She looked over her shoulder. “I can be both glamorous and a doctor at the same time.”
Before I could respond, she took off. I shook my head and returned my attention to the small, starred box. I knew exactly what was in it.
I cut into the tape and flipped open the cardboard flaps, revealing the objects stored inside. There were three postcards at the top, one from New York City, one from Burlington, Vermont, and the other from North Carolina. Beneath these, there was also a framed picture and a little, velvet sack.
It was my River box. I carried it over to my dresser to lay out all the contents next to one another.
The framed picture was the only one I had of me, River, and Riley all together. It had been one of the rare times the three of us had all hung out at the same time. We were in my parents’ backyard, and my mom had taken the picture while we were in the pool and unaware of her presence. We all looked happy in the snapshot, and we had been.
The postcards were from him. River. He’d sent them to me throughout my first year of college. The first one, sent in the fall, was from New York City. He really had driven all the way out there, just like he’d told me he would. The postcard featured the New York skyline. On the back, he’d written: I made it! Wish you were with me. You would love the pizza.
The postcard from Vermont had arrived during my winter term of school that year. It surprised me that River would visit a place like Burlington, a seemingly dull city, at least in comparison to places like New York. This postcard depicted the quaint-looking city on the water. River wrote: It’s kind of cold here. But it’s got charm that you would like. Wish you were with me.
The final postcard had come in the spring, when I was almost finished with my first year of school. North Carolina looked sunny and green and warm. The card didn’t specify what city was pictured, what city River had visited. On the back River had only written, WYWWM, Drew. When I first read it, it took me only a moment to understand what that meant: wish you were with me.
The postcards stopped coming after that one. I figured he’d gotten too busy to keep sending them. He apparently was moving around the country continuously, never really staying put in one place. We’d texted each other from time to time that first year, but that gradually faded over time, too. The truth was, I had gotten busy as well: commuting to school, maintaining my GPA, working at the bookstore, and occasionally volunteering at a clinic to boost my chances of getting into nursing school. Somewhere along the line, the contact between us completely came to a close.
I analyzed the framed photograph of me, River, and Riley. I read each postcard and studied their images of faraway places. I hadn’t looked at any of these items in about two years. Once I finished looking them over, I opened the top drawer of my dresser and stashed them all away underneath some of my pajamas.
I left the velvet bag for last. Part of me wanted to hastily toss it under my pajamas with the other items and just forget about it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
The necklace slid out of the sack in a smooth motion. In my hand, it felt cold. I looked at the emerald gem on its dainty chain. I had worn it during that first year of college, nearly every day. But when I stopped receiving the postcards, and when River and I no longer texted each other, it didn’t feel right to keep wearing it. I still thought it was beautiful. I still liked the way it felt around my neck. But I couldn’t come up with a really good, pragmatic reason as to why I should continue wearing it.
Maybe it was weighing me down, I thought, with the past. Maybe it was foolish and childish, and it was time to grow up.
I moved over to my full-length mirror, hooked the chain around my neck, and arranged the emerald so it fell right at the middle of my chest. Seeing it in the mirror reminded me of the apple tree, something I rarely thought about anymore. In my first year of college, I had daydreamed about that day when River and I would meet at the tree and read the letters we’d written each other. Somehow, the more that time went on, the more it seemed to me like merely that: a dream. The prospect of us convening at our green rendezvous at thirty years of age didn’t seem real anymore. It was now nine years away instead of twelve, yet it had become harder for me to envision.
I forced myself to stop thinking about the tree—there was no point to it. Just like wearing the necklace—was there really any point to wearing it anymore? It wasn’t really practical to do so, for one thing. We weren’t allowed to wear jewelry during our clinical rounds in the nursing program. I would have to be taking it off and putting it back on too many times throughout the week. A hassle.
And the necklace probably wouldn’t look good with most of the clothes I wore to my classes. I kept things comfortable and casual with my school attire, sweatshirts and jeans most of the time, and a fancy, gemmed necklace would probably clash with that.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror one more time, beheld the green stone against my skin. I unclasped the necklace from my body. It went back into its velvet sack and joined the postcards and photograph in the top dresser drawer, buried away underneath my pajamas.
Chapter 8
Iwas beginning to feel worn out after the third week of school. That wasn’t a good sign.
My coursework really wasn’t terrible that term, certainly not the most overwhelming I’d ever had. The clinical rounds were the same as always—unpleasant, interminable, but predictable, at least. I couldn’t understand why I was already feeling fatigued, but with nine weeks still remaining in the term, I was going to have to figure something out. Slacking was not an option.
Considering this early-onset fatigue of mine, I was not happy when the fourth Monday of the term arrived, and I remembered I had to attend a workshop on campus that evening. Government & Politics Today, it was called. Maybe because of its bland, dull name, I’d nearly forgotten about it. But thankfully, my counselor had emailed me a reminder thirty minutes before it was set to begin.
The scholarship I had—that had been paying substantial chunks of my tuition over the last few years—had some contingencies. Maintaining a good GPA was not an issue for me. Neither was being full-time or completing a measly total of fifteen hours of volunteer work each year. But the one requirement that was a nuisance to me was that every term, I was assigned a certain workshop to attend, put on by varying departments at the college. They were all as boring as they sounded: Thoughts, Feelings & Behaviors (from the Psychology Department), Roots of Capitalism in the U.S. (History), The Art of Rhetoric (Language and Arts).
The workshops usually met a few times throughout the term and were free to the students. The paperwork of my scholarship explained that developing well-rounded, knowledgeable, and participatory citizens was the primary mission in funding students, and so these workshops were developmentally essential. Maybe I was just being cynical, but these workshops didn’t seem to be developing any of those traits for me.
Government & Politics Today met in one of the small auditoriums on campus at six o’clock. When I entered the auditorium, I saw around thirty people milling about. I studied the crowd until I located the face I was searching for.
“Kat,” I raised my voice slightly as I made my way over to the girl in the gray jacket who was looking at her phone.
“Oh, hey, there you are.” She glanced up at me through her thick-rimmed glasses, then looked back to her phone. “One second. I have to text my dumb roommate back about something.” I waited patiently until she was done and had slipped her phone into the pocket of her jacket. She said, “Here, I saved some seats for us.”