Page 179 of Across His Line

I’ve known the number since October. I’ve had it in my head. But I’ve never seen it written down by somebody else. It’s a different thing to look at that way, like seeing your own name on a list you didn’t know you were on.

What strikes me is what he hasn’t said. He hasn’t said that’s insane. He hasn’t said just take loans, everybody takes loans. He hasn’t said a word about his father, or about money, or about what anything costs him. He’s just been asking me questions and writing down the answers in order, like the answers matter, like this is a problem that belongs to somebody worth solving it for.

I look at the number for a long time.

“I don’t know if I want it that bad.”

Rafe turns his head.

It surprises me as much as it surprises him. I didn’t know I was going to say it. I didn’t know I thought it until it was out.

“Woodbury?” he says.

“I love Woodbury,” I say it fast because it’s true. “I love the business program. I love Kylie. I love Corvin Hall. The post office lady knows my name.” I stop. “But that’s a lot of money for one year and a degree I might not use.”

He doesn’t say anything. He waits.

I think out loud as I go.

“What if I didn’t,” I say. “Just—think about it. What if I took that much money and didn’t give it to Woodbury? What if I found an apartment somewhere cheap? Somewhere with a roommate, maybe. I’d get a regular job somewhere. Something with hours I can count on. And then at night, and on weekends, I build the business. As much as I want, as late as I want, and nobody tells me the dorm closes on the twentieth.”

I’m looking at the TV, which is still on the West Coast game with the sound off. A player in blue is skating toward the bench with his head down.

“I’d pay my own rent,” I say. “I’d pay my own electric. Nobody would decide if I got to stay. There’s no committee. There’s no email in January. It’s just me, and what I make, and what I spend.”

The player sits down on the bench, and somebody hands him a water bottle.

“How much would the apartment be?” Rafe says.

I turn and look at him because I thought he’d tell me it was a bad idea. I had the argument half-ready. He’s just looking at me with the pen in his hand, waiting for a number.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It depends where.”

“Say somewhere cheap.”

“Seven hundred? With a roommate. Maybe less.”

He writes APT 700? on the opposite side of the page, the right side, across from the Woodbury column.

“What would you do for work?”

“Anything. I’ve done everything. I bussed tables for two summers. I worked at a dry cleaner.”

“How much would you need saved?”

I think about that. The few times I’ve said anything like this out loud, people asked whether I was sure, or what my grandma thought, or whether I’d considered how hard it would be. He wants a number. He isn’t being emotional about it; he’s being rational.

“Three months,” I say, thinking that’s a good number. “Of everything. Rent and food and bills. So if a month goes bad, I don’t—” I stop, because I was about to say end up back there. “So I still have somewhere.”

He writes that down, too. And as he’s writing it, as I watch it go into a column on the right side of the page across from the Woodbury column, it stops being something I’m making up to sound brave and turns into something that has a reality to it.

I’m not leaving Woodbury tonight. I know that, and I think he knows it because he hasn’t asked. But I’ve been holding Woodbury in my head like it was a rope somebody threw down a well, and if I let go, I fall back to the bottom, and that was it. I don’t want it to be Woodbury or the bottom of the well.

I pull the blanket up and look at the two columns on the page.

“Okay,” Rafe says. He flips back a page to the night before and taps the pen on CAP, still circled, still crossed out, with NO CEILING underneath it. “So why are you still buying six-dollar jeans?”

I blink. “What?”