Good Girl : A Memoir (9781476748986) by Sarah Tomlinson Page B

took on a loan, too, it was going to be possible. Even as entitled and emotionally farsighted as I could be at fifteen, I knew enough to be extremely grateful.
    As I counted down my final shifts at the Anchor Inn in late August and began packing up my belongings in preparation for my attendance at Simon’s Rock’s “Writing and Thinking Workshop” for all incoming freshmen, I received a two-line letter from Oliver: He was a lost cause. I should forget about him.
    I shook. I cried. I sent him impassioned pleas, telling him that he was no loser, that he was special, that I loved him, and so there was hope; there was hope as long as we had each other. He didn’t write back. That was it. He was gone. I was devastated. The problem must be me, just like I’d always known it to be.
    Suddenly, after I had waited and waited for what felt like forever, the summer was over, and it was time for me to leave home. I dyed my hair purple, determined to make an impression from the first moment I arrived. I woke up at six in the morning on the day of my departure,covered my freckles as best as I could, carefully painted on my black eye makeup, and loaded the last of my possessions into Mom and Craig’s Toyota Tercel hatchback. Mom had to work that day, and while Andrew was a cheerful, obedient kid who never caused trouble, he was only six and couldn’t be left home alone, which meant Craig was driving me the six and a half hours down to school.
    I stood in the living room as Craig took the last of my bags out to the car, giving Mom and me a final moment of farewell. I looked at Mom. My eyes filled up.
    â€œLet me get a picture,” she said.
    She’d always taken a picture of me on the first day of school, and here it was, the last time she would ever do so. My eyes brimmed over. I managed a cloudy smile, my arms crossed over my chest. I hugged Mom good-bye, feeling the grief of rootlessness, as if I no longer had a home, wanting to run back up to my childhood room and never leave. But I knew I had to go, and that I was incredibly lucky Mom was letting me do so under such extraordinary circumstances at such a young age. It was as if she’d seen how stuck I was and, instead of forcing me to stay small out of fear, or showing the kind of love that diminishes a person just to keep her close, she’d handed me the reins to my life along with a challenge: if I thought I was so smart, which she fully believed I was, then I should prove it, read some books, wrestle over their meaning with people who were smarter than I was, put something of real value on the line in my life.
    â€œI love you,” she said.
    â€œI love you, too,” I choked out through my tears.
    We had been in something profound together, from the moment I had been conceived, all of those brave choices she had made in order to get herself free and get us to the land. Even though I had felt betrayed when she had her second family, and part of that urged me out on my own, I also felt that we were still in it together and always would be. As her oldest child, her only girl, who had the exact replicas of her hands and feet, the same pale freckled skin, the cleft of the Tomlinson chin,and the name Tomlinson, too, I was about to take all of that and go out into the world to make my fortune, but we would always be joined together.
    S imon’s Rock was as good as I had expected it to be, even better. I had gotten everything I’d wanted. I was still sometimes sad for no reason and deeply insecure, but I thrilled at my new life, and for once, I had the good sense to value it in the moment.
    I’d landed on the smoking hall, even though I had checked the box that I didn’t smoke on the housing form, for fear Mom would see. I lit a cigarette on day one and didn’t put it out—simply hiding it during holidays at home—for the next fifteen years.
    I fell for the most glamorous boy I’d ever seen. Nok was half-Thai,