A secret? Did she have one to tell? Everyone has secrets. That they shoplifted something from a mom-and-pop shop once; that they had cheated on a test; let their sister take the blame when something was broken in the house. But a secret she had told no one else? Odilie bit her lip. She thought about her conversation with Peri, what Peri seemed to see in her. She was still confused as to why Peri had even asked to have drinks with her. Weren’t there a thousand other things a woman like Peri wanted to do aside from spending time with an invisible girl from a tiny town? Odilie didn’t have the gumption to ask. And maybe that was her problem, she was beginning to realize. That she thought so little of herself that her instinct was to question why someone would even want to hear what she had to say, be interested in her thoughts and opinions.

She swallowed. Turned to her side to look at Peri. Even in the night, the whites of Peri’s eyes shone bright, like little moons themselves. “I think that I’ve felt so constrained by my expectations for life, that it’s never even occurred to me to ask for more, to want more. I feel...unseen, and I thought that was my lot in life. Average looks. Average smarts. Average life.” She breathed, put her hand on her stomach and traced her naval through her T-shirt. “But somehow, meeting you, more seems possible. I don’t feel so...stifled.”

Peri reached out and touched Odilie’s face, in the same spot as the time they’d first met, caressed Odilie’s cheek with her entire palm. “I see you.”

Odilie’s face burned bright and hot and red. She wondered if Peri could feel it.

4

VERA

Present day

I wake up hungover and smell bacon frying, cinnamon bread warming in the toaster, but I lie still, trying to detangle the rest of the night.

I’d left Page’s soon after she asked me that impossible thing, my head already beginning to throb from the mezcal and wine. She’d tried to get me to stay longer, to watch a movie, drink more, maybe even go out. But the longer I sat there, the glasses sweating, the more I began to question why I was there to begin with, with Page and her familiar face and her unanswerable questions.

I understood why she wanted my help worming her way into Odilie’s snooty New York social scene. Her hair had the texture of straw and was too blond, her lash extensions too long, her makeup heavy-handed, and the color of her spray tan, if she insisted on having one at all, should have been two shades lighter.