by Jennifer Yu
“No,” my mom says. “With you, the trouble started after you learned to talk.”
And then it happens. My dad laughs. It’s more of a snort, really, but still. An expression of emotion. Of mirth, even. My mom looks up at him, smiling, and the moment that passes between them is so unexpected that I don’t know which to react to first: my mom’s sarcasm, or—or that.
I don’t want to make it seem like my parents have this magical, marriage-fixing moment while standing in the kitchen at two in the morning on a random Thursday night while their daughter and their daughter’s health class partner try to wrangle a fake baby into submission, because it’s not like that. They don’t look at each other like they’re young again (which would be weird), or like they’re suddenly back in love (which would be gross).
All it is, is this: for this brief moment, my parents seem...content. Content to be in each other’s company. Content to be standing next to each other in the house that they bought together, bonding over a joke about their daughter (who is about to get a C in this health class, I swear to God). Not overjoyed, mind you, and I doubt either one of them will look back on this moment as one of the highlights of the year. Just...content.
And I think that contentedness is a fragile thing.
“Sick burn,” Jeremy says, which, of course, instantly ruins the moment.
“Was that a joke?” I say, turning to my mom. “Did you just make a joke?” Now that Jeremy’s chimed in, I’ve remembered that the real shock of the night is not that my parents can still stand each other sometimes, but that my mother—my mother!—has a sense of humor.
“Well, you have to get it from someone, Stella,” my mom says. “And we both know it isn’t your father.”
“Jesus,” I say. We’ve been up for almost an hour now, and I’m starting to feel delirious. It occurs to me that maybe this is all actually a dream, and that if I can just wake myself up, I’ll be in my bed alone, and my mom won’t be making out-of-character jokes about me and my sparkling personality, and my dad won’t be snickering at the aforementioned jokes, and Jeremy will be back home, saying things like “sick burn” to his friends via text instead of to my mother via real life, and, most importantly of all, I won’t have to listen to this godforsaken shrieking anymore.
But the weirdest thing of all is that if this entire situation were a dream, I don’t think I’d want to wake up. I think I’d take this particular brand of delirium any night, screaming baby and all.
47.
Halfway through our lunch period.
“Sorry you couldn’t go off-campus with the rest of the team,” I say.
“It’s all right,” Jeremy says. “I’m sure we’ll go again before the semester ends.”
A pause. Emily wails on.
“You’re sure,” I say. “You’re sure we can’t just throw her out the window?”
Jeremy grits his teeth. It takes him a few seconds to remember the correct answer to the question.
“Yes,” he says sadly. “I’m sure.”
59.
By the time the end of March rolls around and the weather begins its slow, arduous climb from New England winter temperatures (below freezing) to New England spring temperatures (ever-so-slightly above freezing), the sound of Emily’s crying has become a persistent, omnipresent, extremely unwelcome soundtrack to my life. It accompanies me to school in the morning on most days, switches on and off in the background as I’m doing my homework and, of course, occasionally keeps me up until hours of the night that should be illegal.
I even begin to hallucinate the sound of Emily crying as I walk through the halls on the days when she’s with Jeremy, which is seriously concerning until I realize that no, it’s actually just someone else’s baby crying three feet in front of me as their owner—parent, I have to remind myself—stops at his or her locker.
The only person in the universe who finds this health project more irritating than I do is Kevin, who starts looking at Emily less like she is a cumbersome-but-mostly-harmless academic exercise and more like the spirit of Satan himself resides inside her creepy, plastic, battery-controlled body.
More than anything, I think Emily annoys Kevin because it makes him think of Jeremy, and all the time I spend with Jeremy, and all the time I spend not complaining about Jeremy, which, to Kevin, would be the optimal outcome of this health project: fresh hatred between his girlfriend and the alarmingly sculpted Bridgemont football star. But the truth is that Jeremy is a good partner and, honestly, a pretty nice guy, as much as it pains me to admit that about someone so obsessed with a stupid game centered around men hitting each other as hard as possible, brain damage be damned. Jeremy is the type of person who takes it upon himself to create a three-month “date calendar” at the beginning of the project to make sure that the two of us get to have Emily-less time with Jennie and Kevin, and then presents that “date calendar” to me with the expression of someone who has just laid out a ten-year plan to world peace. I don’t want to be type of girl who shit talks someone just to make her boyfriend feel better. So I don’t.
So spring drags on, and Kevin and I fight in diners about Jeremy, and Kevin and I fight in my room about philosophy (but also sort of about Jeremy), and Kevin and I fight in his room about whether or not we spend enough time with each other (definitely about Jeremy). Every time we have a new argument, it feels like the very first time he walked out of my house—that sick tightness in my stomach, regret so powerful it’s practically indistinguishable from self-loathing. And every time we make up, it’s Halloween weekend and I’m up on that balcony again—heart racing and breath held, taking one step forward after another, just waiting for the ground to fall out from underneath me.
One of these times, I always think to myself, one of these times, we’re not going to make up. One of these times, he’s going to leave and he’s not going to come back. There will be no letter. There will be no 4:00 a.m. phone call. One of these days, I’m going to wake up in the morning and whatever sick force of nature keeps us coming back to each other isn’t going to be there anymore. The magnetism, the pull, the desperation to be with him whenever I’m not and to be closer whenever I am—one day, all of that will be gone.
Isn’t that what they always say about young love? It’s temporary. The feelings will fade as quickly as they came. The flame always, always burns out in the end.
But that’s not how this story ends. It doesn’t end with that slow dissipation of energy—where both parties wake up one morning and realize that, for better or for worse, they’ve both moved on. It’s not a gradual burnout; it’s a runaway forest fire. A case of arson where the two of us are the criminals, and the victims, and accessories to each other all the while.
It’s ironic: the end of this story isn’t a particularly happy one, but to get there, we have to go back to a happy note. A happy day. The happiest day of Kevin’s life, probably—and, as a result, one of the happiest days of mine. The day that Kevin gets into Columbia.
49.
The day that Kevin gets into Columbia is a quintessential New England spring day, which means that it’s about forty-five degrees outside, it is pouring rain and there’s still snow on the ground. By the time I arrive at Kevin’s house, my bike is mud-splattered and I’m soaking wet.
“So, what’s the big emergency?” I say. I’m actually supposed to be at Jeremy’s in forty-five minutes to work on a paper about our parenting styles, but I know better than to tell Kevin that, especially since it’s only been two weeks since the debacle at the diner.
“Are you and Mulland eloping? Did he finally propose? Also, can I get a towel?”
Kevin throws me a towel and calmly ignores the rest of my questions.
“Stella,” he says slowly. “It is very, very important that we savor this moment.”
“Why?” I say. “There’s nothing special about this moment. It’s going to be j
ust as shitty out tomorrow. And probably for the rest of the month. Plus, we have to go to school tomorrow.”
“Savor this moment!” Kevin says, laughing.
“Okay, fine,” I say. I close my eyes and take a depth breath—a rough approximation of what I imagine it means to “savor a moment” when you’re not even sure what the “moment” is that you’re supposed to be savoring. “Savoring...savoring...”
I open one eye and peek at Kevin, who is gazing at me with a very solemn expression on his face.
“...savored. Okay, hit me.”
“Okay,” Kevin says, clearly unable to contain his excitement much longer. He walks over to his desk, picks up an envelope and throws it to me.
“A letter?” I say blankly. “From—oh, my God. Is this it? Is this it? And you’re happy, which must mean...”
I slide the letter out of the side of the envelope, which is already slit open. The page falls open in my hand.
“‘Dear Kevin Miller,’” I read out loud, “‘we are thrilled to welcome you to the Columbia University Class of 2020. We received an unprecedented number of applications’ and blah, blah, blah, holy shit, you’re going to Columbia!”
Kevin kisses me. I chuck the letter back toward the general vicinity of his desk.
“I should call Yago,” Kevin murmurs. “He’ll want to know.”
And I should text Jeremy, I think, and tell him that I’ll be late. But both those things seem like they can wait.
“Call Yago afterward,” I say. Kevin pulls me close and I can feel his lips curving into a smile against mine and there’s this energy between the two of us that makes it feel like we’re back at the beginning again, falling into each other for the very first time.
I slide my hands under his shirt.
“Afterward?” Kevin says, but I can hear in the tone of his voice that he’s already convinced.
“Yeah,” I say. I pull his shirt off and chuck that toward the general vicinity of his desk, too. “I think we should savor the moment.”
50.
On Tuesday, it is still raining.
“She won’t let me go,” Kevin says. He is staring straight at his bedroom wall and saying the words with the flat, shell-shocked tone of someone who has just been hit with really bad news that they have not yet managed to process.
“What do you mean, she won’t let you go?” I say. “She has to let you go. It’s Columbia.”
“It is Columbia,” Kevin says. “And it is also, as my mother informed me yesterday, ‘A bit expensive, don’t you think?’”
He closes his eyes. I can see him clenching and unclenching his jaw.
“Well, how is expensive is it?” I say.
“Sixty-five thousand dollars a year.”
I think about that for a moment.
“I don’t know even know what that means,” I say.
“Neither do I,” Kevin admits. “But I just—”
He cuts off. Takes a deep breath. Massages his temples.
It occurs to me that after all this time, and after all these fights, I still don’t know how to make Kevin feel better. When he’s happy, or when I’m happy, when things between the two of us are good, it’s so easy for us to be with each other, and it’s so easy for me to make him laugh. But I don’t know how to get us to that place when things aren’t good, and I can’t help but feel like this is a failure on my part, like I am a lifeguard watching someone drown and realizing only now that they have forgotten how to swim.
“It’s because she—she thinks there are more important things than going to an Ivy League school,” Kevin says, through gritted teeth. “Like ‘personal character’ and ‘perseverance.’ She thinks going to Columbia is going to kill my ‘creative spirit.’ She’s heard that it’s cutthroat and she’s ‘worried about me.’ Fucking artists, Stella, I swear to God.”
I don’t point out that personal character and perseverance probably are more important than whether or not you go to an Ivy League school; firstly, because it doesn’t seem like the time for that, and secondly, because I was friends with Lin for long enough to know how that conversation ends.
“I have never asked her for anything,” Kevin says. His voice is low. “I paid for my car myself. I never ask them for gas money. I never tear my mom away from her precious paintings to have dinner or even to talk. I haven’t asked them for anything in, like, ten fucking years, and now all I fucking want is to go to Columbia.”
“I’m sorry, Kevin,” I say.
“I know that it’s a lot of money. And I know that she doesn’t believe in schools like that. But I do,” Kevin says. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”
This helplessness. I almost wish he were mad at me. At least then there would be something I could do about it.
“Whatever,” Kevin says. “I’ll talk to her again tomorrow.”
51.
On Wednesday, Kevin talks to his mom again, and she says the same thing. Columbia is so expensive, and there are so many other good schools in the area, and didn’t he get a scholarship to UConn? They have a philosophy program there, don’t they?
“Well,” I say. “Did you get a scholarship to UConn?”
“I’m not going to go to fucking UConn,” Kevin says.
I try to ignore his flinch when I put my hand on his arm. “Okay,” I say. “You’re not going to UConn.”
52.
On Thursday morning, Kevin finds an article titled “Why an Ivy League Education Is Worth It” and texts it to his mom. She points out that there are probably a million articles on the Internet about Why an Ivy League Education Isn’t Worth It, and maybe he should look into some of those.
Kevin and I are at lockers together when he sees the text, and he Googles it while I’m trying to cradle Emily in one hand and unlock my locker with the other.
“Ivy League Schools Are Overrated,” the first headline announces. “Send Your Kids Elsewhere.”
Then Emily starts crying, and I accidentally knock one of my books out of my locker, and the bell rings. Kevin storms off to his statistics class, and even if he hadn’t, there isn’t much that I can say.
53.
By the end of the weekend, Kevin’s belief that he can convince his mom to pay for Columbia is running out, and the determination of the past few days transforms into a permanent undercurrent of fury. He alternates between angry and apologetic with alarming speed and intensity, and I, of course, am useless in the face of it all.
One night, I dream that I am standing on a beach. That I am looking out at the waves. That I am hearing someone begging, crying, screaming for help. That I am ready to dive into the water, but all of a sudden my hands and arms are made of sand and they are crumbling, crumbling, crumbling into the ocean.
The tide comes in. The screaming stops.
54.
At 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday night, when Kevin hasn’t texted me in six hours despite the fact that I have sent him ten messages asking if he’s okay, I bike to his house. I call him. When he doesn’t answer, I leave my bike in the middle of his driveway and ring the doorbell.
It’s his mom that answers. She’s wearing a T-shirt that’s smudged with paint and a pair of faded jeans. Her hair is pulled into a ballerina bun. And she looks completely relaxed, which is weird, because I know for a fact that Kevin has been seething over Columbia for the past week.
“Hi, Stella,” she says, her voice almost musical. “Are you looking for Kevin?”
“Yeah,” I say. It suddenly occurs to me that it’s late at night, and that I probably should have called his house or something before showing up, and that I haven’t really even spoken to Kevin’s mother since the one time I had dinner with the two of them months ago. “Sorry to bother you so late at night,” I add hastily.
“Oh, no worries at all,” she says. Kevin’s mom says every word
like she has all the time and patience in the world. It makes me wonder where on Earth Kevin got all of his intensity, the fire behind his eyes, the way he says every word like he is desperate for someone to listen to him. I can’t remember ever hearing Kevin speak the way his mother is speaking right now.
She steps back, ushering me in, and I step inside and close the door.
“He’s upstairs as usual,” she says. “Don’t think he even came down for dinner tonight.”
She frowns a bit, then gives a helpless little shrug, as if to say: Kids these days.
“Well, let me know if you two need anything,” she says.
“Will do, Mrs. Miller,” I say. “Thanks.”
I hear her footsteps padding back down to the basement as I make my way up the stairs.
When I get to Kevin’s door, I knock twice. And it’s sad, how unsurprised I am when he doesn’t answer.
“Kevin,” I say. “I’m coming in, all right?”
Then I push open the door.
I don’t know what exactly I’m expecting, but what I see when the door opens feels distinctly anticlimactic. There he is: sprawled diagonally across the bed, one hand holding open a book, the other curled into his hair. I feel like I’ve been transported into an alternate universe: one where everything hasn’t gone to shit.
“Hi,” I say.
Kevin looks up from his book.
“I don’t really want to talk right now,” he says shortly.
And we’re back to reality.
“Yeah, I got that. You know, from the fact that you didn’t answer any of my one hundred text messages. But I was worried, Kevin.”