Frances looked at him in the side mirror, still waving after her as she reached the end of the block. As she swung around the corner he swiveled on his heel just as smoothly, and went back into the house. She wondered anew where Julie was. Once Lally and Lucas had started at the same preschool she and Julie had begun a tentative friendship, but then, suddenly, Julie wasn’t at home anymore. She’d asked Bill if Julie was away for work, and Bill had just shaken his head and said nothing.
That had been a couple of months ago, and somehow the moment for inquiry had passed. She and Iris had joked that maybe Bill killed his wife and buried her in the yard, but she’d heard Lucas talking about his mom to Lally, so presumably that wasn’t true. It was strange, and the neighborhood gossips had tried Julie in absentia and found her guilty of abandonment with a side order of failing to keep them all informed. Frances hadn’t known her well enough to have her phone number, and certainly didn’t know Bill well enough to ask where he’d stashed his wife. Frances mentally shrugged her shoulders, and focused again on the road. People did weird shit, usually for boring reasons, and Frances tried not to judge people without knowing all the facts. She flashed on Anne’s face, her eyes closed with pleasure as her boyfriend’s tongue teased and pleased, and found it all too easy to judge and sentence that one.
• • •
After dropping off the smallest kids, Frances circled back to the high school. She sat there with her windows down and the radio on quietly, waiting to hear the first bell. Frances had an appointment to talk to the school counselor about Ava’s grades. They’d argued about it the previous night.
“My grades are fine,” Ava had insisted. “A solid B is totally OK. Why are you so focused on achievement? Aren’t we supposed to be embracing a growth mind-set these days?” She’d been sitting on her bed, her long legs in stripy tights folded up under her, one side of her hair shaved, the other streaked with purple. She was the cool kid Frances had always wanted to be friends with at school, but now Frances understood that the independence she’d admired had come at a price at home. The coolest girl at her school, six million years previously, had brought a pet rat to school every day, hidden somewhere on her person. At the time it had seemed bold and daring, a declaration, a manifesto. Now it struck Frances that the rat must have represented a daily argument with her mother that only got her revved up for the potential half dozen others she would have once she got the rat to school. Frances wondered what had happened to that girl. The rat was dead, of course, time being what it was.
To be honest, Frances admired the way Ava was starting to bring serious artillery to these discussions, reinforcing her arguments with actual information and well-researched ideas. Frances thought she spent too much time online, but it was clear she wasn’t just watching cat videos. Ava often regaled her mother with facts Frances didn’t know, sometimes casually, sometimes with enormous excitement. She had almost weekly obsessions, her future plans changing accordingly: She was going to restore old houses, she was going to breed rare lizards, she was going to be a psychologist, she was going to be president, she was going to move to Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, New York.
Everyone loved to warn you about teenagers, particularly teenage girls. They’d raise their eyebrows as they watched your four-year-old cartwheeling about: “Oh, wait till they’re teenagers, then the trouble starts,” or something equally dark. Sure, Ava gave her way more attitude than she had at seven, but she also came to her full of enthusiasm about things Frances had never heard of, and asked her questions about morals and metaphysics. Frances had privately decided the world just didn’t like teenagers to have fun, or to be enthusiastic and confident, so they told everyone teens needed squashing or fearing. It was the same old bullshit, and ignored the thrilling excitement of watching your child’s world open up in front of them, unfurling like the yellow brick road, the emerald spires of adulthood a distant, shimmering dream. Anything was possible, they could do and be anything, they could try on eighteen different personalities a month. Frances believed in Ava, and held on tight, even as her daughter bucked and bitched and tried to throw her off.
The bell rang, and after waiting a few minutes for the kids to mill to their various rooms, Frances stepped out of the car. She believed in her kid, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need to go talk to the counselor. Trust, but verify.
• • •
The counselor’s name was Jennifer, and she was approximately half Frances’s age. She had been born perky, but had also refined her natural talents through years of pep rallies and cheer squad at school, and was now pert and energetic enough to jump-start a tractor trailer.
“Your daughter’s doing great!” she said, her eyes strafing across Ava’s file. “Her teachers love her, she appears relatively popular, the nurse hasn’t seen her all semester . . .” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Although, she has dropped all her extracurriculars. Did you know that?”
Frances didn’t. “Like what? The school paper?”
Jennifer nodded. “Yeah, she quit that, and the orchestra. She used to go to animation club once a week, and she quit that, too.” Her eyes lifted to meet Frances’s. The poster behind her urged everyone not to eat the marshmallow, which was making Frances hungry. She thought back . . . Ava had definitely stayed later at school the week before for “orchestra practice.” What the actual fuck?
“Well, could she just
