Today, her inability to read social cues might land her on the autistic spectrum. Back then she was just considered weird. She wanted to be a writer. Wanted is too weak of a word. She craved it. She wrote like her life depended on it, during class, lunch, late at night, in longhand in those cheap marble notebooks you can buy at any grocery store. She mocked people’s grammar and word choices to their faces, which endeared her to no one.
We spent hours fantasizing about our life after high school. We’d move to New York together, and I would take the art world by storm while she made her publishing debut. We did everything together, and we had no secrets, including my crush on Mr. Adamson. In the beginning, she helped me stalk him, find out where he took his coffee between classes, where he parked his boxy vintage BMW. She accompanied me on countless trips into town to skulk through the cobbled streets trying to spot his reddish-brown hair, a bit longer than the older male teachers wore theirs.
But then one day, I had a secret worth keeping.
Madeline was like one of those cats who knows when its owner has been visiting a house where another cat lives. She could sniff Paul’s scent on me. I tried to keep the secret from her for as long as I could.
My secret felt as beautiful and fragile as an aqua robin’s egg you might find in springtime. I wanted to protect it, even as much as I knew it wouldn’t last.
Then came the weekend that I forgot plans with Madeline. Nothing special, not a birthday, just a date between friends. We were supposed to go see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which we claimed we were watching ironically, although we had both loved the books when we were younger. But I wasn’t at my apartment when Madeline came to fetch me. I was at the Moonlight Motel, off Route 1, where they charged by the hour. Krystle let her go up to my bedroom. She couldn’t have known what Madeline was going to do, because Krystle had no idea what I had been doing.
Krystle didn’t know about the drawer where I kept the pictures and copies of all the letters I wrote to Paul. Letters written in a loopy, girlish hand, bursting with adolescent longing, expressed in graphic sexual language that I thought made me look sexy and alluring.
But Madeline’s instincts were spot-on. Madeline found them.
I refresh my email, hoping for news from Facebook or Tinder, and to my surprise, I find an email from Overton. I hadn’t expected her response to be so fast.
When I come to the third line of the message, my throat tightens. I force myself to read the line two more times to be sure I am not seeing things.
The National Capital Overton Alumni Group coordinator is Madeline Ashford-Brown.
24
The whole drive back to Bethesda, I can’t stop thinking about Madeline.
Her betrayal cut me deeper than anything done by a guy I had been with. I trusted her, let her in. I told her things about my mother and my homelife that no one else knew. She was the only person from Overton who ever saw where I lived. And she exposed me—on the internet, at school—to ridicule.
And now she’s Madeline Ashford-Brown, living in Alexandria, Virginia, just over the Potomac River, less than a thirty-minute drive from my house. It’s true that loads of people end up in the D.C. area for a variety of reasons, but it shakes me that she is so close. My past is like a parallel life that I had come to believe would never intersect with my present. And here they were, not just crossing but marking a large X.
The worst part of her posting that picture was that I didn’t have my best friend to turn to for support. I felt totally alone in my shame.
She scared me off female friendships for a long time.
I pull into the parking lot of the grocery store and shut off the engine. As much as I want to crawl under the covers until this nightmare ends, I have to keep normal life going for Cole. And that means keeping the pantry stocked with mac and cheese and blueberry granola bars, and buying ingredients to make shortbread for International Night next week.
I’m not a scared teenager anymore, and I need to know what the hell is happening. Could she have sent that shirt? Could it have been an innocent gesture, or is it possible that she is behind everything else, too? There’s only one way to find out.
Without overthinking it, I dash off an email.
Madeline, it’s Alexis Ross (formerly Healy) from Overton. Turns out we’re practically neighbors. Any chance you could meet me for a cup of coffee? I need to talk to you.
I hit Send before I chicken out.
I’m in the baking aisle, trying to decipher the difference between confectioner’s sugar and superfine sugar, when Krystle calls me.
“Hey,” I say as I put both in my cart. Susan, who has agreed to bake shortbread with Cole for next week’s International Night, can sort it out.
“I got a call from the neighbors in Westport this morning,” she says by way of greeting. “They said you hired someone to assess the house. That you’re selling. That’s not true, is it?”
My throat tightens. I knew this phone call was coming, but I didn’t realize Barb DeSoto would move so fast. “It’s true. I’m putting the house on the market.” I move the phone away from my head an inch and wait for the screaming to begin.
“Are you kidding me? And you didn’t think to mention this to me when we spoke earlier?” she yells. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Allie?”
Gone is my sister the ally, whom I spoke to this morning, replaced by Krystle the rage machine.
“Calm down. In case you don’t remember, I
