Page 4 of The Someday Daughter
My phone pings with a text, and I lift it off the stone step. I’ve made my way down to the very bottom of the ocean staircase, my feet buried in the sand. I snuck outside when I heard Camilla start to stir; it’s chilly out here, the morning whipping with storm wind, but still preferable to being near her and that copy of her book. Fallon’s sent me an article, too:Camilla St. Vrain Tour Off to a Shaky Start as Daughter Audrey Suffers Food Poisoning.
Food poisoning. I have to hand it to Magnolia; it’s a smart story. Why else would national darling Camilla St. Vrain’s historically self-composed daughter flee the stage in the middle of a sold-out event? Why would anyone?
Curdled carbonara’s easier to grasp than the truth of the matter: that seeing all those photos, the person Camilla’s made me out to be for her six million social media followers, felt intolerable. Not difficult to tolerate—intolerable. Full, simultaneous rejection from my body and my brain. So, in a way...
Yeah, I reply.Spiritually.
Fallon responds immediately.explain
If I were to explain, it would sound like this: That photo of me,seven years old, holding a turtle on this exact beach, was taken by my dad. I’d never have held out a baby turtle to my mother, because she’d never have touched something like that.
The one of me on my first day at the Summit School was taken without my knowledge; I was eleven and walking into my new dorm building and she called my name so I turned around. In the photo I look focused and serious, the perfect face for the caption she posted—a gushing rush of emotion about her pride, her big-brained daughter, her mini-me so self-actualized at just eleven that she was ready to live in Colorado, live at school, make academia her entire life. I didn’t feel that way then. I felt terrified. I felt alone and unwanted. But she told me how excited I was, how brave I was, how much I wanted this—told the whole world, too. And eventually I did feel those things, though I don’t know who chose them for me to feel: my own mind, or Camilla’s voice that lives inside it.
Then the last photo: Ethan and me at graduation. Ethan, the embodiment of a life I’d made without her, still somehow there on her social feeds like he was hers, too. Nothing was mine to hold sacred; nothing belonged to me fully enough that she couldn’t abscond with it and turn it into a layer of her brand.
And now, the very worst of it: this summer. The biggest thing she’s ever ripped out from underneath me and taken for her own.
She stole my summer on a Thursday morning while wearing a matching lilac workout set. Scallop-edged sports bra, high-rise leggings. She’d sent me a set of my own; mine was seafoam green but, critically, had the same Saint logo emblazoned across the boobs. It was still in the flat-rate shipping box Magnolia mailed it in; I wore pajama shorts and an oversized T-shirt I’d stolen from Dad in middle school.
“Find your sit bones, honey.” My mother pulled her feet together in front of her, legs bowed wide, extending her spine. “And close your eyes. Thumbs to third eye center.”
I crossed my legs and watched her breathe, ribs expanding over the lip of her yoga pants. We did this every Thursday: Weekly Flow. A name that sounded decidedly menstrual to me, but was actually an hour of one-on-one yoga over video chat. Exactly as torturous as you’d imagine.
“Namaste,” my mother murmured, her eyes fluttering open. She always smiled at me dreamily through the screen before adding, “The light in me honors the light in you.”
Great. Weekly Flow was the only way we kept in touch while I was at school, sixty minutes per week of Camilla bossing my body into various contortions that required zero conversation. But the light in her always honored the light in me, so. There was that.
“I’m going to go,” I said, reaching to shut the computer. “Have an exam tomorrow.” It was early May, the heat of finals season, and I resented the loss of the last sixty minutes.
“Just a moment.” She sat up taller, and I let my hand drop from its grip on my laptop. She had that look—theI need to tell you somethingone. TheThis school across the country will be perfect for youone. TheMaybe spending Christmas with your father makes more senseone. I bit the inside of my cheek.
“Lettersis turning twenty-five this year,” she said, like her book was a human being. “And they want to do a national tour for the anniversary edition.”
The door to my dorm room swung open, and Fallon walked in with an armful of textbooks.Sorry, she mouthed, waving a handat Camilla on-screen. She crept over to her desk, out of sight of the camera, and shot me awhat is it this timelook.
“Congratulations,” I said, because it had always been my mother’s favorite thing to hear. “I’m sure that’ll be great.”
“Yes, well.” She cleared her throat, smiling in a way that would almost seem nervous if I didn’t know her so well. “I’d like for you to come with me.”
Over the top of my computer screen, Fallon made a choking noise. Our eyes met across the room, and she screwed up her entire face in a caricature of shock. Because, truly,excuse me?I hate surprises.Hatesurprises from my mother.
“What?” I pulled my legs out of their careful fold. “I’m going to UPenn this summer.”
“Well,” my mother said, “I wonder if that could wait.”
I snorted, laughter licking up my throat like fire. She was the most ridiculous person. The most unreasonable, unthinkably privileged person. Nothing existed outside of her own expectations, and there was nothing the world could do but fall in line.
“No,” I said, so sharply that Fallon hunched into herself. “It can’t wait, Mom. It’s a program for rising freshmen. It has a seven percent acceptance rate. I’m going with Ethan.”
“Honey, you’re already in at Johns Hopkins.”
“And that precludes me from having any other goals?”
“No, but you certainly don’t need to spend your whole summer studying. That’s what the next four years are for.”
I tipped forward, elbow buried between my thighs, to pinch the bridge of my nose. I needed the Penn program—not just to be with Ethan, but to set myself up for the fall. Johns Hopkins Hospital takes one incoming freshman for its fall ICU shadowingposition, the most coveted premed placement on campus. I needed Penn on my résumé to land it, but my mother would never understand that, or care. The only way to get her to listen was to frame things through the viewfinder of her own desires.
“Why do you need me there?” I asked flatly, not looking up.
