“Oh. That.” I feel my elation suddenly begin to ebb away. “Ryan dropped it by before I left. I haven’t been able to watch it yet,” I admit.
“Let’s do it now,” she cries. “Come on, I’m dying to see it.”
“Well . . . all right,” I agree unenthusiastically, but she’s already flipping up her laptop screen and opening the envelope.
“Which one is it?”
“Hmm?” I carefully begin to smear moisturizer under my eyes, the way my mother ordered me to at age twelve, “to stave off the ravages of time.”
Tash tosses the discs onto my bed. “There are two. And a note!” she exclaims, withdrawing a single sheet of paper.
“I don’t want to hear!” My heart drops, just imagining what Ryan would have to say.
“Sure you do.” Ignoring my plea, Tash begins to read. “Emily — I know you’ve already made up your mind about us, so I won’t try and stop you. But please think about the summer job.” At this Tash fixes me with another of her looks. “Either way, I made this so you remember your time here and everything you managed to be. Have a safe journey home.”
She lowers the letter. “That’s all there was. Go on, play the disc!”
I slowly clamber over beside her and slip the DVD into the computer, my insides already twisting themselves into a tangle.
“Look, it’s you!”
I watch in silence as a photograph of me fills the screen under the words “Emily’s Big Adventure.” It’s one of the shots from outside the diner: my hair is glossy under the sun, and my whole face is lit up as I blow the camera a kiss.
“So cute!” Tash coos, hugging me, but I just feel a pang. It already feels like that place is a world away. The first still is quickly replaced as new photographs and short bursts of film dance across the small screen. Me working on the script, me lying out on the lawn with a book, me ordering our group around during filming, all set to a familiar soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen, Patsy Cline, and all the other songs Ryan played for me that day.
I watch myself as if in a daze. The girl on-screen is more hesitant than the people around her, I can see. She holds back, visibly assessing each moment, but then there are moments where Ryan has caught me completely unaware: doubled over with laughter on the beach; eyes animated as I explain a line of dialogue.
“That must be Carla!” Tash exclaims happily, as the slide show continues. And then another film clip plays. I’m Rollerblading on the boardwalk in Santa Monica, begging Ryan to turn the camera off.
“You’re not doing too bad.” Our banter is a burst of noisy giggles and sarcasm. “You haven’t checked the time all afternoon.”
“Yay me!” I’m breathless and flushed, backlit by the sparkling ocean and sinking neon sun.
“Don’t go changing too much; they won’t recognize you when you get home!”
The shot freezes on my face in that moment before I started to fall, lingering on the screen in front of us.
“You look so sad,” Tash murmurs quietly. I nod. She’s right, it’s as if a shadow is drifting over my features. Ryan captured me in the very instant that I thought about going home, and what he saw there would be clear to anyone: a fleeting look of panic in my eyes, a fraught tension in my jaw.
The image finally fades away and the disc is finished. I exhale, not realizing I’ve been holding my breath.
“Are you OK?” Tash looks at me carefully. I shrug.
“Yes. No.” I fall back onto the pillows, my voice small. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, Em.” She lies down beside me, our hands overlapping and limbs splayed out like paper dolls. “Talk to me.”
But I don’t know how to find the words, so we just lie in silence while aching waves roll through me until, at last, I drift to sleep.
I slip out of bed early before Tash awakes and wander across to the beach. Sitting on the cool, clear sand, I watch the light from the rising sun behind me turn the water a brilliant blue and try to find a path through all my confusion.
I’m on the edge of something, I can tell, but even the thought of moving in any one direction is enough to paralyze me. Snuggling deeper into the folds of my new UCSB jumper, I try to organize all my thoughts into a neat, ordered list like usual, but nothing stays in its place. Images from Ryan’s film keep jumping into my mind; memories of the past semester; my script; the hours I spent on research and applications for the law internships.
I sigh. I thought I would make the decision and be done with it — that’s always been the way it’s worked before. I may make lists and weigh up every available criteria and even occasionally plot a spreadsheet of competing values, but in the end, once I reach a (well-considered) conclusion, that’s it: over, finished, certain. No regrets, no repeats, and certainly no changing my mind.
But now . . .
I shiver despite the sun, remembering the look on my face in that frozen shot. Things will be the same as they always were back in England, of that I have no doubt, but surely that’s a good thing? I missed my old routine: the academic rigor, the satisfying framework of achievement — so why now do I feel such a flutter whenever I imagine working until 2:00 AM on an essay or spending eight hours a day buried in the dusty Raleigh library?
I’ve tasted something different here — that’s the problem. The past three months have been the first time in my life I’ve stepped out of the hyper-driven rush of school and career planning, the first time I’ve ever been able to look in on my life from the outside and see myself for what I am.
Stressed. Overachieving. A control freak.
I repeat the words under my breath, and then again, feeling lighter with every whispered syllable.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
That’s what I’ve learned on this trip, I realize — besides how to dress like a California girl and fake an excited squeal. That my life shouldn’t be this hard. I’m nineteen years old, buried in activities and work, and I’m acting as if one wrong move will throw me into a downward spiral. Like I’m just a single ruined timetable away from stacking shelves in the village Tesco for all eternity.
I start to smile. A sense of gentle reassurance is spreading through me, as easy as the Florida sunshine on my skin. Because in this instant, I know without a doubt that I’ll be all right. No, better than all right — I’ll be excellent. But not if I let myself get tied up again in stress and cold fear and the constant Oxford rush to do more that put such an awful expression on my face in that shot.