Page 38 of Past Present Future

“That actually sounds pretty nice,” she says, seeming more visibly relaxed. “Maybe Adhira and I could throw a Purim party!”

We spend the rest of dinner chatting with the others at our table—Chaim, a history major from Orange County; Marnie, a business major from Toronto. I learn that Zoe’s from upstate New York and met Adhira during orientation week last year. She’s majoring in biochemistry—“which makes it even sadder that I can’t keep a plant alive,” she remarks. I tell her more about Rowan, about Seattle, about the first time I had Shabbat dinner with her family and acted starstruck around her author parents.

By the end of it, when we all exchange numbers, I finally feel like this school and city are exactly where I’m supposed to be.

11

ROWAN

“YOU LOOK DIFFERENT.”

I roll my eyes. “I look the same, Kirby.”

Mara leaps off Kirby’s bed, where she’s been paging through an old magazine, and draws me in for a tight hug. Then she pulls back to look at me. “She’s right. You do look different. And we missed you.”

“Fine. I trimmed my own bangs and it went terribly and you’d really think I’d have learned my lesson by now. Thank you for noticing.”

If anyone looks different, it’s the two of them. Nothing in their physical appearance, at least not obviously so—maybe it’s just the fact that I haven’t seen them for months. And yet it hits me that this, the two of them in Kirby’s room, is entirely normal. The way it used to be for all of us. Clothespinned above her desk is the collage of photos we helped her arrange a few years ago because she saw it online and wanted to re-create it. In a place of honor on her bookshelf is a small figurine of Angkor Wat she got on one of her trips to Cambodia with her family, along with a few awards from dance, though she doesn’t dance anymore. A dried corsage from prom, one that I know lives in Mara’s room, too.

I plop down onto the bed, picking up the discarded magazine. “What’s this?”

Kirby laughs. “You know how my parents have been asking me to clean out my closet for, um, the past three years? Well, I decided now’s the time, and look at this absolute relic.”

“ ‘Fifteen tips to drive him wild in bed,’ ” I read off the cover, beneath an airbrushed photo of an actress who used to be on some werewolf show we all watched. “ ‘You won’t believe number seven!’ Wait, what’s number seven?” I flip through it. “ ‘Make eye contact’? Seriously? No wonder print journalism is failing.”

“And there’s more where that came from.” With concerted effort, Kirby shoves the door of her closet, where stacks of magazines and clothes and even a pair of skis threaten to topple over.

“If you can believe it, it was worse three hours ago,” Mara says.

“I can, in fact.” Kirby has always been a predictable kind of chaos, and I’ve missed it. “Almost as much as I can believe that Kirby’s about to put me to work less than five minutes after I got here.”

Kirby swings her desk chair over to the bed, nudging me with her foot. “Yes, but first I want to hear everything about Emerson! Tell, tell.”

So I do—or I try to. I tell them about my mostly nonexistent roommate, and about Professor Everett’s class, and about how much I love Boston.

“But Seattle will always have my heart,” I assure them.

I got home late last night and passed out, and this morning I allowed myself to sleep in until ten o’clock, which was still just seven a.m. Pacific time. Neil got home a couple days ago, but I had to see Kirby and Mara first.

Three weeks until I go back to school, and I plan to make the most of it.

“And how’s our favorite former nemesis?” Mara asks.

I consider this for a moment—not whether our relationship is going well, but how much I want to tell them. They know we slept together on the last day of school, made suggestive eyebrows at me all through graduation. But what happened in New York felt too complicated to text. Besides, both of us are back in Seattle for the next three weeks, and with that comes an instant sense of comfort.

Neil and I know how to be together in Seattle.

“He’s good. We’re good,” I say. “The distance isn’t always easy, but we’ve been texting… creatively.”

The two of them start squealing, and Kirby tosses a pillow at me. “Oh my God, you icon.” Kirby tells me about her classes—“Anthropology of Ice Cream has forever altered the way I view mint-chocolate chip”—and Mara mentions a performance she did with a modern dance troupe on campus.

“I think it went okay,” she says shyly, braiding a strand of her blond hair.

“She’s being modest,” Kirby says. “She was the only freshman in the show, and she rocked it.”

Mara blushes, gives Kirby a tender look.

If they’ve heard too much about these things from the other person, they don’t give any indication of it. From the very beginning, they have just been good together, Kirby’s sharper side balanced by Mara’s gentleness, and a mutual respect and compassion that’s easy to admire. I love that they haven’t changed, that Kirby is still a mess and Mara won’t stop teasing her about it.

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