Chapter Thirty
Eleven Years Ago
Our bags were packed, the passports were ready, and I had withdrawn five hundred euros from the bank. Strolling down Carlthorpe’s main walkway before heading to the airport, I could get one last look at campus before flying to Spain with Jake. Well, we were first flying into Paris for a week, and would then take the train to Madrid, my dream vacation destination, and arrive in Barcelona at the month’s end, when classes officially started.
Everything we had planned had turned out perfectly. We both got into the study abroad program our first semester senior year at Autonomous University of Barcelona. I had saved enough money so I could travel before and after the semester ended. And I got into all the courses I had wanted.
I had never imagined that I, Lily Lee, would be studying abroad in Europe. My only passport stamps were from a trip to Korea, but that was to visit family. This was different. Soon, I would gather my travel gear from Mia’s apartment and fly across the Atlantic, ready to have the experience of a lifetime.
I shivered with excitement and giddiness.
My phone rang. It was my umma. We’d already said our goodbyes earlier that morning, or rather, I got a lecture about how I was wasting money, slacking off, and I should travel to Europe when I was older instead. I promised my parents that I would study hard and not “play around,” as they said.
“It’s still not too late to take premed classes and study for MCAT,” they managed to squeeze in before we said our goodbyes. I hung up knowing I didn’t have their support, but it was time to start living my life outside of work-study and my textbooks, even if they didn’t approve. Three years of adulthood had already flown by, and I had nothing to show for them.
I wanted to break out of my shell and have the time of my life with my boyfriend. Jake and I had fought recently about how he wasn’t prioritizing me higher than, say, intramural softball, community gardening, ultimate Frisbee, and a million other things. He countered by complaining that I was constantly working, studying, or signing up for Res Life activities. Barcelona would give us time together.
No distractions.
When Umma tried calling three times, I knew it had to be urgent. She’d never tried to contact me like this, not even on the day Carlthorpe sent out their admissions letters, or the day my older sister had gotten into med school, or when Appa had been transferred to a new city for his engineering job and they were selling my childhood home.
“Hello?” I answered with a smidge of fear.
“Lily, good! You’re not on the plane. Don’t go to Spain.”
Actually, I was headed to Paris to spend a week with Jake, stuffing our faces with croissants, steak frites, and macarons. Not Spain. Not yet.
“We’ve already gone over this,” I complained. “My course load there will mostly transfer over and I promise I’ll study hard. Financial aid will be the same, and I’ll cover any extra spending.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she contested. There was a long pause before she continued. “Did you talk to your sister?”
My sister had, in fact, sent me a travel accessories kit as a bon voyage gift, something my parents hadn’t thought to do. “We already said goodbye last night. What is all of this about, anyway?” I checked my watch. “My plane leaves in about four hours.” Did my parents tell Sara to talk me out of going, the day of the flight? Now annoyed, especially that they had brought their favorite child into this, I fumed, “Look, I’m going. I’ve never gotten to travel anywhere other than Korea, and this is a perfect opportunity to do something academic, cultural, and social, all at the same time. I’m heading to the airport now, and I’ll let you know I arrived safely.”
“No, Lily. You don’t listen. You’re not going. You can’t.” Her voice fell faint. “Your appa . . . his company lay him off today, just after we talk on phone. We don’t have money for your college, we paying for Sara medical school too, remember?”
I stopped breathing. What did she mean? They didn’t have money for college?
She added, “We have enough saving to help paying for only one semester. And we have to keep paying for Sara medical school. It’s a good school, but expensive.”
Words fumbled around on my tongue. “So . . . I—I have to stay here?” Queasiness overtook me. I fell onto a bench along the walkway and tried to steady myself.
“Stay at campus and graduate early. You have the AP credit, you can take all of your classes in one semester. We can’t pay our share for both semester. We can’t take out more student loan right now and it’s too late to get low interest. You already borrowing too much.”
Her words hit me one after another. I was barely able to process them. Throughout my first three years of college, I’d picked up campus work-study jobs and various other part-time gigs, but increasing my hours wouldn’t be enough to pay my parents’ portion of tuition. I was in a lot of debt with federal loans already, and although my brain couldn’t process what was happening, the math worked: graduating early would help my family financially.
How many classes did I need? Five, maybe six? My schedule would be packed with courses and whatever part-time work I could find to help offset expenses. I would have no life.
My phone beeped. It was Jake calling on the other line. I ignored it.
Rather than apologize or temper this shocking major life change, my mom said, “Well, you can go to Spain another time. When you retire. We didn’t want you to go anyway, too much playing.”
Boy, she hit a nerve with that one.
I cried out in frustration, “Why do you think I’d go there to play? What do you even mean by that? I wanted to do something on my own for once. Make my own decisions. I didn’t even choose Carlthorpe, remember? You and Appa did. And now when I finally have an opportunity to grow up, to figure out how the world works, to enjoy my life . . . I even saved up spending money and tried to do something for myself for once . . . and nothing goes right! And on top of that, I’m the one who has to take the brunt of this money crunch, not future doctor Sara.” I let out a frustrated scream as my stomach twisted into a distorted pretzel. A familiar feeling of tightness in my abdomen returned in full force, along with a sense of dread. Could I even get any classes I wanted? Could I get campus housing now? Where would I stay before classes started?
I could hear my mom repeating my name over and over, each time sounding more irritated and impatient. It was too much for me. I ended the call and leaned my head back on the bench.
What a fucking disaster.
A set of large hands covered my eyes from behind. “Guess who?”
I whirled around, my angry fist making immediate contact with Jake’s chest.
He held his palms up. “Whoa there! I was just messing with you. And shit, that hurt. I was worried because you were taking such a long time at the bank. We need to leave in a few minutes, so I came looking for you.”
“I’m not going,” I barely whispered. Tears tumbled down my cheeks and I wiped them away with the palms of my hands.
I repeated those words again. Louder, sadder, and void of hope. “I’m. Not. Going.”
Even then, the words still didn’t feel real.
He came around to my side of the bench and sat down. “What happened? Did you get cold feet? Did someone get hurt? Is everything okay?”
No point in hiding any of it. I told him about my dad’s sudden job loss. How they were paying for my sister’s med school too and prioritizing it over my undergraduate studies. He looked stunned as I shuddered and sobbed.
I looked at him. “Could you stay with me?” Just a while. Or longer. Until I figured some things out. “Please?”
Jake’s eyes darkened. He hadn’t had much time to process what I’d told him, but when his face fell, I knew things were about to get worse.
I pleaded anyway, with more desperation in my voice. “Please don’t go. Don’t leave.”
And this was when a potentially touching moment together turned into another unexpected, life-changing one that would haunt me forever.
Jake didn’t offer to stay a few hours, or a day or two to help me get on my feet. Nor did he say he could stay with me for any part of the week when we were supposed to vacation in Paris, when we were going to sightsee together and stuff ourselves with butter-laden pastries.
He proposed none of those things.
His face hardened instead. “I-I’m sorry, I can’t flake out on this. You know how you’re always on my case about how I do a million things but I never see anything through? My parents say the same thing. They’re fed up with me. For switching majors, for changing my mind about summer internships, for not knowing what I want to do after college. They threatened to cut off my college funds, but they said I could go to Spain if I proved I could be responsible. They’ll kill me if I bail this time.” His eyes became watery but he remained steadfast. “I’m sorry, Lily. I can’t back out. I have to go.”
The alarms on my phone and watch went off at the same time. A reminder it was exactly four hours prior to the flight departure time. The car service we scheduled to take us to the airport would arrive at any moment.
I withered into a smaller, fragile version of myself. Jake’s phone buzzed over and over. “I need to get this. It’s my mom. I—I don’t know what to say to her. But I should take it.”
He hesitated a second, then whispered to me, “I still love you.” When I didn’t respond, he said it a second time. I still didn’t say it back. Instead, I fought back tears and looked away from him.
After the phone rang again, he walked a few steps away from the bench and answered. “Hi, Umma. I’m kind of busy.” A pause. “Heading out to the airport soon. Everything’s taken care of, I’ll call you when I land. Okay, sure, put Appa on the line.”
“I need to go,” he mumbled to me as he covered the phone receiver. He tried to kiss my forehead, but I shirked away from his touch. His hurried footsteps down the walkway were timed perfectly to the frantic beat of my heart. The aching inside my chest was unbearable, a physical sign of my heart slowly breaking in real time. Jake’s silhouette grew smaller and smaller in the distance, and eventually disappeared.
He was gone.
I was alone.
I came back to Mia’s apartment a few hours later. Her new roommate, an exchange student from Hong Kong, wasn’t arriving for a couple of weeks. So that gave me time to plan around my calamity. Not much time, but some.
I undressed in the bathroom and flicked on the hot water.
Hot showers usually relaxed me and cleared my mind, but not this time. The stream of water hit the back of my neck. My brain played back the worst parts of the afternoon’s events. No trip to Spain. Not having money because of my dad’s job loss. Jake abandoning me.
No Spain. No money. No Jake. Over and over again.
My mind felt sluggish as the steam from the shower enveloped me. Each breath I drew was more and more shallow.
I needed fresh air.
No, I needed to sit. Sliding my back down the shower wall, I sat knees to chest in the shower. The water temperature transitioned from hot to warm to tepid as I closed my eyes, trying to control my breath.
A squeal above me echoed in the room. The sound of the shower valve cranking to the right. The flow of water stopped.
“Lily? Are you okay?” A familiar voice cut through the fog.
“Mia?” I barely whispered.
She placed a tattered terry-cloth robe around my shivering shoulders. “You think you can get up? Maybe get some rest? Let me help.”
“I’m not going to Spain.”
With her arms outstretched, Mia grabbed both of my hands and lifted me slowly from the tiled floor. My body weighed a thousand pounds, but by some miracle, I managed to make it to her bedroom with her help. She laid out a few blankets and a pillow on the mattress, placed a mug of water on the nightstand, and dimmed the lights.
I whispered, “Did he call me? To talk about it?”
Mia pulled my phone out of my coat pocket and looked at the screen. “There’s nothing from Jake. I’m so sorry.”
Mia and I were reunited unexpectedly on the worst day of my life, when I was let down by my family, and my boyfriend became my ex-boyfriend. That night, we formed an eternal bond that could never ever be broken. Mia had my back then, and I would always have hers.