Chapter 18
On Sunday, I curl up in Dad’s armchair with my laptop, watching live music videos that the internet selects for me, too spent to change the queue.
My week-long state of fear and confusion has exhausted me.
I struggle to keep my eyelids open even as an up-tempo beat pulsates through my eardrums. Every time a scene changes and cuts to black, Xander’s face flashes across the screen.
“Food!” Dad yells as he rushes through the front screen door. He grips two grease-covered brown bags in his left hand and a beer can in his right. He enters the kitchen and flicks on the pendant lamp hanging over the wooden table. The bags land on the counter with a crunch.
“What’re you working on?” he questions, looking at my laptop.
“Who’s working on what?” Mom asks as she walks into the living room from the bedroom hallway. “It’s Sunday night. I don’t want to hear about any type of work.”
“Nothing. It’s just music.” I slam my laptop closed and take out my earbuds. “I couldn’t possibly do another second of work. I don’t think a full-time job is for me.”
“Your first forty-hour work week will do that to you. Welcome to the real world.”
“What happened to your head?” Dad asks as I waddle to the kitchen. It’s the first time he’s seeing me up close in a while.
“I fell at Whitley’s house,” I say.
“It looks like you didn’t get the cream from the pharmacy like I told you to,” Mom says. “The wound is slow to heal.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Dad chomps on a fry, then mimics a fist punch, hitting me with a gaze sharp as a tack, seeing right through my lie.
Mom digs into the food bag and pulls out a salad. “What’s this?” she asks, holding it out to Dad.
“Your salad.” Dad’s forehead wrinkles.
Mom sighs. “I said I wanted a cheeseburger but should probably get a salad.”
“Yeah. Then I asked which is it, and you said a salad.”
“I said, I guess a salad. Which means you were supposed to treat me to a cheeseburger.”
Dad scoffs. “And if I got you a burger, you’d be mad I didn’t get a salad.”
Mom ignores him and turns to me. “What’d you get, honey?”
One of the hardest things to understand about life is how sometimes, instead of just asking for what we want, we do the opposite, hoping it will somehow get us what we actually need.
It makes so little sense that even thinking about it feels like running in circles.
Like Mom with this salad. Or like when I wanted my family to know I was gay.
Instead of telling them, being open, and making myself happy, I shut down, went silent, and made myself miserable hoping they’d notice and force me to tell them.
Or like Whitley, when her dad left town.
She wanted him to come back, but instead of saying that, she told him to kick rocks and never return, hoping he’d get mad and prove her wrong.
But feelings don’t follow logic. That’s why nothing about how we act makes sense. It’s an equation that doesn’t add up, something I can’t count. Looking back, it’s no surprise that when Murray wanted me to stay, he spent all his time pushing me away.
A chime from my laptop breaks my thoughts. An email.
I refresh my inbox on my phone, half expecting some long-winded hunting plan from Whitley.
Instead, buried between spam from shoe stores, I see it.
Subject: Financial Aid.
A lump forms in my throat. I swallow a french fry too fast, coughing as it scrapes its way down. My thumb hovers over the email before I finally tap it.
I skim the words. My eyes move faster than my brain can process and I’m two paragraphs in before the first sentence actually sinks in.
I’m ineligible for aid.
The world tilts. My meal fades to black like a movie reel running out of film. My ears ring.
I see it in my mind—the word printed next to University of Tennessee on my résumé.
Tentative.
The future just changed from tentative to certain faster than I wanted, and not in the direction I was banking on.
My dream of leaving Penango was like a flashlight on its last flicker in a summer storm. Now the light is gone. I’m in the dark, unsure where to go next.
My mind races, searching for ways to undo this decision. This job might be enough to cover my housing deposit in a few weeks. But the rest? My paychecks won’t even come close. Nights and weekends are open for another position, but in a town this small, every summer job is already taken.
My brain turns into a calculator, frantically adding, subtracting, and multiplying work hours and tuition costs. But the numbers aren’t in my favor.
Murray won.
Checkmate.
I was supposed to be the first person in my family to leave for college. The first to get a degree. Last fall, I never thought I’d fit into Whitley’s plan to go to school far from home.
Now it’s clear that I don’t.
At Stillwell Trail High, my first guidance counselor was a seventy-year-old man I never met. He passed away at the end of my freshman year, and the school struggled to replace him.
For two years, I assumed the position was still empty, until one day I was called to the office.
A young woman sat behind the desk, flipping through a stack of SAT prep books.
A navy bandana held back her long brown hair, and her round face was flushed like she’d been rushing around all morning.
I swore I’d seen her before, maybe in the halls, but I didn’t think she was a teacher, definitely not a counselor.
“Hi there,” she said, barely looking up. “I’m the new counselor for Stillwell.” She exhaled, her shoulders slumping like she was carrying the weight of the entire school. “How are you?” Her voice was a little too fast and eager.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m Stetson.”
I sat across from her with my hands resting on my knees and earbuds still in from the walk over. This was during my Brandi Carlile phase when I had her live album with the Seattle Symphony on repeat after learning she was also queer.
“Do you mind removing your earbuds while we meet?”
She yanked open a file cabinet and slammed it shut, making me jump. I quickly pulled my earbuds out and shoved them into my pocket.
“I’ve only been here for a few days,” she said, tossing a file onto the desk. “But, Stetson, you’re one of the first students I wanted to talk to.”
I shifted in my seat, picking at a loose thread on my jeans. “Why is that?”
“I was looking through your notes, and I wanted to see if what I was reading was accurate.”
I laughed. “I hope so. I’ve been here my whole life. You’d think they have it all right by now.”
She pulled a paper from the file and held it up. “You’ve had straight A’s for all three years?”
I leaned over her desk to get a better look at the page. It was my academic transcript.
I nodded. “Aren’t we supposed to?”
“And you run cross-country in the fall, play basketball in the winter, and run track in the spring?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. There’s not much else to do around here. I’d be bored otherwise.”
“And you lead mathletes—”
I crossed my arms. “Only because my calc teacher guilt-tripped me. They needed an extra person. It’s easy, so I just jump in when I don’t have games.”
She ran her hand down the page. “Stetson, you should be proud of these accomplishments. And there’s more.”
I raised my eyebrows.
She smirked. “Have you applied to college yet? I know it’s already your senior year, but I’m trying to catch up as quick as I can.”
“No,” I muttered, spinning my thumbs in my lap. “I’m going to go to the city first. Then I’ll figure it out.”
“What city?”
“Pittsburgh,” I said. “Or maybe Cleveland. I have an uncle there.” I pointed out the window as if the city was just beyond the tree line. “Anywhere outside of Penango, really.”
Her expression softened. “That’s great. I’m happy to hear you have a plan after high school. Have you thought about applying to schools in those cities?”
“Like where?” I asked. “My friend Whitley Wyomen wants to go somewhere crazy like Florida. You know her?”
She nods. “Whitley told me about that plan.”
“I probably won’t get accepted anywhere that my parents can actually afford, so it doesn’t matter.”
Her brows pinched. “I think you have an opportunity that a lot of students don’t. And there are ways to make college more affordable.”
“Yeah? I figure I’ll work first to save up money. My parents get pissed whenever I mention anything other than community college—too expensive.” I shook my head. “It’s crazy that college isn’t free like high school. And my boyfriend, Murray, wants me to stay close by too.”
She leaned forward slightly. “Well, what does Stetson want?”
I frowned. “I just told you.”
She shrugged, then slid me another paper across her desk. “Take a look at this.” I skimmed the words. “It’s a list of schools that might interest you. But no pressure. Do what’s right for you.”
I bit my pinky nail. “Thanks,” I said, grabbing the paper and shoving it in my pocket, nearly crumpling it in the process. “I’ll show Whitley.”
Afterward, I went straight to Whitley’s locker and told her I might actually join her grand escape plan.
Mom, however, was less enthused. She stared at me, unblinking, for a solid five minutes before finally saying, “When people tell you to pursue your dreams, they mean within reason.”
“My counselor said this is within reason for me,” I countered. “School might be good. You always said if I was going to spin my wheels, don’t do it around here or I’d get into trouble like everyone else.”
“You can apply,” she said, voice clipped. “But only to state schools. We give the state half our money, the least they could do is provide you with an education.”
So I wrote down the names of every state that didn’t border Pennsylvania, tossed the slips of paper into a mason jar, and picked five. I could only afford five application fees.
This seemed as fair a way to choose as any.
By December, I had applied to the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Nevada.
California was my first draw, but I quickly learned their state schools barely accepted out-of-state students. I wasn’t about to waste an application fee, so I pulled another.
I also drew Utah and Washington. But Murray made me miss the deadlines. Every time I submitted an application, he wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. Two more rounds of silent treatment felt unbearable, so I just didn’t apply.
When the acceptance letters came, I chose the University of Nevada because it was the farthest from Penango—mileage-wise—per my and Whitley’s pact.
But then Mom found out it was in Las Vegas.
“You think I worked day and night my whole life to send my child to school in a city where people go to ruin their lives?” she scoffed.
“University of Tennessee it is,” I said.
But now none of it matters.
I did a fine job of ruining my life on my own.