Lila Has Crossed the Sound

Chapter 3 The Draft

The draft in my email was to the financial aid office at Whitman. It was a request for a change in housing status, a petition to move off campus, which required a formal letter and a $200 processing fee and a deadline that was three weeks away. I'd started writing it the night I saw the ferry confirmation. I'd saved it and closed it and told myself I wasn't serious.

But I was serious. I just hadn't admitted it yet.

On the second morning, I woke early, before either of them, and sat on the porch with a cup of coffee and watched the fog roll in off the water. The air was cold and clean, and the only sound was the distant call of a gull and the soft lapping of the waves against the dock. I opened my laptop and looked at the email again.

It was simple. I was requesting to move off campus for the fall semester. I'd found a studio apartment near the university, small and cheap and mine, and I'd already contacted the landlord. I hadn't signed anything yet. But I could.

The only problem was the money.

My financial aid package was built around on-campus housing. If I moved off campus, I'd lose part of my grant and would have to make up the difference with a job. I'd been working part-time at a coffee shop near campus since sophomore year, but I'd need more hours, and I'd need to be careful with every dollar.

I could do it. I'd done the math. It would be tight, but it would work.

The question was whether I wanted to.

The door opened behind me, and Evan came out with his own cup of coffee. He was still in his pajamas, his hair sticking up in all directions, and he looked like he always looked in the morning, rumpled and warm and familiar.

"You're up early," he said, sitting down next to me on the steps.

"Couldn't sleep."

"You never sleep on trips." He took a sip of his coffee. "Remember that time in Vancouver? You were awake before the sun came up."

"I remember."

"I always thought it was because you were excited. But I don't think that's it, is it?"

I looked at him. He was watching me with that careful, perceptive expression, the one that made me feel like he could see right through me even when I didn't want him to.

"No," I said. "That's not it."

"Then what is it?"

I could have told him. I could have said: I'm tired of being your afterthought. I could have said: I've been in love with you since high school and you never noticed. I could have said: I can't keep doing this, sitting in the back seat, taking the middle seat, being the third person in my own life.

But I didn't say any of that. What I said was: "I'm thinking of moving off campus."

He blinked. "What? Why?"

"I need my own space."

"You have your own space. You have a single room."

"I have a single room in a dorm full of people. That's not the same thing."

"Lila." He set his coffee down and turned to face me. "This is about Marisol and me, isn't it? About the apartment."

I didn't answer.

"It is," he said. "I knew it. Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"Because there was nothing to say. You didn't do anything wrong. You're moving in with your girlfriend. That's what people do."

"But you're upset."

"I'm not upset." I stood up, because I didn't want to be sitting next to him anymore, because the proximity was confusing, because I could feel the old familiar ache rising in my chest and I didn't want to let it win. "I'm adjusting. There's a difference."

He stood up too. "Lila, you're my best friend."

"I know."

"You're my best friend," he repeated, "and I don't want you to feel like you're being left out. We should have talked to you before we signed the lease. We should have told you what we were planning."

"Yes," I said. "You should have."

He flinched, just slightly, and I saw something cross his face that I'd never seen before, something that looked almost like guilt.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think."

"No," I said. "You didn't."

I went back inside, and he stayed on the porch, and I could feel his eyes on me as I walked through the kitchen, but I didn't turn around.

Marisol was already up, standing at the stove in her pajamas, making pancakes. She looked up when I came in and smiled.

"Morning," she said. "Everything okay?"

I looked at her, at her bright face and her easy smile and her absolute certainty that the world was a kind place, and I thought: she doesn't know. She doesn't know that I've been carrying this for years. She doesn't know that her casual inclusion of me, her warmth and openness, has been the thing that kept me close enough to be hurt. She doesn't know that the cruelty isn't in what she's done. It's in what she hasn't noticed.

"Everything's fine," I said. "Pancakes smell good."

The rest of the trip passed in a blur of small moments. We hiked a trail on the south end of the island, and I walked behind them the whole way, watching their backs, listening to their conversation. We ate dinner at the house, and I washed the dishes while they sat on the couch and watched a movie, and when the movie was over they went to bed together and I lay on the pullout couch and stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain.

On Sunday morning, we took the ferry back to Seattle. I had a window seat this time, because the crossing was less crowded, and I watched the island shrink behind us and the city grow in front of us, and I felt something settle in my chest, something that might have been resolve or resignation or just the exhaustion of three days of pretending.

Evan and Marisol sat in the row behind me. I could hear them talking about the apartment again, about the paint color for the living room, about whether they should get a cat. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to.

When the ferry docked, we said goodbye at the terminal. Marisol hugged me and told me she'd see me on campus. Evan hugged me and told me he'd call me later. I nodded and smiled and walked away, and by the time I reached the street I had already pulled out my phone and opened my email and hit send on the draft I'd been working on.

The financial aid office would reply within two weeks. I had until September to figure out the rest.

I walked home in the rain, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was walking toward something instead of away from it.