Two

Upstate New York

“I can’t believe you didn’t even pack yet,” Sadie Bailey’s boyfriend said. He sat at the small wooden desk next to her bed, waiting for her to finish halfheartedly tossing clothes into an overnight bag.

He had every reason to be impatient. After all, they were supposed to already be on the road to his parents’ beach house on Cape Cod.

“Almost done,” she said, glancing up but avoiding eye contact. Behind him was a poster of Sadie’s favorite Virginia Woolf quote: “Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?” What does that even mean? Holden had once asked.

They had so little in common. And yet she’d found Holden Dillworth irresistible, with his golden-boy good looks and boundless energy. By day he was captain of the crew team; by night he was a beer-chugging partier. Sadie had been smitten the moment she spotted him at the dining hall.

Holden had blond hair and brown eyes. He had flawless skin and teeth that had never needed braces. He very much resembled Kristoff from Frozen, though a tad less burly.

Sadie, on the other hand, did not resemble a Disney princess. She might be cast in a movie about a family’s perilous flight from the Ukraine in the 1800s, which was something that had actually occurred in her ancestry. Sadie had curly dark hair and brown eyes and was not tall. She did, however, have her mother’s dramatic eyelashes and a version of her father’s high cheekbones, as well as an aquiline nose that she felt gave her face a certain strength of character.

Holden initially found her seriousness and intellectualism intriguing. But now reality was catching up to them. Holden complained about how much time she spent reading and writing. He complained that Sadie was never willing to be “spontaneous.”

Things had worked when crew was in season; they made time for each other in the margins of their first priorities. This always felt like an appropriate balance to Sadie. She never considered it a sacrifice to write instead of hanging out with Holden. And she thought Holden felt the same way about her own schedule, until crew ended, finals finished, and he announced that they finally had time to “really hang out.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with him. But apparently the only thing Sadie knew how to be truly devoted to was her writing.

Sadie closed the overnight bag. “I need to talk to you.” She beckoned Holden over to the twin bed in the corner. They sat facing each other. He shook a lock of hair out of his eyes, even blonder now after a month or so of sunshine. “Look, I’m sorry I’m distracted. I just met with Dr. Moore.”

“Can we not—for one weekend—talk about Dr. Moore or your thesis?”

Sadie immediately felt defensive. The only reason she was at that particular school was Dr. Moore.

Sadie had applied to only one college. It was a decision that mystified her parents and high school advisors alike. It was not the most prominent school—certainly not as prominent as, say, Harvard or Princeton. It was not the most beautiful campus—certainly not as beautiful as, say, Vassar. But the college had one thing that no other school had: English professor Rohita Moore.

Sadie had first met Dr. Moore when she was a junior in high school and had won a spot at YoungArts, a prestigious national arts competition. The essay she’d written had been part poetry, part treatise on the objectification of adolescent girls in popular culture. YoungArts flew her down to Miami, where she had room and board for a week to spend with other high school artists—writers, ballet dancers, playwrights, actors—and to study under mentors who were professionals in their field of interest. One of Sadie’s mentors had been Dr. Moore, a groundbreaking music journalist who had also published several volumes of award-winning short fiction. Now she was her academic advisor, and Sadie had planned to spend the summer working as her research assistant.

She’d never been more excited about anything in her life. The fact that she had just been published in The New Yorker—the magazine that published her literary idol Susan Sontag—paled when compared to the anticipation of working with Dr. Moore for the next few months.

Holden would never understand, but there was no place she would rather be, even on a flawless spring afternoon, than inside the redbrick Colonial building that was home to the English department. Somehow it smelled of musty library books even though it didn’t actually house a book collection.

An hour earlier, Dr. Moore had welcomed her into her office looking uncharacteristically somber. In hindsight, Sadie should have known something was up by the lack of Dr. Moore’s usual warm smile.

Dr. Moore stood and closed the office door. She wore one of her signature jewel-toned dresses that complemented her dark skin and large brown eyes. She had close-cropped hair, and the only jewelry she wore was medium-size gold hoop earrings. A striking woman, she wore her beauty effortlessly because she knew her looks were only her second-best asset.

The thing Sadie liked the most about college was the way it felt to be surrounded by brilliant women. In high school, she’d read the book Steal Like an Artist, and it said if you were the smartest person in the room, you were in the wrong room. Well, for the first time in a long time, she felt like she was in the right room.

Dr. Moore resumed her seat and leaned forward at her desk, looking at Sadie with a direct gaze. “Sadie, you continue to miss all the key deadlines for your thesis.”

“Um, well, not all of them. Exactly.”

She had been admitted to the university’s honors English program, a track that would enable her to take masters-level classes during her senior year. To graduate with the honors degree, she would spend her senior year writing her thesis. The outline had been due the week before finals, and she still had not handed it in. The shameful truth was, she still couldn’t quite home in on the right angle for her paper.

It should have been easy. The subject of her thesis was her favorite writer, Susan Sontag. She’d originally intended to examine two works: Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and her seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’”

She had thought her passion for Sontag’s work would be enough to sustain her through the rigors of developing a thesis.

Apparently, it wasn’t.

“I’m a little behind, but I have my topic now,” Sadie said. “Detachment as methodology in the works of Susan Sontag.”

“You were supposed to have finalized your topic months ago. You should have an outline already.”

“I can catch up.”

Dr. Moore clasped her hands together and leaned forward on the desk. “Sadie, I can’t in good conscience keep you on as my research assistant. Even if I wanted to overlook the fact that your status in the honors program is in jeopardy—a prerequisite for the research position—you need to focus on your academics.”

Sadie crossed her arms, hugging herself. “I just need a little more time. Can we talk after the weekend?”

“Sadie, this isn’t something that can be figured out in one weekend. Nor should it be. I want you to give this some thought.”

Some thought? All she’d been doing was thinking about it! She was exhausted.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said quietly.

“Nothing’s wrong with you. This is exactly how you should feel.”

“I’m supposed to feel like I’m failing?”

“No. But this is meant to be a challenge. Have you ever felt challenged before?”

“Of course,” she said. But inside, the answer was a stunning no. She’d never thought of it that way before. She’d always worked hard, but writing short stories felt natural to her—like flexing a muscle that ached to be stretched. Writing this paper, based on research and a sort of rigid academic logic she wasn’t accustomed to, was like she was asking her body to lift two tons.

“Sadie, the purpose of this time of your life is to push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. Dig deep.”

Dig deep? Sadie’s ideas were subterranean. There was nowhere deeper to go.

So no—she wasn’t in the mood to spend the weekend at the beach meeting Holden’s family.

She looked up at him.

“The truth is, Dr. Moore fired me from my research position. I have to get back on track. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t be offtrack if I wasn’t going out all the time.”

“Going out all the time? You’re a twenty-one-year-old hermit.”

What was he talking about? She went out. Sometimes. Not everyone could keep up with his drinking.

“Look, I’m not outdoorsy like you. I didn’t grow up in Connecticut.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Holden said.

Sadie was not a beach person. She didn’t want to lie down in glorified dirt. She didn’t want to walk barefoot and step on creatures. She didn’t want to deal with plastic bags packed with moldering food.

Holden didn’t wait for her response. “Sadie, I’m sorry about the gig with Dr. Moore. But you have all summer to figure this out. Let’s get on the road.” He walked over to her dresser and pulled out some clothes, tossing them into the half-packed bag. “No more excuses. We’re going to have a great time. My parents and sisters can’t wait to meet you.”

Sadie wanted to meet them, too. She wanted to meet his mother, Catherine. His dad, Douglas. And his sisters, Lily and June. She wished she were the type of person who could run around with the sunny blond Dillworth family, clamming and sailing and doing whatever it was normal people did on a summer weekend.

But she had to work. Surely, Holden would understand that.

“You’re asking me to choose between you and my work.”

Holden tossed his car keys from hand to hand, impatient. “Are you coming or not?”

When Sadie didn’t move, Holden kicked the desk chair. She flinched.

“So that’s it?” Holden said. “You know, it’s one thing to work all the time, to never be spontaneous . . .” There it was again. She wasn’t “spontaneous” enough. “But now you’re just bailing for no reason. It’s bullshit.”

“I’m sorry,” Sadie said.

“This is over.” Holden headed for the door but then stopped and turned around. “One more thing: don’t be sorry for me. I feel sorry for you. You think you’re living some big ‘life of the mind.’ But you’re not living at all.”