Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Diego

THE GAS STATION is the first sign of human civilization that I see in hours. My drive began in Wisconsin and continued almost due east with precious little to break it up.

Not that I'm complaining. The stretch of I-90 that took me past Chicago was perhaps the most terrifying driving experience of my life. I got out of the city as quickly as I could and retreated to the wide open spaces of more Midwest farmland. I cut the drive in half, staying in a motel last night before continuing my journey today. My perilously empty gas tank is the only reason I'm happy to spot the gas station sitting just off of a lonely exit on the highway.

I get out and pop my gas tank open. I've just fitted the nozzle into the tank and started the pump when someone strolls out of the convenience store attached to the gas station. The guy gives me a quick, disinterested look, then heads for his truck, but I call out before he reaches it.

"Excuse me, do you know how far it is to the city?" I say.

The guy cocks his head to one side. "New York? Three or four hours, I think. Philly's a little less."

"Not New York or Philadelphia," I say. "Montridge."

The guy's eyebrows raise. "Montridge … New Jersey?"

"Yes, I'm headed to the university."

"That's not a city. It's barely a town when the university is on a break. Should be about three hours though. Maybe less if traffic is good."

"Thanks."

I let the guy go, hoping to hide my dismay until his truck rumbles out of the station and lumbers down the road.

Montridge, New Jersey, is several times the size of the town I grew up in. It's more than enough city for me. But apparently even to folks living in rural Pennsylvania, it's barely a blip.

My stomach knots around itself, the dread I've been pushing down since I got my acceptance letter welling up all over again. I've put my graduate degree off for years because of this. I was able to go to a pretty small school not that far from home for my undergrad, but there aren't too many places offering masters degrees in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Montridge is one of the best. I thought because it's not New York or San Francisco or some huge, overwhelming city like that I could handle it, but the closer my destination looms, the more I doubt that conviction.

The gas pump clicks, and I have little choice but to continue on my journey. I put news on the radio instead of playing music. It's calming and quiet. Besides, all those stories about crime and the environment and protests always felt so distant to me, big city problems for big city folks. Now, I suppose they'll be my problem, so I should probably find out what I'm in for.

I squeeze the steering wheel tightly and strengthen my resolve as the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey looms. City University of Montridge will give me an opportunity to do the research I've always yearned to do. It will introduce me to people and resources I couldn't access otherwise. Besides, my specialty is gender and sexuality, and up to this point, that's mostly been a theoretical pursuit. There was a gay bar a few towns over that I would visit, but everyone there was like me, the lone queer person in their small town. A setting like Montridge could finally place me in the heart of my own community. I should be ecstatic, but as I get closer and closer to my destination, that dread in the pit of my stomach hardens.

I pull onto the shoulder of the road when I suspect I'm getting close. My phone is far too old to have the battery life to present me with directions for the duration of this journey. And my car is far too old to charge the phone. So I relied on simply following I-90 and 80 east for most of this, saving my phone for when I got close enough to need specific direction to my new apartment.

An apartment I'll share with a complete stranger.

Okay, deep breaths. People do things like this all the time. And my roommate is like me — a grad student at C U of M. Besides, my savings and my employment as a TA at the university are not enough to furnish a lavish lifestyle, not when I also have my own classes to pay for. I had to get a roommate in order for this to work at all. It'll be fine. It'll be great. I'm a twenty-six-year-old adult and I can move to a city that isn't even a city and have a roommate and experience new things and I will not die of shock or fright in the process.

Probably.

I nearly drop my phone in my efforts to program in my new address. The device informs me I'm less than an hour away. I should have enough gas to get there. Smooth sailing. If I simply keep on driving I will have no choice but to meet my exciting and terrifying new life head on.

It takes more effort than I care to admit to convince myself to pull back onto the road and continue my journey. My clunky old car grumbles, as though it's just as displeased as I am with having to clamber closer to our destination. In fairness, my little two-door has been with me a long, long time, well past its expiration. I've kept repairing it instead of getting a new car, but the repairs are starting to outweigh the cost of upgrading.

I'll worry about it later. This car only needs to last me from here to Montridge, and that is an increasingly short distance.

Houses and neighborhoods cluster in the farther I go, like a crowd closing in around me. Even in the safety of my car, it starts to feel claustrophobic. The wide open spaces of the Midwest are gone, thoroughly banished by New Jersey's dense East Coast sprawl. Even on the highway, I don't feel alone anymore. Gone are the sleepy exits boasting hardly more than a lone gas station.

My hands are sweating on the steering wheel. This is so different from everything I grew up with. It was hard being both the only queer kid and the only non-white kid in my town, yes, but it was my town. I knew it. I came to like it. That open, largely unpopulated place is all I've known until this moment of my life, and the longer I drive the more it feels like I'm diving into the depths of the ocean in a submarine I don't know how to pilot, delving into some alien landscape I know nothing about.

Traffic slows my progress. I turn off the radio, listening to nothing but my shaky breaths and rattling vehicle. I need to do this. I want to do this. The opportunity to do my graduate studies at C U of M is a dream come true. I didn't really believe someone like me would get accepted when I applied, so I was beyond stunned when the letter arrived. But the reality is setting in with every mile that passes, and part of me isn't sure I'm ready for this.

I pass a sign proclaiming the next exit is for Montridge. I turn on my blinker automatically and get into the right lane. An angry driver honks at me and speeds around me, but I'm going the speed limit. What does he want from me? Maybe this is another one of those East Coast things, aggressive drivers. Can I even drive among these people?

I very nearly relax when I make it safely to the exit and get off the highway. But then the sign at the bottom of the ramp rears up in front of me: Montridge.

I'm here.

I almost miss my turn. My car gives a lurch, clunking and clattering at my jerky insistence. There's stuff everywhere . Stores line the road. And even when I turn off it onto a smaller street, there are houses standing sentinel along it. They're so close together you could probably shout out of the window and talk to your neighbor. Where I grew up, it was a decent walk at best to reach a neighbor. How do these people live so close together? Don't they go crazy this way?

My map app takes me down what I assume is a main street. I mean, it's literally called Main Street, but it also looks like a main street. There are cute decorative light poles lining the road. The shops have signs written in flowing cursive and plants sitting on the sills. I nearly slam on my brakes at a crosswalk where pedestrians fearlessly stroll into the road without waiting to see if I'll halt for them.

And this isn't the city?

New York City is only an hour away, from what I understand, but it's like a mountain looming in the distance. I can't see it, but I can feel it. It's in the way these people cross the street. It's in the closeness of the buildings. It's in the city-ness of this supposed town.

My directions take me off of the main road at last. I breathe a little easier as I cruise down an arterial packed with houses. The homes are large but cute, with colorful paint jobs and narrow lawns and towering oaks with branches that sprawl over the street.

I'm just thinking to myself that this part of it isn't so bad. It's just a neighborhood, even if it's all close together and squashed. Then my car splutters again, far more angrily this time. Something clicks. Something shudders. And suddenly I'm pulling over toward the curb as quickly as I can.

"Shit," I hiss. "Shit, shit, shit."

My car made it almost a thousand miles and gave up when we had just one left.

I turn off the engine and fold forward, groaning and leaning my forehead against the steering wheel .

"No. Please, please no. Come on. Come on."

I turn the key, and while the car turns on, it does so with such a churning, metallic grumble that I turn it right back off. I'm no car guy. I have no idea what those sounds mean. But there's no way any of them are good.

"Okay. I'm fine. I can do this. Cars break down. It happens."

I force myself out of the car and into a cool night. The air smells wrong, too full of stuff , like it's just as busy and crowded as the rest of this place.

I walk around my car and pop open the hood, then stand there as though I have any freaking clue what I'm looking at. Looks the same as always to me. Whatever's wrong, it's not obvious, and I'm clearly going to need to call a mechanic. But it's way too late at night for any of them to be open. Which means I'm completely stranded on this random side street.

I'm contemplating calling some kind of taxi or rideshare to transport me that final mile to my apartment when two people come around the house I'm parked in front of.

And one of them walks straight toward me.