I don’t look at the Grands. “I’ll be back later,” I mumble as I leave.

  I get back into my truck and drive. My anger at Tom Swift is growing hotter, like a coal someone is blowing on. The feeling radiates through me, filling up every bit of empty space. All I can think about is how he looked at me with such disgust, like I was something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.

  Fuck you, Sam.

  I hear his voice in my head.

  Fuck you.

  I drive until I reach the little bridge outside of town, the one that crosses over Coldwater Creek. I pull my truck to the side of the road and park it there. I take the paper bag and walk to the center of the bridge. The quarter moon illuminates the water passing beneath me, streaking the surface of the creek with silver threads that shimmer as they wind around the rocks.

  I hold the bag out over the edge of the railing. For a moment, I hesitate. Then I picture Tom’s eyes looking at me as if he hates me more than anything in the world, and I let go. The bag tumbles through the night, and there’s a soft splash as it hits the water. The creek gurgles in surprise, then swallows it up and carries it away.

  “Fuck you, Tom.”

  I walk back to my truck, get in, and pull back onto the road. The bridge rattles under my tires as I cross it and head out of town. I’m not ready to go home yet, so I drive. I don’t even think about where I’m going. I just follow the road, one arm on the wheel and one hanging out the open window. I drive away from Tom Swift. I wonder what it would be like to keep going, to get on the thruway and drive all night, to head west, maybe, until I end up somewhere totally different. Somewhere new.

  What I want is to go home. But home doesn’t feel safe anymore. Tom Swift is roaming around my world like some kind of dangerous animal I don’t want to run into. I need somewhere new. Somewhere safe.

  But there is nowhere safe. Not now.

  In the end, I turn around after about fifty miles and drive back. It’s after midnight, and I’m getting tired. My anger at Tom Swift is fading to sadness, which is much, much worse. I don’t want to miss him. Not so soon.

  When I get back to the house, I go inside and barely acknowledge the Grands, who are now playing Yahtzee. I go up to my room and take a shower to get rid of the lingering smells from the Eezy-Freezy and the cigarettes and my unhappiness. Only two of those things wash away. Then I sit on my bed with the telephone and dial Linda.

  “Everything is fucked-up,” I say when she answers.

  She laughs. “You’re just figuring this out?”

  “I mean here, specifically,” I say. “In my life. Tom Swift hates me.”

  I explain about the other night.

  “Wow,” Linda says. “Plot twist. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I sigh. “I was wishing tonight that I could run away from everything. Go somewhere totally new. Have a different life. Be a different person. You ever feel like that?”

  Linda says, “That’s what Dorothy wished for, and remember what she learned.”

  “Dorothy?”

  “In The Wizard of Oz. But what did she end up figuring out?”

  “That a pair of pretty shoes isn’t always worth the trouble?”

  “That there’s no place like home.”

  “Oh, that. I don’t know. I think she should have stayed in Oz. I’ve never understood why she wanted to go back. From what I can tell, Kansas kind of blows.”

  “I should do a tarot reading for you,” Linda says. “Hold on. Let me get my deck.”

  I hear Linda moving around. Then she comes back. “Sometimes when I’m feeling a little lost, I pull one card and let it tell me what I should be focusing on,” she says. “Let’s see what card comes up for you.”

  I hear the sound of shuffling. Then Linda says, “Okay, I’ve spread them out. I’m moving my hand across the cards. When you want me to stop, say ‘stop.’”

  I don’t really know how I’m supposed to decide, so I wait awhile. Then, weirdly enough, I feel a kind of tingling in my body. “Stop!”

  “I’ve got your card,” Linda says. “I’m turning it over.”

  There’s a short silence, then she says, “Interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “You pulled the Eight of Swords.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “None of the cards are necessarily bad. Some are maybe more challenging than others.”

  “Is this one of them?”

  “That depends on how you look at it.”

  “Well, I’m not looking at it at all, so I have no idea.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Well, the card depicts a woman standing up, wrapped around with rope. She also has a blindfold over her eyes. And there are eight swords stuck into the ground around her.”

  “Swords and rope sound not good,” I say. “What does it mean?”

  “Like I said, it depends. Some people interpret it to mean a person who is feeling outnumbered and helpless, powerless to do anything.”

  “And some people don’t?”

  “I prefer to think of it as someone who feels overwhelmed, but just needs to take off the blindfold to see things more clearly. To change her way of thinking and see other ways of dealing with the situation.”

  “But how can she when she’s tied up?”

  “That’s the thing. She’s tied up. But has someone else tied her up, or has she tied herself up?”

  “It’s kind of hard to tie yourself up.”

  “It’s a metaphor,” Linda says. “Just go with it.”

  “Okay, so I can totally relate to the feeling outnumbered and overwhelmed thing. What do I do about it?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  I snort. “I thought the point of tarot cards was to tell you your future.”

  “Not really. They show you how things are. What you do with that information is up to you.”

  “I think I want my money back,” I tell her.

  She laughs. “Sorry. No refunds. We can do a larger reading, though, if you want to.”

  I’m tempted. But I’m also feeling exhausted by everything that’s going on. “Another time?” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks for listening to me. I should probably get some sleep now. Morning is wiser than the evening. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  “You remembered!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s good advice. Your mom is smart.”

  “She is,” Linda agrees. “I wish I’d listened to her more.”

  “Is she dead? I’m sorry. I don’t remember you saying anything about it.”

  “She’s not dead,” Linda says. “We just haven’t talked in a while. It’s a long story. I’ll save it for another night.”

  “You sure? I’m not that tired.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for listening. And for the tarot reading.”

  “Anytime. Good night, Sam.”

  Twenty-Three

  The inside of Lola’s house is airless and hot. The first thing Farrah does is open the windows in the living room. A small breeze comes in, but not enough to drive out the stifling heat.

  “This place is like a museum,” Paloma remarks as we look around.

  She’s right. The room is crammed with antique furniture, and every shelf, table, and mantle is covered with knickknacks: china figurines, glass vases, teacups. On the walls, portraits of stern-looking women and men look out at us, as if we’ve invaded their home and woken them from two-hundred-year-long naps.

  But the weirdest thing is the Christmas tree. In one corner of the room, a huge artificial tree looms. Paloma touches a switch on the wall beside it, and it comes to life. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of small white bulbs begin to twinkle, illuminating the ornaments that crowd the branches. An elaborate tree topper almost grazes the ceiling.

  “This thing must be twelve feet tall,” Farrah says.

  I go over and look at the ornaments. There are hundreds of them, each one different, all made of glass. I see snowmen, angels, a dozen different Santas. Glass birds with real feather tails perch on the branches. Strings of tiny glass beads are strung around the tree, and strands of perfectly placed tinsel dangle airily.

  “I guess somebody liked Christmas,” I say.

  Farrah goes over to an old phonograph and picks up a record that’s sitting on top of it. “Holiday Sing Along with Mitch,” she says. “Mitch Miller and the Gang. Old-school.”

  “She told me once that the only time she was happy was at Christmas,” Paloma says. “I guess she decided to make it Christmas all year long.”

  “Like Miss Havisham and her wedding day,” Farrah says. When she sees Paloma and me looking at her with clueless expressions, she adds, “From Great Expectations? Charles Dickens? Don’t you bitches read? Woman got jilted as she was getting dressed for her wedding. Found out her fiancé had swindled her and run off. She kept everything just the way it was for the rest of her life. Wedding dress. Wedding cake. Everything.”

  “Sounds like she needed to let some things go,” Paloma says as she investigates a hanging cabinet lined with tiny spoons commemorating the fifty states.

  Farrah puts the record back. “You two need to brush up on your literature. Let’s go upstairs. Maybe we’ll find Santa Claus tied up in the guest room.”

  We walk up to the second floor. There are two guest bedrooms, each one overflowing with more collectibles. We leave them without looking too closely, then go into the third bedroom, which was Lola’s.

  Over the bed there’s a framed poster for the film version of Damn Yankees. It shows Gwen Verdon wearing the famous black merry widow costume. Against one wall is an antique makeup table with a lighted mirror. It’s covered in pots and tubes and brushes. Tucked into one edge of the mirror is a photo of Lola wearing a costume very similar to the one Gwen Verdon is wearing in the poster. And on a stand to one side of the table is a hat shaped like a big pink rose, just like the one she wears in the film.

  “More records,” Paloma says, holding up the cast album from Damn Yankees. She looks through the rest of the stack sitting near the phonograph that rests on top of a small table. Unlike the one downstairs, this one looks like something a kid would have in his bedroom sixty years ago, and it occurs to me that it’s probably the one Lola had when she was little.

  I’m looking at another framed item. It’s the playbill from Sweet Charity. Across the white part of the magazine cover is an inscription: “To Garrison, Whatever you want, you get! Best Regards, Gwen Verdon.”

  “It’s like a shrine,” Farrah says. She opens the door to the room’s closet, then whistles. “Stuffed with girl clothes,” she says. “I wonder where she kept her boy clothes?”

  “Probably in one of the guest rooms,” Paloma suggests. “I think this room is like the Christmas tree. It was how she wanted her life to be.”

  I sit down on the edge of Lola’s bed. For some reason, the room makes me incredibly sad. “She spent her whole life wishing she was somebody else.”

  “Most people do,” Farrah says.

  “Is that what we’re doing?” I ask. “Doing drag? Are we trying to be people we’re not?” I think about the time Lola commented on Farrah being a little black boy who named himself after a white woman, and how hurt Farrah looked when she said it.

  Farrah turns around. “Lola was not the happiest person on the planet,” she says. “I think he really would have preferred being a woman. And it looks like that’s how he lived when he was alone.”

  “You think he was trans?”

  Farrah shrugs. “I don’t know what he would have called it.”

  “Now you’re calling him ‘he.’ What happened to ‘she’?”

  Farrah shuts the closet door. “You know I almost always say ‘she.’ But right now we’re talking about Lola the person. Not Lola the character. And what I’m saying is that I don’t know what Lola—what Garrison—thought about who he was. Maybe she was trans. Maybe he just liked to dress up. People aren’t always one thing or another. You know that. Lola was from a different generation. Things were harder then for queer people. They didn’t have as many options. What I do know is that he did the best he could with what he was dealt.”

  “Can I ask you guys something?” I say. “It’s kind of personal.”

  Farrah snorts. “Honey, you’ve helped me tuck my boy bits up inside my butt crack and tape ’em in. How much more personal does it get?”

  “Do you ever want to be real girls? Like, go the whole way?”

  Farrah shakes her head. “Uh-uh. I like having a ding-dong.”

  “Ding-dong?” Paloma says. “What are you, four?”

  “More like eight and a half,” Farrah says, cracking up. “That’s why it takes so much duct tape.”

  Paloma rolls her eyes. “I’ve thought about it,” she says.

  “Really?” I ask.

  She nods. “I’m a lot happier as Paloma, so for a while I thought, why not be her all the time?”

  “But?” I say.

  “But I’m not a woman,” she says. “It’s one thing to dress up as one a couple of nights a week. It’s another to know you’re one. I might not be all that happy as Ricky, but being Paloma full-time wouldn’t change that.”

  Farrah sits down in the chair at Lola’s dressing table. “May I ask what brought this up? It’s not just all this, is it?” She gestures around the room.

  I’m embarrassed to tell them about what I did, dressing up for Tom Swift.

  “Sammy, are you thinking you might be trans?” Farrah presses. “Cuz you know we’re your sisters and would be fine with that.”

  “No. I’m not trans. I don’t know what I am.” I take a breath, then tell them about what happened with Tom Swift. I tell them everything. Well, not quite everything. I leave out the part about throwing Tom Swift’s T and his dick into the creek. But I do tell them about outing him to Anna-Lynn.

  “Maybe the girl didn’t get your meaning,” Paloma says when I’m done.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But that’s kind of not the point. The point is, I shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

  “True,” Farrah agrees. “You shouldn’t go blurting out people’s business like that. But I know how it can be. One time I was dating this guy and he was all, ‘I love you’ and ‘I want to be with you forever.’ Then one day I was at the mall and ran into him with his girlfriend. They were looking at engagement rings. I had a couple of things to say to the both of them. But in that case, I don’t think I was wrong.”

  “No, you were not,” says Paloma, and they nod at each other.

  “That’s the thing, though. Tom Swift and I were never going out. He never promised me anything. Nothing. This is all me.”

  “Friends fight,” Paloma says. “You’ll make up and get over it.”

  I can tell they don’t really understand. Or maybe I’m the one who doesn’t understand. Either way, talking about Tom Swift with them isn’t helping. Thankfully, there’s something else to talk about, and now Farrah brings it up.

  “I don’t know about you two, but I don’t see myself taking up residence here,” she says.

  In addition to leaving us the Shangri-La, Lola has also left us the house and everything in it. That’s why we’re here, to decide what to do with it.

  “Me neither,” says Paloma. “I say we sell it.”

  “Sammy?”

  Having to decide whether or not to sell a house is not something I thought I would be doing at sixteem. I’ve lived with the Grands my whole life, in a house that my dad lived in his whole life and that the Grands have lived in for almost forever. I can’t imagine us ever selling it. So having to make that decision about Lola’s house is a big deal for me.

  “I guess,” I say. “What else are we going to do with it?”

  “That’s settled, then,” Farrah says. “Now I know we’ve put off talking about it, but this is as good a time as any to do it. What about the Shangri-La? As you know, we each own a share of the bar. As you also know, we’ve had a very nice offer to buy the place. We’ve all had a little bit of time to think about it, so I want to see what we’re all thinking. Paloma, what about you?”

  “I think we should keep it,” Paloma says. “If we sell the house, that will be a little bit of money for everyone. And I don’t have anything else going on, so I’m happy to work at the bar.”

  Farrah sighs. “Is that really what you want to do with your life? I thought you were thinking of going to cosmetology school. You want to work at a bar in the middle of nowhere, or do you want to go out on tour with Ariana Grande and make her beautiful every night?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Paloma says. “The most I can hope for is opening my own salon.”

  “You need to dream bigger.”

  “Oh yeah?” says Paloma. “What about you? What are your plans?”

  “I say we sell the place. I’ll use the money to send myself to school.”

  “And what are you going to study?”

  “Filmmaking,” Farrah says.

  “Filmmaking?” Paloma says, and laughs. “Gurl, you going to be the next Steven Spielberg?”

  “More like the next Ava DuVernay,” Farrah says. “And what’s so funny about it? I already filled out my application to NYU.”

  Paloma laughs again. “New York University?”

  I can see that Farrah is getting mad. She looks at me, “That makes one for selling and one for keeping. Looks like you’re the deciding vote, Sammy.”

  Any relief I felt at not talking about Tom Swift anymore disappears instantly. I don’t want to be in this position. Farrah and Paloma want different things, and I want them both to be happy. But one of them isn’t going to be, and which of them it is depends on what I decide.

  “I still don’t know,” I mumble.

  They both groan.

  “Come on, Sammy,” Farrah says. “What are you going to do with a bar you can’t even legally work in yet? You can’t expect us to run it and just give you a third of the profits when you can’t even help out. No offense. It’s not your fault. But it’s how it is.”

  “We can always work something out,” Paloma counters. “Don’t worry about working, Sammy. The Shangri-La will be there when you’re ready.”