Tim nodded. He didn’t say he had to go. I told him, again, how surprised I was. My family had just spent Christmas together. Elise and Charlie had come in from California. They stayed in her old room, and I stayed in mine, and on the afternoon of Christmas Day, we’d walked over to old Mr. Wansing’s for the neighborhood pie party just like we had on every Christmas Day of my life. Everything seemed normal. My mother got my father a recording device that looked like a pen, something he could use at work. My father got her a juice machine. They’d sat next to each other on the couch in bathrobes and watched as we opened our presents from them. In my memory, they both looked happy.
After a while, Tim started to look tired, his green eyes squinty, his long arms going wide when he stretched and yawned. I told him he could go if he wanted. I would be fine, I said. But I knew I wouldn’t be. I didn’t know what I would do with myself the rest of the night. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I wouldn’t be able to study.
He raked his hands through his brown hair and said, “This may sound stupid, but when you’re this upset, sometimes TV is good.”
I didn’t have a television, so he took me to his apartment, where I watched infomercials and a documentary on coral reefs until I fell asleep on his couch. He slept in the chair beside me, his legs dangling over the armrest, one of his hands in my hair.
I never liked living in the dorm. Even as a freshman, I disliked the noise, the ugly, orange-cushioned furniture, the communal bathrooms halfway down the hall. During my first visit home, I worked out a careful budget to show my parents that their costs would actually go down for my sophomore year, even when taking utilities and food into account, if they let me move into an apartment with two other girls on my floor. My mother seemed persuaded, but my father would have none of it. He seemed preoccupied by the idea that I would somehow be killed as soon as I had to buy my own groceries. He didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of me walking or biking to the store. He didn’t care that one of my roommates would have a car. He worried my roommates would not be careful about locking doors and windows. He worried that they would skip out on their share of the rent, or suddenly start smoking, or have weird boyfriends. And then, he wanted to know, what would I do?
There was no arguing with him when he got like that, impervious to logic, talking too quickly to hear anything I said. Elise might have known what to say, or yell, back at him; but all I could think was that I had nothing to negotiate with, nothing to threaten, nothing to withhold.
Later that night, my mother tried to plead my case. She didn’t know I was listening. She thought I’d gone out to walk Bowzer, but I was just standing in the mudroom, scratching Bowzer under his collar so he would stay quiet, my ear pressed against the door.
“You read way too many of those crime books.” She sounded angrier than I was. “They are making you completely paranoid. And no, do not talk to me about everything you’ve seen in court. You have to quit talking to Veronica like that. I don’t want to teach her to be afraid of everything.” Here, to my surprise, her voice broke.
He started in with a “You don’t kno—” but she made a yelping sound so loud and sudden that I pulled away from the door, and my father actually stopped talking.
“She is making a perfectly reasonable request,” my mother said, her voice quiet now, her breathing even. “I think we could at least consider it.”
A long silence followed. I leaned close to the door again, waiting. I smelled cookies baking, chocolate chip. She would send me back to the dorm with several bags, enough to give out to my friends.
“Okay,” he said. “I considered it. And the answer is no. She’s safer in the dorm. I’m paying for the dorm. I’m not paying for an apartment yet. Period.”
He was calmer the next time we talked, though he didn’t change his mind. He said I would have to stay in the dorm until he could get my