Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

She left the Student Health Center with a two-week extension, the stay of execution she needed to write her Political Theory paper, a written excuse absolving her of penalty for all four of her prior absences, and a prescription for Celexa. Her confession was far from a tell-all—she didn’t roll up her shirtsleeves—but she apparently said enough to warrant medication.

The school physician never said I hereby diagnose you with clinical depression , but it doesn’t take a genius with a college degree from NYU to figure out the implication. She read the product paperwork that came with the pill bottle. Celexa is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor . So it’s an SSRI. An antidepressant. The prescription speaks for itself.

The slip of paper he’d handed to her had felt like an unprovoked assault on her character. She could barely stand to carry it home in her pocket. She felt accused, violated. How dare that crackpot school doctor, who’d never even met her before, label her with depression, when all she did was have the courage to vulnerably ask for a little support. Her request for help, in and of itself, demonstrated that she was being reasonable and responsible, doing what an emotionally healthy person would do. She hated that asshat doctor for labeling her with his totally unprofessional rush to judgment. Based on what? A single conversation? Ridiculous.

Two days later, she walked into Duane Reade and filled the damn prescription.

Every morning for three weeks, she swallowed a pink Celexa with water—the breakfast of champions for today’s modern woman. The doctor had said it would be three to four weeks for the Celexa to take full effect, but even after the first week, she felt a tickle of something happening. By week two, the change was dramatic and unmistakable. She had energy. She felt like not only herself again, but the best version of it. She became interested in her classes, enthusiastic even.

She effervesced.

She’s 100 percent caught up in all her assignments, two chapters ahead in Political Theory, acing her tests. She wrote a brilliant essay on free will that her philosophy teacher didn’t even assign. She’s engaged, participating the fuck out of class. Each thought she has is the sharp tip of an arrow whizzing through the air, piercing the bull’s-eye, smack-dab in the center. Every time. She’s crushing life. This bus has turned all the way around.

Italian is a breeze. She’s way ahead of the syllabus, doing hours of Duolingo on her own at night for fun. She loves the adorable cartoon mascot, that little green owl. His name is Duo, but she calls him Gufo. She plans to become fluent before next fall, when she’s decided she’ll do a semester in Florence. Or maybe she’ll do a whole year abroad. Perfetto!

Adam should come with her, but she knows he won’t. He’s a finance major, singularly focused on making as much money as possible. He only speaks English, thinks the whole world should revolve around his Anglo-white-American ass. If his goal is total world domination like he says it is, then he should be learning Spanish and Chinese at the very least.

She’ll do it. She’ll learn Italian first, then Spanish and Mandarin, then maybe Arabic and French. She’ll aim to be fluent in five languages, pretty commonplace in Europe, but being multilingual here in the US is like being a unicorn. She laughs, imagining an animated unicorn mascot named Maddy.

Four nights ago, while listening to Midnights on repeat, she decided she had to know absolutely everything there was to know about Taylor Swift. She went deep down the rabbit hole, clicking and reading and watching music videos, playing every song from every album, enthralled for hours, her love and admiration intensifying the more she learned. Her heart tore right down the middle when she realized she had spaced out and missed the verified fan presale for her Eras Tour, and the general sale that was supposed to follow had been canceled. The entire tour was already sold out.

She screamed FUCK about a million times.

But then she read about Taylor’s mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, and her devastated, broken heart forgot all about not having a concert ticket. Suddenly, Taylor Swift was a girl from New England, just like her, living right around the corner. And that’s when she cooked up the big idea.

She’s going to write Taylor Swift’s biography! Fireworks explode in her heart every time she thinks about it. She’ll have to get permission, of course, as she wouldn’t want it to be unauthorized. She’ll get to know her, spend countless hours with her at home and on tour. Who needs a ticket when she’ll have a backstage pass?! They’ll become best friends, naturally. She’ll start by taking a writing class next semester, before the tour begins. She doesn’t want to approach such a colossally important project as an amateur.

That first night of Taylor research, she didn’t go to bed at all and never got tired. Since then, she’s only been getting about two hours of sleep a night and still isn’t tired. She feels revved up, like she’s overcaffeinated but without the nausea or constant need to pee. She goes to bed around three and is up at five, before Manoush, without an alarm, refreshed and excited to hop out of bed and kick the day’s ass.

That’s also when she stopped taking the Celexa. If she was ever actually depressed, she definitely isn’t now. She can’t remember the last time she cut herself. She feels fan-fuckin’-tastic. So there’s clearly no need for little pink pills.

It’s late afternoon, and she’s done with classes for the day. She’s alone in her room, blasting Taylor’s Red album on her portable speaker, dancing like a maniac, sweating and singing her soul out. In the middle of “The Lucky One,” she hears pounding on the door. She shimmies across the room and opens it to reveal the scowling face of petite Nina from across the hall.

“Love Taylor, but can you please turn the volume down or use headphones?”

“Yeah, okay.”

She closes the door, pauses the music, and looks for her AirPods on her desk and bed but can’t find them. Her dorm room suddenly feels too quiet and small to contain her. It’s Wednesday, two days shy of another weekend with Adam. But she’s restless and wants to see him now. Why not? She’ll surprise him.

She steps outside, and the air is crisp and gorgeous, unseasonably warm for November. She decides she’s going to walk the five or so miles to Columbia instead of taking the subway. Aside from the streets surrounding Washington Square and the campus at Columbia, she really hasn’t seen much of New York City. If she goes anywhere, she gets there underground. She’s lived here for over a year and still hasn’t seen Central Park. She knows her mother took her and Jack to the zoo there when she was little because she’s seen the pictures, but she doesn’t remember it, and she hasn’t been there since. It’s time to get to know this magnificent city.

The good weather has put people in a cheery mood, and she can feel it. She smiles at her fellow New Yorkers as they walk toward her, feeling a deep connection, a kinship. They are family on this sidewalk, in this neighborhood, alive at the same time on this planet together. If anyone smiles back, and many of them do, her heart lifts, swelling with love.

Something delicious permeates the air, and the odor lures her like a magic spell to the hot dog cart on the next corner. She hasn’t eaten a hot dog since she was thirteen, swore off them after watching a documentary about how they’re made in health class, disgusted by the thought of their questionable ingredients. But these are authentic New York hot dogs, and she is an authentic New Yorker. They look and smell amazing.

“What’ll it be?” asks the vendor.

“One hot dog, mustard and ketchup please.”

She watches him assemble her hot dog in awe, as if it were performance art. He hands it to her, and she pays. She steps aside and takes a bite.

“Oh my God,” she announces to the vendor and everyone in line. “This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

Several people in the line laugh.

“That’s right, sweetheart. You have a good day!” says the vendor.

A bounce in her step, she eats the rest of the hot dog as she continues toward the park. She stops before a storefront window, arrested by the beauty of a blazer on a headless mannequin in the display. The lapel is velvet-cake red with pink satin trim. It has three pockets. She loves pockets. But what really captures her heart are the roses—bold red, pink, and yellow roses in unapologetic bloom all over the gray blazer.

She dashes into the store, finds the blazer on a rack near the mannequin, and tries it on right there. She steps in front of a mirror and checks herself out. It fits and looks phenomenal on her with her leggings and black Converse high-tops, but the blue sweater she’s wearing is too bulky for it. She removes the blazer, pulls the sweater off, and slides herself back into the blazer, which is now coupled only with her lacy black bra.

O. M. G. Yes!

She checks the label. Dolce all Maddy and everyone in the audience can feel is his discomfort.

Maddy orders a second vodka soda from a passing waitress. Arms folded, she’s feeling bored and is itching to escape when the fourth comedian (shocker, it’s a dude), a tall snack named Max, surprises her into laughing. He lands another and then another, and it’s as if he’s sneaked inside her and located their common humanity, and they’re in on the secret of life together, the truth, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“School didn’t prepare us for the world today. They made us learn things like cursive . And chemistry.”

He holds his hands up as if to say, Can you believe this bullshit? He shakes his head as amusement dances in his hazel eyes and a mischievous smile blooms across his face.

“Until I draft the Gen Z Declaration of Dependence with a quill or create a meth lab in my kitchen, I have not been equipped to achieve the American dream. Or afford things like health insurance. And cheese.”

She laughs out loud. She wipes her eyes with her drink napkin. When’s the last time she laughed this hard and out loud in public? A long-ass time and maybe never.

The next six comedians, all guys, are a mix of okay and snoozers. She pays for another vodka soda, hoping for another Max, but the emcee hops onto the stage and calls it a night. Back in the bar, to her utter delight, she spots Max drinking a beer in a booth opposite one of the other comics. He’s scooched over, his shoulder up against the wall of headshots, a stretch of empty booth next to him, plenty of room for her. She sits down, uninvited.

“You were awesome,” she says to Max, and not to the not-funny comedian whose name she’s already forever forgotten. She clinks her glass to his.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Seriously, I almost peed my pants. You had us all laughing our asses off.”

“Thanks, what’s—”

“You were the best one up there by far, no contest.” She turns to the other comedian. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he mutters.

“And it was so deliberate and controlled, the pacing and your delivery. It was masterful. You,” she says, touching Max’s bare arm with the palm of her hand, “are masterful.”

He smiles. “That’s—”

“Really, to get a whole room of people to laugh like that. The power!”

She touches his arm again, this time holding on.

“That must feel amazing,” she says.

He looks down at her hand and then back at her.

“Yeah, it does.”

“Yeah,” says the other comedian, “and it’s equally horrible when everyone stares at you expressionless with their arms crossed.”

Maddy glances at him for a moment and says nothing.

“Doctors should prescribe you for depression,” she says to Max.

He laughs. “Yeah, but I’d come with my own set of side effects.”

“One of those scary, long warning labels, huh?”

“May cause irritability, headaches, diarrhea.”

Maddy laughs. “Is your picture on the wall?”

“Nah.”

She slides closer to Max, to get a better look at the wall that she could already see just fine. Her hip touches his, and he’s the conduit for an electrical current turning all her switches on. She scans the comedians on the wall, and this time she recognizes a lot of them—Jim Gaffigan, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld.

“What has to happen to get your face up there?”

“You have to audition and get passed.”

“How long does that take?”

“It depends.”

“On how good you are.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’d say you were plenty good tonight.”

“Thanks.”

She looks back up at the wall.

“How long did it take Jerry to get up there?”

“No idea.”

“They’re mostly guys.”

“True.”

“I think you have to have a penis to get on the wall.”

“There are chicks up there.”

He points to the face of a woman she’s never heard of.

“I bet I could get up there,” says Maddy.

“Oh yeah? You a comic?”

“No, but—”

“It’s harder than it looks. It’s not just about if you’re funny or have a good sense of humor. Right, Reggie?”

Max looks across the table at the other comedian. Maddy forgot he was still there. Reggie lifts his pint of beer, drains it, and slides himself out of the booth.

“What’s your name?”

“Maddy.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a student at NYU.”

“Oh, yeah. What do you study?”

“Philosophy, political science. I’m also becoming fluent in Italian and four other languages. And writing. I’m going to be a biographer. But I haven’t landed on a major yet. Maybe I’ll study comedy.”

Max laughs, amused. “You don’t study comedy,” he says. “You do comedy.”

“Okay, then maybe I’ll do comedy.”

“Okay.”

“What? You don’t think I could get up there? I could totally get up there.”

“You’re funny.”

She smacks him playfully on the arm. She likes touching him.

“No, you could,” says Max. “I’m just sayin’. It’s hard.”

“That doesn’t scare me. I like when it’s hard,” she says, her smile full of suggestion.

“That’s what she said.”

Maddy laughs, her cackle piercing and pressure loaded. She finishes her vodka soda and chews on a cube of ice.

“I want to do something that excites me,” she says. “Something that moves my soul, you know?”

“I thought you said you want to be a biographer.”

“Yeah, but I can do other things, too. What kind of music do you like?”

“I like country.”

“Seriously?” Maddy rolls her eyes.

Max shrugs. “I like Zac Brown.”

“Dude, it’s Taylor Swift. All fuckin’ day.”

“You know she started as a country artist.”

“Taylor is her own genre. She’s every genre. I want to do something that makes me feel as good as listening to her Red album.”

“I get what you’re saying.”

“Anything less is just spinning around the sun until you die.”

Maddy feels intoxicated, on the vodka, life, and this tall comedian. She stirs the melting ice cubes in her glass.

“I like your blazer,” he says, eyeing the lacy edge of her cleavage.

“Yeah?”

“Totally hot.”

“I like your mouth,” she says.

Her bold invitation hangs between them for a weightless moment before he accepts, and then they’re making out. He’s a good kisser. His lips, his tongue, he’s tastier than a New York hot dog, and she wants him more than she wanted her rosy blazer.

He slips his hand inside her lapel. She kisses him harder. He disengages and looks past her, over to the bar. She turns and notices that the room has mostly cleared out, not that she’d care if they’d had an audience. She wishes they did.

“The next show starts soon. I gotta get my jacket in the greenroom. You wanna see it?”

She can hear some part of her voicing its concern, reminding her that she has a boyfriend, that she’s in fact on her way to see him, and that she should leave before this goes any further. But she’s in the fluid flow of this dazzling day, and she doesn’t want to pump the brakes. And now that she thinks about it, that’s her mother’s buzzkill voice scolding her inside her head, old-fashioned, puritanical, and oppressive. Her entire existence has been built out of blocks made of don’t s, nailed in place with should s, a prefab box ordered by her mother to keep her good and safe.

No more. She deserves to be free, to create the life she dreams up, to do whatever the fuck she wants. And right now, she wants Max.

“Yeah, let’s go.”