I’m being selfish right now, and I know it. But this whole thing is born of selfishness. Dad didn’t tell us he was going to apply. He didn’t explain what would happen if he got in. He just plopped a binder on the kitchen table one day. It was his portfolio—I have no idea why his résumé needed to be in a three-ring binder, especially when you could have just as easily scribbled “Delta” on a napkin and used that.
And then we waited.
Well, he waited. Mom and I gave him shit, because that was so much easier than accepting that he could actually make it in. He could change our lives, make us regulars on Shooting Stars, which, despite its patriotic and unifying start, slowly devolved into the overdramatic, ratings-hungry reality show it is now. But he never asked if that’s what we wanted.
“Jesus. Get it together,” he says.
Looking at my mom’s eyes, I can tell we’re in agreement here.
“Let’s leave him alone for a bit,” Mom says, voice squeaking, and ushers him away. I can breathe easier, even if just for a second, even though I know what’s about to happen.
“It’s not my fault he can’t process it. Neither of you seem to get how important this is.” His voice rises. “I’ve worked my whole life for this.”
“I think you can drop that,” Mom says. Her voice is stronger now. Anxiety be damned, she doesn’t take his shit. “We’ve been together seventeen years, and we all knew you loved space, but you never mentioned considering being an astronaut until you slapped us with that ridiculous binder.”
I take the opportunity to flee to my bedroom. As I’m shutting the door, though, Dad comes stomping back down the hall.
“Wait!”
I do, briefly. I take a deep breath and push out the nicest response I can muster. “I can’t be excited for you right now. I have to go clear out the troll comments on my video, plus my BuzzFeed internship starts on Monday, and I have forms to fill out. We’ll talk later.”
“Cal, you don’t get it,” Dad says. He looks nervous now. “We don’t have time to wait for you to get on board.”
A beat, and all the energy gets sapped from the room. My legs feel wobbly. I feel my heart rate spike, and my hand feels slimy on the doorknob. I breathe, but it’s shallow and unfulfilling.
“We need to start packing tonight,” he says. “They’ve got a house for us.”
“What do you—”
“We’re moving on Monday.”
My insides stop working. I’m experiencing literal—okay, figurative—organ failure right now. I just stare, and blink, and stare again. Then I pull back and unfreeze my body for a second. Just enough to clench my fingers around the doorframe and slam the door in his face.
I click the button lock and dash to my headphones. I press play on the cassette deck and let the sounds pump through, blocking out the shouting and the expectations and my frustrations.
I block it all out.
For a few minutes. The music isn’t working. I can’t concentrate, and everything sounds like noise and makes me tense up. I feel angry and sad, but I don’t know which feeling brings the tears to my eyes faster. I start to cry, but I take off my headphones before I let myself do it. I can’t let him hear.
My parents resume fighting in the other room. Well, not fighting, actually. It’s a discussion. I hear numbers being thrown out, and words like “movers” and “salary” and know they won’t be settling this anytime soon.
I pull out my phone and send a text to Deb.
Can I come down? Need to get out of here for a min
She responds in a flash.
Yeah, we heard the stomping. Door or window?
I send her an emoji of a window and double-check that my door’s locked. They wouldn’t mind me going down to talk to Deb—it’s only one flight down—but I can’t bear to look at them right now.
I imagine them coming to check on me and hearing no response. They’d think I was ignoring them, or if they used that little gold key above the doorframe, they’d know I bailed. And they’d stop the fighting for one second, and they’d sigh “oh shit” at the same time. And for once, I wouldn’t be the one trying to make things better, to fix our problems.
Finally, something would be about me.
I lift the window, then the screen. I duck out onto the fire escape and feel the wind tear through my body. I welcome the feeling, refreshing and calming, and stretch out on the landing. My eyes scan the world beneath me, all strollers and parents and dogs, rushing home for dinner before the sun finally sets. Bikes and cars and trucks and brick buildings line the avenue. Beyond that, the trees block my view of brownstones.
This might be the last time I stand out here.
This might be my last weekend living in Brooklyn.
When I reach the third floor, I hesitate at the open window. Her sheer curtains are drawn, and I see her silhouette frantically darting back and forth—she’s probably throwing all her dirty laundry in the hamper so I can find a place to sit.
It hits me so hard I stagger back and lean against the railing: I’m about to tell my best friend that I’m leaving immediately, indefinitely. Probably. Unless there’s some chance Dad’s being majorly pranked.
She pushes aside the curtains, and I gasp. The moment she sees my face, which must be lined with tears, her jaw drops.
A familiar pang hits me in the chest. I’ve seen this expression before. I’ve given her this expression before. Last year, I crawled in her window, a panicked mess, to break up with her.
For some reason, I didn’t ease her into it with talking about us growing apart or going different directions, or wanting to focus on school or exploring other options. These were all phrases I had rehearsed.
But she was my girlfriend … and my best friend. She deserved more than a weak excuse, so I went right to the point:
“I kissed Jeremy.”
We talked it out, and—months later—she accepted my apology. The thing was, Jeremy was always there in the back of my mind. He was the unattainable senior, and I was content with Deb. Unfortunately for her, I found something better than content as I sunk into his lips, the taste of Coors Light on our tongues.
I found a fire, a passion that I was missing. My identity seems to change by the minute, but I knew I was queer—and Deb did too. The hardest thing for her to accept was that it wasn’t that I didn’t like cishet girls … I just didn’t like her like that, and after dating for three months, I wanted to find someone I did like. And I found Jeremy.
Two weeks later, Jeremy found someone else.
“Calvin?” She grabs my hand and pulls me closer. “Come in. What’s—wow, last time I saw you looking like this I had to bring you back from a panic attack so you could break up with me. What’s going on, babe?”
My breaths aren’t coming easily. I’m suffocating, drowning in the overwhelming pink of her room. The pink beanbag chair with the pink fuzzy pillow and the—why can’t I breathe?—pink rug that I’m somehow lying on now, though I don’t remember crawling in through the window.
I focus on a point on the ceiling, and I don’t let it go. Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly, I pull myself together. I’m okay.
“I’m okay.”