Page 24 of A Better World

They looked up the charity, ActHollow, and its members in theWho’s Whodirectory, a hefty print book updated every year that listed every resident in town and provided folksy page-long biographies. Everyone involved in ActHollow was a hotshot—a board member or related to one.

“This could be big,” Russell said.

She spent too long getting ready, practicing answers to imaginary questions in the mirror:It’s true, my grades weren’t good, and I tested at the bottom, too. Not everyone comes from the same place or has the same advantages. I’m an excellent doctor now.In her imagination, they grilled her, their comments adversarial. (Why did you move to part time after your twins? Don’t you have any ambition? Are you sure you’re capable ofimplementing our technology? It’s far more advanced than anything you saw in New York.) In reply, she made an award-worthy speech that brought them all to weeping tears. In the end they hugged her and told her she was both hired and also the coolest person they’d ever met. By the time she left the mirror, she was wet eyed, too.

Sometimes she wondered: Was she crazy or charmingly whimsical? Unclear!

Finally, wearing jeans, boots, and an old wool sweater (the Omnium tracksuit seemed too casual, and the bespoke stuff she’d ordered from PV’s clothing store, Fabric Collective, hadn’t arrived), she came down to find her family in the kitchen eating pizza. They were physically healthier since the move, but this relentless hazing had chafed. The skin under Russell’s eyes was dark. The twins had lost their zest. Everyone seemed soggy, like cereal left in the bowl too long.

“What time do you think you’ll be home?” Russell asked.

“No idea. If I’m late, don’t wait up. You need the sleep.”

He nodded with relief. “You nervous?”

Like Hip, he’d eaten half his pizza slice very neatly, the bites evenly sized, no crumbs. The plate and water glass were equidistant from the computer.Hewas nervous, she could see, which was making hermorenervous.

“Nope!”

The Night of the Fire

“No more tablestonight,” the host said. They wore a neon blue tuxedo dress with ruffles, their glitter-decorated dayworker badge pinned to their breast pocket like a corsage. After glancing at Linda in her outsider sweater and jeans, they looked straight ahead, as if she’d profoundly failed at the general task of existence.

“I’m here for Daniella Bennett,” Linda answered.

Like magic, their eyes popped and they snapped to attention. “Oh! Follow me!”

Sirin’s Bar and Grill was located in a former stone church, the oldest building in Plymouth Valley and the only edifice that predated the town. The large altar in back had been repurposed as a bar and bandstand. Crowded tables fanned out like spokes on a wheel. Linda stopped when she got to three pushed-together four-tops, where about half the Roc team parents caroused. She’d curled her hair and applied red lipstick. Her jeans fit snug, revealing decent curves and a still-perky ass. She didn’t look PV, but she did look good.

Amir did a double take, seeming at first not to recognize her, all dolled up.

“Where are you headed? I didn’t know you came here.” He was drinking a double shot of something alcoholic and brown. Mead, probably. This was a Roc parent get-together, from which the Farmer-Bowens had been excluded. They showed zero contrition, nor any indication that they ought to at least pretend.

“I’m meeting a group called ActHollow.”

At the mention of Daniella Bennett’s group, the others stopped chattering and gave the conversation their attention. “ActHollow! How’d you snag that invitation?” Amir asked, his voice sharp, even as he grinned. It was an affectation she’d grown to recognize as classic Plymouth Valley.

“They’re interviewing me for a position.”

“Well, tell her I say hello. In fact, once you’re done, tell them all to come over and have a drink with us,” Amir said. He seemed to think about it, then added, “You can come, too!”

“Yes, tell them we say hello!” added the goalie’s mom, an administrator in Russell’s department who’d never acknowledged Linda before this but was now flashing prayer hands. “Tell them Ruth Epstein says hello!”

Linda scanned these people whose acceptance she so badly wanted. They kind of sucked. “Will do!”

She caught up with the host along a wide service hall. They slid open a stained-glass door, then retreated, leaving Linda peering into a private room.

Three women sat along the far end of a rectangular table, papers messily strewn between them. “Linda, you clean up great, you hot bitch!” Daniella cried as she stood. She hugged Linda hard enough to accordion-out her breath. “If I weren’t married, I’d beonyou!”

“Holy bananas. You’re SO strong!” Linda gasped.

Daniella kept holding her with warmth. Her tight blue denim coveralls fit like driving gloves. “Free weights. Lloyd likes a little wrestling between the sheets. We old marrieds have to keep it spicy.”

It was so charmingly inappropriate that Linda laughed.

“I say anything. I say everything. I’m radically honest,” Daniella said. She held Linda an extra beat before letting go, and Linda had the feeling the gesture was intended to steady:I invited you, and I have your back.

Next came Rachel Johnson. She was a bone-thin Black woman in her late thirties. Her smile was etched with premature wrinkles. Either she was a smoker or chemically treated faces were so normalized around here that Linda’d forgotten what natural aging looked like.Linda’d seen her at the Beltane Crowning—she’d been onstage with the rest of BetterWorld’s board. She was BetterWorld’s compliance director, whatever that meant.

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