Chapter 1.
Timothy
It’s on a bench outside the Visual and Performing Arts Center under the shade of a sycamore tree that I pull out my pink-and-red notebook and matching pencil. At the top of the page is a title:Things I could be instead of Timothy “TJ” McPherson. Below it, twenty items. Among them: National park ranger. Professional ghost tour guide (with a doodle of a ghost). Barista in Bangkok (with a note to learn Thai). Iceland-based wedding DJ (that one is enthusiastically circled ten times, then crossed out). Guy who lives in a van making sourdough. And on one especially despairing night after returning to my dorm from a tough exam I was sure I had bombed, I added: “literally anything but taking overMcPherson Tractor & Financeand pretending spreadsheets havepersonalitiesfor the rest of my life.”
It’s the last item on the list. Written the smallest, like a tiny, shameful little secret.
My mom once said nothing written down is a secret anymore.
A cute, chipper squirrel hops onto the other end of the bench. Likely after one of my tasty Cheetos. I smile at my new pal, pluck the perfect one out for him, and offer it.
He snatches the whole bag instead and flies away.
I watch him go, bewildered. Still holding the single Cheeto.
Half of them end up in the grass.
After popping the lonely orange bite into my mouth—I did make a New Year’s resolution to cut back on stress snacking, after all—I flip my notebook to its last page, which boasts a far less depressing title: Project Spruce Jailbreak, orHow To Avoid Another Summer Trapped in Texas By The Well-Meaning-Yet-Suffocating Embrace Of My Parents. Next to the title, an entirely unrelated recipe for “magic eye tiramisu”, only because my phone was dead and the girl who sat behind me in class spoke a mile a minute and it sounded so yummy at the time because I was going through a breakup.
But underneaththatare details (and doodles) of a road trip I meticulously planned with my bestie AJ. Yes, we’re besties because of the “J” thing—AJ and TJ, though now I go by Timothy. There’s a CJ as well—also from Spruce, believe it or not—but he graduated last year. At the tippy-top of the page is one more of my doodles: me and AJ as cats, squeezed together on a bookshelf, asleep.
AJ is seriously one of the coolest dudes on the planet. The day he found out I was gay, I swear he grew even fifty times closer to me, always wanting to know my love life, determined to find me my special man—but mostly just to take the credit for doing it.
Probably should’ve left the matchmaking to him, because my last boyfriend—a guy I proudly met all on my own at the gym—went from being a dream boy to a soul-sucking nightmare. He mayliterallyhave sucked my soul straight out of my bones while I slept, for as empty as I felt the weeks after we broke up. AJrazzed me for ages, saying I can’t be trusted to find guys on my own.
AJ and I ended up rooming together for half of last year, but then some other peeps at his engineering school pooled money for a big studio apartment, and he “totally fuckin’ couldn’t turn that shit down”. I felt kind of rejected at first, but my new roommate turned out to be a shy Korean guy named Taemin whose (single and lonely) LA-based mom has tasty food delivered every weekend to us, and we get along well, and how dare I complain about that? Besides, AJ now lives with his esteemed “gear crew”—that’s what he calls his engineering pals—and we still hang out when we can.
I later learned one of his “gear crew” is a hot girl named Paris, who I’m pretty sure he’s gonna marry, even though she doesn’t give him the time of day and he’s too chicken to ask her out. For all his hard-earned cool points, he sure turns into a knob around the girl he’s allegedly dreamt of since freshman year.
A distant cluster of slightly-off violins turns my head. The doors of the music building have been thrown ajar, releasing a group of giddy students, likely having finished some final exam, now eager to fly home and be free from all responsibility. I watch, for a moment feeling my soul galloping after them—a naïve little puppy at their heels, wondering what kinds of families they’re returning to, what matters of homemade apple pies and motherly affection, of freedoms and friends, of boundless laughter …
My parents should feel lucky. I could’ve studied abroad. Gone to a school in London. I had a scholarship offer for a school in New York. Instead, my cozy campus is a mere handful of hours north of Spruce, easily drivable. Guess I couldn’t even get out of Texas.
And this road trip will take me farther than I’ve ever gone.
“Project Spruce Jailbreak …?”
I fall out of my thoughts as if from a tree, smacking the earth hard as I twist around. Oh, it’s Professor Patel. I slap the notebook shut against my chest. “Just a road trip thing with my bestie,” I tell him. “No relation whatsoever to breaking anyone out of prison.” I reconsider that. “I mean, other than myself. From a prison I’m … not yet in.” Then I reconsiderthat. “Sorta not yet in.”
“I won’t ask,” decides the professor, then adopts a kind smile. “I was wondering if I might trouble you to … help me move a thing or two from the art room? My aide was supposed to be here an hour ago and is sadly nowhere to be found, and—”
“Your injured back, of course.” I’m off the bench, notebook tucked away into my satchel. “What can I do to help?”
A “thing or two” was clearly a punchline that went right over my head. I end up lugging thousand-pound bags of clay. Buckets of slip. Boxes of plaster. I enjoy three trips of hauling jugs of gesso, acrylic medium, and mineral spirits from the first floor studio to the supply closets on the third. It’s possible he originallydidonly have one or two things to move, but seeing as I’m here and his aide is very muchnot, he rightfully took advantage of my goodwill. I probably would have done the same, given the circumstances. He took a fall some time ago and no one ever helps him out.
On the last trip, he insists on chipping in, as it involves a not-particularly-heavy but long and awkwardly-shaped piece of art he explains is a “bold statement on the theoretical quantification of love and loss”. And it gives us no trouble on its brief journey down a long hallway until we reach the narrow door of its destination.
“A tad to the left,” I croak.
He scoots to the right.
“Other left, sir.”
His arms shake as he corrects himself. “Got it!”
“Just a couple more steps, and we’re through the—”
He stumbles forward. I’m thrust back. The bold statement on the theoretical quantification of love and loss catches one of my fingers in the doorframe, and I suppress the mightiest of screams I might’ve ever made, had I actually made it. Professor Patel shouts his apologies, asking if I’m okay, and for some reason I can only squeal, “For the love of licorice, yes, yes, I’m fine, yes, oh god!!”