Lakewood(3)

“I’m sorry, Biscuit—” her mom began. Lena handed everything over. “Take these.” Her mom’s eyes were watering. Lena made her mouth soft, adjusted her posture. “I’m not mad, I’m just tired.”

“But—”

“This day has been too long for us to have this conversation right now.” She watched her mother carefully, making sure she swallowed her pills, ate at least half of the banana, drank all the water. Lena squeezed her mother’s hands when they were free, hoped the gesture was reassuring. “Get some sleep and we’ll talk about this in the afternoon.”

Deziree stood up and went to her room. Lena picked up the bills and carried them out to the kitchen table. She organized them into categories: house, medical-Mom, funeral, medical-Grandma. Then she pulled out a pen and her notebook from her backpack. Flipped to her current to-do list: an astronomy test the next day that she still hadn’t studied enough for, a three-hour shift at her work-study job that night, Spanish conversation lunch about going shopping where she was supposed to lead a conversation entirely in Spanish. Thank-you letters to write. Coordinating with Miss Shaunté about Deziree’s home health care schedule. She needed to understand the math to calculate a star’s gravity and its effect on everything around it while it was still living. Figure out summer work.

Lena tapped the pile of bills with her pen, flipped the page, and started a brand-new list.





2


The letter arrived in the mail on the day of Lena’s third job interview. An invitation to participate in a series of research studies about mind, memory, personality, and perception. The Lakewood Project. It offered Lena and her family health insurance if she was selected to be a participant. Also housing and a weekly stipend for qualified applicants. It was addressed specifically to her: Miss Lena Johnson. A signature at the bottom that she couldn’t read. An 800 number to call to schedule an appointment. There was something about it—the lack of details, the thick, expensive paper, maybe just the whole vibe—that made her uncomfortable.

Lena showed the letter to Tanya. “Is this a scam?”

Tanya held the letter up to the light, asked to see the envelope it came in. “I don’t know. I’m not—” She scrunched her nose. “What’s the word for someone who can tell if things are forged?”

“I think they’re called—” Lena took the letter back. “Um, forensic document experts.”

“It’s probably legit. Didn’t Stacy say his brother did these?”

“I can’t remember. I zone out most of the time when he talks about his brother.”

“He’ll be at the party tonight. You can ask him about it.”

“No one’s brother is as great as Stacy says his brother is.”

Tanya pulled out a dress. “What I’m wearing now with a leather jacket, or this?”

Lena looked down at the letter again. If you are selected for this study, you will be well compensated.

“You are going to come out tonight, right?”

Lena kept her eyes on the letter. She knew if she looked up, her friend’s eyes would be let-me-take-care-of-you soft. She would offer to put on Work Spaces, point to the drawer where their vodka was hidden, start talking about doing face and hair masks. “Yes, we’re going out. And yes, what you’re wearing now with a leather jacket. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard.”

“You know what I think?”

“Almost all the time.” Lena folded the letter.

“I think you should call.”

Lena was still wearing the pantsuit Tanya called Your-Honor-I-Plead-Not-Guilty. “Do you think I should wear this to the party?”

“You need a backup plan.”

Lena watched as Tanya held the red dress up against her body. Their room stunk of the black pepper and honeysuckle candles they liked to burn to relax, and to hide the smell of Tanya’s cucumber-scented vaping. Doing a research study didn’t sound any worse than the Craigslist ads she had just been looking at—a secretary position for a notoriously terrible cable company, openings at a new, “innovative” maid service where you had to dress as a French maid and say your name was Simone at every house you cleaned. “I’ll call in the morning.”

They took a shot each. Another. Lena changed out of her pantsuit, put on a shade of lipstick that she couldn’t help calling Schiaparelli, though it was five dollars from CVS, though Tanya screamed, “Pretentious,” every time she did it.

It brought Lena so much pleasure to call colors by specific names, both formal and made up. Klein Blue, Cerulean, Scarab-From-Cleopatra Blue. It made her feel like she was becoming an interesting adult to know things like that, to get pleasure out of the things her brain squeezed onto and refused to let leave.

At the party, music was playing just loud enough to smooth out any pauses in conversations. People were passing around bottles of fortified wine. A girl Lena didn’t know was talking about how her vape pen was the best on the market. Try it, the vapor is smoother, she kept saying. Stacy and his boyfriend were quietly fighting over the playlist. You have ho taste in music, she heard Stacy whisper through gritted teeth. Tanya was texting someone. Lena thought that she could be wearing pajamas right now, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, blowing heat off a cup of tea. Two girls from Lena’s How to Write About Art class asked her if she was staying in Michigan over summer break. They were traveling to Montana to learn about rock formations. Everyone was going to summer camps to teach kids archery and how to be away from home. They were going to Senegal to speak intensive French and cry at Gorée Island. They were interning for their not-rich-but-you-know, comfortable, uncles. College—where everyone was struggling until suddenly it was summer, and all the worries got smoothed away.