Nice Girls(69)

Dad waited for me to go before he left for Mass. I expected him to mention my mug shot—a comment from Mass, a question from the Willands—but he said nothing.

In the driveway, I saw him watching me from the living room. There was a light flurry of snow in the air, covering the house and the cul-de-sac. I imagined myself running into it, until I had gotten far away.



For once, the break room of Goodhue Groceries was comforting. I saw the jackets hung up on the coatrack, the employee locker bank, the empty lunch tables. Work was a repose. The customers were terrible, but I could depend on them. They would distract me.

After I opened my checkout lane, Jim came by. I could hear it in the way he walked, each step halting for a slight second too long.

I tried to smile so hard that my cheeks hurt.

“How’s it going, Jim?”

“You have a criminal record?” he asked.

I froze midsmile.

Jim was frowning, his arms folded across his chest. He was wary, as if he were looking at a bomb instead of a person.

“So it’s true?” Jim asked. “The fourth-degree assault charge?”

“It was dropped,” I blurted out. My mind was focused on the email. Jim had received it. “It’s not . . . it’s not real.”

“You lied, Mary. On the paperwork, you said you had no criminal record.” Jim didn’t blink. “And you’ve got a whole article. That’s something you should’ve told us.”

I was watching myself slip away, my hands slackening off the rope, gravity tugging me down. There was no stopping it.

“I quit,” I croaked.

“You can’t quit if you’ve been let go.”

I shook my head. I could imagine the scene from a distance, from the other end of the store: Jim standing there, his arms crossed, and me too frozen to move. But the scene was too stilted, too flat, as if the volume had been turned off. I sensed no urgency, no panic.

I was still drowsy.

People were fired every day. They were let go because of budget issues or a lack of skills. Sometimes the boss was in a bad mood. Other times they deserved it.

But I wasn’t like them. I was boring and smart and I had busted my ass off to get into Cornell. I was nice. I wasn’t someone who got fired.

“I think you should go, Mary,” Jim said, unsmiling. “You can return your uniform and employee card by the end of this week. I need your polo and pants to be cleaned. And as for other things . . .”

It was easy to block out Jim’s voice. He talked too much for his own good.

Nearby, at the center of the self-checkout aisle, someone had decorated the pita chip display. It reminded me of a Christmas tree—the tall pyramid shape and the small pita chip bags that hung like baubles. But someone had recently put real ornaments on there, in glittery red and gold and silver.

We weren’t even past Thanksgiving yet.

“Erin will fetch your things from your locker. You can wait by the bathrooms,” Jim said, walking away. “Good luck.”

It was my cue to leave. I left the aisle, trying not to look at the faces that watched me from self-checkout. Just like at the dorm, everyone was looking at me. This time, my cheeks were frozen in place, midsmile. I pretended I was fine.

But instead of walking to the back room, I looped around to the self-checkout aisle. My legs were moving on their own. I was watching myself from above.

It was only a nightmare, I was sure of it. None of it was real—it was too anticlimactic. Jim hadn’t fired me. I had imagined the whole thing, just as I had imagined the Christmas tree of pita chips.

I reached out and touched a bag. I felt the sandiness of the paper. It was biodegradable.

And I shoved the whole display.

The little chip bags went flying everywhere. The rack crashed over. There was a scream from nearby. Then Jim shouted at me to get the hell out. I looked at the mess and walked away. If no one picked up the bags, then they would degrade into compost in the middle of the store. I wanted that, a little pile of dirt where I had once been.



I was buzzing in the car, my pulse racing. I saw the lake, a dark slab of gray beneath the sky. I pictured myself wading into the water, one foot in front of the other until I was completely submerged. It seemed like a lovely way to go.

But in reality, the lake was polluted with algae and zebra mussels and dead bodies.

At home, I slammed the door shut behind me.

In the gray morning light, the couches looked worn. Our coffee table was still chipped in a corner where I had once smashed into it with a toy. The carpet still had its ugly red design. And the walls still had the framed pictures of me and Mom and Dad throughout the years.

The living room had always looked like this, from my birth onward. It would stay the same even after I left.

And I was the same. Still fat, pathetic, and easy to ignore. Even easier to push around.

I thought I could make things different.

I wanted to be seen, so I excelled in school. I wanted to be remembered, so I aimed for an Ivy. I wanted to be treated well, so I lost the weight. And when Carly mocked me, I wanted to prove her wrong. I wanted to stand up for myself.

But none of it had worked.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t change.

The person I had tried to become in college—she was temporary, a mirage. She was never meant to last.

Ivy League Mary had never been real.