Graduation Speech

In the back of the limousine, Phoebe Lombard yawned into her palm. The windows were so dark they might as well have been painted on. She lowered one anyway, letting morning light sting her awake. Augusta, Georgia slid past in sun-washed flashes, half-familiar, half-strange, and she refused to let the haze from her red-eye flight steal it from her.

The heat was close to what she left in LA, but the humidity gave it heft. Phoebe breathed it in and had the fond, baffled thought: how did they film anything in Georgia? She pictured her friends on set and the hair and makeup teams waging their daily war against sweat and frizzing curls. Even having grown up in it, she found survival in this kind of air to be goddamn miraculous.

The limo turned onto the academy’s driveway and took the speed bumps at an almost ceremonial crawl. Phoebe went still, as if any shift in her weight might make the vehicle’s long belly kiss the cement. Through her open window, the school appeared in the slowest zoom imaginable. Even as she drew closer, it didn’t expand the way her memory insisted it should. It stayed small, framed by dry-yellow grass and pine straw.

The driver eased into the circular drop-off.

Phoebe pressed the window button. The glass rose, beginning to seal off the damp morning. Then the driver opened her door, and the button moved out of reach. The window froze halfway up.

She leaned out from the seat to reach the controls again.

“Ma’am,” the driver said, patient as a saint, “I can—”

“No, sir.” Phoebe jabbed at the button with grim determination. “I’ve got it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They both watched the window finally slide shut.

A girl, drowning in Lilly Pulitzer pinks and greens, appeared at the curb like she’d been launched from offstage. A cup of clinking ice bobbed in her hand.

“Ms. Lombard!” she sang. “Welcome back. I’m Avery Carter, student council president. Well… in about two hours.”

Phoebe hauled herself up from the low seat. “Congratulations, Avery.”

“Thank you.” The girl pressed the iced coffee into Phoebe’s hand. “It’s your favorite.”

“My favorite—”

“I saw that old WIRED video you did,” Avery interrupted as she grabbed Phoebe’s suitcase from the driver. “You said this was your go-to order.”

Phoebe searched her memory and found only studio lights and the strange feeling of saying things she didn’t remember believing. Clearly, the internet had a better memory than she did.

Down the sidewalk path, Avery waved at a motion-sensor keypad. The glass doors of the school building parted, opening into a carpeted lobby. Inside, the space divided into two hallways lined with lockers. Mr. Carmichael’s chemistry lab was down to the right, Mrs. Sharp’s classroom to the left.

Avery steered her through a door. “Assistant Head of School’s office,” she announced. “You can change in here before the ceremony.”

Phoebe managed a smile. “Is Mrs…?” But the name wouldn’t come.

“Oh! She retired.”

The door nudged open wider and another student stumbled in with an armful of papers. “Avery, I’m so sorry, the printer jammed and the programs are… doing this,” she said, shaking a stack like it had wronged her. “We should’ve just done QR codes.”

“Dr. Kline said those felt ‘impersonal.’”

“But this is giving wasteful,” the new girl muttered.

Avery turned back to Phoebe. “So is it, like, way more modern out in LA?”

Phoebe laughed, then coughed to cover it. “Do you mean, do we still print stuff? Constantly. Scripts. Call sheets. Forms I sign without reading because my agent tells me not to.”

Avery made a face. “Paper products are… a lot.”

Phoebe kept her mouth busy with the straw of the iced coffee, resisting the easy joke about the plastic in her hand. Avery had acquired for her, after all.

“We’ll sort this out,” Avery said, already backing away. “Do you need directions to the quad?”

“I’ll find my way.”

Finally alone behind the closed door, Phoebe shrugged out of her travel cardigan. She unzipped her suitcase and yanked out her makeup bag. She wasn’t sure how much time she had. She grabbed a tissue from the desk and pressed it to her forehead. It came away shiny.

The door swung open.

Phoebe turned, her arms half-crossed around herself on instinct. “What the fuck?” she said, her voice jumping an octave. For a moment, her brain glitched. The man looking back at her was not who she thought it was—could not be who she thought it was.

He looked from her face, then down at the cardigan bunched in her hands, and laughed under his breath. “Morning to you, too.” He snapped the door shut behind him. “Stop fidgeting. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he added, as if that was meant to help.

Phoebe’s cheeks burned. “We never—”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean,” she ground out. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my office.”

Phoebe’s eyes jumped around the room, taking in the empty walls and moving boxes. Someone new was just starting here. Her eyes landed on a placard on the desk, with brass shimmering letters that spelled: LUIS DEL RIO. And below that: ASSISTANT HEAD OF SCHOOL.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, turning back to him. He looked older, yes, but still had that infuriating steadiness, the one that used to make her feel both safe and cornered. “Are you why I was invited to speak?”

“No,” he said. “You’ve been on that shortlist for years. That wasn’t me.”

“Why didn’t you warn me you would be here?”

He let out a breath, almost a laugh, like she’d asked why he didn’t simply text the moon. “How was I supposed to tell you? Lord, you’re a celebrity. I can’t imagine you’d have the same phone number.”

“Well I do.”

That got him, finally. A quick flicker crossed his face before he smoothed it away. “Repping 706 out in Tinseltown,” he said. “That’s somethin’, Phoebs.”

“I need a minute,” she said, and gestured at the door, polite as a knife. “Alone. To get ready.”

He hesitated, then nodded, the bravado draining out of him quickly. “Right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge in.” He pointed with two fingers toward a narrow door tucked beside the filing cabinet. “Private bathroom’s right there, if you need it.”

“Thanks.”

He left, and Phoebe exhaled in quick bursts. She looked at the brass plate again, as if the words might change if she stared at them for long enough.

A knock sounded at the door, and Luis entered a second time.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “For how it happened. And for how it didn’t.”

“It was a long time ago,” Phoebe said, because she understood he wasn’t talking about twenty seconds ago. He meant twenty years ago.

“Yeah, but clearly you’re still mad.”

“I am not.”

He looked at her a moment. “I think you were close to throwing me out a window.”

“I was surprised to see you, is all,” she said, lifting her hands to her hips.

“Don’t put on for me.”

Her stomach tightened. “I don’t do anything for you.”

“I was just a kid,” he said, and then corrected himself. “We were both kids. I screwed it up. So what?”

“It’s not just the ending that was wrong.”

Luis’ eyebrows knit. “What else was wrong?”

Phoebe’s voice came out steadier than she felt. “I was fourteen.”

He held her gaze. “So?”

“You were nineteen.”

He opened his hands, helpless. “We were in school together and—”

“And now you’re educating fourteen-year-olds,” she said. She surprised herself with the thought, with the sudden shadow of allegation.

His face went hard. “Don’t you do that.”

“Is it really such a leap?” Phoebe just couldn’t help herself.

“I have never been inappropriate with a student,” he snapped. “Or with a teenager, or even considered—” He cut himself off, swallowing his fury. “My God. You went off and learned a new word and now you’re throwing it at me.”

“I didn’t call you a pedophile.”

“But you suggested it.”

Phoebe let out a breath, more weary than triumphant. “Are you really turning this around on me? You knew I was coming and you were just going to spring your presence on me.”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“No. No, I am not happy to see you.”

“I thought actors were resilient.”

“Oh, shut up. You never thought that. Nobody thinks that. We’re all whiners with ego problems.”

“Masterful demonstration,” he said, deadpan.

Phoebe dragged her hands over her hair. The humidity had already started taking her apart. Or maybe it was him. “I don’t actually think you’re a pedophile,” she groaned, and even saying it made her want to crawl out of her skin.

He snorted, collapsing into one of the armchairs. “I figured.”

Phoebe sat on the edge of Luis’ desk, then stood, then sat again like she couldn’t find a suitable way to exist in the space. She looked past his shoulder out the window. People were arriving.

“I’ll leave you to get ready,” he said, noticing the same thing. He put his hands on his thighs, readying to stand.

“You know, the last time I was here wasn’t long after my own graduation,” she said. “I volunteered to reorganize the costume shop. I used to love coming to campus in the summer, and having the place to myself.”

He stayed quiet, not interrupting.

“They were doing renovations,” she continued, “so the quad was blocked on all sides with fences. I always walked that way out to my car, but when I crossed to go in through the other door, it was locked. I was stuck in the school, but outside.”

“Poetic,” he said, gently.

“You know, it actually fucking was. I was trapped.” She threaded her fingers together. “I’m going to tell that story today in my speech.”

He nodded once, excessively solemn.

“Fuck you,” she said automatically. “My screenwriter neighbor workshopped it with me.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“But there was a detail he cut,” she admitted, “that he said wasn’t right for the occasion.”

“What was it?”

Phoebe looked down at her hands, knotted together. “After I called security and waited for someone to come get me out,” she said, “I sat on the grass, and between the embarrassment and the annoyance, I felt… joy. Complete, stupid joy.” Her eyes went hot. “I loved it. Because for the last time in my life, being trapped wasn’t my fault. I was just a teenager surprised by fences. And I knew, somehow, that later I’d keep getting trapped. In college. In relationships. In jobs. In apartments. In myself, even. And when you’re an adult and you’re stuck, everyone treats it like you did something wrong. Like you didn’t plan enough. Like you didn’t know enough to deserve the exit.” She swallowed. “So for that one stupid moment, I was free. For the last time, I was blameless.”

Luis let the silence sit a beat. Then, softly: “Yeah. I can see why he had you cut that.”

Phoebe grabbed the nearest thing off the desk—which happened to be the box of tissues—and threw it at him without thinking.

He caught it on instinct. “They also hired me to coach baseball,” he bragged.

“Well isn’t your life lovely.”

“You’re the celebrity.”

“Hardly.” She shrugged. “More like a professional auditioner.”

His mouth twitched. “Even after the tits?”

Phoebe was used to playing it cool after all those years, being remembered for that early role when the director had told her—promised her—that her breasts would be cropped out of the frame. Phoebe’s unguarded laugh in response to the jab surprised her. She had hardly ever found the humor in it. Until then.

Luis stood, finally. “I should let you get ready.” He reached for the door handle.

“Hold on a minute.”

He paused.

“I know it was a teenager’s love,” Phoebe said, her voice quiet and honest. “I did love you. And you ignoring me for months… fucking hurt.”