Somewhere New

Few things can wake me up before my alarm and not annoy me in the process. The family dog licking my hands, the old tabby kneading my chest begging for pets, even my little brother body slamming me awake when breakfast is ready. It’s an endearing waking experience, little things that remind me how much I’m loved.

This is not any of those, but it’s no less comforting.

At 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning I hear the ringtone, her song, all visceral guitar riffs and thrashing drums. My eyes snap open to a ceiling dimly lit by phone glow, and a smile tugs at my lips. No, this is nothing like waking to the pets or excitable kids. This is a more intense experience, one that never fails to jumpstart my heart and leave me breathless. She just has that kind of effect on me.

“Mornin’,” I yawn into the phone. “Why you up so early?”

She’s silent for longer than I’m comfortable with, so I speak again. “Angie?”

“Paper cups.”

My heart seizes. This is why I never mind when she calls so early, why she gets her own special ringtone, and why I find myself rushing to the window a little too desperately. The blankets tangle around my legs as I stumble out of bed and follow me all the way to the windowsill before I think to kick them off. I pry off the screen and slide the window up, and take a seat. Across the side yard she sits on her own, cross legged atop the desk she has set up beneath her window. Her body is twisted away from me, back leaned against the frame.

We’ve been neighbors since we were in diapers, and friends just as long. In our younger years before either of us were allowed to have our own phones, we made do with a pair of paper cups and a kite string. It always stayed connected between our windows, our own private line whenever we needed someone to talk to. It was safer than the home phone, more personal. It was ours and ours alone.

Even after we got cell phones and outgrew the paper cups, the tradition still lived on as a code. Whenever either of us needs to talk, for comfort or to confide in one another, all we have to say is paper cups. 

“Did something happen?” I ask. 

She stares at me vacantly, bangs hanging in her face, then turns her attention to the street. An engine rumbles in her driveway as her parent’s car pulls out, and slowly putters down the hill. I hear her sigh.

“Sometimes, I want to disappear. Leave in the dead of night with the bare minimum and go somewhere new, somewhere nobody knows me and just… start fresh. Is that weird?”

I feel my heart drop to my stomach, making way for a flood of emotions to fill the void it left. Fear claws at my ribs, concern chokes the air from my lungs, and a deep sorrow burns my throat. And creeping through the mix to rest on the tip of my tongue, understanding.

“I don’t think it’s weird,” I assure her. “I’ve felt the same way.”

I see her reach for something on her desk with the barest smile. A worn old book, though I can’t see enough of it to tell what it is. She thumbs at a crinkled corner, still staring at the street.

“Let’s go, you and me, let’s move to another state and start a new life.”

It’s a thought I’ve entertained several times, picturing myself in a cozy Seattle cafe watching the rain pour, or wandering the bustling streets of downtown L.A. Anywhere that isn’t nowhere America with its empty skies, its flat open fields unbroken by mountains or skylines. Anywhere that doesn’t leave me feeling suffocated and exposed all at once.

“Yeah? Where do you wanna go?”

She hums in thought, and finally drags her eyes back up to look at me. “Well what are we into? Hella nature, trees out the wazoo? Big city, lot’s of skyscrapers and pigeons on every corner? Sleepy little beach town? Crazy big beach city?”

“There’s a certain appeal to all of those, I think. If we play our cards right we might be able to get a lot of those in the same area. West coast or east coast?”

I hear the book flutter as she flips through the pages, and the click of her tongue when she can’t seem to find what she’s looking for. “West, east, why does no one ever say south? We could go down to Florida, Georgia, Louisiana--”

“Hell no,” I laugh. “I do not want to be in hurricane territory.”

“Well that basically rules out the East coast too. I guess we go west?”

“Northwest? Southwest?”

“Bet you’d wanna go North into indie central. Coffee shops and flannels, hipsters with fluffy beards and glasses, moody gals with beanies and pixie cuts and tiny ankle tatts. Stupid amounts of rain. Sounds right up your alley.”

“You literally got an ankle tattoo last week. And a new beanie.”

She chuckles. “Don’t out me like this, I’ve got an image to keep.”

“Oh yeah, wouldn’t want to ruin your hardcore punk rebellion schtick. Can’t lose our resident edgy twenty-something to the alluring pull of small town mundane.”

“Exactly why I want to leave!” Angie hops off her desk and disappears into her room, and I hear faint thumps and shuffling in the background. “This place is so… so… suffocating! I mean you’d think a place so open and empty would feel more freeing but it’s like… I look up, and the sky is just this big blanket smothering me, holding me down, holding me here. I get… I get scared, sometimes, thinking about it.”

I scoot off the window to grab my stress ball off the nightstand, and return to my perch on the window. She hasn’t come back yet. “What are you afraid of?”

A light flicks on in her room, bathing the space in a soft orange glow. Her shadow dances on the wall as she fusses with something on the wall. A sound like thick paper wobbling in someone’s hands reaches my ears, followed by a quiet curse.

“Missing my chance. Waiting too long to leave and getting trapped here because I’m too much of a chickenshit to go!” 

More wobbling, a click of the tongue.

“There’s… something else too, I guess. Something else that scares me about it.”

I squeeze the ball as I watch her shadow go still. “What’s that?”

The light shuts off. Angie reappears in the window and sits at her desk, free hand moving to flip through the book once more. Her eyes are distant, longing. Yet, with the way they catch the moonlight, they shimmer like the stars above us. I want so badly for her to look up at me. 

The book flutters once, twice, three times, before she stops somewhere near the end. “The world will swallow me whole, and leave nothing behind. I’ll change in a way I don’t want to. I’ll end up in another cookie cutter town with copy-paste people, and I’ll be trapped again, and I’ll lose whatever will I have left to pick up and move again. I’ll get exactly what I want… I’ll disappear, and… I’ll…”

She goes silent, and frankly, I couldn’t blame her. 

“God, this is so stupid.” She wipes her eyes furiously and sighs. “So fucking stupid. I can’t keep crying over this.”

“It’s not stupid if it’s bothering you, Ange. You have every right to be upset, you’re allowed to feel these things--”

She slaps her desk. “Hah! Yeah, of course, and that’s why I’m crying all alone in the dark when my parents are gone and can’t get on my ass about not actually having any problems.”

“Angie.”

A car rumbles on the street and we both turn to see whose it is. Ms. Tomlin’s minivan pulls out of her driveway and takes off. Angie sighs.

“I don’t want to hide anymore.”

Her voice is so small, so frail, but carries the force of roaring thunder crashing through my chest. Seeing the way her shoulders crumple at the admission, the resignation that marrs her expression, I’m so tempted to make good on our talk and take her away from this. Leave behind the ugly black clouds hanging over her head and carry her into the sun.

But this isn’t a problem that could be solved so easily. Its roots run too deep for the sun to reach, and won’t be torn up without a struggle, and a lot of it.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” I tell her.

She almost looks up, but as fresh tears roll down her cheeks she shrinks further into herself. Away from the window, and away from me. 

“Angie please, look at me. You’re not alone, I’m right here with you okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you are!” 

Angie slaps a hand over her mouth and looks behind her. It takes a minute for her to remember no one is home.

“You’re leaving… we heard the news already, college letters came in and you got accepted to Michigan State. And I… got rejected. From, from fucking everywhere! Every chance I had to get out of this hell house, all gone!”

Her words are broken by heaving sobs as she folds in on herself. “You and I kept talking about moving out and getting an apartment together, going to school, crashing each other's classes, I, I really thought that things would be okay that, that we’d always have each other. I’m so dependent on you, I don’t know how else to be. I don’t know how to be on my own. You’ve always been there, you’ve always had my back and I’ve always had yours. I don’t know how to live without that once you leave!”

I feel sick, watching her fall apart, laying out her heart and every vulnerability. It felt wrong to watch her then, like I was intruding on something private. I knew she wouldn't be openly weeping in front of me if she didn't want me to see, however. She could easily tuck herself away in a corner of her room, or under the bedsheets, away from the one person who's ever seen this side of her.

But she doesn't. She stays right where she is, a silent request for me to stay right there with her. For me to see, and understand. I wish I could be closer and sweep her up in my arms, but it's too early for either of us to leave.

“Ange, it’s okay. I got into schools around here too, I don’t have to move! I’ll still be here, I’ll always be here. You’re not gonna lose me.”

“No, no you don’t get it. I’m not staying here, I can’t… I can’t stay with them. Not anymore. Not even if you stay in the area. I’ve been planning it for a while… I’m leaving by the end of summer. Around then my brother has some tournament in Vegas, my parents are taking him. And when they do, I’m out. I’m not coming back.”

It feels like all the air is ripped from my lungs. My body feels cold and numb, stiff as a corpse as I stare through the window. “I… don’t… understand. With what you were saying it sounded like you don’t want to leave, but, you’ve already made up your mind?”

“That’s why I kept saying this was stupid! I want to leave, I have for years, but I don’t want to leave you. I want to hold onto you, but I don’t want to hold you back, and I want to leave but I’m terrified we’re going to drift apart. We’ll go our separate ways and take different paths and meet new people and stop talking and-- and forget and it’s too much--”

She stands so quickly that the chair topples over, and starts pacing around the room.

“It’s too much and it hurts, and I don’t know what to do with all this bullshit except shove it deep down where I don’t have to deal with it. But…” she stops, picks up the chair so slowly you’d think it weighed a ton, and sits. 

Angie finally looks up at me, slumped in her seat, the light in her eyes diminished. “I’m so tired. I’m so, fucking tired of hiding myself, who I am, what I feel. I want to be free, and that’s never going to happen if I stay in this house. You’re the only one I can be open with, so, there it is…”

I try to speak, but the words won’t leave my tongue. I’ve never seen her look so defeated. What could I possibly say to comfort her? What would give her hope?

The sun starts to peek over the horizon as the start of our conversation comes back to me. “The sun sets in the west…”

“What?”

“The sun. It sets in the west. I think I’d like to see an ocean sunset, they always look crazy pretty in photos. I bet the colleges out there get some nice views.”

I can almost see the gears turning in her head as she tries to piece together where I’m going with this. All I do is smile, and wait, until finally it clicks. 

Her brow furrows and she frowns. “What about Michigan State?”

“I was only so excited about MSU because it’s the closest to home. Visiting would only take a two hour drive. And, well…” I swallow hard, trying to quiet my nerves before they can stop me from finishing. “It’s just… I don’t think this’ll feel much like home if you’re not here.”

She breathes in sharply, stumbles over her words. “I, I don’t… if you’re trying to convince me to stay--”

“Not at all.” I turn and lean out the window to face her full on, mustering as serious an expression as I can manage. “Come with me.”

“... you know I was joking earlier, right? About running off together?”

“Well I’m not, Angie. If you’re leaving anyways, why don’t we go together, just you and me, just like we were talking about. I got accepted to UCSD, in southern California. We can go together, get an apartment near campus. I’ll help you apply for spring semester! And, and if you don’t get in there we can find you another school, or a community college somewhere.”

She shakes her head, but in a good natured I can’t believe you sort of way. A small smile tugs at her lips, but she still looks at me like her heart was just shattered. “You don’t have to do this, I’ll figure something else out. I’ll be okay.”

“It’s not for you.”

Angie raises an eyebrow at me.

“Okay, not completely for you. It’s for me too. I’ve heard UCSD has a good medical program, and I’ve been wanting to go somewhere new. And… I’m being a little selfish too, ‘cause I don’t want to let you go either.”

She blinks owlishly at me, then snorts. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m not hearing a no,” I chime.

“It’s gonna be tough for us out there.”

“But we’ll be helping each other out, just like we always do.”

Angie smirks at me, and climbs up onto her desk to sit in the window. The rising sun bathes her in a soft glow, and once again I’m left breathless. 

“Just like always, huh?” She sighs. “You really want me there with you?”

“Obviously.”

She lets go of an exasperated groan, but the playful air to it and the grin on her lips betrays her attempt at annoyance. Her eyes shine in the rising sun. “Alright, fine. I’m in.”