Page 36 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
“Don’t ever call me again.” My voice nearly broke then, so I turned and started walking away.
What would’ve happened if she’d chased after me? If she’d grabbed my arm and hugged me and refused to let go? I don’t know, but I often think back to that moment, and every time I do, I play out a different scenario. Ellery catches me. I fall into her arms. I tell her the truth, the all-consuming love I feel forher. She tells me she feels the same. We kiss. We make it work, even across oceans.
But that didn’t happen. What actually happened was…nothing. She didn’t come after me. I kept walking.
And that was the last time I saw Ellery for many, many years.
An Interlude
IZZY
“Nainai.” My arm tightens around hers. This whole time, I’ve been listening to her without interruption, completely enthralled by her story. Whenever I’d thought of Nainai at my age—well, you know what? I’ve never thought of Nainai at my age. She’s Nainai, my grandmother, and as far as I’m concerned, she simply popped into existence exactly the way she looks now. Silver hair and tailored pantsuit and her “I’ve seen it all, kid” expression. In order to fully absorb the reality of what she’s been telling me, I’ve had to think of teenage Magnolia as someone else entirely. A stranger.
But then I glance over at Nainai, and I suddenly see it. That scared, lonely young girl. I see beyond the age-wizened skin and the hardened eyes, and I see her at seventeen, wide-eyed with wonder, taking in everything around her with so much awe and hope, uncertainty written all over her youthful face. I press my cheek to her papery one and breathe in her scent.
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell you,” I say, angry on behalf of seventeen-year-old Nainai.
“We were young. Young people do foolish things, mostly because they are scared.”
“Now who’s being ageist?”
She chuckles. “I would’ve hated being told I was young and foolish too, back then. I wouldn’t have said so, of course. Wouldn’t have had the guts to disagree.”
“I can’t believe you were so…” I search for the right words. “So timid. What changed? How did you turn into this badass person?”
Nainai is quiet for a while. “Well, mostly aging. I know that’s not the answer you want to hear. But it’s only one part of it. The other part is losing people I loved and cared about and realizing that none of the other things mattered. When Ellery and I had the fight that ended our friendship, I thought:Good riddance. Now I can finally move on with my life.And a not-so-small part of me thought:Thank god that happened, because now I no longer have to be confused about who I am. Now I don’t have to deal with that part of me anymore, and I can go on being normal.”
She reaches out and pats my cheek. “It took years for me to consider what is even the point of being ‘normal.’ The only reason to be ‘normal’ is to make everyone else around you comfortable. Putting everyone else, even strangers, before yourself. As Fry fromFuturamasaid: ‘What’s the point of being normal when you can be abnormal?’ ”
I blink away my tears and smile. “Nobody knows these ancient references you keep bringing up, Nainai.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s late. Go home. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow night.”
I kiss her on the cheek. “Okay, Nainai. I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time?”
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter 11
MAGNOLIA
October 2000
Dear Bellery,
They say we have over six thousand thoughts in a day, ranging from the mundane, like “It’s a cold day,” to more complicated ones like “At this very moment, Bellery is probably stepping off the plane at London Heathrow Airport,” and “I wonder if Bellery has forgotten me,” and “I’m sure she has,” and “I hate her,” and “I miss her so much,” and “She is the worst person in the world,” and “I miss her smell,” and…
Bellery, out of the six thousand thoughts that I have every day, 5,999 of them are about you. But I know that day by day, the thoughts will slowly dwindle, and there will come a time when I will realize that out of sixthousand thoughts, none are about you. I both dread and look forward to that day.
Anyway. I started at Cal a couple of months ago. (That’s what people who go to Berkeley call it. We don’t say, “I go to Berkeley,” we say, “I go to Cal.”) James is here too. He got into the engineering program. We’re dating now. He asked me to be his girlfriend the day after I turned eighteen. If you were here, you’d laugh and say, “I knew it! I told you, he’s such a cradle robber.” But you know what? I think it’s sweet that he waited all this time to ask me out, so you can shut it. (I didn’t dare tell Iris because she’d tell me he’s gross.)
I’m living in an apartment two miles off campus. I’d applied for a dorm room and got a room at Stern, which is supposed to be an all-girls dorm. But when we went for a visit, Mama and Papa were horrified to learn that even though Stern is an all-girls dorm, they still allowed boys to hang out there. They were convinced I was going to lose my precious virginity and also start doing drugs and getting face tattoos, so they rejected the dorm and rented me an apartment instead. My neighbors are a sixty-eight-year-old Japanese American lady who gave me a jar of homemade pickles the day I moved in (they were delicious, you would’ve loved them) and a thirty-something-year-old white single mom with the cutest toddler. The toddler’s name is Rebecca, and god help you if you call her Becca or Becky or anything other than Rebecca.
James is in Unit 2. That’s literally the name of the dorm. Like they ran out of names. He hates it, so most nights, he stays over at my place. We do a lot of stuff witheach other, but we haven’t gone all the way. He’s very respectful. Iris would roll her eyes and make gagging noises at this, I’m sure. I’m very happy with James.
I hope you’re as happy with whatever new girl you’re dating as I am with James, which is very.
LoveSincerely,
