Good Girl Bad (11)
Lots of ghosts in the cupboards here.
“No, we’ll be fine,” Rebecca says, back to being self-contained, in control. Breezy, almost. She’d keel over and die before she admitted she needed anything from Nate.
But Gen looks worried. “Can I stay with Dad?” she asks, not quite looking at Rebecca, trepidation in her eyes. She doesn’t elaborate and Nate bites his tongue, waits for Rebecca to respond first.
Rebecca hesitates. “Maybe it would be best if you stayed here, Nate. If it’s not too much trouble. So we’re all together, we can share information.”
“Sure,” he says, trying to sound casual. “I’ve got some spare clothes in the car. Let’s get some take-away and try to get some rest.”
As he turns to the stack of menus near the fridge, exactly where they used to be, a strange feeling settling in his stomach, a phone pings, though, and they all freeze.
Rebecca pounces on Tabby’s phone, and a message flashes up from an unknown number.
They stare at it in silence, shocked.
Dirty slut.
9
Four Months Earlier
Freddy and Tabby are lounging on Freddy’s bed, their long, brown legs stretched out in front of them. Donk, Freddy’s Burmese cat, purrs half-heartedly beside Tabby, and she strokes his soft fur absentmindedly.
Both girls are scrolling through their Instagram and TikTok feeds, occasionally showing each other something that makes them laugh.
“You’re awfully quiet today,” Freddy ventures.
In fact, Tabby has been quiet for a while, and even Freddy’s mother, Nancy, has noticed. Privately, Nancy worries about Freddy’s friendship with Tabby. She actively encourages Freddy to socialize with some of her other friends—bright, bubbly ones who bring joy and laughter into the house…unlike Tabby, who seems almost morose these days. But Freddy insists that Tabby is her best friend, and in her more generous moments, Nancy thinks it’s a good thing that Freddy can support her through whatever she’s going through. She’s happy that her daughter has such loyalty. When Freddy was younger, Nancy would have fully expected her to ditch a friend who became dull. She seemed perpetually distracted by the next shiny thing, and Nancy worried equally about such frivolousness.
Now, Nancy pokes her head in the door.
“You girls need anything?”
Freddy rolls her eyes. “Mo-om,” she reprimands her mother. “You’re supposed to knock!”
“Sorry, sweetie.” Nancy smiles apologetically at her daughter. “I’m going to make some rocky road. You want to help?”
“No,” says Freddy, at the same time that Tabby says, “Yes.”
Freddy rolls her eyes again, but follows Tabby out to the kitchen, where Tabby perches on a barstool, intermittently asking Nancy for instructions.
She doesn’t talk at all otherwise, and Nancy glances from one girl to the other surreptitiously.
Are they fighting? she wonders. But Tabby seems distracted, rather than upset. And Nancy had definitely heard them laughing just before she stuck her head in Freddy’s door.
The girls have lounged on these barstools more times than Nancy can remember. They used to be louder, though, more joyful, and Nancy relishes this opportunity to watch them, to try to figure out what’s going on.
It always seemed an unlikely friendship to her. On the surface, sure, she could see the attraction. Both pretty and sporty, they’d been popular at school, popular with the girls and the boys. Tabby always outshone Freddy just slightly at everything, though. She was beautiful, where Freddy was merely pretty; she was top of the class, whereas Freddy hovered in the top five or six.
For all that, Nancy glowed with pride whenever she thought about her only child. Freddy was honest, strong-willed, smart. But more than that, she was a problem-solver. She had robust self-esteem and bounced back from setbacks. While other mothers fretted about eating disorders and their daughters capitulating to peer pressure or the lusts of boys, Nancy was always startled by Freddy’s diplomacy, her resilience, her ability to get on with things. When there’d been fallouts in the friendship group—just normal teenage girl bitchiness, to be honest—it was Freddy who offered support, who smoothed things over. Even when she herself felt hurt or left out, she dealt with it so maturely. She’d talk to Nancy about it, but she always had a positive outlook, a sensible approach. And sure, sometimes Nancy gave herself a pat on the back about that—she definitely tried to cultivate that in her approach to parenting—but she also thinks that it is just who her daughter is. She’s not worried in the least about what grades Freddy finishes school with. She has no doubt her daughter will find a corner of the world to thrive in, and she can’t wait to see what she does with her life.
Now, she watches Tabby stir the melted chocolate through the nuts and marshmallows. She seems ephemeral, too beautiful for this Earth, and too distant. But for all her success and beauty, Nancy gets the feeling that it is Tabby who leans on Freddy, not the other way around.
What does someone so outwardly perfect have to worry about?
She hopes to God that Tabby doesn’t get mixed up in anything unsavory, because however smart Freddy might be, she seems to be bonded to Tabby with such strength that it might drag Freddy down, rather than pull Tabby out.
“How are you finding school this year, Tab?” Nancy asks now, rifling through cupboards for an appropriate tin, careful not to look directly at Tabby. She’s always found that conversations with teenagers work best when you’re not looking at them.