Carroll agrees faster than I expected. “Sure.”
Carroll asks which of the girls on our floor I think would be most likely to drop out of school if they got a chance to star on a reality show and/or YouTube series. We make a list on another napkin, then soak it in yogurt to hide the evidence.
I need to stop obsessing over when Toni and I will get back to normal. We’re normal now.
This is the new normal, and it’s fine.
I wonder if Toni knows about November 1. If Toni looked up the transfer application deadline, too.
I glance across the table at Carroll, then out the window at the city. At the leaves blowing against the restaurant windows. The taxis darting between delivery trucks while tourists cling to the windowsills of their backseats. The people hurrying by with their shopping bags, their yoga mats, their labradoodles.
Carroll is watching me with a smile. I take his napkin-poem out of my purse and press it flat to read it again. He stuffs naan into his mouth and turns away as if he’s embarrassed.
Filling out the application would be a lot of work. There’s only a week left until I’d have to send it in, and I have a paper due on Thursday for my Twentieth Century Hispanic-American Novels class.
I look out the window again. It’s starting to get dark. I can see my reflection and Carroll’s. We’re both smiling. We look like a picture you’d see in an admissions catalog.
It makes me want to keep smiling forever. Sitting in this tiny restaurant, on this perfect street, in this perfect city, with my new best friend.
I don’t want to give this up. Not yet.
It’s just one more semester. I might as well stay. For now.
I can figure out the rest of it later.
7
OCTOBER
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
2 MONTHS APART
TONI
I’m in downtown Boston waiting for the bus from New York to pull in, and I’m so excited I can’t actually handle it. It’s been two months. Two months.
In a few minutes I’ll finally see Gretchen again. I can’t believe we waited this long. What a crazy mistake.
A new bus is unloading, but I can’t see the sign that says where it’s from. A few minutes ago I was sure I saw Gretchen, and I jumped up and down and waved my arms so hard people looked at me funny, but it was only some blond farm-girl type getting off a bus from Albany.
When I see another flash of yellow across the station, I try to restrain myself, but there’s no way that’s happening. This time it’s Gretchen.
“T!” Gretchen shrieks.
My heart skitters in my chest as I push through the crowd. It’s been so long since I actually saw Gretchen, since we actually touched, that I’d somehow convinced myself it would never happen again. That it would be another false start. We’ve had so many of those lately.
What a dumb way to think. Gretchen’s here. This is real. That beautiful smiling face is right in front of me, laughing, brushing back tears. I hope they’re happy tears.
“Oh, my God.” I can’t stop grinning.
“Oh, my God is right.” Gretchen laughs.
We hug for a long time. I can’t believe how good it feels.
“You’re here!” I say when we pull apart.
“I’m here!” Gretchen’s jumping now, too.
We push through the crowd again and hold hands as we get on the train. It’s hard to talk on the ride back to Harvard.
I’ve imagined this scene so many times. I have to fix my eyes on the grimy water bottle rolling back and forth across the train floor to remind myself that this isn’t another daydream.
“What do you want to do?” I ask Gretchen as we come up the steps into the sunshine at the Harvard stop. The dance is still a few hours away. I’m so excited my voice sounds shaky. Like I’m nervous.
Maybe I really am nervous.
“I have to leave my stuff somewhere,” Gretchen says. “Can we go to your room first?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
Our common room is empty. Joanna and Felicia’s bedroom door is closed, and I can’t tell if anyone’s inside, but my room is definitely vacant. Ebony has already left to stay over in a friend’s room for the night. That’s the deal we made. I’m staying at the guys’ place in a couple of weeks when Ebony’s boyfriend Zach comes to visit.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding.” Gretchen looks around the common room, taking in the couch, the rugs, the dark wood furniture that looks like it’s been here for a century or more. “This is amazing. You even have a fireplace.”
“Yeah. We always talk about roasting marshmallows, but you’re not allowed to actually light fires. Supposedly last year some guys tried and they wound up destroying some historic bricks or something. They got, like, two thousand hours of community service. Here, you can put your bag in my room.”
The bedroom is tiny—just a bunk bed and two dressers we wedged in side by side. I called tails on move-in day, so Ebony has the bottom bunk and I’m stuck with the top. I put Gretchen’s bag down next to my dresser. At first we just stand there, looking at each other.