long live lola

three

I survive a week of orientations, new reading lists, curriculums, a multitude of future due dates and assignments, and everything that the beginning of a new academic year entails. On Thursday night, as I eat the dinner I cooked with my father, my phone notifies me of an email. It's been sent to the whole school, with the heads up that a vigil for Lola Hargood will be held in the courtyard at seven o'clock the following evening. Almost immediately after, the Smallshore student network, an app designed by some graphics student, buzzes as well, that the first quarterly beach party will take place immediately after. There is a brief remark that this party will be in Lola's honor, but the truth is that this is another rich kid's excuse to sip Ciroc, smoke Cali, and get underneath the La Perla underwear of whoever their latest conquest may be.

    I'm no prude. I'm also not adverse to parties. In high school, when my social circle was larger than one acquaintance I see on a semi-frequent basis, I was at a party every weekend, drinking, smoking, and acting like any other teenager. But, college and the world of elitism and privilege I found myself in severely diminished my social capital. The last time I was drunk was at family Christmas, after a few too many chardonnays that my aunt sneaked over to me while my dad wasn't looking.

    My attendance is pretty much vital at the vigil. It'll be a good chance to talk to people. Perhaps Quentin will even let me cover it for this week's events column, as part of the larger pieces regarding Lola I'm working on. I shoot him an email, tell him he can take the night off and I'll cover tomorrow, and he replies with a thumbs-up emoji, quickly followed by a beer bottle emoji, so I know his plans now.

    Thursday night is spent drafting questions for me. Questions for regular students who I have no idea of their connection to Lola, about what they knew of her, how the tragedy has affected them, the school. Questions for tutors and professors. And questions for the people who knew her best.

    In your own words, why do you think she would have killed herself?

    I would not ask such a question so plainly. No, that required building a prior level of trust and integrity. I'd simply ask them to describe fond memories of Lola, her best qualities, and what they miss most about her. I would earn their trust, and then use it to discover the truth about them.

    The Smallshore Six were infamous and elusive all at once, and I'd spent the week since my appointment on the memorial learning everything I could, everything they had decided to reveal about themselves.

    Goldie Darlington's mother had invented software that had revolutionized online shopping thus leading to their fortune. At first, the Darlingtons only summered in Smallshore, instead living in D.C. where Mr. Darlington worked on Capitol Hill. Now, Goldie uses that very summer house, and the staff along with it, to study in Smallshore. Hair as blonde as the name suggests, Goldie is everything one would expect of a native to California, although she isn't actually. She's whimsical, dreamy, half a world away, and, judging by the commiseration posts she frequently posts on her Instagram story, miserable since the loss of her best friend Lola. She is the only one of the six to have done something to indicate anything in their lives is not business as usual.

    James Hamish Winoner is as old money as it gets. His family is something oil related from the Deep South, which is how he quickly fell in with Nadia and Inez. He wears pressed shirts and khakis to class, a Rolex on his wrist, and a short string of family pearls around his neck, signet rings on his fingers. He's a mugger's idea of heaven, all that luxury in one place.

    Brighton Alexander, Nadia's boyfriend of three years, is the opposite. New money, celebrity money. His parents were actors, or in the music industry, and after bleeding Hollywood dry, they moved up north and settled here. Their house is an eyesore, right on the beach, all steel, concrete, and industrial. Nothing in Smallshore is industrial, but the rich care only about their personal aesthetic, rather than disrupting that which is around them.

    The only glimmer of grief has come from Goldie. And thus, it is Goldie who I will target for information about her dead best friend.

***

I arrive to the vigil early, dressed in my usual, lazy get-up of blue denim cut-offs and some sort of logo tee on top, probably one of the five-dollar ones the surf shop sells as cover-ups so the girls don't traipse around town in swimsuits. I have made no particular effort with my appearance, with no more than my basic application of makeup and a brush ran through my hair. So, when I sidle up to Goldie Darlington as she arrives in her Mercedes, I feel embarrassed to even breathe the same air as her.

    Everything about her is designer, from her big, blowout curls I don't doubt she visited a salon for this afternoon, all the way down to the red soles of her shoes. Even the mascara beginning to leak from her lashes probably cost more than my entire outfit combined. Her grief is expensive and potent, like a strong perfume you just can't shake the smell of.

    "Hi, Goldie?" I say as if anyone could doubt who she is. Her blue eyes lift and I'm taken aback by the abject dismay I find in them, a stark contrast to Inez and Nadia's apathy. "My name is Violet and I'm writing Lola's memorial piece in the Spectator, I was wondering if you wanted to talk a bit about her with me so I could create something well-rounded, respectable, and true—"

    "Why isn't Inez writing it?" She says, her voice is soft and trembling.

    "I'm sorry?"

    "Inez. She controls the paper, she assigns the stories. Why did she give this one away?" Goldie asks me as if expecting me to have an answer. Even Inez's nearest and dearest cannot assign a reason why she does the things she does.

    "I—I don't know. But I have it, and I don't know— didn't know Lola too well, so I'm just hoping to get an idea of who she was from the people closest to her. Do you have anything you can—?"

    "I'm sorry," Goldie says as her voice breaks, interrupting me yet again as she presses a handkerchief to the corners of her eyes, dabbing carefully as she looks upwards and swallows in three careful, shuddering breaths. "I can't do this today. But... but we can talk. Message me, ok?"

    Then she walks away. Part of me is frustrated I couldn't get more out of her about Lola, however, I know it is a harsh stance to take. When my mom died, I wouldn't shut up about her, but it took Duncan and my dad years to even be comfortable saying her name casually around the house. People deal with grief differently, and it has only been two months since the passing of Lola, I can't expect the people around her to start singing whatever tune I want them to just because I asked. As expected, this will take some time.

    I take a candle and stand among my fellow students, listening as professors, teammates, and anyone who wishes to speak about Lola gets up and does so. I make a careful note in my mind of all the words they use to describe her: strong, caring, gifted, wonderful, polite. As they describe her, I hear the tone in their voices, what they surely must want to say. There was no sign that she might kill herself. The day before, she won a volleyball tournament.

    She did not make any last confessions of love, she did not start giving her belongings away. There was no trail of reckless behavior and no escalation of harmful thoughts. There was nothing that might indicate what she was going to do to herself. But, no one says it out loud.

    At the front of the gathering, Nadia and Brighton stand arm in arm, but her hand is clasped tightly in Inez's. Inez rests her head against James Hamish Winoner's shoulder, he stands steely, facing forward and barely blinking. Goldie is weeping, yet she no longer reaches up to dab at her eyes, she lets the tears fall down her face as if too exhausted to wipe them away anymore.

    The vigil is concluded with Lola's favorite song playing from the overhead speakers in the courtyard. Oh to Be in Love by Kate Bush. The crowd drops their heads as they listen for three minutes. When the music stops, people begin to shuffle away, into their cars, heaving sighs and shaking their limbs to brush the weight of sorrow off of them.

    They're heading to the beach, where the real vigil is taking place. Where people will drink, and throw themselves at one another, all in the claim that it is in honor of their fallen friend. I do not want to go. I find it perverse. But this is part of the story. Lola's friends are going, and thus I will be there.