My mother has great intuition, especially when it comes to me. She is also my greatest comfort. Though I told her that I was prepared for rejection, she knew me, understanding that it would be hard on me, and she also understood that at that moment, I would want her to be there.
When my name was called, I took my envelope and, with the greatest will I’d ever mustered, stuffed it into my pocket and marched out of the school, my fingers plugged into my ears.
Outside, I stood alone, the sun brushed my face. I pulled out my phone and dialed my mother. She didn’t pick up. I tried again. No answer. I left the message that I’d received my high school letter and I was heading home.
By now, kids were leaving the school. I spotted Maria, the Planker, and others from my table huddled on a corner, all of them talking about their letters.
When they heard that I hadn’t opened mine, they couldn’t believe it. They thought that by calling my mother and leaving a message, I’d satisfied my promise. But it was not so much the pledge to my mother. I didn’t want them to see my disappointment. There was also the suspicion that they might not be as sympathetic as I would want them to be.
We walked another few yards.
It was too much for Maria. She lunged at me.
“OPEN THE DAMN LETTER!”
She grabbed the letter from my pocket, and I, trying to get it back, lost my balance, knocking both of us over.
The Planker, shaking his head, stared at us on the gum-speckled pavement. Meanwhile the letter floated into the middle of the road, where Krysta, the crossing guard, grabbed it. Halting traffic, she held it up, slowly turning it over in her hands.
As she returned to the sidewalk, to the soundtrack of honks and cursing, she opened the letter.
I gasped. Maria helped me to my feet.
Krysta frowned.
“You’re going to LaGuardia.”
—
Walking back to the hotel, I thought about my mom. She was the one who was always surprising me with good news; now I had something for her.
As I entered the lobby, Uber-Crafty and Crafty Two were in their chairs. Stormé was there. I nodded to them, but wasn’t going to stop. I needed to get upstairs to Mom.
“Excuse me.”
It was Uber-Crafty.
“Where are you going?”
Puzzled, I turned toward him.
“Did you forget to tell us something, Little Crafty?”
Was it that obvious? Did they know me that well?
It was too much to think about.
But think about it I did. Their faces, their gestures, their personalities, their humor, and their kindness had carried me through, unaware.
When I told them about LaGuardia, they were on their feet hugging me.
—
The next day, Maria, the Planker, Joshua, the Licker, and I met up at a coffee shop in the Village. We were there as we had been so many times in the years before. And, as so many times before, a couple tables away were the popular kids from our school. The ones I’d spent so much of my life pursuing.
All of us knew that the next few months could be our last opportunity to spend so much time together. We might see each other in passing, but that would be it. Shortly we would be going off without each other. Off to new schools, new lives.
Whether it was from the weight of this or something else that none of us could articulate, the Planker stood up, moved his chair aside, and, in the space where his chair had been, lay facedown on the floor.
Immediately the kids from the other table began to point and laugh, making sure that no one else in the coffee shop missed the Planker.
As the laughter in the room rose, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
I stood up, moved my chair over, and lay down next to him. Staring up from the floor, the world, for the very first time in my life, could not have looked better.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
AS A CHILD, I would return home each afternoon and lament to my parents about my tragedies: the malignant odor that emanated from the locker rooms, my daily social faux pas, and my deafening loneliness. Upon my arrival in middle school, my father, bored by my complaints, told me to “write it down,” which I did. As I wrote, I would ask my parents to tell me what I couldn’t know. As we talked, my stories became richer, more amusing, less painful than what I experienced. Toward the end of eighth grade, I presented my English teacher with a bound-up copy of my journal as my end-of-year project. She asked me if I would read one of the stories at my graduation. My parents were shocked—not so much at the story as at the initiative it took to produce the journal, initiative being a trait which, as my father explained it, had skipped so many generations of his family that they hardly knew how to spell it. For the past three years, I have been working with my father to flesh out my stories. He has guided me, teaching me how to structure a story, weave together themes, and connect loose ends into a narrative. For this reason, the book is a unique effort between a father and a daughter. These stories have evolved with each year, expanding as I have, going back and forth between the two of us as we sat in cafés over the weekends. I know my teachers and classmates and others will not recognize some of the events that I recount, any more than they will recognize their names, which have been changed. Nor should they, because these are the stories of my life; stories that are remembered, imagined, passed down, and often a combination. They are as legitimate as my memories, which are fallible and mysterious, and as real as you care to believe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
HERE ARE PEOPLE who, despite my age (and lack of maturity), took me and this project seriously. For this, they have been punished by having to help with the book, and help they did:
I would like to thank my incredible editor, Liese Mayer, whose persistence and intuition turned this into something readable; my agents, Nicole Aragi and Duvall Osteen, whose dedication to this book has been both mystifying and wonderful; the entire marketing and publicity team at Scribner, who taught me more about the habits of my generation then I ever knew; and Nan Graham, whose powerful presence behind this book took it to publication.
Accolades go out to the readers and editors Alex Traub and Paulina Porizkova, who had the bad luck of being the first to get ahold of it, but whose insights made it so much more for everyone who read it after.
Thanks to my parents, without whose genetic material I would be sorely disadvantaged. Thank you, mom, for sticking up for me when I need it. Your ceaseless optimism, love, and graciousness is a lesson. As to my magical father, who spins words into worlds, I have been privileged to have grown up with him and been privy to his mind. Thank you for being my role model and teacher.
Thanks to my high school friends, who are a phenomenal support system. If I had known you guys in elementary school, this book would never have been written.
Lastly, I am eternally in debt to my middle school teacher Ms. Boyd, who read this back in its first stages and saw something that she encouraged, pushing me to make more of it. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ursula Bowling
Nicolaia Rips is a graduate of LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (class of 2016) in New York City. She has lived at the Chelsea Hotel for her entire life. In her spare time, she studies vocal music, participates in team sports, reads avidly, and tolerates her parents. Trying to Float is her first book.
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This book weaves together what the author experienced, what she was told, and what she imagined. Many names and identifying characteristics have been changed.
Copyright © 2016 by Nicolaia Rips
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First Scribner hardcover edition July 2016
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Jacket design by Jaya Miceli
Jacket photographs courtesy of the author
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rips, Nicolaia, author.
Title: Trying to float : coming of age in the Chelsea Hotel / Nicolaia Rips.
Description: First Scribner hardcover edition. | New York : Scribner, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014365| ISBN 9781501132988 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501133008 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Rips, Nicolaia—Childhood and youth. | Coming of age—New York (State)—New York. | Girls—New York (State)—New York—Biography. | Teenage girls—New York (State)—New York—Biography. | Chelsea Hotel Biography. | New York (N.Y.)—Biography. | Bohemianism—New York (State) New York. | Eccentrics and eccentricities—New York (State)—New York. | New York (N.Y.)—Social life and customs. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTO- BIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women.
Classification: LCC F128.57.R57 A3 2016 | DDC 974.7—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014365
ISBN 978-1-5011-3298-8
ISBN 978-1-5011-3300-8 (ebook)
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