NINETEEN YEARS OLD

“Did you color-code your boxes?” Regina asks.

I look up from taping the last one. “Of course. That way I know where everything is.”

Our dorm room is a study in opposites. My side is completely packed up, the bed stripped, the sheets and blankets tucked away in their labeled yellow boxes. My posters—matted prints of extinct plants and animals—are already wrapped and in their blue box. Everything on my checklist is crossed off—I’m ready to go.

On her side, Regina’s got half-folded bins and boxes strewn across the floor, Degas prints hanging askew on the wall, and a massive collection of eighteenth-century French literature still stacked underneath the bed.

My roommate shakes her head, walking over to her half-made bed and throwing herself on it. “Dearing, you’re one of a kind. And to think that the first time we met, I wasn’t so sure about you. Especially when I opened the mini-fridge and saw that box of crickets.”

“You were so freaked out.” I snicker at the memory.

“What was I supposed to think? You had bugs in our fridge!”

“Well, yeah. What else would Sally eat?”

“And then there was that time you had your lizard on that snail-and-spinach diet…,” Regina continues.

“Switching up a blue-tongued skink’s protein sources is important. You wouldn’t want to eat the same thing all the time, would you? That’d be boring.”

Regina gets up and walks over to the aquarium, where Sally is hanging out on her favorite rock. “You’re lucky you’re so cute, Sally Ride.” She grins when my lizard flicks her tongue out. Regina has this thing where she insists on calling Sally by her full name, ever since she figured out I named her after the astronaut. She’s funny like that.

“Speaking of bugs…” She goes over to her fringed bag, digs around, and pulls out a small box. “I have a present for you. I may have had to put up with crickets and snails this year, but you had to deal with my repeated snooze-button smashing and night-owl tendencies.”

“Plus that gross-smelling tea you love,” I add.

“It’s good for you!”

“It smells like the Grim Reaper opened a perfumery,” I tell her, taking the proffered jewelry box. I open it, and a smile breaks across my face when I see what’s inside: a cicada pin, carved out of amber. “Regina,” I say, pulling it out. “You didn’t!”

“I remembered you were looking at it when we were at Riverter’s Vintage last time,” she says. “It’s not a cricket, but I thought it was fitting.”

“You’re so sweet.” I reach over and hug her. “Thank you. I love it. And I’ve loved being your roommate. Not everyone would’ve been so cool with the lizard. I know she’s not the most conventional pet.”

“You’re not the most conventional person, Claire.”

“Neither are you,” I say, making her laugh. “I have a present for you, too.” I grab her gift from behind one of my boxes. The edges of the bright red houndstooth wrapping paper are perfectly lined up, the tape smooth and nearly invisible, the edges of the ribbons curled just so.

“This is so pretty I hate to open it,” Regina says, right before she tears into it like she’s five. Of course. The book inside is an old copy of Rumi’s Masnavi.

“Is this the Nicholson translation from the 1930s?” she squeals. “The one Professor Gillian was talking about in class?”

I nod. “She helped me find it from a used bookstore in Oregon,” I say.

“Thank you. This is awesome! Especially considering your aversion to poetry and all things emotional in verse.”

I groan. Professor Gillian’s Poetry 101 was harder than molecular biology. “I would’ve failed without your help.”

“Oh, you would have been fine,” Regina says. “That last paper you did was good.”

As usual, she’s being nice. Every essay I wrote for that class—every poem I analyzed—I felt completely out of my league. Like I was just scraping along the surface of something that everyone else was diving deep beneath. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t quite slip under with everyone and get it.

It was hard. I like school. I’m great at it. Struggling with a class—struggling with anything—isn’t what I do. But with Regina’s help, I managed to kind of muddle through.

“I don’t know how you do all that literature analysis stuff day in and day out,” I confess.

“Well, I couldn’t do all the political analysis stuff you’re working on, or go to law school so I can lobby to protect animals, so I guess we’re even,” Regina replies. “You are all about the long game, Claire. I appreciate that. I so don’t have that kind of patience.”

I smile. She’s right; what I wanted, it’s a long game. I realized a long time ago that in order to create real change for animals—from domestic pets to wildlife to farm animals—you need to have a lot of money, or a lot of power. Laws that could—and should—protect animals more aren’t being championed the way they should be.

All it takes is one person, determined to rise, to get enough power to give a voice to the voiceless.

Politics make so much more sense to me than Rumi’s talk of gardens that aren’t actually gardens and love that runs so true you’re shattered when it ends. Politics are about what you want, who you know, how you manipulate, and what you control. The climb to get the kind of power to make laws and pass bills and create real change—that path is clear to me.

It’s the path I’ve chosen, and nothing will get in my way. I won’t let it.

There’s a knock on our door, and I go answer it. My big sister’s standing there grinning, her blond hair in an intricate braid down her back.

“Karen, hi!”

We hug. She smells like home, like the cinnamon candles our mom lights in the evening and the barest whiff of smoke from the backyard fire pit. When we were little, we roasted marshmallows and hot dogs on long sticks over the big bonfires our dad built. Now Dad does the same thing with my nephew, Zach.

Karen looks over my shoulder, still holding me. “Did you actually color-code your moving boxes?” she asks. “Claire…honestly!”

Regina cackles from her bed. “I like your sister, Dearing.” She waves. “I’m Regina.”

“Karen,” my sister says, finally letting go of me. “It’s nice to meet you. Claire’s been so busy this year we’ve barely seen her, and getting her on the phone has been nearly impossible.”

It’s a pointed comment. Mom’s obviously been complaining to her. She watches Zach while Karen’s at work, and Karen and her husband live just across town from my parents. So she’s close. And I’m…not anymore.

I’ve gone home only a few times this year, and it’s not enough for Mom. Dad probably feels the same, but he’s kept it to himself.

“I needed to get good grades,” I protest.

“I know,” Karen says, reaching out and squeezing my hand. “And you did great, didn’t you?”

I nod. My GPA is perfect—partly thanks to Regina saving my butt in that poetry class. But even as Karen turns to ask Regina about her summer plans, I feel guilty at my sister’s reminder of how I’ve neglected my family this year. The last time she sent me a picture of Zach, I was startled at how big he’d grown.

I want to go back more often, I really do. But money is always so tight, and I don’t have a car, and taking the bus turns the six-hour drive into fourteen. And then Professor Broadhurst offered to be my mentor, and that also meant managing her office hours once a week. I’ve tried to explain what a big deal it is to be chosen as a freshman, but I don’t think my parents quite get it.

There’s a lot my parents never quite get. They try. They’re wonderful. I love them. But there’s something in me that wants more than a little family in a little house with a quiet little life. And I’ve never figured out a way to say that without sounding mean or scornful.

I am grateful. For our little house and the lovely childhood I had. For my parents and for Karen and for the chance to be an aunt.

But I’m different. I want things they don’t. Control. Change. Power. I want a bigger life. One far from here. One that’s never boring. One that’s always a challenge. One where I fix problems and always have the answer.

I see a climb ahead of me, a long, rough road with hazards and hills…but it’s not defeating and it’s not scary—it’s exciting.

Driven is what people call girls like me to our faces.

Bossy is what people call girls like me behind our backs. Like it’s a bad thing.

Someday, they won’t be able to say it’s like a bad thing.

Because someday, I’ll be the boss.