To Toby, From Mandy

Fanbright, California, is a literal shithole.  

Never in my fifteen (out of eighteen) years of life breathing its polluted, industrial air did I compliment it once.  In fact, the only humans who have been cursed with the knowledge of its existence are those who live in it, and those who have escaped it.  I’ve done both.  

In 2005, we moved to Fanbright for a pretty boring reason: cheap housing.  It’s a good idea to save money before sending your kid off to college, which leaves me to where I am now: packing my bags for NYU.

I decided that I wanted to become an author, which may have been the biggest letdown for my parents, considering my older brother lives as a starving artist over in Florida.  I was supposed to be PhD something Mandy Lee, but I might just be the 11-point font under a boring article for the Huffington Post.  There is, however, one goal I plan to achieve in my writing career, even if it costs an arm and a leg.

One day, I will write a book about the one interesting thing that has ever come out of my hometown - Toby Alvarez.

Graduating Class of 1986, Toby Ryland Alvarez was as far away from the spotlight as one can get.  Ditching class to smoke with his delinquent accomplices, constantly going on solo road trips to avoid family in his beaten down Volkswagen, any girl nowadays would have fallen in love immediately.  Well, any girl then might have had a crush, but he was probably ugly or something.  Nearly no one knew or cared about the kid, until just a few days before graduation.

The story varies with who tells it, but one thing rings true for them all: on June 2nd, 1986, Toby died in a car crash.  The rusty, black, 1983 Rabbit GTI was T-boned on the freeway, the smoke from the engine blending in with the smoke from whatever he was high on that day.  He was dead before anyone could even help.  It was the first unnatural death in Fanbright since 1925, and no one has followed since.  This makes sense as to how the story gets twisted on why.  Some will say it was the drugs that made him lose control of his focus.  Some say it was the other driver’s fault.

Most say he wanted to die that day.

I know thirty years is arguably enough time to draw the conclusion that Toby committed suicide without it being “too soon”, but I always felt weirdly uncomfortable hearing it.  The fact that someone who so hated the public eye would choose to die in front of hundreds around him just doesn’t make sense.  The struggle with trying not to believe it, though, was that everyone around me did. 

I’d be lying if I said every resident hated shithole Fanbright.  Most people actually loved it.  Descendants of those who first settled found the northern air to be peaceful, an artifact of their ancestors that can so easily be forgotten.  So if some outcast teen dies while skipping school, they think the city is too perfect to blame it on anything other than the kid.  

No one bothered about his home life, his interests, the fact that he happened to be the only minority in the whole school.  They always said he “set himself aside” from others, never the other way around.

Hearing the story for the first time when I was a freshman at the same high school, I felt an odd connection to Toby.  Not because I did drugs and rebelled against the social order, but I did feel isolated by things I couldn’t control.  Being the only asian american student, I too felt set aside.  

On graduation day, classmates who I had several failed attempts at getting close to simply said I was “independent”, and “never cared about popularity”.  I didn’t care about popularity, but that’s a pretty sugar-coated way of saying I had no friends.  My family also isn’t the “mingling” type, and I soon found out from verbal stories and newspapers that the Alvarez family never tried to befriend the other townspeople either.  Did we hate relationships, or did we hate the possibility we wouldn’t be accepted that we just never took the chance?

“Mandy, you almost done?”, my mom calls me from the hallway.  My flight leaves in five hours.

“Yeah, just about to tape up the last box”.  For the past ten minutes I had been staring at a piece of paper I found four years ago stuffed in a library book.

Mr. Rodman, thanks for assigning this.  It’s the only one I’ve read in your class to be honest, but it inspired me.  I want to be like him, but better. -T. Alvarez

There’s no more Mr. Rodman at school, he retired in ‘92. I asked the school what the ”T” stood for, and that’s how I learned the story. The book was Robinson Crusoe, which I thought was too boring up until the last page where the note was taped in.  It’s obvious that his teacher didn’t see it; he might have hoped that he could give the note personally, or that Mr. Rodman would find it by chance.  The note was probably still taped in since none of the kids since the ‘80s opened it up, let alone finished it.  Nevertheless, there has to be some reason why I’m the one who found and kept it.

Three sentences and a sign-off didn’t close Toby’s case, but it did help his case.  For someone who never did anything to or for anyone, reading a book and giving a review to a teacher definitely meant something.  He had a dream to leave Fanbright, to be someone somewhere, to be like Robinson Crusoe, but better.  Regardless if it was suicide or not, Toby, at some point in his life, dared to dream for a life outside of the one he was currently living in.  That was enough for me not to hate him.

“Alright mom, we can head out”, I was going to fly out first with a few of my things before the rest got shipped in, so I wasn’t as rushed as my family was.

I quickly stuffed the note into my bag - maybe a good luck charm I guess.  I headed out towards the car with my hands full of suitcases and was pushed into the passenger seat by my dad.  We are pretty punctual people, so it was imperative that we arrive hours before the plane takes off.

We drove for about half an hour before reaching the town sign that read “Come back soon!”. 

I really hope I don’t. 

At the stoplight, I feel a weight off my shoulders, the type of weight you feel when you turn in your final exam at the end of the year, or when you hear the buzz at the end of a game season.  I was moving on, going somewhere to be someone.

Across the street, I feel someone looking at me, and I quickly glance so as not to start a staring contest with a stranger.  It wasn’t a stranger, though.  Leaning next to a broken down Volkswagen, smoking a cigarette in an all black ensemble, I get a head nod.  There was also the tiniest smile, the kind someone gives when they aren’t used to smiling.  There was pride in that smile, hope in those eyes, and warmth in our hearts.

I will write about you, Toby Alvarez, in NYU or after NYU.

I’ll write about shitty Fanbright; I’ll write about narrow-minded people, and I’ll write about being like someone who inspires you, but better.