How did it go?” Toni asked when I returned to Reeti’s guest room.
She was sprawled on one of the two twin beds, scrolling on her phone, her duffel open but still packed on the floor.
“Okay. She’s going to pick up your things from the dorm.”
“Good.”
“Just like your mother,” Em said in my head. “Leaving someone else to pick up the pieces.”
“Toni.”
She looked up, eyes glistening. “Thanks for calling, Dodo.”
“Oh, honey, of course. But are you really sure you want to give up your housing? If you decide to go back—”
“I’m not going back.”
I sat on the foot of her bed. KU was pretty inclusive. “GayU,” Todd Nelson at the feed store said dismissively the last time I was home. Which just went to prove that the administration’s support for diversity on campus wouldn’t always protect Toni from narrow-minded assholes.
“Did something happen at school that upset you?” I asked gently.
“I’m good,” Toni said. “Not everybody leaves Kansas because of a broken heart, you know.”
“So, no more roommate issues?” I persisted.
Toni hunched one shoulder. “Madison was fine. Her boyfriend was a jerk.”
“We could get you a single,” I suggested. “If you gave it some time...”
“I’m not like you. I can’t wait forever to go after what I want.” Toni flushed. “Sorry. I know you only stuck around so long because of me.”
“Oh, Toni, no, I—”
“You’re so smart,” Toni said. “You could have gone anywhere. You got all those postcards and stuff.”
I was surprised she’d noticed. She was only nine when I started looking at colleges, poring over the glossy brochures of campuses I would never visit. Columbia. Emory. Northwestern.
“I never applied,” I said.
“Because you wouldn’t leave me. Like Mom did.”
That was true. But also...
“I was afraid to put myself out there,” I confessed. “As long as I didn’t actually apply, they couldn’t reject me.”
“You applied here,” Toni said.
“Only because I couldn’t face Gray again. I had to go somewhere.”
Toni grinned. “Me too.”
—
And maybe, after all, Tim was right, I thought hopefully later that week. Maybe I wasn’t only running away from a broken heart and public humiliation. Maybe I was searching for something. Finding my voice. Making a space where I could belong.
It was Christmas Day. The Christmas cactus had not bloomed. It was still too early to call Em and Henry, and I was trying to fill the hours before we went to the Clerys’ for dinner. Toni and I were walking back to Reeti’s apartment. The streets were almost empty, but we’d found an open convenience store that sold coffee (for Toni) and strong black tea. We had pitched our to-go cups into a corner bin when I spotted a family going into a church around the corner—a little girl, a lanky boy, a mother in a puffer coat. The square bell tower rose against the sky.
I tugged Toni’s arm. “Let’s go in.”
