I pause, briefly, feeling another inconvenient spike of anger toward her.That’s it, I think. That small, casual “It’ll be fine.” That’s the way she’s managed it, this distance between us. She’s kept it so friendly. She’s never let on she notices that anything at all has changed.
She knows, more than anyone, why this would work on me so well. Why I wouldn’t want to press too hard about what has, without a doubt, changed.
“Yeah, of course.” My voice sounds the same as it always does, but I feel as if I’m speaking through clenched teeth. “I’m happy for you, Sib.” I’m anI-went-alongbroken record.
For a split second we look at each other, and to me it feels like a mountain of letters between us, all jumbled up and unmatched, a thousand things I need to say to her but can’t figure out how to say. Not without starting some kind of terrible avalanche. Not without getting buried beneath them.
So I blink first, right before Sibby’s quiet “Thanks,” and after that I decide it’s my turn to do the avoiding for a while.
Here’s the thing:Iused to hate New York, too.
When I was thirteen years old, my eighth-grade class got split into two groups: in the spring, only three weeks before the last day of middle school, half of us would take a four-day trip to Washington, D.C., and half of us would take a four-day trip to New York City. In the days leading up to the October announcement about the trip rosters, I would lie in my twin-size bed and make promises to a god I wasn’t even quite sure I believed in, swearing to do all my chores early for a whole year, to lay off my parents about finally letting me get a cell phone. Anything,anythingso I wouldn’t get picked for the New York trip.
I got picked for the New York trip.
I was scared; that’s the long and short of it. I’d never traveled outside the state of Ohio, and even inside of Ohio I’d only really ever left home to visit Cincinnati, which is where my dad’s parents lived. Both trips seemed overwhelming, but in pictures D.C. seemed mostly comprised of clean, white, official-looking buildings surrounded by evenly cut, extremely green grass, and since I grew up in the suburbs, evenly cut, extremely green grass was basically my understanding of nature in general.
But in pictures—not to mention in TV shows and movies—New York seemed huge, unpredictable, gray and crowded and noisy and mismatching. There was Central Park, sure, but in the aerial photographs our social studies teacher showed us, even that seemed overwhelming—thick-topped trees hiding what, I didn’t know, but probably not a bunch of suburban-looking grass, and all of it surrounded by that gray maze of buildings.
When I’d come home and told my parents, neither of them seemed to register the wobble in my voice, instead almost immediately—as was their tradition—taking up diametrically opposed positions on the whole thing. My mother was appalled that a place as “unsafe” as New York was even an option, and my father rolled his eyes and complained about how sheltered I was. By the time they were done, a few slammed cabinet doors later, the wobble had been out of my voice. I’d told my mom all about how many chaperones would be with us; I’d told my dad how excited I was.
A few months later, I’d taken my seat on that spring day with a sketchpad clutched to my chest and two full bottles of Pepto-Bismol in my backpack, remembering my dad’s advice to “stay tough” and my mom’s to keep all my money in the flat fanny pack she’d bought me to wear beneath my pants.
And then Sibyl Michelucci sat down next to me.
She was new, had moved to our school from Chicago, and basically she was one hundred times cooler than anyone in our class. By extension, she was also obviously one million times cooler than the person with two bottles of Pepto-Bismol in her backpack. She’d been to New York “uh, alot” of times, because her dad was an architect and also because the entire dream of her life was to be on Broadway, and her parents were “like,sosupportive” and took her to see a show at least twice a year. On the bus ride she started sing-a-longs that no one hated (magic!) and a game of truth or dare where no one got embarrassed (sorcery!).
I’d had friends before Sibby, of course—kids I’d been in school with for years, kids who knew me to be polite, upbeat, always drawing or coloring something. But as soon as I was old enough to recognize them, I’d been cautious about cliques, about the rivalries and conflicts that always seemed to brew beneath the surface of them, and I suppose I’d kept my distance. But there was nothing cautious about Sibby, no one—including me—she kept her distance from. She was easygoing and fun-loving and curious, and she had a way of bringing me into the fold without making me feel overexposed.
And on the New York trip, she became my best friend.
But even having Sibby by my side didn’t change my mind about the city, not really. I was still overwhelmed; I still wore that flat fanny pack as if it was a medical device keeping me alive; I still drank two tablespoons of Pepto every morning before we left the hotel for the heavily scheduled and chaperoned days of sightseeing we had; I still thought I was in imminent danger of being mugged every time I was in the open air. I managed to enjoy parts of it (the park did, after all, have a lot of nice grass), but I didn’townit.
Iwent along.
When Sibby decided to move here right after graduation, we’d hugged and cried and made promises never ever to lose touch, but there was really no question I’d ever go with her. I had a partial scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design, and planned to grin and bear it at home with my parents until I could save up enough for a small apartment. I was going to graduate and get a job doing graphic design, first for my dad’s business and then, I hoped, for others. New York would be a place I visited, for Sibby, but not—notever—a place I lived.
But when everything fell apart, it was Sibby who I needed, Sibby who gave me a fresh start. That I hated the city was irrelevant. I didn’t hate it as much as what had happened at home—that final, terrible fight between me and my parents. The one where for once, they’d been on the same side. The one where I’d finally, finally pushed them into telling me the truth—about them, about me, about all of the things they’d kept from me for years.
Talk about an avalanche. Some days I think I’m still shaking off the snow and rocks.
So at first—numb and sad and scared—I followed her lead. She offered me a spot on her small, uncomfortable couch; I took it. The catering company where she worked at night needed more servers; I signed up. She needed to go to auditions; I rode the subway with her, helping her carry extra clothes and waiting in hallways and lobbies while she anxiously read sides. She made plans with the friends she’d met since her arrival; I tagged along.
When I was ready, though—when I finally went out on my own—it was signs and letters that taught me how to love the city for myself.
To make it my new home.
So maybe that’s why, after my awful, stomach-churning conversation with Sibby, I take the extra-long way to the shop, so extra-long that it’s not really the way at all. It’s just a big, zigzaggy detour that kills time before I really have to be there for the shift that doesn’t start for another hour and that lets me see more of what I want to see: letters making sense.
There’s not much at first, or at least not much most people would notice. The signs on my street are about how to function in a space, reminders of how to be a resident:. They’re mostly all caps, mostly sans serif, sizes varying depending on the seriousness of the problem you’ll have if you don’t pay attention to them. Then west toward Fifth, a left to take me past where I sat with Reid Sutherland last night, more of his words ringing in my ears.
There haven’t been many signs for me here.
I go down Union, where it’s all about to change, where it’s not so much about functioning in a space as it is about figuring out what to visit or eat or buy once you’re in it. There’s a red awning marking out a restaurant known for using almost all local ingredients; their sign looks carelessly, charmingly handwritten, a heavy, uneven tittle over ani, an all-lowercase web address that looks scribbled out as an afterthought, a messy accommodation to modernity. Union and Sixth, a good corner for signage—a veterinary clinic with a slim sans serif, clean and safe-looking. A market with a lime-green star to replace theA, a standout against the black background—it’s hip, it’s expensive, it’s probably got a bunch of food you’ve never heard of but you’d definitely be hip, too, if you tried it.
Past the neighborhood food co-op there’s a block that gets exceptionally good for signs, for letters. A creamy script on the maroon awning of an Italian restaurant. Across the way, cream again, but this one for a laundromat, bold and plain against a dark green backdrop trimmed in yellow, the letters stacked vertically, efficiently, exactly how you’d want your laundry to be folded. A favorite: the jumbled cacophony of the multiple signs for a local, longstanding bike shop—some Gothic printing on the sign for the building, a decorative serif for the bright red sign hanging over the street. That one, it looks hand-painted, as does the window lettering—white, trimmed in blue—over the front door.We’ve been here a long time, these signs say.It doesn’t matter if we match.
I keep walking, head up, and I feel as if I’m counting, noticing signs I’ve never looked at before, and that’s saying something. It soothes me in the same way it did back then, when I learned the city by walking it, by paying attention. I learned neighborhoods letter by letter, sign by sign. It’s how I got inspired; it’s how I fell in love with the city but also how I learned to make it here. It’s how I taught myself that I could be someone other than the sheltered, suburban girl from the perfect-on-the-surface family. It’s what I sketched late at night on the subway, stinking of food and dead tired, distracting myself from thoughts of my parents and also my chances of getting mugged—signs and letters I’d seen, new ideas that rattled loudly in my head like the tracks beneath my feet. It’s what convinced me to take the first commission I ever got offered, twenty-five birthday party invitations for my catering manager’s son’s eighth birthday party.
