“How is the biology program?” my father had asked as we passed by the science buildings.
“The biology program is ranked highly, sir. It is one of the toughest at Penn State, but one of the most rewarding. Many of our graduates go on to higher education.” The boy who was giving our group the tour had the incredible ability to walk backwards without running into anyone.
“What do you think?” my parents had asked in our hotel room afterward.
“I’m coming here.”
I feel the same way now. It is as if I have eaten one large dose of happy, and my tummy has no signs of butterflies, nervousness, or excitement. I am still.
James comes into view from the other side of the pavilion. His black peacoat and white sneakers look immaculate despite the remnants of a recent snowfall.
He greets me with a, “Hey,” in his deep voice, and hits his shoes on the side of the steps to dust off the snow. He gives me a hug and though it’s barely perceptible, he’s breathing me in.
I do the same. His hint of cologne feels like home.
“How were your interviews?”
“Good. I kept wondering if they thought I was an idiot. It was hard to crack them!”
“They were probably trying to make you nervous,” he says reassuringly. “I know you killed it.”
“Thank you… How was your break?”
“Really good. My cousins came up from Virginia. I watched a lot of movies. It was relaxing.”
Wishing I’d heard about it when it happened, I fidget a little, looking around.
“Nithya,” he says, gently. “What’s going on?”
I rehearsed a speech on the walk here about how this relationship would be really difficult and there would be days I wanted to walk away or days he would, but that I wanted to go through it with him because I couldn’t imagine life without him. But when I look up at him, his flushed cheeks in the winter snow and wide hopeful eyes, I’m struck dumb. So, I speak from the heart instead… Which I suppose is the way I should have done it all along.
“I have always done what I was supposed to do. I’ve always followed the rules and colored inside the lines. My world has always been organized. And it’s never reached further than my family because I never needed anyone else. The first two times we met, I didn’t know which way was up. It was so out of character. And when the smoke cleared, there you were. Nothing has been the same since you showed up, James. There’s been vulnerability and unfamiliarity… And there’s been truth. Laughter. Challenges. Things that I never expected of myself, like falling for someone so different, are in my hands now, and I can’t walk away.
“You’ve…” I struggle to find the words. “…changed everything. You’ve changed me. And if I get to feel this little earthquake, this shift in what I know, every day when I’m with you, then it’s a risk worth taking. Every second I’m with you is a risk worth taking.” I take a deep breath to steady myself. “I want you. I want to be rebellious and safe, wanted and challenged, broken and whole, and I want it all with you. I am all in.”
The passing seconds feel like minutes. I can’t take my eyes off his, and our breaths form clouds between us, our faces inches apart. Then he says four words that sound like music to my ears.
“I’m all in, too.”
My hands are at the nape of his neck, his hair between my fingers, and I pull him close, arching my back as I push into him, and our lips meet. Unlike the desperate kiss in the apartment when he left two months ago, this one is filled with hope and promise. The snow falls around us, the clouds giving the sky an eerily bright gray glow as if to say, “Look at what has been created.” We are limitless, and in my heart of hearts, I know the greatest love stories in the world have been made of moments lesser than these.
t is one month into my new relationship with James. It’s also the night before THON weekend begins–a forty-six hour long, no-sitting, no-sleeping dance marathon, which sixteen thousand Penn Staters take part in every year. The very night James came to the party where he saved me, he was late because he had an interview for a captain position on the morale committee.
Fourteen organizing committees, headed by a small number of captains and one overall each, have worked through the past year to fundraise for the Four Diamonds fund, which assists pediatric cancer patients at Hershey Medical Center. Students brave freezing weather and rain and stand on street corners in major cities with coffee cans to ask for money. The committees work like hell to organize entertainment, hospitality, and special events for the big weekend. James is a captain on morale, which pairs each morale committee member with a dancer. It is the moraler’s job to keep their dancer’s excitement up, particularly during the brutal tail end of the marathon, where muscles ache and all anyone wants to do is sleep. Before the big weekend, they create mail to be delivered throughout the forty-six hours, devise personalized packages to help their dancers stay on their feet, and plan special surprises.
Then, during the last weekend in February, all the preparation comes together in one enormous dance marathon at the Bryce Jordan Center. Fraternities and sororities, the ones who started the marathon as a fundraiser in the seventies, come dressed in neon colors, holding up their Greek letters with pride as they support the dancers chosen to represent them. Other organizations like Red Cross, who I supported when I participated, also choose representatives. Each dancer and organization represents a family with a child who has undergone or may still be undergoing treatment at Hershey.
I was a part of the rules and regulation committee for my first two years at Penn State. During junior year, THON was one of the many things I had to forgo in lieu of MCAT classes, organic chemistry, and volunteer work at the hospital and health services center. To not participate during the last two years serves as one of my few regrets, but though I am no longer a committee member, I have made it a point to attend THON every year and stand with the dancers and volunteers as a spectator.
“I got you a present,” I tell James on Thursday night, the night before he is to line the pathway to the Bryce Jordan Center along with his fellow morale captains as dancers nervously walk through the human tunnel.
“You didn’t have to do that.” He packs tennis balls into his Nike bag for his dancer to roll her feet on when she’s sore.
“I’m proud of you. Of course I did!” I hand him a wrapped gift.
He tears the paper off quickly, the opposite of the deliberate movements I make when I open my presents.
“This is perfect. You’re perfect,” James tells me, as he leans in for a kiss. He holds a silver keychain with a portable phone charger attached, engraved with this year’s THON logo, Dream Forward.
“Overstatement of the year.” I can’t hide the happiness, I’m thrilled he loves it. The amount of time I spent looking into gifts for techies is unreal.
“Do you think you’ll be there for the whole thing?”
“I hope to stay there for all of it.” I remind myself to take a nap before I go. “Are you ready to pay it forward?”
“Every year,” he replies, with a contemplative smile. His words from a few weeks back ring in my mind again: Max pays it forward by being a doctor. I do THON so no other little brother has go through the same shit we went through.
The gates open at four on Friday afternoon. There is already a line, slowly wrapping its way around Beaver Stadium before we can enter. Every organization tries to take over the same section of the Bryce Jordan Center each year so the massive rush of people into the building is a huge wave of college students on cell phones, spreading their belongings over rows of seats so their friends can join them later. We sit in the arena seats, watching dancers, captains, and committee members file in and begin stretching on the floor below. At promptly 6:00 p.m., the overall committees speak and begin an exuberant countdown.
Everyone, the supporters in the stands and the dancers on the floor, stands together, officially kicking off the weekend with showers of confetti and loud music. No one is allowed
to sit anywhere in the arena.
The forty-six hours that follow are a haze of colors. The stage, a diamond-shaped custom made creation, is a hub of action. The Penn State athletes put on a show with different teams showing off various talents. The women’s soccer team dances to a Spice Girls song. The Nittany Lion makes appearances in jazzy outfits, and the children, the focus of the entire weekend, remind us that they’re cancer patients last and talented kids first as they perform their little hearts out for a packed house. Committee members and captains run behind the stage and underneath the main concourse with cell phones to their ears, sorting out any issues with committees and doing their best to keep the sleep-deprived dancers from feeling their pain. Families who have been impacted by the Four Diamonds fund are on the floor; they spray water guns, throw beach balls, color, create art projects at project tables, and play on Slip’n’Slides set up by the organizers of THON for all the dancers and children to enjoy. All the while, thousands of supporters stand in solidarity with the dancers. Rules and regulations committee members filter through the audience to ensure no one sits down in view of the volunteers.
I take photographs all weekend long. One of my pictures captures James holding a little girl dressed in a tutu with a crown on her head. She holds a squirt gun to his chest and he and his dancer, a petite brunette named Kate, are mid-laugh, heads thrown back. I can hear him in my mind as I look at it on the small two-inch screen, imagining it bubble from his belly. He should go sleep in his apartment on his sleep shift, but he stays on, and his exhaustion doesn’t show. He is happy to be in the midst of the action.
-I feel so lucky to be doing this, James texts me partway through the night.
You are. We are. Remember who you’re doing this for. And text me if you need anything, I reply, knowing that despite him being a runner, his legs must be throbbing by now.
The last four hours are filled with stories from families on the long road to recovery and a twenty-minute tribute to the THON children who are no longer with us. The tales don’t leave a dry eye in the house. College boys who drink their way through weekends are red-eyed, and girls like me who move through life without really realizing how good we’ve had it swallow back sobs. Each of us is acutely aware of how short life is, how the most innocent can be taken away. Each of us knows forty-six hours on our feet is nothing compared to the thousands of hours that these children have whiled away undergoing MRIs, CT scans, blood testing, radiation treatments, chemotherapy, surgeries. This gratefulness and awe isn’t just a college thing. This weekend, it’s a Penn State thing.
I observe James during a speech a Four Diamonds family gives about the chemotherapy process. Even with six hundred people on the floor, my eyes pick him out of the crowd immediately. The muscle in his jaw twitches when the mother tells us how all hope felt lost. The numbers of personal connections in this room to cancer are heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. It reminds me why it’s so important to me to go into medicine and make a difference–so someday, events like these don’t need to be held because people don’t lose the ones they love.
“Ten, nine, eight…” The countdown begins for the dancers to sit. It’s been forty-six hours. My eyes are red and burn from being awake, and my feet are excruciatingly sore, but I’m just one of thousands. Some dancers are delusional. Others are unable to remember conversations they had minutes before because they are so exhausted. Yet they fight on for the final ten seconds before everybody in the arena breaks into a raucous cheer as they get to rest their weary legs and sit down.
The breakdowns of the total are announced–how much each organization raised and which ones raised the most. The fraternities and sororities, who compete amongst themselves, have six-digit figures. It’s staggering when I picture the amount of effort used to just fill one coffee can with people’s change.
“You ready, Nithya?” Tommy asks me. He is one of James’ friends who kept me company throughout the weekend and endured the endless trips to the concession stand for overpriced pizzas and water with unfailing good grace.
“You bet. Time to see what James and everyone else has worked for!”
You can hear a pin drop as the Overall THON Chair tells us to wait for the total. Cameras are in the air to capture the moment.
“$7,490,133.87!”
The screams are deafening. Sixteen thousand rise to their feet for just a few more minutes, screaming, hugging and in more cases than I can count, in tears. THON has hit another successful record-breaking milestone. The Overall Committee members, now jumping up and down on stage, hold up white signs with one number each, displaying the total like a neon sign. The camera flashes, capturing this moment for posterity, are blinking like fireflies.
When I look at James, his arms wrapped around the other captains in his morale committee, there are tears streaming down his face. I’ve never been more proud of him.
HON is a major mark for the year. Each event is ticked off: applications due, interviews, spring semester starts, THON, spring break, medical school acceptances, finals, and graduation. After THON, spring break flies by with a visit home and so many coffee dates with friends that I lose count. When I return, medical schools are about to send out their decisions.
The panic of our senior year winding down lessens when I think of all the minutes James and I have crammed in. We learn the small things about each other in our blissful ‘new relationship honeymoon phase’. James knows I pick out the cookie dough from my ice cream to eat at the very end. I know how his little finger on his left hand doesn’t bend as far as it should because he broke it playing backyard football in high school. He knows I’ve never broken a bone, had stitches, or required hospitalization.
“How do you even know you want to be a doctor if you don’t know what the inside of a hospital looks like?” he needles me, and I retort that he can’t be a lawyer then, since he spent most of his twenty-three years on a quest to get into trouble.
Sophia tries to come up with a moniker, similar to ‘Brangelina,’ her celebrity couple obsession for the last three years. She says it doesn’t work for James and I because there are too many syllables, but I figure it’s because I’m Indian and he’s American. ‘Jithya’ or ‘Names’ just doesn’t sound as effortless. James points out when I mention our flawed name chemistry that Sophia and Luca’s don’t make an easy portmanteau either. Sometimes, it serves as one more reminder that James and I connect, but don’t match. The nights are the toughest. My conscience usually kicks in when my mother calls while I’m with him. I am now sure a mother’s intuition exists. She always seems to close the one hundred-fifty mile gap that allows me to break the rules by calling me right when she senses my transgression.
“Amma, I’ll call you back, okay? I’m at dinner.” I take a bite of my baby’s veggie burger.
“Okay, baby, sounds good! Who did you go with?”
“Just James!” I forget for a split second who I’m talking to and bite my tongue.
“Who is James?” She sounds very curious and a bit worried before I tell her he’s just a friend and I’ll call her back. I find James giving me a knowing glance as I sheepishly stow my phone away.
“Why are you with me?” I ask him one day. I always told myself I would never be one of those girls, the eternal victims of insecurity, but I’ve finally understood the fun in being wooed. The whispered comments, the behind-the-scenes romance, the outward bravado… This game has become fun to play if only for the sake of my ego.
“Lack of better options,” he teases without looking up from his ESPN magazine. It’s his only periodical subscription because he likes to read most of the news online.
“Thanks,” I say, sarcastically, before turning back to the tator tot casserole I’m in the middle of making for dinner.
“Did I upset you?” He finally looks up and sets down the magazine onto the coffee table.
I shake my head and stick my tongue out at him.
“I’m with you because you’re intelligent. You
intrigue me. And because you don’t let me get away with shit, including embarrassing conversations like this.” He wraps his arms around me from behind. “And because you’re kind of sexy.”
“Kind of?” I look up.
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.” He kisses my forehead before stealing a bite.
Our pending acceptances to law and medical school mean we are playing a perpetual waiting game. I receive my first two rejections, and I can’t lie when I say I am disappointed. Though they weren’t from my top schools, the narrowing of options does stress me. Some schools, however, want my grades through the end of the year, so I can’t ignore the schoolwork. James has received one rejection from Harvard, but shakes it off like a champion.
“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to go to Columbia anyway. Besides, what’s meant to be will happen.” He takes notes in his chicken scratch and is unbothered.
“Aren’t you worried at all?” I ask, incredulous at his calm demeanor.
“What’s the point in worrying? They’ll decide. We’ll hear back soon enough.”
Just days later, we celebrate Sophia’s acceptance into NYU Law. While Luca builds up his client list at his public relations firm, Sophia will hit the books. We are out to rejoice at the Indian restaurant downtown, a place James and Sophia have come to love thanks to yours truly–naans are Sophia’s favorite while James is partial to any kind of paneer, something we have in common. Luca says the spiciness of Indian food reminds him of his Latin heritage, so he never complains.
“To Sophia!” We raise our glasses of mango lassi, and Sophia blushes.
“Now, we’re waiting on you, Nithya. Let’s crank those acceptances out so you can come join us in the city!” Luca is filled with optimism.
“Let’s hope so!” I cross my fingers, but inside, a piece of me quakes.
I receive three more rejections in the next two weeks. The standard, We appreciate your interest in (said university). Unfortunately, due to the high volume of qualified applicants, we regret to inform you… has been a phrase I could recite in my sleep after hours of staring at the letters, hoping something, anything, will change the outcome or tell me why I wasn’t good enough.
The Rearranged Life Page 15