In Twenty Years: A Novel Read Free

said, and they all peered up from their pads and gold pens, Lindy and Annie craning their necks from the front stoop. “Promise me that after tomorrow, nothing will change. That no matter where we all end up, we’ll stay family.” The air got caught in my throat, and Annie rose to grab my hand, ripping her paper, tossing her draft into the trash, as if she thought I wouldn’t notice. “You guys are my family. So please. Promise.”
    “Bea,” Annie said, “don’t say it like something bad’s gonna happen. Don’t say it so ominously.”
    I wanted to say: You don’t know. You don’t know how time works. How it can sneak up so quickly you don’t even realize what it’s stolen from you. But Annie was so sincere, and besides, this was my burden, not theirs.
    “Just promise.” My voice still shook.
    They did. We all did.
    We said it aloud. We said it to each other.
    We promised.
    “We’re streaking the campus police later,” Owen said, handing me his folded letter. I tucked it into an envelope. “Wanna come?”
    “Streaking!” Colin thumped his fists against the table. “It’s going to be legendary!” He set his pen down. “Come on, Bea, you in?”
    “Maybe.” I smiled.
    “I’ll take that as a yes.” He grinned back, because he knew me well.
    “I’ve seen your naked ass before, you know; it’s no great shakes.” I leaned in and kissed his cheek.
    “Says just about no other girl on campus.” Owen laughed. “Bea’s in!” He raised his fists in triumph.
    “Like I could say no,” I said. “I practically live for streaking.”
    “Please don’t get arrested,” Catherine fretted. “Our parents are all in town! And we’re graduating tomorrow!”
    Not everyone’s parents were in town, but we were past offending one another by parsing words. Only Annie’s mother was here. And my parents not at all.
    But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the six of us. What mattered was our star. What mattered is that in this moment in time, we were unbreakable. We were light and destiny and a meteor shower of invincibility.
    We were twenty-one. We were allowed to believe impossible things.

2016–JUNE

1
    ANNIE
    Annie is not at all happy with the way Gus is smiling in the photo.
    Why does he look like he needs to take a poop? she thinks. Why can’t he smile like a normal ten-year-old?
    She immediately regrets the thought, because what sort of mother thinks her son isn’t the epitome of handsomeness and looks like he’s constipated in a picture? She narrows her eyes and stares at the image on her phone. No. He is handsome. The cutest ever. He looks more like Baxter than her, which is OK, because theoretically—though she fights the good fight (the best fight)—Baxter is better-looking than she is, even now that he’s forty.
    Forty. Jesus.
    Her fortieth is right around the bend in October. Annie tries not to think about it too much because she finds the concept of middle age to be depressing, and no one likes her when she’s depressed. Maybe her mother does. She sets her phone on her marble kitchen counter and remembers how, after Gus was born ten years back, just nine months after she and Baxter married, she found herself sinking deeper and deeper, mired in darkness, pedaling through the quicksand, with no idea how to pull herself free. She called her mom more often then; in fact, she was the only one Annie called. Every night when the hours grew too long, and sometimes in the mornings too. Annie’s mom always answered, and Annie could hear her sucking on a cigarette in her La-Z-Boy—her breath a long gasp, then an exhale—while Annie curled up on her white-tiled bathroom floor and confessed her guilt, her shame at her bleakness.
    Annie nods to herself now: yes, her mother probably liked her, but no one else likes a stick-in-the-mud.
    She shakes it off and refocuses on the task at hand: a suitable filter on Instagram to perhaps whitewash the pinched look on Gus’s face and thus capture their