“Where is all your stuff? Did you bring everything?”
“Yeah, it's all here in the back,” I reply.
He walks over and opens the back gate of the Subaru, stacking a couple of crates and angling them confidently against his hip.
“It sure doesn't seem like very much,” he says doubtfully. “Are you sure this is it?”
“Yeah, well, it's just one dorm room worth of stuff. I guess it's not really all that much,” I mutter, but he's already on his way up toward the house again.
“You should come see your room!” he calls over his shoulder as he takes the concrete steps, two at a time. “It's pink!”
Grabbing a couple of duffels, I glance over my shoulder to see if my mom is trying to send me more psychic messages, but she's still following her moving box around as though it is some kind of divining rod. The boxes are all labeled on the sides: dining room, pre-Columbian artifacts, etc. The box that's in her hands is marked “Notebooks, 1 of 2.” Looks like it must be searching for its better half.
As soon as I walk in the front door, I can tell that this house is actually a lot nicer than other places we’ve lived. My parents are definitely the adventurous types, so we have stayed briefly in lofts, other people's guesthouses (which are basically garages), industrial spaces, and tiny shacks in out of the way places. Once we lived in a Russian-style yurt in southern Wyoming, tracking buffalo by day and looking up at the stars through the smoke hole at night.
My parents make documentaries about American wildlife, so we tend to end up in remote towns that are frankly better suited for wildlife than humans. Mom writes the documentary and dad shoots it with her over a few weeks or months, then we move on. We’re basically vagabonds.
But this place is pretty nice, I think as I run my palm over the carved wooden post at the bottom of the staircase. It's got two spacious rooms that I can see from the front hallway, set up with small sofas facing each other, as if conversations are required here. There’s a staircase leading upward to a ninety degree angle topped with a stained-glass window. It's pretty. Most surprisingly of all, this seems utterly habitable with no major intervention or rehab required. We’re not roughing it, for once.
At the top of the stairs, I peer down the hallway to figure out which room is mine. I assume it has to be the one with the door open and that neon pink glow spilling out.
“Isn't it great?” my dad breathes excitedly as I come around the corner and through the doorway. He holds his hands out like, ‘ta-dah!’
“Oh, man,” I start. I'm not sure what to say. It's definitely pink. Pink walls. Slightly darker pink ceiling. Long, floral lightweight curtains that skim along the top of the petal pink carpet.
“You got your own bathroom too!” he announces, flinging open one of the walnut stained doors. Thankfully, that room is stone white, like a visual breath of fresh air.
I set my duffels down on the bed and rub the ache out of my shoulder.
“This is pretty awesome,” I say, forcing a smile. I can tell how proud he is that the room is set up with my bed, my bedspread, and a nice set of drawers. And do I really have anything against the color pink? No. I mean, this quite a bit of it, but…
“Your mom said you would love it,” he winks.
Despite myself, I wonder what combination of gestures that entailed.
“Yeah, it's pretty great,” I nod.
Awkwardness marches between us like a bunch of popsicle stick figures. Suddenly he points toward the large window.
“And a desk! That came with the house. You can, you know… set up your books. Or whatever. No pressure!”
I smile tightly. Nothing says all the pressure like the phrase no pressure.
He shifts from foot to foot.
“So, okay!” he announces. “I'll just go grab whatever you’ve got left in the Subaru and be back in a jiffy. Check out your bathroom!”
“Thanks. Will do,” I say with a little salute.
As he leaves the room, my shoulders slump just a little bit. One interaction down, several more to go.
The truth is, I need to tell them I don't want to go back to college. Emptying out my dorm room felt amazing. After four semesters of trudging dutifully through finance and accounting classes, with a little bit of math and English thrown in for good measure, I was glad to empty out that tiny little closet, those cramped cubbies. I was happy to chuck all my stuff into the back of Subaru and set out for the highway toward this admittedly strange destination.
Two years in college felt like a prison sentence, and I’m finally on parole.
Still, I take my duffel off the bed and move it toward the desk to attempt to do what my dad asked. The books clunk together when I set it on top. They're worthless now. Six hundred dollars in textbooks, and for what? How can a book possibly cost $150 when you can only use it once? That seems stupid.
I never even picked a major, just straddled the fence between business management and finance, hoping that I could see myself