Well, she knew most things.
When the Subway was just barely in sight at the far end of the street, Drew put on her signal and started to slow down. She was a driver’s ed instructor’s wet dream. She pulled carefully into the lot and parked near the back.
“Did you look through that stuff I sent you on apartment brokers?” Drew asked.
I made a noncommittal noise as I pretended to fish for something in my bag, hoping she’d drop the subject.
She pulled open the door to the restaurant, and the steamy smell of lunch meat wrapped itself around us. “Look, I know you were set on Brooklyn, but everything I’ve seen makes me certain it will be easier to find someplace reasonable in another part of town.”
Drew and I had been planning to move to New York for years. We talked about how we’d weave through the crowds of tourists in Times Square, past the half-price theater ticket booth and the chain restaurants with their neon signs. We’d know which subway lines to take without having to check the map, and there’d be a guy at the corner deli who would save us a copy of the paper on Sunday mornings when we slept in. She’d be in school, and I’d get some kind of cool job—?like working at an art gallery or for a fashion magazine. We knew what it would be like to live there, even though neither of us had ever set eyes on New York except for in movies and TV shows.
It had seemed like a harmless dream. Like picking prom dresses out of a magazine when you weren’t even dating anyone. Now it was getting real, and that realization made my anxiety ratchet up several notches.
“Queens is an option,” Drew added. She started listing the pros and cons of different areas of the city as we waited in line. She didn’t need to worry about where she would be living. She’d been accepted to the School of Visual Arts, and her parents had put down a deposit on one of the dorms. I was the one with nowhere to go.
I stared up at the menu board, considering my sandwich options even though I always got the exact same thing. The clerk shoved the various vegetables I pointed at into my roll as I pushed my plastic tray down the line. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out.” I passed over my hard-earned ten to the cashier. Now I didn’t have the money, but I did have a fresh pile of guilt. And one veggie sandwich.
Drew grabbed her sub and, after a pause, a bag of chips. She looked great, but she worried about her weight. “Yeah. But you don’t want to wait too long. Finding the right place is going to take some time.”
There was no right place. At least not for me. Her family had plenty of money for her to go. I didn’t even have enough to cover first month’s rent for an apartment. Not even a tiny studio. Hell, not enough for a shared tiny studio. I was going to have to tell Drew the truth soon; there was no way I could move with her. At least not this summer. I kept putting off breaking the news, and the longer I did it, the harder it became to tell her.
“Isn’t that a great idea?” Drew said. I nodded, even though I hadn’t been paying attention. She would keep brainstorming plans to make the move easier, but it wasn’t going to happen.
Well, it would happen for Drew. She’d go to New York. I hated the tiny part of myself that resented her for that fact. It wasn’t her fault she was who she was, or that our lives had been on different trajectories since we met, but I’d been able to ignore it until now. Now the division was speeding toward us like an out-of-control truck. The truth was graduation was coming, and I’d be the one still living in a small Michigan town trapped between the touristy towns like Traverse and the less desirable cities in the south. The boring middle. A town that could be exchanged for any other small town, with places like the Kwik Klip Hair Salon, where the K was a pair of scissors on the sign, and where the bowling alley still did big business on a Saturday night, and the most exotic restaurant in town was the run-down Chinese place. She’d do all the things we talked about, but I wouldn’t. I’d be stuck working at the Burger Barn, or at the grocery store, dreaming about a life I’d never have. My stomach was as tight as a drum. I didn’t even want my sandwich anymore.
Subway was packed. We grabbed the last empty table next to a group of the people from our school. I hoped their loud discussion of where to eat on prom night, which they were debating as if it were as important as nuclear disarmament, would take Drew’s mind off moving.
“I’m still not sure about bringing my car,” Drew said. “My dad thinks it’s a waste, but then we’d have it if we ever wanted it. What do you think?”
I took a sip of my Diet Coke, letting the carbonation burn through the lies building up in my mouth. “I bet parking in New York is expensive. It may not be worth it to drive.”
Lucy Lam turned around. “You can’t drive in New York. It’s, like, impossible.” She tossed her hair over a shoulder. One long dark hair drifted down onto the table, landing on her salad. I considered telling her and then thought, Screw it. She’d moved to our school a year ago. Tragically for her, the role of school bitch had already been filled, but she was doing her best to be a skilled understudy for the part.
Drew arched an eyebrow. “So you’re a New York traffic expert?”
“I’ve been there, like, a million times—?my aunt lives there, so basically, yeah,” Lucy said.
“I thought your aunt lived in Jersey,” Paige Bonnet countered from the far end of the table where she sat as the official queen of the popular people. She smirked at Lucy, and the other people at the table exchanged awkward glances. Looked like there was a battle brewing in Popularlandia. I didn’t even bother to try and keep up with the politics of who liked whom and who was on the outs anymore. Allegiances in that group changed more often than I changed my socks.
Lucy’s nostrils flared. “Yes, she lives in New Jersey, but we go into the city all the time.”
“You guys are moving to New York, right? In the city, not the ’burbs.” Paige looked at Lucy.
Drew nodded. She was beaming as if thrilled that Paige knew about our postgraduation plans. “We’re still trying to find an apartment,” she explained.
Lucy snorted. “You’re both moving to New York?”
I swallowed the lump of bread that had expanded in my throat, cutting off oxygen. I should have eaten in the cafeteria.
“Yeah, Skye’s going too,” Drew said. She sat ramrod straight, as if daring Lucy to push it.