Page 50 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“Are you using that?” she asked, pointing at the tube of red lipstick balanced on the lip of the sink in front of me.

“Oh, no, here you go,” I said, handing it to her.

“You okay?” Stevie asked as she reached for it. “You’ve been kind of in a funk all day.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

Yael came over and put her arm around me. “It’s okay, Charlie,” she said, leaning her head on my shoulder and glancing meaningfully at my reflection in the mirror as if she understood. “You don’t have to hide it from us. I know what’s going on.”

She knew?

I had never talked to Yael or Stevie about my mother. I had almost talked to Drew about her once—on one of our first Saturday nights at Knollwood as freshmen. The subject sort of thrust itself upon us. Drew and I had gone to the grocery store in Falls Church with our roommate, River. We were loading up on junk food for a movie night in our dorm room, which was supposed to be a fun bonding experience but was proving instead to be a tortuous crash course on a subject Drew and I would become begrudging experts on over the rest of the semester: Things River Could Not Eat. (Throughout the rest of the semester, Drew and I would also become reluctant experts on other subjects, like Things River Found Misogynistic and Things River Left Lying Around the Room That Looked Like Trash but Were Not Trash So Why Did You Throw That Away?) I had made the mistake of plucking a bag of gummy bears off the shelf when we first came into the store, and River had batted the bag away from the cart like she was a goalie defending her net.

“What gives?” I asked.

“Gummy bears are made of gelatin,” River said, her face puckered in disgust.

“Yeah, okay, so?”

She raised her eyebrows at me. I looked at Drew, who looked as confused as I felt.

“Is that like super fattening or something?” Drew asked.

River scoffed. “Gelatin is made from collagen, which comes from ground-up animals.”

Drew and I looked at each other.

“Okay, so that’s a no for gummy bears,” I said. I eyed the other candies on the shelf and picked up a bag of M&M’s. “Are you more of a chocolate girl?” I asked, hopeful.

River rolled her eyes. “Those hard candy shells come from a resin excreted by bugs,” she said.

“I guess they don’t sound so appetizing when you put it like that,” Drew said.

“Yes, I find it difficult to find the torture of innocent animals appetizing in general,” River said.

I grabbed a bag of cinnamon-sugar pecans.

“Okay, what about some nuts?” I asked.

River leveled me with a death glare.

“What? You’re not one of those people who consider plants sentient beings, are you?”

“They’re coated in sugar,” River said. “a.k.a. bone char.”

“Is there anything in this store you can eat?” I asked.

“I’ll check the produce section,” River said, grabbing the cart from me and pushing it determinedly down the aisle.

Later, when we were waiting in line to check out with our cart full of organic kale and fresh fruit, I skimmed the magazines displayed next to the boxes of gum and York Peppermint Patties, and I saw it: on the cover of the Star Enquirer was my mother. She was wearing a pair of thick sunglasses and a hat and she was sprawled out on a beach chair. She held up her hand as if to block the photographer’s shot of her face. billionaire’s wife grace calloway spotted in buenos aires with secret lover, the tabloid read.

The color drained from my face. I glanced up and caught Drew’s eye, and I knew from the expression on her face that she had seen it, too. I opened my mouth to say something—to cut it off before it could even start—to explain to her that it was all a lie, that none of it was true, when Drew beat me to it.

“Oh my god,” Drew said.

“What?” River asked as she moved a bag of oranges from the cart to the conveyor belt.

“These blueberries aren’t organic,” Drew said.