by Eileen Cook
Drew grabbed her sub and, after a pause, a bag of chips. She looked great, but she worried about her weight. “Yeah. But you don’t want to wait too long. Finding the right place is going to take some time.”
There was no right place. At least not for me. Her family had plenty of money for her to go. I didn’t even have enough to cover first month’s rent for an apartment. Not even a tiny studio. Hell, not enough for a shared tiny studio. I was going to have to tell Drew the truth soon; there was no way I could move with her. At least not this summer. I kept putting off breaking the news, and the longer I did it, the harder it became to tell her.
“Isn’t that a great idea?” Drew said. I nodded, even though I hadn’t been paying attention. She would keep brainstorming plans to make the move easier, but it wasn’t going to happen.
Well, it would happen for Drew. She’d go to New York. I hated the tiny part of myself that resented her for that fact. It wasn’t her fault she was who she was, or that our lives had been on different trajectories since we met, but I’d been able to ignore it until now. Now the division was speeding toward us like an out-of-control truck. The truth was graduation was coming, and I’d be the one still living in a small Michigan town trapped between the touristy towns like Traverse and the less desirable cities in the south. The boring middle. A town that could be exchanged for any other small town, with places like the Kwik Klip Hair Salon, where the K was a pair of scissors on the sign, and where the bowling alley still did big business on a Saturday night, and the most exotic restaurant in town was the run-down Chinese place. She’d do all the things we talked about, but I wouldn’t. I’d be stuck working at the Burger Barn, or at the grocery store, dreaming about a life I’d never have. My stomach was as tight as a drum. I didn’t even want my sandwich anymore.
Subway was packed. We grabbed the last empty table next to a group of the people from our school. I hoped their loud discussion of where to eat on prom night, which they were debating as if it were as important as nuclear disarmament, would take Drew’s mind off moving.
“I’m still not sure about bringing my car,” Drew said. “My dad thinks it’s a waste, but then we’d have it if we ever wanted it. What do you think?”
I took a sip of my Diet Coke, letting the carbonation burn through the lies building up in my mouth. “I bet parking in New York is expensive. It may not be worth it to drive.”
Lucy Lam turned around. “You can’t drive in New York. It’s, like, impossible.” She tossed her hair over a shoulder. One long dark hair drifted down onto the table, landing on her salad. I considered telling her and then thought, Screw it. She’d moved to our school a year ago. Tragically for her, the role of school bitch had already been filled, but she was doing her best to be a skilled understudy for the part.
Drew arched an eyebrow. “So you’re a New York traffic expert?”
“I’ve been there, like, a million times—my aunt lives there, so basically, yeah,” Lucy said.
“I thought your aunt lived in Jersey,” Paige Bonnet countered from the far end of the table where she sat as the official queen of the popular people. She smirked at Lucy, and the other people at the table exchanged awkward glances. Looked like there was a battle brewing in Popularlandia. I didn’t even bother to try and keep up with the politics of who liked whom and who was on the outs anymore. Allegiances in that group changed more often than I changed my socks.
Lucy’s nostrils flared. “Yes, she lives in New Jersey, but we go into the city all the time.”
“You guys are moving to New York, right? In the city, not the ’burbs.” Paige looked at Lucy.
Drew nodded. She was beaming as if thrilled that Paige knew about our postgraduation plans. “We’re still trying to find an apartment,” she explained.
Lucy snorted. “You’re both moving to New York?”
I swallowed the lump of bread that had expanded in my throat, cutting off oxygen. I should have eaten in the cafeteria.
“Yeah, Skye’s going too,” Drew said. She sat ramrod straight, as if daring Lucy to push it.
“You planning to go to Columbia?” Lucy asked, the corners of her mouth curling up.
I shook my head. I wasn’t university bound, not even community college. I hadn’t applied anywhere. It wasn’t that I was stupid, and my grades were decent enough, but I didn’t have the money to go, and it seemed pointless to take out a loan when I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with my life. I had vague ideas about photography or maybe something in social work, but as soon as I tried to picture myself in the future, the image got blurry and faded away. Drew had always known what she wanted. She’d been drawing since we were kids. “I don’t have any firm plans right now,” I mumbled.
Lucy drew back as if shocked. “What, here I thought you’d tell us you had a full-ride offer from all the Ivy Leagues and an apartment on Fifth Avenue.” She smirked. “I know how you love to tell a good story.”
Blood rushed to my face. I wanted to drop under the table and disappear. Just when I thought that people had forgotten the past, someone dug it back up. The joys of living in a small town. The bodies of your mistakes rarely stayed buried. They had a tendency to pop up when you least expected them.
“Hey, take it easy. That’s not cool,” Brandon said, nudging Lucy with his elbow. He smiled at me. His big sister had some kind of special needs, so he was, possibly, the nicest person in our entire school, but having him stick up for me made me want to puke my vegetarian sandwich onto the table.
Lucy tossed her hair again. “I’m joking,” she said to the group. Ah, the joking defense. The tried-and-true excuse for bullies everywhere. “I just didn’t think she’d have the money for someplace like that. You know the city’s really expensive, right?”
“Of course she knows,” Paige said. “Skye’s not an idiot. She’s not going to plan to move to New York without knowing what she’s getting into.”
Lucy’s mouth formed a tight line. “It’s no big deal to me. I’d just heard that in the past Skye’s confused what she wants to be true with what is true.” She turned to Drew. “All I’m saying is you might not have to worry about getting a moving van that fits both of your stuff.”
“I’m not worried,” Drew said. “I know she’s coming with me.”
“Uh,” I said.
Drew whipped out her phone. “I’d trust Skye with my life.” Her fingers flew over the screen and then she slapped it down on the table. “There. I just cancelled my dorm reservation. Now Skye and I will get a place together. Maybe, if your aunt ever lets you stay in the big city, you can come visit. That is unless you need to get back to bridge-and-tunnel Jersey.”
Paige laughed, and Brandon high-fived Drew. He turned his raised palm to me, but my hands lay in my lap like dead fish.
My breath came fast and shallow. Drew hadn’t really sent that email, had she? Maybe she just wanted to make a point. There was a huge waitlist for residence space. If she’d given hers up, she wouldn’t have anywhere to live. Her parents were going to kill her. Or me.
“Whatever.” Lucy grabbed her giant leather Coach tote from under the table. “We should get going, or we’re going to be late.” They gathered their stuff and shuffled back to the parking lot. Paige looked over her shoulder at us and waved as she walked away.
Drew was flushed, and her eyes sparkled. She looked almost high. She’d always had a crush on Paige. She’d never pursued her, or any of her other crushes, but she held her out as that unobtainable beautiful thing. Deep down, I was certain Drew knew Paige wasn’t worth her time, but it didn’t stop how she felt. She noticed how I was breathing. Her face instantly turned serious. “Hey, take it easy. Are you okay?”
I tried to say something, but my heart was galloping full speed and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
“Close your eyes,” Drew said, her voice was calm and firm. “You got this. Breathe in through your nose.”
As she counted to three, I forced myself to follow her directions,
blowing it out a few beats later. She breathed with me, counting softly several more times until I was breathing normally again.
“Better?” Drew patted me on the back.
I nodded. I wasn’t even remotely fine, but I had managed to avoid spiraling into a full panic attack, so that was a positive.
“Don’t let Lucy get to you. It was bitchy to bring that up.” Drew wadded up the sub wrapper into a tight ball. “She didn’t even live here when it happened, and she’s got no business acting like she’s somehow in the know.”
I nodded. I didn’t care about that at the moment. “You didn’t really just send an email to give up your space, did you?”
“No,” Drew said.
My lungs filled fully, relief streaming like cool water through every nerve.
She bounced in her hard plastic seat. “I sent my cancellation email last night! That’s what I was going to tell you. I told you I had a plan that you would flip over.”
Air stuttered in my chest. “Why?” My voice cracked.
Her face grew serious. “Lately you’ve been weird whenever we talk about New York, and I know why.” She patted my arm. “Money’s tight. Even with the cushion you’ve saved, and even if you get a job right away, you’ll have a hard time on your own, and I know you hate the idea of living with a stranger. I know I would. What kind of friend would it make me if I left you to handle this solo? This way we can pool our money and afford a better place. With what you’ve got saved and the money I’ll get from my parents, we’ll be all set.”
She had no idea. How was I going to tell her that I didn’t have any cash to pool anything? It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to save, but every time I did, something came up. Stuff like late electric bills and a need for shoes that didn’t have a hole.
“What are your parents going to say?” I squeezed out.
Drew stood and dumped the trash on her tray into the garbage. “They’re going to be pissed, but there isn’t a thing they’ll be able to do about it now. I don’t want to live in a dorm if I can live with you.”
Shit. I had to tell her. “Listen, Drew, you can’t do this.”
“Too late. It’s already done.” She laughed and tucked her curly hair behind her ears. “The school sent me an email this morning letting me know my spot has been filled. They also sent me a list of possible apartment brokers.” She hauled me up from the seat. “We’re going to be New Yorkers together!”
Three
After school I told Drew I had stuff to do and headed to our town library. It was my favorite place on the planet. Built over a hundred years ago, with its granite blocks, scratched wooden floors, and deep-set windows, the library felt solid and permanent. It had a sense of peace, like a church without the religion.
My chosen spot was the reference room in the very back of the second floor. It was poorly lit and dusty, but it was almost always empty, and there was a cracked dark green leather bench on the back wall, perfect for curling up. I would lie there for hours reading, pretending it was my living room, until the librarian announced they were closing for the night by flashing the lights on and off.
My hand ran over the shelf, stopping at the spine of one of the outdated World Books. The letter L. I paused and then instead I pulled the giant maroon map book from the shelf below onto the worn table and flipped to the map of Manhattan. I’d looked at it so often I could have drawn a copy with my eyes closed. My fingers traced the roads, up Sixth Avenue to Rockefeller Plaza and Radio City Music Hall, then across to Fifth Avenue, skirting along Central Park and into Harlem, then across the East River and into Queens.
The sound of my finger whispering across the page relaxed me. I closed my eyes and imagined myself there. Our dream apartment would have an exposed brick wall, and we’d know that you couldn’t have the light on in the living room and run the blender at the same time or you’d blow a circuit. Our neighbors would speak Cantonese, Spanish, Russian, and some language we couldn’t place, but we’d play a made-up drinking game where we had to guess the subject of their conversations.
My hand shook. There was no way I could afford to go to New York. It wasn’t just coming up with the monthly rent. I’d need a security deposit, plus utilities, cable, food, and everything else required to survive. A minimum-wage waitressing job wasn’t going to cut it, and I wasn’t qualified to do anything else, no matter how many fancy gallery jobs I dreamed up. I couldn’t ask Drew to float me.
I should have told her months ago that it wasn’t going to work, but I hadn’t wanted to let her down. It was easier to pretend graduation was never going to arrive. When Drew asked, I’d made up a number for my savings account. I liked that she felt proud of me for saving all that money. I wanted to be the kind of person who had that kind of discipline. There were a lot of times I could almost forget it was a total lie, until my bank statement would come in the mail.
Making big plans almost always turned out badly for me. My destiny was set before I was born. My mom was fifteen when she got pregnant and dropped out of school to have me. Then perhaps to punish me for ruining her life, she named me Candi. With an i, no less. You know what you never hear? “Let me introduce you to my neurosurgeon, Dr. Candi Thorn.” Or, “All rise for the Honorable Judge Candi Thorn.” A parent who names you Candi is setting you up to be a stripper, or a Walmart greeter complete with a wrinkled blue uniform vest festooned with various smiley-face buttons and flag pins. Or a lifer waitress at the Burger Barn. I had to go by my middle name, which was still pretty hippie dippy, but Skye is light years better than Candi.
When Drew and I became friends, I realized that there was this completely different world possible. At her house there were matching dishes, and their glasses weren’t collectibles from some gas station promotion. The heat was never off because the bill hadn’t been paid, and their fridge wasn’t full of ketchup packages stolen from McDonald’s. It wasn’t that I didn’t know people lived like Drew, but I’d never seen it up close. I knew that was what I wanted. I would become the kind of person who traveled, who went to art galleries and knew people who talked about real things like politics and books.
I wanted to be the kind of person who moved to New York.
But as much as I wanted life to be a certain way, wishing doesn’t make things happen. For years I tried wishing my mom into a better job. Or there was the disaster of when I tried to fix her up with my fourth grade gym teacher so they could get married. That ended with the whole school witnessing my mom screaming at him in the parking lot.
Then there was the lie about my dad . . .
I sat in the corner of the bench and pulled my legs up. One reason for wanting to move to New York was to be in a city where every single person I came across hadn’t been a part of the most humiliating experience of my life. I don’t remember when I started lying about my dad. Early. First or second grade. And I didn’t set out to lie as much as I wished the truth—that my dad was a car mechanic who dumped my mom as soon as he found out she was pregnant with me—weren’t real.
My mom had always been honest: I picked a real loser when I picked your father. I used to wish that she’d told me he was dead instead of AWOL. It seemed better to have a dead dad than one who was very much alive and working at a garage three towns over but had no interest in my life.
So I made up a dad. He was in the military. That explained his long absence from home and why he and my mom divorced. She couldn’t bear him being in harm’s way. Deployment is so hard on those left behind. His job made me a bit more noble too, gave me a whiff of respectability that my mom’s job at the grocery store didn’t convey. I was the daughter of a real live American hero. The kind of guy other people thanked for their service. And I might have gotten away with that lie. A distant dad, gone from my life not because he couldn’t be bothered, but because he was called to a higher purpose—protecting America.
Then in eighth grade I pushed my luck. I told people my dad had been injured. I can’t remember what made me add to the lie. To embro
ider the story with a roadside bomb, VA hospitals, and countless surgeries. Maybe the original story had become dull. Or people wondered why he never seemed to get leave to visit and I thought I needed to create a reason. But my lie went a step too far. Instead of merely keeping people from asking too many questions, it made people feel bad for me. To want to do something.
Without telling me, Drew got the ball rolling when she asked her parents if they would let her take money out of her savings account so I could fly to the veterans hospital in Washington, DC, to visit my dad. Her parents told people at their church, and suddenly the thing spiraled out of control. Weeks later there was an all-school assembly with my mom invited for a big surprise. The mayor of our town was there. A representative from the Rotary Club presented me with a check in front of everyone. Enough cash so I could travel to Washington with my mom. There was talk of the excess money going toward an accessible home for my poor amputated-legs dad. It was a great example of a town pulling together. A bunch of people were crying and waving these tiny American flags the local Walmart had donated for the event. It would have been amazing—made for TV—except for the part where I’d made him up. I’d just stood on the stage and wished for a meteor to strike me dead while my mom looked around confused, trying to figure out what the hell everyone was talking about.
I still remember Drew’s face when she realized I’d lied. She was with her parents, all dressed up for the occasion, and her face collapsed. Her response hurt almost as bad as the pitying looks from everyone else and the hushed snickers. The money had to be returned. No more big giant cardboard checks for me. I had to stand there next to my mom as she explained the truth. I knew, even at thirteen, that no one was ever going to let me forget this.