sounds obnoxious, pretentious.
Dave looks momentarily thrown. “Does that mean loud?” he asks.
“Loud and unruly,” I supply hesitantly.
“Yes. Exactly.” He nods fervently. He walks past me, heading for the food line. “Come on, Fitz. I need bacon.”
I follow through the dining hall, threading between tables and chairs draped with coats. While we pile our plates, Dave introduces me to a few of his friends, guys in the political science program, one of whom is writing his thesis on the political plausibility of The Handmaid’s Tale. They’re friendly, full of questions on my hometown and what I want to study. I notice my nerves from the beginning of the night are gone.
It makes me wonder whether Juniper was right. If my fear of change is something I have to face and fight, and my mom is only my excuse not to. Because tonight had nothing to do with my mom, and yet I was ready to give up on it before I’d even given it a chance. I was going to write this experience off like I did with Cara, like I’d planned with college, like I was preparing to do with Juniper. But I didn’t give up on tonight. I let it sweep over me, and the only consequence was that I had a memorable, wonderful night. If I let other things in, it might be fine. It might even be wonderful.
Maybe I’ve made Mom my excuse every time. For Cara, college, my future.
But if my fear comes from me, I can fight it for myself.
Sitting with Dave and his friends, a plate full of half-finished pancakes before me, my thoughts return to the one thing I need to do. I stand up from the table, searching the room for a particular ponytail.
Juniper
I LOVED THE Primal Scream at first. The frenetic buzz was exactly how I’d imagined it when I read up on the tradition over my solitary dinner in Philly. When I entered Sharples Hall, I went up to the first girl I found and asked if she comes every semester. She told me she did, and I wanted to keep talking to her, but she got a text and walked off to join her friends.
Enveloped in the crowd, I wove through tables, looking for Fitz. But the countdown began before I found him. The seconds wound down to midnight, and the room erupted. I prepared to join the hundreds of voices screaming themselves hoarse, pouring out their every emotion in one cathartic rush.
I couldn’t. My lungs, my heart, wouldn’t. I have things I want to scream. The day with Fitz, everything with Matt, the pressures of my family. I just couldn’t.
I hated the feeling. Everywhere around me, students were clinging to each other, laughing, coming together, and all I felt was alone.
I walked out of Sharples Hall into the night, where I heard the echoed screams of students who couldn’t come to the dining hall joining in from their dorm rooms. I’ve been wandering the campus for the past ten minutes, my thoughts a blizzard colder than the wind on my face. I can approach someone and ask her about her school, her major, whatever, but that won’t make me her friend. I could be in exactly this position next year, in a crowd of friendly faces and yet entirely alone. Except next year, I won’t be returning to high school with my friends, with my sister, at the end of winter break.
When I’m in college, I’ll be finding my place and finding my people anew. And with every day I’m connected to my family only through FaceTime and phone calls instead of breakfasts and carpools, I’ll be deciding what parts of home to hold onto. How I’ll put myself together from the pieces of my past and my present, of old friends and new, of my family, of the two cultures I grew up in.
The pressure won’t just be about fitting in with everyone else—it’ll be about figuring out where I want to fit in. The newness of college will force me to reconsider who I was and refigure who I want to be. Whether I want to keep doing student government. Whether I’ll have every meal