42 Berry
Berry
Phil and I are just finishing the dinner dishes when McKenna gets back. We’d invited her to eat with us again, but she wanted
to spend the evening visiting with her grandmother.
Leo greets her in the foyer, and I hear them exchange pleasantries in such a casual, typical way that I actually get a little
teary. Leo sounds almost like he could be any other sixteen-year-old opening the door for a friend. Their voices get quieter,
and I turn off the faucet in hopes of catching more of the conversation, but it’s too muffled from so far away. Phil finishes
drying the Pyrex he’s holding and bumps his hip against mine with a playful smile. The way his lips dance says your hovering is mildly endearing.
I smile back, rolling my eyes in a way that feels like flirting, and then turn toward the cabinet to put away the saucepan.
Then McKenna comes bounding into the kitchen, bringing all her wild energy with her.
“I had my meeting,” she says. “With the committee?” Her voice gets higher at the end, as if we might have forgotten.
“We’ve been thinking about it all day!” How could she not know that? The poor thing, she’s been so alone, she must have forgotten what it’s like to have people rooting for her. “Come, sit.” I motion to the kitchen table, where a few crumbs still need to be wiped up. “I want to hear every detail.”
As we settle into the chairs, I notice McKenna’s wearing an expression I can’t quite name. I look over to Phil, who’s filling
a glass of water for himself from the sink.
“Anyone else want one?” he asks. But nobody does, so he comes and sits beside me at the table.
I can’t take this suspense a single second longer. “Spill it, babe!”
She glances at Leo and then looks back to Phil and me.
“They offered me my scholarship back.”
“Oh my god, that’s amazing!” I clap my hands together. “I knew you’d get back your place on the team. You see? Everything
is working out after all. You just needed to have faith.”
Even Leo has cracked a smile. “McKenna is back on the swim team,” he says.
But McKenna shakes her head. “I didn’t take it.”
Our smiles fall.
“Why in the world not?” Phil asks, his glass halfway to his mouth.
“Because I realized, while I was sitting in that room with them, with their lawyer and their rules and their expectations
and all that pressure to be exactly who they want me to be, that it wasn’t the right thing for me anymore.”
Phil looks just as stunned as I feel. Only Leo seems nonplussed as he goes over to the oven and starts pushing buttons again.
“Well,” I say over the beeps coming from the oven, “it was brave of you to make that choice. But what are you going to do about housing?” I glance at Phil, wondering if we could take her in for the remainder of her time in school.
It’s only a year and a half, the same amount of time Leo has until he finishes high school.
Once she gets a job, she could get her own place.
It might actually be a wonderful thing for our son to have her around all the time.
Phil looks back at me, and it’s like he can read my mind.
He shrugs and offers me a small smile, tacitly agreeing to whatever cockamamie idea I’ve got cooking in my head.
I open my mouth to make the offer, but McKenna speaks first.
“Something even better,” she says with a smile so wide that I wonder if it makes her cheeks hurt. “I guess they’re afraid
of liability or whatever. I’m not sure whether it’s for wrongfully depriving me of funds they’d promised or that they can’t
knowingly turn a blind eye when a student’s unhoused. They said they can’t just give me money if I’m not on the team, but
they offered an alternative. If I work as a resident advisor in a dorm, like a lot of upperclassmen do, I’d be entitled to
free housing from the school. Not only that, but a spot just opened in one of their living and learning communities—”
“What’s a living and learning community?” Leo interrupts as he comes back to the table and hovers over McKenna’s shoulder.
She twists in her seat to look up at him.
“It’s a college dorm where the school puts groups of students together because they all share a particular interest. Like maybe if they have a program in sustainability and the environment, the school will offer students the option of living in a dorm with other kids studying the environment too.
That makes it easier for the sustainability kids to get together outside class, to work on sustainability projects or access resources related to environmentalism.
It’s supposed to enhance the learning, make it richer and deeper. ”
“Do they have aviation living and learning communities?” he asks.
McKenna smiles so fondly at Leo that I want to give her a million hugs.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure you could look into that.”
“What does a resident advisor do?” he asks.
“If you sit back in your seat so I can stop craning my neck, I’ll tell you.”
Leo dutifully returns to his seat, and McKenna continues. “They live in a dorm full of other students, usually younger ones,
and help out when the residents need things. There can be mentoring involved, or just helping kids sort through problems they’re
having at school, social problems, educational challenges. It’s someone who can offer a little extra support or help to students
who need it.”
“You’d be good at that,” Leo says. “You gave me a lot of help back when I needed it.”
By the way he phrased that, he probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s basically just announced that he no longer needs help,
that he’s in a good place. Phil notices though. He reaches under the table and squeezes my thigh. These are the moments you
wait for.
“That’s nice of you to say, Leo. I will always give you support if you need it. You just let me know.”
“What’s the theme for the living and learning community with the opening at your school?” Leo asks.
McKenna looks from Leo to me with an expression of pure glee on her face.
“It’s the Health and Wellness LLC. And I can move in tomorrow!”
She looks so excited that I jump out of my chair with a squeal and race around the table to hug her.
“Honey, that’s wonderful! It’s the perfect thing for you!”
As she sinks into my arms, I can feel the relief oozing out of her, the triumph of finally figuring out exactly where she
belongs.