Two Truths and a Lie(79)

“Put some clothes on,” said Rebecca. “And shoes. We’re going out for dinner. I’m buying. Bob Lobster.” She poked Alexa’s leg with her toe. “Come on.” She had exactly one item on her agenda. She’d been holding on to her knowledge of Alexa’s YouTube channel for two weeks now, waiting, as Daniel had advised, for the right time to bring it up. And now was the right time.

Alexa groaned and said, “Why do you want to go all the way out there?” Bob Lobster was on the turnpike leading to Plum Island.

“I just do,” said Rebecca. “I like their clam rolls, and I haven’t had one all summer.” She moved toward Alexa like she was going to tickle her, and that got her going. No seventeen-year-old wanted to be tickled by her mother. “Come on. Morgan is at Katie’s. It’s just the two of us.”

Alexa groaned again and pulled on ripped jeans shorts and a tiny, tiny T-shirt. “Tourists love Bob Lobster because it’s ‘quaint’ and ‘no-frills,’” she said. “But when I go on vacation? When I’m a grown-up? I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m going to go to the Royal Villa of Grand Resort Lagonissi in Athens, which costs fifty thousand dollars a night. I’m looking to embrace the thrills, not avoid them.”

Is that because you are a YouTube personality? wondered Rebecca. But what she said was, “That will be nice for you, one day. For now we’re going no frills. I’ll drive.”

The sky over the Merrimack was a delicate pink bordered here and there by orange. There was the sense of summer coming to a close, of days and nights diffusing and re-forming as nostalgia. They rolled down the windows of the Acura and took in the briny, summery smell along the turnpike. They passed the weathered wood-shingled Joppa Flats Education Center, where Alexa had once attended a summer day camp, learning all about the native birds and marine life, and then they passed the Plum Island Airport, where Rebecca had once bought Peter a piloted ride on a WWII fighter plane for his birthday. He’d emerged looking green about the gills, but he claimed to have loved it.

They ordered their food—the clam roll for Rebecca, chicken Caesar wrap for Alexa—and, once they had it, repaired to one of the outside tables, where they tried to ignore the buzzing flies and concentrate instead on the loveliness of the sky. Alexa was facing away from the road and Rebecca toward it; she could see the light playing on the Pink House. She kept her eyes trained across the street so she wouldn’t have to meet Alexa’s when she said, “I watched your YouTube channel.”

Alexa put down her wrap. Her voice shook a little. “You what?”

“You heard me.” Rebecca selected an onion ring from her basket and met Alexa’s eyes. “Silk Stockings. I watched it.”

“How’d you know about it?”

“From Morgan. Apparently all her friends watch it. And at least half the Mom Squad.”

“They do? Are you serious?” Alexa looked the way Peter had after the WWII plane ride.

“I am very serious. You’re a big local hit, apparently. Morgan told me about it that day we saw you and Cam on Pleasant Street, but I wasn’t sure then how to bring it up. So I’ve just been watching. Catching up. Waiting, I guess.”

There was a long pause during which Rebecca watched a lot of emotions cross Alexa’s face: surprise, anger, stubbornness, a little bit of pride.

“Did you like it?”

Rebecca was touched by how eager Alexa sounded; she was for an instant the eight-year-old bringing home her self-portrait from art class and presenting it to Peter and Rebecca.

Rebecca poked through the onion rings to find another winner, and she spoke carefully: she’d been preparing for this.

“You have a great presence in front of the camera, and a way of condensing the topics into a digestible, educational format.”

“Thank you,” said Alexa.

“But that isn’t the point. My liking it isn’t the point.”

Alexa kept her eyes on Rebecca. “What’s the point?”

“Honey, you’re seventeen years old, and you have a very public online personality. Sixteen thousand subscribers?”

“Almost seventeen thousand,” corrected Alexa. “I’ve picked up a bunch of new ones recently.”

“But people don’t have to subscribe to watch, right?”

“Right.”

“So anybody can find you. Anybody can watch those videos, and do—whatever they want with them. To them.”

“Ew. Mom.”

“Not just people who want to learn about the stock market, but any old pervert or freak.”

Alexa sighed, exasperated. “I know, Mom.”

Rebecca felt her voice take a turn toward sharp. “You might not know, Alexa. I know you think you’re all the way grown up, honey. But you’re not grown up. You’re not even eighteen yet.”

“Almost.”

Rebecca had done what Daniel had advised. She’d sat on the knowledge of Silk Stockings while she watched a lot of the videos and read through many of the comments. But now she had to speak up. Alexa was about to step into Rebecca’s shoes at Colby—she was about to go off on her own! When Rebecca had matriculated at Colby she’d hadn’t been just wet behind the ears; she’d been positively sopping. She cringed when she thought of some of the mistakes she’d made. And that was pre-social media, when kids had the luxury of anonymity while they were bungling their young lives.