Page 4 of Promise Me Nothing
“Yeah, and my boss was really supportive.” She sighs. “I wish things were different and I didn’t have to leave.”
“You know you can stay, right?” I say, feeling a little guilty for trying to get her to change her mind.
But Melanie shakes her head, giving me a sad smile. “Andyouknow that I can’t.”
She’s right, though I don’t say it.
Melanie and her sister are best friends, and she’s had a really hard time adjusting ever since Marissa moved to New Mexico three years ago. So, Melanie and Lissy are going to be packing up and following her out there. They’re going to move in with Marissa and her husband, and apparently she has a job already lined up to work for a construction company that needs someone to cover a receptionist going on maternity leave.
It’s great for her. Doesn’t mean I’m not sad about it, though.
Eventually, we finish dinner, and then I pack up and head out to the bus stop, leaving Lissy and Melanie to their Friday evening routine of renting a movie and splurging on a few sugary treats.
Most Friday nights, I’m working at The Lone Grill, a barbeque restaurant a few miles from where we live. But stupid Paul has been stealthily slicing away hours here and there from my schedule and giving them to this new girl that I think he might be sleeping with.
Part of me wants to file a complaint, though I don’t have any real proof and I’m not sure anything would come from it.
And, with mid-terms coming up next week, I decide to just take the night off for what it is: a much-needed opportunity to study and try to pass this pointless class.
Campus is only a fifteen-minute bus ride away, and I just can’t afford any distractions. Even though I feel completely lost, and I’m struggling to keep up with everything, I still have to do my best.
My parents always wanted my brother and I to go to college, and there’s something inside of me that won’t allow myself to give up on their dream. Especially since I’m the only one left to try and live it into reality.
So, instead of calling Sienna or trying to do something interesting with my night off, I trudge my butt onto the next bus that stops at my station, and head to campus.
I truly do have good intentions when I get to the library. It’s a weekend, so the building is fairly empty. Only a handful of other students are wandering around or slumped over textbooks, their lives just as pathetic as mine if we’re finding ourselves studying on a community college campus on a Friday night.
Knowing I have a reflection paper to write for my Intro to Literature class, I wander over to the textbooks that are available to check out – because I definitely can’t afford to buy my own – and grab the one for my class. Then I spend an hour reading a collection of poems. A bunch of flowery shit by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.
When I get to Robert Frost’sThe Road Not Taken,it takes everything in me not to roll my eyes.
I don’t despise literature. But I do aggressively dislike shit that’s stated as fact without any consideration for what someone else’s perspective might be.
Like, why would you encourage people to intentionally take the more difficult road, Robert? Maybe I’m pretty exhausted because my road is full of branches to climb over and I’ve got scratches from limbs and bruises from tripping and falling.
A well-traveled road that’s easy to navigate sounds pretty damn great to me. And who says you get to choose? Sometimes, life gives you one shitty road and that’s what you have to walk. The end.
I slam the book closed, maybe a little louder than I should in a space that’s supposed to be quiet. Glancing around, I catch one girl’s eyes.Sorry, I mouth at her, but she just looks away without acknowledging me.
Cool, cool, cool.
I carry my stuff over to one of the computer stations and log myself in to the system, gearing up to write this reflection paper that’s due on Tuesday.
And it’s then I make my first mistake.
I open my email.
There, sitting towards the top, sandwiched between a reminder to pay my tuition and – I can’t make this up – a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon, is the email I’ve been avoiding.
I minimize the screen, attempting for just one more minute to pretend that it isn’t there. I crack open the literature book again and glare at Robert Frost’s name, as if everything about this is his fault.
But all I can think isjust get it over with.
Choosing to let impulse guide me, I quickly reopen my email browser and click on the message that has dominated so much of my thoughts today.
And it’s here, in a quiet library, sitting at a computer, next to a printer that’s whirring out what must be someone’s entire dissertation, that my world does exactly what I thought it would.
It changes forever.
