And even though it’s probably the most boring thing in the universe to think about, I really should probably tell you what it is.
So here’s my problem:
I don’t have a clue.
I started moving again very slowly. My shoulders felt sort of better. I swear, how quiet everything was had sort of started to bother me. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was get to one of the archways. I slowly raised my elbows without hitting the tablecloth, and then I went forward, one step at a time, headed for the closest arch.
I don’t fit in, and I can’t just act like I fit in, because I’m no good at doing all that stuff Carol does, all those lies and everything. And I’m not saying everybody lies just like Carol, but what I am saying is that a lot of people sort of put on an act anyway, without having to go to those drastic lengths that Carol does for his little “private satisfactions.”
In my neighborhood you get bombarded by your neighbors’ attitudes. I mean, it’s like everybody in my neighborhood acts like they know everything, and can do anything, and are, like, totally competent. And if you don’t feel that way about yourself and don’t know how to fake it, you’re in trouble.
You get judged if you don’t go to the best school or if everybody knows your parents don’t have much money despite how hard they try to hide it or if you can’t, like, renovate your house every year and sort of really keep up.
After a while, all the people who can do that stuff—and believe me, most of them can—kind of catch on that you’re not fixed as well as them and they sort of start to judge you in a million sly little ways. So you have to learn to behave in a certain way just to be sort of tolerated. I mean, you have to learn how not to draw too much attention to yourself. You have to act like you’re hiding.
But you know what’s funny?
After spending my whole life growing up here, I’ve decided that the competent act all the neighbors have, it’s like hiding too.
I mean, the whole neighborhood is like a hiding place, where people get seen as something here—because everybody knows proof positive that they do all that stuff: send their kids to the right school and keep up appearances and everything. But they’re not the same in other places, because the few times I’ve seen parents from Ivy Hill at the beach—and that’s only, like, a couple hundred miles away—they always look lost and really pulled out of their shell and nothing like how they look in the neighborhood, where they look so totally together.
Maybe everybody in the world is hiding in a very important way that I can only sort of partly understand.
But I see it.
I even saw it in the hall as I crept along, very slowly now, because the archway was getting closer. I saw it in how Laura’s mom seemed to everybody like this perfect mom who had great habits and undoubtedly felt great about herself and never clueless, and Laura’s dad, too, in how he was seen as such a terrific businessman and everything. But after I’d heard how Laura’s mom talked, god knows how she actually felt about herself, because she was, like, the most clueless and nasty person on earth, in my opinion, and so was Laura’s dad, treating his daughter like the invisible girl. Maybe they both felt lost and completely clueless but were just super good at putting on an act that fooled everybody.
When it comes to my neighborhood, that’s the kind of hiding I mean.
I hope you don’t feel it’s weird that I think like this, but to tell the truth, living where I live sort of makes me think this way. You can learn a lot in my neighborhood, especially if, like me, you’re always watching and not participating the same as when you see everybody swimming in a pool whom you couldn’t see if you were actually in the water with them and splashing around trying to stay afloat.
And all that watching, that’s just another kind of hiding, maybe the most effective kind.
I paused a second and stood there thinking that one day I’d probably come out of hiding.
Maybe when I was twenty-five.
I’d always wanted to come out of hiding.
I figured I’d throw a party to celebrate coming out of hiding.
I just didn’t know if I’d really go to the party.
Chapter
Twelve
I got to the archway when I was halfway down the hall. I felt lucky because it opened into a room where not only the lights were out but the curtains were drawn. So super fast, thinking that the quicker I moved the less chance anybody watching would notice, I crossed over the bare floor and darted through the archway into the darkness.
Except I hadn’t noticed two steps leading down from the archway. As soon as I was through I lost my footing and fell with a wham right on my ass.
I hit the floor but managed not to yell, and as fast as I could I scrambled behind this big fanback chair, one of three arranged in front of a big sofa. I just crouched there a minute and held my breath. I felt very tingly, not just because I’d hit the floor, but because I really did expect a siren to go off any second and whirling lights to flash on.
After a few seconds I knew the coast was clear, so I got on my knees and peeked over the chair back, looking around very carefully.
It was a huge room, and wide open, with sofas arranged in this semicircular pattern, little metal-and-glass tables everywhere, and big art books on wall shelves.
Up in the far corner of the ceiling on my left was another little doohickey with a red
