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It has become tradition when we arrive in Cancún for Melanie and me to strip to our bathing suits as soon as we get into the condo and run to the beach for an inaugural swim. It’s like our vacation baptism. We’ve done it for every one of the last nine years we’ve come down here.
But this year, when Melanie digs through her suitcase for a bikini, I go to the little desk next to the kitchen that normally holds nothing but cookbooks and prop open my textbooks. Every day, from four to six, I am to have study hall. I get New Year’s Day off, but that’s it. These are the terms of my parole.
I kept my grades a secret throughout the entire semester, so when the report cards showed up at the end of the term, it was kind of a shocker. I’d tried. I really had. After my midterms were so dismal, I’d tried harder, but it wasn’t like my bad grades were a result of slacking off. Or skipping classes. Or partying.
But I might as well have been partying, given how tired I was all the time. It didn’t matter if I got ten hours of sleep the night before—once I set foot in the lecture hall and the professor started droning on about wave motion, writing up equations on the monitor, the numbers would start dancing before my eyes and then I’d feel my lids grow heavy, and I’d wake to other students tripping over my legs to get to their next class.
During Reading Week, I drank so much espresso that I got no sleep at all, as if I was using up all the credits from the class naps. I crammed as hard as I could, but by that point, I’d fallen so behind, I was beyond help.
Given all that, I thought it was miraculous I finished the semester with a 2.7.
Needless to say, my parents thought otherwise.
When my grades came through last week, they flipped out. And when my parents flip out, they don’t yell—they get quiet. But their disappointment and anger is deafening.
“What do you think we should do about this, Allyson?” they asked me as we sat at the dining room table, as if they were truly soliciting my opinion. Then they presented two options. We could cancel the trip, which would be terribly unfair for the rest of them, or I could agree to go under certain conditions.
Melanie shoots me sympathy looks as she disappears to change into her suit. Part of me wishes she’d boycott the beach in solidarity, though I know that’s selfish, but it seems like something the old Melanie would’ve done.
But this is the new Melanie. Or the new, new Melanie. In the month since Thanksgiving, she looks totally different. Again. She cut her hair all asymmetrical and fringy, and she got a nose ring, which her parents gave her crap about until she told them it was between that and a tattoo. Now that she’s changed into a bikini, I see that she’s let her armpit hair grow, though her hair is so fine and blond, it barely shows.
“Bye,” she mouths as she slips out the front door, her mom, Susan, thrusting a tube of SPF-40 into her hands. My mom is digging through a suitcase for her special magnifying glass so she can check all mattresses for bedbugs. When she finds it, she walks by me and pretends to look at my chem book with it. I snap the book shut. She gives me a pissy look.
“You think I want to be your warden? I thought I’d have all this free time now that you’re in college, but it’s like keeping you on track is its own full-time job.”
Who asked you to keep me on track? I fume. In my head. But I bite my lip and open the chemistry textbook out and dutifully reread the first chapters as Mom has instructed me to do for catch-up. They make no more sense to me now than they did the first time I attempted them.
That night, we all six go out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant, one of the eight restaurants attached to the resort. We go here every year for our first night out. The waiters wear giant sombreros, and there’s a traveling mariachi band, but the food tastes the same as it does at El Torrito back home. When the waiter takes our drink orders, Melanie asks for a beer.
The parents gawk at her.
“We’re legal to drink here,” she says casually.
Mom gives Susan a look. “I don’t think that’s wise,” Mom says.
“Why not?” I challenge.
“If you want my opinion, it has to less to do with the age than the expectation. You’ve grown up with a drinking age of twenty-one, so you’re not necessarily prepared for drinking now,” is Susan’s therapist answer.
“I’m sorry, but did you not go to college?” I ask. “I can’t imagine it’s changed that much. Do you not remember how all anyone does is drink?”
My parents look at each other, then at Susan and Steve.
“Is that’s what going on with you? Have you been drinking too much at school?” Dad asks.
Melanie laughs so hard that the special bottled water Mom brings sprays through her nose. “I’m sorry, Frank, but do you not even know Allyson?” They continue to stare. “On the tour last summer, everyone drank.” There is a moment of shocked silence. “Oh, spare me! The legal drinking age in Europe is eighteen! Anyhow, everyone drank but Allyson. She’s totally straight and narrow. And you’re asking if she’s boozing it up at college? That’s ludicrous.”
My dad stares at me, then at Melanie. “We’re just trying to understand what’s going on with her. Why she got a two-seven GPA.”
Now it’s Melanie’s turn to gawk. “You got a two-seven?” She clamps her hand over her lips and mouths, “Sorry.” The look she gives me is one part surprise, one part respect.
“Melanie got a three-point-eight,” Mom brags.
“Yes, Melanie is a genius, and I am an idiot. It’s official.”
Melanie looks wounded. “I go to the Gallatin School. Everyone gets As,” she says apologetically.
“And Melanie probably drinks,” I say, knowing full well she does.
