April Rains
The thing about Portland’s April is that it rains on everything equally. The good things and the hard things get the same weather.
April || Change || Alex || Development
April was the month that the college decisions started arriving seriously — not just Priya’s Stanford, but everyone’s, the whole senior class sorting itself into its next configuration while the juniors watched and understood that the next year would be their turn. I watched it happen with the specific awareness of someone who was still a junior but whose questions about next year were already organized and complex. I had spent the fall managing my life on index cards. I was spending the spring thinking about it in a different way — thinking about what I actually wanted, which was a question I had been afraid to ask because the wanting implied choosing and choosing implied the possibility of choosing wrong, and for three years choosing wrong had been the thing I was most afraid of. Now I understood that the fear of choosing wrong was not a reason to avoid choosing. It was just the feeling you had in proximity to things that mattered. The feeling you had courage about.
I applied to four schools in April for early decision in the fall: Reed, U of O, Whitman, and — on the recommendation of Mrs. Callahan and with significant trepidation — Northwestern’s debate program, which was where Jamie had applied and been accepted and which was fifteen hundred miles from Portland and which was the option that required the most courage. I told Jamie before I submitted the application. We were at the coffee shop on Hawthorne, which had become our Saturday place, and I showed them the application on my laptop and they looked at it for a moment without speaking. “Northwestern,” they said. “Yes,” I said. “You’re applying to Northwestern.” “I’m applying to Northwestern,” I said. “Contingent on whether I get in, which is not — ” “You’ll get in,” Jamie said. “You don’t know that.” “I know the debate program takes the best,” they said. “And I know you are the best.” They said this without ceremony, as a fact. “We’d be there together,” I said. “Possibly. Contingent on both of us choosing it.” Jamie looked at me. “Is that—” “I’m not choosing a school for someone else,” I said. “I’m choosing a school where a great debate program happens to have someone I want to be near. That’s a different thing.” “Is it?” “Yes,” I said. “The school is excellent on its own merits. The rest is additional information.” Jamie smiled. “You’ve been spending too much time with Priya,” they said. “Priya would say that’s not possible,” I said. “She’d be right,” Jamie said. They looked at the application. “Submit it,” they said. I submitted it. The screen confirmed. The April rain pressed at the coffee shop window. Fifteen hundred miles was a lot of miles. It was also, in the specific context of having spent three years afraid to want things, an entirely manageable distance. I thought about the debate topic. Authenticity requires courage. I thought about every form of courage I had practiced across this year. Applying to the school that was right because it was right — even if it was also, additionally and significantly, where Jamie would be — was just one more in the collection. I was getting better at collecting them.