New York, Spring Break, Freshman Year
NEW YORK, SPRING brEAK, FRESHMAN YEAR
Evie
She turns nineteen in the sky, on her way to Theo.
It’s March. Pisces season. Her first time on a plane.
Yesterday, while texting during Survivor , Theo asked her what she wanted for her birthday.
You , she thought.
You.
You.
You.
Twenty-four hours later, Evie’s thirty-three thousand feet in the air because she can be. It was impulsive, purchasing a plane ticket without telling Theo. Only because she knew what his reaction would be. Are you sure you can handle that? Lately he speaks to her as if she’s made of porcelain. She’s not. In fact, after a near year working with Dr. Griffith, her gastroenterologist, to figure out what combination of medications seems to best manage her brand of Crohn’s with minimal side effects, Evie feels okay.
Finally .
No , her brain corrects. For now.
The last time Theo saw her? She was not okay. Still in physical therapy. Still flaring. Still processing that Crohn’s disease is a chronic illness, that chronic means forever . But now? She feels good enough to be impulsive and it’s terrifying and exhilarating, to feel okay enough to want and be able to have, even just for a moment. Evie spent so much of her eighteenth year wanting impossible things. New York. Dance. Cheese. She loved cheese. Evie dreamed about baked brie. Yearned to point her toes without hissing in pain. Ached to experience life in New York with her best friend. Next month marks one year since the fall that led to a diagnosis that upended her life and clarified it all at once. Today, Evie has made peace with vegan cheese. Her ankle no longer hisses but whimpers. She’s in clinical remission. So when snow fell in New York as her spring break began… it felt like a sign to go. Experience snow.
Upon deplaning, Evie learns it’s disgusting.
City snow.
She hauls her suitcase onto a crowded E train, toes frozen from stepping in a dirt slush puddle. Someone looks up from the Sunday Times crossword puzzle to shoot her a look for having the audacity to sit in a seat reserved for people with disabilities. She averts her eyes. Doesn’t have the energy to tell him to fuck all the way off. Tears sting the corners of her eyes.
From the cold.
Not from the overwhelm of it all.
Not because she almost shit herself in search of a functioning bathroom at JFK.
Not because a kind grandma-aged woman in a green tracksuit helped her swipe her subway card after five failed attempts , then introduced herself as Evelyn. I’m Evelyn, too , she said. Grandma Evelyn replied, Of course you are, hon , then took her hand and led her to a map. With a chipped lime-green-polished index finger, she traced the line to West Fourth Street.
To Theo.
She follows Grandma Evelyn’s instructions, earbuds in but music muted because she’s more interested in the sounds of the subway. Rusty brakes scream as they approach a station. Static conductor announcements her ears strain to hear. Conversations among friends, lovers, strangers. Evie wipes a furious tear from her cheek because just a year ago, she was so certain that this cacophony would be hers. Daily.
But then she fell.
Evie doesn’t remember hitting the ground, just the sound of her scream.
Knowing it was bad.
Theo carrying her into the emergency room, where she was admitted for a fractured ankle. A nurse entering her curtained-off “room” with vials. So many vials. Resisting. Not understanding the need to draw blood with such an obvious injury. Pep’s assurance. It’s just protocol, Sweets . Theo’s hand in hers as the needle pierced her skin.
Evie hates needles.
The bloodwork came back funky and that necessitated more bloodwork that kept her in the hospital for two weeks of tests, scans, and a colonoscopy that ultimately led to a diagnosis. Crohn’s. A chronic inflammatory bowel disease. It explained so much. Stomachaches so painful that she’d regularly be sent home from school. Pain that her pediatrician attributed to menses , even when she explained that these pains were sharp and random and not at all in sync with her cycle. Sleeping in until two every Sunday but always fading in class come Monday… and believing that was normal because doctors insisted she was healthy and wouldn’t anyone who spent at least twenty hours a week pushing her body to its limit always be bone-tired?
Evie learned it was not.
Normal.
Losing dance, the stillness that was required of her body to heal, was already painful.
Adding an autoimmune disease on top of it?
Well.
It was so much.
So.
Evie isn’t in New York because she couldn’t be.
Not physically.
Not financially.
Summer was two surgeries to reconstruct her ankle. Evie opted to start classes at UCLA in the spring. Gave her body, her brain, her heart time to heal. Rendered what should’ve been her first semester of college a monotonous blur of physical therapy and various cocktails of medications to reduce the inflammation in her colon paired with so many supplements because her body has trouble absorbing a lot of critical nutrients. She started seeing Jules, a therapist Dr. Griffith referred her to. Pain ebbed and flowed. Pain that Dr. Griffith and Jules validated. Pain that Evie now understood was not a normal part of being a person but would continue to be her normal.
One moment from last fall is burned into her brain.
Theo’s voice pressed against her ear, soft and tentative through the phone.
“I’ve been thinking… maybe I’ll transfer next semester.”
“What?”
“It makes more sense. UCLA. It has an amazing education program. In-state tuition. I’d be there for my mom. We would—”
“Theo. No. ”
“What?”
“You have to stay.”
“Evelyn—”
“I will hate you if you don’t stay.”
Evie is jolted from the memory as the train pulls into West Fourth Street. She exits the station, then follows her phone to Washington Square Park in search of a face she only knows from photos. Dev Kumar waits for her by the fountain, hands stuffed in his pockets. When their eyes meet, he smiles and she’s so relieved she feels like she could cry. Do not cry. Evie sent Theo’s suitemate and closest college friend a message on Facebook as soon as she booked her flight because while she hates nothing more than asking someone for help, she needed an assist to pull off this surprise. His answer was immediate, gotchu np! , but she didn’t trust it until his warm brown eyes met hers.
She never trusts it.
People showing up for her.
“Evie?” Dev asks.
She throws her arms around his neck. “I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”
He laughs. “Honestly? Same.”
Dev drags her suitcase through the slushy park to the dorm on its west side. They chat pre-reqs and Survivor and it’s easy, small talk with Dev. Theo got him into Survivor . She leaves her ID with security and follows Dev through the turnstile, into the elevator, up to his room. Their room. It’s clean but cluttered, the shared living area, with a small flat-screen television and half-finished puzzles covering the coffee table. Dev unbundles, tossing his puffer and scarf over a kitchen chair, then asks Evie if she wants anything to drink.
“Water or Bud Light?”
Evie laughs. “Water, please.”
He pours water from a Brita and nods toward Theo’s room. “I’m pretty sure he’s in class, but feel free to chill in the meantime.”
Her reply is interrupted by his phone ringing. She sees the name on the screen. Ammi. Dev retreats to his room, shrugging, like, You know how moms are , and then she’s alone and once again on the verge of tears because Naomi is somewhere in New York and has no clue that Evie is so close and it’s so ridiculous, this primal want to understand Dev. Her desire to have a mother who calls too much, to have a mother who calls at all.
She chugs the water.
Swallows her Naomi feelings, then places the Lost mug in the sink and kills time excavating Theo’s room. Even if she didn’t help him select his sheets, she would know which side of the room is his based on the collection of posters hanging above his bed. Billy Joel at MSG and Camp Half-Blood. The Song of Achilles lies open on his bed and the sight of it splits her heart in half. Last week, Evie sent a string of incoherent texts about how Madeline Miller ruined her life and now he’s already halfway through the book and with this tangible proof that he misses her, too, she feels so relieved and incredibly stupid all at once.
Evie sits on Theo’s bed.
Next to the book.
She hasn’t seen him in six months, but when he asked her what she wanted for her birthday she knew she needed to go to New York, to Washington Square Park, to his dorm, to his bed. Knew she needed to be wherever he is, right now . But now that she’s here? Evie hasn’t thought up an explanation for why apart from the embarrassing truth.
I think I’m in love with you .
Before those words even have the chance to alter their trajectory, Theo stumbles backward into his bedroom attached by the lips to someone else and time slows down into the longest, most mortifying five seconds of her life. He slams the door shut and presses her against it. Her hands cover his ass. His mouth is on her neck. Caro’s neck.
It’s Caro .
Theo’s…
Caro.
“Fuck.”
Her voice sends him backward.
Theo blinks, so confused. “Evelyn?”
She stands so fast her ankle hisses. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
Caro adjusts the hem of her shirt and fills the silence that follows. “Hey! Theo didn’t mention you were visiting.”
There’s no edge to her tone, not a single hint of frustration that she’s been cock-blocked or an ounce of jealousy. Caroline Shapiro-Huang has never felt threatened by their friendship. Evie, on the other hand, feels something akin to fury that Theo failed to mention his on-again-off-again situationship with Caro seems to be very much on and she wants to scream, to vomit, to…
“You’re…?”
“Leaving!”
… get the fuck out of here.
Evie dashes past them toward her coat, toward her shoes, toward the door. Lies to Theo’s face. I’m crashing with Mir and Mateo . Hates that she wants him to say, Don’t go . Hates even more that he doesn’t. He just looks at her like, Please let this be a horrible dream . So Evie leaves. Gets as far as across the street and into the park before she curls into herself on a park bench, her head between her knees until the nausea subsides. Then she cries in the snow. God. She’s such an idiot.
“Hey. Are you okay?” Evie looks up, her swollen eyes meeting a set of concerned, piercing blue ones. There’s something familiar about this boy in a buttoned-up peacoat, his shaggy brown hair poking out of his beanie. Evie can’t place him, but he recognizes her immediately. “You’re Theo’s Evie.”
“I’m not Theo’s anything.”
He holds out a glove-covered hand. “Hey, Not Theo’s Anything. I’m Topher. His roommate.”
“ Oh .” Evie sniffles as she takes his hand. “Hi, Topher His Roommate. I’m fine. Really.”
Topher frowns, then pulls her to her feet. “You’re shivering. Come on. Let me buy you a coffee. Or tea. Or whatever your preferred hot beverage is.”
“You really don’t—”
“I’ll use dining dollars. So it’s basically free. At least, that’s what they want you to think.”
“They?”
“The System.”
Evie’s laugh makes Topher smile… and it’s cute. He’s cute. She lets him buy her a chai with dining dollars, then spends the entire day with Topher His Roommate, her phone set to do not disturb . Later that night, he takes her to a bar that doesn’t card and she dances (well, sways ) for the first time since she fell. For the first time with a partner who isn’t Theo. And when Topher’s lips press against hers, she deepens the kiss because she likes that he doesn’t know that she’s broken and Evie is so desperate to feel something, anything , that isn’t this persistent yearning for everything and everyone she cannot have. Tomorrow, she’ll laugh off the poor timing of her surprise. Maybe spend the day with Theo. But for now, she kisses Topher and lets go of it all. New York. Dance. Cheese.
Naomi.
Theo.
Because Evie is nineteen.
And so done with wanting impossible things.