Nice Girls(7)

As I passed the elementary school, I heard the wail of sirens. Two police cars appeared far behind me, their lights flashing red and blue. I quickly pulled over. The police sped by so quickly that the car shook.

A few minutes later, I saw two more speeding by. Madison used to joke about the secret meth labs in the suburbs. With the amount of police I’d seen, she might have been right.

I stopped first at Goodhue Groceries. It was a popular supermarket in Minnesota. People liked the organic groceries and the soothing green interior. Dad hated the pricing.

On a Monday morning, Goodhue Groceries was surprisingly busy. There were long lines of harried shoppers and only two open registers. The store was decorated for Halloween—fake cobwebs over the shelves, orange streamers, and displays of candy everywhere. I flagged down a tall teenager in a green polo. His face was pimply.

“Hi, where do I drop off a job application?”

The teenager stared at me, as if I’d spoken in Dutch. The badge on his shirt said his name was Ron.

I handed him the form.

“Can you just give this to your supervisor?”

Ron’s ears glowed pink as he spoke into a walkie-talkie: “Hey, what am I supposed to do with a paper application? Can you handle this? I’m near checkout nine.”

As we waited, Ron skimmed through the form. He looked like he was barely out of high school. The longer he looked at my information, the more uncomfortable I got.

“You interested in working for us?” asked a voice.

I wanted to shrivel up immediately—I recognized him. Even in a green polo shirt and a pair of khakis, he looked the same as ever: Dwayne Turner, former high school football star. Tall, handsome. He’d made history as the first Black prom king at our high school. That same year, he helped carry the Liberty Lake Patriots to the state football championship. Other than one semester of eleventh-grade AP English, we’d never interacted.

“What am I supposed to do with a paper application?” Ron asked. With Dwayne now towering over him, Ron had straightened up.

“Most people apply online,” said Dwayne, addressing me. “But since you’re here already, we can do a quick interview.”

I could only nod.

We left Ron out on the floor and headed through a large back room. Down a hallway we passed by the break room and entered a small assistant manager’s office. Dwayne sat down at the computer. On a lone shelf above the desk, there was a row of small trophies and medals. They were awards for wrestling and track-and-field—sports that Dwayne had played during the off-season. But his football memorabilia were nowhere to be found.

“I’ll talk to my supervisor Jim about you,” said Dwayne, typing on the computer. “With the holidays, we wanted to hire more people anyway.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll just send him a quick reminder email about you . . . Mary,” said Dwayne, glancing at the form. He paused, doing a double take. “Ivy League Mary?”

As stupid as it was, I found myself nodding.

Ivy League Mary, resident whiz kid and overachiever. Perennial honor roll student. AP scholar with distinction. Midwest Regionals Quiz Bowl champion. National Honor Society secretary. School newspaper copy desk chief. Drama club stagehand. Prominent community volunteer, total logged hours in twelfth grade: 372. ACT score: 35. SAT score: 2320. Liberty Lake’s Academic Patriot Scholarship winner. Cumulative GPA: 4.09. High school class of 2012 salutatorian, second only to Madison.

Ivy League Mary, the girl with the big stomach and the baggy clothes and the quiet voice. Ivy League Mary, who had been ignored and called a teacher’s pet during all of high school. Until college acceptances came in the spring of 2012.

Instead of attending a state school or a no-name private school, I had managed to ditch the entire Midwest for one of the most elite universities in the world: Cornell. I’d made it big.

I was featured in the local newspaper as “Liberty Lake’s ‘Ivy League Mary.’” The city had produced other Ivy League students before, but none of them had a dead mother like mine and an equally sad appearance to boot. I was a feel-good story, a memorable one. And the nickname stuck. During those last few months of high school, I reveled in it. Suddenly people were speaking to me at school, wishing me congratulations. Even when Olivia Willand and Sydney Bello had sniped that I’d gotten into the easiest Ivy, it didn’t matter.

Ivy League Mary was going to do big things.

Ivy League Mary was never going to come back.

“Sorry if I sounded shocked,” said Dwayne, his eyes on the screen. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s fine,” I said. The last time anyone had seen me in town, I’d been about fifty pounds heavier.

“Not to be rude,” he said gently, still typing away, “but aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

I felt my face growing hot, the conversation heading somewhere that I didn’t want to go.

“Why exactly is Ivy League Mary back home?”

“Why aren’t you playing college football?” I said.

Dwayne’s eyes snapped onto mine. We stared at each other blankly. I couldn’t read him.

It was the middle of college football season. As Liberty Lake’s star quarterback, Dwayne had signed on to play for one of the state schools. He was supposed to be living the high life at some sprawling university campus. Not working at his hometown grocery store.