What if they knew? Would that make my family appear any less happy? Would we seem suddenly tragic? Would our family be classified as a broken home? I think about all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and Easters we’ve had together. Mom always opens our doors to anyone without a place to go for the holidays. A few years ago, we had over twenty people at our house for Thanksgiving. Dad dragged the old folding table up from the basement. My brothers and sisters and I sat at the kids’ table, peering at the grownups’ table and dubbing dialogue over their conversations. We cracked ourselves up over the dorkiest things, like the time Grace laughed so hard at our little brother’s impression of a spastic cat on the playground that cranberry juice came out of her nose. Or when my older brother and sister acted out that Saturday Night Live skit where Justin Timberlake was on a Bee Gees talk show. Or when the five of us did mash-ups of Sesame Street characters as commentators for the Olympics.
We’ve had our share of drama just like any other siblings. There are times my older sister and I will get in fights that last for days. Or smaller arguments where she’ll accuse me of using her mascara or wearing her favorite fuzzy Aerie sweater. But underneath it all, we are a team. Our parents motivate us to be a force of goodness in the world. They inspire us to stamp out injustice whenever we cross paths with anyone being mistreated. We have always been taught to be crusaders of justice, gladiators for social change.
Underneath the surface, my family is as complete as it appears. There is nothing broken about us. I have been shattered in the past. But I am determined to put the pieces of myself back together.
We are all a collection of our past experiences. But who we were before doesn’t have to define who we will become.
My stomach clenches when it suddenly remembers I am also supposed to be upset about the deceptive appearance of my own romantic relationship.
Shayla still loves D. And she’s made sure he knows it.
I know D told me not to worry. I know he’s my boyfriend, not hers. But the nervous fluttering tells a different story. The nonfiction underneath the fiction.
There was something more between them that whole time D told me they were just friends. I knew it. When D admitted that they went out in high school, I almost felt more validated than devastated. Finding out Shayla still has feelings for him wasn’t a revelation. It was the truth underneath a lie I never really believed.
I want to stop being the paranoid girlfriend. Acting like a crazy person on a roof deck when Shayla calls or interrogating D after they hang out is not who I want to be. I want to be able to trust him. I should be able to trust him. If a girlfriend can’t trust her boyfriend, the relationship is doomed. But now that my worst fears have been confirmed, am I wrong to worry?
I want to stop feeling this way. I just don’t know how.
And I don’t know where we go from here.
CHAPTER 16
SADIE
“YEAH, NO. YOU CAN’T LIVE here.”
“Why not?”
“Um, because it’s disgusting?”
Austin looks around the deteriorating apartment. “It’s not that bad.”
I gawk at him incredulously. There are no words for how bad this apartment is.
When Austin asked me to look for an apartment with him, I assumed he wouldn’t be putting grungy bachelor pads on the list. I understand he has a budget. I understand rents in the West Village are outrageous. But there has to be a better place than this within his price range. There is no way I can let him live here.
“Did you see the bathtub in the kitchen?” I ask.
“Those old claw-foot tubs are vintage. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
“They don’t make them like that anymore for a reason.”
Austin smirks at me. “I think it’s charming.”
“And I think you should take showers in the bathroom.” I stalk over to the bathtub sitting right out on the kitchen floor between the stove and the refrigerator. The other side of the refrigerator is almost touching a couch in the tiny space Austin’s broker, Maxine, keeps insisting is a living room. You can watch TV and get a cold drink from the refrigerator without having to get up. Sorry, but it doesn’t qualify as a living room if you can reach into the kitchen from the couch. “How do you even take a shower in this? There’s no rod or . . . where’s the shower curtain?”
Maxine, a rumpled girl who doesn’t look much older than us, speaks up. “You don’t take showers in the tub.” She indicates a rickety accordion partition on the wall, yellowed with age. When she opens the partition, a narrow shower stall is revealed. The shower is so constricted you couldn’t even turn around in it.
“Seriously?” I blurt. I know Maxine is just doing her job, but come on.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Austin asks.
“This unit doesn’t include a traditional bathroom,” Maxine spins.
“But . . . it has a toilet, right?”
“Of course.” Maxine points at a small set of three stairs leading up to a raised platform just inside the front door. A paisley sheet is tacked along the top edge, hiding whatever is back there. I thought it was a pantry when we came in.
Austin turns to me. “I’m starting to see your point.”
“Are you going to look behind the curtain? I mean, nasty old sheet?”
He lifts the sheet aside. Perched in a cubbyhole is a toilet all by itself. A roll of toilet paper sits on the floor. A plunger is wedged behind the toilet.
“Yeah, so . . . I’m going to pass on this.” Austin grins at Maxine. “You said there’s another unit to look at? Not in this building?”
“Um.” Maxine shuffles some papers in a sloppy file. “I had that right here. . . .”
“Oh my god.” I made the mistake of opening the cabinet under the sink. Chunks of plaster have fallen off the wall around the pipes. Whoever lives here didn’t even bother to sweep up the broken pieces of crumbled plaster. Or fill the gaping hole in the wall. An array of roach traps indicates that indoor wildlife is an imminent threat to whomever dares rent this apartment.
“Here it is.” Maxine reads the address of the other apartment for us to see. My optimism gradually filters back in as we walk the three blocks to that building. Nothing could be worse than what we just saw.
“This next apartment is a good deal,” Maxine tells us as we walk down Carmine Street. “It’s eight hundred square feet.”
“That’s huge,” Austin says. “How can it be in my price range?”
“It’s not a typical unit for the building.”
“Why, is the toilet in the bedroom?” I quip.
Maxine chuckles a little. I can’t tell if she’s laughing to be nice or because she actually gets the joke. The way she was pushing that crazy kitchen bathtub place, I have to wonder where she lives.
We don’t have to take one step into the next apartment for me to know that Austin can’t live here, either.
This is a basement apartment. It’s this weird structure carved out of the cement, kind of like a cave with walls they tried to get straight but gave up on. The apartment is right next to the laundry room, which is weird. But the main problem with this place and basement apartments overall is lack of natural light. The whole big space only has two tiny windows placed so high up on the walls you can’t even reach them. Which means if Austin lived here, he would never have any fresh air. No fresh air is a deal breaker. The rooms are painted a dark gray. The little bit of light straining from the lamps is sucked in by the dark walls, making everything even more depressing than it already is. And hello, basement apartment? That’s practically synonymous with indoor wildlife.
“A great value for the location,” Maxine says. “This is by far the largest apartment I’ve seen in this neighborhood at your price point.”
“It’s big, but kind of dark.” Austin turns to me. “What do you think?”
My hard stare at him makes it clear that if Austin rents this place, I won’t be visiting any time soon. Or ever.
> Maxine scrounges up one last listing for us to look at. We take a quick cab ride over to Thompson and Bleecker. The apartment is a sixth-floor walk-up.
“You might want to consider looking at more sixth-floor walk-ups,” Maxine advises Austin as we get out of the cab. “They’re typically at least two hundred dollars less than rents for lower floors. No one loves climbing those stairs, but you look like you’re in good shape . . . and stairs are cheaper than a gym!”
Either Maxine is a legendary spin doctor or she is desperate for commissions. This is probably her first job out of college. Maybe she lives with roommates way out on Staten Island. Or maybe none of her clients have found an apartment yet this month. She could be worried about paying rent on September 1. It could be killing her to have to push these horrible apartments in order to make a living. You never know what someone else’s circumstances are. I tell myself to be less sarcastic around her about kitchen bathtubs.
Maxine finds the key to the front door of the building. The stuffy hallway smells like mothballs and coleslaw. I am drenched in sweat from running around in this gross heat wave. None of these apartments have their air conditioners on, and this steep climb upstairs is not helping. I force myself to stay positive. We are looking for an apartment for Austin, who cares enough about what I think to bring me along. Anyplace might be the needle in a haystack. Including this one.
The three of us are breathing hard by the time we climb up to the sixth floor. Something is off about the configuration of the apartment Maxine is opening. The wall outside the apartment is different from the rest of the hallway walls. It’s all spackled over with a hasty paint job. The color looks like that burnt sienna crayon I never used when I was little because it was ugly. The door to the apartment is weird, too. There’s a tall gap under the door. Indoor wildlife could run in and out under the door with no problem. Shaggy black fibers stuck to the bottom of the door are blowing around in a draft.
“I can’t get this door open,” Maxine grunts. She shoves the key in the lock again, pressing against the door. “New locks. The whole apartment is new.”
“It is?” Austin says. “That’s cool.”
“The landlord built this additional unit on the roof.” She takes the key out and sticks it back in, finessing the lock more delicately this time.
“Wait, so . . . this apartment was built separately on top of the building?”
“In a sense. Got it!” Maxine pushes open the door to reveal a brightly lit apartment with polished new floors. But the floors are pretty much the only new part. The kitchen looks like we walked into 1923. The cabinets are cracked, the stove is crooked and burned, and the refrigerator is from the same era as that claw-foot bathtub. Everything is a different color and style.
“Why does the kitchen look so old if it’s a new apartment?” I ask.
“I believe the landlord used materials salvaged from other apartments in the building.”
Translation: This kitchen is a hodgepodge of garbage the landlord threw out when other apartments were renovated.
Observation: This apartment is a rickety mess slapped together as an afterthought, a random Lego fort pressed onto an already completed building.
Verdict: There is no way I am letting Austin live here.
I get why Austin wants to just find an apartment in New Jersey and call it a day. Searching for the needle in a haystack is never easy. But despite today’s horrific display of jankety apartments, I remain determined to help Austin find his needle.
“You’ll find a good place you can afford,” I tell Austin when we’re decompressing at The Uncommons after our busted-apartment search. The Uncommons is a board gaming café I found while I was on Sadie Time, making the most of being single. For a while I didn’t think I would get back together with Austin. I loved the hardcore board gaming group he brought me to, but of course I couldn’t go back there and risk running into him. So I researched smaller, more laid-back board gaming groups. A few of them meet up here, right down the street from that weird Lego apartment.
Austin moves his Ticket to Ride piece. He leans his elbow on the table, propping his chin on his hand. “How can you be so sure?”
“I just know.”
“You have the Knowing?”
As much as I want to say that I do, I don’t. The Knowing is one thing that cannot be faked. “Not exactly. But I do know that anything is possible.”
“It might be possible to make that place with the kitchen bathtub work,” he says. “Bathrooms are overrated.”
“Really?”
“No.” Austin winks at me.
“Whew!” I lean back in my chair. “I thought you were serious.”
“That’s because you’re gullible.”
“I am not.”
“You kind of are,” Austin says with affection. “In an adorable way.”
We pick up our caramel lattes at the same time, smizing at each other over the foam. I think about what Austin said.
“Am I really gullible?” I ask.
“Sometimes.” He carefully puts his mug down next to our game board. “You want to believe that everyone is good. When people talk to you, you assume they’re telling the truth.”
“Doesn’t everyone assume that?”
“Not cynical people. Not people who think the world is out to get them.”
“What a horrible way to live.”
“Exactly. You would never choose to live that way. Your positive attitude is one of the things I love about you the most.”
Austin doesn’t know about the darkness lurking under the light. He doesn’t know about my nightmares or the hopeless thoughts I have when I’m triggered. He thinks I’m sparkly rainbows and unicorns all the time.
I wish I could be that girl. Not in an unrealistic way. Not in a naive way where I think nothing bad can ever happen and no one has an evil side to them. Only so I could chase the darkness away.
It’s my turn. I study the game board, strategizing where to build my next train.
“Hey,” Austin says.
I look up.
“Thank you for coming back to me. I just . . . I love you so much.” He blinks back tears. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
I reach out across the table to hold his hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
Austin looks at me with so much longing to make things right between us, so much affection in his eyes that my heart aches. A slant of sunlight catches his sky-blue eyes, making them bright with silver sparkles. In this moment, we are connected by a bond that can never be broken.
Four guys at the table next to ours are playing a complex game involving a ridiculous number of game pieces. One of the guys steals a glance at Austin. He’s probably wondering what anyone could be crying about at Board Gaming Nirvana. But this is the kind of safe space you can let your emotions show without worrying about other people’s reactions. Old-school board gamers can empathize with emotional turbulence. Other than that one guy glancing over, everyone else is so engrossed in their games, they wouldn’t notice if a piano crashed in from the ceiling.
It’s actually not as crowded in here as it should be for a Saturday afternoon. That’s the magic of August in New York City. I enjoy the annual perk of having Manhattan all to myself at the end of the summer. No lines. No reservations. Even most coffee shops have free seats. The Uncommons is a small room, but there are three free tables. I make a mental note to add this little thing, being able to walk in and sit down without reserving a table in advance, to my list of daily gratitude. I’ve been practicing daily gratitude like Your Dream Life says to do. It is supposed to inspire genuine happiness. I’m hoping this habit will help me shine light into the darkness.
Austin wins Ticket to Ride. I’m happy he won. I feel bad that he’s struggling with so much regret. But his regret is another thing I’m adding to my daily gratitude list for today.
“Should we play another game?” I ask. I could sit here playing for seven hours with him. We
both could.
“Sure.”
“What was the one with the castles?”
“Asara.”
“Yes! Let’s play that next.”
This is exactly what I want to do. I want to build a magical kingdom with sparkly rainbows and unicorns. A place glowing in sunlight, shiny and bright, where everyone lives happily ever after.
CHAPTER 17
DARCY
THE BEST THING A GIRL can do when her life is in shambles is find comfort in her friends. Which is why I’m stoked for movie night at our apartment. Going out in this disgusting heat does not appeal to me at all. The second heat wave of the summer has rolled in and we are rolling out the air-conditioning up in Apartment 4A. Not sure how we’re going to pay the terrifying electricity bill after blasting every air conditioner we have. We can worry about that later.
Tonight I don’t want to worry about anything. Tonight is all about my girls.
“Does it still feel hot in here to you?” Rosanna asks me.
I look up at her from where I am sprawled on the couch. “A little.”
“How is that even possible?” she agonizes.
“The living room unit can’t handle this kind of heat,” Sadie says from the kitchen. She’s digging around in the freezer for the coldest thing we can eat.
Rosanna drags a chair over to the utility closet. She stands on the chair to get a big fan down from the high top shelf. “This is what we did back home,” she says, setting up the fan on an end table. She stacks some books in front of the fan. Then she empties four ice trays into a bowl, puts the bowl on the stack of books, and turns the fan on so it’s pointed at us.