Chapter 1: So Long and Goodbye

Eliana had her face ready by seven. She had been practicing it for two and a half weeks, the way some people practice a performance or a signature. Her chin stayed level, mouth a little bored, nothing behind her eyes that anyone could use. A girl like her couldn’t afford to look bad. She changed twice before settling on her cream sweater. The first outfit looked like she was trying, and the second looked like she was grieving, and the whole point was to look like neither.

Downstairs, her parents were discussing Uncle Tommy’s apartment like it was a gutter that needed fixing. Eliana walked into the living room, half expecting her father to ask how she was holding up and half expecting her mother to lash out from stress.

Neither of them did. Her mother glanced up from her phone just long enough to tell her there was coffee, and her father kept his eyes on the tablet propped against the fruit bowl.

“The landlord wants Tommy’s place cleaned out by the end of the month,” he said to nobody in particular. “I can get a company in on Saturday. Save us the trouble.”

“Save us the weekend,” her mother agreed.

Eliana poured her coffee and added the cream in one slow pour, the way she did every morning. Nobody asked what she thought, which was fine. She would have said something polite and frankly empty, and there was no need to waste everyone’s time. Past her mother’s shoulder sat a cardboard box with DONATE written across the side in neat black marker. The corner of a record sleeve stuck out from under the flaps, its edges worn white from years of being handled.

“Do you have your keys?” her mother asked.

“Yes,” Eliana said, and that was the whole conversation.

Nobody in Lexie’s house wanted to talk about it, but it seemed like every other person in the world did.

Celeste, who was only ever Cece at home, was on TV in a sequined golden jacket, mid-note, under a banner that read ICON LOST. She was on Lexie’s phone in a black-and-white tribute reel with a piano laid over it. She was in the group chat twice, because Rodney had sent a joke, and then a second, worse joke.

Lexie turned her phone face down on the counter and ate her cereal standing up.

Outside, a car rolled past with its windows down and the chorus pouring out of it, the part everyone knew. Lexie crossed to the kitchen window and slammed it hard enough to rattle the glass.

Her mom didn’t flinch. She stood at the counter with her back turned, buttering toast. When the news anchor started in on the funeral arrangements, she reached over and shut the TV off without looking at it.

“She was always busy,” her mom said, and began pouring herself some juice. It was said in the tone of a locked door.

Lexie waited, in case there was more. There wasn’t. She could have asked why nobody had picked up a phone to call Cece, and who exactly was supposed to, but she already knew that any answer in this house would be worse than the silence.

She rinsed her bowl, grabbed her bag, and left before the toast went cold.

Hannah held court from the third step, the way she had since freshman year, and the rest of the school orbited her at carefully measured distances. Eliana climbed the stairs and took her usual place one step below and to the left.

“Oh my god! There you are.” Tessa appeared at her elbow, wrist raised so the bracelet caught the light. It was a thin silver chain with three tiny charms, each engraved with a letter: T, H, E. Tessa had bought it for the three of them back in September, but she was the only one who ever wore hers. “How are you? Like, seriously, with the whole uncle thing? It must be hard for you.”

She had pitched it for the whole staircase to hear, and more than a few heads turned.

“I’m great, Tessa,” Eliana said. “Thanks for hard launching my uncle’s death.”

Hannah laughed, short and genuine, and Tessa’s face did something complicated before settling back into a smile. Eliana saw it and felt a small, familiar pinch of guilt, and she smoothed the front of her sweater to cover it.

“Have some marshmallows,” Hannah said quietly, and pressed a paper cup into her hand. It was a vanilla latte with too much vanilla. She had been doing this since they were twelve, back when it was hot chocolate with too many marshmallows, and she still called it that, though there hadn’t been a marshmallow in it in years.

She didn’t mention Tommy. She turned back to the group and went on with whatever she’d been saying.

Eliana’s throat went tight. She swallowed it down, took a sip, and kept her face where it belonged.

Lexie found the band where they always were, on four milk crates in a strip of cracked asphalt behind the gym where the dumpsters lived. They had claimed it freshman year by dragging the crates over and refusing to leave.

Rodney was already sitting on one, drumming on his knees with two pencils. “Okay, but hear me out,” he said as Lexie rounded the corner. “Is it too soon for me to say that she looked hotter in black and white?”

“Dude, that’s fucked up,” Ryan said, without looking up from his phone.

“It’s a compliment!”

“Come on.”

Meghan had her guitar case flat across her lap like a desk, a setlist taped to the lid in her small, furious handwriting. “Rule for today,” she said, to nobody and everybody. “Nobody in this band is allowed to be sad about a pop star. None of us even knew her, and this kind of rampant celebrity culture is exactly what we, and I mean we, hate.”

Cece had once spent forty minutes teaching her to cheat at Uno. Nobody on these crates knew that, or that the woman on every screen in the world was Lexie’s aunt. Lexie kept her eyes on the setlist taped to the case and her face exactly where it was.

A junior cut past the dumpsters in a T-shirt with Celeste’s face printed across the front, glitter heart and all. She gave the band a wide berth.

Meghan watched her go. “Manufactured grief,” she said, with real satisfaction. “Give it a week and there’ll be a candle that smells like her.”

Rodney whooped. “Vanilla and regret.”

“Give it a month and there’ll be a deluxe box set,” Lexie heard herself say. “Now with extra dead.” It came out harder than she meant it to, and a beat too fast.

Everyone laughed. Lexie sat down on the last crate and studied her shoes. When she looked up, Ryan was watching her, a second longer than the joke deserved. Then he went back to his phone.

Eliana knew which chairs by the lockers outside the English classroom were Hannah’s, and so did everyone else.

Today a freshman was sitting on one. She was small and sunburned, with a trombone case planted between her knees, and she was retying her shoe like it was the most important thing in the world.

“Are you gonna say something?” Tessa murmured at her shoulder.

Eliana stopped in front of the seat. She didn’t raise her voice. She had learned a long time ago that volume was for people who needed it.

“Excuse me,” she said pleasantly. “You might want to move. This spot’s kind of taken.”

The freshman looked up, startled. She looked at Eliana, then at Tessa, and seemed to understand. She grabbed her trombone and left, one shoe still untied.

Tessa giggled. Eliana’s stomach dropped, just for a second, and she kept walking.

A few minutes later, she passed the music wing. The freshman was trying to get through the heavy door with the trombone case, and it kept swinging shut on her. The hallway was empty. Tessa had gone to find Hannah.

Eliana didn’t slow down. She kicked the rubber doorstop into place as she went by, and the door stayed open.

She didn’t look back. Nobody was supposed to know she’d done it.

The flyers had gone up overnight. They were taped along the hallway outside the library, bright pink paper with a hand-drawn heart and a time: CANDLELIGHT VIGIL FOR CELESTE. 4 PM. FOOTBALL FIELD. BRING A CANDLE. Someone had added a smiley face at the bottom, like it was a bake sale.

Eliana stopped in front of one with her coffee in both hands. A girl next to her was already texting a friend about what to wear. Eliana thought about Uncle Tommy. Nobody was going to tape up a flyer for him, and nobody was going to bring a candle. She read the flyer twice, as if there might be a line meant for her, then kept walking.

Lexie passed the same flyer taped to the wall of the back stairwell, right at eye level. She tore it down without stopping and crushed it in her fist. A few steps later she stopped, smoothed it flat against her leg, and put it in her pocket instead of the trash.

Mr. Anderson stood at the door of the civics room, greeting every student by name the way he did every morning. “Eliana, good to see you. Lexie, good morning.” He said it to both of them the same way, warmly, with no extra weight, and for some reason that was what Eliana noticed.

Eliana took her usual seat, third row on the left, while Lexie dropped into hers on the right. Eliana seemed almost to be paying attention, while Lexie was only in this class for the credit.

Mr. Anderson skipped the textbook. He leaned on his desk with one of the pink flyers in his hand.

“Celeste’s estate will take about a year to settle,” he said. “Millions of people think they’re owed a piece of it. The law says her next of kin is owed all of it. So who is owed any of it?”

Sean’s chair was tipping back before he finished. He steepled his fingers. “Respectfully, the question is a categorical error. Property is the extension of the self into the material world, so asking who is owed it is like asking who is owed your left kidney. She earned it, it’s hers, and she can leave it to whoever she wants. Inheritance is the entire teleology of building anything.”

“Devil’s advocate here,” Leonard said. “She got rich off millions of people. Every album, every ticket. Doesn’t that give them a stake?”

“They bought a product. That’s a transaction. If I buy a sandwich from a man, am I then owed a share of his sandwich legacy? His children’s? The deli’s metaphysical destiny?”

“Neither,” Thea said. “She’s dead. She doesn’t need any of it, and her family didn’t earn it. In a system that worked properly, an estate that size would go into a public fund. Infrastructure, hospitals, global development.”

Sean made a noise like a low hiss combined with a chuckle. “That’s woke socialist communism. If you want the government taking people’s money after they die, go live in North Korea.”

“It’s not like I’m abolishing money,” Thea said, without raising her voice. “People still get paid. They still compete, they still get rich if they’re good at something. They just don’t get to own the hospitals. And North Korea is a hereditary dictatorship, so you two have more in common than you think.”

“That’s an ad hominem, which is Latin for ‘you’re wrong.’”

“It’s not Latin for that.”

“Hang on,” Leonard said to Thea. “Who decides where the fund goes? The government? The one that can’t fix the road outside this school?”

“A public trust with published rules, audited like a company. It works better than you’d expect when nobody’s allowed to own it.” She shrugged. “And it’s still better than a relative who never called her.”

Lexie’s pen stopped moving.

“Better isn’t the point!” Sean proclaimed. “Let’s say hypothetically that a man spent forty years building a canoe—”

“Nobody mentioned a canoe,” Leonard said.

“He has the God-given right to leave that canoe to his son, because otherwise what is a son, if not a person who inherits canoes?”

“What are you even saying to me right now?” Thea asked, bemused.

“I’m saying the family is the foundational substrate of civilization,” Sean said, “and the intergenerational transfer of property is its metabolic function.”

“That almost sounded like a sentence,” Thea said. “Use your canoe. The father earned it. The son didn’t. Why does the son get it?”

“Because it’s his.”

“That’s circular.”

“It’s recursive.”

“Wait a minute,” Leonard said to Thea. “Your fund does the same thing. Some stranger in another country gets money they didn’t earn either. Why is that fairer than a guy’s son?”

“Because the fund goes where it can do actual good. The son gets it because of his bloodline.”

“Blood’s pretty convincing to most people.”

“Thank you,” Sean said. “Finally, a voice of reason.”

“I’m not on your side,” Leonard said. “I just don’t like hers right now.”

Mr. Anderson hadn’t moved from the edge of his desk. “Sean. What if the son sinks the canoe?”

Sean paused. For the first time all period, he didn’t have a word ready. Good things never last.

“Then it’s his canoe to sink,” he spat out. “As is his right that was fought for by our Founding Fathers!”

“So forty years of work ends up at the bottom of a lake,” Thea said.

“That’s called freedom.”

“That’s called waste.”

“Just playing devil’s advocate here,” Leonard said. “Maybe that’s the best argument for inheritance. Nobody can tell you what’s worth keeping except the person who has it.”

Thea turned to look at him. “You’re arguing against me, and also against yourself.”

“Pretty sure I’m just arguing.”

Lexie kept her eyes on her notebook. There was an envelope from the estate’s lawyers on the kitchen counter at home, and her mom had never opened it. Lexie pressed her pen into the margin until the paper tore.

“Eliana,” Mr. Anderson said. “What do you think?”

Eliana had been hoping nobody would ask her. She had taken neat, even notes through the whole debate, including Sean’s canoe, and she clicked her pen cap on and off the whole time, and she set the pen down before she answered so nobody would see her hands.

“Honestly? Whoever it’s left to,” she said. “My parents have a folder for this, like an actual labeled folder. It’s not that deep.”

Mr. Anderson waited. “Is that who should get it?”

“I mean, that’s how it works, right? The family gets the money, and everyone else gets the songs. Everybody walks away with something.” She gave him the smile she used on teachers, pleasant and finished. “Honestly, it’s kind of a nice system.”

It came out smooth, and she hated it right away. She was thinking about the cardboard box in her hallway, with a record sleeve sticking out of the top. Nobody had decided it was worth keeping. It had just been the nearest thing to the door.

Across the room, someone snorted. Eliana looked over. Lexie already had her eyes back on her notebook, like nothing had happened. In six weeks of sharing this class, it was the most Eliana had ever heard her react to anything.

Mr. Anderson didn’t argue. He nodded slowly, like she’d answered a different question than the one he’d asked. Then he turned to the right side of the room.

“Lexie,” he said. “You seem to have an opinion.”

Lexie hadn’t planned to say anything. She put her pen down, because she was about to ruin another page, and folded her hands on the desk.

“Not really.” She used the voice she used at home, even and polite, the kind that doesn’t give anyone anything to push on. “I think it’s fine. The law says the family gets it, so the family gets it. It’s very organized.”

“But?” Mr. Anderson said.

“No but.” She smiled a little. “I just wonder how anyone knows what she wants. She isn’t here to say. So everyone gets to decide for her, and then they all agree it’s what she would have wanted. That seems convenient.”

It was so calm that Leonard looked disappointed. Sean looked like he was assembling a response. Lexie kept her hands flat on the desk and her voice exactly where it was, and she tried not to think about the woman who had taught her to cheat at Uno.

“I heard you laugh earlier,” Eliana said, pleasantly, from across the aisle. “Was something wrong with my answer?”

Lexie had forgotten she’d snorted. “No,” she said, still polite. “I thought it was lovely. I’m sure it works great when your parents have a folder.”

A couple of people laughed. Eliana’s smile didn’t move. “I’ll tell them you said so.”

“Please do.”

Neither of them said anything else. Eliana looked at the board. Lexie looked at her hands. Mr. Anderson looked from one to the other, and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

Mr. Anderson let the silence run until it started to feel like part of the lesson. Then he stood up, uncapped a marker, and wrote on the board in square, careful letters.

CAN YOU BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THE PEOPLE BEFORE YOU DID? MAKE YOUR CASE. TWO PAGES. DUE FRIDAY.

“Pick a side,” he said. “I don’t care which. Use at least one historical example and one example from your own life, or your family’s, or your town’s. Be specific.”

Leonard started to say something, and Mr. Anderson held up his hand. “One side, Leonard.”

Leonard closed his mouth. Sean asked whether it counted if his example were hypothetical, say a man whose great-grandfather had lost a bet to a duke, and the duke’s heirs now owned a very good lake. Mr. Anderson said a hypothetical wasn’t a historical example, and that he looked forward to reading about the duke anyway.

Lexie wrote FRIDAY on the back of her hand in pen, since nothing else she owned would survive until then. She kept her mind blank until the bell rang, but the envelope came back anyway.

Eliana copied the prompt word for word, question mark included, and packed her bag the way she did everything, neatly. Two examples. She’d use her grandfather’s business for the personal one. It was a good story and cost her nothing. The box in the hallway wasn’t going in the essay.

She and Lexie left through the same door and went opposite ways without looking at each other. Eliana turned left toward the front hall, and Lexie turned right toward the stairwell.

At the end of the hall, Eliana looked back through the open door. Mr. Anderson was still at the board. He was erasing the prompt in long, even strokes, one side to the other, as if he had all day. He kept going until there was nothing left on it at all.