Page 23 of Leaving the Station
Oakley yawns. “I should probably try to sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to try too?”
The thought of going back to my seat next to Guy Fieri as everyone’s waking up is the worst thing in the world. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You should try,” she says. “It was nice talking to you, Zoe.”
“Was it?”
She gives me a weird look. “Obviously, yes.” She turns to go, but before she does, she says, “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have looked for you here.”
Three Weeks into College
I debated not answering my dad’s call. It would’ve been so much easier.
But with every ring, my Jewish guilt spiked. So I picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, kid,” his disembodied voice said in my ear. “How’s my future doctor?”
“Good,” I told him. It was an automatic response; anything else would’ve led to more questions. It would’ve required me to tell the truth, that I wasn’t a future doctor. I wasn’t a futureanything.
The idea of a successful, productive life in the future tense was hard to imagine, because I couldn’t picture myself any different than I was now.
It was easier to tell my dad, “Good,” and leave it at that.
He told me about fall in Seattle, and I mentioned the foliage on the East Coast, about autumn in a city where the trees weren’tevergreen, where thingschanged.He told me how the Mariners were doing and whether they would make it to the playoffs (almost certainly not). He told me about my grandma’s physical therapy and how she wished I would call more.
I didn’t tell him about my job at the greenhouse or the Tees. Iespeciallydidn’t tell him about Alden.
We didn’t talk about anything of significance at all.
“My classes are going well,” I assured him once again. “And actually, I’m meeting up with my bio study group, so I should go.”
“Good for you,” he said, and sounded like he meant it. “Study hard, but don’t go overboard.”
“I won’t.”
It was the first honest thing I’d said.
I went to Rex’s dorm after that, where we were having a “Tees Night In.”
Autumn brought sheet masks, Shelly brought weed, and I arrived empty-handed, feeling foolish.
When our faces were covered with bologna-like masks, Autumn took a selfie, then put her head in my lap.
“Is this okay?” they asked.
“Of course,” I said, surprised.
We were talking about our first queer crushes, and when the conversation turned to me, I was suddenly hyperaware of my body, of the part of my thigh Autumn’s head was touching.
“I haven’t really... ,” I began.
There was no good way to finish that sentence.
