I spot a bag of pods on the lower shelf and grab them. “Here! Now let’s go.”
“It was your idea to stop at the store, Lily. And you know I don’t like the pods. The liquid detergent is better.”
“Mom, look at me.” I gesture to my outfit: old leggings, oversized sweatshirt, fluffy pink slippers. “Do I look like I’m fit to be seen in public?”
To make matters worse, my hair is pulled half back in a clip, and the curtain bangs I spontaneously asked for in the midst of my quarter-life crisis keep escaping from it, blocking my vision.
“I’m going through a personal transformation,” I told my hairdresser, pausing for dramatic effect. “I want my new hair to reflect that.”
“Okay,” she said, and then proceeded to ruin my life.
She wielded her scissors as if they were garden shears until all that was left was the ugliest topiary imaginable. And it was on my head. I thought the bangs would make me feel better, but of course they only made everything worse.
“Lily.” Rose’s “mom voice” makes a reappearance—calm but authoritarian—the same tone she used to take when I was a toddler having a meltdown. “It’s not my fault you left the house in your pajamas.”
Right now, Rose is wearing flared white jeans, raffia wedges, and a chunky tan-and-white sweater. For not the first time, I’m struck by her simple elegance. When I was a kid, Rose’s beauty was a popular point of teasing. “Lily’s mom is HOT!” I remember hearing as early as sixth grade from Stephen Levinson, the very boy I had a crush on. Once, when I was fifteen, I tried to be clever and rebutted with “I have her genes. You should date me now and consider it a long-term investment.” But even I doubted the statement as soon as I said it.
With Rose’s sleek red hair, long legs, and high cheekbones, no one with eyes and half a brain could disagree. I always hoped I would grow up to look like her, but it seems the only feature I managed to inherit is her red hair. Although, hers is straight and smooth while mine is curly and unwieldy. On my mom, the color looks powerful and singular. On me, it looks like my head is on fire.
“There it is!” says Rose now, pointing to a top shelf. She frowns. “It’s so high up, we might need to ask someone to help us.”
She looks around, searching for an available employee, but I’ve already devised a plan.
“I’ve got this,” I say, beginning to climb. I step on the lower shelf and stretch my hand up. The metal groans but stays put.
“Lily!” Mom shouts. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to get hurt.”
The detergent is just within reach. I can almost grab it. “Give me a boost,” I say.
“Lily, get down.”
This has always been our dynamic. When I was growing up, Mom used to call me her “wild little thing,” because she was always off chasing after me.
I climb another shelf and… there it is! I wrap my fingers around the handle and jut it out into the air like it’s a trophy.
“Woo-hoo!” I yelp. “And you said I wasn’t athletic. Look at me now!”
Rose is laughing but she also looks nervous. “Okay, okay. You’re right. You’re the most athletic person in the world. You would absolutely set a world record, no problem. Now, please, just get down.”
“Thank you,” I say, beginning my descent. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
I’m almost back on the ground when I hear someone call out my name.
“Lily Gardner?”
I turn around slowly, a heroine in a horror movie. In the harsh fluorescent light of Stop & Shop, I find myself for the first time in a year face-to-face with Henry Wright: my ex-boyfriend, the former love of my life, and the very last person I want to see.
He looks the same but also somehow more himself. His back straighter and his shoulders broader. His face filled in. His hair is shorter, cropped like a helmet, his jacket is less baggy, and his shoes are the kind of purposefully roughed-up, pre-scuffed sneakers that cost upward of five hundred bucks. We used to make fun of that kind of thing.
I drink him in for several seconds, excruciatingly aware of my own disheveled appearance, before I can process the full image. He’s holding hands with a girl. She has neat, short blond hair, no ill-conceived bangs in sight, a small smile, and an even smaller nose. She wears a white eyelet sundress, and the combined effect makes her look like an angel or a ghost, depending on your point of view. Right now, for me, it’s a bit of both. Even more terrifying, a beautiful ghost.
The girl smiles wistfully at Henry, the way people in love always smile: as if they know the secret of the universe, which of course they do. I recognize the expression, because not too long ago I used to look at Henry the same way.
Something on the girl’s hand catches the light, attracting my attention downward. On her fourth finger is the unmistakable glint of a diamond ring.
At that precise moment, my footing loses traction, my hands slip, and everything in the world comes crashing down.
Chapter ThreeLily
