Page 35 of The Getaway List
Mariella nods. “Yeah, that’s really what it was for me. Something all mine. Except my parents were so happy to have birthed a surprise nerd that they spent a ton of their savings putting me in the fancy private school Tom and I went to—like, money I didn’t even know they had. So they were super adamant that I only study academic stuff. Like they were afraid the creative arts were contagious and I’d catch them if I took classes in anything else. So then I got restless and did the kind of shit restless teens do.”
“Oh boy. I have a feeling you and I are about to swap some detention horror stories,” I say. “What did you do?”
Mariella’s lip curls the slightest bit, undeniably proud of her skill set even if she’s not pleased with how she used it. “At first it was little stuff. Hacking into the school’s database to tweak grades or change attendance records. I always had friends, don’t get me wrong, but suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. And in a school like ours where most of the kids have that vague untouchable New York eliteness to them, it’s hard not to get swept up in it.” The smile uncurls itself from her lips when she says, “I don’t have any detention stories, though. I was too good to get caught. And I don’t mean that in a braggy way. I kind of wish I had been.”
I wonder if it’s worth warning her off that wish, considering my permanent record is one of the reasons why there’s a graduation cap in a landfill right now full of letters from schools sending their “sincerest regrets.” But her expression is unsettled and unfocused, like she’s trying to turn a bad memory into words she hasn’t actually said out loud yet.
“Because it was worse stuff, too,” she explains. “Like, some of the kids were doing ridiculous betting circles or selling weed to each other. Big fucking private-school clichés, you know? And they wanted a safe way to send money back and forth without getting caught. And I knew it was a bad idea but damn, did I love the challenge of building an app for it.” She meets my gaze then, the regret so plain in her face that it’s dimming all the usual brightness in her eyes. “Except by the time I finished it I’d seen enough of what they got up to that the whole thing just kind of made me sick. I mean shit, I was sick of myself. I was drinking with them a lot. My grades were slipping. I just didn’t feel like myself anymore. So I destroyed the app before I was supposed to launch it. All the kids involved basically shunned me, and anyone in their right mind followed suit.”
I blink, trying to digest this all at once. It’s so far removed from the hijinks my classmates would get up to in our small town that I feel like I was on the bunny-hill version of high school, with no idea how steep the stakes could get.
I finally settle on “What the fuck? After all that, they turned on you over a stupid app?”
Mariella shrugs, but more out of indifference than confusion. “I guess they were afraid I was going to rat them out or something. I wasn’t, but it’s a power thing. They punished me by shutting me out, but that was just their warning shot. You know—the ‘we could do worse.’ They made sure I knew how well-connected their parents were. It was especially fucked up because, like—even if I wanted to bring them down, it’s not like that even mattered. Who are they going to blame for that kind of thing in the end? Not the pack of rich white boys, that’s for damn sure.” She picks at her kimbap like she’s only just remembered it’s there. “But the real reason I wish I’d been caught is I just got carried away with their shit. The drinking. The lying to our parents. I even liked it at first. It felt like I was getting back at them for choosing everything for me.”
I feel the weight of those words so instantly and so viscerally that for a moment I’m not on the bench with her but too many places at once. All the tired conversations I had with my mom about the next shift she wanted me to cover or group she wanted me to join. All the moments I sat around wasting time and thinking I didn’t have any other choice. I don’t realize I’m tearing up until Mariella meets my eye and says candidly, “Oh, shit.”
“Sorry,” I say, rubbing at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “It’s just—fuck. I know exactly what you mean. It’s like when all your decisions get made for you like that, you’re just sort of—set up to fail, trying to get out from under it. Like you’re either going to disappoint them or yourself.”
To the surprise of approximately none of me, it’s my mom I’m thinking of then. How it’s been more than a week since I got here and despite her demanding we stay in touch, she hasn’t called or texted or even emailed. How I’ve been so busy go go go-ing to keep up with the pace of this city and the temporary life I’m making in it that I haven’t felt the impact of it just yet—of the way this constant stream of back-and-forth between us has been cut off all at once, and I feel untethered without it in a way I’ve never been.
But I manage to get ahold of myself even as Mariella nods, clearly sympathetic. “It’s ridiculous because I can’t do anything to change what I did, but I’m still disappointed in myself.”
I laugh wetly. “Even after you basically said fuck you to richest kids in this city? That takes guts,” I tell her. “I think that’s automatic badass territory.”
“For me it was automatic loser territory,” Mariella groans, taking a bite of kimbap.
“Badass,” I say firmly, before echoing her: “I don’t make the rules. I just enforce them.”
She smiles then, and for the moment the conversation comes to an easy quiet. A shared understanding that’s made not just of the words, but the absence of them.
“Well,” Mariella says once we move on to the giant cookie, “now you know my deep, dark secret.”
“Yeah. And to watch my back if I ever commit fraud, since you’re inevitably going to get scooped up by the FBI.”
Mariella makes a pfft noise, straightening her shoulders again. “Those squares wish.” She gestures out vaguely enough that she’s either encompassing this little park or the entire city, then says, “Anyway, that’s what this photography thing is about. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with that old crowd or my parents or even anything to do with my future. Something that’s just mine.”
“You don’t think coding can be again, too?” I ask through a mouthful of cookie.
She takes another chunk of it herself. “Close to it, maybe. I think it will never be just mine again because I want to put my stuff out in the world, and once you do that it’s not just yours anymore. But I guess it’s more mine than it has been in a while. I had a long talk with my parents about not going to college yet. I want to see where the next few months take me with it. I’ve got some ideas, and friends with ideas, too.”
She goes quiet then with the suddenness of a car braking without warning. I tilt my head at her in curiosity, but she blinks like it didn’t happen, settling her focus back on the cookie.
“Well, shit,” I say after a moment. “I wish I could be that brave. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life, let alone how to talk to my mom about it.”
Mariella swats me on the shoulder. “Sorry, did you fall on your head and forget that you just up and moved to New York City? That’s brave as hell.”
“Up and temporarily moved to Tom’s for the summer,” I correct her.
“Technicality, because we’ll get you in the end,” she says, waving me off. “The way I see it we’re both leaving all our shit from high school in the rearview mirror. This is our new start. One we make on our own terms. In clothes that weren’t previously owned by a perilously tall space-obsessed dweeb.”
I let out a sharp laugh, but feel the comfort of those words settling over me like a weighted blanket. A grounding reminder that I might be on my own for the first time, but I’m not alone in it. That we’re all playing jump rope with that murky line of what our parents think is best and what we want for ourselves, knowing we’ll trip along the way and hoping we’ll be able to pick ourselves back up again.
But knowing Mariella talked it out with her family makes me feel a little less daunted about talking it over with my mom—whatever it is I decide to do with my life, and however I decide to do it. Now all I have to do is somehow figure those impossibly large, decidedly life-altering, ridiculously high-pressure things out.
“C’mon,” says Mariella, leaping up from the bench so fast that the crumbs from our cookie spill to the concrete. “There’s a dog that knows how to skateboard in the park. We should go see if he’s out today.”
I follow, happy for a reason for the day not to end just yet, and happier still that at least for now, it gets to be whatever we make of it.
