I didn’t say anything, but I turned my face to his, and I let him kiss me.

  There were a couple of guest rooms tucked in the back of the basement. We found one of the empty ones and locked the door behind us. I pulled his shirt off before we even made it to the bed. I was wearing a white off-shoulder tee printed with a gold tiger, with a lacy red bra underneath. His fingers fumbled a little on the clasp, so I took it off for him. His skin was warm and his body was firmly muscled, and I wanted him physically in a way I hadn’t felt in a while. There was something transactional about it, but that’s what made it work for me. I was under no illusions that he’d want something more with me, and I didn’t want anything more from him. Just this experience, on this bed, his body above and against me, my hands pulling him in.

  When I reached for the waistband of his jeans, he told me to wait while he got out a condom. But when I lay back against the pillow, he had his phone in his hand—he must have taken it out of his pocket—and he snapped a bunch of photos.

  “What are you doing?” I said, putting a hand up over my face. Even then it didn’t occur to me to cover my breasts.

  “You look so beautiful,” he said. “I just want to capture the moment.”

  * * *

  —

  The day after the party, the photos appeared.

  Haley sent me the link. I was at home, watching mindless TV to get through my hangover, when her text made my phone vibrate.

  Someone sent me this. You’re in these pics. WTF?

  I clicked through without thinking, and when the first photo loaded, a shock of heat went through me. I sat up abruptly. There I was on the bed in Haley’s basement, one arm over my head, looking straight at the camera as if I’d posed for it. There were four photos, almost identical, as if he’d kept his finger on the red shutter button and snapped them off within a second or two.

  The number of likes on the post clicked up as I was looking. The heat that had flushed my body seemed to pulse through me now, my blood surging with each heartbeat.

  I had told him to put the phone down before we continued, and he had. But it hadn’t occurred to me to ask him to delete these.

  A cool, snarky voice inside my head commented, At least you look good. And I did. I had sexy hair and bedroom eyes, my lips were puffy from kissing him, and my breasts looked fantastic. But as the likes kept going up, a nauseating feeling took hold of me, a groundless, falling sensation that made me think I was about to vomit. I ran to the bathroom and gagged while bending over the toilet. My phone clattered onto the tile floor, barely missing the toilet bowl. Two hundred and fifty-three likes and counting.

  * * *

  —

  Everything happened pretty quickly after that. I was supposed to go to Martha’s Vineyard with Haley after graduation. Her parents had invited me to stay with them at their Edgartown house through the Fourth of July. By then, Tasha would be back from her marine ecology internship in Thailand. Her parents had a summer house in Oak Bluffs, also on the Vineyard, and I was going to stay with them till August. Then I was going to California to see my grandmother for a couple of weeks before coming back to get ready for college.

  My dad had been relieved when the plan came together, because he’d been accepted at the Deer Bay Writers’ Colony in Washington State, and he wanted to be there the entire summer. Martha’s Vineyard was the perfect plan. I’d have one last summer with my friends before we all scattered to different colleges in the fall. Haley was going to NYU, Tasha to Spelman, and I was starting at MIT.

  But the day after slut was painted on my locker, Haley’s mom called my dad to say that unfortunately they were not going to be able to host me on the Vineyard. Haley told me it was because her mom had seen the pictures, recognized the seashell lamp on the nightstand next to me, and realized the photo had been taken in their basement. I tried to convince my dad I could stay at home by myself until it was time to go to Oak Bluffs with Tasha, but then Tasha called and explained that her mom was taking her to France for a couple of weeks after Thailand, so I couldn’t stay with them anymore.

  “I’m really sorry,” Tasha said gently.

  And just like that, my parents decided I’d spend the whole summer with my grandmother. No amount of arguing could convince them that I would be fine on my own, that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Jacob didn’t seem to get punished at all. In fact, he only seemed to get more popular. Somehow the fact that he had managed to get my shirt off made him someone the other guys looked up to, but the fact that I had taken my shirt off made me a slut.

  Officially, of course, the school condemned what happened. But there was also a kind of collective shrug. Jacob and I were both eighteen. We were two weeks away from graduating. The photos had been taken after school hours, off campus. They would have disciplined whoever defaced my locker, but nobody was talking. Maybe if I’d made more of a fuss about it—maybe if I showed school administrators the nasty messages I got after Jacob posted the photos—maybe then they would have done something. But I didn’t want to show anyone. I just wanted it all to go away, and the best way to make it go away was to say nothing.

  * * *

  —

  I’m still telling this wrong. You have to understand something. I grew up in Wellesley, surrounded by all these rich people, but I was never one of them. It’s not like we were poor—we weren’t—but my friends were rich. Haley’s dad ran a hedge fund and had a collection of Rolexes; her mom headed up a wealthy arts organization that gave money to struggling artists. Tasha’s dad was a partner at a law firm who was always traveling to London or Geneva; her mom was a biotech executive who wore the most amazing suits I’d ever seen.

  They all knew that my dad was a professor and a sort-of famous author, and that my mom was an opera singer, even though she was never around to impress them. That had some cachet, especially with Haley’s mom, but my artsy, educated parents could not make up for the fact that I didn’t have the money to buy Birkin bags or take spontaneous weekend trips to Paris. And I definitely didn’t have the resources to summer on Martha’s Vineyard without their charity.

  They always made me feel like a guest in their homes, but as a guest, I was easily uninvited.

  The morning my dad left for the writers’ colony, I pretended to sleep late, until there was barely enough time to say goodbye on the doorstep before he drove off in the rental car. Joan asked if I wanted breakfast, but I mumbled that I would shower first. The guest bathroom was painted buttercup yellow, and there was a skylight in the ceiling that let in the sun, but when I stepped under the hot spray, I closed my eyes so I could be in the dark.

  I washed my hair with shampoo from the near-empty St. Ives bottle in the basket hanging from the showerhead. The sweet, buttery smell brought me back to previous visits here. Christmas with the whole family—Aunt Tammy and Uncle Brian and their twins, Luke and Noah, running up the stairs eager to open presents. Summer evenings with Dad and Joan on the deck, grilling tri-tip beneath the redwoods. And earlier, Grandpa greeting me with his giant swinging hugs.

  I didn’t want to miss them, and I didn’t want to be here. I felt displaced and yet cornered.

  I remembered Jacob’s face afterward, so pleased with himself.

  There was a weird, frantic fluttering in my chest.

  I scrubbed the shampoo out of my hair, raking my nails across my scalp, the sudsy water running over my tightly closed eyes. The rich scent made me gag. I needed new shampoo.

  * * *

  —

  The Safeway parking lot was laid out in diagonal rows that made it difficult to figure out how to approach the entrance. I ended up parking Joan’s Honda out by the edge, facing Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. When I got out of the car, the dry summer heat radiated up from the asphalt with an almost physical force. I headed quickly for the store, plunging into the freezing air-conditioning.

  I’d been to this Safeway on previous visits, and everything was the same as before, right down to the same eighties power ballads playing in the background. I was only here for shampoo, but I took my time getting to the toiletry aisle. I didn’t have anything better to do. I was finally narrowing in on the shampoo section when my phone dinged. I pulled it out of my purse to find a text from Tasha.

  Haven’t heard from you in a while. You in Cali now? Everything OK?

  I felt that panicky feeling in my chest again. I shoved my phone back into my purse.

  After the slut situation, Tasha had been so supportive, reassuring me over and over that it wasn’t my fault. But she still canceled our summer; she was still going to France. She told me it had nothing to do with what happened with me. She swore that her mom just wanted to take her to Paris for some mother-daughter time before college.

  What would it be like to have a mother who wanted to do that?

  I didn’t know what to say to Tasha. I plucked a bottle of Pantene from the shelf and left without even smelling the other options.

  At the checkout, only one cash register was open, and there was a line. I pulled a Cosmopolitan off the rack to distract myself. An article about sexual positions of the ancients featured a thin, white model draped in part of a toga, her lips painted bright red. She looked straight at the camera, just as I had.

  “Excuse me, miss?” A woman in a Safeway vest was gesturing to me. “I’ll take you over here.”

  I followed her to the next checkout lane and realized I was still carrying the magazine. She looked at me, clutching the shampoo and Cosmopolitan.

  “Are you ready?” she asked a little impatiently. She had brownish-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a name tag that read LISA, MANAGER.

  “Sorry,” I said. I put the magazine on the conveyor belt along with the shampoo. I hadn’t intended to buy it, but now it felt weird to put it back.

  As Lisa rang up my purchases, the woman who did Joan’s yard work showed up—it looked like she had come straight to my lane from the entrance—and said, “Lis, you ready?” She sort of did a double take when she saw me and said, “Oh, hey.”

  “Hi,” I said to Steph.

  Lisa shot Steph a puzzled look. “You know each other?”

  Steph said, “I do her grandma’s yard—you know, Joan West out in Woodacre.”

  “Oh.” Lisa shrugged. “Do you want a bag?” she asked me. “It’s ten cents.”

  “Um, that’s okay,” I said.

  She handed me the shampoo, Cosmo, and a receipt.

  “Thanks.” I stepped out of the aisle and started to head toward the exit, but Steph was still there. “Nice to see you,” I said. I didn’t want to appear rude, but I didn’t want to be in the Safeway anymore either.

  “Yeah. Hey, hang on,” Steph said. She glanced at Lisa. “Are you ready to go soon?”

  “Maybe five, ten minutes,” Lisa answered. “There’s a backup. Cheryl didn’t come in today.”

  “I’ll meet you outside then.” Steph looked at me. “You have five minutes?”

  I hesitated, but I had all day. “Sure.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Steph said.

  We headed for the exit and I flipped my sunglasses back on. As we left the store, my phone chimed again. I ignored it and asked, “What’s up?”

  She gestured to a bench nearby in the shade of the entryway and we both sat down.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your grandma,” she said. “You’re gonna be here all summer, right?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  She grinned. “I got the impression this was a last-minute kind of thing.”

  “Yeah.” I wondered what Joan had told her. Did Steph know why I was here? The idea of her knowing made me uncomfortable.

  “I know your grandma’s pretty healthy, especially for someone her age, but I worry about her, you know?” Steph said.

  This surprised me. “I thought you just did her gardening.”

  “Yeah, I do that, but I help her out with other stuff sometimes. If she needs something fixed, she’ll call me and I’ll come climb a ladder to change a light bulb or whatever. And sometimes I help her move her canvases or set things up.”

  There was something in the tone of her voice that made me apprehensive. “Just tell me,” I said. “Did something happen?”

  She was turned toward me, right arm along the back of the bench, and now she crossed her left ankle over her right knee. She was wearing cargo shorts again, and her legs weren’t shaved. For some reason, noticing that made me notice—really notice—the rest of her. Her hair was dark brown and cut very short on the sides, longer on top like a guy. She had little black gauges in her earlobes, and up along her right ear a line of silver studs. There was an easy boyishness to the way she moved. Yesterday I had thought she was cute but dismissed her because she was a girl. Today I just thought she was cute—exactly the way I might feel about any boy. It was confusing. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever looked at another girl that way before.

  “A couple months ago,” she said, “I came over to help your grandma with her dishwasher. It’s pretty old and sometimes it acts up. Anyway, I got there and she had totally forgotten she’d called me. I know that can happen when you get older, so I didn’t think too much about it. But there have been other things—little things—but together they make me worry about her. Like, she told me she couldn’t find Analemma’s leash one day, which is weird because it’s always on the hook by the front door. I was there that morning so I helped her look, but I only found it on accident. She’d put it in a kitchen drawer. For a while she was acting a little strange. Not only forgetful—sort of like she wasn’t sure what was going on. She asked me when Matty was coming home for dinner a couple of months ago, when she knows he doesn’t live here. She’s better now, but I think it’s a little dangerous for her out there all alone, you know?”

  I realized that the tattoos on her arms were koi fish swimming in a yin-yang pattern. “She has a dog,” I said. “She’s not alone, exactly.”

  Steph gave me a strange look, as if I wasn’t getting it but she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I flushed and glanced out at the Safeway parking lot. The cars were gleaming in the sun; it was getting hotter. This conversation with Steph about my grandmother was the least sexy topic I could imagine, but inside me I felt a tiny unfurling, as if a tender green shoot were turning toward the sun.

  “Analemma is a great dog, but unfortunately she can’t call 911,” Steph said.

  “You think she needs to call 911 a lot?” I said, suddenly worried.

  “No, no,” Steph assured me. “I just—it’s that she’s on her own, and she’s—well, she’s getting older.”

  I crossed my legs, and my right foot bobbed out of the shade into the sunlight. I was wearing flip-flops, and my purple toenail polish was chipped. I became aware that I was wearing stringy cutoffs and a faded blue tank top with tiny holes near the hem. And of course, even though I’d washed my hair, I’d pulled it back in a ponytail when it was still wet. I didn’t look that great, and here was Steph looking at me and expecting me to be a responsible adult.

  “I know,” I said. I sat up, uncrossing my legs and tucking my feet beneath the bench so the chipped nail polish wasn’t visible anymore. “I know she’s getting older, but Joan’s very independent.” I saw Steph note my use of her first name. “I call her Joan. She’s not really a ‘grandma’ type. So it’s good she can ask you to come over and help her. I’m pretty impressed that she’ll do even that.”

  “Did she tell you about her memory lapses?” Steph asked.

  “No. But I’m her granddaughter. I don’t think she would tell me.”

  “Well, now you know,” Steph said gently.

  “Yeah,” I said. This was awkward. “Maybe I can talk to my dad about it.”

  “Okay. I hope it’s all right that I brought this up—”

  “Yo, Steph, what’s taking so long?”

  A woman was walking toward us from the parking lot. She was stocky, wearing a striped rugby shirt, knee-length baggy shorts, and sneakers. Her black hair was in a ponytail pulled through the back of a baseball cap.

  Steph glanced up. “Lisa’s running late.”

  The woman stopped a few feet away from us and flashed me a grin. “Hey,” she said. “How do you know Steph?”

  “This is Aria West,” Steph said before I could answer. “She’s Joan West’s granddaughter.”

  “Oh, the artist lady,” the woman said, nodding.

  I was about to ask how she knew about my grandmother when Steph said, “Aria, this is Mel Lopez.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “I hope Steph’s not boring you with all her xeriscaping theories,” Mel said. “She’s a little obsessed.”

  I glanced at Steph, who cracked a tiny grin.

  “No, she’s not boring me,” I said.

  The Safeway doors whooshed open and Lisa emerged, looking a bit frazzled. She had taken off her Safeway vest and was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her back pocket. As she lit up, Steph went over to her and rubbed a hand over her back. “You okay?” she asked.

  Lisa frowned and nodded. “Just busy.”

  The way they stood together—Steph leaning in, Lisa letting her get that close—made me realize they were a couple. It jolted me a little, a tiny jab of disappointment.

  Mel sat down next to me, taking Steph’s place on the bench. “Hey, what are you doing Wednesday night?” Mel asked.

  “Um, I don’t know, why?”

  “Steph’s performing at the open mic at the Bolinas Café in Fairfax. You wanna come?”