Page 113 of End Game

Barrett

The pharmacy is packed. The line to pick up prescriptions is nearly fifteen people deep, and I’m not thrilled about needing to wait. All I want to do is go home and curl up in my bed and sleep the day away. Instead I get ten thousand phone calls from the pharmacy yelling at me for not picking up my anti-depressants on time. I have enough to get me through the next few days; they give me a ninety days’ supply. And, worst case scenario, I skip a dose. Big deal. My mental health won’t tank if I skip one little pill. The incessant automated phone calls got to me, though, and so now I’m here in town on my only truly free day off for the next three weeks.

There are already three people in line behind me, so I can’t back out now. I do a double take when I recognize Johanna Chen standing behind me, her eyes on her phone.

“Johanna. Hey.”

She doesn’t look up, like I’m not even there. Is she that pissed with me for turning her down that she won’t even look at me?

“How’s your weekend going?”

She scoffs.

“You really won’t talk to me?”

“What’s the point?” she mutters.

“You don’t like making awkward small talk in the pharmacy line?”

“No, not really.”

But she locks her phone screen and shoves her phone into her back pocket, looking up at me guilelessly.

“You guys leave tomorrow for your road trip? Virginia, right?”

She nods. “And then we have a home game later this week.”

“How’s the record?”

She looks pained. They still haven’t won a game, a fact I am all too aware of. Diana is stressing it. She thinks Coach Larsen is going to get fired any day now, and she wouldn’t be that far off. I’m surprised she hasn’t been canned already, halfway through the season and not winning a single game, except for the fact that women’s soccer is hardly scrutinized by the athletic department.

We shift forward half a foot.

“What else is new?”

She rolls her eyes.

“It’s so weird that this is our senior season. I don’t know what we’re going to do next year without sports dictating so much of our lives,” I admit. “I’ve been playing football for so long.”

“I’ve been playing soccer for seventeen years,” she says evenly. “I’m not ready for it to be over.”

I offer her a smile. “At least there are rec leagues. You can still play.”

Johanna shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”

We shift forward.

“What’s your plan for next year?”

She sighs. “Apply like crazy for a job, so I don’t have to move back home and live with my parents.”

“You don’t want to stay with your family?”

My family is not the typical Chinese-American family, in that they would rather not live with their offspring. In our culture, young adults usually stay with their family until they’re ready to get married. My parents don’t want us living at home—they barely wanted us living there when we were children. They’re already talking to my cousin’s boyfriend, a realtor, about finding an apartment for me for next summer. He pulled me aside and asked me what I was really looking for, and he added my few requests into the properties my parents have him searching for.

I don’t have a lot of needs. I’m looking for a two bedroom, decent square footage, relatively modern and updated, and at least one assigned parking spot. That’s it, that’s my list. So much of where I live will depend on Diana next year. If we really are going to be roommates, if she gets into grad school… so much is up in the air.

The pharmacy opens up another register. The line is moving quicker now. It’s almost my turn. By the time the pharmacy tech pulls my prescription down, Johanna already has hers in her hand. We exit the pharmacy at the same time.