Half-glass full and cynical Calista Dames can sketch out her life in a series of plans, predictions and preparations. She's the girl who knows what she's doing and where she's going, the girl with all the questions answered, the girl with a foundati...
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CHAPTER FOUR
New York, New York
A Year Later
"Your mother doesn't mean to miss out on this," informed my father as he swivelled his stare onto me through the rearview mirror, looking for any signs of disappointment, tears or heartbreak on my expression. He didn't find anything. Instead, I rolled my eyes, knowing my dad was just making excuses for mom giving me the cold shoulder.
"Right."
"Honestly."
"You don't have to lie for her," I responded simply, tossing my hair to the side. It had grown out now, all messy over my head, spilling out to the tail of my back.
My mother had been handing me the silent treatment ever since I received my acceptance letter from NYU, not Brown- the original plan. The thing about my mother was that she had no idea the silent treatment was more of a blessing rather than a punishment. Anyway, she wanted me to go for Brown- like she did.
I think she wanted me to turn out just like her, a carbon copy, especially since her eldest daughter ditched the original route and opted for Australia. But I didn't want to be like her, married at twenty-five, living a subpar life, earning an income from a job with hopes to just get by. I shuddered at the very assumption. Called it a dreamer's desire but I craved for adventure. I craved to get the hell out of this small town. Foolish and hopelessly idealistic, like some ridiculous lifetime movie. I hated those type of movies because it was so unrealistic; it was like educating anybody stupid enough to believe in lifetime movies that their life was spectacular when it was infinitesimal and woefully insignificant. I knew I could never come across anything special in my small, uninteresting life but the least I should try. If I didn't, I would become some crazy cat lady who hated and whinged about their sucky existence. And I hated people who whined more than people who were foolish dreamers.
"Calista," sighed my father, shaking his head, interrupting the freight train of thoughts. "You know your mother's just worried about you. New York is dangerous."
"I could handle myself," I defended and both my parents knew this was true. They knew I could handle myself both mentally, emotionally and physically. After all, the whole ninth grade Nina-Richie-breaking-arm incident didn't go quietly. I don't go down quietly.
"Yeah, well, you know your mother." Yeah, unfortunately, I did. If my mother didn't get her way, it was no way. I could tell my father had a whole night's argument about this with my mother. I could effortlessly be pictured my mother going on and on about my insubordination and how I wasn't going to survive in NYU to my father, who was probably not listening to her and was nodding along simply for the sake of appeasing her. Originally, I did want Brown. It had a great psychology course but I had always loved the idea of residing in New York. The only thing that confirmed my longing for New York was that Astrid had applied for pastry school in Manhattan. The instance she told me about her acceptance letter into pastry school, momentary flashes of Astrid and I decking out in Times Square, riding the subway together and moving into a studio apartment together invaded my head. The final push was using NYU as my fallback University and getting accepted. The rush of endorphins surging in my neck as I waved the letter in my dad's face, the substantial excitement swarmed me again at the mere thought of going to New York, to start all over again, a blank canvas, unravelled before me in my head.
