Nice Girls(23)

“Smile, Mary! Start off the week on a positive note!” said Jim, passing by. The light was bouncing off his white hair. I smiled at him so hard that my cheeks hurt.

I saw Dwayne once during the morning. He came by to refill the change drawer with new rolled coins. Dwayne wasn’t smiling much, either. He looked pale, as if he’d fallen sick.

“You okay, Ivy League?” he asked quietly, not looking at me.

“I’ve been better.”

“Did you hear about what happened at the lake? Like after we left?”

“The arm wasn’t Olivia’s.”

“Nope,” said Dwayne glumly. “It was a whole other girl.”

“It’s horrible, and I hate to say it, but at least it wasn’t—”

“Olivia?” Dwayne finished, shaking his head. “That’s one hell of a silver lining.”

He was thinking about it, too—the mottled, gray forearm in the sand. The way that the bone had been hacked off from the rest of the body. The fact that there was a murderer out there who’d killed DeMaria Jackson. The fact that Olivia was still unaccounted for. It haunted him, too.

After Dwayne left, I scanned more grocery items until it was finally lunch. As I sped past the customer service desk, I heard a woman’s angry voice.

“Goddammit, how dare you people try to sell me spoiled food—you really think someone wouldn’t notice?”

I recognized that voice—Mrs. Willand, Olivia’s mother. Svelte, blond Mrs. Willand who looked like she’d just stepped out of yoga class. Beneath her jacket, she wore Lululemon leggings and bright orange tennis shoes. Her hair was in a bob cut. A stocky brunet man stood next to her, also in athletic wear. It wasn’t her blond husband.

They both had their backs turned to me.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, for the inconvenience. But this Greek yogurt isn’t spoiled,” said Sara, the overweight woman who worked at the desk.

“This yogurt is expiring in less than a week,” ranted Mrs. Willand, leaning on the counter. “This should’ve been off the shelves a week ago.”

“I can give you a refund, ma’am—”

“Why do you people keep testing me,” fumed Mrs. Willand, burying her head in her hands. “I’m so tired. I can’t deal with this, too.”

Her back was heaving—Mrs. Willand was crying now. The brunet man tenderly put a hand on her back. He said something to Sara, his voice low like gravel.

Sara nodded, her face growing pale. She suddenly saw me over Mrs. Willand’s shoulder.

Sara’s eyes looked desperate, begging for me to come help her.

But I backed away, beelining for the back room.



“I think my mom’s having an affair,” Olivia once told me. We were ten or eleven years old, lying on a mess of blankets and pillows on the floor of Olivia’s pink bedroom. It was a sleepover for the two of us.

“Do you have any proof?” I asked.

“Mom’s pretty. Men all look at her,” said Olivia, shrugging. “That stuff always happens in the movies.”

I couldn’t understand how one parent could cheat on the other. Mom had been dead for a couple of years, but I doubted that she would have cheated. She was too religious, too kind to do that. And Dad was too lazy—even too loyal—to hurt Mom. Our family preferred to keep things the way they were. We were steady.

“What about your dad?” I asked.

Olivia giggled, turning to me on her pillow.

“Ew, why would he cheat? Who wants to cheat with him?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “That’s why he uses the Internet. And the magazines at the cabin.”

“That’s—ew. Ew!”

The two of us cackled with laughter. Olivia was right—who would cheat with Mr. Willand? He had a pink face and a growing potbelly.

Soon after, Olivia fell asleep, her hair messy over her pillow and her mouth slightly agape.

I always knew that the Willands had a nicer house, nicer clothes, and more money than my family. The Willands were prettier than us, better liked. But that night I felt smug to know that at least my parents weren’t bad people.



In the lunchroom, I sat at the far end of a table by myself. I nibbled through a salad, scrolling through the Internet on my phone.

It only took me a minute to find Kevin’s Facebook account. His profile picture was basic—Kevin holding a gargantuan fish that he’d caught on a boat. His face was covered beneath a pair of sports sunglasses.

We were Facebook friends. I’d spent years hating him, only for us to add each other in high school. It happened all the time on the Internet—people despised each other in person, but online, they were happy enough to add one another as a “friend” or “follower.” The numbers were more important. The clout was everything.

Kevin’s Facebook listed his cell phone number. I spent a long time drafting a text message. I kept deleting, then rewriting the entire thing.

After most of my lunch break had passed, I sent it, my heart pounding: Hey Kevin! This is Mary from high school. I’m back in LL right now. Things seem really crazy here, and I was hoping to catch up with you. Would you want to grab coffee sometime?

I was embarrassed by my own text. It was too casual. There was no guarantee that Kevin would respond. For all he knew, I was still the same fat girl from high school. I wasn’t worth the time or the attention.