by Jen Larsen
There is a scream in me, a roar, a gaping hollow full of storming sound in my gut and I am shaking.
“Get out,” I say. “Just get out.” But I’m the one who walks out of the room, gets in the car, and lurches it out of the driveway, hitting the gas and letting the sound of the engine and the wind fill up my entire head, drown out that noise that is whirling inside me, that is pacing the long path between my stomach and my throat, that is trying to crawl out. I find myself skidding into my usual spot next to Cap’n Bill’s and sit there for a minute, wondering how the hell I got there and why. When I slam the door behind me, the whole car shakes.
“Oh my gosh hiiyee!” fluffy pink Jessica says, walking hand in hand with her new idiot boyfriend from the next town over. I grimace at her. She’s finally given up on Brandon at least. I raise my hand at the three freshman yearbook kids who swerve to grab my arm and I zoom past them, walking fast to the end of the pier, the fake lighthouse, the hazy horizon, and the water looking like molten silver. There is no one drowning out there, no head or hand or movement at all, just wisps of clouds pulled thin and translucent across the backdrop of sky that makes you feel like you’re falling forever. I pretend that everything behind me has toppled into the sea, and I’m just here balancing on the horizon as best as I can. I kick off my flip-flops hard, and one of them splashes into the water, floats briefly, dips, and then starts washing down the side of the pier and away and I catch a sob in my throat. It’s too much. A stupid little thing is finally too much.
“No,” I say, scrambling after it. It snags on a post, in a haze of seaweed and muck, and I fish it out. The water is so cold. I can’t imagine how my grandmother could have plunged into it, swam so far and for so long, there and back again. My hand feels stiff. I throw the flip-flop back onto the dock and just lie there with my fingers wrapped hard around the slat of splintery, rotten wood, my forehead pressed against a gap between the boards. It smells like seaweed and fish and salt. Another spasm in my chest.
I push myself up and stumble to my feet and spin around because I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m here or what this is.
And then—Brandon is coming down the back stairs of the restaurant with his hands in his pockets. I stumble back like I have been pushed on the shoulder. I don’t look around for Morgan, who is probably sitting on the hood of his car in her hockey shorts and posting windblown Snapchats. When he hesitates at the bottom of the stairs, lifts his hand to me in a wave, I shudder. A picture of myself as an enormous creeping shadow silhouetted against the bright sky flashes behind my eyes. He recognizes me from this distance because of the space I take up. The enormous cutout against the clouds.
He is standing there and he’s waiting for me. I am flailing around snatching up my flip-flops and walking toward him because hunching at the end of the dock and pretending I am just a seagull isn’t going to be any less awkward.
“Your hair is a mess!” he says, grinning. “It’s a good look for you.”
He reaches out to pull a curl away from my cheek but I jerk back, patting my tangles self-consciously. “Great,” I say.
He winks and I say, “Oh god, Brandon, don’t wink. It’s skeevy.”
“Laura tells me that all the time.”
“She’s usually right,” I say automatically. “Or, sometimes. She’s been right before.” A pause. “I have to go,” I say. “I’m going.” I start shuffling over to my car, and he turns to walk with me.
“Have you seen her?” he asks. “I thought she was working today.”
“Laura? No,” I say. “I mean, not working. She was at my house helping me pack. I’m going to Harvard,” I say stupidly.
He stops and pokes me in the arm. “Wait, really? That’s great! That’s so great!” he says. “Come here!” He slides his arms around my waist and pulls me up against him in a tight hug. He’s stroking my back and saying, “Congratulations! Why didn’t Laura tell me? The last she told me was that you were still working on—”
“No,” I interrupt, pushing back from him, taking a couple of stumbling steps away. “Just the interview.”
He reaches out to catch me but I bat his hand away. “Oh. Okay,” he says. “Okay. That’s still pretty great.”
“I don’t want to go,” I say. I cross my arms. “I don’t think I can go, even if I get in.”
He frowns.
“Harvard. No one can get in,” I explain. “Did you know that they only admitted one thousand, six hundred and sixty-two students last year?”
“Out of how many?”
“Over thirty-five thousand!” I shout. I have flung my hands up dramatically but I cannot stop myself. “Does that seem reasonable to you? Does any of this seem reasonable to you?” It did seem reasonable, when I thought my mother was once one of those just-over-one-thousand students.
But not now. Not anymore.
Seagulls squawk and flap away and my voice echoes off the pier and neighbors are all looking at me. I stop and lean against the railing of the dock. I can’t look at him. I drag my fingers through my tangled hair and they catch on the knots, hurt when they pull.
“Where else did you apply?” His voice is soft.
“Nowhere,” I say. “I didn’t apply anywhere else.”
“Oh,” he says. “It’s not too late.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” I say.
“Well, you could. Your grades are good enough.” He sounds so reasonable.
“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” I say again. “I won’t. I can’t.”
I am almost spilling over with tears and still not looking at him, but I can feel his concern radiating over me. But maybe I shouldn’t assign compassion to people whose minds I can’t read. “I have to go,” I say again, and the truth of that is all around me, in the faces of all the people I know passing us and waving, me feeling so outsized in a town so small. The place my mother had to run away from. The feeling that nothing but the best can make up for all the rest of me. The flaws that everyone knows so well, no matter what I do. They have opinions about how I look, no matter what I accomplish.
Like a cramp in my belly, an echo of Laura. Like my grandmother sitting next to me in the car, saying, “You know I’m right, darling.”
“Are you okay?” Brandon says. He cups my neck with his big warm hand and he’s peering into my face.
I open my mouth but there she is, Morgan leaning against the side of her little Audi. She’s staring at us. “No,” I say. “No. I’m going.”
He reaches out and runs his other hand up my arm, clasps my shoulder. He’s got me surrounded. His thumb brushes the side of my neck and I am frozen. “You’re brave,” he tells me with a so serious, so sincere look on his face.
I am overcome with the urge to laugh at him.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’ve always thought so.”
I push his hand off, swerve around him and around the front of my car. “Great!” I say. “That’s great!”
He doesn’t mean it. He’s making fun of me. What is wrong with him? What is wrong with me? I yank the door open and fall into the car. My hand shakes, trying to fit the keys into the ignition. He’s watching me with his hands in his pockets and I give him a thumbs-up that means fuck off. He nods but doesn’t move and I clench my teeth. Morgan has straightened up, is still watching us with her arms crossed, but he is watching me instead. I pull out fast, swerve away. I can’t drive. I am shaking and now I am sobbing, my whole body caught in the storm, all of me hurting, all of it. I pull over and rest my head on the steering wheel.
A knock on the window makes me jump.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mrs. Tam says. Mr. Tam stands stoically next to her, gazing off into the distance.
I look at her.
“Do you need me to call someone?” she says.
I swallow, and I feel the tears still running down my face. I look at my wet hands, short fingers, calluses from volleyball, tanned darker, my hands.
“I’ll be fine,” I s
ay.
“You don’t look fine,” she says dubiously, and I’m afraid if I start laughing I’ll never stop.
CHAPTER 17
All week: Laura’s chair is still empty in every class, in the cafeteria. Jolene draws wobbly overlapping circles in her notebooks, covering entire pages in black lines. Hector and I catch each other’s eyes and he smiles tentatively and I look at him, willing him to come say hello but he just looks away. I smile a lot at other people. They keep laughing at my jokes even though I’m not making any. I’m not eating. And every night I get home and lock myself in my bedroom, lock everyone out and write a draft of an essay. At four in the morning I delete it again.
Then, the interview is tomorrow. The application deadline is tomorrow. There can’t be any more missing pieces. So I fill it in.
When I write the last word, put the period at the end of the sentence, briefly consider the urge I have to write THE END in all caps at the bottom of the page, I realize my head is pounding. It’s four in the morning again and all the lights in my room are on, and all down the hallway and down the stairs and in the kitchen. I have turned on the few lights my father hadn’t, so that the whole house except for the guest room and my grandmother’s room is glowing while Dad drools on a pillow on the parlor couch and Grandmother is off in Palo Alto at a conference. The windows rattle in the wind once, and then again, and I hear my father snoring, a sound that has been drifting in and out of my consciousness all night.
I stand up and pace around the bed as Soto watches me with half-closed eyes. I shut the laptop and tuck it under my arm and head downstairs and into the kitchen with her at my heels. Jolene is sitting at the counter eating a bowl of raisin bran. She’s wearing my robe, which looks more like a queen-size blanket wrapped around her. She smiles at me tiredly when I’m at the door. Even when she’s exhausted she has perfect posture, her spine like the straight stitching on a hem.
“I finished it,” I say. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Not really,” Jolene says. “Do you want cereal?”
“No,” I say. “I have to hit the submit button.” I sit at the counter.
“Do you want to submit it?”
“No,” I say. “I have to.” She picks up the empty bowl to drink the milk, but stops when I say, “I wrote about getting weight-loss surgery. I can’t think of anything else to write about. And I have an interview.”
“Those aren’t good reasons,” she says, setting down the bowl.
“It’s a lie. I wrote that my weight has been holding me back all this time,” I say. “It was a lie.” Then I look at her. “What if it’s not a lie?”
“Are you trying to talk yourself into it?”
“I don’t know!” I say. “I don’t know. What if my body really is just broken?”
“You’re not broken,” she says.
“Neither are you,” I say. She smiles at me crookedly, tiredly. Soto stands and nudges her head against Jolene’s knee. She drops her hand on Soto’s head, who sighs.
Jolene says, “We will be okay. Whatever we decide to do.” Her eyes are drifting shut as she scratches Soto’s head. Soto is drifting off too. “We don’t”—she yawns—“we don’t have to decide right now.”
“Go to bed,” I tell her softly. “Maybe you can get some sleep.”
She shakes her head but she slides off the stool. Soto pads after her, up the stairs. They creak all the way up, and the door clicks, and there is silence. Even the wind has stopped outside and it has gotten warm.
I open the laptop. Just a few clicks and my mouse is hovering over the submit button. I read the first sentence involuntarily. “Weight-loss surgery: It is my only choice, and my only chance to make a difference for both myself and the world.” This isn’t making a decision. It’s just presenting a possibility, I think. And before I can call myself on my own bullshit, my finger twitches on the mouse and I’ve sent it and my application is complete and I am done.
CHAPTER 18
There are biscotti crumbs all over the table, and four crumpled napkins and an empty plastic cup coated with the tannish slime whipped cream leaves behind after you’ve sucked your drink dry and scooped out the rest of the good stuff with your straw. The interview has been over for ten minutes, but I am still sitting here with my hands in my lap, staring at my empty cup. There’s lipstick on the straw. I never wear lipstick. At the end of the interview we both stood up and she looked at her watch and said, “Wow, we’ve been talking for ages!” and smiled at me widely and warmly. She shook my hand, firm and warm, and looked into my eyes and said, “Good luck, Ashley. I mean it. You’re an incredible candidate and deserve all the success in the world.”
I said, “Thank you, Dr. McGillicuddy.”
She said, “I wish you all the best with your surgery, too. You’re a brave girl. Smart, ambitious, and brave.”
And I said, “Thank you, Dr. McGillicuddy.”
“I’ll be looking forward to watching your career!” she said, and then she was out the door into the brittle cold of Cambridge and I sat down hard again on the wooden chair.
I am supposed to text Laura when I’m done, but my phone is still in the bag Grandmother lent me, a sleek black thing with many buckles and a blue satin interior and too many pockets. I have a wallet, and gum, and my phone, and every time I have to check two or three pockets before I can locate what I need.
The night I submitted the essay I had hit send and then picked up the phone and texted Laura: I’VE DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL AND I’M MOVING TO MEXICO TOMORROW, and she called me because she knew.
I said, “Come with me to Boston,” and she said, “Okay,” and was getting out her gold credit card and finding a seat on my flight while I held the phone to my ear and listened to her type.
She’ll be expecting me to call her now and tell her how charming I was, how animated and lively and forthright and compelling in my enthusiasm.
Five more minutes go by. I’m watching them on the clock behind the counter, next to the chalkboard sign that says BABY IT’S COLD OUTSIDE and then lists eight hot drinks, half of them with peppermint. The iced drinks looked lonely off to the side. I had gotten to the coffee shop an hour early and ordered an iced peppermint one and drank it even though it was so cold outside. I was not prepared for how much the cold outside would hurt, that kind of wind that slices right through you and leaves you shaking in its wake and more vulnerable for the next gust and then even more for the next. Even with my father’s ancient cashmere trench coat and a scarf and a knit Red Sox hat I bought at Logan Airport, I have not been able to get warm.
“Hot bath,” Laura had said when we finally got into our room. She disappeared into the bathroom for an hour while I lay on the bed in a cocoon I had made of all of our blankets and shook. The heat on the giant wall-length furnace was turned all the way up. It made a keening, howling noise that disrupted sleep but I wasn’t going to sleep anyway.
I know I should reach down now and pull my phone out of this strange bag and call Grandmother and say, “She thinks I am a good candidate. She believes that I can do this.” I am trying to decide if Grandmother would reply, “Well certainly,” in that infuriatingly condescending voice or, “I’m glad you didn’t screw it up,” or give me a skeptical hmm noise. I can’t decide which would be worse. I wonder if all of those things are the exact same thing.
I get up from my wobbly café chair because baby, it’s cold outside, and I order a peppermint thing, hot this time because I am shaking a bit in the café, where it is a little bit chilly and the bell over the door keeps chiming, chiming as people hustle in looking like they are wrapped in down comforters, all of them with red noses and hats pulled down over their eyebrows. No one in Boston seems to have eyebrows when it snows.
It’s snowing and I should go, but the hem of my dress pants is still damp and sticking to my ankles and my feet are still cold. I packed flats. I packed for a whole city I didn’t know anything about. I should go out and find the law school, find the spot where
my mother sat on the lawn in front of the entrance, the huge white columns and glinting swathes of glass behind her, but I can’t move. I need to stand up and figure out how to take the red line to the blue line, where the airport hotel is where everything is beige and other brown colors. And then I will have to tell someone about the interview.
Dr. McGillicuddy had come through the door and I knew immediately it was her because she looked like a Dr. McGillicuddy, like she should be too small for a name like that but she could handle it easily. She had narrow shoulders and an angled bob and horn-rimmed glasses and she smiled at me like she was very pleased to be out in the cold to meet a stranger who was sweating in the unbreathable, unnatural stretchy fabric of her new pantsuit but still couldn’t get warm.
She said, “Ashley!” and looked me straight in the eyes and pulled off her gloves to shake my hand. I said, “Hello,” and sat back down. I watched her tuck her gloves in her pocket and shrug out of her coat and drape it over the back of her chair with neat, efficient movements.
“Can I get you anything?” she said to me as if she didn’t notice the whipped cream melting on the top of the giant iced drink sitting in front of me, and then, “Give me just a sec,” when I shook my head no. She returned with hot tea in a ceramic mug and set it in front of her, wrapping her long elegant fingers around it, leaning forward closer to the steam. “Ah,” she said. “Finally warm. You must not be used to this kind of cold.”
“I didn’t pack very well,” I blurted out, and she laughed.
“I can’t imagine you have winter clothes lying around anyway! Though you’re certainly going to have to invest in some for the next four years.”
I nodded, and she regarded me over the rim of her cup as she took a sip.
