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If we last that long, a tiny voice always reminded me, but it’s been easy enough to ignore.
Now, as the plane’s wheels strike the ground and we hurtle toward a stop, that voice is a little louder.
I text both Rowan and my mom that I’ve landed, adjusting my watch to Eastern time while waiting my turn to wrestle my carry-on down from the overhead bin. While I’m sure a digital watch would be more practical, this one belonged to my grandpa on my mom’s side, who gave it to me as a sixteenth-birthday gift. The silver has dulled and the band is worn, but it ticks like a champ.
My sister Natalie’s already sent me a picture of Lucy, our nine-year-old golden retriever, curled up on my bed. Make sure she doesn’t forget me, I message Natalie, and she replies on it, with a photo of Lucy posed with one of our old family albums.
The flight was smoother than I imagined, my motion sickness kept at bay with some Dramamine tablets and a series adaptation of one of my favorite books, War and Peace, that I’d always meant to get around to watching and Rowan loved to tease me about.
“You’re a nineteenth-century nobleman trapped in an eighteen-year-old’s body,” she said last month before giving me another one of those looks. Deep brown eyes, one side of her mouth curving upward, pure mischief. “Guess I have a thing for older guys.”
I navigate JFK with my shoulders high, masquerading as a seasoned traveler as I follow the signs to baggage claim. My mom initially planned to help me move in, but Natalie falling off her skateboard and breaking her wrist earlier this summer necessitated a hospital bill we couldn’t have budgeted for. Over and over, I assured her that it was okay, that I would be fine on my own, but I could see the guilt on her face as I packed my suitcases and then as she spent most of last night’s picnic talking to Rowan’s mom, who’s probably getting off the plane in Boston with her right now.
I spot my bags right away, which instills in me a sense of false hope that the rest of this transition will be just as easy. It’s only after I haul them off the belt that I realize traversing the New York City subway system for the first time with two massive suitcases and an overstuffed backpack may be a bit of a challenge.
My eyes snag on the signs for rideshares and taxis, and the mental calculations begin. I worked through high school, and combined with loans and work-study and a generous financial aid package, I should be able to get through freshman year comfortably enough, while allowing myself the occasional splurge on meals out and other activities. Plus, there’s the prize money from winning Howl with Rowan—our school’s senior class game that also happened to bring us together, although she insists I was the true winner because I happened to be the one who crossed the finish line—most of which I haven’t touched. I already have alerts set to notify me of the lowest prices for my trip home in December.
Even so, all of it sits heavy on my chest, not unlike the pressure I lived with throughout high school. Do more. Work harder. It’ll all pay off soon. I’ve been able to ignore it most of the summer, but now that I’m surrounded by the unfamiliar, it pushes against my lungs, winds its way up my throat.
I’ve only been in New York for forty-five minutes. If I’m already worrying about money, I’ll barely last a week.
With a determined set of my jaw, I grab the handles of my suitcases and make my way toward the AirTrain to Jamaica Station. Once I get out, though, I’m expecting the subway to be right there—and it’s not. I blink back and forth between the signs that lead back to JFK and the ones pointing toward the street, with symbols for the E, J, and Z trains. Still, I don’t entirely trust Google Maps and want to make sure I’m going to the right place.
“Excuse me, is this the—”
The guy blazes past before I can even get the sentence out. Face flaming, I approach someone else. “Sorry, hi, does this train go to Washington Square Park?”
The woman yanks an earbud out of her ear. “What?” she asks, and I repeat the question. “You’ll want to take the E to West Fourth and Washington Square. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you so much.”
Eventually I find the platform, huffing from the effort, my T-shirt pasted to my back. A few minutes to catch my breath.
Neil: Is it dorky if I’m not even in the city yet and already taking photos of the subway station?
Rowan’s response is immediate.
yes, but the dorkiness is part of why I love you so much.
I still can’t believe this is something we do, casual texting that isn’t laced with barbs or taunts. When I confessed my feelings in her yearbook, I never anticipated she’d do anything but laugh in my face. Or maybe she’d pity me—that would have been worse. But school was over, I rationalized, and I’d only have to live with the humiliation for a short time. I could probably get over her by the end of the summer, especially if I wasn’t seeing her every day.
Then we danced together in that darkened library. Fought with frosting at Two Birds One Scone. She wore my hoodie and read her writing at an open mic and met me at the Museum of Mysteries for Howl’s final clue. We argued—because of course we did—before she kissed me for the first time, a kiss that may have permanently rerouted my neurons, tattooed ROWAN FUCKING ROTH all over my prefrontal cortex. And then a handful of other things for the first time, too.
Twenty-four hours, and our relationship had completely changed.
Her text is enough to soothe some of the remaining tension in my chest as the E train roars into the station, everyone on the platform seemingly unaffected by the noise. I drag my suitcases inside and claim an empty seat, my whole body still pulsing with adrenaline.
A sudden grin takes over my face, a broad and ridiculous thing I don’t even try to contain. I’m on the subway going into Manhattan, where I’ll be a freshman at my dream school. New York has always meant freedom, and now here I am.
Then a guy stumbles into my car, flings out an arm to catch one of the poles, and promptly throws up on the seat next to me.
* * *
New York may be eager to humble me, but I manage to get into the city without any additional catastrophes.
My dorm is a magnificent brick building on the western edge of Washington Square Park, somehow both imposing and welcoming, though the latter may be due to the violet NYU flags waving in the breeze. One of the things I loved most about NYU from my research is that there is no actual campus, technically. There’s no tree-lined quad like other schools have, no central square. The city is the campus, dozens of buildings spread across blocks and blocks, most of them here in Greenwich Village.
“You’re going to get kicked out if anyone hears you saying ‘Green-witch’ instead of ‘Gren-itch,’ ” my mom warned before I left, and I promised her I wouldn’t dare. Besides, like any good aspiring lexicographer, I’d already looked up the etymology of it years ago, learning it had come from the Old English word Grenevic and had most likely never been pronounced “Green-witch.”
