“Xiao Ming.” Mom’s voice cracked.
I held back, but my mouth threatened to overflow. Words clawed for space, pushing at my tongue. I was finally old enough to apply for the student-worker program, but they wouldn’t be hiring until next year, and that was nine months out before I would make a cent. Maybe I could try to find someone to stay with over winter break so flights weren’t on the table. The thought of begging for someone’s charity made me taste bitterness, but I had to stay here. I was so close.
“Please, let me ask the school about it,” I said, keeping my voice low. “If I transfer, their withdrawal rate goes up. They want me to stay. They want me to apply to college, they want me to do well—”
Mom snapped. “Then why they never put you in a show, huh?”
I drew back from my laptop.
She sighed. “You went to that place to do something. If they don’t let you do it, you should come back home. That’s all there is to say.” Mom rubbed her forehead and glanced at Dad. “Well?”
Dad lifted his head. The crease between his eyebrows had begun to sag into an immovable frown. “It’s not a question,” he said. “We’re telling you so you can get ready. You’re there until Christmas Break. Then you’re coming home.”
I called Nihal. He didn’t pick up. He must have been flying back to Newark. I called the girls one right after the other, but nothing from them, either. I bet they were out together, laughing, talking, normal.
Normal had evaporated. Normal had skidded headlong off a cliff.
Isaac, I thought, and pulled up his contact page, but something kept me from hitting the call button. In retrospect, last night looked like a hallucination, or a dream. I didn’t want to ruin it with reality.
I yanked my wig off, bundled up, and tromped out into the snow. No soft, drifting flakes tonight—tiny beads of snow swirled in gray tornadoes, fast and loud. The winter air clamped around me, and wind brutalized my skin, chapping my lips the second I stretched them in a grimace.
A hand of wind slammed the door behind me. Amid the whitish stir, I made for the road and shuffled down toward Arthur’s Arch.
I paused between Wingate and Ewing for a moment and peered up at the dorms, glazed and dripping with ice, water stains rimming their peaked windows. Streaks of snow ran along the turreted details at their roofs. My first memories of Kensington had me driving up this street, under those crows pecking at the wrought-iron arch, up to these two dorms. They’d towered over the cab, blocking the sun, cutting swaths out of the deep blue sky, and when we’d emerged from their shadows at the intersection of Main and August, the sky had opened up again, like unfolded origami. I’d never seen a sky like that before, flat and uninterrupted, miles of what instantly became my favorite sort of blue. Our colors were black and carnelian, but when I thought of Kensington, I thought the blue of the glazed-over lake past North Campus. The blue of Lydia’s eyes, the first day of freshman year. The blue of that sky.
The sky was an umbrella of black-gray now, thick with bluster. I shunted my way through the wind and down the sidewalk, a mess of slush and corrosive greenish salt, until I reached Arthur’s Arch. Red rust glared out at me from the hinges. Slender icicles dangling from the apex of the A trembled with the wind. Everything looked ancient and worn out. I wanted to cling to it, gather it all to my chest. Even the cruel winter.
My eyes stung. I hurried down the drive, hat on and my head bowed, keeping my eyes fixed on the closest lights: the Carrie Café. The sweet orange light of the lantern outside bobbed, rising and falling like a candle on a ship’s prow. As I approached, the lantern’s iron whine mewled into life over the wind.
I shouldered my way in. The door banged hard into its frame, and I wiped my cheeks free of the wet. The café was as quiet as always, the only music a tinkling piano nocturne.
An island occupied the center of the coffeehouse. Rickety tables edged the five walls: The glass front wall looked out on the street, while the other four were white clapboard, covered in framed photographs of a thousand shades, sepia, black-and-white, blue-and gold-framed. Tiny lanterns dangled over every table, making the silvery chairs shine. Every single chair stood empty.
“I’ll be damned. Jordan Sun?” called Carrie from the register. “That you?”
I felt a twinge of guilt. I hadn’t been here since last spring. Walking through the door without Michael felt like walking in naked.
“Hi, Carrie.” I stamped the snow onto the mat in front of the door. It squelched under my feet.
“Really wanted a coffee in the snowstorm, huh? Love the haircut, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I said, injecting life into my voice. “How’s it going?”
“Always fine. Beans. Roasting. You know the drill.” Carrie drummed her fingers on the counter. She was a round, dowdy woman with a carrot-orange braid trailing down her back. She always had the same uniform: army boots and a floral dress. Sometimes with an apron, sometimes with thick woolen leggings, sometimes with a quilted winter coat, but the boots and the dress never budged. Super lesbian, said some of the Kensington kids knowingly, which was funny, since Carrie was married to the guy who worked every other weekend. Not that they actually cared enough to find out. With so many queer kids at Kensington, people sometimes got weirdly comfortable, like they had a free pass to say anything they wanted about sexuality. I guess it was tempting to stick a rainbow-colored “Ally” pin on your backpack and call it a day, as if that were the endpoint, not the starting line.
“What can I make you?” Carrie asked. “How about a Thanksgiving Special?”
“What’s that?”
“Turkey-flavored coffee.”
“Um. What?”
“Messing with you.” She flashed me her bright, yellowing smile. “Hot cider with cinnamon, cube of chocolate on the side. Sound good?”
It sounded like it would have been heaven, if I had a few bucks to spare. “I actually . . . just came in to get out of the wind.”
“Let me make you one anyway.” She winked. “On me.”
I managed a smile, finally approaching the counter. The scales of cold started to fall away from my cheeks and neck. “Thanks, Carrie.”
Carrie rummaged under the counter for a mug, but her shrewd eyes stayed on me. “I haven’t seen you here all year. The second Mike graduates, you ditch me, huh?” She set the mug on the lip of a machine and pulled a silver knob. A line of golden syrup glided down into the porcelain. “Tell him I ain’t impressed, young lady.”
“We, um, we actually broke up. Start of summer.”
Carrie went still. She released the knob and set the mug on the counter. “You did not.”
“Yep.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. I didn’t want advice. I didn’t want sympathy. I’d moved past those phases.
“What happened?” she asked.