Posey shakes her head, and her cheeks flush. Light red strands are escaping from the tiny black elastic band that’s too small to hold her hair. In the light, her hair looks lighter, as if she dyed it red. Her complexion doesn’t give any of her secrets away.
“I need the shifts. But if you know anyone who makes bubbles to put little four-year-old daredevils inside of while I work, let me know.”
I smile with her and look at Lila, who is still lying on the floor.
“She’s autistic,” she says. Somewhere inside my head, the pieces were put together within a few minutes of meeting her. “We aren’t sure how severe yet. She’s learning to talk now”—she pauses briefly—“at four.”
“Well, sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.” I gently bump her shoulder with mine, trying to find a dash of humor in something so scary. She uncrosses her arms and her face relaxes into a wide smile.
“True.” She presses her fingers against her lips.
Posey bends down closer to her little sister and rests her hands on her knees. I can’t hear what she says, but I can see that it makes Lila happy.
I check the time; it’s close to six. If I’m going to go out with Nora and her friends, I need to get back to my apartment and shower. I’m not nervous really, I just don’t know what she’s thinking about me. Does she randomly kiss people often? If so, that’s okay, but I wish I had some inkling of what she’s feeling, or how she acts on a date. She’d been flirty before today—well, I take it as her flirting, but so far she hadn’t given me any indication or warning that she was open to kissing me like she did this morning. She was so confident when she leaned into me, pressing into me, running her hands over my chest. Remembering the way her tongue tasted makes my cock ache. I need to do something about it, and this time, I won’t rip the shower curtain and fall on my ass and cut my face and bruise my knee. Safe sex: I’ll stay safely in my bed. With my door locked. I’ll even push my dresser against the door.
I look over at Posey, who’s sitting back at the table again. She has her phone next to her ear and is frowning. I watch her shake her head and mutter something into the phone before hanging up. I want to be nosy, to ask her if she’s okay, but at the same time, I don’t want to pry into her life without her wanting me to.
“Do you need anything before I go?” I ask while I walk behind the bar to check my schedule and make my espresso. Double espresso. I consider doing a triple, but that might not be the best idea.
Posey’s shift should be close to over by now. She shakes her head, thanking me, but says she’s fine. I wave goodbye to Lila and Posey, shouting goodbye to Jane loud enough for her to hear me from the stock room.
chapter
Eleven
AS I PUSH ON THE heavy shop door and walk out into the coming night, my phone pings in my front pocket. Heavy bags of trash line the street, nearly bursting open to spill their litter onto the sidewalks. It’s the same every day, but I don’t see myself getting used to it. Manhattan must be even worse, with all the shops and a million and a half people sharing the smaller space. It’s an impossible city to live in if you don’t want to be bumped into, honked at, or hassled.
It astounds me that so many people can be shoved into so many little apartments with tiny windows and tiny kitchens. The rooms in my place are bigger than I had expected (the bathroom is snug), but I knew I couldn’t afford to live in an expensive place in Brooklyn that was any bigger than five hundred square feet. My stepdad, Ken, helps pay our rent, but I’ve been putting money aside since I got a job and I plan on repaying him someday, at least some of it. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of him helping me with my bills. I’m responsible enough, partly thanks to him and his lectures about money management and student expenses. I don’t blow my money on booze or going out. I pay my bills and occasionally buy books or tickets to a hockey game.
Having a parent who occupies such a high position at a university has unquestionably made my college life one hundred percent easier. I got help with each and every form, I had a helping hand in choosing all my classes, and I managed to get into some that were supposedly full. Ken had a lot more pull at Washington Central than at NYU for sure, but it still helps to know the ins and outs of admissions departments.
I often think about how life would be if my mom had stayed in Michigan. Would I have left her alone there and moved to New York with Dakota? I feel like I would have been less likely to move if she didn’t have Ken and her group of friends in Washington. My life would be so different if she hadn’t met him.
Sometimes I think that outside of the few obvious things, New York City isn’t that different from Saginaw. The sun is often hidden in Manhattan, keeping the light from the city’s residents in a small box on a beach somewhere on the West Coast. I’ve become so used to the overcast sky shadowing every town I’ve ever lived in that when the sun shines here in Brooklyn, my eyes burn for half of my walk to work. I bought a pair of sunglasses, which I quickly lost. But the sun shows its face in Brooklyn often enough that I would actually use them, marking one of the many reasons I chose to live here instead of Manhattan. In September, the overcast has blotted out everything close to the skyline. The farther you get away from the towering buildings, the more luminous the sun becomes.
A short, stocky bundle of layered coats with a hat on top moves past me on the sidewalk, the man beneath them pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans and plastic bottles. His hands are encased in thick, faded brown gloves covered in black dirt. Patches of gray hair poke out from under the red-and-green plaid hat he’s wearing and his eyes are half-closed, like time and hardship have wilted him to the point of near collapse. He stares straight ahead, paying me no mind, but my heart aches for him.
To me, the poverty in some parts of the city is the hardest thing to deal with. I miss my mom, but seeing the sad, shameful look on the weathered face of a middle-aged man sitting against a bank window using the words printed on a piece of cardboard to beg for food money—that kind of thing is especially hard for me. Even so, it must cut even deeper for men like that to be leaning against a building that is home to millions of dollars. To watch, with an empty stomach, as groups of suits walk past on their lunch break and spend twenty dollars on a grain salad while they are starving.
Saginaw doesn’t have a large population of homeless. Most of the city’s poor have homes. The siding on their old homes is almost collapsing, the walls are rotting with mold, and the beds are infested with little bugs that feed on them in their sleep. But they have roofs over their heads. Most of the people I know in Saginaw try and try to get ahead, but it’s hard there. All of my friends’ parents were farmers or lifelong factory workers, but since all the factories closed over the past decade, there just aren’t any jobs. Outside of heroin, the city can’t boast of any growth industries. Families that were doing well ten years ago can barely put food on the table now. Unemployment rates are at an all-time high, along with the crime rate and drug problems. The happiness ran away with the jobs, and sometimes I think neither will ever return.
That’s the biggest difference between my hometown and this city. The hope that buzzes through New York City makes all the difference in the world. Millions of people move to the biggest city in the entire country based solely on this emotion. They hope for more. They hope for more happiness, more opportunity, more experience, and—most of all—more money. The streets are crowded with people who leave their native countries and build a home and a life for their families here. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.
People pack up and move here, some crazy statistic like over a hundred people a day. Twenty-four-hour subways—heck twenty-four-hour services of every category—and no large pickups or tractors taking up half of the road, like in Michigan. The small brown municipal buildings that we called “downtown” Saginaw aren’t even close in comparison to the soaring skyscrapers in New York City.
So the more and more I think about it, New York and Saginaw have absolu
tely nothing in common, and I think I’m okay with that. Maybe I keep trying to make them similar to try to reassure myself that living here won’t change me . . . that whatever growing up means, I will still be myself when I get there, only different.
My phone pings again. Pulling it out, I see my mom’s name twice, making my heart race. When I read the messages, I relax. One of them is a link to an article about a Harry Potter–themed bar that just opened in Toronto, and the other is an update on my little sister’s weight. She’s a little one so far, but my mom still has four weeks to go. The last month should give little Abby enough time to bulk up in there.
The thought of my wrinkly little baby sister wearing a pink headband while lifting little pudgy arms into the air makes me laugh. I don’t know how it will be to be a big brother, especially at my age. I’m too old to possibly have anything in common with the little one, but I want to be the best brother I can be. I want to be the older brother that I needed when I was young. It will be an adjustment for my mom and for Ken, to have such a young baby at home again when both of their other children are grown and finally out of the nest. My mom kept telling me that she couldn’t wait to have her house to herself, but I could tell she would be lonely without me around. It’s always been her and me, through the best and the worst.
As I wait for the crosswalk sign to change and show that glowing white silhouette, I remind myself how damn lucky I am to have the mom I do. She never once questioned my move and has supported every one of my whims since I was a child. My mom was that mom who would dress up in costumes with me months away from Halloween. She even told me I could live on the moon if I wanted to. When I was a child, I often wondered if I ran fast enough, if I would land on the moon. Sometimes I wished I would.
When the light changes, a woman in high heels struggles to cross the street before me. I don’t understand why women put themselves through so much torture to look taller. The intersections here change quickly, usually giving pedestrians less than thirty seconds to cross. I type a quick response to my mom and promise to call her tonight. I shove my phone back in my pocket, deciding to read about the bar later.
I really want to go to Toronto, I always have, and a flight from here is only an hour, so maybe I can plan a trip over winter break. I’ll most likely go alone, even though a wild part of me suddenly suggests that I take Nora—she would be fun to travel with, I bet. I have a feeling she’s traveled more than I have. Even without knowing her, I see her as someone who’s been a few places, or just knows more about the world in general than me. There’s only so much a textbook can teach you. I’m proof of this. I would love to travel, and soon.
But why am I imagining Nora and me on some tropical beach somewhere, imagining her in a tiny bikini top, her full ass peeking out from the bottom? I barely know her, and yet I can’t get her out of my head.
The deli just below my building is never crowded, and sometimes I feel bad for Ellen, the young Russian girl who works behind the counter. It worries me that she sits in there alone at night. The bell above the door rings as I enter, and Ellen pops her head up from a thick textbook and gives me a polite smile. Her short, wavy hair is tucked behind a thin headband that matches her red sweater with small white dots.
“Hi there,” she says to me as I scan the refrigerated section in the back for milk.
“Hey, Ellen,” I say, grabbing a container of milk; I check the dates because I’ve left here with expired products more than once. Then I search for a blue Gatorade, to grab for Nora the next time she comes over, but they don’t have any. I have time, so I’ll just walk down to the next-closest store after I leave here.
And for the second time today, I find I could have used one of the tote bags Tessa keeps a supply of near the door. She likes to discourage the use of plastic, and now every time I open the door, I hear her voice, reminding me of the damage plastic bags wreak on the environment. That woman watches way too many documentaries. Soon she’s going to boycott wearing shoes or something.
Ellen closes her textbook as I approach. I grab a pack of gum from the shelf in front of the counter. She looks a little stressed, so now I really wish I had brought a tote, the one with a watermelon and a cantaloupe on it. Next to the watermelon is a text bubble that says, We should run away and get married and the cantaloupe replies, I’m sorry, and underneath that, the cantaloupe’s face is larger and it’s saying, I CANTaloupe.
Ellen finds the fruit humor just as funny as I do, which makes her quality people. And maybe a joke would make her smile.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“Good, just studying.”
The old register beeps when Ellen types in the cost of the milk and gum. I pull my card out and swipe it.
“You’re always studying,” I say. It’s true: every time I come here she’s alone behind the counter and is either reading from a textbook or filling out work sheets.
“I need to get into college.” She shrugs, and her brown eyes flash away from mine.
College? She’s in high school and works here this late, and this often? Even on the days when I don’t stop in, I see her working through the window.
“How old are you?” I can’t help but ask. It’s none of my business, and I’m not much older than her, but if I were her parents, I would be a little worried about my teenage daughter working alone, at night, in a store in Brooklyn.
“I turn seventeen next week,” she says with a frown, which kind of runs counter to the typical teenage girl, who beams at the idea of getting another year closer to the golden age of eighteen.
“Nice,” I tell her as she hands me the receipt to sign.
She’s still frowning when she hands me a red pen tied to a small clipboard with a dirty brown string. I sign it and give it back to her. She apologizes profusely when the printer machine jams before my copy of the receipt comes out. She pops the top off and I tell her that it’s fine.
“I’m not in a rush,” I tell her. I don’t have anywhere to be except home to study for Geology. Oh, and my date with Nora that I’m pretty damn nervous about. No big deal.
She rips the jammed paper roll out and tosses it into a trash can behind the counter.
Thinking about her, I realize that Ellen has never really seemed as carefree as a seventeen-year-old should be. Often I forget that most people in the world don’t have a mom like mine—heck, most kids I knew growing up didn’t. I didn’t have a father figure growing up, but it never bothered me much, honestly. I had my mom. Everyone reacts to things differently based on their own personal experience and how they’re built. Hardin, for example . . . his experiences had different effects on him than mine had on me, and he had to take a different path to understand them. It doesn’t matter why; what matters is that he’s taken responsibility for them and is busting his ass to understand his past and shape his future.
When I was twelve, I began to count down the years and months leading to my eighteenth birthday—even though I wouldn’t be going anywhere right away, my eighteenth birthday being right at the beginning of my senior year. Because of the enrollment cutoff, I was always older than everyone else in my grade. I hadn’t planned on leaving my mom’s house until after college, but that was before Dakota started mentioning me moving to New York with her during her senior year. After I spent months applying for a transfer, applying for FAFSA at NYU, finding an apartment for the two of us that was easily accessible to the campus using the subway, coming to peace with leaving behind my best friends, my pregnant mom, and my stepdad, Dakota’s life took a change and she forgot to tell me.
I’m still happy that I moved, happy that I’m becoming an actual man who’s socially aware, with responsibilities and plans for the future. I’m not perfect—I can barely do my own laundry, and I’m still getting the hang of paying my own bills—but I’m learning at a pace that I can keep up with and having a good time doing it. Tessa helps a lot. Tessa likes to keep things much tidier than a normal person, but we both clean and do an equal share o
f the chores. I’ve never left a dirty pair of socks in the living room, or forgotten to pick my damp, dirty clothes off of the bathroom floor after a shower. I’m conscious that I share an apartment with a woman who I’m not intimate with, so I never leave the toilet seat up or freak out if I see a tampon wrapper in the trash can. I make sure she’s not home when I masturbate, and I always make sure to leave no evidence behind when I do.
Though perhaps yesterday disproves that last claim. My mind keeps going back there, to the encounter with Nora.
After turning the machine off and back on and changing the roll of paper twice, Ellen prints my copy of the receipt. I decide to linger just a little longer; I have a feeling that she doesn’t get much interaction outside of the characters in her history books.
“Are you doing anything special for your birthday?” I ask her, genuinely curious.
She scoffs and her cheeks flare. Her pale skin turns red and she shakes her head. “Me? No, I have to work.”
Somehow I knew she didn’t have plans outside of sitting in a stool behind the high counter.
“Well, birthdays are overrated anyway,” I say with the biggest smile I can manage. She half smiles, her eyes lighting up with just a touch of happiness.
Her back straightens slightly and her shoulders sag a little less. “Yeah, they are.”
I tell her to have a good night and she says she will. As I close the door behind me I tell her not to study too hard. Man, what it would be like to be seventeen and growing up in the city; I can’t really imagine it.
During my walk to the store at the end of the block, I read about the bar my mom texted me about and call her. She tells me that Ken just got home from a conference in Portland, and he hops on the line so we can talk about the score of the last Giants game. With their loss, I won a little wager we had going, and I can’t keep myself from bragging just a touch. We play quick catch-up and get off the phone so he and my mom can eat dinner.