I’m really into this now, which is kind of crazy, because I don’t even want a beer. One of the few things I like about this restaurant is the virgin margaritas—they’re made with fresh fruit.
Mom turns to me, her mouth ready to catch some flies. “Allyson, do you have a drinking problem?”
I smack my hand to my head. “Mother, do you have a hearing problem? Because I don’t know that you heard a word I said.”
“I think she’s saying that you might ease up a little and let them have a beer with dinner,” Susan says.
“Thank you!” I say to Susan.
My mom looks to my dad. “Let the girls have a beer,” he says expansively as he waves the waiter back over and asks for a couple of Tecates.
It’s a victory of sorts. Except that I don’t actually like beer, so in the end, I have to pretend to sip from mine as it grows sweaty on the table, and I don’t order the virgin margarita I really wanted.
The next day, Melanie and I are sitting at the giant pool together. It’s the first time we’ve managed to be alone since we got here.
“I think we should do something different,” she says.
“Me too,” I say. “Every year we come down here and we do the same things. We go to the same frigging ruins, even. Tulum is nice, but I was thinking we could branch out. Talk our parents into going somewhere new.”
“Like swimming with the dolphins?” Melanie asks.
Dolphin swimming is different, but it’s not what I’m after. Yesterday, I was looking at the map of the Yucatán Peninsula in the lobby, and some of the ruins are inland, more off the beaten path. Maybe we’d find a bit more of the real Mexico. “I was thinking we could go to Coba or Chichén Itzá. Different ruins.”
“Oh, you’re so wild,” Melanie teases. She takes a slurp of iced tea. “Anyhow, I’m talking about New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh. You mean you don’t want to do the Macarena with Johnny Maximo?” Johnny Maximo is this washed-up Mexican movie star who now has some job with the resort. All the mothers love him because he’s handsome and macho and is always pretending to mistake them for our sisters.
“Anything but the Macarena!” Melanie puts down her book, something by Rita Mae Brown that looks like it’s for school but Melanie says is not. “One of the bartenders told me about some big party on the beach in Puerto Morelos. It’s a local thing, though he says lots of tourists come, but people like us. Young people. There’s going to be a Mexican reggae band, which sounds bizarre. In a good way.”
“You’re just looking for a guy under sixty to make out with come midnight.”
Melanie shrugs. “Under sixty, yes. A guy? Maybe not.” She gives me a look.
“What?”
“I’ve sort of being doing the girl thing.”
“What?!” It comes out a shout. “Sorry. Since when?”
“Since right after Thanksgiving. There was this one girl and we met in film theory class and we were friends and one night we went out and it just happened.”
I look at the new haircut, the nose ring, the hairy armpits. It all makes sense. “So, are you a lesbian now?”
“I prefer not to label it,” she says, somewhat sanctimoniously, the implication being that I need to label everything. She’s the one who’s constantly branding herself: Mel, Mel 2.0. Punk-rock librarian. I ask her girlfriend’s name. She tells me they’re not into defining it like that, but her name is Zanne.
“Is that with an X?”
“Z. Short for Suzanne.”
Doesn’t anybody use a real name anymore?
“Don’t tell my parents, okay? You know my mom. She’d make us process it and talk about it as a phase of my development. I want to make sure this is more than a fling before I subject myself to that.”
“Please, you don’t have to tell me about parental overanalysis.”
She pushes her sunglasses up her nose and turns to me. “Yeah, so what’s that all about?”
“What do you mean? You’ve met my parents. Is there a part of my life they’re not involved in? They must be freaking out to not have their fingers literally in every aspect of what I’m doing.”
“I know. And when I heard about the study hall, I figured it was that. I thought maybe you had a low B average. But a two—point—seven? Really?”
“Don’t you start on me.”
“I’m not. I’m just surprised. You’ve always been such a kick-ass student. I don’t get it.” She takes a loud slurp of her mostly melted iced tea. “The Therapist says you’re depressed.”
“Your mom? She told you that?”
“I heard her mention it to your mom.”
“What did my mom say?”
“That you weren’t depressed. That you were pouting because you weren’t used to being punished. Sometimes I really want to smack your mom.”
“You and me both.”
“Anyhow, later on my mom asked me if I thought you were depressed.”
“And what’d you tell her?”
“I said lots of people have a hard time freshman year.” She gives me a sharp look from behind her dark glasses. “I couldn’t tell her the truth, could I? That I thought you were still pining for some guy you had a one-night stand with in Paris.”
I pause, listening to the shriek of a little kid jumping off the high dive. When Melanie and I were little, we used to hold hands and jump together, over and over again.
“But what if it’s not him? Not Willem.” It’s weird saying his name out loud. Here. After embargoing it for so long. Willem. I scarcely even allow myself to think it in my head.
“Don’t tell me another guy dicked you over!”
“No! I’m talking about me.”
“You?”
“It’s, like, the me I was that day. I was different somehow.”
“Different? How?”
“I was Lulu.”
“But that was just a name. Just pretend.”
Maybe it was. But still, that whole day, being with Willem, being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I’ve been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I’d never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to find that door.