The couple with the baby was two rows ahead of where Lucy was seated. She made brief eye contact with the young boy and his eyes unmistakably threatened a loud and uncomfortable journey for them both. Lucy sat down by the window in row eleven, just ahead of the left wing of the plane. A clean-cut man in his forties stashed his luggage overhead, sat down by Lucy, and took out his laptop and started pecking away. Not bad, as flight-buddies go. And then the sniffles started. Sniff. Sniff. Wipe. Sniff. She was seated next to Satan himself. The plane was packed; this was her family for the next few hours. Lucy leaned her head against the window.
The tiniest decision can change everything was floating around in her mind. Lucy wondered what she could change. Her problem was she didn’t really believe it was possible. In her head she did, in her head she knew she had choices, but it was this gut feeling, this thing deep, deep inside her, in her heart and in her flesh, that just knew it would all turn to shit. It was that same voice that was laughing at her when the Beatles came on in the airport waiting area. The same voice that decided she was broken, a failure, that she’d always be painfully shy, that her life would never amount to anything. The voice that had decided that it could never work out with Evan and that he’d never understand her, that he was unable to reach his potential. That he was stuck as a mama’s boy.
Lucy played devil’s advocate, though, in honor of Mister Sniffles sitting beside her. Things she could change: For one, she could choose not to go home. She could land in Georgia and take another flight somewhere else. Somewhere far. She could see what was available and choose then. Of course, she didn’t have the money for the flight. Or for when she landed. She’d be stuck and homeless, and probably turning tricks for food money by the end of the week. She could stay with Tess. Although Tess had an alcoholic, abusive mom and lived in the middle of the ghetto. Maybe she and Tess could get jobs and rent an apartment together. They’d probably still end up in the ghetto, though. Two mess-ups living together, a pair of bad influences, how long could it be before they turned into coke whores, hitting the streets and turning tricks for drug money? She could break up with Ian. Definitely break up with Ian. She’d rather be alone than with him. She could confront Bill, New Dad. Tell him to get out of her family. She could break his nose. She could go to jail. Hi, Evan, hope you’re making some mistakes, miss you. She’d need a home—that was first. Not with Ian. And preferably not with Tess. And if not with Mom, then somewhere. She thought more about what she could do. She needed a plan, like Evan had plans. Her first goal was to have a plan by the time they landed. It would be like her hundred stories from her diary entry; she had to start with the first one. Not that she ever wrote that.
The plane gained speed and soon found its way off the ground. Lucy felt faint but continued to look out the window. Everything began to get smaller. New England looked like Charlie’s winter town. All the little houses and cars shrank beneath her. She knew what was down there, all the dirt in the snow, and the murderous Joeys. Still, it looked pretty and clean from that vantage. From up in the sky, everything looked perfect.
When Lucy landed, it was dreary out. And cold. No one greeted her at the airport. Lucy waited at the luggage terminal with all the reunited families and couples, everyone embracing and jovial. Even the other lone travelers were already on their cell phones. Everyone had someone, somewhere. Lucy had no one. She had herself, dark cloud included. She watched her two weeks’ worth of luggage slowly roll out like a piss-poor prize on a game show. Lucy dragged her suitcases and bags along and called a taxi and waited in the drizzle outside.
Lucy’s cabdriver annoyed her with inane questions. Live here? Where are you coming from? Out to see the family? Some weather, huh? She kept her answers short and watched the scenery pass by like a Flintstones background. Country, buildings, ghetto, repeat. She thought about school. She had only months to prove she was worthy of getting into college. She could do well. She could study. She was smart. This past year wasn’t her—that’s what she wanted to prove. And maybe someday she could show Evan. See? I turned things around. Everything’s okay. I’m the same old Lucy.
Lucy arrived at what used to be her home and braced herself for whatever might answer the door. She felt like she had when she was boarding the plane—tense, hot, flushed, and dizzy—but she tried to swallow it. She had made up her mind that Bill was going to answer the door with her mom and their new adopted kid. She didn’t know what she’d do then, but it would be bad, and she knew her family was done for and that her mom hated her—she knew everything was doomed here. But those were just thoughts. She had choices to make, whatever the outcome.
Lucy stood on the sidewalk for a moment, with a cold wind and the taxicab behind her, and her mom’s car in the driveway beside her. She took several large paces to the front door, held her breath, and knocked, absolutely terrified of whatever would come next.
ONE YEAR LATER
Evan trudged through the snow alone, Nerd Rock blaring in his ears. Fountains of Wayne, the Apples in Stereo, Harvey Danger. He kept a brisk pace, which was no small feat as he juggled his coffee, a large portfolio, and his laptop. It was snowing lightly and it was December again, nighttime, and the sky was dark. It had been almost a year now since he broke up with Lucy, and he hadn’t heard from her since. He thought a lot about her, but he didn’t have any eureka moments, no answers sprung to him in the middle of the night, and he never figured out what he could have done differently to fix things. His eureka moment was more of a long journey. He was happy with where he’d ended up, though.
A strong wind blew and pulled out a page of art from his portfolio and into the street. Evan started after it but his hands were full, so he looked for anyone who could help him out; no one seemed to be paying any attention, though. He stepped into the road.
“Being the great egoist I am,” Evan had stated at the beginning of his valedictory speech, “I’ve crafted this as a memo to myself, and hopefully you will find some use in it as well.” He took the speech seriously and had a lot of trouble writing it. He still felt like he was emotionally in a tailspin after a late winter spent more or less in a quiet and reflective funk. It wasn’t until he was accepted into Brown that his father relaxed. With the higher spirits at home, Evan was able to really excel for the remainder of the year. The first draft of his speech was an absurd stream of consciousness that he really did write as a letter to himself, and he asked himself what he honestly thought about going to college, about leaving his family, about what he wanted with these next years of his life. He was amazed to see how much of it connected to his time with Lucy. In the end he wrote a lot about change. He wrote about academia and its place in life, and how it needs to be balanced with adventure, and art, and fun. It became easy when he wrote it this way, when he made it personal. He wished Lucy had been there to see him read it.
Things had been great until Evan decided in the summer that he was, in fact, not going to Brown University. His speech had rung truer than his life did. Again, it wasn’t a eureka moment, just a gut feeling that walked with him, that went against every thought he had, but it was an exciting feeling that he couldn’t ignore. He told Gram before anyone else.
“It’s not easy to hear,” she told him as they played cards after dinner, “but sometimes your family are the last people to have your best interests in mind.” It wasn’t easy to hear. Evan had pretty much guided his life on the principle that his family knew what was right. They’re my parents, he’d thought. They know what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s worth doing. “Your mom and dad raised you to do what they know is right, and they’ve taught you what they learned growing up. Some of it is what they were raised with and some of it is what they learned on their own, but, Evan, you’re eighteen now, you’re going to college. What they’re teaching you is what they know, what they feel safe with. And that’s meeting the right girl in college, having a family, and becoming a lawyer or a doctor.” Evan listened carefully. Gram spoke like there was something
to decode, like this was something important. “They want for you what worked for them. But they aren’t in tune with what’s going to work for you. And that’s what happens when you go away to school—you leave your family and you find your own path, and you’re that age now. You need to trust what’s in here.” Gram placed a jittery finger over her heart. “Or, Evan, you can always trust what’s here,” and she placed a finger on Evan’s Gram tattoo.
Evan was lost in thought but almost had his drawing in hand when a taxi slammed on its brakes and laid on the horn. The cabdriver was swearing in some language, Evan was sure. He looked up at the taxi and thought, This is a new experience. Evan picked up the portfolio and hopped back onto the sidewalk. A man nearby was working a hot dog cart and caught the scene. He shrugged his shoulders. Evan shrugged his, too, and they shared a moment. A New York moment? Evan thought. He breathed in the air and smiled. The streets were busy with students everywhere. It was hard to feel lonely with all the activity. It was nighttime, but the streets were bright. Manhattan was lit up for Christmas.
It was Marshall who had tried to talk Evan into coming to New York with him and Tim.
“I’d like to, believe me,” Evan had said on the phone while he was grounded for the summer. He was forbidden from doing anything that didn’t involve finding work. He thought back to the excitement he had felt imagining some kind of life in New York with Lucy. It felt like a fantasy, though, not something a person can just wake up and do one morning. “Everything I know is here.”
“But everything you want is there,” Marshall said, and he was right. He was going to be leaving it all behind in months, one way or another. Marshall thought Evan just didn’t want to disappoint his family, or face his dad, who would not enjoy this news. He wouldn’t be able to get into another school. He’d have to take a year off. It was so un-Evan.
“Think of Tim,” Marshall said. “He had to tell his family and friends that he was gay. That he wasn’t going to be settling down with a nice girl or doing any of the things they all expected him to do. He had to change everything they knew so he could be happy with himself. All you have to do is tell them you want to go to New York instead of Rhode Island.”
Mom? Dad? I’m an artist.
Evan knew that every minute he let pass was going to make his family’s reaction that much more severe when he finally told them. His anxieties were so much more than this little personal choice, than choosing a school or an occupation or doing what made him happy. Evan was going to disappoint everyone in the name of his own happiness. How could he even be happy when he was hurting everyone he loved? He weighed everything in his life on a scale, his mom and his dad, his grandmother, his friends, his school and his grades, his talents. Not one item on the scale could make his decision. He couldn’t base his life around any one of them. He had to choose what he wanted deep down. He was going to have to break his father’s heart, and he did. At least he thought he did, as there were no tears or mournful talks. There was yelling.
“Do you know how much money we put away for this? Do you know the amount of things we did to make sure you got into a good school? Evan, just look at what you’ve done the past few years. You’re gonna throw it all away?”
“I’m not going to throw it away,” Evan said, as scared as he’d ever been around his dad. He’d never heard his voice this loud, and he’d never had his face this close. Mom was in the kitchen, too, when this went down, and Evan remembered her saying No hitting to his dad, and Evan wondered if he’d really do it. He didn’t know. “I just need more time, maybe a year,” Evan said, backed against the counter.
“That’s as good as quitting, goddamn it!” Dad yelled with an intense amount of eye contact. Evan was miserable over what he saw in his dad’s eyes. “Everything we did for you.”
Evan cringed with his eyes shut, certain there’d be some kind of violence or something broken or slammed, but Dad yelled and then there was quiet, a lasting quiet. Dad didn’t speak with him for the rest of the summer. There was tension and silence. All the love and joy and Christmas movies and cookies were gone. Evan hadn’t just faced down his dad, he’d faced down his entire family, the way they’d chosen to raise him. Evan felt like a traitor, an enemy in his own home. He couldn’t apologize, and Gram couldn’t make any inroads. He’d effectively broken his own family. He didn’t even want to fight. He just wanted to make his own decisions.
Shortly before Evan left for New York, his mom had visited him in his room and given him an envelope with money in it.
“I’m not supposed to tell you who this is from,” his mom said, closing the door and sitting on his bed to give him the envelope. “He does love you and he wants you to be safe.” She could have been lying, trying to protect them both, but Evan chose to believe her. She’d been hurt by the decision, too. He was going away, he was her only child, and the house would be empty now. He was going away from all of his family, not just the ones he lived with. There was an element of the unexpected, of the what now? that threw everyone off guard, that made it seem like there was no plan. The Owenses didn’t operate well without plans.
Evan reached the library, his heart still racing from his near-death taxi run-in. He loved it here, the vastness of the place. It had an energy that was completely unlike the sleepy libraries he was used to. It was his preferred spot for working on his comic strip. Evan opened his portfolio and took out his latest page of cartoons and his pencils and brush. He had blown movie night with Tim and Marshall to come draw. He liked to be alone to work on his comic sometimes.
Evan had started doing the comic as a way to hold on to Lucy. He thought somewhere in the back of his mind that maybe she’d see it and write him if he posted it online, which he did, in February. He called it Aelysthia. Evan and Lucy were the main characters, and he tried his best to capture her voice, although he always felt it was a pale comparison with the real thing. He wanted it to be good. Epic, and funny. He wanted it to be big. But it wasn’t; it went mostly unnoticed. Lucy never wrote him; the radio silence continued. Evan had known things were too disturbed to try to write her himself, and he’d figured she must have thought the same thing.
When Evan moved to New York with Marshall and Tim, Marshall started “managing” Evan’s comics career. His first move as manager was to get Evan to write a group of online artists he respected and to show them his work. Evan had built a small but consistent archive of comics, and his story was starting to take some fun turns. A few of the artists wrote him words of encouragement, although most of them ignored his e-mail completely. Two of them had linked to his comic, though, and suddenly Evan found himself a small but growing fan base. Around October, Evan’s comic took a turn. He found he had more to say than he’d ever imagined. Having his own comic was like having someone to talk to, and then it was like having a therapist. The comic wasn’t just stuff to draw, or something he could impress Lucy with, and it was no longer what he thought she’d want to read. It became personal. It was his outlet. Evan learned the joy of self-expression. He fell in love with art.
Evan leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh and drank his coffee. He placed his iPod on the table and put in his earphones. He was around people, he felt a part of something, but it was quiet, too. The city was odd because even with the insane number of people around, Evan could feel lonely. Maybe because of all the people. It felt promising, too, like you could meet someone anywhere at any time. Maybe he’d meet some New York lifer who’d be charmed by his cluelessness and show him around. Or someone who’d just moved here like him, and she’d be thrilled to find someone else from a small town. He could meet an artist. Marshall said the city was a magnet to artists. He’d have someone to run around the world’s largest playground and explore with. It never happened, though. Evan spent his time with Tim and Marshall or alone, wearing his melancholy like a coat to keep him warm.
Evan liked to people-watch while he procrastinated, and he was doing that when he spotted someone who was all of those thin
gs, a city girl, someone who’d grown up like he had, an artist. It started with a woman’s leg fidgeting under the table a few rows away. Her head was buried in a large book and her hair was black with streaks of a purple-fuchsia color. She could be cute. And she was artsy. Evan recognized the book as the third Lord of the Rings volume. She was drowning in books—art books, math? A textbook, so she was a student. And she was reading Lord of the Rings. Evan liked her. She looked up briefly and must have noticed Evan staring, because she did a double take and this time their eyes locked. He recognized the girl as Lucy. She was beautiful. The library disappeared and everyone in it turned dark, and all he could see was her, still and emotionless like a fawn in snow. His heart sped up like it had when the taxi nearly ran him over. Evan’s face involuntarily spread into a wide grin. He nearly exploded with all the things he wanted to tell her, and he fought the impulse to leap out of his chair and run to her.
Evan stared, grinning, and Lucy’s eyes squinted the way they did when she smiled, when she really smiled.
It’s different now, Evan and Lucy both thought.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I won’t fill up too much space here, but it only feels right to acknowledge a few people who helped inspire this story or helped me while I worked on it. Of course, I want to thank my family, Mom, Mike, Pop and Gram, all my aunts and uncles and cousins—too many to name here, but you know who you are! Elaine Hornby, for being an inspiration in writing this, as well as Jules Bakes—I owe you big time—and my buddy Sara Rhine. I need to thank everyone who listened to me rant and rave: Cori Payne, Bob Jacobsen, Takarra Harrell, Leslie Andrews, Briana Benn. Some other inspirations: Lawrence Degley, Billy Ordynowicz, Mike Attebery, Jack Lilburn. I’d like to thank my agent, Kirby Kim, for working hard on all the stuff I have no brain for.
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