Page 40 of The Getaway List
My eyes sting, because I know there’s some truth to that and I don’t want to hear it right now. Especially when there doesn’t feel like much point in talking about it, seeing as I can’t change the past. I can only change the future, and she doesn’t like my version of that, either.
“And you were?” I say instead. “You think the aunts didn’t tell me everything? You didn’t even bother going to your own graduation before you took off. You were fighting with your parents all the time—”
“Exactly. Because I wasn’t ready. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, and why I don’t want us to have the exact same fight.”
“This isn’t me fighting you, this is me telling you. Me trying to get you to understand.”
“All right, I’m listening,” my mom challenges me. “Give me one good reason why you are staying in New York, of all places, where you have no family, no plan, and no experience with the real world to rely on yet. Go on.”
I have so many reasons. Reasons that I was excited to share with her. I’ve spent the last few weeks firming up such a strong sense of myself in this place that it seemed impossible that she wouldn’t be able to sense the change in me, that she wouldn’t want to hear me out. That she wouldn’t recognize some part of her own self at my age and try to understand.
But even if I had the confidence left to tell her, I can tell she doesn’t have the patience to listen. I can practically feel her poking holes into words I haven’t said yet, and I can’t let that happen. My life finally feels like it’s mine, and it’s all still too fragile and new to let her pick it apart. Like it’s taking shape but it hasn’t taken root.
I thought maybe she could help me find those roots. My whole life my mom has felt like gravity to me. The one place I’ve always felt settled and known. But now I’m something she doesn’t recognize, something that can’t be grounded the same way, and the worst part is I think it’s just as scary for her as it is for me and neither of us knows what to do about it.
“You lived here once,” I say quietly. “You know why.”
My mom lowers her own voice in turn. “And it’s because of that I know you’re making a mistake. About to make one, at least. It’s not too late to change your mind about this. I’m here when you do.”
“And if I don’t?” I ask. “What then, you’ll just be mad at me forever?”
“I’m not mad, Riley. I’m worried. I’m trying to give you space here so you can work this out for yourself, but you should be home. Getting ready to start classes and save your money and build a life. If you’re so set on this then you can wait for it. The city will still be there when you’re done.”
I shake my head, glad that she can’t see me, because it’s more for myself than for her. A reminder that I’ve already wasted enough time waiting. I’ve seen what my life could look like cast in all these new colors, and I can’t go back to the gray.
“Just think about it, okay?” my mom asks.
I backslide then only because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to end this call on the same terms we ended the last one. I don’t want another few weeks to go by without us saying a word to each other. Tom may be my best friend, and I may have plenty of others to rely on, but there’s nothing in the world that compares to the comfort of knowing and being known by my mom.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”
It works, because after that we talk. Like, actually talk. She tells me about drama between the coeds at the coffee shop and the summer courses she’s taking before she finishes up her degree next semester. I tell her about some of the more romantic deliveries I’ve been a part of, like the old couple who keep sending each other fries from different delis every week, knowing that she’ll appreciate those stories more than the wackier ones. We talk long enough that she has to leave because her lunch break is probably long since over. We both say “I love you,” but there’s a resigned weight in the way she says it. Like she’s worried this call is the last of its kind.
I swallow thickly when we hang up and have to swipe at my eyes fast. Apparently my tear ducts were just waiting for the second the connection dropped, which, honestly, good for them. Maybe I only have half a backbone about my decisions, but at least I didn’t get sabotaged by my own waterworks.
I sink into one of the benches in the closed-off courtyard outside Tom’s place and let myself blink a few more tears out as the reality of the situation makes itself clear. I have a choice here. New York or my mom. It seems suddenly impossible to have them both. But every time I try to settle on a decision—stay here with this life I’m building for myself, or go home to the person who is the only life I’ve known—I start crying all over again for the part that gets lost along with whichever I choose.
My phone pings just before the same dispatcher who keeps getting saddled with all our deliveries arrives. “You again,” he says, as I jolt up straight from the bench. He winces when he registers the tears, then says with his usual born-and-bred New Yorker candor, “Shit. I’m starting to feel like I’m an extra in you guys’ soap opera.”
I let out a wet laugh and take the paper bag from him. “Watch it, or I’ll anonymously send someone a pile of bricks and make you take them all the way to Brooklyn.”
“It would still be less weird than the single hunk of cheese.”
Once he’s off I take a moment to collect myself before looking down into the paper bag. Inside there’s a bound notebook with a solid brown leather cover. I pull it out and see all the pages are delightfully blank—no lines, no structure in place. But as I flip to the first page I see there’s something written in ink.
For your realms of possibilities, it reads.
This time when a tear falls, it’s with a sweet kind of ache, one that starts in my chest and swells everywhere else. It’s not the gravity I was hoping for, but it’s enough. It’s like someone sent me a piece of myself, and now that it’s here in my hands it has the weight I need to keep myself steady, to keep my resolve. I may be new here, but I’m known.
I close the notebook carefully and set it back in the bag. For once I know I’m not going to tell anybody else about this delivery. I don’t want to wonder about that mystery anymore. Not when this gift is so personal, so me, that it might break my heart a little if it didn’t come from the one person I’m hoping it did.
The truth is it doesn’t really matter. Because of all the things I didn’t say to my mom just now, I got to say the most important of all: being here is my choice. And from here on out, so is everything else.
Chapter Thirteen
“Okay, we have a moral responsibility to other New Yorkers to leave some candy in this store,” I say to Jesse and Tom, who have a cart so full to the brim with it that we’re going to need a magic carpet to carry it home.
Jesse bops me on the head with a bag of Twizzlers and says, “You need the extra sustenance. It’s not every day a girl turns sixteen twice.”
