Chapter One: Kendall
I paused at the door, allowing the crisp mountain air to fill my lungs before I fumbled for the key to the apartment that I was about to start calling home. Even if it was just for a year or two, it was a home, and for that I was grateful. Although anything more would be something I wouldn’t even know how to begin to process.
The air entering my lungs brought with it a moment of clarity, and the feeling of finally being free again rushed over me. I was truly starting over again, which means I survived once again. That thought alone was a relief. I was as far as I could be from home, and the idea of creating a new home, even if it was temporary, was a source of genuine relief. The word ‘home’ hooked itself into my mind, a word that still left a feeling of fear that it wouldn’t last for another few more years. After all, it never did for me.
Instead, I bounced from city to city and state to state, running every time my name was publicly attached to something. Whether it was newspaper articles, projects promoted by a university, jobs posting images of me on their social media, anything that could be considered public knowledge, it was a risk. Which was hypocritical once I took into account the fact that I spent my weekends as a cam girl for a part-time job when I needed the money. It was hypocritical, even if I hid my face as much as I could.
It felt odd returning to college after taking a year off. At the very least, I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb in an intro-level class filled with eighteen-to-nineteen-year-olds again. Those classes, hell, those semesters, were not the best memories I had from my undergraduate years. Especially since I was the only one in my twenties in those classes. My only saving grave was toward the end when my upper-division course had people from all walks of life sitting beside me. This time I was finally pursuing my graduate degree, something I had only decided I would do with the offer of a teaching assistant position.
Even that acceptance, that offer, was a surprise to me. I had thrown out applications with a bonus I got at my last job just to see if anything would stick; lord knows a fresh bachelor’s graduate couldn’t afford those fees without it. Especially not one that hadn’t even been able to land a job with the degree she had acquired.
To my surprise, Ashburn State University not only accepted me, but offered the teaching assistant position I was desperately hoping for. To my surprise, Ashburn was also the only one to accept me from the list of schools I had applied to. I couldn’t say that I had spent my life being lucky, so the day I received the acceptable letter and the offer, I signed into my account and accepted it with no further consideration. I spent the next few weeks packing up my apartment, and the moment I got the email saying I had been assigned an apartment, I drove across the country. Everything felt short notice despite knowing weeks in advance; even classes were scheduled to start the following morning.
Despite the universe seemingly turning the other check and rewarding me with some degree of luck, yet there I stood. Staring at the key. Just as I had done when I started my undergraduate degree. Although this time, the one reason I was looking forward to living on campus, I didn’t have roommates. It was a one-bedroom apartment for which I had only seen the layout sketch for, in a city I had never been to. Even looking at photos online of the harbor, the downtown district, the university, all of it felt surreal. It wasn’t a city that someone like me would normally move to, but that was part of the draw to it at the moment before I officially accepted the offer. Part of me even expected it not to work on the lock; so far, everything had been too good to be true. An expectation that had faded away as I unlocked the deadbolt and turned the doorknob, letting the door slowly swing open. I stepped inside, letting my duffle back and backpack slide off my shoulder and fall to the ground.
I stared at the apartment’s layout. The doorway led into the living room, which was empty, and then off to the left was a counter that divided the living room from the kitchen. Between the two rooms was a hallway leading to the bathroom and the bedroom. I sighed once the reality of unpacking and setting up yet another new apartment hit me, then began moving boxes and deconstruction furniture into the apartment to reconstruct my life. Hopefully, for what would be one of the last times I did it.
The one good thing about moving was that it allowed me to go through all of my belongings again. I had somehow managed to cut the number of items I owned in half, donating or selling what I could on various marketplaces to help fund the move. Eventually, I would decorate the apartment, at least once I found an extra part-time job if time allowed, but it could wait.
It didn’t take long to move the small boxes into the apartment from the U-Haul, maybe about an hour, but the remaining items were the most daunting, especially since I unpacked around the trailer that carried my car. A full-sized mattress in a box, a foldable bed frame, both of my rolling utility carts, a couple of short bookshelves, a T.V. stand and the T.V. itself wrapped in blankets, a desk, and a dresser. One by one, I dragged each piece of furniture out, groaning over the fact that unpacking everything somehow seemed worse than packing everything in the first place.
