The Swap Page 2

  Freya’s father was a powerful entertainment lawyer and a workaholic. He’d been a distant and distracted parent, but she’d inherited her drive and work ethic from him. Her parents’ marriage was tense and dysfunctional.

  “My dad loved my mother, but she was a liability. He never knew what she was going to say or what she was going to do. Once, he took her to a film premiere and she made out with the female lead.”

  I was tempted to laugh at the outrageousness but didn’t know if I would offend my teacher. Luckily, Freya chuckled.

  “She was nuts, but she was never boring.” She set down a scalpel-like trimming. “And boring is the worst thing you can be.”

  I couldn’t suppress my smile. I knew people considered me odd, charmless, intense—but not boring. I was complicated. I was complex.

  After numerous affairs, her parents divorced. Freya’s mom moved to Topanga Canyon, but Freya stayed in the Palisades with her dad. “I knew if I lived with my mom, I’d become her caregiver. And my dad had a lot of useful connections in the entertainment industry.”

  Freya had started out as a model. “Commercial stuff,” she explained, as she demonstrated how to apply slip to a bowl with a squeeze bottle. “I wasn’t tall enough for editorial.” She looked at me then. “Have you considered modeling, Low? You’ve got the height and a really unique look.”

  My response was a blank stare. In addition to the lack of a modeling industry in our tiny community, I’d never thought of my lanky body and pointed features as positives.

  “Actually, don’t do it,” Freya continued. “You’ll end up with low self-esteem and an eating disorder.”

  It had been a throwaway compliment, but I clung to it for days. Unlike every other person on our island, Freya saw something different when she looked at me. She saw someone interesting, fashion-forward, maybe even elegant. I swear my posture improved in the afterglow.

  Freya had been an actress, too, a career she called soul-crushing.

  “I did a teen sitcom pilot that never got picked up. And a sappy Christmas movie that was just embarrassing. My character’s name was Trixie Gains. Do I look like a Trixie fucking Gains to you?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “We filmed it in LA with fake snow. I had to wear angora sweaters in every scene, and it was ninety degrees. LA is a cesspool,” she informed me, “but I miss the weather.”

  In more recent years, she’d been a social media influencer. “It was the best gig ever,” she said, her eyes sparkling with remembrance. “I’d get paid twenty grand for a post. Up to thirty for a live story. I got invited to clubs and restaurants and concerts. And I got so much swag! Beauty products, electronics, even vacations.”

  I avoided social media like a root canal, but I said, “Sounds amazing.”

  She put down the sponge she’d been using to wipe the wheel. “I had half a million Instagram followers. I’d get over a hundred thousand likes on my posts. Sixty thousand views of my stories. It was addictive—all the attention, all the adoration, and positive reinforcement.”

  I smiled and nodded, though I was unfamiliar with the feeling of public validation.

  “But then… all those people turned against me.” She dropped her sponge into a bucket of water and stood. “It was never real. They never cared about me.” She moved toward the back sink, leaving me to ponder her bitterness.

  Other than some superficial chitchat—What’s your favorite class at school? Photography. What kind of music do you like? Eighties and nineties alternative—Freya talked exclusively about herself. This worked well for me. I wasn’t ready to open up to her, didn’t want to dispel the illusion that I was just a regular girl. I couldn’t risk her judging me as a freak and cutting me off. She was the most interesting, extraordinary person I had ever met. I was already addicted to her.

  Since her marriage, Freya had lived in Montreal, Las Vegas, and New York. “I loved it there,” she told me. “In my heart, I’m a New Yorker.”

  “You’ve lived in a lot of places.”

  “My husband was a professional hockey player. When he got traded, we moved.”

  My family did not watch sports. Our motto was: Cooperation, not competition. (Yes, my family had a motto that was embroidered, framed, and hung in our entryway.) Hockey, in particular, was too violent and pugilistic… though I’m sure my spaz of a brother, Leonard, would have loved it. But I knew enough about pro sports to be impressed. By the money, the fame, the athletic prowess.

  “Has he retired now?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” she said, eyes on the perfect cylinder forming under her expert touch. “He was forced to leave a couple of years ago. After he killed someone.”

  Abruptly, I pulled my hands from the tower of clay, my precarious structure caving in on itself. “Oh my god.”

  Freya’s voice was nonchalant. “It was an illegal hit. Broke the guy’s neck. He was paralyzed from the waist down. And then…” She finally released her vase and looked up. “He overdosed on his pain meds.”

  It was wrong to be relieved—it was still terrible, a man was still dead—but Freya had made it sound like cold-blooded murder.

  “So, it wasn’t your husband’s fault,” I said.

  “Tell that to the dead guy’s family,” she snapped, and her face darkened. “They sued us for millions. It wasn’t enough that Max’s career was ruined. That he pled guilty to assault charges. We’ve been harassed online and in real life. We’ve had to move to the middle of fucking nowhere and still… they had to make us pay.”

  Freya hated these people who had lost their son, their brother, their uncle; she had no compassion, no empathy for them. Perhaps I should have taken note. But I didn’t. Instead, I stammered, “I-I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you, Low.” Freya looked at me for a long moment. “You know, if you want to come to the studio more often, you’re welcome to. It’s hard to get much done in just one session a week. Besides”—she smiled, and she looked ridiculously pretty—“I enjoy your company.”

  Something bloomed inside of me, spreading warmth to my stomach, my chest, and my throat. Her attention nourished me. It filled the empty place in my soul, cast light into the dark shadows of my psyche. Even if I had known then how it would all end, I wouldn’t have walked away.

  I couldn’t.

  3

  I know what you’re thinking: I was in love with her. And I was, in a way. But a crush is far too simplistic a term for what we shared. Romantic love doesn’t even begin to convey our bond. Freya and I had a soul connection. I know that sounds like something I read in one of my parent’s New Agey books (and it is), but it’s also the truth. My friendship with Freya felt complex, profound, and eternal. She made me feel like a whole person, for the first time in my life.

  My sexuality, at seventeen, remained undefined. I had, on occasion, had crushes on boys and, as often, on girls. These feelings had all gone unreciprocated, though, which prevented me from declaring a preference. And while I longed for a romantic relationship, it wasn’t about sex for me. I wanted intimacy and connection but felt no need to get naked and swap bodily fluids. I might have been biromantic asexual. Or maybe I was a bisexual late bloomer. There was no pressure to label myself. I was raised in a progressive community, in an unconventional family. I was taught to have an open mind. My polyamorous parents led by example.

  My mom and dad had a girlfriend named Gwen. They had been with her for most of my life. Gwen lived in a cottage at the edge of our property line. In the summers, Gwen’s lover Janine moved in. Janine was not a poly so her relationship with my parents was strictly platonic. She was a teacher on the mainland but spent her summers with Gwen working on her short-story collection.

  A few other lovers had come and gone, but the only other repeat offender was Vik. He kept a double-wide mobile home on the island’s northern tip and traveled a lot, but he occasionally shared my mother’s bed, and, when Janine was in the city, sometimes Gwen’s. (My dad and Vik were close friends but not r
omantically involved.)

  The thing was, it worked for everyone but me. My parents and their partners really loved one another. They were caring and considerate of everyone’s feelings, warm and affectionate to us kids. My brothers had never known any different, so they loved Gwen, Janine, and Vik like stepparents. Or aunties and uncles. I was less enamored.

  Perhaps it was because I was the eldest. I’d had loving, stable, normal parents until I was five. Then, they sat me down and told me things were about to change.

  “You know how Mommy and Daddy love each other?” my mom began.

  I nodded.

  My dad picked it up. “We feel that we can love other people that way, too.”

  “Like Grandma?” I asked.

  They’d exchanged an amused look. “We love Grandma but not in that way,” my mom said. “We want to love other people in a mommy/daddy way.”

  My father clarified. “When mommies and daddies are only allowed to love each other, that’s called monogamy. We feel that’s unnatural. It’s an outdated biblical construct that’s been perpetuated by conservative elements in modern society.”

  I was five. Lost in their incomprehensible explanation, I had given them my blessing.

  It wasn’t uncommon for couples to swap partners on the island. Locals called it the “Hawking Shuffle” or “the island way.” But this behavior was strictly sexual, a party favor even. My parents and their partners considered themselves a family. I didn’t realize it was weird to have three to five adults attend a recorder concert or a school play until the third grade. That’s when I noticed the whispers and sidelong glances of the other parents. That was the first time Evan Wilcox called me a hippie.

  After my eighth birthday party, when my guests’ parents came to retrieve them, our fate was sealed. They looked at our chickens and goats and the shelves full of my mom’s canning with a wary eye. They spotted Vik rubbing my mom’s shoulders while my dad, Gwen, and Janine served the birthday cake, and soon we were proclaimed a freaky free-love, hippie commune. I was mortified.

  My parents were not ashamed of who they were. “We all love each other so much. It’s a beautiful thing,” my mom said.

  “Sex and physical affection are an expression of that love,” my dad tried, but I wasn’t listening.

  Perhaps my apathy toward sex stemmed from growing up with parents who so exuberantly enjoyed it. It wasn’t like they did it in front of me, but nor did they pretend, like all parents should, that they never did it at all.

  Shortly before I met Freya, my mom had announced that she was three months pregnant with her fourth child.

  “I can’t wait to be a big brother,” Wayne said. But he was just nine, too young to understand the optics of this new addition. I was too old to be a big sister, yet again. I was too self-conscious to welcome another human into our large family. And I was resentful. A baby would take up more room, more time, more love. My parents’ affection was already spread too thin.

  At home, I was an afterthought. At school, I was a pariah. At Freya’s studio, I was everything. Freya was a best friend, a parent, and a crush all wrapped up in one worldly, glamorous package. Later, people would say I was obsessed with her, but I wasn’t.

  With Freya, I was home.

  4

  After about a month, Freya invited me up to the main house. “I need a glass of wine,” she said, after a particularly arduous session with a set of eight matching dinner plates that had been commissioned for the new gift shop in town. “Want one?”

  I was seventeen. I rarely drank alcohol. Booze was a social beverage, so I had few instances to indulge. I also had to drive home after. But I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to explore the stunning cliffside house. To see where Freya and her husband lived. To gain more insight into her life.

  The house had floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, providing ocean views, abundant natural light, and a significant lack of privacy. Given its isolated location, this was a nonissue. When I parked my car, I was allowed a glimpse into the home through the glass. It looked like something out of a magazine, so tidy, so serene. Once, I’d caught a brief glimpse of a man passing by with a cup of coffee in his hand, and my interest was piqued. I wanted in. I wanted more.

  “Sounds good.”

  Despite its scenic location, its awe-inspiring exterior, its jaw-dropping price tag, the house was warm and homey. The floors, cupboards and closets were a soft golden wood that seemed to glow in the afternoon light streaming through the walls of glass. Everything else was white: the walls, the furniture, the quartz countertops. The decor was distinctly Scandinavian—sleek, unfussy—obviously a nod to Freya’s maternal heritage. It was so different from my own cluttered, chaotic, colorful home with its abundance of noises and scents. I felt an almost overwhelming sense of peace and belonging. I wanted to spend time here. A lot of time. I wanted to live here.

  I followed Freya to the pristine kitchen that had a distinctly unused feel. She expertly opened a bottle of red wine and poured us two large glasses. Handing one to me, she led us to a sunken living room that afforded us views of the dark blue Pacific. I chose a Danish-style leather-upholstered chair; Freya curled up on the white sofa, pulling a white blanket across her lap. She was the kind of person who could drink red wine on white furniture. I was not.

  “This house is amazing,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking around her as if seeing it for the first time. “Too bad it’s not in New York or LA. Or anywhere that’s civilized. But then we wouldn’t be able to afford it, since we settled the lawsuit.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, unsure of an appropriate response.

  Freya looked at me intently. “Does this feel strange to you?”

  “What?”

  “Us. Our friendship.”

  “It feels great to me.” I covered. “I mean, it feels normal.”

  Freya sipped her wine. “I’m so much older than you, but I feel so close to you. I was lonely. Maybe even depressed. And then you came along and now… I just feel lighter and happier.”

  My voice came out a croak. “Me too.”

  “I thought I had friends before, but I didn’t. I had fans and followers. I had acquaintances. When the shit hit the fan, they disappeared. Poof.”

  “I-I’m sorry.”

  “But now I have you. And I know you’d never let me down like that.”

  I was about to say that I wouldn’t. No matter how many people her husband killed, I would have her back. But she kept talking.

  “I’m grateful for the stuff I’ve been through. I can read people now. I can tell who’s a shallow hanger-on, and who’s a true, quality friend.” She drank more wine. “I’m more complicated and interesting now. Strife builds character, you know. People who have never experienced hardship just don’t get it.”

  I was so desperate to grow our connection, to show her that I was complicated and interesting, too, that I decided to share the details about my unconventional family.

  “My parents are polyamorous,” I blurted. “They have a girlfriend who lives on our property.”

  Freya stared at me for a beat, and then her face lit up. “Oh my god… Do you live in a sex cult?”

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  “But your parents are swingers.”

  “Poly is different. They have multiple relationships, but everyone is in love. And they just have a normal amount of sex, I think. At least now that they’re middle-aged.”

  Just then, a man walked into the room. He was tall—much taller than I was—and muscular. He was all right angles: square jaw, square shoulders, big strong arms and legs.… He was wearing sweats (but expensive sweats) and a fitted black T-shirt. A few curls of dark hair peeped out from under a black knitted hat. His eyes were brown, almost black, and his skin tone was warm. (The next day, when I googled him, I found out that he was Métis, a descendant of Indigenous peoples and French settlers.) He had a bit of dark stubble above his lip and on his chin. He was serious, un
smiling… and ridiculously attractive. So this was Freya’s husband.

  “Hey, Max,” Freya said. “This is Low. She lives in a sex cult.”

  I blushed to my ankles. “No, I don’t!”

  “Hi,” Max muttered, as if living in a sex cult was like living in a duplex.

  “N-nice to meet you,” I managed, my heart thudding audibly in his presence.

  Freya asked him. “How was your run?”

  I noticed that he was sweaty and breathing heavily. My heart began to flutter. My romantic feelings may have been ambiguous, but at that moment, in the presence of this aggressively masculine specimen, I was decidedly hetero.

  “Good,” he said, pulling off his hat, revealing thick black waves of hair. Jesus Christ.

  “Join us for a drink?” Freya suggested.

  His face darkened. “I’m going take a shower.”

  “You’re no fun,” she said to his departing back. And then to me: “He says he’s quit drinking, but I’m not buying it. Anyway…” She stood, picking up my glass, which, to my surprise, was empty. “More for us.”

  “No, thanks,” I said, but she was already in the kitchen, already refilling both of our glasses.

  “You can’t let me drink alone, Low.”

  Freya returned and handed me the glass. She’d brought the bottle with her, which I instinctively knew was a bad sign. Or was it a good sign? I felt giddy and relaxed and happy, and I didn’t want it to end. So I went with it.

  “So…,” Freya said, continuing her inquiry, “are you excited for your graduation?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly. “School sucks.”

  “I hated it, too.”

  “Really?”

  Freya was so pretty, so charismatic. She had to have been popular.

  “I couldn’t wait to get out into the world and start my life for real. Are you going away to college? Traveling?”