Library Reinvention

I don’t know how to tell Henry that every time he ends a sentence with a question mark and an exclamation point I want to personally declare nuclear war on him. Some may call this overreacting, but after two months of tutoring him in English, you’d think he’d at least learn how to use correct punctuation. 

“Henry, what do you think is wrong with what you just wrote?”

“I dunno. Isn’t that your job? You’re supposed to tell me what to fix.”

“Well, no not exactly.” I plaster on a syrupy smile, “My job is to help you recognize your mistakes and how you can fix them on your own.”

“My last tutor jus’ told me what to fix.” The last one also quit her job screaming, but you always seem to forget that part when comparing us. I quickly shake away the thought. No point getting angry at her for escaping while she could. “Anyway, I’m paying you to help me not give me more work” He adjusts his hoodie and leans back in his chair. 

My smile falters and I clench my jaw to suppress my rising irritation. Cute of him to act like this is costing him anything when it’s his father whose name is written on my checks.

“Well, if you tried learning how to do it right the first try we could stop spending so much time together.” I push the words through gritted teeth. He doesn’t respond. Instead, he puts on his hood and leans the chair even further from the table. It’s an effort not to push it to the ground with him in it. I take a deep breath, unclench my jaw, and continue with a nicer tone, “Listen, improving isn't going to be easy. If it were I wouldn’t be here,” I stare at him a moment, waiting for any sign that he’s listening. He gives none and I’m not at all surprised. I continue on nonetheless. “But eventually, after high school when you go out into the real world, these skills—”

“I gotta piss.” The chair thunks back to the floor and he ambles off toward the bathroom.

With a groan of frustration, I look toward the clock. We’ve only been here for twenty minutes. He has forty still left in his session. I’m not gonna make it. Either I’ll end up putting my head through a wall, or Henry’s. His last tutor leaving after a month really should have tipped me off about his rotten personality.

Why did I take this god-awful job? 

As if the world was waiting for me to have this very thought, my phone lights up with a notification from my bank. 

The balance for CHECKING *1271 is 

at or below the minimum. It is $64.30. 

Questions? Go online or call 800-723-8269

Below that depressing reminder of my poverty sits an Instagram notification. 

Camilles_camera_roll mentioned you in a comment  

To avoid ruining my mood more than Henry already has, I ignore the message from my bank and turn my attention to Instagram. Camille’s post is a picture of her and two of our college friends standing at a yacht railing with interlocked arms. Under her initial caption of “Cabo baby!” sits the comment responsible for the notification. My username is sandwiched between a slew of vaguely familiar names followed by a “wish y’all were here” and a frowning emoji. 

Me too.

I like the image and comment a heart before scrolling past it, only to discover that everyone and their mom is having an interesting summer. The further I scroll the more effort it takes to tamp down my jealousy. It seems that everyone has a life worth posting about, and I’m the only exception. My college friends are in exciting locations and dressing up and flirting and drinking and falling in love, and the few people I follow from my hometown are buying their first apartments or achieving all their career goals and starting picture-perfect families. While they’re out making the most of their early twenties, I’m in a library that smells like mildew and body odor, tutoring a waste of space high schooler who has drugged himself almost braindead. 

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness hasn’t seen a legacy kid’s Instagram during summer break. I’ve witnessed fellow college students purchase beauty, business connections, and immunity from a long list of misdemeanors. Does it send my moral compass spinning? Hell yeah, it does, but I would give anything to live their lives. I wish I could ask and receive and use and not worry about replenishment, like my peers from affluent families. I would never have to work too hard to get what I want, and I wouldn’t have to wait on timing or a bonus or my tax return to see my goals through. 

Unfortunately, wishful thinking does nothing but paint my world a bleaker shade of gray. In my reality, college is far from the freeing experience I was expecting. I still don't know who I am, and I’m only fifty percent sure that I am my own person rather than a reflection of who I think others want me to be. I somehow skipped a step and missed my chance at reinvention because every summer I return to my mediocre hometown, to my family’s too-small-townhouse, and the bedroom with pink walls that has been suffocating me since I was eight years old.

Reinvention costs money that I do not have. And after two years of college, I’m worse than I was before I came. I’m swimming in debt and can barely afford to feed myself. This is far from the glorious future I’d dreamed up. I didn’t expect freedom to be this… awful. 

Someone drops a stack of books by the checkout, drawing me out of my cycle of self-pity. I peek at the clock. I’ve wasted ten minutes scrolling through my feed. I take a look around the room. No Henry.

 If the little prick disappears on me again… I take a deep breath in an effort to soothe my barely contained fury.

It doesn’t work.

I scan the room once again, giving the miserable crowd a once-over. This building is filled with tired souls tethered to unremarkable futures.

There’s a man in a corner punching at the keys of a technological dinosaur the staff like to call a computer. His back is hunched from the weight of his past— or the threat of his future— it’s hard to tell. Behind me, a woman frantically whisper-yells at two children. I catch a let-go-of-your-sister’s-hair and a throw-that-book-and-your-not-getting-dinner before the wailing starts and the hardly whispered orders are drowned out. Her eyelids sag and her once-young face wrinkles, sharing the story of exhaustion from a life she couldn’t outrun. 

In the far corner, a group of high school students studies for midterms, quizzing each other on historical events that they won’t ever need to remember after graduation. Behind the stress, I can still see a hint of hope in their eyes. They have not yet realized what a scam life is. 

My eyes casually avoid the seldom visited manga aisle, where a young couple embraces, somewhat hidden behind the shelves. They giggle and coo at each other, not realizing that this one moment is as good as it gets for them. Before they know it they’ll be the villain in each others’ stories about their most heartbreaking relationship.  

I hold up my phone and catch my reflection on its darkened screen. My eyes are just as tired as the mother behind me. My shoulders just as burdened as the man across the room. Though I’ve lost all the hope of the children, I can still feel my naive expectations rooted in the dark depths of my mind.

I choke back an incredulous laugh. I am the same as those who surround me. I’m an empty shell of the person I wish I could be, barreling toward a future of half-there smiles and midnight tears. 

What am I still doing here? 

There’s an entire world outside these mortar walls and it’s not going to slow down and wait for me to gather my bearings. I thought adulthood started when I left high school, diploma in hand. Really all this time I’ve been a child playing adult, hiding behind the supposed to’s and alleged rules of life instead of creating my own path. 

To hell with this job and crippling debt. To hell with my rich friends and disapproving family. To hell with my excuses. There is no trust fund coming my way and I will probably never be financially stable. There will never be a good time for me to get my shit together. A million little things seem to be in my way, and— as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise— they multiply with each day that passes.

I get up from the round table where I wasted my morning and gather my things. I stomp toward the library’s exit determined to make today worth something. The monotone voice of Henry, who suddenly decides to come out of hiding doesn’t slow me down. 

“Hey! Where are you goin’?” He jogs to keep up with my determined strides. 

I don’t respond,  making a mental list of all the self-imposed rules I will break today. Bursting through the library doors I head toward the parking lot. 

“You can’t leave. My essay isn’t done.”

“I’m done. You’ll have better luck paying someone to write it for you.” He stops walking for a second, shocked at what he’s hearing, or maybe just shocked at who he’s hearing it from.

“I— well— give me my money back!”

I ignore him and climb into my car, closing the door between us.

“Hey!” he yells, “You can’t just leave! That’s, like, stealing or whatever!” 

I give him a single-finger salute and speed out of the parking lot. Is it wrong that flipping off a high schooler makes me feel powerful? Most likely, yes, but this new me— the one I discovered in a musky, dimly lit library— no longer allows patchy moral standards to dictate my life. This beginning could have gone smoother, but I’m not mad. This kind of start suits me, or at least the me I want to unleash upon the world. The me that goes after what she wants unapologetically. The me who lives life for today, not for an unattainable future.