Stargazing with You

2. Columbia University

Chapter 2

Columbia University

First Year

I did not, in fact, “kill it.”

I woke up a full hour after I intended, missing my alarm. The leisurely morning I had planned, with a full breakfast, a hot cup of coffee, and some light note-reading, turned into a panicked rampage. I threw on the same clothes I had worn to Tom’s the night before, gathered my backpack, a canned Starbucks espresso from my mini fridge, and a silver package of brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts. It would take me about ten minutes to walk across the campus, and with every quick step I made, inhaling my makeshift breakfast along the way, I felt like I forgot another important fact about chemistry that I had once known. My heart was racing by the time I made it to my assigned seat in the multi-tiered lecture hall, and it did not stop racing until well after I completed the exam.

A few days later, I walked down the stone steps in front of the white rotunda of Low Library, when I heard a voice call out to me, “Why, hello there, Dr. Richards.”

I spun toward the voice, a smile lighting my face instantly when I saw Javi sitting at the foot of the bronze statue of Alma Mater. He had a half-eaten hero sitting in his lap.

“Please,” I said, teasing. “Dr. Richards is my father.”

He laughed, patting the cement next to him. “Are you in a hurry? Come join me.”

I dropped my bag down on the steps and settled in beside him. I leaned back against my hands and closed my eyes, enjoying the warm sunshine on my face and shoulders. When I finally opened them, Javi was staring at me.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “What is it?”

He looked away quickly. “Nothing. You look really happy.”

“I am,” I replied. The weather was phenomenal today—a perfect 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I heard the ding of my email notification sound from my phone and looked down at the screen. “Or at least, I was . Exam scores just got posted.”

My hands shook as I frantically clicked through the online portal to find my score. And when I saw the black numbers against the white backdrop, my heart sank.

“76,” I said, in shock. “I got a 76 on my exam.”

Javi looked over at my screen, appraising it closely. He chewed on his sandwich in silence for a few moments.

“Hey!” he enthused. “Good job!”

I looked at him, aghast. How could any Columbia University student look at a 76 on an exam and say, g ood job? He must have had a very different high school experience than the one I had lived.

“Are you insane?” I asked him. “That is not a good score.”

Javi snatched my phone from my hands, scrolling over on the screen before I could protest.

“Diana, look at this with me.” He pointed to the header above the score . “What does this say. ”

“Raw score,” I read aloud.

He scrolled over to the far right of the score report. “And what about this?”

“Final adjusted score…” I read slowly. “94? It was curved?”

“It was curved,” he repeated, grinning widely. “You got an A on your very first exam. My buddy Clara is the TA for Gen Chem. She told me on Friday that the average on that exam was a fifty-something.”

I was quickly learning that Javi Valenzuela “had a friend” or “knew a guy” for every facet of life, from every corner of this university. And he had only been here as long as I had been here, only a few weeks. I would consider myself lucky if I could name more than ten people living on my floor.

“You know what this means?” he asked. “We have to celebrate.”

I shook my head at his declaration. He said it as if he had known me for years, not just a few days. “Celebrate how?”

“Dinner? Dessert? A Broadway Show?” he mused aloud. “All of the above.”

I laughed. “It’s a Tuesday, Javi. I have forty pages of Lysistrata to read by tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s easy!” he exclaimed. “A bunch of Greek women tell the men they won’t have sex with them until they stop going to war. Conclusion: women are the superior species. Reading done! Let’s go to Broadway.”

I shook my head. “You’re ridiculous. Broadway shows are like $150 a ticket, minimum.”

“ Not if you know how to work the system,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

I hesitated. There was a part of me—the good little high school student who would study every night from the time I got home until I went to sleep at an early, respectable hour—that protested, saying, it’s a school night. But that part of me was smothered by the girl who had stood on the sundial at midnight the night before an exam and finally felt alive.

I sighed in mock exasperation. “What time?”

He did a little victory dance. “I’ll pick you up at your room at five.”

We parted ways soon after to attend our afternoon classes. On my way back to my dorm that afternoon, I texted my mom to tell her the good news about my first exam. The name Helen Richards flashed across my notifications seconds later.

HR: Great job, honey! Never doubted you.

A few seconds later, another text followed.

HR: Making friends too?

A soft smile pulled at my lips. My mom would be more concerned about me making friends than making good grades. Someone had to balance out my father, after all—he probably didn’t care if I spent the next four years alone, so long as the end result was medical school.

DR: Yeah I actually did meet someone… We’re going out to celebrate?

HR: Going out, like a date????

DR: I don’t think so?? But it is unclear.

HR: LOL, update me when you find out. Wear something cute, just in case .

I looked in my closet skeptically, surveying my options. I had seen a few shows with my parents over the years, and they usually dressed up for the occasion. But my dad refused to step foot in a theater unless he had box seats, so I didn’t know if the same protocol applied here.

I pulled up Javi’s number, which he had freshly saved in my phone this afternoon.

DR: Hey. What are you wearing?

A few seconds later, the “…” appeared as he was typing his reply.

JV: Why, Dr. Richards. How forward. We only just met.

I blushed furiously, realizing only in hindsight how my original text sounded. I sent a face palm emoji back.

DR: Not like that. I mean what are you wearing to the “Broadway show.”

JV: I take the quotations to mean you doubt me and my abilities to get us in.

DR: I’m only wondering if I need to wear a black cat suit. How clandestine is this operation? Are we rappelling in from the rafters?

JV: No rappelling necessary. But please, feel free to wear the cat suit anyway. I would enjoy that.

DR: Seriously though, what’s the vibe here?

JV: I’m going with “poor college student dressy casual,” aka jeans that I haven’t gotten chemical stains on and a shirt that hasn’t been sitting at the bottom of my hamper.

DR: I can work with that.

When Javi knocked on my door at five o clock, I wore a black flowing jumpsuit—not quite a black cat suit, but hopefully Javi appreciated the effort. He, as advertised, wore dark blue jeans and a fitted blue button-down. We walked the few blocks to the subway station and caught the south-bound train to a stop just north of Times Square.

Javi led me toward the red-and-yellow umbrella over the Halal Guys cart on the street corner, with a line of at least twenty people waiting beside it. We ordered big silver platters filled with lamb and rice and loaded with a white, garlicky sauce. He carried the food as we walked toward the glaring, flashing lights of Times Square in the distance. I cringed a little at the sight. I avoided Times Square like the plague—fighting to get through the crowds of tourists did not appeal to me.

He wound through the throng with purpose. After a troop of Sesame Street imitators nearly separated us, Javi hooked one elbow through mine. I looked down at our intertwined arms curiously.

“I almost lost you to crackhead Elmo,” he said, by way of explanation. “Your parents would never forgive me if I let harm come to their dear little future surgeon.”

I cackled with laughter and willingly let him lead me by the elbow. We ducked down a side street, seeing the marquis for the Eugene O’Neill theater ahead.

“ The Book of Mormon ?" I asked with delight .

“That’s the plan,” he said. “You’re not Mormon, are you? Or easily offended?”

“No and no,” I said, grinning. “I have always wanted to see it.”

“Hopefully, today is our lucky day,” he said, leading us to join a line of about ten people sitting or standing on the sidewalk beside the box office. He sat against the wall behind the last person in line, fishing out the silver trays and plastic utensils from the plastic bag. Though the idea of sitting on the dirty New York City street wasn’t exactly appealing, I was starving. Javi tore the plastic bag in half and placed it on the ground beside him, gesturing for me to sit on it.

I shook my head at the casual chivalry. I was certain that if Javi had a jacket on, he would have sacrificed it for me. They just didn’t make boys like Javier Valenzuela in New York, I decided.

I settled in beside him, happily eating my halal food as we waited outside the theater. Over the next thirty minutes, a steady crowd built up around us. Some joined the line behind us, some milled about in front of the theater. An hour before showtime, a woman in a black Book of Mormon t-shirt appeared with a fishbowl and slips of paper, announcing that entries for the lottery were open. His antics finally made sense—I vaguely recalled hearing friends before mention student rush or last-minute lottery tickets to Broadway shows, though I had never sought them out myself.

Javi wrote our names down and placed them in the bowl. After ten minutes of people walking up to enter their names, the woman called out that she had ten tickets for thirty dollars each available, and that each person called could have up to two tickets.

One by one, they called out names from the fishbowl, and the winners went to the box office to receive their tickets. For some reason, I knew he was going to win. Javier Valenzuela radiated luck. He was the kind of person who turned everything he touched to gold. Blessed by the gods, some might say.

“And the last two tickets go to Javier Valenzuela!”

Javi beamed at me. “Told you I had my ways.”

I shook my head. “And how could you have possibly known you would win? There are probably sixty people here.”

”My family says I was born lucky,” he said, shrugging. “But if we didn’t win the lottery, they have standing room tickets. That’s why we were sitting in line.”

He really thought of everything. We got out of the standing room line and went straight to the box office. We received our tickets—third row, center orchestra. Probably worth $250 each, and we paid thirty dollars each for them. We were both buzzing with excitement by the time they opened the theater doors, and the crowds of theatergoers filed in beside us. I bought us sodas and peanut M&Ms from the bar as a token of gratitude to Javi and his dumb luck.

We took our seats at the very center of the beautiful, ornate theater. The stage was decorated with a depiction of the heavens, radiant beams of light filtering through fluffy clouds, with faux stained-glass windows surrounding it. We perused the playbill until the lights went dim and the first few notes rang out from the orchestra pit. We were so close to the musicians that I could feel the sound resonating in my chest. The curtain rose, and the actors were so near, I could see the lead’s freckles speckling the bridge of his nose.

After two and a half hours, my abdominal muscles ached from laughing so uproariously with so little respite. On the walk to the subway and on the uptown train back to campus, we recounted our favorite songs and jokes from the show. Conversation with Javi flowed so easily, it was almost unnerving. I would not call myself antisocial by any means, but I didn’t make new friends often or easily. I had some close friends in high school, sure, but moving schools after freshman year when my dad got the Chief of Surgery position at Columbia hadn’t helped. And no friendship had ever bloomed so easily and effortlessly as it had so far with Javi.

I suspected that this was in no way specific to me, though. This was just the way it was for Javi, which would explain how everyone on campus seemed to love him. He made people feel seen and heard and special, all at the same time. So even if I was one of many friends he planned to make, I was happy to be included.

When we were back on campus, we were walking past Butler library when Javi stopped in his tracks.

His eyes glinted with mischief. “Would you, perhaps, still be interested in any clandestine operations this evening?”

I looked down at my watch. “I would tell you that it is eleven o’clock on a school night, but I imagine it would only fall on deaf ears.”

“It would,” he said. “Come with me.”

“And where are we going this time?” I asked.

“The Butt,” he said.

I looked up at the enormous structure beside us and back to him. “The Butt? I thought the point of tonight was not studying indoors.”

“You are correct,” he said. “We will be neither studying, nor indoors.”

I shot him a skeptical look. I was learning not to question his brand of madness. My life, at least the small part of it which intersected with his, had only been improved thus far by letting the insanity happen. Javi approached the world with an open mind, with spontaneity and joy—characteristics I felt lacking in myself, but that I desperately wanted to learn.

I gestured toward the door of the library, as if to say, after you.

He led the way through the front door, and we scanned our IDs at the security desk. We took the elevator to the top floor of the building and walked through the black-and-white tiled hallways. We passed room after room of study halls and bookcases, filled with students who appeared to be having much less fun than we were having. Javi ducked into an unmarked staircase. We walked up a final flight of stairs to another door, propped open with a tattered copy of The Iliad (required reading for all first-year students at Columbia, now turned door stop).

When Javi pushed against the heavy door, the cool evening air hit us. We walked out onto the roof of the library and ran to peer over the ledge. The entire campus sprawled before us in all its glory – the sparkling white roof of Low, the red brick academic buildings with their green copper roofs, the tailored green lawns, Alma Mater and the sun dial sitting at the center, looking as small as insects from here. A few stragglers walked the paths between the buildings or down college walk.

“This is amazing,” I told him. “I can’t imagine we’re allowed to be up here?”

“Not even a little bit,” he said. “Strictly forbidden.”

I rested my chin on my hands, feeling like I could stay up here watching over the twinkling lights on the campus below for the rest of the night.

“What made you choose Columbia?” Javi asked quietly .

I laughed, a little bitterly. “It’s not so much why did I choose Columbia, but why did Columbia choose me. My dad’s Chief of Surgery at the medical school uptown. Kids of faculty get free tuition. I couldn’t exactly pass up a free education at one of the best schools in the country.”

Javi whistled low and slow, clearly impressed. “Free tuition. Wow.”

“That’s not to say I don’t love this school,” I said. “I really do. It has always been one of my favorite places in the city. But with my dad working here and being who he is... sometimes I wonder if they even looked at my application before accepting me. I know it’s stupid and that I have no room to complain. I’m extremely fortunate to have the opportunities I have been given. But just once it would be great to know I earned something for me. Because of who I am and what I have done. Not because of who my father is.”

“I don’t think that’s stupid at all,” Javi replied.

“What made you choose Columbia?” I asked him, trying to divert his attention from the subject I was most sensitive about.

Javi got quiet for a while, and for a moment, I wondered if he hadn’t heard my question. I looked over, seeing that he had lay down on the ledge, looking upward toward the stars with his hands behind his head.

Finally, he said, “I applied to a couple good schools. I really didn’t think I would get in, to be honest. I mean, my grades and my SAT scores were good, of course. But kids in my school didn’t really go to the Ivy League. No one had gotten into one in anyone’s memory. But my parents and my sisters encouraged me to shoot for the stars, so I did. And I got in.”

Javi’s voice sounded wistful and sad, about what I thought would have been a happy topic. And something in the tone of his voice told me there was more to the story, so I waited for the rest without saying anything.

Eventually, he continued.

“I was dating someone for most of high school,” he said finally. “Sofia. She had already decided to stay in town and attend Texas A&M Corpus Christi. My plan was to go to University of Texas in Austin. It was only a three-hour drive, so we were planning on trying to make the distance work. But then, when I got into school here, unexpectedly, everything kind of changed.”

I lay down on the ledge beside him, end-to-end, until our heads nearly touched. The stars were faded against the black sky, mostly drowned by the lights of the city.

“Everyone said we were going to get married someday,” he mused. “I know we were really young for all that talk, but in my high school, people regularly got married or at least got knocked up at our age. Sofia didn’t think we could make it work cross-country. She begged me to stay. And I considered it. But my family told me I couldn’t pass up a shot like that. To go to a school like this. So, we broke up.

And man, did it suck. It kind of tore our whole friend group apart, everyone choosing a side in the ‘divorce.’ And with me leaving, most of our friends chose her. I don’t really blame them, and I’m glad she still has them. But it put a damper on graduation. On the whole summer, really.”

After an extended silence, I finally said, “I’m sorry, Javi.”

“It’s alright,” he said. “But I decided that if I’m going to sacrifice everything for this school, if I’m going to lose the girl and all my friends to come here, I better damn well make it worth the sacrifice. Not only am I going to study my ass off and get the fancy degree, but I’m going to treat this city like my playground. I’m going to do every dumb tourist thing and see every show and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to me.”

His declaration seemed to echo between us long after he finished.

“Javi?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“Would it make you feel better if I told you my high school boyfriend broke up with me the night before the AP Biology exam, because I was the only person with a better grade than him in the class?” I offered.

His surprised laughter broke through the contemplative silence. I smiled in triumph at the sound. It felt good, being the one to make him laugh. I could see why Javi liked making people smile and laugh so much—it was addictive, being someone’s source of joy in an otherwise joyless moment.

“Thank you for taking me with you tonight,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

“I know it doesn’t make up for everything you had to sacrifice to get here,” I said carefully. “But for the record, I’m glad you came to this school. Because, if you hadn’t come, I’d still be tucked away in my room in John Jay, studying every second of the day, never stepping foot off campus, never bothering to branch out, to make new friends. And I would very much like to be your friend, Javi.”

“You already are my friend, Doc," he said. “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

We stayed up there for a while longer, lying on the cool tiles of the rooftop, talking about everything and nothing. The city buzzed below us, a constant hum of life and energy. From the few stars that he could make out, Javi pointed out constellations, telling me stories about each one, his tone so calming I nearly nodded off.

“We should probably head back,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“I didn’t think too late existed for Javier Valenzuela,” I said, stifling a yawn.

“For a night owl like me, you are correct, too late does not exist,” he agreed. “But too early does. And I’ve got lab in the morning. As much as it pains me for this night to end.”

We made our way back to John Jay. As he had done before, Javi dropped me off at my door, even though he lived two floors above. When he dropped me off at my door, there was no awkwardness to our goodbye, no expectant pause between us. No indication that this was the end of a date . Part of me was grateful for that, but another part harbored just the smallest disappointment.

“Good night, Doc,” he said.

“Good night, Javi,” I replied.

He smiled, turning from me with his hands in his pockets, to walk back down the hall to the elevator.

When I was in my bed a few minutes later, I texted my mom, not really caring if she knew how late I was up on a school night. Knowing my mom, she’d probably be thrilled I had spent this many hours in a row socializing.

DR: Not a date. I think he’s still recovering from a bad breakup. But it was pretty much the best non-date I’ve ever been on.