The Comeback(56)

“Well, the other night, that happened to me, and I was thinking that of course you should be the one to present Able with his lifetime achievement award. Doesn’t that make sense to you? He always did his best work with you.” Emilia leans forward again, taking my hand in hers. Her touch is smooth and warm.

I stare down at the table, my fingers tracking the grooves filled with glitter from arts and crafts sessions.

“It could also be just what you need too. To get back out there after . . . missing it all last year. You know? The show is on January eighth, so you have exactly a month to decide.”

“I have to think about it,” I say quietly, all the while telling myself that there’s no way she knows about any of it, that this could never be Emilia’s warped way of assuaging some of her guilt.

“Of course,” Emilia says soothingly. “Take as long as you need. A friend of mine is heading up the committee this year and she just asked me who would be most appropriate to do the honors, but if you don’t feel ready, then we can always find someone else.”

“I don’t . . . Did you speak about it with . . . Able?” I ask, wondering if Emilia will notice the uneven edge to my voice when I say his name.

“He thinks it’s a great idea,” Emilia says confidently, in a way that makes me think she hasn’t told him. I wonder what he’d say, whether he’d be able to tell her it was a bad idea without a valid reason or better option. Even I can see that Emilia is right; objectively there is no more suitable, no more press-worthy option for the event than to have me present the award to Able. I try to picture the look on his face as he comes up to the podium. Would he even be scared of me? Or would he never believe in a million years that I would expose him, knowing it would mean destroying myself in the process?

“You don’t have to say yes now, but wouldn’t it be perfect?”

“It could be,” I say, staring into the water in front of me as all of the nerves in my body start to tingle, making me feel as if I could peel off my skin at the kitchen table and step right out of it if I wanted to. “Perfect.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





So, I think it’s pretty simple. You just press this button and point the camera in the right direction,” I say, watching as Esme turns the camera over in her hands and studies the back closely. We are sitting in a lobster shack on PCH, and I’m not sure she can actually hear me over the noise of different football games blaring from twenty screens around the restaurant. I had a shower before I came out, and my hair is hanging in wet clumps above my shoulders, dripping down the back of my oversized T-shirt.

“There’s a ton more options than that, Grace, but I guess that’s the general idea,” she says, shaking her head while I signal for the waitress.

“Smart-ass,” I mutter as I scan the menu, even though I’m trying not to laugh. We order a small seafood platter to share.

“Why was this so urgent?” Esme asks, holding up the camera. “I had to bribe Blake to drive me here outside of her therapy schedule.”

“I don’t know, I just wanted you to have it,” I say, already losing faith in my idea. “How’s Anaheim?”

“Still Anaheim. The most barren of cultural wastelands,” Esme says importantly, as if she heard the phrase somewhere and memorized it. For some reason I think of Emilia, how I could deliver the phrase to make her laugh, even though making fun of where my parents live is always a cheap shot.

“How’s Mom?”

“Why don’t you call her and ask her yourself?”

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“Don’t bullshit me, Grace. ‘It’s complicated’ is what adults say when they don’t have an answer.”

“Are you . . . mad at her sometimes?” I ask slowly.

Esme turns her phone over and traces the sparkly Union Jack on the back of the case with her finger.

“Sometimes,” she says eventually.

I change the subject before she can ask me the same question.

“How are you feeling about going back to school soon?”

Esme glances at me, then back down at her chipped fingernails, which were once glittery gold.

“Unfortunately, school is the least of my problems. There’s a loose behavioral code that most people adhere to when faced with another human. That goes out the window when said human is replaced by a screen.”

“What are they doing now?”

“Honestly, Grace? I appreciate that you want to help, but I just don’t know if I can explain it to you. I’m totally aware that it’s this ‘different world’ from hearing Dad say it four hundred million times, but it’s also impossible for me to put it into perspective for you. Like movies and TV shows about kids my age? If they were actually trying to show our real lives, it would literally just be a bunch of kids staring at their phones. They’ll have to stop making movies about kids born past the year 2000.”

“It can’t be that bad,” I say, aiming for soothing but unsurprisingly not pulling it off.

“You have no idea. This is like trying to talk about Bitcoin to someone out of a Jane Austen novel. You’re bubble girl,” Esme says, eyeing me with disgust. I try not to show my surprise at her anger, and I realize I was probably the same when I was her age. Maybe I still am.