31. Piper

31

PIPER

JANUARY 2, 11:00 P.M.

When we get home, Mom is waiting for us in the living room with a vodka soda and a stare that could cut diamonds. For a few seconds, she's quiet, taking a long sip as she watches us. I changed out of my ball gown in the car, and Wyatt's back in the street clothes he wore under the Jester costume, but I get the strange feeling that she knows exactly where we've been—not only tonight, but from the beginning of time.

She sets the glass down squarely on the coaster.

"Where should we start?" she asks. "With what you've been doing tonight, or whatever the hell is going on with this email?"

"Does it even matter?" Wyatt snaps. "We're already the family with the dad who got arrested. Might as well commit, right?"

I can't believe he's being so callous after everything that's just happened. I don't even have it in me to defend myself: right now, I feel like someone took one of those oyster spoons and scooped out all of the soft parts inside of me until they could only scrape shell.

To my surprise, Mom laughs, just a small one as she brings her glass to her lips again.

"Well, I suppose you're right about that." Her gaze turns on Wyatt, cold. "But maybe you should think twice about your tone, considering he's only in there to protect you."

The sudden harshness is enough to silence us both. Wyatt curls into himself, his shame obvious. And then it dawns on me.

"You know," I say. "About the deal with the Pierrot."

For a second, she's silent.

"Yes," she tells me. "I do."

I stare, waiting for her to say something, do something, but she just takes another tired sip of her drink. Wyatt looks as stunned as I feel. Clearly, he had no idea Mom knew, either.

"Then you know Dad didn't do it," I argue. "They framed him."

"He made his deal. Without consulting me, I should add. He didn't tell me until after, when it was already too late." She sets her drink down, turning her glass a few degrees on the coaster, like it has to be perfectly aligned before she can continue. "But I can't say I would have told him not to take it."

I don't know what I expected this conversation to look like—rage and disappointment at the both of us, definitely, but I also thought Mom would have a plan, some ingenious way for us to get through this. Because it's always been Mom who's steered the ship. Dad can be softer, more even-tempered, but it's Mom who's kept it all running behind the scenes, stitching our family together as flawlessly as one of her gowns. Of course she knew about the deal.

And something about seeing her now, so detached and defeated, is enough to break the dam.

"You know what goes on at the Pierrot, right?" I explode.

"I know enough. Your father does trust me more than most of those men trust their wives."

"And you let them be a part of it?"

"What else was I supposed to do? Let Wyatt face charges?" Her voice cuts sharply. "And last I checked, your father has free will. He would have done what he wanted regardless. Just like he's doing now."

There's something brimming under those words, more than just resentment.

"What do you mean, like he's doing now?" I ask.

"He told the Pierrot he wanted out," she says. She glances at Wyatt. "For both of you. He knew what would happen if he broke their deal, what they would do, and still, he told them y'all were done."

Wyatt sinks into one of the chairs, his neck straining the way it does when he's trying not to cry, and I feel myself biting back my own tears. That's what being a Johnson is about, isn't it? Fix the problem. Push it down. Be great. Even when it's all built on a rotting foundation.

"So that's it, then," I force out. "We let Dad go down for a murder he didn't commit?"

"Of course not," she says sharply. "We'll fight this. I have an appointment with a lawyer first thing tomorrow, and believe me, I'm not stopping until we've proven this accusation is as flimsy as an underbaked praline." She pauses. "What I'm more immediately concerned with, however, is fixing the problems y'all both created tonight."

Her stare is ice, the implication reflecting back at us in the surface. The email. Wyatt looks down at his hands, the guilt written all over his face. But even his cheating feels small now, in comparison to everything else. And maybe my indiscretion should, too, but a stubborn need to defend myself bubbles up.

"It was her own essay," I say. "All I did was submit what Lily had written before I helped her."

"Jesus," Wyatt mutters. "Like that's the most important thing right now."

"She manipulated me. She convinced me to write her essay for her, and then—"

I stop short, suddenly at a loss for how to explain it. Because the thing is, Lily didn't ask me to write it for her. She mentioned being stressed about her essays when she was over for family dinner once, and Mom started gushing about how great a writer I am, how maybe I could help, and I knew I had no choice but to offer. Anyway, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have Lily LeBlanc owe me one.

The next thing I knew, we were working on edits in a study room at Beaumont.

"You're so much better at this than I am," Lily had said, flopping dramatically onto the desk, her head in her hands. "Like, seriously. Wyatt's always going on about how you're the smartest person he knows, and he's right."

Something started to tap on my heart at those words, like an egg on the kitchen counter, cracking until the inside oozes out.

Lily turned to look at me. "I don't think enough people get you, you know? They might think you're this, like, high-strung, anal-retentive freak, but it's only because you're not afraid to care."

Now I can't believe I didn't see through that backhanded compliment. I was too caught off guard by her complimenting me at all.

"Anyway," she'd said, turning back to her laptop. "Sorry my essay is such garbage."

"It's not," I told her, even though the essay was, by most objective standards, bad—a puffed-up narrative about her family's debutante tradition that would only make her look spoiled and out of touch to the admissions board. But I couldn't say that. Instead, I said, "It has potential."

The next week, I was surprised when Lily wanted to work at her house instead of at school. Even more surprising: once the hour was up, she asked if I wanted to stay for dinner. Her parents, both busy that night, had left a credit card behind. We ordered pizza and ate it by the pool, talking about school and college and Les Masques. I thought it was a one-off, or maybe just Lily's way of thanking me for the help.

But then, a few days later, she invited me to go shopping with her at the boutiques on Magazine Street, the ones she usually went to with Vivian and Savannah. As we went from shop to shop, Lily offered me fashion advice that I was embarrassed to admit I was grateful for, and the more we talked, the more I realized that Lily was smarter than I thought—she had depth, even though she managed to say things in a way that was more accessible and less condescending than I ever could.

I started to think we could, maybe, truly be friends.

And then, the next week, when we were back in the study room, Lily did something that changed everything: she looked at her new essay draft—still bad, but better—and burst into tears.

"Sorry," she said. "You're helping so much. It's just—my parents are going to kill me if I don't get in. And clearly, I'm a lost cause. I just wish you could, like, crawl inside my head and do it for me, you know?"

She laughed at that last part as she wiped her tears, like it was just a joke, but I felt the idea burrowing under my skin.

"I could," I told her. "Write it for you, I mean."

"Oh my god, seriously?"

Looking back, her performance was flawless: surprise, then uncertainty, followed by gratitude. But in the moment, it felt real.

"That would be amazing. But you really, really, really don't have to."

"It's no problem," I told her. "It'll be easy."

She pulled me into a tight hug. "You're the best, Piper."

So I trashed the debutante crap and wrote her a kick-ass essay, one full of her own words and sentence patterns but better, brighter. I knew it was wrong, obviously—that it could mean disaster for me if Vanderbilt found out—but I was careful. I knew they wouldn't. And some part of me was still aglow in the magic of Lily LeBlanc's admiration. Her friendship.

Friends. I should've known it was bullshit from the moment she came to me for help. But I didn't learn the harsh truth until a few weeks later at school, when I overheard Lily and Savannah talking about their essays in the senior lounge.

"It's truly unfair," Savannah was saying. "Six hundred and fifty words can't possibly express the talents I bring to the stage."

She was mostly joking, putting on an ironic old Hollywood accent, but Lily said breezily, "I know someone who could help."

Savannah paused. "You mean, like, a tutor?"

"Sort of." Lily lowered her voice. "I got Wyatt's sister to do mine. All I had to do was massage her ego and throw her some pity hangouts and she literally offered to write it for me. For free. "

Her laugh. That's what I remember, a little twinkling sound at the end, glitter falling through the air. It wasn't the first time I'd heard laughter at my expense, but it was the first time I hadn't seen it coming.

It was the day before the early-decision deadline, and I knew I had to do something, ruin something—because it was suddenly so obvious, how stupid I'd been. Vanderbilt was everything I'd worked my whole life for, and here I was, helping Lily LeBlanc waltz in and snatch it up without breaking a sweat.

In the end, it was even easier than writing the essay. Lily had given me the password to her Common App account. All I had to do was log in, delete my essay, and copy and paste her old one. And just my luck, she hadn't submitted yet—that's what you get for being a procrastinator, I told myself. With one click of a button, it was done.

Now tears sting my eyes as I look at Mom, awash in shame and disappointment.

"She didn't even notice," I say. "She didn't check the application after I submitted it. That's how little she cared."

Wyatt stands abruptly. "This has been a great family chat, but I'm going to bed."

"Wyatt—" Mom starts, but he cuts her off.

"Sorry, but I just—" He chokes up, tightening his jaw. "Lily is still missing, and all Piper cares about is the stupid essay, and I can't, okay? I'm done."

He sulks off toward the stairs. Mom just watches, and maybe Wyatt has a point, maybe I'm a robotic, college-obsessed freak, but still, the anger builds and builds until it explodes.

"Why does he always get away with it?" I shout, turning to Mom. "He cheated on her, and I'm the only one who gets a lecture? No, forget the cheating. He beat a guy within an inch of his life, and you're just letting him walk off. Why does he always get someone else to clean up his messes?"

"Because that's what families do." Mom's voice breaks, and something in it breaks me, too, enough to make me go completely silent.

"I don't mean to let him get away with things," she says after a moment. "But what else are we supposed to do? When your kid screws up, you protect them. You fix what you can and pray they learn from their mistakes, because you love them like your own heart outside your body, and what person in their right mind can look at their heart and watch it get crushed?"

My throat tightens, but I feel too guilty to cry. Mom reaches for her drink before changing her mind, setting it back down.

"And maybe—" She pauses again. "Maybe it seems like we're only cleaning up Wyatt's messes because he's the one who makes them. You're always so smart and so together, Pipes. But it isn't fair of me and your dad to assume you've always got it covered. And I know I'm hard on you—maybe because some part of me thinks I'm preparing you. Because the terrible fact of it is that young women, bright women like you… when you slip up, you don't get away with it." She shakes her head. "But it's wrong. You deserve better."

Quiet tears slide down her cheeks, and all of the anger inside me shrivels up like a dying petal. Because I understand. Mom is teaching me to survive the only way she knows how: by being the best. The brightest. Saying "please" and "thank you" and leaving no room for error, hiding your thirst for blood behind a sweet Southern smile. We both deserve better.

I walk over to the sofa and wrap my arms around her, let her cry. "I'm sorry."

"No." She squeezes my hand. "Never be sorry."

"Is Dad okay?" I ask, and I'm crying now, too.

She sniffs, nodding. "You know him. He was already joking about how thrilled he'll be to have time to read, for once."

I laugh, but it fades into a hollow pit in my stomach. "How long does he have to stay there?" I ask. "Can't we post bail?"

"They haven't set it yet. But we will." Mom squeezes me tighter. "We'll be okay, Pipes. Johnsons are always okay."

And it's only now that a new piece slots into place. A question I'm almost afraid to ask out loud.

"If you know about the deal with the Pierrot," I start, "then do you know what they wanted from Dad in return? Why they needed him to join?"

Something in Mom changes, like a small electric jolt. Then she smooths out her expression.

"I really don't." She shrugs. "Maybe they thought it wouldn't hurt to have a psychiatrist on board—you know, to get access to some easy prescriptions, or get their kids extra time on the ACT even when they obviously don't need it."

She gives a small laugh, like it's just a dark little joke, but I saw it, the slip of her mask. I felt the shift.

"Mom…"

Her hand finds my cheek, cold against my skin.

"You're so smart, Pipes," she says gently. "And you're smart enough to know that some questions, you're better off not asking."