Begin Again(2)

Well, “help” might be a generous word for it. With Gammy Nell long since widowed and Grandma Maeve divorced multiple times over, they did their fair share of it, then pretty much took over after my dad landed a job two hours away and I stayed put to finish high school. It wasn’t long before the two of them were so well-known in our neighborhood that the neighbors practically camped out on our porch, hoping to hear about another misadventure behind one of Grandma Maeve’s tattoos or score some of Gammy Nell’s famous chocolate cherry jam.

There’s this pang then that I’ve been doing a pretty decent job of ignoring for the past few weeks, ever since I got my transfer acceptance letter. It’s been a weird childhood, but a mostly good one. They’ll only be a two-hour drive away, but it still feels like a whole lot more.

We roll up to the entrance of Cardinal and my heart skips a beat. I’m trying to think of something to say as we all get out of the car, something to reassure both them and myself, but then Gammy Nell nudges Grandma Maeve and says, “You forgot.”

Grandma Maeve scowls. “Forgot what?”

“I knew you would. The rib—”

“Oh, you’re right. Shit.”

Cue the trademark Gammy Nell flinch.

“Hold up, chicken,” says Grandma Maeve, pulling something out from the glove compartment.

She presses a stack of three ribbons into my hand, one red, one yellow, and one blue, all of them stamped with a faded version of the Blue Ridge State logo of a knight. She waits to give me the fourth ribbon last—a white one marked with my mom’s signature “A” in permanent ink.

My throat goes tight. I haven’t seen these since my dad put them in storage; I wasn’t even sure we still had them.

“I dug them out of your mom’s old things,” she says. “She’d have wanted you to have them.”

Neither of us likes to talk about my mom in front of other people. After our tiny town of Little Fells watched her grow her local radio show into a statewide syndicated one, she was so universally loved as the “hometown spitfire” that everyone jumps at the chance to share memories of her. But there’s always been this private, almost sacred grief between me and Grandma Maeve and my dad, in the rare moments he acknowledges it with us.

So I’m not surprised when Grandma Maeve immediately changes gears by pressing a bag full of quarters into my hand for the laundromat. A beat later Gammy Nell yanks out an entire grocery store aisle’s worth of snack cakes and candy she’s stuffed into a tote bag and hands them to me, nearly spilling out individually wrapped Ring Dings and Tastykakes onto the sidewalk.

“For all your new friends,” she says excitedly.

I grin back, the seams of my coat itching at the anticipation. The minute I had that acceptance letter in hand I promised myself that this wouldn’t just be an academic fresh start, but a fresh start for making new friends, too—something I don’t have a lot of experience with, growing up in a small town full of people I’ve known my whole life. Lightly bribing the dorm with snack cakes seems like a good place to start.

They hug me in turn, Grandma Maeve with that deep, sharp squeeze like she’s jolting my bones with love, then Gammy Nell all soft and full and smelling like the apples she put in the air fryer this morning. I swallow back the extremely unhelpful balloon of fear in my stomach.

“Call us when you’re settled,” says Grandma Maeve as they get back into the car.

“And every day!” Gammy Nell demands.

Then Grandma Maeve blows me a kiss and steps on the gas as Gammy Nell squawks in protest, trying to take my picture through the open window in vain. I wave as they turn the corner, smile still fully intact, then open my suitcase to its hidden pocket and press the ribbons inside, safe and out of sight.





Chapter Two


Cardinal dorm is on the fringes of campus, nestled between a row of other dorms and the woods behind the school. The campus is every bit as stunning as all the brochures I’ve collected over the years promised, and the ache in my chest feels deep enough to bruise. It’s not just the faded red brick of the buildings and the idyllic tree-lined paths and the sweeping mountain views from the campus’s highest hill. It’s that I’ve seen them all before, in the background of pictures of my parents I found in a box under my dad’s bed. Blue Ridge State is where they met.

I square my shoulders. This is my story, not theirs. And seeing as I have an entire floor’s worth of new friends to make, an entire schedule of classes to wrangle, and eventually a dimpled soccer star to surprise, my work here is cut out for me.

An elevator takes me up to the fourth floor, where I’ve been assigned. I pass a group of students in the hallway, all of them carting sleek laptops and textbooks and laughing about something that happened at a finals party last semester. A few of them cast me a curious glance, but they all seem so at ease with one another that I clam up before I can remember which hand I’ve got the snack cakes in.

I take a deep breath, promising myself to give it another go later, and knock on the RA’s door.

“Nobody’s home.”

I laugh nervously. “It’s Andie Rose? The transfer student.”

There’s rustling on the other side of the door, which then opens to the more modern Blue Ridge State logo. I blink, then look up from the T-shirt into the eyes of an overly tall boy who must be the Milo Flynn I’ve been emailing with, blinking right back at me with the bewilderment of someone who clearly hasn’t slept in a week. He hovers in the doorframe, his shoulders slumped but his eyes considering mine so intently that my face burns from the unexpectedness of it. He clears his throat and we both glance away.