Hadley & Grace(71)

“Not really. I just didn’t talk about it. I kept the parts I didn’t want people to know to myself. You’d be surprised how little people ask about your past and how little they pay attention when you answer. Most people are so caught up in their own lives they don’t really care about yours.”

A long beat of silence passes, Grace looking down at her hands and remembering when they were Savannah’s—same hands, different girl.

“You think I can do that?” Mattie asks.

Grace lifts her face. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, for you it’s a little different; your mom and Skipper still know you. But no one else does. It wouldn’t be easy. You’d actually have to change. No one can do that part for you. For me, it was all about forgiveness, learning how to let go of all the anger I was holding on to. It was tough. Changing.”

Mattie looks away, and Grace watches as she turns the idea in her mind, once again feeling like looking at Mattie is a little like looking at a reflection of her younger self.

“So, I would need to change my name?” Mattie says.

“You don’t have to. For me, it helped. Savannah is who I was, and Grace is who I am. Like one of those before-and-after transformations, there’s a clear break between then and now, past and future.” She pauses, then adds, “What’s your real name? What is Mattie short for?”

“Matilde,” Mattie mumbles, looking embarrassed. “It was my dad’s grandmother’s name.”

Grace considers it for a moment. “How about Tillie? That’s pretty cool.”

Mattie doesn’t say anything, but Grace feels her rolling it around in her brain. Tillie Torelli. Grace thinks it rocks.

Finally, Mattie says, “Do you really think I could pull off being Tillie?”

“I do.”

Mattie almost smiles, then pushes off the tub to stand. “You know that boy who posted the picture last night?”

“Yeah.”

“He was wearing Superman underwear.”

“You saw his underwear?”

“He forgot to zip his fly.”

“Too bad you couldn’t post that on Snapchat.”

Mattie snort laughs, and Grace laughs as well thinking about it: #supermanskivviesloser.

“What’s going on in there? Let me in,” Hadley pouts, sounding like a toddler who’s been left out of a game.

“Should we let her in?” Mattie says.

Grace touches her hair and is about to shake her head, but Mattie is already reaching for the door.





47





HADLEY


Hadley opens her eyes and immediately regrets it. Her hangover has really heated up now, and the light through the windshield works like daggers on her brain. She grabs hold of her head on either side, fearing her skull will actually split in two from whatever is chiseling at it from the inside. She was dreaming of her mom, the sweet memory drifting away before she could grab hold of it—granola and berries, perhaps a dream about breakfast. She’s hungry. It’s a little past four, and they haven’t eaten since their late breakfast six hours ago.

Grace pulls into a gas station with a minimart, part of a small outcropping of businesses with a smattering of houses and cows behind them. It’s amazing how many of these small towns they’ve driven through, communities of a few thousand people in the middle of nowhere, making a living ranching, farming, running a gas station, or who knows what. So little surrounded by so much emptiness, and it makes Hadley wonder how the world can be so crowded in other places.

“Where are we?” she says.

“Laramie.”

“State?”

“Wyoming.”

Hadley pushes herself up and goes to run her fingers through her hair and hits only air.

She keeps forgetting it’s gone, her silky mane now shorn to a choppy pixie cut. She glances sideways at Grace, and just like this morning, the sight of her with straight-ironed ink-black hair makes her smile, mostly because she knows how much Grace hates it and also because of how much it makes her look like Melissa. Though, on second glance, the fierce scowl and piercing glare are 100 percent Grace.

“What?” Grace says, catching Hadley looking at her.

“Nothing.”

The scowl deepens; then she turns to the back seat. “Mattie, take Skipper to the bathroom but keep him out of sight. I’m going to pay for the gas and buy some snacks.”

Things this morning did not go well with Skipper. While the rest of them had all agreed, however reluctantly, to transform their looks, Skipper would have none of it—not a haircut, not a hat change, and definitely not a uniform change. So, while the rest of them no longer look like themselves, Skipper continues to look exactly like himself: a special little boy in a Dodgers uniform.

This has all been too much for him. He has never dealt with stress well, and the past four days have been extraordinarily stressful. He doesn’t understand everything that is happening, but he understands enough to know that yesterday Mattie was in danger, that Hadley was shooting a gun, that Grace was running over motorcycles with a truck, and that afterward, Hadley was throwing up and everyone was arguing and crying.

When it was time to leave the hotel this morning, Skipper refused. His eyes still fixed on the wall, as they had been all morning, he folded his arms and said simply, “No.”