Page 4 of Past Present Future
“We’ll text and talk all the time. I already have my train ticket for the end of September.”
“And then I’ll be in Boston for Thanksgiving.”
“Why does that feel so far away?”
Suddenly I’m worried we haven’t discussed it enough, that we spent too much time living in the moment this summer when we should have mapped out call schedules with color-coded spreadsheets.
It’s what High School Rowan might have done, but I guess that’s not who I am anymore.
“We’re going to be okay.” His voice is solid, and his eyes on me will never not make me feel so wholly seen. “I can’t wait to show you New York. Assuming, of course, that I know my way around after a month.” A soft smile. “I love you, Artoo.”
The nickname has its intended effect: to remind me that all our history cannot be undone just because we’ll be in two different states.
“I love you too.” I hold him close. Inhale deeply. One more kiss, and then another. “Fly safe and don’t forget me.”
“Impossible.”
I try to stop the statistics about long-distance relationships racing through my mind as he opens the passenger door, kisses two fingers, and holds them to his heart. With a grit I honed over four years of trying to best him, I push aside the anxiety and replace it with a fierce resolve.
We’re going to be the ones who make it.
After all, overachieving is kind of what we’re known for.
Neil,
Hard to believe we’re almost at the end of this.
I suppose in a way, I’ll miss you, the same way you miss a pesky mosquito trapped between the window and the screen. You’re not happy it’s there, exactly, but when the buzzing stops, something just feels off.
I kid, I kid. You’re much nicer than a mosquito, which is a strange thing to realize on the last day of school, but there it is. From elections to gym class contests, you’ve really kept me on my toes, too. Rude to find out that you’re a decent human being underneath it all. Don’t get a big head about this, but… I’m glad we teamed up today, even if we don’t end up winning. (But how could we not?!)
Because I think, deep down, I might actually miss everything. Just a little.
Best of luck next year. HAGS! (Please know I mean that ironically.)
Rowan “Artoo” Roth
2
NEIL
“PLEASE STOW YOUR tray tables and return your seats to their upright positions,” says a flight attendant over the intercom, and despite my grogginess, I’m quick to comply. An ardent rule-follower, even 2,415 miles away from home, according to the flight tracker on the screen in front of me.
Out the window, swaths of blue sky paint the horizon, barely a cloud in sight. I crane my neck to get a better view of the city taking shape beneath me, the island jutting into the East River—or is it the Hudson?—and buildings stacked like child’s toys. A topographical map come to life.
“It’s my first time in New York,” I explain to the middle-aged woman sitting next to me when I accidentally jostle her armrest, if my eagerness hasn’t already given me away. First time on a plane, too, but somehow that seems embarrassing to admit to a stranger. She just gives me a lift of her eyebrows and a mumbled “congratulations.”
I try to imagine taking this flight so frequently that the views cease to impress. Even if I make this trip one hundred times, I am somehow certain I’ll remain the overexcited passenger with his face pressed to the window, dying for a first glimpse of the destination.
Ever since I learned of its existence, I have dreamed of New York. My mom grew up outside Philadelphia and spent long weekends there in the summer as a teenager, and I’ve always wished we still had family on the East Coast so we’d have had a reason to visit. She talked about it like it was an amusement park, a one-of-a-kind sensory experience—the food and the energy and all the different languages she heard on the street, how you could never feel truly alone, no matter the time of day. I couldn’t get enough of those stories. I pictured it the way it’s shown in movies, with that famous, now-cliché shot of a New York City sidewalk: everyone in their own worlds as they bustle down the street to wherever they’re going. Because everyone is always going somewhere, somewhere important, and I loved the idea of being caught in that tidal wave of determination. Of ambition.
Anytime I felt lonely, I simply reminded myself that one day I’d be swept up in that same tidal wave.
As I grew older, I set my sights specifically on NYU. We couldn’t afford a visit, but that didn’t matter—its top-tier linguistics program seemed a perfect match. I was certain I was meant to be there.
The only thing New York doesn’t have going for it is the fact that Rowan Roth isn’t in it.
Last night, I told her I missed her already, but the truth is that I have missed her all summer. Every moment she smiled, laughed, gazed at me in a way that made my heart swell—so, approximately 99 percent of the time we spent together—felt like something to stow in a secret pocket of my suitcase and take back out when we were deep in winter.