but one boy three rows from the back. He remains in his chair, writing in a paperback book, while the rest of us head for the doors. His red hair stands out in the room, and when I pass him, he glances up for a heartbeat and his eyes meet mine. They’re startlingly blue, set in narrow, freckled features. It’s a face seemingly sculpted in its precision, with high cheekbones and a serious, contemplative mouth.
I’m the one to break our eye contact, walking on with the crowd.
The admissions officer divides the room in two for the campus tour. Because we’re on different sides, the boy and I don’t end up in the same group. Finally, in the bustle of everyone finding their tour guide, he closes his book and joins the others.
He obviously hadn’t even noticed the information session ending, and the flush I felt when Matt texted through the presentation returns to my cheeks. This guy is completely checked out, finding whatever is in his book more important than the information he’ll use to make the decision on which his future hinges.
I bet I know what he’s thinking. Because I bet it’s no different from the perception of college I’ve watched form for countless classmates. There’s an interchangeability to the college experience for them, the impression they’ll be content with whatever universities check a standard series of boxes. Football, parties, degree. They consider college nothing but doing what they’ve been doing, being who they’ve been.
They’d rather read, or text people back home, than look at what’s ahead.
I walk out onto the tour, carrying my coffee-scented cardigan, and put the boy from my thoughts.
Juniper
THE T RUMBLES toward Park Street. The view of the river explodes through the glass of the windows when we emerge from the tunnel, the ice reflecting the oil-paint oranges and pinks of the sunset.
It’s nearly five. I’m packed between students with headphones and university sweatshirts and moms corralling children on the crowded train. Matt and I grabbed sandwiches when the BU tour ended around noon. After, I changed my shirt and took the T into Cambridge on my own for the Harvard tour I had scheduled for three. I’d planned to tour both schools today knowing I could cover each in a couple of hours.
The Harvard tour was breathtaking—the wrought-iron gates and brick buildings, the new dusting of snow on the courtyard where poets and presidents walked, the towering library. It felt intimidating, though, even unfriendly, if inspiring. I’d pitched the idea of touring Harvard to Matt weeks ago, but he wasn’t interested. Over our sandwiches today, I tried again on the off chance he’d changed his mind. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t. We made plans to meet in the North End when I was done.
While I’m changing trains in the Park Street station, I find myself imagining what Matt’s doing now. I know with incontrovertible certainty he napped in the hotel room. Every chance the boy gets, he dozes. Traverson family trait, he told me once, which is a bullshit excuse. I’d guess when he woke up, he wandered to the closest coffee shop to grab a matcha because coffee is “gross” to him. It’s nice just thinking about it—he’s probably befriended half the baristas by now. There’s a tender pride to envisioning the person you love when you’re not there, being funny with friends, being charming with classmates, having interests and inspirations. It’s different from imagining yourself with them, and differently wonderful.
The river of my thoughts reverses course, and I think back to the day he and I began. The hallways of Springfield High were empty, everyone having headed to the cafeteria for lunch. I had doubled back to grab the heavy AP US History textbook from my locker, and I was on my way to rejoin my friends when Matt walked past me.
He was wearing his white Adidas, and his jeans bore grass stains, probably because he’d been sitting in the courtyard with his friends in the mild September weather, no longer summer and not quite fall, instead of in the cafeteria. I remember his confident stride—which hasn’t changed—and how he’d recently cut his hair.
Of course, I blushed.
This was Matt Traverson. Baseball co-captain, big man on campus—whatever