by Sara Barnard
I take a deep breath and call home.
“Peyton!” Mum’s gasp of a voice, answering after barely one ring.
“Hi,” I say.
“You—” she begins, then stops. “We… I can’t believe you—”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“How could you do this?” she asks. “Why have you done this?”
“I told you,” I say. “I explained, in the email.”
“But you can’t just leave, Peyton,” she says. “I know you think you can, but you can’t. You have to come home. You’ve got college.”
“I dropped out of college,” I say.
“You… you what?” She sounds a bit faint.
“I dropped out,” I repeat.
“You can’t drop out,” she says. “You have to be in education, Peyton. It’s a legal requirement.”
“Or have a job or an apprenticeship,” I say. “I told them I’ve got a job.”
“Peyton!” She’s somehow both faint and shrill now. “You can’t… This isn’t… “
There’s a brief, muffled conversation on the other end, a protest, something that sounds like a whimper, and then my dad’s voice is coming through the phone, so sharp it’s like it cuts right into me.
“Peyton!” he barks. “This is ludicrous. You cannot drop out of college. We’re not even going to have this discussion.”
“It’s already done,” I say. For so long, Dad using that voice on me would have sent me into a panic, but right now I’m calm. What can he do from so far away?
“It very much is not already done,” he says. “I’m going to call your college and straighten this out.”
“You could,” I say. “But I’m not coming home even if you do, so you’ll just have more aggro to deal with. Plus, the legal-requirement thing Mum mentioned is on the parents, not the students. So if you want to get a fine or whatever, then go ahead. Not my problem.”
“Peyton!”
“I’m seventeen,” I say. “And that college isn’t what I want. It’s never been what I wanted. And I’m so unhappy. I’m so unhappy.” I hear the crack in my voice, feel the tears spring into my eyes. “And you’ve known that for years and you haven’t done anything. And you made me go to that college even though you know it’s not what I want. I don’t want to be a lawyer. I want to be an illustrator.”
“That’s what this is about?” he says, his voice a mix of incredulity and frustration. “We’ve never stopped your art. You draw all the time. You’re throwing this ridiculous—dangerous—tantrum because we helped you make the right choice about your education?”
“No, Dad!” And finally my voice has risen to match his, emotion getting the better of me. “I’m doing this because I have to. Where have you been the last six years? Can’t you see what’s happened to me? I don’t have any friends. I don’t have anything. I’m just nothing. And I don’t want to be nothing, Daddy.” The “Daddy” slips out, betraying me. But I need him to see me as I am, my life as it is. It matters too much.
Quietly, he says, “You’re not nothing.”
“I feel like I am.”
“Peyton,” Dad says. “If this is some kind of breakdown—”
“It’s not,” I say. (Is it? Maybe it is.) “It’s what I have to do.”
“Regardless,” he says, as if a breakdown is the kind of thing you can “regardless” away. “You can’t just… fly away like this. We have to know where you are.”
“You do know where I am,” I say. “I’m right here.”
“With my credit card, I assume.”
I swallow. “Just for emergencies. I’ve got money saved.” All those years of having no friends to have experiences with and spend money on have finally paid off. I’ve got a decent chunk of savings accumulated. It won’t last forever, or maybe even very long, but it’s enough for now. For this.
“I’ll cancel the card,” he says. “I’ll book you a flight home and then cancel the card so you can’t use it.”
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t get on the flight, but okay.”
There’s another silence, longer this time. I can hear Dad’s breathing, the regular bursts of exhalation through his nose. What I’m learning is that if you do something so extreme, so beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so out of character, there’s actually nothing that can be said. I have blindsided my parents so completely, they’re left floundering in my absence.
“Peyton,” Dad says eventually, like repeating my name is a way of getting some kind of a grip on me, all these thousands of miles away. “Get on a plane and come home. Right now.”
Is that the best you can do? I think, and I’m surprised and maybe even a little disappointed. That’s your final card to play? My whole life I’ve carried this basic daughter assumption that my parents really do have the ultimate power over me, that I could never really defy them in any lasting, meaningful way. But now I’m standing here, my feet on the steady ground of a different country on the other side of the world, and what can they do? Nothing. They can’t will me back home any more than they can magic themselves beside me and physically drag me to an airport. Even the threat of Dad canceling his credit card is—I realize it in this exact moment—empty. If he does that and I really don’t come home, I’ll be stranded and unsafe. However furious my dad is, and however I’ve hurt his pride, I know that nothing is more important to him than my safety. He would just never take a risk like that.
And so I’m free.
“I love you,” I say. “Both of you. I’ll email you, like, every day, if you want. But I’m not coming home, not for a while.”
Our conversation circles for a while—Dad gets angrier; I stay calm—until Mum takes over again. Her shrillness has gone and now she’s in practical mode, asking me exactly where I’ll be staying, the address, phone number, any and all plans I’ve made.
“I can look after myself,” I say, once Mum has run out of questions. “You can trust me.”
“No, I can’t,” she says. “Clearly.”
When we hang up, I cry. It’s more a physical cry than an emotional one; all the stress of the last twenty-four hours—maybe even longer—pouring out of me. In England, if I had done this, everyone would have politely ignored me, but this is Canada, and four different people quietly and kindly ask me if I’m okay, if there’s anything they can do. To each, I stutter that, yes, I am; no, I don’t need anything; no, there’s no need to call anyone; yes, I’m really fine, thank you. I think a big part of me had assumed that the “Canadian people are really kind” thing was just a stereotype, but it turns out it’s actually true. At least here, in Vancouver airport.
I should leave, find an Uber, make my way to the hostel, but every time I think about standing up and moving, my knees go all wobbly. All my confidence has faded and I am suddenly very, very aware of how far from home I am, how un-England this country is, and I haven’t even left the airport yet. I think I’d been imagining Canada as England, just farther away, but already I’m overwhelmed by how very not the case that is. Oh God, I’m in Canada. I’m sitting on a bench on the other side of the world. The wrong side of the world. What the fuck have I done.
I try to breathe. This is fine. I can do this. I unlock my phone and stare at the time, the wrong time—English time. I open my settings and change my timezone so I am officially on Pacific Standard Time. See, I say to myself. I’m here. I can do this. I stand up, lifting my rucksack onto my shoulders. One thing at a time.
* * *
I’d chosen the hostel mainly because it was one of the only ones that had a bed in a dorm room available at such short notice that also looked nice and, most crucially, accommodated seventeen-year-olds. It’s part of a North American chain of hostels called the Sunshine Hostels, or Sun-Ho. The Vancouver one I’m staying in is called Sun-Ho-Van and it’s bright and cheerful when I arrive, even in the dark.
The girl behind the reception desk has a part-shaved head and multiple piercings in her ears and nose. Her badge says AMELI
A—NEW ZEALAND. She greets me cheerfully and talks through the hostel facilities and rules too quickly for me to really keep up as she checks me in and goes through my documentation. I hear something about “group activities,” but she’s already sped on to breakfast, which seems more important, so I don’t ask for more details.
There’s a photo of a tortoiseshell cat in a big frame resting on the reception desk, with a cardboard speech bubble pronouncing, MY NAME IS TEAPOT! WELCOME TO VANCOUVER! YES, I HAVE BEEN FED! I smile.
“Our hostel cat,” Amelia says, nodding at the picture as she slides my travel documents back over to me along with my room key. “She’s usually in the common room or hanging out here. Wherever she gets more attention. She’s good for a cuddle if you feel homesick. Or, like, just like cats. The only thing we ask is that you don’t feed her. She’s well fed, trust me.”
The dorm room is bigger than I’d expected, with two bunk beds on either side of the room and four lockers along one wall. No one else is in the room when I get there, though I can tell by the three other beds that they’re all taken. The top-left bunk is free, so I climb up onto it and take off my rucksack, looking around. I think, for probably the fiftieth time since I landed at Vancouver airport, I made it. It still doesn’t feel real.
I sit there for a while, just staring into space. It’s after ten on a Monday night, so I probably won’t be on my own in the dorm room for very long. I can’t face the idea of even talking to anyone else tonight, so I should get ready for bed quickly, but I can’t quite bring myself to move. How is it still Monday? This might be the literal longest day of my life. This morning I woke up in my own bed. Now I’m on the other side of the world, sitting on the top bunk of a bed in a youth hostel in Canada.
I pull out my phone and message Mum on WhatsApp.
Me:
Got to the hostel and I am fine. Just going to go to sleep. I love you xx
She replies immediately, even though it’s—I quickly calculate the time in my head—about six a.m. at home.
Mum:
I love you too. Please check in when you wake up xx
Me:
I will. Don’t worry xx
Mum:
Might as well tell me “don’t be a mother” xx
Me:
Please don’t send the police after me?
Mum:
So long as you check in regularly and send me your itineraries and I can be sure that you’re safe.
Me:
Is Dad OK?
Mum:
He’ll be fine. Get some sleep, my little bird xx
Me:
xxx
I can pretend that I don’t cry again, but I do. I’m so tired and overwhelmed. And then, when I finally get myself together and unpack what I need for the bathroom, I realize I’ve forgotten to pack pajamas. Basic error, Peyton. Really basic. I’ll have to sleep in my clothes tonight. Also, no towel. I have to go back down to reception to rent one for one Canadian dollar.
Amelia, still behind the desk, eyes me. Specifically, my wet, red eyes. “Everything okay?” she asks as she hands me a worn orange towel.
I nod, taking it. “Thanks.” I turn and leave before she can ask anything else in her knowing-but-gentle Kiwi voice.
“The desk is manned twenty-four seven,” she says. “Always someone here if you need anything.”
I glance behind me to nod at her, because I think I’ll cry if I have to speak. I jog back up the stairs and find the bathrooms, locking myself into one of the private cubicles, which turns out to contain a shower, toilet, and sink in one space hardly bigger than a wardrobe.
When I’m under the water—hot but dribbly—I repeat to myself my mini mantras. Independence, not loneliness. I have chosen to be here. I want to be here. I remind myself that I can go home at any moment, if I want. I am in control of myself and my life.
By the time I finally crawl under the covers, I’m too tired to really feel anything. I curl myself up, tucking my face into the crook of my arm, ready to let sleep take me. But it doesn’t. I just lie there in the dark, heart pounding, feeling the Canadaness of Canada all around me. It still seems so unreal, even as the sheets rustle beneath me and the mattress sinks under my weight. I am here; this is happening. Tomorrow, I will start my adventure for real. I’ll go out into the city and explore, like the intrepid adventurer I am choosing to be. Tomorrow will be the start of finding what I’m looking for.
That’s what you thought last time.
No. Stop. Don’t. This isn’t like that. I can learn from the mistakes I made then and not make them again. Or maybe it’s just one mistake I need to learn from. Namely, make friends at all costs. Such an obviously wrong thing to think, but I didn’t just think it—I believed it. Didn’t I put everything I had into achieving it?
I want to reach into the past and grab hold of my own shoulders. I want to say, Not that way. You’re doing this all wrong. Not him. Not them. That road I’m already on, spread out before me. A road that has somehow led me here, to this bunk bed and the dark, half a world away.
BEFORE
aka
Last time I was
planning for
tomorrow
aka
That day I met
my friends
(Or thought I did)
Day two of college, day two of my new life. Not quite exclamation-mark levels of enthusiasm; my optimism faded somewhat by the previous day’s lack of friend-making and the fact that I had math first thing, which I was dreading. Why had I let Dad talk me into taking math? Why? I told myself that I could live through one week of it, tell Dad I couldn’t bear it and then switch it for something else.
There wasn’t assigned seating, but everyone who knew each other—presumably the Eastridge students—had gravitated into pairs and toward desks. I dithered, glancing around at the other stragglers, like me, wondering whether to offer a smile to a stranger and hope we could grab a desk together.
This would have been the best thing to do, and I should have done it, but before I could the teacher, Mrs. Landon, sighed with impatience and started pointing us toward different seats. “You,” she said, pointing at me. “There.”
The seat was beside a lanky boy whose attention was on the boy and girl sitting behind him, all three of them mid-conversation. I slid myself awkwardly onto the stool, wishing I’d acted more quickly. Now I was stuck here. A couple of desks over, two of the stragglers from before were sitting together, smiling nervously at each other but already chatting away. That could have been me! Goddammit.
But then. “You all right?”
I glanced over automatically and the boy, my deskmate, was smiling at me, all casual. Friendly, even. He had shaggy brown hair, messy in an unstyled way, and eyes almost the same color.
A greeting! A normal, friendly greeting from a normal, friendly person. Like I was normal, too. Don’t fuck this up, Peyton. Do not fuck this up. Smile. I smiled. Say hi. “Hey.”
Yes!
“Consider this a very easy intro session,” Mrs. Landon was saying. “I’m going to go over what you can expect to cover this term and this year, when I’m going to be scheduling in tests and practice exam papers, that sort of thing, so I’d suggest you take notes. If you’re unsure about anything, ask now. If you ask me something later that you could have asked now, I will remember and assume you weren’t listening.”
Intense. I thought wistfully of the art studio, where I would be right now if I had any say in my own life. The wide-open spaces, the peaceful hum of everyone at work. I pulled out my notepad and pen, trying not to sigh.
“I’m Travis,” the boy whispered.
“Mr. Fuller,” Mrs. Landon said. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot.”
Travis smirked at her, tapping his pencil to his head in a mock salute, which earned him an eye roll. He didn’t say anything else to me for the next half an hour, but I basked in the casualness of our exchange. I listened as he carried on a patchwork whispered conversation
with the pair behind us—a girl that I gathered was called Flick and a boy whose name never came up—and made mental notes of the way they talked to each other, how often they insulted each other but in a way that was met with laughs, so it was obviously okay.
“Damn,” Travis said when Mrs. Landon had started going from desk to desk, handing out textbooks, and I realized with a shock of joy that he was talking to me. “Your handwriting is crazy neat.”
I felt instantly, instinctively, hot with shame and embarrassment, tensing against whatever else was to come. But the determined part of me reared up, trying to shake it off. No. No. Things are going to be different here.
“Yeah, it’s an old trick,” I said. I almost didn’t recognize my own voice. “Look neat, hide the messy truth.”
Travis laughed. “Sneaky.” He glanced behind us. “You hear that, Flick? You got to at least pretend to be neat.”
“Pretend to be neat?” Flick said, which made me realize that when my voice had come out slightly different it was because I’d accidentally mimicked hers. “If you’re pretending to be neat, doesn’t that mean you are neat? Like if you pretend to be confident, that looks like confidence, therefore you are confident?”
Should I turn slightly in my chair like Travis and join in? Is that how people make friends? But what should I say? I pretend, therefore I am. Yes! Wait, no. What if they don’t get the reference? What if they do and they think it’s pretentious?
“No amount of confidence can hide the mess that is you,” the boy next to Flick said. I heard her shriek and smack him, his laugh in return that was more like a cackle.
Travis didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the lesson, and neither did they. As I watched the three of them walk off together toward the dining hall, I cursed myself for missing my chance, though I still wasn’t sure if it would have been okay for me to have joined their conversation.
Later, after a lunch spent walking in a slow loop around the college rather than braving the common room alone, I went in to drop my things into my locker and saw them again, part of a larger group sprawled over the sofas. As well as Travis, Flick, and the boy, there were two other boys and one girl, all talking animatedly, probably multiple conversations at once. Flick was in the lap of the boy she’d been sitting with earlier. Judging by the way he had his hand curled around her upper thigh, I guessed he was her boyfriend. Which surprised me, because they hadn’t seemed to really like each other much earlier, in between all the insults. But what did I know?