Such a Fun Age(86)
Alex popped Kelley’s locker open. It was so vacant and sad. This was the locker she’d dropped several letters into, and Kelley didn’t even have the decency to leave it dirty for this moment. She hadn’t known what she expected to find, but the fact that it didn’t really need cleaning felt like a backhanded compliment. Still, Alex cleaned out Kelley’s locker as if it had a thin coat of high school wear and tear. Kelley’s locker creaked all the way open as Alex began to clean the locker directly beneath it.
She started at the top and planned to work her way down, but Alex felt and heard the rag snag on something in the top corner. There was something paper and triangled squished in the metal plates in between this locker and Kelley’s up above. With her fingernail underneath the rag, Alex bent farther on her knees and fingered the roof inside the locker, preparing herself for something foul to pop out like a forgotten sandwich bag or the hardened wings of something dead. But after one final swipe at what she thought was possibly a dirty magazine, hidden here for safekeeping, Alex gasped to see a flash of her own handwriting on folded loose-leaf paper fall out onto the ground in front of her knees. From the slot of space in between Kelley’s locker and the locker beneath it were five of her letters. They were grimy and bent and yellowed, but even worse, they were still unopened and sealed with her cursive on the front reading From A.M. Alex gasped. She turned over her shoulder to find she was thankfully still alone, rapidly picked up her unopened letters, and stuffed them between her breasts and her bra. She quickly wiped the locker down and slammed it shut, which was when she saw another set of initials engraved into the rusty metal. In the top corner of the locker door Alex saw an R and a C. Just below Kelley’s locker was Robbie Cormier’s.
For weeks, Alex had been thinking of Kelley and mostly just wondering, How could he do this? As it happened, all this time, he actually hadn’t.
But what did it matter now? The damage had been done. No matter what, students would call her names all summer, and Robbie’s admission wouldn’t be regranted. For a moment, Alex wondered if she should pull the letters out from her bra, or if they carried some dirt or muck that would make her skin break out. But once again, she looked over her shoulder and saw that no one was there. Alex was alone, and the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.
It would never be a relief to know that a locker malfunction was to blame for her demise, rather than Kelley Copeland himself. Believing that Kelley was the starting point of her adversity would always be easier than believing she’d simply slipped through an unlucky crack. This choice to believe otherwise, to pretend there weren’t coffee-colored letters pressed into her chest, would keep her close to him, even if staying close to Kelley meant holding a grudge for something that he never did. And all summer long, as Alex rolled silverware and received lousy tips, it was easier doing it while mad at Kelley, rather than having no relation to him at all.
And by the time Alex moved to New York, it was like she didn’t have to pretend.
Kelley was the guy who ruined her senior year, much in the same way that her name was spelled A-l-i-x.
Twenty-eight
It would be unfair to say that Emira Tucker stopped babysitting. She worked the front desk of the Green Party office but only for a total of five weeks. During a fund-raising event, Emira was refilling a large carafe of coffee when she saw a little boy place a handful of goldfish on a flimsy paper plate. “Hey,” Emira said to him. “How about we put those in a cup instead?” This child belonged to the regional director of the U.S. Census Bureau, a six-foot-tall woman named Paula Christi, who watched on from afar. Paula hired Emira as an administrative assistant, and Emira proceeded to spend the majority of her twenty-sixth year in meeting rooms and black SUVs.
Emira booked Paula’s appointments and ordered her lunches and stood backstage at panels and speeches. But she also rubbed the backs of Paula and other middle-aged adults as they cried and swore in private (she handed them tissues and told them it was okay). While her own news segment on WNFT was the gateway to the highest-paying position of her life (eighteen dollars an hour—she also received free lunch), Emira later found it funny that she once considered her four-minute segment on Philadelphia local news “a big deal.” The interview cut just after Zara announced Yeah, das right! And aside from a few YouTube compilations of Local News Interviews Gone Wrong, no one Emira’s age saw it. Not even Shaunie or Josefa; Emira made Zara swear.
Three days before Emira turned twenty-eight, her boss called her into her office. Emira sat down across from her and opened up her notebook, ready to take instructions or a lunch order, but Paula told her to put it away.
“You’ve been here for almost two years, yes?” Paula confirmed. After Emira nodded, she added, “When are you planning on leaving?”
Emira blinked three times and smiled. “Leaving?” she asked. Something Emira appreciated about Paula was her directness, but in moments like this, Emira was both grateful and afraid, because Paula always meant what she said. Emira squinted and asked, “Am I getting fired right now?”
“God, no. But Emira,” she said, “I’ve never had an assistant who wanted to continue being my assistant for more than two years. Basically, if you stayed on for much longer, it would mean I’m doing something wrong.”
Emira sat back and laughed. “Okay, well . . .” She looked at Paula’s desk and a picture of her family. “I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . but I actually think I’m okay.”