Myles and Blake stifle a laugh. I get that Savannah is just kidding, but it makes me kind of paranoid that they all believe I’m some west coast city girl who’s going to shrivel up and die out here. I was born here; I can survive in Tennessee. Hell, I’ll maybe even like it.
“Blake, drive by Fairview Elementary first,” Savannah instructs, leaning forward to tap him excitedly on the shoulder. “Let Mila see.”
On the left, we pass a sign for Fairview High School, and on the right is the elementary school. We pull into the small parking lot and Blake slows the truck to a crawl, circling around and shining his headlights upon the red stone building. There’s an air of expectancy in the car, like they’re all waiting for the nostalgia to hit me.
“Do you recognize any of it?” Savannah asks, eyes wide and encouraging. She’s like a puppy that’s finally got its favorite chew toy back – she seems so happy to have me around. “We used to play tetherball in the yardallllllthe time!”
I take a good look at the building. It’s familiar in a déjà vu kind of way – IknowI’ve seen this before, but I can’t really associate many memories with it, and I certainly don’t recall playing tetherball with Savannah Bennett. I can barely remember the house we lived in, let alone the school I attended.
“Sorry,” I say with a hopeless shrug. Maybe Savannah wants me to remember so that I feel like less of a stranger to her.
“Well, that was pointless,” Blake mutters, then pulls back out onto the road.
I wonder where this tailgate party is being held, but the answer becomes obvious when Blake cuts across the road to the high school. It’s summer, school is closed, there’s no one around, but still. . . A tailgate party on school property?
We draw closer to a parking lot out by the sports fields where a handful of other trucks is already parked, and a small bunch of people is milling around. There’s a girl standing in one of the truck beds, setting up a huge pair of speakers on the truck’s roof, and another guy is kneeling by the ground, rifling through a cooler.
My palms feel clammy as it becomes real to me that I’m going to have to talk to all of these people at some point. I’m usually a sociable person, but it helps that everyone I interact with back home already knows what my deal is. Here, though? Here, I wonder who knows and who doesn’t. A stranger wouldn’t be able to figure out who I am just by looking at me. It’s only Dad’s super fans and the press who pay me any attention, so to the rest of the world I look like any other teenager. . . Except this is Fairview, Dad’s quaint little hometown, which I’m sure must mean the locals here know all about us Hardings. But so far, the only people who know I’m Everett Harding’s daughter are Savannah, Myles and Blake. No one else knows I’ve arrived here from the Harding Estate tonight.
Maybe I can pass myself off as someone else. A new girl in town whose parents have bought a home here. . . Normal. Nothing gossip-worthy.
We park in the next available gap, adding to the wide circle that all of the trucks are starting to form. Blake kills the engine and throws off his seatbelt, already sliding out of the vehicle.
“Nervous?” Myles asks in the new silence that has formed inside the truck. When I look up at him, his cheeky smile is directed at me. He’s kind of goofy, but in an attractive way. He playfully purses his lips. “Don’t worry. They’ll like you.”
“You’ll fit right in,” Savannah adds.
Really?
The Bennett siblings climb out of the truck and I follow suit, tugging at the belt loops of my jean shorts to keep my hands busy. My naval piercing shines under the lights, the aquamarine gemstone glittering – my birthstone. My parents still don’t know about it, but for once they aren’t around to see it. There’s a kind of thrill in knowing my parents are a thousand miles away and have zero control over me for however long I’m here. It lets me do things like flash my piercing to the world without fear of repercussions.
“I like that.”
My eyes slide over to find Blake acknowledging my piercing with a clipped nod.
I hug my arms around myself and look him up and down in return. I feel oddly weird about Blake noticing, mostly because I fear he’s making fun of me. I let his remarks in the truck slide only because I’m trying to make some friends, but he strikes me as being. . . Well, maybe not the nicest person around here. Not as welcoming as his cousins, and definitely harder to read.
Blake scoffs at my protective stance. “Why get a piercing if you’re going to hide it?”
He turns away, moving to the back of the truck to help Myles lower the tailgate. I flip a strand of hair away from my face in irritation as he effortlessly springs up into the truck bed and hauls different items around, slabs of muscle shifting in his arms.
Luckily, Savannah appears by my side as a distraction. She grasps my wrist. “Let’s go say hi to Tori.”
I let her guide me along through the circle of trucks. A couple more pull up, filling in the remaining gaps, and everyone gets set up. People are lowering their tailgates, dragging out chairs and coolers and snacks. I spot someone unwrapping disposable grills and lining up packets of hot-dog buns on the bed of their truck. The atmosphere is lively, and I enjoy the buzz of voices that gradually grows louder and louder. Everyone seems to be in good spirits.
“Tori, come down here for a sec,” Savannah says as she brings me to a halt by the truck with the girl who’s setting up the speakers.
“Hang on,” Tori says over her shoulder, fiddling with notches on the speakers with one hand and scrolling through her phone with the other. After a second, music echoes through the speakers, a nice R&B groove, which is a welcome change from the country we were listening to on the drive over here. She lowers the volume to a respectable level, then spins around with a proud grin plastered over her face. “There. Call me the tech wizard.”
“I need to introduce you to someone,” Savannah tells her.
Tori jumps down from the truck, pulls Savannah into a hug, then faces me, arm still slung around Savannah’s shoulder. So, they’re best friends.
“This is Mila,” Savannah explains. “She was in our class in grade school.”
“Ohhhh,” Tori says with a knowing wink. Her hair is dyed a bold pink that pops brightly against her bronze skin and there’s a stud piercing in her nose. “Mila Harding. Hey, girl. You’re back.” She steps forward and draws me into a tight hug, enveloping me in a luscious scent of perfume, and I awkwardly embrace her in return even though I have no recollection of ever knowing her.
Is this how it’s going to be? My childhood peers can all remember me becauseof coursethey’ll be well aware that once they went to school with the kid of an A-lister, but I can’t quite recall any of them because in the last decade my childhood memories have been somehow overtaken by more exciting, glamorous ones. I can remember every peculiar detail of meeting the Kardashians, the super-luxe thrill of taking a private jet to Paris. But I’m struggling to unearth memories of Savannah and Tori from first grade, of playing tetherball in the schoolyard. How shallow does that make me?
