“Why do you look like I just punched you in the gut?” she asks. Another line of cheese stretches from the sandwich to her mouth.
“I think that might just be my face now.”
She karate chops the cheese with her knife and shakes her head.
“I just don’t get it. If you love each other why the hell aren’t you over there?—”
“Beneath her window with a boombox?” I interrupt.
She lifts her nose.
“What the fuck is a boombox?”
Apparently it’s embarrassing to be born in the nineties. I’ve seen Sammy give me this exact face before. She slurps at her soda.
“You know, I really hope you don’t curse like this at your interview next month,” I say, reaching for the ketchup bottle.
She narrows her eyes at me.
“What interview?”
I shrug, untwist the ketchup bottle.
“I spoke to some friends at the Pediatric Center at Northwestern?—”
She’s around the table so fast I barely have time to release the Heinz. Her arms wrap around me and I wait until she’s done squeezing me before I reach into my pocket and hand her the plane ticket. I wish Devon were here for this.
She looks down at it, the tiny diamond in her left brow reflects off the tears that fill her eyes.
“I’ll never get into Northwestern,” she whispers, still staring at the dark block lettering on the ticket.
I’ve seen Devon manage Syd’s self-doubts a thousand times. Always the same dialogue, like they’re reading from a script they wrote together. I find the words. Channel my inner-Devon.
“Who was that?” I ask.
She meets my gaze. Lifts a brow. Then finally gives into her role.
“Self-doubt,” she tells me.
She knows this routine. And though she rolls her eyes every time, she always smiles at the end.
“What do we do with self-doubt?” I picture Devon lifting her hand into Syd’s face, getting ready to tick off the answers.
“Acknowledge, accept, and restructure,” Syd answers in an overly chipper tone.
I forget the next part, because I’m always too focused on Devon’s smiling face.
Syd elbows me and says, “Now you tell me to ‘prove it’ in an obnoxious frat boy voice.”
“Prove it,” I say too loudly. Someone in the booth next to us clears their throat.
And there’s that smile. I see a waiter nearly drop his tray while he stares at it in my periphery.
Syd doesn’t see it—doesn’t know she stops people in their tracks with that dazzler.
She’s focused on her part of Devon’s script.
“Hey, self-doubt. You’re ok sometimes. But right now, you aren’t as loud as my purpose. I will help kids. I will become a pediatric psychiatrist.”
