“I thought you just said you wanted to go for Blake and Mason? Make up your mind, child. Either you thought of it on the railroad tracks, or you’ve been planning it for years.”

“How do you know we were on the tracks?”

“I saw you.” Lang pointed out the window. “Right across the lake.”

Both things were true. Chloe and Hannah had been dreaming of going for years, but Blake and Mason just thought of it today. Lang sat and watched her daughter like a bird watching the world. One never knew what the Langbird was thinking until she sang.

“Isn’t going away to college enough for you?” Lang said quietly.

Chloe clasped her hands. She didn’t want to look into her mother’s face. She knew how hard it must have been for her parents to let her go away to school. “I’ve been dreaming of Europe since I was little,” she said, almost whispered. “Way before college.”

“Sometimes circumstances change, and we have to dream a different dream,” said Lang. There was only a breath after that, and no change in expression to reflect the colossal wreck from which life had had to be recomposed, rebuilt from the ashes, Capezio shoe by Linzer tart. “College away is a big step, not to mention an enormous expense, even with the scholarship they’re giving you.”

“I know, Mom. Exactly. And then work and study and more work and study, and when else could I ever do it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, let’s see, how about—four years from now? Or never. Either way is good with me.”

“That’s what I want for my graduation present,” Chloe declared boldly. “A trip to Europe. You went to Europe.”

“It was for a funeral!”

“So what.”

“Graduation present. Really. I thought you wanted a laptop.”

“I’ll use our old one. I’ll take the desktop.”

“You certainly will not. All my family-tree files are on it.”

“I thought you were baking now? Oh, and yes, the files are permanently embedded in that one desktop computer. You’re right. They can never be moved.”

“Do you know what happens after you make a choice to be sarcastic to the woman who gave you life?”

Chloe softened her tone. She knew that talking to her parents about anything was a fifteen-part process that would begin with an idea being promptly rejected and then followed up by a string of days during which her mother enumerated in Tolstoyan prose why whatever it was Chloe wanted was the worst idea. After a War and Peace-length volume on why they couldn’t get a dog, or a tattoo, or a third earring, or go to Europe, the real decision would be handed down. She didn’t get a tattoo. Or a dog. Or a third earring. What was happening here was just preface. The real meat of her mother’s argument was still to come.

But this time Chloe wanted a different resolution. This time she wanted her way, not Lang’s way. “Mom, what’s the big deal? I’ll be eighteen when we go.” When, not if. What a clever play on words! What a clever girl.

“Yes, because that solves all the problems. And don’t use the word when with me, young lady.”

Ahh! “What problems? There are no problems. We want to go to Europe for a few weeks. We’ll walk around, visit beautiful churches, eat delicious food, go to the beach, experience things we’ve never experienced before—”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“And then come home,” Chloe continued, “and Blake will write a beautiful story that will win first prize.”

“The boy has many skills. Do you think writing is one of them?”

“He thinks he does and that’s all that matters.” Chloe was defiant, but she didn’t have the answers. To her friends, she was usually the person her mother was being to her right now. The devil’s advocate, the sucker of joy. There were a thousand reasons why everything Blake and Mason wanted to do was a terrible idea. Oh God. Had Chloe already turned into her mother at seventeen? Facepalm!

“And by the way,” Lang said, “Europe is a big place. It’s not Rhode Island. Or Acadia National Park. Where in Europe were you four thinking of visiting? You mentioned church and beach. That could be anywhere.”

“Barcelona.”

Her mother groaned. “Barcelona. Really. That’s your idea. Of all the places, that’s where you want to go?”

“We’ve never been to Spain. And it’s on the water.”

“So is Maine. And you’ve never been to Belgium either.”

“Who wants to go to Belgium? What kind of story can one possibly write about Belgium? Or Maine?”

Lang shook her head. “There is so much you don’t know.”

“That’s why I want to go to Europe. So I can find out.”

“You’re going to learn about life lying on a filthy beach? Okay, riddle me this,” Lang said. “Where do you plan to sleep?”

“What do you mean?”

“Am I not being clear? You’re planning to go with your boyfriend, your best friend and her boyfriend. Where are the four of you going to sleep in this Barcelona?”

Chloe tried not to stammer. “We haven’t thought about it.”

“Haven’t you.” It was not a question.

“Probably a youth hostel or somewhere like that.”

“So in a dorm with fifty strangers all using the same bathroom facilities, if there are any?”

“We don’t care about that. We are young, Mom. We’re not like you. We don’t care about creature comforts. Where we sleep. What we eat. What we wear. It’s all fine. So it’s not the Four Seasons. So what? We’ll be in Europe. We’ll buy a student Eurail pass for a few hundred bucks, sleep on trains if we have to, to save money.”

“Why would you need to do that?” Lang’s already narrow dark eyes narrowed and darkened further. “You just said you were going to Barcelona. Why would you need to sleep on trains?”

“In case we wanted to see Madrid. Or maybe Paris.” That was Hannah’s idea. Hannah, the Toulouse-Lautrec artiste.

“Paris.”

“Yes, Paris. Isn’t France next to Spain?”

Her mother folded her hands together. “Chloe, I tell you what. Go away and think carefully about all the questions I’m going to ask you next time you sit down and say, Mom, I want to go to Barcelona. Everything I’m going to ask you, ask yourself, find an answer, and come prepared.”

“Like what?”

“Nope. That’s not how it works. You figure out the solutions to the problems. Oh, and by the way, one of those problems is telling your father. Let’s see how you surmount that.”

Chloe became deflated. “I thought maybe you could tell him.”

“That’s likely.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Mom.”

“I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being snide. You know I’m actually going to tell him as soon as he walks in the door.”

“Perhaps he’ll be more reasonable than you,” Chloe said. “Maybe Dad remembers what it’s like to be young. Oh, wait, I forgot, you can’t remember, because you were born old. Born knowing you’d have a kid someday whose dreams you’d spend your entire life harpooning.”

“I’m harpooning your dream of going to Barcelona?” said Lang. “The dream I didn’t know you had until five minutes ago?” She raised her hand before Chloe could protest, defend, explain, justify. “Where are you going to sleep, Chloe? Why don’t you first work on giving your father the answer to that pesky question. Because it’ll be the first thing he’ll ask. Then worry about everything else.”

Her parents didn’t yell, they didn’t punish. They were simply hyperaware of every single thing Chloe said and did. She got a new ribbon at the high school book fair? They knew. She once almost failed a biology test? They knew. She wore black eyeliner? Oh, they knew. She and Mason danced too close at one Friday night canteen? How they knew. They had no life except to live vicariously through hers. And the only thing that was expected of her, aside from not flunking out of school, was not to let down half a billion Chinese mothers by going to a Barcelona beach to have unfettered sex with her boyfriend.

“Going to Barcelona is also an education, Mom,” Chloe muttered. She really didn’t want to face her dad’s questions. What was she supposed to say? We’re going to get two rooms, and the girls will stay in one room, and the boys in the other? What kind of naïve fool for a parent would believe that?