@returnoftheMcKenzie: so you know we gotta talk about it, right?
Not like me. To do this. To initiate this particular topic of conversation. But here I am. I think I’m high on endorphins from carrying Clarke all the way here. That has to be it. Either that or I’ve been drugged. I glance around at the four girls sitting at our table.
Teletubbies. The whole bunch of them.
@leirbagavlis: talk about what
@returnoftheMcKenzie: come on, man
TYPING …
@leirbagavlis: haha alright I see you. Fine. Talk about it.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: eighth grade. you kissed me.
@leirbagavlis: I did
@returnoftheMcKenzie: And then you left
@leirbagavlis: I did. Not by choice tho. Plus that kiss was barely long enough to be anything.
It was long enough. Long enough to feel like healing.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: So you’re what now? Gay? Bi? Straight/a queer-baiting asshole?
@leirbagavlis: I mean, I don’t even know man. Bi is what I tell people.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: So you’re out
@leirbagavlis: yeah, but I have a girlfriend. So. That kinda shit stops mattering when you’re in love and shit.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: love, huh?
What does that even mean? I’m eighteen. I’ve been in what I thought was love once, but it died quietly, like a balloon losing helium over time. Our death took maybe a month. Right before prom, too. Jerk.
I hit the lock button on my phone immediately, shutting out the conversation like I can hide from it so long as it can’t see me. Shit.
Shit, shit, shit. He has a girlfriend. Didn’t see that coming.
Which is so dumb, because literally, in every movie I’ve ever seen where people reconnect there is always a preexisting relationship.
Name me one example in recent media where both parties reunite and are single and available. Just one. If you Google it right now, I’ll know, so don’t even think about it.
Anxious in the weirdest way, I tap into his profile again. I scroll through his posts, but there’s nothing on his page that I can see. No cute-ass pictures of them, no tags for #wcw, no rhyming lines of iambic pentameter as captions.
It’s taking me too long to respond now. He’ll probably notice. I swipe backward, into our conversation again.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: nice
“Nice?” What in the hell kinda response …
@leirbagavlis: I mean, I don’t know. It’s new and we been friends for a minute. We’re trying to figure it out. And since we’re here, ngl, I wanted to go for longer
@returnoftheMcKenzie: longer?
@leirbagavlis: I wanted to kiss you. For longer than I did.
I lock the phone again. He’s jumping around so much, I can’t track where he’s going with any of this. I shovel a forkful of Mexican rice into my mouth, the tiny bits of tomato and fresh onion on top becoming what should have been a satisfying combination. My taste buds have other plans.
With a glance over at Emery, I ask, “Dare me?”
“Dare you to what?” she says, mouth full of mole.
I set my fork down, lean sideways, close as I can get to her ear, and whisper, “I’m on the verge of sending a risky-as-hell DM. Dare me to do it.” I need her to. If she doesn’t, there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to log into my Insta account ever again.
“I dare you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I hesitate.
“Do it,” she commands. And then she snatches the phone out of my hand, and holy shit I think I’m going to throw up a whole bunch of lengua right now as I reach in her direction, where she is, right now, skimming my DMs with Gabriel, index finger moving too quickly. She stiff-arms me and continues to read. And before I can put her in a headlock or, I don’t know, sneeze into her plate of food, she hands it back.
“Goddamn. Do it, Torr.” She smirks.
Wet Willies are supposed to be juvenile and mildly disgusting but somehow I just haven’t grown out of using them as a tactic for payback. Which Emery learns the hard way. And she shrieks so loud with laughter, and probably also some horror, that heads turn.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Auburn says.
“Nothing,” we chorus together and then stare at each other.
I shake my head and send it before I can psych myself out.
@returnoftheMcKenzie: Except you punked out
Palms beginning to sweat, I need to forget how high this conversation is making me feel, so I jump over to my thread with Lisa and text, Hey, any more info for me on this whole thing? I think we should probably sit down with someone on this, maybe?
Phone locked, I then shovel six tacos con lengua into my gut as fast as God and also Jesus will allow.
And after Auburn tells five very unfunny penis jokes and Clarke almost chokes on a mouthful of asada fries, we make the walk back to campus, where students are still milling, though things are much quieter than they were earlier.
I don’t like it. You know why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because once I’m back in my room lying on my bare-ass saltine cracker of a mattress, I start to think. Too much time to think just brings me back home. Too much time to think—especially when Desh is MI-freaking-A—allows too many of the whispers to seep in.
How in the hell is it possible that I made it out just a moment before the universe would require me to tuck back in? There’s a moment where I just spend, like, ten minutes imagining I don’t go back home or admit that I abandoned my bees or that I lied to Uncle Miles when I told him I’d always find him there, in the apiary.
That promise? That was just moments before he died in the shittiest hospital in east LA. It’s not the kind of thing you renege on.
Around 3:30 a.m., I wake up with the remnants of a nascent dream on my lips as Desh kaleidoscopes his way back into the room and onto his mattress. He’s asleep within seconds, not a single sound made aside from the heavy inhale-exhale action he’s got going.
I turn over onto my stomach, taking in as large a breath as possible, soaking in all the honey-scented memories that talk Baldwin Hills into being some kind of sweetness.
Sweetness.
Sweet things.
I open my Instagram back up, and sure enough, there’s that paper airplane up there telling me I have a new message. Somehow, opening it at nearly 4:00 a.m. is easier. Feels like it’s just me and whatever’s written in the message.
Stupid, I know. Don’t judge me.
@leirbagavlis: Hey, here’s my number. Do you maybe want to like, text instead?
And his big, dumb, stupid ten-digit phone number is sitting right there.
And I don’t even waste the space of a moment keying the number sequence I may already have memorized into my phone.
ME: Hey, it’s Torr
ME: *Torrey. This is Torrey, I mean.
ME: Torrey McKenzie
Wow. I’m extra as hell right now.
GABRIEL: I know who you are, Torr
Super extra, but also very okay with him calling me Torr. I’m into it—to the surprise of absolutely no one.
ME: What are you doing up?
GABRIEL: What are YOU doing up
ME: Touché. My roommate just came in. Couldn’t sleep after that.
GABRIEL: How is your roomie? Cool?
ME: I know him a little bit. He’s cool. SFSU does this thing where they connect you with your dorm- and suitemates ahead of time.
GABRIEL: Wait what? You’re at SFSU?
Did I stutter?
GABRIEL: I promise I’m not stalking you on some weird shit, but I am at SFSU.
GABRIEL: Also. As a student. Attending this school.
Did he stutter?
ME: So this means … you are on campus? Right now? Wait, are you dorming?
This is a commuter college, but the dorm population is still pretty substantial. I have to slow my fingers down with intent as they fly
across my screen. My phone is starting to get warm from all the use it’s getting.
Lock the phone. Hold the phone as tight as possible to your chest. Realize you are ten seconds away from scribbling Mr. Torrey Silva into your notebook. Plug your phone in to charge, you idiot. Do not open it again—
Okay, fine. After that time, do not open it again to check for a response that hasn’t come after four minutes. Five minutes. Eighteen … twenty minutes.
Do not keep checking for a reply that probably isn’t coming.
Pat yourself on the back. You’ve ruined it before things have even gotten started. Like sneezing on someone else’s birthday cake just before the off-key “Happy Birthday” chorus could even shoot off.
I stick my phone under my pillow and close my eyes. Something hot and heavy hits me about the fact that I am not in my bed at home, where Theo sleeps downstairs in his drafty basement and Aunt Lisa snores indelicately just across the hall.
This is new, and suddenly my skin is on fire.
I’m not saying I’m about to start hyperventilating. But do you happen to have a paper bag I can breathe into right now?
Okay. Focus. Breathe. Think.
I can do this.
My hand snakes back under my pillow to once again retrieve my still-hot, overworked phone.
I’m on the university’s website faster than Apple can drop its next iPhone upgrade. Add/Drop.
The crucial deadline after class registration where you can add or drop courses without penalty to your GPA or your pockets.
That’s two weeks from now. Two weeks.
That’s a pretty solid amount of time. Fourteen days. That’s 336 hours.
Don’t worry. That’s not an offhand fact I just so happen to know. Google is powerful.
Two weeks is enough time to settle things both here and back home. Because I like this place. And I think I kind of need it. I need these people and these opportunities and—
I won’t verbalize that last one. But, basically, Gabriel. I … yeah.
Remotely, I could take these two weeks while my options to add/drop are open and try to fix this mess with my apiary from here. I’ve got that much time to alter my class schedule before I can be penalized financially for it anyway, so I’ve got an okay amount of wiggle room to figure this mess out.
Mess. Messes. Speaking of messy … I gotta call Theo.
I let my phone drop from my hand and stare up at the ceiling for a moment before the stillness has a chance to take hold. I pull my shirt off just before the flames of newness, loss, and rejection can swallow me.
6.
I’m not sure which is preferable: A wake up from my university-issued alarm clock—a hair-raising alarm bell meant only to startle—or the person on the other end of my phone line, ringing me at 7:00 a.m.
It’s a number I know too well. The San Francisco area code gives it away, but I have to squint at the phone for a minute to get my dry eyes to focus. It’s what I get for falling asleep with my contacts in again.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Torrey. This is Loretta calling from God Willing Hospice Care.”
“Yeah, hi, Loretta. I know where you’re calling from.”
“Good. We’re calling to see if maybe this month you’d like to take care of your mother’s billing on time or if you’ll be calling at the last minute to request another payment arrangement.”
See. She just out here being hateful. Loretta has called us every month for two years. Before I was of age, she was calling Theo and Uncle Miles. But every minute of those two years she was on us, Loretta has hated my stupid guts.
And another shit thing is, what the hell is up with that name? “God Willing”?
What?
God willing, your loved one will live to see another day and also maybe if they’ve abused too many pharmaceutical drugs, they won’t actually have to live out their days as a vegetable at some shitty-but-still-too-expensive inpatient care center in the Bay.
I’m sorry, you want people checking their family members in to feel like life is maybe possible? Like, well, I mean, you could stay here but, you know, if God says you gotsta go, you gotsta go.
How much would you bet me God won’t get up off His ass to do jack shit for my mom?
She did it to herself anyway.
“Have you talked to Theo?” I ask. Theo is always the first option for paying my mom’s monthly. If he decides he’s too crotchety to take care of it, they default to me. I know that if they’re calling me now, Theo’s already told them to wipe their own asses with it.
Here’s another gamble: How much would you be willing to bet those were his exact words?
I always thought living closer would ensure I stayed on top of this stuff; it’s a large part of the reason I picked the schools I applied to. I just needed to be closer to her.
To handle her healthcare. Just to handle the healthcare stuff.
“Mr. McKenzie has already requested we not bother him with it.”
I’m not going to ask Loretta to elaborate on the wording he used, but I feel like this probably means I won our bet. I got Venmo, Cash App, Ko-fi, and PayPal.
“Okay, uh. I’m going to have to call you back. Like, later. At a later date. To set something up.”
The key is to be vague here. Smooth. But I’m locked out apparently, and so all that just seems as obvious as watching a twelve-foot woman tap dance down the street.
New-student orientation is, for the most part, mandatory. About half the planned events are required. Which is why, after sleeping through the Breakfast Mixer (yes, everything is a Mixer, don’t ask me why, ask the white people who plan these things), Desh and I drag our sorry asses down to the quad, a massive grassy hill, to hear the president of SFSU (she tells us to just call her “Carol”) talk about … SFSU.
We really only attend this “mandatory” thing for the free food, but it’s just our luck that we were idiots, didn’t set an alarm, and arrive just as all the food is being finished.
I pull my Ray-Bans down onto my face. Definitely could have just read up on this school, you know, on the Internet. Like, before I applied to it.
But okay, go off, I guess.
I take a long drag off the very large black coffee in my hand, the heat of it doing things to my body that I am regretting in the moment but will appreciate in approximately ninety minutes. Desh does the same to his iced something or other, licking caramel and whipped cream out of its dome top.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I snatch it out so fast, I almost catapult my hot coffee right at Just-Call-Me-Carol.
Turns out it’s just Emery texting to find out where in the crowd we are.
So, if you couldn’t tell, I still have not received a text back from him.
I don’t even care though. No BFD.
Shut up.
There are bigger, more important things to worry about. My farm, for example. As soon as this mandatory shit is over, I’m hopping on the phone to make some calls. There’s supposed to be some kind of Meet-Your-RA thing happening after this, but I’m only willing to take things so far with this school right now. The apiary’s a priority. Uncle Miles is a priority.
“God, finally, I find you guys. This crowd is dumb huge,” Emery says. Her thick, dark hair is in two buns, one on each side of her head. I flick one, and she smacks my hand.
“Do not fuck up my space buns, Torrey, I will actually castrate you.”
Desh laughs, sips his coffee. Ass.
The crowd is suddenly clapping and I look around, my own golf clap in full effect.
“Why are we clapping?” Desh asks.
Glad I’m not the only one.
“I don’t know,” Emery adds. Excellent, we are zero for three. “When can we leave? I need to pee.”
This girl. Em’s bladder is in charge of her life and not the other way around. But that doesn’t stop us from taking our sweet time, wandering around campus—a thing that is supposed to be handled via a mandatory campus tour so
metime tomorrow. We find a bathroom after stopping at two different ones first, none of which are to Em’s liking.
Seriously, what is the process for girls when they pee? Why y’all do it in pairs? Why y’all take so long? How many times are you going to remind us that y’all have a couch in there and we don’t?
And while she’s in there, Desh is talking about how there’s a Guided Meditation Mixer and then a Fun-and-Games Mixer. Meanwhile, I’m over here chewing my nails to the quick as girls and their stupidly good-smelling perfumes waft past us as they dance in and out of the bathroom.
We are probably standing way too close.
And I think some of the ladies are disgusted by the way I’m basically cannibalizing on my own hand. It’s the need to be back there at home. Handling business. It’s ridiculous that it’s already past noon, and I haven’t even heard from Lisa with any news or updates yet.
So I text. Because I’m impatient, I haven’t learned not to jump the gun on things. Yet. And also because—here’s some transparency—if I can put off speaking to Theo, I’m going to go out of my way to do it. Speaking to Theo about literally anything is going to be filed in the encyclopedia under the Hot Pile of Garbage entry. But speaking to Theo about this? About the bees, the apiary—Theo’s favorite subject, things that matter to me … those instances are never not steeped in some low-level kind of trauma.
ME: Hey, you talk to Theo? I send to Lisa. Is this considered delegating or punking out? Don’t answer. It’s just an observation.
Aunt Lisa doesn’t text back right away. But when she does, it’s not pretty.
LISA: The fact that you’re away at college and could be doing it up out there and forgetting everything and everyone up in this place and yet HERE YOU ARE in my texts, about the farm. Patience, Torrey.
Those three little gray dots pop up. I feel like Apple should just remove that feature from iMessage altogether, because honestly, it’s not doing anything good for nobody’s blood pressure.
She doesn’t send anything else though. And I’m surprised, because Black girls and their ability to completely obliterate you via text messages is legend.
A cluster of chills riots its way down my back. If Lisa walks, the farm will keep running. There are people who help out occasionally, people from the neighborhood who know business, who knew Uncle Miles, and who helped me when I was running things there. But the thing is, those people aren’t Lis. I can’t trust them the way I can trust her.
By Any Means Necessary Page 3
