Page 26 of Past Present Future

Though I make a silent vow to participate as Jay leads a discussion about current events in the linguistics world, it’s not as easy as I’d hoped. I’m the only new person, the interloper—it’s clear they all know each other. I was foolish for assuming it would be an instant fit and hate that I’d rather be in my dorm with a book.

As everyone packs up, they chatter among themselves. I try to catch anyone’s eye, offering up a smile, but it feels like intruding on a group of tight-knit friends.

“Do you have Mills for your senior capstone? He’s supposed to be the worst.”

“No, I have Kubiak, thank God.”

These are the people I thought I would belong with, but when I leave, I feel just as anonymous as before. Only in multiple languages.

It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me, that in this massive school in this massive city, there isn’t a space I’ve found yet that fits. I had a good enough time with Skyler at that party, even forced myself to mingle a bit before we stumbled home at two in the morning, but I’m not sure I could do that every weekend. As friendly as Skyler is, there’s this inescapable thought that we are simply two very different people. As far as roommates go, I know I got lucky. Last week Cyrus texted about the guinea pig his roommate had sneaked in from home. Do you know how much guinea pigs shit??? he’d asked. IT IS ENDLESS. IT IS EVERYWHERE.

Despite the heavy sense of exhaustion clinging to me, I’m not quite ready to head back to my room yet. Wandering New York City at night doesn’t seem nearly as dangerous as I thought it might. Even on a Sunday evening, there are people everywhere, in pairs and in groups and some all alone, and I can’t help wondering if any of them feel the same aimlessness I do. I have a linguistics paper due tomorrow that’s only half-done, and though I’d regularly stay up late in high school, tonight I’m not sure I have it in me.

I debate calling Rowan before realizing she might already be asleep and try my mom instead, since she’s three hours behind.

“Neil, baby?” she says, picking up on the first ring, and as much as the nickname usually embarrasses me, tonight I don’t mind it at all. “It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“Fine, Mom.” I dodge some garbage on the sidewalk and make my way over to a bench. “I’m just walking home and thought I’d see what you were up to.”

“We just got back from dinner with Christopher.” In the background, I can hear my sister’s voice. “What about you? Late where you are.”

“I was at a meeting for this linguistics club.”

“Could that school be any more perfect for you?”

When I return her laugh, it’s strangely hollow, and I desperately wish it weren’t. I force a smile into my voice. “Yeah, it’s really something.”

Though the time surrounding my dad’s arrest and trial is still a blur, something I viewed through childlike lenses later explained to me in great detail, what I know is this: his court-appointed lawyer tried to reduce the charges to second-degree assault, but given the fact that he had attacked a minor, that the minor had been in a coma for a month with a long way to go until full recovery, the first-degree charge had stuck.

The complicated feelings I have toward my dad are not because he is in prison. It’s everything that happened beforehand—the terrifying display of violence toward that kid, and all the small, sharp ways he made it clear that I was not the son he wanted.

My mom was suddenly raising the two of us herself, a sixth grader and a kindergartener. Her parents and sister helped us out while she worked through a certificate program to become a paralegal. The divorce didn’t happen right away. Two years into my dad’s sentence, she filed for it, feeling it was what our family needed to move on, though we were still making semi-regular visits at that point. Several times a year—several times too many, it seemed to me.

I could have been angry at her that it had taken so long. But all I felt was a swell of sorrow mixed with hope for the future. My mom and I grew even closer, to the point where I must have told her too much about school because she recognized Rowan right away when she came to my house during Howl.

Christopher joins my mom on the phone. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says in that easygoing way of his. It’s his go-to greeting, one that made me cringe when I first met him because it sounded almost phony in its enthusiasm. But then I learned that’s just Christopher: genuinely upbeat all the time. “I need your brain. Blank slate, ten letters, third one is a B.”

He’s a long-suffering crossword fan, and we’ve bonded over words. “Tabula rasa,” I say after a moment. “You realize asking me is just as much cheating as looking up the answer online, right?”

“Yeeeeeah,” he says, drawing out the syllable with a laugh. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

Christopher’s a few years younger than my mom, never married. Natalie and I were reluctant to let him in at first, but he’s as opposite our dad as someone can possibly be. An accountant my mom met on a dating app her friends urged her to sign up for. Bright and sunny, just as happy to talk books with me as he is skateboarding with Natalie. They’ve been together for two years, and although it took a while for my mom to be comfortable with it, now he stays the night at our place most of the time. It’s everything my mom deserves, and I couldn’t be happier for her.

We talk more about school, about the weather in Seattle.

“A lot of overcast skies, if you can believe it,” he says. “You’re really missing out.”

“Hold on,” my mom says. “Nat wants to say hi.” There’s a shuffle, and then my sister takes the phone.

“I moved into your room,” she declares. “I painted all the walls a toxic shade of green except for one, where there’s a unicorn mural. And instead of a bed, there’s just a giant beanbag, and you can only get to it with a skate ramp.”

“Excellent. Unicorns are my favorite mythical creature.”

A groan. “I miss you, you dork. Lucy does too.”

“Back at both of you. You’re not giving Mom too hard a time, are you?”

“I’m an angel. Being an only child is actually pretty nice. And I killed it as Squirrel Number Three in our class play. Everyone agreed that I was the best squirrel.”

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