Page 8 of Back to You
“You think studying a bunch of old poems will make you happy?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Maybe it won’t. But at least it’s something.”
My mom shakes her head. “What happened to you? This—this isn’t like you. You don’t do things like this.”
I didn’t. That’s the problem.
During one of my first driving lessons, I had been so focused on reciting the road rules to myself, roundabouts, intersections, merging, and whatnot, that I sped straightthrough a red light. It’s not even that I didn’t see it or I stopped too late; it was like the red light entered my line of vision but my brain simply glossed over it. The instructor asked me to pull over right away and demanded, in a shaky voice that was trying to be calm, “What happened back there?” I was mortified with myself, unable to answer.
But that was how I had been living, I realize now, for years and years, stuck so deep inside my own head that I had managed to miss everything. Ask me about the general equilibrium theory and I’ll recite all the notes from my lectures, but I couldn’t remember the most basic facts of life: the smell of the rain, the anticipation of stepping into a dark cinema, pale-yellow mornings, what birds sounded like.
“It’s already been done,” I say with a note of finality. “And I’m sorry you’re upset about it, but I’m not sorry I did it, okay? I’m just tired of feeling like I’m in trouble all the time and everybody holds power over me and I have to wait for permission to do anything.”
My mom stares at me, shocked. “Where is all this even coming from?”
If only you knew.If only I had known earlier too.
“I want these years to matter,” I tell her. “I want college to be more than just a place I go to so I can jot down lecture notes. I want—I want to do it differently.”
Because college is supposed to be different. That’s what everyone tells you. Even if you didn’t have a lot of friends, even if you didn’t like yourself in high school, you could start fresh. Change into the person you wanted to be.
But I hadn’t changed; I had congealed.
“This is completely ridiculous,” my mom starts to say, but my phone chimes.
It’s a text from Luke.
be there at 9
At eight fifty, I’m standing on my front porch in a red dress I’ve never worn before.
A wide beam of light swings through the darkness, illuminating the driveway. A Mercedes pulls up right in front of me, and through the tinted window, I can make out the elegant angles of his face. My pulse flutters. He’s here.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” I say honestly as I get into the passenger’s seat.
He frowns, like this reveals something crucial about his character, or maybe mine. “Why not? I told you I would. I even texted you earlier.”
“I know,” I say. But still I didn’t let myself believe it, because it seemed too good to be true. Because I could still hear Victoria’s voice inside my head, her incredulous tone.You’re sure he wasn’t joking?“But I thought you were just, like, saying it.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“To be nice?”
He shakes his head and laughs. “Is that the kind of person you think I am?”
Victoria’s words resurface again.I just didn’t think you were his type.“I don’t know,” I admit.
“Guess you’ll have to stick around to find out,” he says.
I was worried the drive would be uncomfortable or I’d be too nervous, but he puts his music on, a song with a heavy beat I wouldn’t usually listen to myself, and I roll the window down a sliver to let the breeze in, my hair whipping my cheeks. We don’t talk too much, but it’s peaceful.
When we get there, the line is so long it’s wrapped around the block, and it appears to be mutating before my very eyes,splitting into three as more people show up and join their friends.
“Don’t worry, they’ve saved us a spot,” Luke tells me, leading me over to a group of intimidatingly attractive people by the entrance. “Hey,” he calls.
“About time you showed up,” one of them says. He’s wearing a leather bomber jacket that looks way too hot for this weather.
“Sorry, hard to find parking,” Luke says good-naturedly, then gestures to me. “This is Allison.”
