You Think It, I'll Say It(26)

“Be sure to take the cable car up Mount Majesty,” Ashley was saying. “That was our favorite thing so far, right, Ed? Oh, and we’re hiking to Moose Lake tomorrow, which is supposed to be amazing.”

Oh, Jesus, I thought, because that was what Jason and I had been planning, too. Then I thought we could easily go to Moose Lake on a different day, and then I heard Jason say, “We’re going there tomorrow, too. It’s clearly the place to be.” I knew that if I made eye contact with him, it would be to glare, so instead I looked at Ashley.

“Well, I don’t know what time you’re taking off,” she said, “but if you wanted to, we could all…” She giggled a little, and it was such a tentative sound that I almost felt sorry for her. But even then I was conscious of feeling sorry not for Ashley Frye but for Ashley Horsford. She added, “I mean, probably you guys want alone time, since you just arrived….”

There was a momentary silence—Jason was deferring to me, at least now that he’d set this situation in motion—and because I couldn’t deal with the awkwardness of declining, I said, “Why don’t we touch base in the morning?”

“Oh, this’ll be so fun!” Ashley exclaimed. “We’re in Room 412. What number are you?”

“We’re in one of the cabins.” I turned back to Jason. “It’s called Juniper, right?”

I saw Ashley registering this information—the rooms cost $400 a night, and the cabins cost $800—but all she said was “Great, then. We’ll call you tomorrow.” She stepped forward, setting her hand on my arm. “And really, Maggie, I know this sounds corny, but I’m so impressed by your success. I always knew you’d go far.” Her last comment was such an enormous lie that I longed for the courage to dismiss it, right there and to her face, for the bullshit it was. The reality, however, is that my balls aren’t as big as my husband imagines, and I simply said “Thanks.”

I waited until Ashley and Ed had left the bar before saying to Jason, “Why did you do that?”

“Man, was she fawning over you.” He shook his head.

“That’s what you want to listen to all day tomorrow?”

Jason laughed. “Maybe she got it out of her system.”

“I don’t understand why you invited them to join us right after I told you I never liked her.”

“She suggested it, and you agreed to it, not me. Relax, Magpie.” Jason himself seemed perfectly relaxed—he pretty much always does, which is one of his best qualities, except when it’s infuriating.

“I don’t think you get it. It’s not like she’s this annoying but harmless person. She’s kind of evil.”

At this, Jason really laughed, and I said, “I’m not kidding. She once—” I hadn’t thought about this for years. Even though I wasn’t cool in high school, I’m not haunted by it. I’ve lived in Chicago since college, I go back to Cleveland for a couple days at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and that’s it. My sister and I revert to our much younger selves, we bake chocolate-chip cookies and order pizza and watch The Cutting Edge or the Anne of Green Gables miniseries from the eighties, while Jason and my dad play basketball in the driveway. I never call anyone from my past—I’ve never gone to a high school reunion, never tried to, like, redeem myself in some public setting, among the people I once knew.

“Ashley wasn’t in my grade,” I said. “She was a year younger. And when she started as a freshman, right away, she got a lot of attention. She was sort of crowned the official prettiest freshman. And in my class was this girl who was our year’s equivalent of Ashley, Jenny Josephson, and Jenny Josephson went out with a guy named Bobby, who—”

“Wait,” Jason interrupted. “Am I supposed to pretend I’m actually following this?”

“I think you’re up to the challenge,” I said. “Early in our sophomore year, which was Ashley’s freshman year, rumors started that Bobby was going to dump Jenny Josephson for Ashley. I didn’t believe it because, you know, Jenny and Bobby were our super-couple. But it took on this tone of inevitability, like someone somewhere had decided that Ashley was even hotter than Jenny, and so Bobby had no choice but to pursue her. He was the quarterback—did I mention that?”

“Of course he was,” Jason said.

“So Ashley and Bobby become a couple, and Jenny is completely traumatized. She didn’t come to school for a week, and I heard she’d started cutting herself. This was in 1989, and I barely even knew what cutting was. Ashley and Bobby are dating, and then at a party a few weeks later—needless to say, I wasn’t there—Ashley cheats on him with some other football player, so she and Bobby break up, Bobby and Jenny Josephson get back together, and Ashley starts going out with the other football player. I don’t even think she’d ever really liked Bobby. It had just been some big ego trip, but she’d practically destroyed Jenny Josephson in the process.”

“Why was it Ashley’s fault?” Jason said. “Wasn’t Bobby equally responsible?”

“Bobby was in the wrong, too,” I said. “But Ashley shouldn’t have poached another girl’s boyfriend.”

Jason raised his eyebrows, which was supposed to show that he was restraining himself from remarking, as he does on a regular basis, that I’m too hard on my own gender. I strongly disagree with this assessment and consider myself an equal-opportunity faultfinder.