“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with Patrick. He’s cool. We’re friends. That’s all.”
“Fine, I’ll drop it.”For now.
We move on to safer subjects. As I get ready for the day, my phone buzzes with a text.
Alex: I woke up convinced that yesterday must have been a fever dream, but then I checked my phone and your number was there. So I guess what I’m saying is, good morning.
I smile at his message, grateful for the distraction.
Me: Maybe it is a fever dream. Have you checked your temperature? I hear shellfish poisoning’s a bitch.
Alex: Don’t remind me. I ate a sea scorpion, and somehow I’m happy about it. You’re a bad influence.
I chuckle at his words because the verythoughtof being a bad influence on Alex Aquino is laughable. Even the thought that I could influence him at all when he’s always been such an immovable force.
Me: I’m broadening your horizons. Somehow, I never asked… how do you feel about shrimp?
His response is immediate.
Alex: Cockroach of the sea.
“What’s so funny?” Madison asks from across the room. “Oh my God, is that Ellie? Did he finally text you?”
“No,” I say flatly, my good mood deflating at the reminder. “It’s not him.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “Then what the heck is so funny?”
“Nothing, it’s, um—” I scramble for a good lie, wanting to keep Alex to myself just a little longer. I land on something between a truth and a lie. “It’s my mom. I should call her.”
A few minutes later, as I walk aimlessly around campus, I call my mother. The phone rings, and I’m torn between wanting it to go to voicemail and wanting to get this over with.
“Oh myGod, she’s alive,” comes my mother’s voice, imbued with over-the-top relief. “Javier, did you hear that? Your youngest is alive.”
I hear my dad yell something in the background but can’t make out his words.
“Okay, okay. I get it. Very funny.” I roll my eyes, unable to keep the smile from my face. “Sorry I haven’t called.”
“I understand. You go to college, and you forget all about us. It’s the natural way of things. Should I take this to mean school is going well?”
Now that we’re talking, I don’t know why I was so scared. I’m eighteen, so our relationship hasn’t frayed yet. The guilt and emotional heaviness that accompanied conversations with my mom later on are nowhere to be found.
I try to picture my mother as she is in this moment. The last time I saw her, she was in her early sixties and getting ready to retire, but right now she’s forty-eight, an empty nester in the prime of her career. A career that resembles my own—only, as I learned too late, not in the ways that mattered to her.
My mom is a public defender. She works to keep people out of jail,and she’s brilliant at it. It’s a cause she’s passionate about, and her passion fuels a fire that always struck me with awe. Although she pushed me to be a lawyer, I must admit I also wanted to be just like her.
Then I got to law school and discovered I hadn’t inherited the strengths that made Mom a great litigator. I didn’t have the passion. I wasn’t as eloquent. I couldn’t command the attention of a crowd. It’s weird to compare a litigator to an actor, but a great litigator has a certain kind of star power. A stage presence. I had none of that.
What Ididhave was a keen attention to detail. The focus to comb through contracts and not miss a single technicality. The ability to memorize volumes of corporate law until I knew them like the back of my hand. I excelled in my contracts classes, and when I took a corporate law internship, I excelled there too—much more than I had at my internship for a public defender.
So I became a corporate lawyer.
Mom said she was proud, joked about how relieved she was that I’d be able to pay off my law school debt so fast. But I could tell she wished I’d chosen a different path.
All of that was just doubt in the back of my mind until Sierra decided to drag it into the open one day, about three years before I died. I’d gotten a promotion and a raise at my firm. It was Christmas, and my parents were celebrating me.
Then Sierra scoffed and asked them why they were glorifying my selfish corporate greed. That was a common Sierra refrain, calling me selfish, so it didn’t faze me. Only this time, she dragged my mother into it; she said even Mom hated that I was doing such soulless work just because it paid well. I asked Mom if that was true. She couldn’t quite deny it. Over the following three years, I went home a grand total of eight times—only when Sierra had other plans—even though I lived a mere three hours away.
But all that’s in the past… or the future.
