an hour, but my heart’s not in it. As I walk out the front I check my phone, hoping for a text from Fitz. I can’t confide in my sister, but there are eight million people in this city. It’s nice to know I could confide in one of them.
Fitz
OKAY, I UNDERSTAND why my mom loves this book.
I lift my head from the final page, gazing out the window of the café where I holed up when the temperature dropped in the park. I spent the remainder of the day reading, and the sun is lower in the sky. The streets glow with golden light breaking through the buildings. Walking out into the park, I rub my hands in front of my face while I watch the passersby, The Great Gatsby’s final words echoing in my head.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. My chest loosened when I read them. I sat up straighter, feeling lightened.
I don’t fully understand the effect the ending has on me. Hoping to figure the question out, I walk through the park, holding my trusted companion Gatsby to my side. I pass couples hand in hand and evening dog walks, circling the park three times before I’ve organized my thoughts.
Gatsby spent his entire life trying to recapture the past. He failed. Time worked against him like it does everyone. Everything he accomplished, every piece of his meticulous planning, was in the pursuit of something already behind him, something receding in a rearview mirror he mistook for a windshield. And for what? Gatsby lived a half-life, the warped reflection of human existence.
I won’t repeat his mistake.
I lift my head to the road ahead and pull out my phone.
Juniper
FOR A MOMENT, I wonder if I’ve wandered into a fairy tale. Except not one of the fairy tales Mom would read to me and Marisa and Callie from her hardcover anthology with the pastel-painted cover, with stories of princesses and witches and occasionally dragons. No, this is the kind of fairy tale Juniper Ramírez would live, if magic whisked her from the college tour she was enjoying in the present day and transported her to this incredible, impossible wonderland between buildings.
I’ve just come up the grimy bolted-metal stairs from street level. What spreads out in front of me is a walkway—or park—or both. Sheets of rough concrete stretch in either direction, with smaller pavement pathways and wooden decks interspersed. Plants entwine the paths, the trees brittle and the bushes brushed with snow. The walkway hangs high over the streets, cutting through the skyscrapers rising up on both sides.
The High Line, Fitz called this place. When he texted with nothing but an invitation—no dictionary words, no college questions—I didn’t recognize the name. I promptly found the place on my phone and hopped on the subway.
I stare over the edge, watching the churn of cars below and the colors of the sunset. Turning back, I imagine the High Line in spring and summer, the foliage green, the trees waving in the breeze like guests enjoying a party to which they have no idea they weren’t invited.
I’m envisioning the vivid vein this place would cut through the city when Fitz walks up the stairs. His eyes meet mine, and he smiles.
The effect is instantaneous. I notice he’s different, somehow. There’s an easiness to his motion, or even his momentum, like he’s headed in a new direction. I haven’t known Fitz for long, but he’s definitely never had momentum. He walks over while I take in the unusual freedom to him.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he says.
It strikes me as a funny expression. Thanks for meeting me on the High Line tonight? Or, thanks for meeting me for the first time days ago? For unconsciously organizing your life to bump into mine?
I smile back softly, wanting to thank him for meeting me too, though I know it’s not the meaning he intends. He confuses me. Or, rather, the feeling I get when I’m with him confuses me, especially now. The undeniable tug of my heart toward him is wrapped up in the pain of breaking up