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What would I be doing? Still working at the diner, living at my mom’s to save money and keep helping out, but never able to really contribute as much as I wanted. My best friend gone, no social life except for a wave at a casual acquaintance from high school when we saw each other in the grocery store. The loneliness of that life was something I staved off with busyness, with work, with escaping into fantasy worlds in my head.
We’d hatched the plan together as we’d hatched so many. I’d move to New York with Sofia when she began her freshman year. I’d stay in her dorm room so I didn’t have to pay rent, and I’d get a job so that we could save money. Even with her financial aid package and work study, living in the city was hella expensive, and I could work full time while she was in school. With Adrian old enough to get a job and start helping out in our absence, and two fewer people for my mom to support, it was the right time to go.
Sure, we hadn’t thought through the details. How could we know about ID swiping to get into the dorms or the way that many people living on top of each other didn’t allow for any secrets? But we’d worked it out. By the end of the first month, we’d developed a near balletic coordination of ID handoffs, Tupperware in the dining halls, cheese platters at lectures, lost-and-found boxes, and the windfalls of garbage days.
By the end of the semester, we’d charmed the people on her hall into being invested in my continued presence there—turned out a shocking number of college students didn’t know how to do their laundry and were very grateful for assistance—and had fallen into the easy rhythm we’d had at home, evolving the envelopes-of-cash system we’d used as kids into an online banking model.
Sofia had gotten a job working in the admissions office at Fordham after she graduated two years ago, which she was holding onto with both hands even as she looked for other things because it gave her access to the school library, gym, and computer labs.
I’d kept the job at Buggy’s Bagels that I’d gotten that first year far longer than I’d ever expected I would, but I’d gotten several raises over the years, got to take home bagels at the end of my shift, and had latte foaming and cream cheese smearing down to a mindless art that left plenty of space to zone out and think about whatever audiobook I was listening to or museum exhibit I wanted to go see.
So, all in all, we did okay. Yeah, it wasn’t enough for saving much money yet, or decent insurance; yeah, we’d be completely wiped out if there was an emergency; yeah, we lived in fear of our rent being raised and having to move. But we did okay. And what more could we really ask for?
* * *
—
“Oh, hey,” Sofia said as we unlocked our front door. “Did Mom leave you a message about Lucas’s play?”
“Yeah. Are we going?”
“Duh! You think I’m gonna miss the chance to give Lucas shit?”
Lucas was fifteen, and his level of teenage self-consciousness and perceived coolness was at an all-time high.
“Maybe he’ll be good,” I said, and we both snorted. Lucas had only auditioned for the play because he had a crush on the stage manager, a girl who, by all accounts, didn’t know he existed.
We kicked our shoes off and flopped onto my bed, which was in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment.
“No way, man. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t walk off in the middle of the play saying, ‘I’m so over this.’?”
It was what Lucas had said as a little boy, having overheard Sofia say it. It had been pretty funny when five-year-old Lucas would announce “I’m so over this” and change the channel during a cartoon. Slightly less amusing—to our mother, anyway—had been when ten-year-old Lucas got sent to the principal’s office for standing in the middle of math class and announcing the same thing. It hadn’t lasted past age ten, but as Lucas’s older siblings it was our moral obligation to tease him about it forever.
“Do you think we could convince the stage manager he’s in love with to take him into the lighting booth and start making out with him, and then after a few minutes push him away and say deadass, ‘I’m so over this’?”
“I will pay you one million dollars if you can make that happen,” she said.
“Hey, seems like maybe you’ll actually have the cash to make good on that soon,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. Her eyes got big, as if for a moment she’d forgotten what had just happened in the bar.
