Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty Five

MARA

He left on a Sunday.

I didn't go to see him off. We'd talked about it and agreed, both of us, that a parking lot goodbye with boxes and his mother trying not to cry was not the way we wanted the last image to be. We'd had the overlook. That was ours. That was the right one.

So Sunday morning I stayed home and made breakfast with my mother and listened to her radio program and when my phone buzzed at nine forty-seven with a single text — leaving now — I was standing at the kitchen window with my coffee and I looked at it and felt the specific weight of a thing becoming real.

drive safe, I sent back. call me when you get there.

He sent a thumbs up. Then: I love you.

I love you too, I typed. Now go.

He went.

My mother didn't say anything. She refilled my coffee and went back to her crossword and let me stand at the window for as long as I needed to, which was another four minutes, and then I sat down and life continued in the ordinary way that life does regardless of what you're feeling inside it.

The first week without him had a particular texture.

Not bad exactly. Just different, like a room where furniture has been moved — everything functionally the same but the shape of the space altered in a way you noticed without meaning to. I went to the UCSF program Tuesday and Thursday and worked hard and came home tired in the good way. I picked up an extra pharmacy shift. I started the reading list NYU had sent, three books that were dense and serious and required the kind of attention that left no room for anything else, which was useful.

He called Tuesday night. Not a short call. Almost two hours, which surprised both of us when we looked at the time. He talked about the roommate, a wide receiver from Fresno named Marcus who apparently had opinions about everything and stated them continuously but was, Cole said, genuinely funny. He talked about the campus at night, how different it looked from the orientation visits, more lived-in and real. He asked about Dr. Osei and the UCSF work and listened the way he always listened, fully, following the details.

Before he hung up he said: "Seventy-four days."

I looked at my ceiling. "You're counting."

"I've been counting since April. You know that."

"Seventy-four days," I said.

"November fifteenth. I land at JFK at three PM your time."

"I know when you land."

"Just making sure we're aligned."

"Cole."

"Yeah."

"I miss you."

A pause. The good kind, the kind that meant he was sitting with it rather than rushing past it. "I miss you too. Every day like I said."

We hung up and I lay in the dark and thought about the shape of missing someone, how it wasn't the sharp thing you expected but something more like weather, a pressure that moved through you and changed the light slightly.

August went. September came and it was my turn.

The two weeks before my flight were the most organized I had ever been in my life, which was saying something. Lists and sub-lists. NYU had sent a housing packet that I'd read four times and annotated. My mother and I had spreadsheeted the scholarship disbursement, the meal plan options, the subway lines between campus and anywhere I might need to be. We approached it the way we approached everything hard, together and through the logistics, converting anxiety into preparation until the preparation was complete and what was left was just the thing itself.

Elena Reyes came for dinner the Thursday before I left. She brought flowers, the same kind Cole had brought for the NYU celebration, and she and my mother sat at the kitchen table after dinner with wine my mother had been saving and talked while I finished packing, their voices moving through the wall low and warm and occasionally laughing at something I couldn't hear.

I stood in my room surrounded by boxes and looked at the walls. Bare now, like Cole's had been. The water stain on the ceiling that had been there since I was twelve. The periodic table poster above the desk. The hook on the back of the door where the green dress had hung.

I took one last look and carried the last box to the living room.

My flight was six AM Saturday. My mother had arranged a car service because she wasn't going to say goodbye in a long-term parking structure at five in the morning and I respected this. She drove me in the car service and we rode through the empty pre-dawn city and she held my hand in the back seat and talked about nothing in particular, the radio program host she liked, a story from work, small ordinary things laid end to end like stepping stones across the silence.

At the departure entrance she held me for a long time.

"Call me when you land," she said into my hair.

"I will."

"And when you get to the dorm."

"I will."

"And if you need anything. If you need to hear my voice. Any time."

I pulled back and looked at her in the early morning dark, at this woman who had built everything around me and never once made me feel like a weight, only ever like a reason.

"Thank you," I said. "For all of it. Everything."

She touched my face once. "Go," she said. "Go be remarkable."

I went through the doors with my carry-on and my backpack and the bioluminescence book in the outer pocket where I could reach it and I didn't look back because if I looked back I would stay and staying wasn't the right thing anymore.

My phone buzzed at the security line.

Cole: you're at the airport aren't you.

I smiled at the screen. how do you know.

you got quiet at midnight. you only go quiet like that when something is about to happen.

I looked at the line moving forward ahead of me.

I'm going, I typed.

I know, he sent back. New York doesn't know what's coming.

I put the phone in my pocket and picked up my bag and walked forward into the rest of it.

I didn't look back.

I was ready.