The Last Housewife (83)

JAMIE: Ruskin bought you. ’Cause there’s no insurance that will save you if people find out you knowingly employed a teacher who beats women and terrorizes students.

SHAY: I burned down his classroom and walked away, so maybe I have agency, too, Jamie.

JAMIE: You’re right. It’s just…you were a kid.

SHAY: Who am I kidding? I went home and cried. I didn’t cry once after prom, and suddenly after this I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t going to jail. I was only getting grounded. I should’ve been happy. But I was devastated.

JAMIE: You were furious, and you wanted to destroy something, even if the only thing you could manage was your own life.

SHAY: In a way, I did destroy it. That day, locked in my room, I went online, withdrew from UT, and accepted the offer at Whitney. Changed the course of my life, just like that. Want to know why? Because one night, sophomore year, when he saw me looking at college brochures, Mr. Trevors said Whitney was a school for feminazis.

A throwaway comment, but I never stopped thinking about it. And suddenly, all I wanted was to be the kind of woman he would hate.

JAMIE: We had a pact, remember? Since middle school. You, me, and Clara were supposed to go to UT together. When you said you were switching to Whitney, I thought it was because you were done with me after our fight.

SHAY: I wasn’t doing a great job communicating back then. Besides, it was pathetic. Years of agonizing over colleges, doing all those pageants to win a scholarship, and I made my entire decision at the drop of a hat, based on something a man said to me once. There I was, eighteen years old, thinking I was taking back power. And look where Whitney led me.

(Silence.)

My whole life has been like that. Starts and stops. Doing something brave, getting something right, then messing up, burning all the progress to the ground. I can’t seem to get it straight. I’m stuck in a loop. Always back to the beginning.

JAMIE: But you keep trying. What else is there?

SHAY: Now that you know the truth about me, do you even want to come back to bed?

(Deep inhale. Footsteps. Creaking springs.)

Hey, wait. What’s wrong?

End of transcript.





Chapter Thirty-One


“I lied,” Jamie said. While I’d talked, he’d turned his back, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt. Now he sat fully clothed on the bed, eyes cast down to his feet.

“About what?”

His voice was low and husky. “I didn’t ask you to prom because I was being a good friend. I wanted to go with you.”

I tried to remember that day but couldn’t. The memory had dissolved. “Really?”

“Really.” Jamie’s eyes moved to the bedsheets. He still wouldn’t look at me. I became acutely aware of my heartbeat. “I’ll tell you something else. The day you told me you switched to Whitney, I accepted my offer at Columbia. Only a train ride away.”

“I thought you went for the journalism program.”

Gently, almost apologetically, he shook his head. “Shay, when we were in middle school, I stopped going to that soccer camp in California… Remember the one by the beach? Because you couldn’t afford it, and I wanted to stay home with you all summer. Freshman year, when you wanted to come over every night to study, I dropped everything—piano lessons, extra soccer coaching—so I would be free. Got into a huge fight with my mom over it, actually. When we were juniors, I used to time my showers after soccer practice with the end of cheer, so I could drive you home.” He laughed. “My life revolved around finding ways to spend time with you.”

“We were best friends,” I said.

He looked at me but didn’t say a word. Just let me see the truth, plain on his face.

“For how long?” I asked.

This time, his smile was rueful. “Always.”

***

The air in the room had turned cool and crisp. Jamie lay beside me, breathing deeply, while I watched the dark seep out of the sky through the window.

Maybe it was the last story that did it, the last puzzle piece falling into place. Or maybe it was just a matter of time, all the talking and remembering catching up to me. Whatever it was, I finally knew what to do. From one second to the next, the knowledge was just there, as if it always had been.

“I’m glad I told you about the fire,” I whispered, simply for the pleasure of hearing it out loud.

“I’m glad, too,” murmured Jamie, in a sleep-drugged voice. So he was awake.

I turned. His eyes were closed, face creased by the pillow. “I think I know how my book ends,” I said.

Slowly, his eyes blinked open. “You still haven’t told me what it’s about.”

I smiled. “I was inspired by Scheherazade.”

He frowned. “From The Thousand and One Nights? The story you refused to talk about with Mr. Trevors?”

I settled deeper into the sheets. “You were right. I did have a lot to say. Just not to him.”

Silence stretched, but I knew Jamie well enough to know it was contemplative.

“Hey.” I closed my eyes. “Let’s go out, okay? I’ll wear a nice dress, and you can bring me a corsage, and we’ll get drunk and dance.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I want to do it over again. Tie things up clean.”