Page 59 of Seven Days in June

Eva didn’t speak Creole, so she sang it in a bastardized, phonetic way.Dough-dough, tee-bay-bay.Neither one of them knew what the song meant, but it didn’t matter. This was when the good sleep started. The peppermint-and-lavender, dough-dough sleep.

Audre’s thoughts slowly ratcheted up from miserable to indignant.She thinks I’m a burden.

As if it were so easy being Eva’s daughter. A babysitter for a twelve-year-old? Constant check-ins, even if she was just walking to a friend’s house? And then there was the wholeCursedthing. When Atticus Seidman texted the entire class a gross scene from book six ofCursed, Audre had to play along, when all the while her soul was cringing.

The sex itself didn’t freak her out. Audre was raised by a mom who used the correct words for private parts, was consistently honest about where babies came from, and championed masturbation (“Self-love is paramount!”). Sex was natural, but her mom writing about it wasn’t. Gross. She was so asexual! She was just…Mommy. Cuddly and cute. It was like imagining Pikachu writing porn.

Earlier that year, Ophelia Grey’s mom had forbidden her to attend Audre’s birthday party, because Eva was a “smut peddler.” Audre, despite her embarrassment, would defend Eva to the death. She told Ophelia that her mom was repressed, and suggested she try a dildo called the Quarterback, which she’d read about on BitchMedia.org. Eva had been furious with her. But after bedtime, Audre had heard her repeating the story to Auntie Cece and giggling till she cried.

Audre was proud of her mom, unconditionally. But because of one mistake, Eva was no longer proud of Audre.

What else could she do to please that woman? She was a model student. She’d never kissed a boy. Yes, she’d tried a Juul at Brooklyn Bowl’s teen night, but she’d barely even felt anything—until she went home and ate her entire bag of Halloween candy during the span of a six-minute YouTube cheek-contouring tutorial.

Eva didn’t know how lucky she was, having a daughter like her. If Audre couldn’t make her happy, nothing would. If living a dry, dateless life was good enough for her, then fine. But it wasn’t Audre’s fault. She hadn’t asked to be born. She’d learned this lesson from a powerful codependency-themed episode ofIyanla: Fix My Life.

Plus, the threat of being expelled wasn’t the end of the world. Audre was having second thoughts about her private school anyway. It just wasn’t real. She was secretly dying to go to public school, to experience true oppression. There, she could effect the most change.

How can I say I’m a plugged-in cultural force, when I’m surrounded by so much uselessaffluence?she thought.Private school is a dated, classist concept.

She was stifled at Cheshire Prep. And maybe that was the difference between Eva and Audre. Eva accepted being stifled. But Audre wanted to taste life, feel it, do stuff, go places. Be an adventurous woman. Like Auntie Cece! Or Grandma Lizette.

Audre wished she knew Grandma Lizette better. They FaceTimed on birthdays and holidays, but she’d visited Brooklyn only a couple of times. Eva said Lizette had a fear of flying—plus, they were always too busy with school and work to travel much—but Audre always wondered why Grandma Lizette wasn’t in their lives more.

In Eva’s stories, Lizette sounded divine. Too beautiful, too unique, too powerful for the world. When Audre’s Contemporary Art teacher assigned their final project, to paint a feminist icon—she knew she’d paint her grandmother. Lizette, who’d won a zillion titles in the notoriously racist, misogynist pageant industry and, with no education or resources, launched a career as a model and traveled the globe with her daughter. Eva was always talking about the years she’d spent in Switzerland. All that, and then Grandma Lizette had managed to send her daughter to Princeton, too! Whatcouldn’tshe do?

Grandma Lizette was a true American success story.

She would’ve loved me, Audre mused, her thoughts drowning out Parsley’s tirade about whatever.

As Audre continued to plummet, the supervising TA, Mr. Josh, was quietly freaking out. His blond pompadour was sweaty at the hairline, and his peaches-and-cream complexion had flushed a ruddy red. All session, he’d been glued to Book Twitter on his phone, following gossipy tweets with links from Lit Hub, LiteraryGossipBlog, BookBiz, et cetera.

Now he was pacing back and forth in front of the whiteboard, waiting for an opportunity to interrupt the girls. Parsley finally paused for breath. And then, summoning all the prep-school charm that kept him afloat at Vanderbilt while he really wanted to grow his hair to his knees, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and write about the journey like a male Cheryl Strayed, he approached Audre’s chair.

“Hello, girls. How are you holding up?”

“We’re good, Mr. Josh,” said Audre. “Are we talking too much?”

“No, no, you’re fine! Audre, could I speak with you for a moment?”

Her heart sank. God, what did she do now? Pasting on a smile, she said, “Sure. Is everything okay?”

“No, no! You’re great. It’s just…ugh, sorry, I’m nervous.” He shook his whole body like a wet dog and started over. “Audre, your mom knows Shane Hall?”

Frowning, she asked, “Who?”

“Shane Hall, the novelist? He wroteEightandSee Saw.”

“Oh, him.” She wrinkled her nose. Shane Hall wrote what she called “F-train books”: the hardcovers grown-ups toted on the subway to flex that they were reading An Important and Culturally Relevant Book. Audre was a compulsive reader but wasn’t into F-train books. She knew about him, though.

“Didn’t he have a DUI or something?” asked Audre. “It was on TMZ, I think. My mom wouldn’t know someone like that.”

“Shane Hall,” mused Parsley. “His name sounds like a dorm.”

“I think your mom definitely knows him,” said Mr. Josh, thrusting his iPhone in Audre’s face.

There was Audre’s mom, snuggling up to Shane Hall on a bench. Eating ice cream. Looking happier than Audre had ever seen her look. A different kind of happy. The kind of happy that is, in fact, reflective of a person living their best life. The kind of happy that isn’t at all held back by a bothersome daughter.

Is Mommy dating this man?she wondered, her mind a swirl of confusion and hurt.Is she in love? What was that “who has time to date”speech about, then? Why did she lie to me? She’s out there, happy AF, while I’m feeling guilty?

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