Chapter Three

August 20

I told Olivia first, and she reacted about like I would have expected:

“Darb, I love you, but are you fucking joking ?”

I had waited to call her, at least, until the next day. Because part of me was sure that I’d wake up and realize the night

before had been some weird booze-induced fever dream. But I checked my phone, and there was Mom under recent calls. There was the box from In Between Books, still sitting half-exposed on the floor.

“I feel like you’re going to regret this,” Olivia said.

But it was the harsh light of day, or whatever the saying was, and my AC was already on full blast because the temperature

was rising outside, and I didn’t regret it.

“I just need to get out of New York,” I said. “I need a break to figure things out.”

“You know what this is,” Olivia said, with extreme confidence. “Your Saturn return.”

One of my greatest shortcomings in life is that I am not an Astrology Queer, and I had no idea what this meant. “Sure,” I

said, because I didn’t want to argue. “But I’m still going.”

I couldn’t figure out how to tell Ian and Joan. Send them each a text? Call them both? Just assume Olivia would tell Joan

herself?

In fact, Olivia saved me the trouble of telling either of them, because she dropped the bomb for me in the group chat practically

as soon as she and I got off the phone.

OLIVIA HENRY

Darby’s moving to Oak Falls.

He’s actually deserting us.

IAN ROBB

Wait what

OLIVIA HENRY

Saturn return!!! I’ve been warning you all!!!!

JOAN CHU

Darb are you serious?

IAN ROBB

Not everything is about planets, Ollie

OLIVIA HENRY

That is such a Capricorn thing to say, Ian

ME

Guys, I didn’t say I was moving to Oak Falls. I’m just moving out of my place for now and going back to Oak Falls to help

my mom move.

JOAN CHU

Sure you don’t want me to try to take your landlord to court?

Ditching my apartment turned out to be ridiculously easy. Technically, I was breaking my lease a month early, but the management company was perfectly happy for me to get out ASAP so they could raise the rent sooner.

Ditching my furniture was easy too. I thought, for a second, about getting a storage unit—but even getting one for a month

would have cost more than all of my furniture combined. And even though I didn’t want to quite say it out loud... I had

no idea where I would be in a month.

And anyway, it was the end of August. Swarms of college students were already descending on New York, and a lot of them needed

stuff. So off went my desk, chair, narrow dresser. Off went the bowed IKEA bed and the risers. I even sold the noisy old AC

unit to some poor freshman moving from Florida, who was horrified to discover New York still acted like built-in air-conditioning

wasn’t a thing.

Everything else got packed into the boxes I’d saved under the bed. Ian helped me load it all into the cheapest rental car

I could get—a compact hatchback, which, after all the boxes, pretty much only has room for me, and I won’t exactly have great

visibility in any direction except forward.

And now the rental car is parked on the street in front of my building (a miraculous stroke of luck), locked (I checked approximately

ten times), my apartment is empty except for a pillow and some blankets on the floor, and I’m sitting on a chair at Olivia

and Joan’s place in Queens. Because after a few days of waiting (not at all subtly) for me to change my mind, my friends seemed

to finally realize I was serious and decided they should probably throw me a going-away party.

Even though I’ve said I’m not really moving. But when you don’t have an actual exact return date... I guess that’s almost the same thing. As Ian reminded me several

times while loading up the rental car.

I’m still leaving them.

It’s Saturday evening, only a week after Olivia’s birthday bash, and the pizza box on the coffee table is almost empty.

“This is depressing as shit,” Ian says from his spot on the floor.

We managed to laugh our way through the pizza, catching up on everything that had happened during the week that wasn’t the huge elephant in the room. Joan got underestimated in court and handed some landlord’s lawyer his ass on a silver platter.

Ian’s designing a game that’s like The Sims but with dogs. Olivia’s pretty sure a Real Housewife came into her Starbucks. For an hour, it’s almost like everything is

normal.

But now the pizza is mostly gone and so are the other conversation topics, and there’s just the elephant.

“Who wants ice cream?” Olivia pops up from the couch, where she was sitting next to Joan. “I got mint chocolate chip, one of those ones with marshmallow bits, and vanilla because Ian is the most boring human on earth.”

“An excellent vanilla is artistry!” Ian says, looking offended.

“Yeah, we know.” Joan reaches over and pats his head. “You’re pretentious. I’ll have marshmallow bits.”

“Vanilla, marshmallow bits...” Olivia glances at me, and I swear her expression cools off by several degrees. “Darby?”

I push myself out of the chair. “I’ll come help you.”

She opens her mouth but doesn’t say anything. She just turns and heads for the narrow galley kitchen. It’s a typical New York

City kitchen—bigger than my single-wall kitchenette but still with a narrow stove, a narrow refrigerator, and a small sink.

There’s barely enough room for both of us at the same time.

“Bowls are in the cupboard.” Olivia isn’t looking at me.

I’ve been here plenty of times. I know where everything is. “Ollie, can we talk?”

She opens the freezer, which means I’m now looking at dirty limericks made out of magnet words instead of her face.

Okay, then. I open the cupboard and reach for bowls. “I know you’re mad...”

“I’m not mad.” Her voice is muffled behind the freezer door.

“You’ve been texting me about Saturn returns for the last week.”

She reappears, holding two tubs of ice cream, and plunks them on the counter. “Because that’s clearly what you’re going through,

and I thought if you knew more about it, you’d understand what you’re feeling and not freak out as much.”

“Who said I’m freaking out?”

She goes back into the freezer. “You’re moving back to Illinois , Darby.”

“It’s another state, Olivia, not the moon.”

“I told you a Saturn return can manifest as a big breakup, or leaving your dream job, or blowing up your whole life, and that’s

exactly what you’re doing. I mean, come on—remember how I freaked out a few months ago about, like, everything?”

I pull open a drawer and grab several spoons. “I remember you thought about leaving stand-up for like a week.”

She slams the freezer door again, holding a third ice cream tub. “That was a big deal for me.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t.”

“I just feel like you’re setting your whole life on fire without even thinking about it.” Her voice is rising. “I don’t see

why you can’t just get a new apartment and a new job, and call that a fresh start and stay here rather than running off to

a fucking cornfield to have a quarter-life crisis.”

“I told you, my mom is moving. She has to pack up her whole house. She needs help.”

“Yeah, and if you were just going for that, you’d have a plan to come back. But you don’t. So we both know that’s not the

real reason.”

That grates on me. “Why do I need another reason?”

“Because people don’t give up their apartments and sell all their stuff just to go help their moms move house.” She wrenches

the lid off the nearest ice cream tub—pretentious vanilla. “Kinda feels like you’re just ditching all of us along with your

apartment.”

“I need a break from New York!” My voice is rising too.

“Why? New York City has everything and instead you want to kick your friends to the curb and go to bumfuck nowhere with a

bunch of assholes who think trans people shouldn’t even exist!”

It lands like a slap. Or a gut punch. “You have no idea what Oak Falls is like. You’re just... looking at it the way everybody

out here does. Like it’s some redneck shithole. That’s always what you’ve thought.”

She looks incredulous. “It’s what you thought!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Oh, so you were just making shit up that time at Veselka, first semester?”

Now I’m annoyed. “No, I—”

“You told me you moved out here because New York City was the place you could be yourself. We’re all here because this is

the right place for us. So, fine—I haven’t tried to learn a whole lot about some backward place in the middle of the country.

I don’t see why I need to, because I live here and so do you!”

“Yeah, and I’m fucking broke. I’m tired all the time. It’s loud and crowded, and my apartment was tiny.”

Olivia lets out a frustrated sigh. “Look, obviously New York isn’t perfect . But I just don’t get why you’d leave and ditch all of us just to move back to someplace you hated so—”

“Of course you don’t get it!” I’m practically shouting now. “None of you have ever gotten it, because you’re all from cities.

You all belong in New York. I don’t seem to belong fucking anywhere.”

Silence.

Olivia stares at me. “Where the fuck did any of this come from?”

“Never mind.”

“Never mind?”

But I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m suddenly intensely, overwhelmingly angry and somehow horribly depressed, all at the

same time.

“I’m just gonna go,” I say.

Olivia opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

I turn around and stalk back into the living room, where Ian and Joan are still sitting right where we left them, staring

at me because of course they heard everything that happened. It’s not like there’s ever any privacy in New York, even inside.

“Darby...” Olivia jogs out of the kitchen after me.

But I’m already pulling on my shoes. “Look, I just need to go. I’ll text you guys from the road or something.”

And before I can think better of it, I leave Olivia’s apartment. It’s immature and selfish, and I’m straight-up throwing a

tantrum, but I can’t stop myself. I feel like some sort of dam has finally broken—one that’s been cracking for years—and the

flood is driving me forward. Part of me hopes Olivia will come running after me. Even though I don’t know if I’d stop if she

did.

But she doesn’t.

So I don’t.

I go all the way to the subway. All the way back to my building, past the packed-up rental car, up the five flights of stairs.

And then I lie on the blankets on the floor of my empty apartment, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my breathing to slow

down.