I head from the hotel lobby to the street, where I wander aimlessly. The city feels new, or perhaps it’s only me. I follow the sidewalk past Metro entrances and parks with shoveled paths in the snow. While I walk from corner to corner, images come to life in my eyes.
I’m in D.C. for college, and I’m showing my family around. I’m walking them to my favorite restaurants, my go-to coffee shops. I’m touring the campus with them, pointing out my lecture hall, bringing them into my dorm, rolling my eyes when my mom frets over the close quarters, and chasing Callie and Anabel from my desk drawer. I’m growing up, on my own. Except I’m not. I’m with the people who got me here.
I smile, the wobbly kind I couldn’t resist if I tried. I keep walking, envisioning everything I never thought to want. Turning onto residential streets, I pass brick towers with pillars of narrow windows. In front of one of the buildings, I smell something unmistakable.
It’s tamales. The smell wafts from the open window of one of the apartments, spicy and strong and full of familiar flavors. It’s the smell of home.
It fills me with memories. Memories of Abuela folding closed cornhusks with weathered hands, of raiding the freezer with her for leftovers months later.
This time, though, they’re not only memories of Abuela. Tía is there too, in the vista opening wider in my head. Tía, cooking tamales for dinner the first Christmas we celebrated without Abuela. Tía, bringing pans of them to the student government fund-raiser I helped organize when I was a freshman. Even the recollection of finding Tía’s Tupperware in my car holds bittersweet joy.
They bring tears to my eyes. It takes me a moment to comprehend the feeling.
I’m homesick.
It hurts. I’m grateful, though, because the hurt feels right, like discovering pain in places I thought were numb. I pull out my phone, knowing what I have to do. What I need right now. I find home in my contacts and hit call.
I hold the phone up, gloved fingertips brushing my face, while the dial tone rings once, then twice. Tía’s voice comes through on the other end. “Juniper?” She sound stiff, urgent. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice breaking on the word. “I’m fine. I just wanted to say hi.”
There’s a long pause. The longest in the history of telephone conversations, and I feel every agonizing second. I’m holding my heart out over the canyon dividing us and waiting for her to reach forward or refuse.
“I’m helping your brother with his winter break homework,” she finally says, “but Walker is telling me I don’t do the math right.”
I laugh. It’s gunky and overjoyed, and it’s the exact right laugh for the day I’ve had. “Put me on speaker,” I tell Tía. “We’ll help him together.”
Tía pauses once more. I know she understands the significance of my offer to help the family while I’m away, while I’m in the middle of my college tour. It’s not an offer I would have made a week ago, or even yesterday. But though she understands the gesture I’m making, my aunt is nothing if not stubborn. She’s incomparable at holding a grudge. Only a niece who’s refused to speak to her since they fought on the phone could rival her.
“Thank you,” she says. “First, though, I want to hear about your trip. Will you tell me about the school you like best?”
I wipe tears from my eyes. I want to tell her everything this means to me, except I know she knows. In one sentence, she’s strung a bridge over the canyon separating us. It’s easy to walk across.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’d really like that.”
Fitz
I WAKE UP the next morning feeling completely exhausted, yet somehow lighter. Sitting up, I exhale slowly. The room is dark, the drawn curtains letting in only a hint of daylight. It feels annoyingly like a metaphor.
The news of my mom’s health still weighs on me. It’s better since Lewis and I talked, though. I sit, listening to the water running while Lewis showers, and memories of the night rush over me. We spent hours saying everything we’d been holding in. I told him his ever-present cool and easygoing demeanor made him feel unreachable and uninterested. He told me how much he worried for me, and how much pressure he felt to provide for our family. Eventually, we got into how I resented him for disappearing into his partying and job-hunting, vanishing from my mom’s and my life, and he explained he needed room to deal with Mom’s disease on his own.
It was the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and oddly heartfelt. Not because it felt wrong, but because it felt like, why haven’t we done this before? We fought and laughed through years of hidden fears and resentments in one night, and while it was wrenching and totally draining, it felt like a bond. Right now, we’re shattered in the same way. It’s something we have in common, something connecting us as strong as the name we share.
I went to bed around three in the morning. Lewis called Prisha from the bathroom, a conversation I overheard with uncomfortable clarity through the thin door. Prisha couldn’t talk long because she’s visiting a friend at another college and they were at a party. His feelings for her, stripped of the casual veneer he usually puts on, are something I can understand too.
While I wait for Lewis the next morning, I run through our itinerary in my head. We’re driving to UVA today and then beginning the drive back to Boston tomorrow.
I hadn’t considered the rest of the trip in light of everything yesterday. Typing the destination into Google Maps, I realize I really don’t want to visit another school. Over the coming weeks, I’m going to have to package up whatever newly formed dreams I had of college outside New Hampshire. It won’t be easy. Going on one more tour of a campus I’ll never call my own definitely won’t help.
There’s only one reason to go. Juniper. It’s reason enough a thousand times over. I’m not ready to part from her, not yet. If UVA’s where she’s going next, I’m going with her.
Like magic, there’s a knock on the door. I roll out of bed, conscious I’m wearing a rumpled T-shirt and sweats, and open the door. Juniper’s in the hallway, looking perfect. Her hair is still wet, her nose pink from the cold. She’s holding a paper bag I know without a doubt contains bagels—plain for me and chocolate chip for Lewis.
“Hey.” Her voice is gently questioning. “Sorry, I should’ve texted. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“I was up,” I say defensively, my self-consciousness over my shirt-and-sweats combo and bed head skyrocketing.
She doesn’t seem convinced. “I brought you breakfast.” She holds out the bag. “How are you guys?” she continues delicately.