I take a deep breath, as if extra oxygen is all I need to convince my mom against this plan. “I got off the bus an hour in, and then I . . . I bought a ticket back with my own money. I’ve thought about this—”
But she talks over me. “Fitzgerald Holton, you’re impossible. I’ve booked your hotels. Your brother is packed and waiting for you. You’re not bowing out of this trip. It’s happening.”
“But what if—”
“Everything is fine,” she says, placing undeniable emphasis on fine and closing the heavy cover on the anthology she was reading. She gets up from the table and pushes in the worn wooden chair. “Everything will be fine. You have nothing to worry about.”
I have everything to worry about. “I have a French quiz on Tuesday,” I say instead. “And—I’m going to be really behind if I’m out the entire week.”
“You’ll make up the quiz,” she replies, “and we both know you’ll mostly be missing movies in class and free study time.”
I say nothing. She watches me for a moment.
“It’s ten days,” she continues, her voice softening. “I’ll be okay on my own for ten days.”
I want to point out it’s not only ten days. It’s four years. If Lewis’s experience is any indication, it’s four years, each increasingly disconnected from home. She might not need me now, but she will soon. I hold the comment in, though. I promised myself I’d never throw her situation in her face.
“I know change is hard,” she says, “but give this a chance. You can’t make me your excuse not to.”
She’s not an excuse. She’s a reason, a very good one. But pointing that out would only put us on the road to an argument we’ve had enough times to know neither of us will ever win.
She continues. “You’re really going to make your poor mother—who has three dissertation drafts to read—escort you personally to your brother’s doorstep? Because I will, you know.” The corners of her mouth tug up. “Remember your eighth-grade field trip?”
I can’t hide a smile of my own. I’d tried to stay home instead of going on a history class trip to the Paul Revere House. It was my first overnight field trip, and I wasn’t interested in sharing a hotel room with three guys I barely knew. But when Mom came home and found me playing video games, she promptly drove me into Boston and deposited me with my teacher with strict orders not to permit me to leave under any circumstances. Even if it was horribly embarrassing, the effort she went to was kind of funny.
She catches my smile, and it’s clear she wins this one. I don’t enjoy arguing with her, and the trip will only be a week and a half. For all her talk of dragging me onto buses, she can’t actually force me to choose a college I don’t want to. The least I can do is give her trip a chance. “No . . .” I huff. “I won’t make my poor and very obstinate mother take me into Boston. I’ll absquatulate to South Station on my own,” I say, hoping she’ll enjoy the word choice.
Sure enough, she raises an eyebrow. “Absquatulate?”
“To make off with, humorously.”
“I swear, Fitzgerald, I’m a professor of the English language, and I don’t know half the words rattling around in that head of yours.” She walks to the doorway and straightens my coat.
I can’t help it. The nerves set in. I know she notices the change in my expression, because she places her hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes.
“Everything will be fine,” she repeats. From the sharpness in her gaze, I’m almost convinced. “You deserve a chance to know what’s out there. If you hate it, I promise, I won’t force you to go somewhere you don’t want to be. If after everything, you still feel SNHU is the best school for you, I’ll proudly send in your enrollment fee. I know it’s a great college—I have been teaching there for twenty years. I just want to know you’re choosing it too.”