I picked myself up, knees and wrists aching from the fall, and on unsteady legs, walked to the front of the class. Snickers and jokes about my underwear were already circulating, joined by whispers about how red my knees were as they pointed and laughed. I pulled in a breath to steel myself, but the embarrassment and pain had tears forming and my throat thickening, and that’s when my nose started to run.
I sniffed my way through my first page, botching every fact and joke. I repeated half of my report and missed information that was crucial to Magellan’s history and how his voyage impacts us today—and then I tried to discreetly wipe my running nose, and snot stuck to my finger and stretched like a cobweb as I lowered my hand—again, seen by all.
It was the most horrendous, terrible, and embarrassing experience of my life, and no one was prepared to let me live it down. I begged my parents to let me transfer schools or be homeschooled. They refused, assuring me it would all blow over.
It never did.
Nicknames followed me to high school. Thankfully, many forgot the root of those names, and some even said them with affection, but I never forgot about that day, and there were others—mean girls who were always the cruelest bullies—who didn’t, either.
The boredom festering in my head isn’t half as traumatic as my fear of public speaking, yet it’s lived with me even longer because my future was written before I was conceived. The boredom feels like a scratch I can’t reach that sometimes leads to impulses in an attempt to challenge the sands of time and the uniformity of my life that even my childhood city taunted.
After all, being born and raised in the city of sin—Las Vegas—deserves to have a couple of wild and impulsive tales considering temptation is as vital and sought as basic necessities by most tourists. But unlike the tourists who feed their desires and leave Vegas as a memory, I’ve always known it’s where I’d stay and live, joining my parents, older brother, Geoff, and older sister, Lanie, to work at our family business, Foster Construction and Development, as the next piece of the family puzzle. The itch isn’t due to regret or disdain—I want to work with my family, building the company that has been a defining part of my life, which only makes the itch more unwanted and confusing as I work to ignore and escape it.
Ahead of me, traffic slows to a stop. It feels like the universe is constantly working to silence my impulses.
It’s for the better, I remind myself and call my sister, Lanie. Though Lanie’s seven years my senior, she fills many roles in my life, including being my best friend.
“Hi, stranger,” she answers after the second ring. “About time you called. You’ve been gone a week and I’ve barely heard from you. I was about to send out a search party.”
“Sorry. I misplaced my phone charger for three days. I have no idea how it ended up with my shoes, but it did.”
Lanie chuckles, a warm and familiar sound that soothes the itch under my skin. “Geoff probably put it in there when he was helping you move.”
Last week, our brother, Geoff, drove with me from Vegas to Oleander Springs, North Carolina, then flew home so I’d have my car. He did the same in May when summer began. “It was kind of a mad scramble,” I admit. “This summer when I come back home, I think I’m going to take some detours. Go up and see Chicago and the Badlands in South Dakota—make a trip out of it rather than chase tumbleweeds across the Midwest.”
Lanie laughs again, louder this time. “How are things going with your roommates?”
Last September, I met my roommates Katie Payne and Hannah Owens in Public Relations Case Studies. We sat together by coincidence, and then by choice, as the class was often run by the teacher’s assistant who assigned reading material before disappearing that had the rest of the class either leaving or catching up on sleep. We pushed each other to learn the material, Katie because she was born with a competitive drive that makes average unacceptable, Hannah because she plans to one day rule the world—or at least the interweb world—and me because PR is my future. We moved out of the dorms and into the rental house we live in now last autumn, tired of the parties, noise, and cramped spaces. My friend April Carver moved in with us a month later. Hannah, Katie, and I were close, but April and I were like sisters. We did everything together until two weeks before summer break when I learned she was sleeping with my then boyfriend, Ezra. The relationship hadn’t been very serious, but the damage to my friendship with April was irreprehensible.
April was supposed to move out, but then she received the opportunity to study abroad and instead, offered to pay rent to keep her things in the house rather than in a storage facility.
I haven’t heard from April since the formal email she sent, detailing the agreement in June. I know this is what Lanie’s referring to—she knew my breakup with April was a hundred times harder than the one with my ex—but I’m done and over it.
“They’re doing well. Katie’s still dating Carsen, and since his roommate is always gone, they spend most of their time there, and Hannah’s been designing a new video game she started this summer.”
“Any word from April?”
“Nope.” I take a sip of my iced coffee which is now watered down since I couldn’t drink it during my public speaking class. “How are you?”
“Christian nearly passed out yesterday at our first birthing class,” she tells me, referring to her husband. “We watched a birthing video, and I swear, it was like he didn’t realize untilthatmoment that the baby was coming out of my vagina.”
“Brutal?”
“I kind of wanted to pass out, too,” she admits. “It wassographic, I … Shoot. Hadley, I’m sorry. I have to let you go. I was supposed to be in a meeting five minutes ago. I’ll call you later, okay? I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
She hangs up as traffic eases forward.
I pull into the driveway ten minutes later. The house we found to rent is fifteen minutes from most of the campus—twenty-five in the morning or during rush hour—but well worth it. The house on Honeycutt Lane is a three-story farmhouse built in the fifties. From growing up around build sites, I’d known what to look for and ask when we toured the homes and knew immediately that this house had good bones. The basement is mostly unfinished, and the previous tenants had moved out unexpectedly, so the owners gave us a deal, though I think they were reluctant to have four college students living in the house. I’m sure they imagined parties and noise complaints from the neighbors, but we treat the house like it’s our own.
The house feels different this year. Empty in a way I’m unused to. Hannah, Katie, and I get along, but we were never close in the same way April and I were where we’d watch movies, hang out, and make dinner together.
Unease works to settle in my chest, but I avidly work to avoid it, realizing this is the beginning of a new year, and if I can face my fear of public speaking, I can face anything.
Chapter2
Nolan