Epilogue
Christina frowns at the group chat. “Going as a cat would have been a total cop-out.”
“No, Seb was going to go as Cats, the entire musical,” I explain.
We are currently in a very long thread with Seb and Joey discussing our failed costume ideas for the Alphabet Party, which is starting in approximately twenty minutes. Some of the costume ideas were more cursed than others.
“Well, that’s just irresponsible,” says Christina. “There are innocent people at that party. People with families to come home to, dreams to achieve.”
She sets her phone down, adjusting her Cookie Monster costume in the mirror. Well, more like adjusting the fuzzy blue crop top alleging itself to be a Cookie Monster costume. I don’t think anyone’s going to squint too hard, considering she has three fanny packs alternately full of Chocolate Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, and Circus Animal Cookies to distract them.
“Fortunately the large boas he needed for the costume were delayed in transit,” I tell her. Unfortunately for me, Seb already learned the lyrics to “Memory” by heart. We spend so much time attached at the hip these days that I am also ready to understudy for Grizabella at a moment’s notice.
“I’m sure there will be more than enough cats there for him to get whatever nearly possessed him out of his system,” says Christina. “Also, chug your Coke and down your Cheetos. This year I am showing up the precise moment they open the doors, dammit.”
We were luckily yet again struck by the Random Acts of Chaos Club to score an invite to the Alphabet Party, “C” edition. Or rather—Christina and Joey were, when they were out “just getting sandwiches” for the purposes of “touching base about Seb’s recent article about scholarship athletes” in a strictly journalistic, not at all googly-eyed way. If they happened to be sharing AirPods and a protein smoothie and all of their inner feelings about what they wanted out of a hypothetical relationship, that was all just, in Christina’s words, “bro stuff.”
Which is to say, for someone who made fun of my “will they, won’t they” with Seb for years, Christina and Joey sure are putting on a master class in it with their sequel.
“Also, wait, what are you going as again?” Christina asks.
“You’ll see when we get there,” I tell her.
Christina raises her eyebrows. “Ooh. Look at you, all edgy and mysterious ever since you came back from New York.”
I stick my tongue out, nudging her out of the way of the mirror to put on mascara. “Careful, or I’m going to start dressing in all black and converting all your beloved Spotify playlists to vinyl.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just remember to thank me in your Emmys speech, huh?”
I grin at her reflection in the mirror. It’s not like I was doing anything particularly award-worthy during my brief two-month-long internship at Hub Seed over the summer, but it was an early taste of what might come, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Our little Newsbag stunt and my article got me on the radar of one of the hiring managers who runs the internships and fellowship programs up there, and she reached out, encouraging me to keep it up and apply for the summer term. I wrote a satirical piece about academic rivals trying to one-up each other as a commentary on our obsession with academic success that won them over. It earned me an entire summer of living in temporary dorm housing with six other interns, dabbling in podcasts and humor writing and scripted shorts and even a television show in its early stages of development.
It was both helpful and unhelpful in that I have no idea what I want to do in this field, and have come to the conclusion that I’m just going to try and do it all. I brought that same chaotic energy back to campus—as a result, Newsbag is launching its very first podcast at the end of the week, with the first episode chronicling the tryout process for the next round of writers and featuring some deeply hilarious interviews from the writers in question. I’m glad I won’t have to be part of the staff deciding until next year, because it’s going to be a tough call.
“Thank you to the Academy,” I say to the mirror, using my mascara wand as a microphone. “I owe everything to Cookie Monster.”
“You do, after that cookie tour we went on. I did some extensive TikTok deep dives to ensure you ate like a king that afternoon,” says Christina, adjusting a pair of heels so high that they’d definitely turn some heads on Sesame Street.
“It worked,” I say. “I can still feel the power of those cookies going to my head.”
That was just one of many tourist-adjacent excursions I ended up taking, because it turns out when you’re living in New York, just about everyone you know who isn’t in New York will make a point of finding you there. Seb came up most weekends when he wasn’t scheduled to work helping the summer-event coordinator at the community center in our hometown, crashing at his aunt’s West Village apartment to avoid the wrath of all five and a half interns (one of them we saw so infrequently I worried she was a ghost). His aunt said “the more the merrier” and held him to it, so Christina came up one weekend and my sisters on the other. It was a summer of grilled cheese picnics with Seb, Central Park exploring with Christina, and discount Broadway tickets with Marley and Hadley.
And now it’s a fall when I’m very grateful to be back at Maple Ride, and determined to do even more with Newsbag so I can apply for the fellowship on the next round and do it all again next summer.
Christina pushes a final Cheeto into my mouth and all but yanks us out the door after that, walking with the kind of purpose that inclines me to remind her that I do not possess cross-country legs or lungs to match pace.
“Maybe you should join a team then, huh?” says Christina. “Now that it doesn’t come with a side of sleep deprivation and existential despair.”
“Please stop trying to trick me into becoming a jock,” I beg her. “I’m still recovering from that hike we took in tenth grade.”
“We’ll get you eventually,” says Christina, skipping ahead.
Not likely, but I am deeply and perpetually relieved by the results of our ongoing campaigns for Maple Ride to adjust its priorities, for the sake of both the athletes and the student organizations. After Newsbag started making headlines and Daisy published a damning investigative report of her own a few weeks later, the donors hired a third-party team to assess the use of their funds. It hasn’t been an easy year, and we’ve been shut out of plenty of the conversations despite our best efforts, but this much is true: all the coaches of nearly every team rallied in their athletes’ defense, and now practice schedules are less rigid, the scholarship students don’t have nearly as strict academic requirements, and we’re in final talks to hire mental health advocates that specialize in athletics.
As a result, Christina has been able to do all kinds of things in this fall semester that she couldn’t in the last. Things like finally be a more active member in the Hindu Student Union’s planning of the recent Diwali celebrations and fundraising bake sales, and take classes she’s actually interested in, and yell at me that it’s “NOT FLIRTING, JOEY IS JUST BAD AT BALANCING ON THE BOSU BALL SO WE HAD TO HOLD HANDS.”
And all of us have been able to join other student organizations and clubs without fear of them shuttering out from under us. Donors are now allowed to designate a portion of their money specifically to student-run organizations, so they’re as solid as ever. Joey is an avid member of the Bird Watching Society and delights in pointing out blue jays and cardinals anywhere he goes. Seb is testing the limits of human taste buds with the Foodie Club’s “Hot Sauce Death Match” and “Cheese and???? Pairings” nights. I recently got put in charge of next month’s pick for the Sad Bitch Book Club. Christina has joined the Knitting Club and somehow has become more cuddly and terrifying by the day.
Speaking of, I realize Christina wasn’t just skipping for the sake of it but in fact has spotted Seb and Joey, who are both emerging from McLaren. They don’t see us right away, the two of them in avid conversation about something they’re looking at on Joey’s phone that makes them cackle.
My heart cinches at the sight of them—Seb’s face lit up in a genuine, dweeby smile, the kind that swells so much in his cheeks that he has to close his eyes for a second. The kind of smile I didn’t realize I only ever saw on his face when we were safe in the bubble of our families and not at school with our friends. In the past year he’s been loosening up in his own way—less posturing and performing for everyone else’s sake and more letting himself just be in the moment.
It’s meant less Instagramming and more goofing around, less pressure to be what people expect and more freedom to let them accept him as he is. He doesn’t shift to make himself fit but lets himself be in his own space. It has been as much of a relief to watch him come into himself as it’s been to feel myself coming into my own. We may have been the only people who knew the “real” versions of each other in high school, but the same can’t be said now, and we’re both much better for it.
Seb waves when he spots us, his face brightening with a grin in my direction and Joey looking bashfully pleased as ever to see Christina. But before either of them can so much as utter a hello, Christina is demanding, “Wait, are neither of you in costume yet?”
Joey unsuccessfully tries to bite down a smile. “Sure we are. We’re going as cool kids,” he says, wrapping an arm around Seb and jostling him.
Seb shoots me a conspiratorial look. “Cool cats, one might say.”
“Careful, before you’re all alone in the moonlight,” I warn as we approach.
“First of all ‘cool kids’ don’t forget to take off their blue-light glasses,” says Christina, tweaking the bridge of Joey’s nose. “Second of all, if you seriously don’t have costumes, neither of you are getting a single cookie from me this entire night.” She puts on a frankly horrifyingly accurate Cookie Monster voice and says, “‘C’ is for canceled.”
Joey blushes like Christina didn’t poke just his nose but the core of his soul. “Nah, we have costumes. We’re just going to change when we’re there,” he says, releasing Seb.
Seb swoops in and settles a hand on the back of my neck to pull me in for a quick kiss. “Hey, you,” he says, his eyes roaming every inch of my face the way he always does, despite knowing it better than anyone by now. “Long time.”
Because we are maximally insufferable now, I take in every inch of his face in turn, accounting for every tiny freckle on his nose and fleck of color in his brown eyes. “The most harrowing three hours of my life,” I joke.
Christina starts showing off all her cookie-filled fanny packs to Joey ahead of us, and Seb and I fall into step with the same easy rhythm we’ve always had, even when we pretended we didn’t.
“You ready for tomorrow?” Seb asks me, eyes bright against the dim evening and the newly lit streetlamps.
I raise my eyebrows. “The readiest.”
“Not you turning readiness into a competition,” says Seb slyly, stepping so close we’re nearly shoulder to shoulder. “How very unlike you.”
I smirk, stopping him by cupping my hand under his jaw to pull him in for another kiss, deep and slow. It’s only been three hours since we’ve seen each other maybe, but it’s been a week of absolute mayhem. Between Seb preparing for the launch of “Sweet Everythings”—the name he decided on for his online publication, a play on the school’s mascot, Sweetie—and me preparing for the launch of Newsbag ’s first podcast episode, we’ve barely had time to see each other. Even yesterday, when our families came to visit for a launch dinner at Johnny’s diner, we barely got to do much more than swap our sweet-potato and curly fries across the table.
I release him, my hand lingering on his face for a few moments. It’s absurd how I will never tire of staring at it. I’m every cliché rolled into one.
“I’d do that whole ‘I missed you more’ thing, too, but someone would have to mercy-kill us before we declared a winner,” I tell him.
Seb takes the hand I’ve dropped and curls his fingers into mine. “Yeah. It’d be worse when both our headstones read ‘No, I do.’”
I shake my head. “No headstones. I may love you, but never enough to trust font-related decisions.”
Seb squeezes my hand. “Whatever you say, Comic Sans.”
I tilt my head, because that wouldn’t be a bad costume idea for tonight’s Alphabet Party, then register a faint smirk on Seb’s face because he’s thought precisely the same thing. However, we are humans on an adorable ridiculous mission tonight, courtesy of Joey. Our costumes were all his idea. Well, inspired by mine and Seb’s last year, but his idea nonetheless.
Which is why, approximately ten minutes later, we are emerging from the various bathrooms in the Alphabet Party house dressed in identical cross-country outfits, holding identical blue Gatorades, and sporting the same HYDRATE OR DIE-DRATE sticker on the backs of our phones.
Christina’s mouth drops open at the sight of us. Joey just barely rescues an entire sheet of Chips Ahoy! before they hit the floor.
“Did you all… dress… as me ?” she squeaks.
Seb feigns confusion, looking down at himself. “Huh?” he asks. “I’m a cross-country competitor.”
I also shake my head. “I’m a granola bar connoisseur.”
Christina is half laughing, half blubbering, like she is too overcome by this course of costume events to process emotions. “And your excuse?” she says to Joey.
Joey takes a step toward her, his face flushed but determined. He opens his mouth like he is going to say something rehearsed, then laughs a little like he’s about to say something else entirely.
“I’m cool and clever and courageous and captivating,” he says, so earnestly and quietly that we can barely hear him over the sound of “Call Me Maybe” blasting from downstairs. “So yes. I’m Christina.”
Christina pulls in a stuttering happy breath. “You’re corny, is what you are,” she accuses, taking a step toward him in turn. “ Cheesy. Campy.”
“And completely certain,” he counters, his eyes never once leaving hers.
I could not tell you, for the life of me, what changes in that moment to make it different from all the other moments Christina and Joey have just about circled the drain of all of our patience. But whatever it is, it possesses Christina to grab a fistful of the collar of Joey’s cross-country shirt and pull him down to her and say, “How certain?”
Joey swallows hard, but says, “The most certain.”
And then they’re making out like their lives depend on it. It goes from zero to sixty so fast that if I hadn’t seen them in action on their respective race routes and fields, I’d be deeply worried about their stamina. Seb and I hoot and holler and generally make a scene out of what already is one, until Christina and Joey separate, staring into each other’s eyes in mutual astonishment.
“Oh, god,” Christina finally says. “I just made out with myself.”
Joey bites his lower lip. “I hope you liked it enough to do it again.”
Christina blinks. “Again, sure. And again and again and—fuck. That broke my brain. We’re going to kiss again, though, right? And a lot of times after that?”
Joey grins, apparently so endeared to see Christina be the more awkward of the two of them for once that he’s forgotten how to speak entirely.
“Might as well,” says Seb, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Because it’s about to get worse. You’re about to watch yourself make out with yourself, and then watch both of those selves make public spectacles of themselves on the dance floor.”
Christina still can’t take her eyes off Joey, so she’s only barely acknowledging us when she says, “None of us are psych majors. Who knows how long it will take me to unpack this?”
I point over at the corner. “Count Chocula over there is a psych TA.”
The words are lost to the wind, because they’re already making out again, so intently that Seb takes my hand to pull me down to the dance floor. We dance to “Cheap Thrills” and “Can’t Hold Us” and “California Gurls”; we eat chips and chicken wings and coconut cake; we eventually find Joey and Christina in the precise spot we left them, still making out, and convince them that they require sustenance and sleep to survive long enough for future makeouts, at which point we wander in the direction of Pancake It or Leave It.
We are unsurprised to find the lights on and Betty at the grill, doing tomorrow’s test batch. She grunts in acknowledgment when we walk in, and Daisy swoops in and hugs all of us in turn, delighting at our matching outfits and peppering us with questions about the party.
Betty deposits some cinnamon chocolate burnt-caramel pancakes in front of us, which we were told, in no uncertain terms, when we got a peek at this week’s test batch flavors, had “nothing to do with that ridiculous alphabet nonsense,” and if Seb didn’t stop smirking the “pancakes weren’t the only thing about to get burnt.” Which we would have humored if Daisy hadn’t been one of the original creators of the Random Acts of Chaos Club, and Betty didn’t have a soft spot for us the size of the moon.
“Your families came by yesterday on their way out of town,” she informs us now, accepting Christina’s offering of a slightly mangled Circus Animal Cookie.
I tilt my head in surprise—we told our families about Pancake It or Leave It but didn’t give them any precise directions. Or warn them about Betty. Or, for that matter, warn Betty about them.
Betty bites the head off her cookie animal. “I knew instantly who they were, because the only people I’ve ever seen cause a ruckus like that in the first five seconds of sitting down are you two.”
Seb and I flash matching broad grins. I feel a swell of pride, not just to be a part of my loud family but recognized for it. These days it’s happening more often than not.
“Surely not,” says Seb with a cheeky smile. “We’re as quiet as they come.”
“You cretins brought in a goddamn army last weekend,” says Betty, turning back toward the grill. “I shudder to think of the turnout tomorrow.”
Another delicious, happy development of the past year—Seb and I have both taken to inviting people we meet in our clubs and classes to join us on our Pancake Sundays. Particularly anyone who seems lonely or adrift or as homesick as we both were when we got here. Turns out there’s something to warm carbs and companionship to help make a strange place feel like home, even if that home includes a near-six-foot-tall woman who uses a spatula to threaten people as often as she uses it to cook.
“It’s not us,” I protest. “It’s the pancakes. They’re too delicious for our mere mortal friends to resist.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” says Betty.
But evidently it gets me somewhere, because I get the extra “test” pancake that comes with cherry sauce. I share a few bites out of the goodness of my heart, and also because I’m worried without the extra post-makeout fuel that Joey and Christina will pass out.
It’s past midnight when we finally leave, emerging into the cool September air. Christina giddily tells me she’s going back to Joey and Seb’s apartment to “study.” So Seb takes the rare opportunity to come back to my dorm with me, knowing Christina will be out.
“It’s officially launch day,” he says, nodding at the giant clock on Main Street, displaying the time.
I smile, leaning my head onto his shoulder. “I’m proud of us. But it’s weird, because—I know this is just the beginning. Tip of the iceberg. We’re going to do so many big things, you and me.”
Seb nods, his eyes misty but set on mine. He grabs my hand the way he did earlier in the night, only this time the squeeze of it is soft and grounding. “The ‘you and me’ part is the best of it all.”
I nod into his shoulder without saying a word, because he already knows what I’m thinking. That the sweetest part of this beginning is that it isn’t a beginning at all, the same way we’ll never have a true end. The two of us began before time was something we could measure, and we will be fully known to each other no matter how that time stretches and spurts and changes us. A steady constant thing in the flux we’re choosing; an ending already decided, with a middle full of all kinds of beautiful, terrifying, infinite unknowns we’ll face together, one day at a time.
The giant clock moves forward. I close my eyes, squeezing Seb’s hand in the precise moment he squeezes mine, and lean in to kiss him, long and sure and slow. I may not know which future we’re headed toward, but I trust this love to ground us; I trust our good chaos to lead us wherever it is we need to go.