Chapter 1 #4
“Yeah,” she says with an expectant look. And suddenly I realize who she reminds me of. I remember all those times my manager asked me to stay behind to work, one hour, two hours, until midnight, in that same offhand tone, with the same expectant glance.
Allison, can you review the weekly report again?
Allison, I’m heading home now, can you finish up over here for me?
Allison, you don’t mind reaching out to everyone on the client list, right?
And I went along with it, afraid to say no, afraid to disappoint, afraid she’d replace me with a more eager investment banker who needed less sleep. I worked and worked and worked for her until I died, right inside her office.
I’m surprised by the hot twist of rage in my stomach.
Victoria doesn’t even seem to notice that anything’s wrong. “Why, you already have big plans for the night?” She’s smiling like this is an inside joke between us, like it’s so obvious that I don’t.
“Um, I do, actually.”
Her brows shoot up. “Well, this is exciting—do tell me.”
“I’m going clubbing later, with Luke and his friends,” I say, a thrill racing through my blood at the very thought. I almost don’t recognize myself, it doesn’t seem possible that these words could leave my mouth and be true.
Victoria gapes at me. “You’re—wait, whoa, hold up. Nothing you said makes any sense. First, you don’t go clubbing. Ever. And also—you’re going out with who?”
“Luke Blythe,” I say. “From high school—”
“Yeah, trust me, I know who Luke Blythe is,” she cuts in. “But no offense, why would he ask you to hang out? I’m not trying to be . . . but. You know.”
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. “What?”
“Well, like, you’re not ugly, and you do well at school, I just didn’t think you were his type. At all.”
My stomach sinks.
“You’re sure he wasn’t joking?” she asks. “How did you get to talking to him in the first place? I remember you’d freeze and go all red anytime he passed by you at school, it was funny but also like really sad, I won’t lie . . . Hold on, where are you going?”
I wasn’t even aware of myself standing up.
I’m only aware of how hard my heart is beating, how hot my face feels, of the sick feeling churning in my gut.
Another thing I had so conveniently forgotten about Victoria over the years—for her, respect is a prerequisite for love.
She does not respect me, and so she cannot love me. She never has.
And if I can’t tell her what I want without fear of being judged or mocked, if I can’t even confide in her about dying, then—
What’s the point, really?
“I’m going to go home,” I tell her.
She stares at me incredulously. “Are you offended or something? I was only being honest, like any good friend would.”
But I’m not so sure about that. I’m not sure about anything anymore.
My house is the same as I remember.
The windows are open when I walk in and the air is balmy and I can hear my parents’ voices in the kitchen, low and indistinct, the coffee machine whirring.
For some reason, the heat feels nostalgic, like a weighted blanket; summer always reminds me of home.
I’m even wearing the same gray cotton T-shirt I always wore when I was in middle school, the fabric soft and stretched thin.
Before college, I briefly considered moving into the dorms on campus, but my parents talked me out of it.
It was so much cheaper to live at home, easier to do laundry, I could enjoy my mom’s cooking, my bedroom was more comfortable.
It was only a fifteen-minute walk to campus, anyway.
These had all seemed like perfectly valid points, and so I stayed.
I stayed, and I accepted that this was my life in its entirety. This unchanging house, the forty square feet of my backyard. But now I have this suspicion that my life is actually happening somewhere else, not here but outside, that it’s much bigger than I ever realized.
“Allison, dinner will be ready soon,” my mom calls.
I wander over to the kitchen to help them set the table, reaching instinctively for the chopsticks, the bowls, even the same plates I used before.
“How was school today?” she asks over her shoulder.
“Eventful,” I say, counting the chopsticks in my hands to make sure I have enough. Carefully, I add, “I changed majors.”
My mom whirls around. “You changed majors?” she repeats with an incredulous smile, like she doesn’t believe me.
“What? When?” my dad asks from beside her.
“Today,” I say. “I switched to English.”
The smile vanishes from my mom’s face. Suddenly, she looks as if she might burst into tears instead. “That’s not—but you didn’t even tell us.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“You can’t just do that,” she says. “This isn’t a game, Allison. This is your future, your whole life—”
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s my life, and I don’t want to spend it studying something I couldn’t care less about. I mean, I hated my classes. Economics is so deeply, unbearably boring to me—”
“Many things are boring,” my dad cuts in. “We’ve talked about this, it’s part of being an adult. Taxes are boring, chores are boring, jobs are boring, but you have to suck it up and do it anyway.”
“I tried that. And it didn’t work for me. It only made me unhappy.”
“You think studying a bunch of old poems will make you happy?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Maybe it won’t. But at least it’s something.”
My mom shakes her head. “What happened to you? This—this isn’t like you. You don’t do things like this.”
I didn’t. That’s the problem.
During one of my first driving lessons, I had been so focused on reciting the road rules to myself, roundabouts, intersections, merging, and whatnot, that I sped straight through a red light.
It’s not even that I didn’t see it or I stopped too late; it was like the red light entered my line of vision but my brain simply glossed over it.
The instructor asked me to pull over right away and demanded, in a shaky voice that was trying to be calm, “What happened back there?” I was mortified with myself, unable to answer.
But that was how I had been living, I realize now, for years and years, stuck so deep inside my own head that I had managed to miss everything.
Ask me about the general equilibrium theory and I’ll recite all the notes from my lectures, but I couldn’t remember the most basic facts of life: the smell of the rain, the anticipation of stepping into a dark cinema, pale-yellow mornings, what birds sounded like.
“It’s already been done,” I say with a note of finality. “And I’m sorry you’re upset about it, but I’m not sorry I did it, okay? I’m just tired of feeling like I’m in trouble all the time and everybody holds power over me and I have to wait for permission to do anything.”
My mom stares at me, shocked. “Where is all this even coming from?”
If only you knew. If only I had known earlier too.
“I want these years to matter,” I tell her. “I want college to be more than just a place I go to so I can jot down lecture notes. I want—I want to do it differently.”
Because college is supposed to be different. That’s what everyone tells you. Even if you didn’t have a lot of friends, even if you didn’t like yourself in high school, you could start fresh. Change into the person you wanted to be.
But I hadn’t changed; I had congealed.
“This is completely ridiculous,” my mom starts to say, but my phone chimes.
It’s a text from Luke.
be there at 9
At eight fifty, I’m standing on my front porch in a red dress I’ve never worn before.
A wide beam of light swings through the darkness, illuminating the driveway. A Mercedes pulls up right in front of me, and through the tinted window, I can make out the elegant angles of his face. My pulse flutters. He’s here.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” I say honestly as I get into the passenger’s seat.
He frowns, like this reveals something crucial about his character, or maybe mine. “Why not? I told you I would. I even texted you earlier.”
“I know,” I say. But still I didn’t let myself believe it, because it seemed too good to be true. Because I could still hear Victoria’s voice inside my head, her incredulous tone. You’re sure he wasn’t joking? “But I thought you were just, like, saying it.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“To be nice?”
He shakes his head and laughs. “Is that the kind of person you think I am?”
Victoria’s words resurface again. I just didn’t think you were his type. “I don’t know,” I admit.
“Guess you’ll have to stick around to find out,” he says.
I was worried the drive would be uncomfortable or I’d be too nervous, but he puts his music on, a song with a heavy beat I wouldn’t usually listen to myself, and I roll the window down a sliver to let the breeze in, my hair whipping my cheeks. We don’t talk too much, but it’s peaceful.
When we get there, the line is so long it’s wrapped around the block, and it appears to be mutating before my very eyes, splitting into three as more people show up and join their friends.
“Don’t worry, they’ve saved us a spot,” Luke tells me, leading me over to a group of intimidatingly attractive people by the entrance. “Hey,” he calls.
“About time you showed up,” one of them says. He’s wearing a leather bomber jacket that looks way too hot for this weather.
“Sorry, hard to find parking,” Luke says good-naturedly, then gestures to me. “This is Allison.”
“Hi,” I say, and reach forward to shake their hands without thinking, like I’m meeting clients for the first time. I realize my mistake too late, but they don’t laugh in my face, just exchange quick amused glances, which makes me want to melt into the ground. Luke doesn’t seem to mind, though.
“Luke says you guys went to high school together,” the leather jacket guy says, taking my hand and giving it a firm shake.
“Yeah, we did,” I say.
“He was like a local celebrity back then, right?” he presses. “The champion jock with the rich dad?”
I have vaguely heard of his dad before—a self-made multimillionaire, something about venture capital and private jets, the kind of success story people were always sharing on LinkedIn.