Lisa Ko - The Leavers

But after paying Kyle, he hadn’t planned on his credit being so shot that his application for a loan would be denied. He decided to play one last time, so he could make enough to at least pay Angel something, but he hadn’t planned on such a lousy beat — he’d been winning for most of the hand with a pair of aces for his hole cards, only to lose huge to a player named RichDanger who made two pairs on the river. And he hadn’t predicted the extent of Angel’s anger, or that when he didn’t pay her she would call Peter and Kay and tell them about the gambling, though not the money he borrowed. By the time the letter from the dean arrived, he was already in Ridgeborough, attending Gamblers Anonymous in a garage in Littletown. He had told Angel he would make it up to her, that he was going to change.

“You mess everything up,” she’d said. “Don’t call me again.”

Now he wished he could tell her about writing Michael, going to Rutgers Street. It wasn’t just that she was the only person he knew who’d also been adopted (when he had mentioned his adoption to his ex-girlfriend Carla Moody, she had sighed, “That’s so beautiful ”), but talking to Angel was unlike interacting with anyone else his age. She had no pretense. When he talked about music she never pretended to know more than she did, and he never got bored listening to her, even when she was going on and on about the differences between the New York City subway system and the London subway system, or texting him pictures of cats she said she was going to get and never did, or telling him about the time she and her roommate had run out of gas on a long drive to nowhere and gotten lost in a cornfield. Maybe because they’d known each other all these years, she was almost like a sister.

One of the last times they had talked, Angel had told him that her parents had wanted her to be pre-med: “But I’d puke if I had to dissect a dead body. So I told Elaine sorry, okay, but you’re going to have to settle for a social worker or something like that in the family. She said I was throwing my talents away. I mean, seriously, get a grip, Elaine.”

He had laughed and said, “I’m a shitty professors’ kid, too.”

“Then we’re both black sheep. Even if that term is racist. Like the white sheep are supposed to be good ones.”

“Let’s flip it and say white sheep as bad, instead. I’m the white sheep.”

“But you’ve always been so good to them,” she said.

“My parents? Nah. I’m not the kind of kid they want.”

Angel had sounded surprised. “If that was true, you wouldn’t even feel bad about it. I bet they’re proud of you, even if they can’t say it.”

She told him that in high school she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and Elaine and Jim had made her see a therapist who called her hostile . “I’ve never told anyone about that before.”

Daniel hadn’t deleted her phone number from his contacts list. There was still a record of all their text messages, the last one from four months ago. He opened a blank message and typed i miss you . He deleted the first and last words and changed it to: miss talking to you. im working on paying you back. thanks for letting my parents know about the poker, for real . He erased all that and replaced it with you going to your dad’s party saturday? and pressed send. Now that they were no longer friends, he seemed to have lost the ability to be sincere, and in a single swipe he deleted all of his and Angel’s texts, hundreds of them, then deleted her name and number from his phone.

He checked his e-mail. Michael hadn’t responded yet, and when the phone did ring, it was only Kay. “We’ll see you on Saturday,” she said. “Don’t forget to bring the forms.”

He retrieved the Carlough College forms and smoothed them out.

The Statement of Purpose provides an opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances that could add value to your application as a transfer student to Carlough College. This is your opportunity to address the Admissions Committee directly and to let us know more about you as an individual in a manner that your transcripts and other application information cannot convey.

He started typing.

MICHAEL WROTE BACK TWO hours later and suggested meeting tomorrow at a Starbucks near Columbus Circle. The next day, Daniel showed up twenty minutes early and walked around the block three times before deciding to wait inside. He ordered a coffee and sat at a table near the door, looking up each time it opened.

One minute had passed since Daniel had last looked at his phone. 3:42 p.m. No missed calls, no new messages. Michael was supposed to meet Daniel at three thirty. Michael himself had suggested three thirty at this specific Starbucks on Sixtieth and Broadway. Daniel had agreed to meet Michael out of curiosity, but resolved to maintain a healthy suspicion. Whatever Michael had to tell him, it wasn’t going to change his life. He sucked up coffee. If Michael didn’t show in the next ten minutes, he’d leave, call it a day.

The door opened again. A beefy white man in a long T-shirt walked in, hand in hand with his similarly built daughter, but before the door could close all the way, a tall Asian guy in a navy blue coat, white sneakers, and a big backpack caught it and came inside.

Michael looked around, brightening when he saw Daniel, shoving his way through the tables and chairs. Daniel stood and his resolve fell away. They hugged, hard. Michael was an inch taller than Daniel, and they stood there, in the middle of Starbucks, slapping each other on the back.

“Deming.” Michael took off his bag and pulled out a chair. “Sorry I’m late. My professor was talking to me and wouldn’t stop.” Michael’s voice was lower, no longer a kid’s voice. Daniel had never heard this not-child Michael. Michael hadn’t seen him past the age of eleven.

“No one’s called me Deming in a long time.”

Michael scrutinized him. “You look different. Your face is thinner, though your features are the same. I bet if we saw each other on the street we would’ve walked past each other.”

“You look different, too.” Michael’s nerd exterior might be gone, but the core of who he was remained, and there was something familiar, visible only to those who had known him when he was a kid. “But also the same.”

“It’s weird, you having another name. Do you prefer Daniel or Deming?”

“Daniel, I guess.”

Michael folded his hands in front of him, as if they were in an interview. “So, you must be in your junior year of college?”

“I was upstate at SUNY, but I’m taking some time off.” He was failing the interview already.

“Where are you living?”

“Down by Little Italy, Chinatown. I’m crashing at my friend Roland’s on Hester Street. We have a band — I play guitar. We’ve been playing shows around the city.”

“I can totally see that. I remember you used to beg our moms to let us stop and hear the subway musicians and we’d stand there so long we’d miss the train.” Michael laughed. “So what’s your band called?”

“Psychic Hearts. I’m working on my own songs, too, just me singing and playing guitar. Real pared-down, almost confessional kind of stuff.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken about this out loud.

“Let me know when your next concert is. I’ll come.”

“All right.” Daniel pictured a guy like Michael at a loft show, someone more out of place than himself. “And you’re going to Columbia, right?”

“Yeah. I went to Brooklyn Tech for high school.” Michael put his phone down on the table. “I was late because I’m applying for this assistantship thing. I have to propose this genetics research project and I’m trying to decide between two of them. One’s the kind of stuff that my faculty sponsor does — that’s the professor I was talking to before. He’s writing my recommendation, so if I go with that project I might have a better chance. But there’s this other project that has less precedence, so less chance for success. It’s the one I want to do.”