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Right away, she established that it was a competition. The prize: bragging rights and free rein to pick our next movie without the other person exercising veto power. We’ll take photos of each item on the list, text them to the other person for vetting. We are who we are—people who love parameters and guidelines, even in something of our own creation.
We set aside the same Saturday in late January, and I may have a slight ulterior motive for suggesting it: because it’s NYU’s freshman family weekend.
They do this a couple times a year, once in the fall and once when flights and hotels are cheaper. Aka now. At first I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to tell my mom or not. I knew she’d feel guilty because she and Natalie wouldn’t be able to come, and ultimately that’s what made my choice. Christopher is well off but not wildly so, and especially with the wedding coming up, I’m sure they’d rather save the money.
At breakfast with Skyler, as he debates whether he’d rather be able to fly or turn invisible—“Flying’s the obvious choice, I mean, who among us hasn’t wanted to fly? But with invisibility, you could get away with so much.…”—I can’t help noticing how much more crowded the dining hall is. Of course I’m familiar with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina principle: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And yet this morning, even the seemingly unhappy families look alike—all of them, something I cannot have.
“You’re taking what class this semester?” one father asks at the table next to us, aghast.
“The Science and Psychology of Marijuana?” his son replies in a tiny voice.
“Thousands of dollars in tuition, and this is what he wants to study.” The mother shakes her head, stabbing her stack of dining-hall pancakes.
There must be something wrong with me that even listening to these people argue makes my shoulders tighten, my heart swell. I want so badly to replace that mental image of “family” with one that includes Christopher.
I think about that letter I left at home, recycled and hopefully halfway to becoming a math test or dog-walking flyer. Something significantly more useful than what it was. I was so close to telling Sean and Cyrus and Adrian about it over winter break, and even now, I’ve stopped short of messaging them, the medium feeling too casual. They’re living their best collegiate lives, and I don’t want them to worry about me—because they don’t have to. If they don’t know and Rowan doesn’t know, it’s easier to act as though I don’t, either.
I spent so many years pretending that part of my life didn’t exist, and it’s wholly unsettling that he’s come to haunt me when I’m hundreds of miles away from home. I practiced how to be someone who didn’t have a mess of anxiety and resentment attached to his father. I studied, that thing I have always been so good at.
I should be long past the worst of it.
“No family weekend for you guys?” Zoe asks when we meet her and Adhira in front of our building, and for some reason my brain interprets it as a no family weekend—a weekend with no family.
Fortunately, Skyler speaks first, waving this off. “My family’s been here a hundred times.”
“My mom couldn’t get the time off work,” I say, wondering if this is the same thing I told Skyler when I moved in. Given the way one of his eyebrows lifts, I think it might be.
“On a weekend? Capitalism is the fucking worst.” Adhira sucks on her vape, then passes it to Skyler.
Zoe peers up at the sky before sliding a giant pair of sunglasses onto her face. The day is freezing, with rare sunshine peeking through, but competing with Rowan always puts a fire in my veins. “What does she do?”
I shouldn’t be shocked by this question. NYU is a place where people flaunt labels, where who you are and more importantly, who your parents are, matter. The school comes with a price tag, not just tuition but the cost of living. Adhira’s parents are surgeons, and Zoe’s dad has the kind of finance job that keeps him at the office so much she rarely sees him when she goes home to visit. There’s a guy on my floor whose mom is a senator and a girl in my psych class who was a child actress.
And this is the only reasonable explanation for why I tell them “lawyer,” a single word I wish I could swallow back.
The lie is sour on my tongue. I don’t want to be ashamed of where I come from. And yet once it’s out there, I can’t take it back. Can’t say, “just kidding, she’s a paralegal”—even though a paralegal is a more than respectable career, that she works so hard, that this job is the only reason we were able to gain some semblance of financial independence after my dad went to prison.
“My mom too!” Zoe says. “What kind of law?”
Skyler, seeming to notice my discomfort, lets out a dramatic groan. “As much as I love talking about our parents, are we gonna do this thing or what?”
“We’re not just going to do it; we’re going to win it,” Adhira corrects, then turns to me. “What’s the first clue?”
The heaviness is slower to lift than I’d like, but by the time we’ve grabbed street art that really ~moves you~ (three sparse lines of poetry stickered to a telephone pole) and a street that shares a name with one in Seattle (Broadway, which seemed so obvious that Rowan sent back a dozen eye roll emojis), my laughter is more fluid, my limbs looser. It’s my first time hanging out with all three of them, and Adhira and Zoe get extremely invested in the game, helping me stage more artistic shots.
We get cupcakes at the world-famous Magnolia Bakery, because I admitted I hadn’t been there yet. Adhira leans in and snaps a photo of me with a vanilla cupcake. “An embarrassingly over-the-top tourist,” she says, and I groan and try to swipe it from her.
“Uncalled for. This is delicious.”
“Yeah, but it’s just so basic.”
“Gotta agree with Adhira on this one,” Zoe says. “They have much better cupcakes at Billy’s.”
Skyler polishes off his cupcake in two bites. “That’s only because you haven’t tried—”
Adhira gives him a death glare. “If you’re about to mention a cupcake shop in Staten Island, I swear to God—”
This leads us on a quest to Billy’s Bakery in Chelsea for a taste test, because it’s only fair.
