Page 7 of Past Present Future
Most of it, I’ve compartmentalized. I’ve shrunk it and hidden it away until it’s nothing more than a speck. Infinitesimal, and yet somehow always there. Even when I try to put it behind bars.
Marc leaves to get something from their car while Skyler continues unpacking, hanging up a few button-downs and lazily folding some T-shirts. One thing I’ve learned from years of altering my own Goodwill suits: those shirts are definitely going to wrinkle. But Skyler seems unbothered, humming to himself and every so often swiping a hand through his artfully floppy hair.
“So, you’re from here?” I ask as I stretch a sheet over my bed, though the answer seems obvious.
“Staten Island born and raised. And proud of it.” He says this last part as though worried I might fight him on it, and I’m getting the feeling that New York as a state is a crucial part of his personality.
“So I know who to ask if I get lost.”
He waves a hand, casual. Everything about Skyler seems casual: the relaxed slope of his posture, the way he talks with his dad, how he decides to plug in his mini fridge instead of charging his laptop before I offer him one of the two surge protectors I packed. “New York’s easy—most of Manhattan’s on a grid. Avenues run north and south and streets run east and west. That’ll help you out more than you might think.”
He unfurls a piece of art designed like one of those old motivational posters, with a kitten poised on the edge of a table, trying to bat a fish out of its bowl. In lieu of something inspirational, HERE FOR A GOOD TIME, NOT A LONG TIME is printed across the top.
“I’m in the Gallatin school,” Skyler says. “That’s the one where you design your own concentration—they’re really particular about not calling it a major. Pretty stoked about it, especially after I saw that someone last year graduated with a concentration in Orange. Literally just the color orange. What about you?”
“That’s really cool.” At NYU, you’re admitted to a specific program; very few people start undecided. “I’m linguistics, which sounds a lot less thrilling than Orange.”
“Oh shit. So I better watch my grammar around you, huh? Because if I’m being completely honest, I still have no idea when to use lie versus lay. Or laid.” Then he lifts his eyebrows, his mouth forming a smirk. “Unless we’re talking about very specific circumstances.”
Here is the thing. I don’t necessarily have low self-esteem, but there are some guys I can tell I’m going to have a difficult time bonding with, as though there is some kind of unspoken hierarchy and I am not exactly at the top. And it has nothing to do with the correct usage of “lie” and “lay.” My closest friends from high school, Adrian Quinlan, Sean Yee, and Cyrus Grant-Hayes, are at UC Davis, UW, and Western. Last week, Sean sent a photo of his school’s new computer lab to our group chat and we all geeked out over it. We were the presidents of the student council, chess club, robotics club, and Anime Appreciation Society. We even called ourselves “the Quad,” short for quadrilateral, because—well, no big mystery, there were four of us. They’re great guys, but none of us were under any delusions of popularity. We didn’t talk about relationships and we very rarely made references to sex—largely because none of us were having it.
But even though Skyler Benedetti doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who’d have seamlessly fit into my friend group back home, maybe here in New York, none of that matters.
“Getting late,” Marc says when he returns with one last suitcase, peeking at his watch and then tapping the door. “You want to grab a bite with us, Neil?”
“I don’t want to intrude.” I glance at Skyler, waiting for some slight signal that maybe he wants this time with his dad to himself.
“Not intruding. By the end of the year, I’m sure we’ll be like brothers.”
I try to imagine myself integrating into this family of very tall, very confident men. I have no reason to say no, even if they’re just being polite.
“Sure,” I say after a beat. “Dinner sounds great.” And then, worried about the kind of impression I might be making: “Do you mind if I hop in the shower first?”
After I’ve rinsed off the flight, we end up at a nearby pizza place, much to my delight, where Marc declares a little too loudly that it isn’t as good as Staten Island pizza—though he and Skyler can’t agree on which pizzeria is best. They argue and snip at each other in this practiced, loving way, and when Marc asks about my family, I mention only my mom and Natalie and Christopher, my mom’s boyfriend, and no questions are asked about my dad. Marc even invites me to their house for Thanksgiving. I can’t quite believe I’m having this conversation over pizza with two people who were strangers a few hours ago.
Four years of high school, and even earlier than that, I dreamed of going somewhere no one knew my past. A gorgeous city full of opportunity. A place I built up in my mind for so long that sometimes I worried it would never live up to the fantasy.
I have been enamored with words for much of my life, and yet no matter how deeply I root through my mental vocabulary, I cannot find the precise language to describe this feeling. So I settle for something simple:
Finally.
3
ROWAN
WHEN I UNLOCK the door, I’m convinced I have the wrong room. Because it already looks like two people—or maybe even a half dozen—live here, piles of clothes stacked on both beds, photos and fairy lights strung up on three fourths of the available wall space, notebooks and folders strewn across the desks.
The only thing missing is my actual roommate.
“Dios mío,” my mom says under her breath, eyeing the walls with a particularly venomous glare. “That wasn’t very considerate of her.”
“Maybe she didn’t think I’d be moving in today.” I nudge aside an ironing board, almost impaling a stuffed penguin perched atop a tower of textbooks. “Or at all.”
As gently as I can, I transfer a mound of sweaters from what I assume is my bed to the other. Despite what I reassured Kirby and Mara, I’ve kind of been hoping my roommate and I become lifelong friends. I was Rowan’s college roommate, she’d say during her toast at my potential future wedding, for better or for worse. Then we’d share a wink because of all the mischief we got into back then. But Paulina Radowski from Sacramento never responded to my follow request on Instagram and remains as much of a mystery as the day her name popped into my email with the subject line Successful Roommate Match! Mostly I’m just impressed that she managed to do so much to the room in so little time.
My mom holds tightly to her purse, as though trying to protect it from the chaos. “It’s… nice.”
I roll my eyes, dropping my navy JanSport into a desk chair. “It’s not supposed to be a luxury apartment. That’s part of the experience.”