Thanksgiving Break—Junior Year of College
Thanksgiving Break—
Junior Year of College
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and the campus parking lot has cleared out, with everyone in a rush to drive home for the holiday tomorrow.
It isn’t cold enough for me to be wearing a jacket, but I’ve been standing outside too long and the tops of my ears are frozen since my hearing aids make them stick out from my head farther than they would otherwise.
Class wrapped up early this morning. I should be at least an hour or two into my journey back to Omaha right now, but instead, I’m standing here, watching this old sedan get lifted onto the ramp of the flatbed truck to be towed away for good.
My car managed to roll along for a good twelve years, yet now it’s destined for the junkyard. It’s given me a lot of grief, but plenty of good times too.
I video call my sister, holding the phone up so she can take in the whole scene, but Amelia answers with “Hey! What exactly am I supposed to be looking at here?”
“Say goodbye to the car,” I explain.
“Oh, shit, really?” She peers forward, her nose and the edge of one eye taking up the entire screen.
She isn’t too surprised, however—each trip to the mechanic the last few years became a question of Is this fix more expensive than the car is worth?
This farewell has been a long time coming, but the battery was supposed to hold out at least until the end of this school year.
But things rarely play out the way they’re supposed to.
Life always seems to have other ideas. I’m just trying to trust that it’ll get me where I need to go eventually.
“Mom and Dad didn’t tell you?” I ask.
Amelia shakes her head and leans away from the camera. “No, they’re out shopping right now. So how are you getting home?”
“I have no idea.”
My sister flew back last weekend. She managed to arrange her schedule to have the entire week off for Thanksgiving this year, whereas I’m probably one of the last few students still stuck on campus.
Fidgeting with a loose thread on my Butler sweatshirt, I ponder out loud, “Do I try an expensive last-minute flight with a nightmare connection through O’Hare? I’d rather take the bus, but I don’t know what the departure times look like.”
“Eh. Well…” Amelia goes quiet, as if hesitant to complete the suggestion that’s already waiting on her tongue, but she doesn’t let that stop her in the end. “You could see if—”
I know exactly what she’s thinking. More specifically, who she’s thinking of. “No, that’d be weird.”
She’s quick to counter. “I’m sure it wouldn’t.”
How does my sister know if it would be weird or not?
I roll my eyes. “We haven’t talked since, like, May at this point, so it’s not like I can text him out of nowhere?
” But I phrase it more like a question than a statement, part of me wishing it felt possible to reconnect that easily.
That I hadn’t let this much time slip away.
Would he even want to hear from me? There’s no way he’s thought about me as much as I’ve thought about him.
Amelia has dropped her phone on the bed as if this isn’t a video call and appears to be leaning close to her laptop screen as we chat. “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”
“Welp, there it goes,” I say. There’s a loud mechanical noise as the tow truck, with our sedan all loaded up, pulls away and drives off. I ball my free hand into my sleeve, leaving the other up to hold out my phone and show the final glimpse of the vehicle that’s taken us so many places.
“Goodbye, car.” Amelia’s nose and eye peer close to the camera once again.
Is this even more bittersweet for her now that she doesn’t drive anymore?
She’s reached a point in her vision loss progression where it feels safer and more comfortable not to, and at college, she’s been able to get around well enough without needing to.
I’m curious how this will impact her job search, like if it’ll limit her to positions that she can easily access by public transit.
Speaking of which, it turns out Amelia was looking up the bus schedules for me. “The next available bus leaves at three fifteen a.m., with a transfer in Chicago…and again in Des Moines.”
“Two transfers?”
“It’ll be about nineteen hours total.”
“Shit, that’s more than double the time to just drive myself, and I’d miss pretty much all of Thanksgiving Day tomorrow.” I scuff my heels on the pavement. “Should I rent a car? Am I old enough to rent a car? Will there even be any cars available?”
Amelia laughs at my despair, because she thinks she has an easy solution. “Please just text Declan already.”
My heart skips a beat at the mention of his name. “That would seem a little desperate, wouldn’t it?”
“You are desperate for a way to get home. That’s exactly the kind of situation you’re in right now.”
Walking slowly, I exit the parking lot and loop around campus back toward my residence hall. “What if I just stay here and skip Thanksgiving? Mom and Dad will understand.”
“Yeah, but Granny won’t. You’d be hearing about it for the rest of her life.”
“I could video call during dinner.”
Amelia picks the phone up, so I hold the camera back at my own face. “You wouldn’t be able to hear anything if we passed your call around the noisy table,” she says. “Just see if Declan is even still on campus.”
There aren’t many people here as I swipe my card to go in the main entrance to the dormitory.
It would be the path of least resistance to stay here for the long weekend.
People do that. Granny will be mad, sure, but I’ll see her at Christmas soon enough.
Hanging here could be fun, something different.
I think Priya is sticking around—wait, she’s joining Jodi’s family in Carmel for dinner and I…
would rather not. Maybe I’ll just hide and binge a new show and not let anyone know I’m staying on campus.
But it would really be great to get home and see my sister and my parents, as well as catch up with Peyton and Elizabeth.
“It doesn’t seem like you’ve texted him yet,” Amelia says. “Don’t make me have Grady do it for you.”
“As if he has time to meddle while saving the country.” Grady never fails to send out election reminders, and I know he and Amelia keep in touch somewhat regularly, but surely I can find my own way home without needing to involve Declan Weber.
“Well, just making it clear that you have options,” Amelia says, winding down our call.
I don’t respond as I climb the stairs to my floor and let myself into my dorm. My room is bright and welcoming, as Naomi and I have collected tapestries over the last three years to cover as many of the plain cinder blocks with as much color as possible.
“All right?” Amelia asks.
“Yeah, sure, options. Okay, well, I’ll catch you later, or not, we’ll see!” We conclude our goodbyes and hang up.
I flop onto the thin mattress and stare at the ceiling. Ugh. My brain was almost entirely free from dwelling on this boy, but here I am, already spiraling again.
It’s true, college has been nothing but options, to an almost overwhelming degree.
Every semester when I choose my courseload, there’s more classes that I want to take than can reasonably fit into my schedule—and dozens of internships to apply for, though I’ve got my heart set on working at the museum here in Indianapolis next summer.
And, well, options on the romantic front, too, to a less successful extent.
I’ve dated a bit, but mostly because it felt like I should.
A guy asks me out, and he’s nice, and I easily brush past any initial concerns to give things a try, and yet…
just when I finally wrap my head around things and start to get excited about the potential of the relationship, it all crumbles.
Dating is so frustrating. The highs don’t seem to outweigh the lows.
The most comfortable I’ve felt with a guy on campus wasn’t even a dating situation. It was freshman year when I spent every single day with Declan.
Inseparable. Introducing ourselves to people as a unit.
“We’re from Omaha.” “We designed a board game together.” “…Um, no, we’re not dating.” “Really, we’re not. Why do you ask?”
Initially, I relished those questions, appreciating that everyone else clearly saw what I felt, that there was something burgeoning again between me and Declan.
Because it really seemed like there was.
There were plenty of moments. Lingering hands.
Prolonged gazes. Trailed-off comments that almost led to a relationship-status-changing question.
But what no one saw was that every time it felt like Declan and I were ready to throw ourselves back into each other’s arms again, all it took was one serious look in his eyes for me to be right back at the roller rink.
Sitting on that wobbly chair, my heart sinking in my chest, and his rejection fresh all over again, cutting deeper each time it replayed in my memory until it became all I could think about around him.
At first, I thought I could push past it.
That we could get back together and suddenly it would all be fine, but every time I let my brain think Well, maybe this time…
I’d realize I was just setting myself up for disappointment.
That I was lowering my guard and being too vulnerable with someone who shouldn’t get a second chance with my affection, because should I really give anyone another opportunity to break my heart?
But Declan wasn’t anyone…
It was an exhausting game of mental chess, a lose-lose match against my own insecurities, in which I could only confront the negatives. The fear. All the reasons why us getting back together shouldn’t have been considered in the first place.
Even though I really, really wanted to.
The final nail in the coffin was the moment when a girl pulled me to the side just before spring break to ask, “Okay, then, so is Declan single?”
And I had to say, “Yeah, I think so.”