I told myself I wouldn’t even knock. I would leave the note on the windshield of his car.
But then I heard music coming from the house. The screen door was open, and suddenly I just had to see him one last time.
I knocked.
“Yup?” His voice, slightly annoyed, came from the recesses of the family room.
I knocked again.
“Who is it?” he demanded, this time with more irritation.
“Sebastian?” I called out.
And then he was there, staring at me from behind the screen door. I’d like to say he no longer affected me, that seeing him was a disappointment. But it wasn’t true. I felt as strongly about him as I had on that first day I’d seen him in calculus class.
He looked surprised. “What’s up?”
“I came to say good-bye.”
“Oh.” He opened the door and stepped outside. “Where are you going?”
“New York. I got into that writing program,” I said in a rush. “I wrote you a note. I was going to leave it on your car, but…” I took out the folded piece of paper and handed it to him.
He scanned it quickly. “Well.” He nodded. “Good luck.”
He crumpled up the note and handed it back to me.
“What are you doing? For the summer, I mean,” I asked quickly, suddenly desperate to keep him there, for at least a moment longer.
“France,” he said. “Going to France.” And then he grinned. “Wanna come?”
I have this theory: If you forgive someone, they can’t hurt you anymore.
The train rattles and shakes. We pass hollow buildings scrawled with graffiti, billboards advertising toothpaste and hemorrhoid cream and a smiling girl in a mermaid outfit pointing at the words, “CALL ME!” in capital letters. Then the scenery disappears and we’re going through a tunnel.
“New York City,” the conductor calls out. “Penn Station.”
I close my journal and slip it into my suitcase. The lights inside the car flicker on and off, on and off, and then black out altogether.
And like a newborn child, I enter my future in darkness.
An escalator that goes on forever. And then an enormous space, tiled like a bathroom, and the sharp smell of urine and sweet warm sweat. Penn Station. People everywhere.
I stop and adjust my hat. It’s one of my grandmother’s old numbers, with a long green plume and a small net. For some reason, I thought it was appropriate. I wanted to arrive in New York wearing a hat.
It was part of my fantasy.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“Get out of the way.”
“Do you know where you’re going?” This from a middle-aged lady wearing a black suit and an even blacker scowl.
“The exit? Taxis?” I ask.
“That way,” she says, pointing to yet another escalator that seems to rise straight up into nothingness.
I get on, balancing my suitcase behind me. A man, weaving this way and that, comes up behind me—striped pants, jaunty cap, eyes hidden behind dark green glass in gold-rimmed sunglasses. “Hey, little girl, you look lost.”