1
TANNER
“Look, Tanner. Christmas break starts next week, and you’ve got a whole month before next semester. Give yourself some space to think things through. Based on how this semester went, college might not be for you.”
Dr. Gonzalez is kind, even as her words land with the power of a body blow.Well, shit.
I look down at my red cropped hoodie lined with white fur—Christmassy, yet perfectly balanced by super-dark-black shredded jeans and Doc Martens—and wonder if wearing the goth Christmas-elf theme for my last day of the semester was a bit too hopeful. I’m especially ambivalent about the extra-sparkly highlighter and the recent platinum color refresh on my hair as Dr. Gonzalez gently tries to explain that I’m not exactly college material.
Of the four classes I enrolled in this semester, I dropped one, failed another, and passed two by the thinnest of margins.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been told by a teacher to look at something beyond college.”
My English Lit teacher—whose class I passed based on her willingness to round up—grins at me. “That’s because you probably had older teachers who weren’t paying a mountain of college debt.”
I sigh.
My uncle took me in when my dad kicked me out, letting me finish my senior year of high school in his guest room. My dad stripped me of my college fund, but Richard was able to help me sign up for Central Texas College, over by Marble Falls. He even helped pay for my books, which makes me feel like a complete failure and a huge disappointment.
“Okay. I’ll see.”
Dejected, I get up to leave, and she sees me to the door.
“Tanner, you didn’t do anything wrong. You spent a few months in the academic environment, and it didn’t work out. If you were passionate about a career that required a degree, we’d be having a different conversation. But that’s not the case, is it?”
I shake my head, barely holding back tears.
She takes my arm, making me face her. “Then this was not a failure. This was you trying out college for a semester and realizing it’s not for you, at least not right now. That’s it. I promise if you take the next few weeks to think through your likes and dislikes, you’ll figure it out. If it takes more than a few weeks, that’s okay too. You’re what, nineteen?”
I sniff, wiping away a tear. “Yeah.”
“I know it seems like everything is up in the air, but I promise it’ll settle down.”
“Okay.”
I see my way out of the building and walk to my beat-up Geo Metro in the stupid December heat. I get in and cross my arms on the steering wheel, letting my forehead clunk down on them. I give myself a few minutes to feel awful, then pull myself together and put the car in drive.
After a few miles of nothing but the sound of the road, my mom calls. I hit the Bluetooth and am greeted with sniffling.
“Mayko? Are you okay?” I ask, using the Bulgarian word for mom.
“No.” She sniffs again. “You know how Sheriff Patrick has been looking into ways to help me leave your father?”
Mom doesn’t know all the details, but my father ran against Patrick for county sheriff and was going to out him to the county three days before the election. I told him I’d tell the community exactly the sort of husband and father he was if he said a word.
My father kept his mouth shut and lost by under three hundred votes.
“Yes.”
“The nice sheriff came through,” she says in her soft Eastern Bloc accent. “Your dad always told me that if I divorced him, I’d be deported. Patrick had some friends look into it, and it isn’t true.”
I let out a relieved, if pissed-off, breath. My father held that over her for years.
“Thatasshole. What are you going to do?”
“Patrick recommended an immigration attorney, who agreed to take my case for free. We’ve been quietly working out the details, and she had your father served with divorce papers today.”
“Oh my God, Mayko. What did he do?”
