Getting Old

There had been a party last night.

Yvonne had stumbled home laughing, glitter and a fabric flower crown tangled in her dark hair, friends peeling off block by block to find their own respective homes until she was left sober and alone, leaning against the railing of her family’s porch as she considered their front door. The world was quiet.

It was a moment so charged, she half expected the door to creak open and one of her parents to slip out, to ask how the party had been and what she was thinking so hard about. If her life was a coming of age movie, this would be a dramatic turning point, or perhaps the quiet moment just before the climax. The universe would make use of this energy.

Nothing happened.

With a sigh, she slipped into one of their rarely used rocking chairs. They weren’t porch kind of people – it was more of a pretense at the domesticity that had been forgotten in this neighborhood. Her older sister had made an effort this summer, her first summer back from her college, to rehabilitate it. College gave you a new perspective on the world, Wren had proclaimed, and it was the height of privilege to have something as nice as this porch and not use it. Her sister had lived in a shoebox-sized dorm this past year (something that Wren had complained about and yet seemed to delight in), one even smaller than this porch, and yet she’d made the most of it. Space should be leveraged to its fullest potential, Wren had declared, marching outside with a pitcher of Arnold Palmer and a copy of The Bell Jar.

Two weeks later, Wren had taken the train to go visit a friend in Rhode Island, and she’d been in and out of town for the rest of the summer. The porch had remained un-rehabilitated.

The rocking chair creaked. A stray cobweb drifted into her face. She batted it away with a scowl.

It had been quiet here in the past year, her senior year of high school. Yvonne and her parents – well, they didn’t not get along, they just weren’t close. Wren had always taken up so much space, without even trying. Yvonne knew that Wren felt misunderstood, that her older sister just wanted to help everybody, and they were simply being stubborn by refusing to comply. Yvonne had always lived in her sister’s shadow, so she was a little slower, a little more inclined to observe than to act.

Wren wanted to fix their parent’s relationship, for instance. She thought that they should all go to family therapy – had insisted this, in fact, at high volumes, during one of her pit stops between friend visitations. Their parents had insisted in was unnecessary, getting to equally high volumes as the argument dragged on. She’d stormed off the next day, off to see another friend, and the house had echoed emptily in her wake.

It was a stupid fight, to be honest. Yvonne was the only person who had any real experience with counseling. As a young teen Yvonne had realized that getting compared to Wren all the time was pretty stupid, so she’d acted out accordingly. Her parents, too busy for what they considered teenaged drama, had responded by sending her to therapy. It had been tough at first, unwilling as she was, but she’d come to appreciate it.

So when the topic of family therapy had come up, Yvonne was hesitant to get involved, but she had suggested that Wren try therapy on her own before trying to get them all to go. Wren had replied that she didn’t need it, their parents did, but they just wouldn’t go without the kids to galvanize them. She wasn’t technically wrong, but – it was so grating, how stubbornly self-assured her older sister was. Sometimes Yvonne just wanted to shake her into listening.

Lovingly, of course.

Ultimately, it was inconsequential. The family therapy fight had fizzled into nothing as Wren picked up another cause, and her parents had resumed pretending nothing was wrong. Yvonne spent all of her time out with her friends, and time passed in an uneasy stalemate.

Tonight was Yvonne’s last night before going off to college, and Wren wasn’t here. Her older sister had left for college early with a hug and a kiss on the forehead as benediction – some of her friends had rented a house for the year and were throwing a pool party there, and she hadn’t wanted to miss it. Which was fine. Yvonne had her own stuff going on, anyways. One of their parents was driving her up – there’d been some arguing over that, as they’d both had meetings scheduled for the day, and Yvonne hadn’t bothered to check up on who’d won that particular drama – so it’s not like she’d need Wren around. And Wren had promised to come by, sometime this semester.

Yvonne fiddled with her phone. A few friends had liked her graduation picture on Instagram, an old one that she’d reposted with the caption “college tomorrow!!” Valerie had commented a heart eyes emoji. Yvonne commented two hearts back.

She sighed again and closed her phone with a click, looking out at the street. She really should go inside. Her parents weren’t waiting up for her – she knew that much. She’d texted them tonight when she’d left the party, but they rarely noticed if she was out. They all lived very separate lives, for all that they lived under the same roof.

It didn’t matter though. She gently thumped her head back against the chair, to emphasize the thought. None of this mattered. She’d been looking forward to college for so long, forward to getting out of the suburbs and into the city. She’d see her family when she came home for Labor Day, just a few weeks from now. She could always text and FaceTime her friends, and she’d see them over the holidays – besides, she’d be meeting new ones. Wasn’t that the whole point of college? Make friends with new people, learn new things. Grow up.

So, she was being morose for no good reason. It wasn’t like the world ended when you went off to college.

She looked over at the end of the porch. The table that Wren had read at, those first few weeks of summer, looked incredibly empty.

Yvonne told herself that she didn’t care.

Eventually this newly-minted college freshman made her way inside, tripping over dorm-destined boxes and hissing out curses. She extricated the flower crown from the black snarls of her hair and with some thought hung it from the corner of her mirror, as a memento. She took a shower and watched the glitter swirl around the drain, and later rolled her eyes when she saw that there was still more smeared across her face. She’d be glittery for a while yet.

She crawled into bed for one last night before the next chapter of her life, the one that had been looming on her horizon for so long, the one that would change everything, but also nothing at all. She’d still be herself at the end of it all, right?

It wasn’t like the world ended when you left for college.

She went to sleep.

There had been a party last night, but today Yvonne rolled out of bed with a groan, and the morning had dawned bright and beautiful. There was a new world awaiting her, whether she liked it or not.

Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Wren: “Good luck today!!! You’re gonna have such a great time <3”

Yvonne’s thumb hovered over the message as she considered a reply.

Ultimately, she locked her phone, tossed it back on her bed, and wandered downstairs to find some breakfast.

It could wait.