the outside fire escape. While uncomfortable, the patch of hardwood is out of the way and wide enough for me to stretch my legs.
Leaning on the wall to lower myself to the floor, I glance out the window. In the frigid night, packs of partygoers stumble down the front steps. Laughter and shouts echo up from the quad over the vibrating rhythm of the music. My eyes sweep the view of old houses and fresh-faced students until I’m caught up short.
Under a streetlight, I see her.
Juniper hugs her arms over her chest, her hair unleashed from the ponytail I’ve come to expect and falling onto her shoulders. Her breath makes clouds in the cold. Matt’s nowhere in sight.
I hit the stairs without hesitating.
Juniper
I DON’T DISLIKE parties on principle. I enjoy them, even. I love hanging out with friends, the way the normal routines and rhythms of the day ebb away into the endless expanse of night. It’s like entering this universal in-between, a place where pressures relieve and rules change and nobody needs to be exactly who they are.
It’s just this party I’m not down with.
I wasn’t opposed when Matt suggested we come here with Carter. I was even looking forward to checking out my first college party. But when we got downstairs, it took two drinks and one round of beer pong for me to realize this was no different from every high school party I’d ever been to. Except for the obvious differences—the more extensive alcoholic offerings, the absence of anything resembling a curfew, the venue not being someone’s parents’ house—this party is identical to the ones I’ll go to next week and the next week and the next. I don’t know what else I expected. I just didn’t think this would be exactly what I expected.
Which is why I went outside. Out here, I can watch the campus in the nighttime. It’s better than nothing. Facing the cold, I zip up my coat and rub my hands together in front of my face, hoping to generate heat.
I met my abuela on a cold night like this. I remember distinctly our car rolling for the first time into the driveway of the house I now call home. Heavy snowbanks sat on the slanted roofs and the windowsills. The lights were on in every room. When I hopped out onto the driveway, my shoes crunching the snow, the wind stung my cheeks and nose the way it’s doing now. I followed my parents up the path to the porch.
The front door opened, revealing a woman framed in the doorway. She greeted my father with a crushing hug and my mother with a hesitant kiss on the cheek, which I know now was because she’d never met her son’s wife before. Her eyes caught on three-year-old Callie, held on my mother’s hip, and she leaned in to whisper inaudibly to my sister. When she drew back, her eyes had filled with tears. She looked down, and finding me and Marisa clinging behind me, she smiled.
“You don’t know me,” she said, her voice weathered and warm, “but I’m your abuela.”
I blinked. I didn’t know the word. Since I didn’t meet my dad’s family until I was seven, even now I have only a fragmented fluency in Spanish. When we moved to Springfield, I didn’t know a word. I knew nothing of my dad’s family’s culture. Not their food, their traditions, their histories. To this day, I consider those things part of my life but not of me. They’re ours but not exactly mine.
“Your grandmother,” my abuela clarified.
I didn’t know what to say. Marisa, who hadn’t yet exited her shy phase, stood stock-still in my shadow.
“This is my sister,” Abuela continued when a taller, sterner woman entered the doorway. “Your tía Sofi.” I had no idea how familiar I’d become with the expression on Tía’s face then—reserved and wary, with a kind of proud and loving protectiveness. “We’re very sorry we’re only meeting you now. We have a lot of missed time to make up for.” Her expression turned a touch conspiratorial. “Do you know I make a really special meal for everyone in my family every year on their birthday?”