LITMIR.BIZ

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but I’ve seen her hanging around the clubhouse. Mom, she’s like...”

      “Like what?”

      But Danielle only glared out the window, arms folded across her chest. We’d exited 580, thick with traffic even on a Saturday, and were winding our way through twelve miles of twists and turns on the sole access road to The Palms. The road mimicked the switchbacks of the encroaching Diablo Range. In the distance, the mountains rose brown and bare, dotted with the occasional thirsty-looking clumps of cows beneath a thatch of trees. Up close the ranch land was so dry, its fissures were deep as fault lines.

      “Hey,” I said, giving Danielle a nudge with my elbow. “It would be good for you to know some people in the area. And she might be nice.”

      She grunted.

      “What?”

      “You said swimming. It’s a pool party, Mom. How am I supposed to wear my swimsuit in front of people I don’t even know?”

      “Didn’t you do that all week at camp?”

      “But those were just kids. These are...”

      “They’re kids, too,” I said, forcing a note of conviction into my voice. I knew what Danielle was thinking. Somehow, they weren’t just kids—they were miniature reflections of their parents, with designer clothes and disposable income. They’d inherited all the best that life could offer without the struggle, without even the stories that came with triumph and success.

      “What if they hate me?” Her voice was small. “What if they make fun of me?”

      I swallowed hard. It was one of those parent-fail moments, listening to my daughter rehash my own fears, the same lines from the mental argument I’d had on the Mesbahs’ front porch. That never stops, honey, I wanted to tell her. There will always be those people. The difference is that at some point—a point I hadn’t quite reached myself—their opinions stopped mattering.

      We were approaching the final bend on the access road, where the pavement suddenly smoothed out and the scrubby ranch land was replaced with towering, evenly spaced palm trees. Ahead of us the road forked before the wrought-iron ingress and egress gates, flanking the sign that announced our arrival: THE PALMS AT ALTAMONT RIDGE. It still struck me as pompous, and I’d lived in apartment complexes that had a genuine need to inflate themselves: Willow Glen and Stony Brook, where there had been no glens or brooks in sight. This sign announced wealth and privilege, something worth protecting, something with a high cost of admission.

      Recognizing my car’s tracking device, the entrance gate rolled slowly open, then closed behind us. Janet Neimeyer’s Italianate villa loomed ahead, its terra-cotta roof flaming under the sun. As we coasted forward, I turned to Danielle. “Listen to me. You look fantastic in that swimsuit. Just be yourself—smart, outgoing, funny. How could anyone not love you?”

      She shook her head, but one corner of her mouth twitched in a smile. “Okay. But what if I hate them?”

      “If you want to leave, you can. It’s right around the corner. Just say, adios, goodbye, I’m heading home to watch C-SPAN with my mom.”

      Behind us there was a sharp beep, and a little green Mini swerved around my Camry and zoomed past.

      Danielle rolled her eyes. “That’ll firmly cement my coolness.”

      * * *

      Saturday night, she left in cutoff jeans and a shapeless T-shirt that read It’s elementary, dear Watson next to a fading graphic of the periodic table. The blue halter straps of her swimsuit flopped at her neck. It was the first time in years I’d been able to cajole her into a two-piece, and she did look great in it, taller than last summer, limbs longer, her body lean with the merest suggestion of curves. I watched from the front porch as she rounded the turn at the end of our street. Until she disappeared from sight, I wasn’t sure she was going to go through with it.

      All night, I watched the clock while Phil watched the Giants game. I snuggled close to his T-shirt–clad chest, inhaling the smell of aftershave and laundry detergent. Outside the sliding door, the pool glimmered darkly, a reminder of my failed romantic overture last night. Eventually I nodded off, my face warm against his torso, only waking when the game was over, the players being interviewed. Phil had muted the sound. He didn’t like this part, the explanations and excuses.

      My gaze drifted back to the clock. “It’s ten fifteen. Maybe I’ll just walk down there and check.”

      “You’ll ruin any hope she has of being cool if you do,” Phil warned. “And believe me, there’s a kid who needs all the help she can get.”

      I mock-swatted him. He wasn’t kidding, but he wasn’t being malicious, either. It was amazing how well he and Danielle understood each other, how well they’d adapted to each other’s presence. “You can call me Phil,” he’d said when they’d first met, and she’d told him solemnly, “You can call me Danielle.” In the beginning, they had bonded over shows on Animal Planet, made visits to the Bass Pro Shops on weekends, regaled each other with trivia about geology and astronomy and anatomy. She’d outgrown some of this, but what was left between them was an easy sort of comfort, a mutual respect.

      The room flashed between blue and black as Phil flipped through silent channels, not lingering long on any particular image.

      I knew that Danielle wasn’t a typical fourteen-year-old, and that was part of my worry. Over the years, I’d counseled hundreds of teenage girls over breakups and arguments with their parents and spats with their best friends. I was the only female counselor on staff, and girls seemed to feel more comfortable sharing their troubles with me. It was a running joke that the bulk of the school’s tissue budget went to my office. So far, Danielle had avoided those messy entanglements of adolescence—the sole perk of being nerdy. Her weekends weren’t spent at parties; they were spent at the kitchen table, where she zipped through extra-credit assignments.

      Only a month ago, amidst the craziness of our impending move to The Palms, she’d delivered the salutatorian address at her middle school graduation. I had barely recognized her behind the microphone; she’d been so witty and confident, her jokes delivered with the spot-on timing of a comic.

      I hopped to my feet when she came in at a quarter to eleven, her hair slicked back postswim and drying stiffly on her shoulders. Upstairs, she changed into pajamas and gave me the play-by-play as we lounged on her bed, goose bumps forming on our arms beneath the whirr of the ceiling fan. She smelled faintly of chlorine, and her fingers retained the telltale orange residue of Cheetos.

      “The Jorgensens have this massive pool. Olympic-sized,” she said.

      “Really?”

      “Well, huge, anyway. And you should see their pool house. Our old house could practically fit in there. It has this massive TV and all these couches.”

      “Sounds nice. So what did you do—watch a movie?”

      Danielle rolled her eyes. “It was kind of lame. The guys—Mac from across the street and then Alex and Eric Zhang—played video games the whole time. I guess they expected the rest of us to watch them, like that would be any fun.”

      I smiled. “So you went swimming?”

      “Yeah. Kelsey and Hannah and me.”

      “What are the girls like?”

      She yawned, pulling the comforter halfway over us. “Hannah was kind of clingy. She kept hanging on to my arm like we were best friends already. But, I don’t know—she’s okay. And Kelsey’s really pretty, like the kind of pretty you see on magazines. She’s nice, though. Oh—” She sat up halfway, propping her head on her hand. “Is it okay if she comes over tomorrow to swim?”

      “Of course. Are you going to invite Hannah, too?”

      She grimaced. “Do I have to? I don’t think they get along very well.”

      “Kelsey and Hannah? Why not?”

      Danielle

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