by K. M. Walton
“Why are you asking this now? You’re already on your way.”
“Melissa said something last night. And I just…I just want to know what you think.”
Gram is quiet for a long while, so long that I think she might not answer. I adjust the air-conditioning again.
“You’re just starting your life,” she says quietly. “And if you have the chance to start something new, then you should. You already know what’s waiting here. So maybe it’s time you see what else there is.”
My eyes well up. “I don’t understand,” I say. “Why does it feel like everyone’s trying to get rid of me? Are all of you mad that I’m leaving—like I’ve betrayed you or something?”
Gram’s gaze snaps to mine. “Of course not. The people who love you…we know you, Leigh.” She turns back to the road. “Your heart is wild and restless. If you were to stay here always…you’d be miserable. Some people are just wanderers.”
I’m washed in guilt, like I’ve abandoned her already. I get what she’s saying, and I do feel restless. I do want to explore. But loyalty should have been engrained; it seems to be in others. Why don’t I feel the same way?
“I just want to be like everyone else,” I say, sniffling. “I feel like I’m in the wrong life or something.”
Gram presses her lips together, and reaches out her hand to mine. Her rings press against my palm. “You just haven’t found your life yet,” she says. “Your ride just started.”
I hold my grandmother’s hand for a while, and then I reach in back and pull a sandwich out of the cooler. I’m not even hungry, but I have this sudden and complete need to make her happy. Show her that I appreciate the time she put into making me a sandwich.
Because for a moment, it feels like I might never see her again.
• • •
I’m a transfer student, and it comes with some perks. I get to move into the dorms with suites—no floor-shared bathrooms. Each set of four rooms has its own bathroom, its own living room. But I barely glanced at the online “Student Life” section beyond that. I basically just enrolled, carried along by my own curiosity rather than on a well-thought-out path. So now I have no idea what to do next.
Gram parks her car, and I stare up at the large dorm building, intimidated. It’s at least twelve floors. I’ve barely been out of Central New York.
I’m too nervous to talk as I get out of the car and walk around to pop the hood. Gram wants to help, but I won’t let her carry anything other than my comforter in plastic wrap. I’m looping bags and backpacks over my arms, sure I won’t actually be able to carry this much, but wanting to make it to the seventh floor with the least amount of trips possible. I’m about to slam down the truck on the rest of my things, when two guys appear at the other end of the car.
“Hey,” one of them calls to me. “Need a hand?”
I immediately look at my gram and she smiles, and tells him that we’d appreciate the help. He smiles at her, as if he loves his grandmother too, and he and his friend round the car to where my entire life is packed into a trunk.
The guy is cute, and I think it’s adorable that his red hat is on backward, something about it effortlessly casual and charming. His friend is big and burly with a long blond beard and hair. He has a flannel shirt tied around his waist and he’s wearing sandals. I like then both immediately.
“Vincent,” the guy in the red hat says to me. He reaches in and grabs a box with clothes while his friend, who introduced himself as Charlie, picks up my small refrigerator with a grunt.
Between the four of us, we manage to get all of my things in one try. I start into the building, my grandmother grinning to herself like she’s in on some joke. I look at Vincent.
“Is this your dorm?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nope. I’m a freshman. They place us close to the class buildings. Transfer?” he asks me.
“Yeah. Junior.”
“Older woman,” Charlie jokes, and all of us laugh, even if it’s mostly out of embarrassment. Of course, nothing is as awkward as the elevator ride up to the seventh floor.
Gram stays facing the buttons, pretending she’s not even here. She’ll definitely bring it up to me later—she’s full of opinions. But for now, she’s letting me do my thing. And my thing is leaning against the wall, pretending I belong on this college campus.
The elevator smells a bit like BO, and I think it might actually be Charlie. Then again, he’s carrying my refrigerator. And he probably spent too many hours playing hacky-sack in the field.
Without meaning to, I glance over at Vincent and catch him staring at me. We both smile awkwardly and turn away. The elevator dings, and Gram is the first one out.
I try to look confident as I walk toward my suite door, only to realize it’s on the other side of the hall. There’s the faint scent of weed in the air, whether someone’s smoking it here or brought the smell in with them, I’m not sure. Gram doesn’t seem to notice.
I fumble with the door lock.
“Take your time,” Charlie says, hiking up the fridge as it starts to slide down. “Not like this is heavy or anything.”
“Sorry,” I say, but Vincent waves him off.
“Ignore him,” he says. “He’s joking. But mostly he’s just mad because he hates exercise.”
“Obviously,” Charlie replies. “I don’t get to look this good by chance.”
I finally unlock the door, and the four of us enter the suite. My room is the first one on the left, and I poke in my head, sort of relieved that my roommate’s not here yet. It gives me a second to adjust.
Vincent and Charlie set down my things, and Gram immediately gets to work making my bed. Before I even take a moment to look around my room for the first time, I walk the guys to the door and thank them.
“I really appreciate it,” I say. “Honestly, this was really nice of you.”
Vincent shrugs. “We just happened to be passing by,” he says.
“He thought you were cute,” Charlie says, grins at him, and then leaves. My face catches fire and I can barely hold my shit together when I look at Vincent again.
“So I’ll see you around,” I say.
“Definitely.” He holds up his hand in a wave, but then pauses in the doorway. “And hey,” he starts like he’s just thought of something. “There’s a party later if you…if you’re not busy. It’s at 96 Broadway. Guess they do it every year. They call it the Opening Ceremony.”
I laugh. “Maybe,” I say. “Not sure…” I trail off because the answer doesn’t really matter. It was cool that he asked me. We say goodbye, and when I close the door, I let the flutters of flirtation vibrate through me.
I walk back into my dorm room and see that Gram has already started unpacking my clothes. “You don’t have to do that,” I say, going over to take my jacket from her hands. When I do, I turn toward the closet and get my first look at the dorm room. It’s pretty spacious—at least, bigger than I imagined. Two beds, two dressers, two desks. One wall is made up entirely of windows, and it looks over a bright patch of green lawn. There are a few people playing Frisbee out there right now.
“Those boys seemed nice,” Gram says nonchalantly. “Are you going to that party later?”
“Ew,” I say, jokingly. “You can’t eavesdrop.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, grabbing a few books and setting them on my desk. “Your mother liked younger men, too.”
“Gram!” I say, cracking up. My gram is actually hilarious, sometimes scandalous, and always awesome.
We finish putting away my things, my roommate still nowhere in sight, and when we finish, it’s past lunchtime. She asks if I’m hungry, but I’m actually not. I’m starting to worry, dread her leaving. Maybe this was a mistake. I mean, what the hell am I doing here?
“Hey,” Gram says, furrowing her brow. “What’s wrong?” She sits on the ed
ge of my roommate’s mattress. “You should be excited.”
“I don’t feel excited,” I say. “I’m not that smart. I’m not really adventurous.” I rub my palm over my face, overwhelmed by everything. “I should go home with you,” I say, sounding more like a kid than a college student.
“Honey, you’re strong enough to do this,” she says. “But more importantly, you deserve this.”
“What? To be alone?”
She laughs. “No. To be free. And yeah, you’re alone. But what better way to figure out what you want.”
“And Melissa? She hates me right now. So does everyone—they think I’m stuck up for leaving.”
“Melissa will understand,” Gram says. “And who cares what the rest of them think? Leigh…you haven’t had it easy, I know. Your dad didn’t take care of his responsibilities, and your mother—she’s a little lost. But you’ve always taken care of yourself. You don’t need anyone else. And you sure as hell don’t need their approval.”
I have a flinch of pain thinking about my parents. My father left about the same time I was learning to walk. He never called, never paid a dime of child support—not even when our heat got turned off. Hell, he never even sent a birthday card. A therapist would have told me that his leaving wasn’t my fault. But blame doesn’t matter to me—my dad is a ghost. I’ve learned to deal with it.
And my mom…she’s around, trying to get her life in order. She even started taking classes at the community college. She had me when she was too young, she remarried twice, and now she’s finally getting around to figuring herself out. I was lucky—I happened to have the best grandparents in the world. I’ve lived with them for as long as I can remember. I’ve been loved greatly. So my pain at abandonment never lasts long. Because I’ll never lose my grandparents. I’ll always have my gram on my side.
“You really think I should stay?” I ask my grandmother, sniffling back the start of tears.
She nods, her brown eyes welling up. “Yeah,” she says. “I do. And I’ll miss you. But see where this ride takes you. You can always come home if you need to,” she adds.
I stand up and go over to hug her, memorizing the smell of her detergent, the feel of her arms around me. When it’s time for her to go, I walk her out of the building and pause at her car.
“I love you, Gram,” I say.
She gets in her car and slips on her sunglasses. Before she closes her door, she looks up at me, the baddest granny anyone ever met. “I love you, too. Call me after the party. I want to hear all about it.”
I smile. “Drive safe.”
She closes her door, and I wait until she’s gone before heading back into the building. My shoulders slump—I’ve never felt more alone.
I pause in the lobby, and see a crowd of students near the mailboxes. I hadn’t thought to check mine, so I take out my key and head over to find box 18236. When I do, there’s a loud clank and then a laugh.
I look over and see it a pretty red-headed girl rubbing the heel of her palm. She looks over at me, embarrassed. “Sorry,” she says, motioning toward her mailbox. “My key got stuck and now the damn thing won’t open.”
“Oh.” I lean in like I’m the mailbox expert, and after a few minutes, I manage to get her key out—bent.
“Shit,” she says holding it up for us to examine. “Well, that sucks.” She exhales, and I turn to close my mailbox. “I’m Shelly,” she says.
“Leigh.”
“Cool,” she says. “Thanks for your help. What floor are you on?”
“Seventh,” I say.
She gasps. “Me, too! Please tell me you’re my roommate. 716?”
My lifted heart quickly falls. “No,” I say. “I’m across the hall.”
Shelly scrunches up her nose adorably. “Well, at least we’re on the same floor, right?”
I nod, and we start toward the elevator, the silence between us comfortable and easy. The sort of stranger bonding you can get when waiting in a long line at the post office.
“Weird question,” Shelly says, spinning to face me. “Would…would you cut my hair?” She gathers up the ends of her long hair. “I hate it. It’s a knotty mess. I want something cute.”
“Uh…sure, I guess. But I can’t claim to know what I’m doing.”
She shrugs. “Neither do I. But I figure you’ll have a better angle to cut the back. So will you?”
“Yeah, okay.”
We go to Shelly’s room, which happens to be the first door I had gone to when I arrived. Her other suitemates haven’t gotten here yet, so we have the place to ourselves. When we get in, her room is an absolute disaster, clothes and boxes everywhere. But she hung a poster on the wall—one of an aging soap star. She tells me she’s had it since seventh grade.
She rolls out the desk chair to the center of the room, and grabs a pair of small scissors. They’re hardly hairdresser-worthy, but I take them from her hand anyway.
“How do you want me to cut it?” I ask, grabbing a wide-tooth comb from her dresser.
“Whatever you think looks good.” She walks over and clicks on her stereo, skipping through her playlist, until she grins and hits play.
“The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World starts, and she turns it up. “I love this song,” she says, bopping her head from side to side playfully, her red curls bouncing. “It reminds me not to take myself too seriously.”
“You’re letting a stranger with no prior stylist experience cut your hair, so I’d say you’re doing pretty well at that.”
She laughs again and sits in front of me. My heart swells, and I decide I love the easiness of this. She’s so free of judgment, of rules. This moment is honest and open—and back home, you don’t form relationships this easy. They take time. Take tests to prove yourself. I’m at once exhilarated and scared of this new world.
I rake the comb through Shelly’s red curls, measuring them to her shoulder blades. The music plays in the background, the world coming to life around me. My loneliness abates slightly when I make the first snip.
Shelly looks down at the red lock on the floor. “Hah!” she says. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“Me neither,” I murmur.
We both laugh, and I continue to cut. I think about Melissa, and there is a second of guilt—like I’m betraying her by making a new friend. Am I? Or is this the engrained loyalty that I thought I didn’t have?
“I thought my best friend Melissa was going to come to college with me,” I admit to Shelly. “It’s kind of weird being here without her.” I snip another lock and it falls on the lap of Shelly’s jeans.
She smiles, looking a bit nostalgic. “I was Melissa last year,” she says. “My best friend moved to England—fucking England.” She laughs. “She asked me to come with, but I’m not rich. And I didn’t want to go. My sister graduated from here; this is where I belong. But I still gave Claire a ton of shit about leaving. We’re cool now, though.” Shelly turns to look back over her shoulder at me, her wide-set eyes a sparkling shade of green. “She’s going to stay with me during break. You’ll have to meet her. She even has a little accent now.”
“Sounds fun,” I say, meaning it. This insight into Shelly’s life…it makes me feel a little better. It reminds me that Melissa and I are forever, and that she has a right to be mad. But we’ll get through it. We’ve always gotten through it.
“Oh, shit,” I say, taking a step back. “This is totally uneven.” I take the ends of Shelly’s hair and stretch them. There’s at least a two-inch difference between the sides.
Shelly shrugs. “Go shorter then,” she says.
“You sure?” I ask. I feel kind of bad about ruining her hair.
“Why not?” she responds. It’s so simple. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a fresh slate before—I always expect strings. The song finishes playing, setting us in a moment of quiet. Like reality waiting
for me to decide how I’ll live.
“Okay, Sinead. Let’s do this,” I say, making her laugh. I continue to cut as Shelly and I discuss our majors, our friends, and our ex-boyfriends. We have a lot in common, more so than most of my friends back home. It makes me wonder if this is what’s it like when you leave high school. There, our friends are circumstantial for the most part, determined by neighborhood and class schedules. But then the world opens up. My world is opening up.
“I met two guys earlier,” I say. “They seemed nice.”
“How nice?”
“Well, they carried my fridge,” I say.
“Oo…I like them already.”
I smile, crouching down to snip the last hanging threads of hair. Shelly’s hair is mostly even now, just below her chin. She stands and shakes it out, and I have to say that it looks damn cute. She walks over the mirror and turns her head from side to side, examining the cut from all angles. She spins.
“I love it!” she says. “I feel like a new person.” She exhales and then drops down on her zebra-print bedspread. I grab a paper towel and clean up the mess we left, even though I don’t have to. When I’m done I sit on the bed across from her.
“So what else did the boys say?” she asks, leaning back on her arms. “Wait—what are their names?”
“Victor and Charlie. They’re freshman.” To this she scrunches her nose, but lets me continue my story of how they helped me and Gram carry stuff to my room. I tell her about Victor’s invite to the Opening Ceremony, and Shelly gasps.
“I’ve totally heard of that,” she says. “My sister said it’s the best way to meet people. We have to go.”
“Really?” I’m still unsure, a little intimidated.
“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s see what this school is all about. Make some friends.”
Her smile is infectious, and it gives me a bump in confidence. “All right,” I agree. “Plus you’ll get to show off your hair.”
She runs her fingers through it. “I’ll have boys carrying my furniture by the end of the week.”
