The Rearranged Life (25 page)

I take photographs all weekend long. One of my pictures captures James holding a little girl dressed in a tutu with a crown on her head. She holds a squirt gun to his chest and he and his dancer, a petite brunette named Kate, are mid-laugh, heads thrown back. I can hear him in my mind as I look at it on the small two-inch screen, imagining it bubble from his belly. He should go sleep in his apartment on his sleep shift, but he stays on, and his exhaustion doesn’t show. He is happy to be in the midst of the action.

-I feel so lucky to be doing this
, James texts me partway through the night.

You are. We are. Remember who you’re doing this for. And text me if you need anything,
I reply, knowing that despite him being a runner, his legs must be throbbing by now.

The last four hours are filled with stories from families on the long road to recovery and a twenty-minute tribute to the THON children who are no longer with us. The tales don’t leave a dry eye in the house. College boys who drink their way through weekends are red-eyed, and girls like me who move through life without really realizing how good we’ve had it swallow back sobs. Each of us is acutely aware of how short life is, how the most innocent can be taken away. Each of us knows forty-six hours on our feet is nothing compared to the thousands of hours that these children have whiled away undergoing MRIs, CT scans, blood testing, radiation treatments, chemotherapy, surgeries. This gratefulness and awe isn’t just a college thing. This weekend, it’s a Penn State thing.

I observe James during a speech a Four Diamonds family gives about the chemotherapy process. Even with six hundred people on the floor, my eyes pick him out of the crowd immediately. The muscle in his jaw twitches when the mother tells us how all hope felt lost. The numbers of personal connections in this room to cancer are heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. It reminds me why it’s so important to me to go into medicine and make a difference–so someday, events like these don’t need to be held because people don’t lose the ones they love.

“Ten, nine, eight…” The countdown begins for the dancers to sit. It’s been forty-six hours. My eyes are red and burn from being awake, and my feet are excruciatingly sore, but I’m just one of thousands. Some dancers are delusional. Others are unable to remember conversations they had minutes before because they are so exhausted. Yet they fight on for the final ten seconds before everybody in the arena breaks into a raucous cheer as they get to rest their weary legs and sit down.

The breakdowns of the total are announced–how much each organization raised and which ones raised the most. The fraternities and sororities, who compete amongst themselves, have six-digit figures. It’s staggering when I picture the amount of effort used to just fill one coffee can with people’s change.

“You ready, Nithya?” Tommy asks me. He is one of James’ friends who kept me company throughout the weekend and endured the endless trips to the concession stand for overpriced pizzas and water with unfailing good grace.

“You bet. Time to see what James and everyone else has worked for!”

You can hear a pin drop as the Overall THON Chair tells us to wait for the total. Cameras are in the air to capture the moment.

“$7,490,133.87!”

The screams are deafening. Sixteen thousand rise to their feet for just a few more minutes, screaming, hugging and in more cases than I can count, in tears. THON has hit another successful record-breaking milestone. The Overall Committee members, now jumping up and down on stage, hold up white signs with one number each, displaying the total like a neon sign. The camera flashes, capturing this moment for posterity, are blinking like fireflies.

When I look at James, his arms wrapped around the other captains in his morale committee, there are tears streaming down his face. I’ve never been more proud of him.

HON is a major mark for the year. Each event is ticked off: applications due, interviews, spring semester starts, THON, spring break, medical school acceptances, finals, and graduation. After THON, spring break flies by with a visit home and so many coffee dates with friends that I lose count. When I return, medical schools are about to send out their decisions.

The panic of our senior year winding down lessens when I think of all the minutes James and I have crammed in. We learn the small things about each other in our blissful ‘new relationship honeymoon phase’. James knows I pick out the cookie dough from my ice cream to eat at the very end. I know how his little finger on his left hand doesn’t bend as far as it should because he broke it playing backyard football in high school. He knows I’ve never broken a bone, had stitches, or required hospitalization.

“How do you even know you want to be a doctor if you don’t know what the inside of a hospital looks like?” he needles me, and I retort that he can’t be a lawyer then, since he spent most of his twenty-three years on a quest to get into trouble.

Sophia tries to come up with a moniker, similar to ‘Brangelina,’ her celebrity couple obsession for the last three years. She says it doesn’t work for James and I because there are too many syllables, but I figure it’s because I’m Indian and he’s American. ‘Jithya’ or ‘Names’ just doesn’t sound as effortless. James points out when I mention our flawed name chemistry that Sophia and Luca’s don’t make an easy portmanteau either. Sometimes, it serves as one more reminder that James and I connect, but don’t match. The nights are the toughest. My conscience usually kicks in when my mother calls while I’m with him. I am now sure a mother’s intuition exists. She always seems to close the one hundred-fifty mile gap that allows me to break the rules by calling me right when she senses my transgression.

“Amma, I’ll call you back, okay? I’m at dinner.” I take a bite of my baby’s veggie burger.

“Okay, baby, sounds good! Who did you go with?”

“Just James!” I forget for a split second who I’m talking to and bite my tongue.

“Who is James?” She sounds very curious and a bit worried before I tell her he’s just a friend and I’ll call her back. I find James giving me a knowing glance as I sheepishly stow my phone away.

“Why are you with me?” I ask him one day. I always told myself I would never be one of
those
girls, the eternal victims of insecurity, but I’ve finally understood the fun in being wooed. The whispered comments, the behind-the-scenes romance, the outward bravado… This game has become fun to play if only for the sake of my ego.

“Lack of better options,” he teases without looking up from his ESPN magazine. It’s his only periodical subscription because he likes to read most of the news online.

“Thanks,” I say, sarcastically, before turning back to the tator tot casserole I’m in the middle of making for dinner.

“Did I upset you?” He finally looks up and sets down the magazine onto the coffee table.

I shake my head and stick my tongue out at him.

“I’m with you because you’re intelligent. You intrigue me. And because you don’t let me get away with shit, including embarrassing conversations like this.” He wraps his arms around me from behind. “And because you’re kind of sexy.”

“Kind of?” I look up.

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.” He kisses my forehead before stealing a bite.

Our pending acceptances to law and medical school mean we are playing a perpetual waiting game. I receive my first two rejections, and I can’t lie when I say I am disappointed. Though they weren’t from my top schools, the narrowing of options does stress me. Some schools, however, want my grades through the end of the year, so I can’t ignore the schoolwork. James has received one rejection from Harvard, but shakes it off like a champion.

“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to go to Columbia anyway. Besides, what’s meant to be will happen.” He takes notes in his chicken scratch and is unbothered.

“Aren’t you worried at all?” I ask, incredulous at his calm demeanor.

“What’s the point in worrying? They’ll decide. We’ll hear back soon enough.”

Just days later, we celebrate Sophia’s acceptance into NYU Law. While Luca builds up his client list at his public relations firm, Sophia will hit the books. We are out to rejoice at the Indian restaurant downtown, a place James and Sophia have come to love thanks to yours truly–naans are Sophia’s favorite while James is partial to any kind of paneer, something we have in common. Luca says the spiciness of Indian food reminds him of his Latin heritage, so he never complains.

“To Sophia!” We raise our glasses of mango
lassi
, and Sophia blushes.

“Now, we’re waiting on you, Nithya. Let’s crank those acceptances out so you can come join us in the city!” Luca is filled with optimism.

“Let’s hope so!” I cross my fingers, but inside, a piece of me quakes.

I receive three more rejections in the next two weeks. The standard,
We appreciate your interest in (said university). Unfortunately, due to the high volume of qualified applicants, we regret to inform you…
has been a phrase I could recite in my sleep after hours of staring at the letters, hoping something, anything, will change the outcome or tell me why I wasn’t good enough.

“Just say yes!” I want to scream. The self-loathing gnaws at me from morning to night, wondering if an extra activity stacked onto my resume would have made a difference, or if that intro physics class really tanked my chances that badly.
What more could they want?

“Nithya, it takes one yes, that’s all,” my father tells me on the phone when I voice my worries.

“What if I don’t get in?”

“You have to be patient. Sometimes these schools have different reasons for saying no to exemplary students.”

“Yeah, like somebody else was better.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You won’t know, so face forward, and go strongly ahead.”

James’ sentiment is similar.

“Nithya, you’re never going to find out who beat you and why out. You have two more schools to go. Just hold out, homie. It takes one yes, and you’re in. All those no’s won’t matter.”

“What if they’re both no’s?”

“Then you’ll handle it. Just don’t work yourself up right now. Those letters are in the past, and now you have new futures to look forward to. Chill out,” he says soothingly.

It’s easier said than done to ‘chill out’ when two bold messages arrive my inbox. Fate might be playing a cruel joke, or it might be the greatest gift to end the mystery about where I’ll be in a few months, but the final two schools, Emory and Columbia, have sent their letters on the same day.

It’s okay. James, Sophia, and Luca are coming over, so you’ll have good news when they’re here for dinner.

Here goes nothing. I open Emory’s first.

Dear Ms. Kolluri,

We regret to inform you…

I click out of the e-mail before I finish it. There’s no point, now that I know.
It’s okay. No Emory. Close the door on it and move on.
I remember all the pep talks my parents and James have given me before clicking on the next e-mail, all the times James has mentioned closing the door on something opens up possibilities in something else. Columbia’s letter waits. It all rests on this. I take a deep breath in.