“What?” Mallory says.

“Don’t repeat this.”

“Who am I going to tell?” Mallory asks. She and Apple have successfully escaped most of the politics of the high school because they have chosen to confide only in each other.

“I love Bill Forsyth, you love Bill Forsyth,” Apple says. “Bill Forsyth is a good teacher. But he has been using the same lecture notes for forty-four years.”

“Well, yeah,” Mallory says. “Biology doesn’t change.”

“It’s a science, not an art,” Apple says. She frames her forehead with her fingers the way she does when she just can’t wrap her mind around something. She lowers her voice and says, “You were supposed to win it. Right up until the last meeting, you were the favorite. Something must have happened. Someone must have had a change of heart.”

Mallory is tempted to ask if either JD’s cousin Tracey the ER nurse or his sister-in-law, Brenda, who had five kids in the system, was on the committee, but knowing exactly who JD turned against her won’t fix anything.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Mallory says. The end of the world would have been Jake saying, “Jake McCloud,” and then JD later Googling the name. “It’s fine, really.”

Summer #20: 2012

What are we talking about in 2012? The Kardashians; Whitney Houston; Joe Paterno; Uber and Lyft; the Kentucky Wildcats; Trayvon Martin; Lance Armstrong; Walter White, Skyler, Jesse, and Gus; Zumba; the Aurora shooting; Instagram; Sandy Hook; Hurricane Sandy; Noma; Barclays Bank; LeBron James; Silver Linings Playbook; kale; Jimmy Kimmel; “We are never, ever, ever getting back together.”

Everyone Jake knows is on Facebook. Three times recently he has come back into the CFRF office after lunch and found his assistant, Sara, mesmerized by the screen of her computer—likes, tags, shares. When Jake clears his throat—they have a rule about personal business on the office computers that, clearly, everyone ignores—Sara looks up at him and says, “I can’t help myself. It’s like I’m in quicksand. I just keep sinking deeper and deeper.”

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Jake asks Sara to show him how Facebook works. He brings up the site on his laptop and she helps him create a profile using his official headshot from the foundation.

“This is dull and corporate,” she says. “Most people use pictures of their families on a mountaintop skiing or at Disney.”

“Disney?” Jake says.

“Do you want to use one of you and Ursula?” Sara asks.

“Not a good idea.”

“Bess, then?”

“I’d rather not,” Jake says. What he doesn’t tell Sara is that he only wants a Facebook account so he can look people up. That’s what it’s used for, right? To reconnect with people from the past?

(Sara can barely hide her dismay that Jake is insisting on using his bland headshot as a profile picture and refusing to post a cover photo at all. Why is he even bothering with this? In the About section, he lets her list his job title—what a snooze!—then Johns Hopkins University; John Adams High School; South Bend, Indiana; and the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta. He lets her post his status as “married” but doesn’t add his spouse’s name, which Sara can, sort of, understand. She shows him how to upload photos, should he ever choose to do that.

“Now, you request friends,” Sara says.

“You do realize how pathetic that sounds?” Jake says. “Requesting friends? I thought I could just add the people I know.”

“You have to make a request and they can either accept or decline,” Sara says. Nobody in his or her right mind would decline a friend request from Jake McCloud. For Sara, it’s another story. She has one ex-boyfriend who declined her friend request and another who hasn’t made a decision one way or the other, so with Brad Bardino, she remains in what she thinks of as Friend Limbo.

“Thank you, Sara,” Jake says. “I’ll come find you if I have any more questions.”

“Good luck,” Sara says. She considers Jake getting on Facebook a positive development because now maybe he’ll understand why she can’t keep off the site on her lunch break. “I’ll friend you in a minute.”

“You’re going to friend me?” Jake says. “Why? I see you every day. You work ten yards from me.”

“Social media is a parallel universe,” Sara says.

Jake gives her a blank look.

Sara goes back to her desk and sends a friend request to Jake McCloud’s brand-new account. She will be his first friend.

He accepts. He’s not completely hopeless.)

Jake spends the better part of an hour on Facebook. He sees how easy it is to disappear down the rabbit hole. Just clicking on his chapter of Phi Gamma Delta brings up fraternity brothers Jake hasn’t thought about in eons. Ditto the Johns Hopkins Facebook page. Ditto John Adams High School. Ditto South Bend. Ha! Jake’s mother, Dr. Liz McCloud, is on Facebook. How does she of all people have time?

Jake sends his mother a friend request. His own mother! This feels extremely weird.

His father, Dr. Alec McCloud, is not on Facebook.

Jake checks to see if Ursula is on Facebook. She is definitely too busy for this nonsense. Yes, correct—but there’s a Facebook page for Ursula de Gournsey, U.S. senator from Indiana, that he can “follow,” and they’ll send him “updates” about Ursula’s hard work for all Hoosiers. Would he care to follow?

No, thanks.

Jake friends Cooper Blessing and, while he’s at it, Tammy Pfeiffer Blessing, Coop’s new wife. (Is it worth it? Jake wonders. Or will Tammy go the way of Coop’s three previous wives?) He figures out how to get into Coop’s list of “friends,” and he cherry-picks a few more Fiji brothers that way, as well as Stacey Patterson from Goucher—why not?—as well as Frazier Dooley, who has both a personal page and a page for Frayed Edge Coffee. Coffee has its own Facebook page? Jake decides not to follow this page even though he goes to the Frayed Edge Café in Dupont Circle all the time. He sends a friend request to Katherine “Kitty” Duvall Blessing. Coop is friends with his own mother, so maybe this is a thing. (To say something is a thing is now a thing, eleven-year-old Bess has informed Jake.)

Is Bess on Facebook?

No, thank goodness, and if Jake has anything to say about it, she won’t be allowed to get on Facebook until she’s thirty years old. It’s such a waste of time!

A waste of time, yes, especially since it’s taken Jake this long to get to the real reason he created an account.

Mallory, obviously.

She’s a friend of Coop, Kitty, and Fray. He clicks on her name, and, like magic, her face fills his screen. He…he…well, he nearly slams his computer shut because it’s so surreal. Her profile picture is a photo taken from the side on the front porch of her cottage. The setting sun makes her glow rose gold. Her hair is in a messy bun and he can see her freckles as well as some lines in her face. In Jake’s mind, she’s always twenty-four years old, but in this photo, she almost looks her age. She’s wearing a navy hooded sweatshirt that looks vaguely masculine and he wonders if she’s dating someone. Then of course there’s the question of who took this picture in which she’s looking so dreamy and pensive. How can he find out?