Page 90 of Bad Words

“He’ll find something else,” my mom said. “Everyone wants a data person.”

“Hope so.”

I didn’t realize I was massaging the spot between my eyebrows until my mom clasped my shoulder. “Pijay, you look tired. Go lie down, I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

“Okay. Yeah. Thank you.” I shouldered my bag, avoiding her eyes. I’d spent the past few days imagining the comfort of being back here, especially without the family to juggle. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

In my old bedroom, I set the duffel on the dresser and lay down, feeling claustrophobic. The double bed, pushed under the window, took up the room’s entire width. The only other furnishings that fit were a bedside table and dresser, so my mother and I had installed shelves up to the ceiling, which still overflowed with the detritus of my teenage years, clear bins filled with socks and miscellaneous pens and scratched DVDs in busted cases, the skateboard I’d tried to adopt as my identity when I was fifteen, about two hundred books.

I’d moved into this room, originally a storage closet, at fourteen. That was the year Justin had moved to L.A. for college, igniting a debate over which of us would inherit his room—Christi and Elena had shared at the time, and so had Kevin and I. Christi, at fifteen, was the obvious choice, but Kevin had made some incoherent argument about girls not needing privacy. When the argument veered into the personal, I’d insisted on moving in here. Kevin could keep our old room, Christi could inherit Justin’s, and Elena could spread out. Everyone else was happy, and I was happy enough.

I didn’t know why I was imagining Selina propped in the doorway, studying me.

My phone found its way into my hand, and her message preview reappeared onscreen. Would it break our truce …

I let out a short sigh and switched to my thread with Kevin. I was supposed to be here to clear my head, not to circle the same questions that had made Brooklyn feel like it was folding in on me.

Hey, I texted Kevin, I heard about your job. I’m so sorry. I’m in town for a few days—we could get Chibog or something? Let me know if you want to talk.

A minute later, he replied. Yeah thanks it sucks. My ex boss was such an asshole. Happy new year youre fired

I’m sure you’ll find something else soon. You’re extremely employable.

Lol what? he said. You have no idea. Data sounds good but a lot of these jobs are getting automated and the market blows. Yeah probably if I went to Yale or Amherst I could just pick up the phone but some of us can’t.

One scan of this text and a rapid, nervy pulse began to beat in my stomach. I reread it a few times. Why was he angry at me? What had I said wrong?

I get the sentiment, I said, but I never got a job through Yale, and as far as I know, Elena hasn’t gotten one through Amherst.

Check again shes only working at her startup thing because she went to school with someone’s rich ass cousin. And you probably could have done the same thing except you chose to be an English major lol

My grip was constricting on my phone. I typed a few letters, not knowing what to say. It seemed enormously selfish to get frustrated with Kevin when I’d texted with the express purpose of consoling him.

I was beginning to type Yeah when the ellipsis appeared on his end again. He typed for longer than Kevin was generally known to type. Down the hall my mother’s knife beat a rhythm on one of her ancient cutting boards.

An enormous bubble appeared, kicking the rest of the conversation out of sight. The Elena thing is just insane bc she was a sociology major. Ik she got grants but she spent 60k of our parents money and took 80k of debt to get a soc degree which is FOR REAL a dead end degree unless youre doing academia. and now she has this great job and mom and dad are all “baby is such a grown up businesswoman, so driven and responsible” give me a fucking break. I actually WAS responsible and made sacrifices and didnt go to Northwestern because I KNEW we couldnt afford it and now im fucking unemployed and ofc thanks to you Elena doesnt even have to deal with the debt she signed up for. Shit is driving me crazy.

I could feel my pulse throughout my body now, in my palms, in my throat. The walls seemed closer, the room darker.

I pushed myself off the bed and strode back to the kitchen. My mother, aproned at the counter, was swaddling a glistening brick of tofu in paper towels with neat, practiced motions. “Mom,” I said, “I—I’m going to take a walk. Stretch my legs from the flight.”

“Okay, sure! Dinner at six or so.” She let a series of heavy cookbooks thud down on the wrapped package, beginning to press out the moisture.

Outside the sky was black, although it was barely 5 PM. A single car a couple of blocks away drifted through an intersection, and I caught snatches of faraway ocean as I walked, faint as the sound of cloth rubbing against itself. It wasn’t until I turned out of the residential side roads onto the wide, flat pathway of Mission Street that I realized where I was going.

I checked my watch. 5:18. Poppy Street Books was usually open until six. I’d wind between the shelves, the page-scented air stirring around me, until I reached the back corner by the biographies, where I’d sink into that enormous leather armchair and feel the weight of reality slip from my back, the way it had hundreds of times before. I imagined that if I replaced myself in that spot, I could access some feeling of refuge that had tided me through eighteen years here.

I passed a gas station and a pond of white light, then crossed over a median whose runty, leafless trees shuddered in the evening wind. There, half a block ahead, the awning at the intersection of Mission and Poppy fluttered.

But as I approached, my steps slowed. The bookstore’s front window was dark.

I stopped at the door. A sheet of paper taped inside the glass said, We are closing our doors after forty-two amazing years!! Thank you Daly City!!

Little by little, the fast shallow heartbeat in my ears faded to something slow and dull, like the tap of one knuckle against a slab of wood. I touched the ridged metal bar on the door and let my fingers rest there until they turned cold.

I made an aimless turn. The wind was sliding up the sleeves of my jacket. San Francisco wouldn’t freeze you like New York, but January wasn’t exactly balmy or forgiving. Ahead, light flowed down from the streetlamps like sheets hanging from clothespins.

In a daze I wandered back up Mission Street and into the QuickStop. More flickering fragments of memory here. Maricel and Tyler and I had roamed these gleaming aisles every other Friday evening at seventeen, pissing off the unlucky cashiers with hissed jokes and explosions of laughter. I passed shelves of chip bags, the same four logos in eight colors apiece, and came to a standstill in an aisle of gummy sour and caramel packages jam-packed on their white hooks.