May 7th - "Turn and Face the Strange"

The sun had already started to set over Jackie’s house. She stood in the middle of her living room, nostalgia washing through her. “To think,” she told her two friends, “We have college graduation tomorrow. It all went by so fast.”

She eyed the spot where Regina currently sat on the couch. “Man, it feels like just yesterday I threw up on that cushion.”

Jackie then looked at the wall beyond the couch. “And it’s been a whole year since I punched a hole through that wall. Good times.” Her eyes then widened in realization. “How does this feel for you, Regina? Since you didn’t go to college and all. Are you sad you won’t be able to visit your friends at school anymore?”

Regina, having moved a good two feet away to the other side of the couch, just gave her a shrug. “You're basically the only friend who lives near their school that I visit, and you still got the house until the end of August, so I mean…”

“Ah, you’re right.” Jackie turned toward her other friend. “How do you feel, Lucille-”

Lucille sat in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped tightly against her knees, brunette hair falling past her eyes. She spoke quietly into her legs. “This is the final night. It has to be perfect.”

Jackie tilted her head. “We're celebrating tomorrow after the graduation, though. I guess this is technically our last night as college students, but this is just like any other night. Except not really, except it actually is. Know what I’m saying?”

“No.” Lucille raised her head. “A four year era ends tonight. Do you understand the significance of that? Tonight needs to be a culmination of the past four years. Reflection and rumination and being able to say a proper goodbye. I hate not being able to say a proper goodbye to things. I won’t be able to move on otherwise. I'll just have this empty feeling in me.”

Jackie rubbed her chin. “...uh, okay. Do you have anything in mind?”

Lucille suddenly stood up. Her hands were balled against her sides. “Big Wang’s.”

The Miad cousins shared astonished glances. Jackie then tugged at her collar, leaving Regina to do the dirty work. She slipped off the couch and placed a fatherly hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Lucille…you were banned there, remember? You said their fried rice really wasn't fried all that well and refused to tip.”

“Yeah, four years ago. And after we went there like thirty-seven times, too!” Lucille smiled at the memories. “Big Wang’s was the spot our freshman year. That’s when we transitioned from our high school eras to our college eras…well, post-high school in your case. That’s a big deal. That’s where I went from girl to young woman. Now I’m going from young woman to woman. I need bookends, you know what I mean?”

“...no,” Regina admitted. But then she thought about it. “They had some really good crab rangoon, didn’t they?”

Jackie wiped her mouth. “And good meat skewers, too…fuck it, let’s ride!”

The three friends tossed on shoes and hoodies - it wasn’t quite summer weather yet, but low sixties was all you could ask for after a long winter. Unfortunately, stifling humidity came along with it, but you can’t have everything in life.

Lucille scrolled through her phone. “Alright, if we leave now, we can take the subway-”

“No way.” Jackie crossed her arms. “The subway caught on fire last week. We’re taking an Uber.”

“But…it’s the train.” And trains put Lucille in her happy place. She looked over at Regina for support.

Regina raised her hand and voted.

Ten minutes later, the Uber drove down a city highway, the bright lights of buildings appearing like tracers in the dark as they drove by. Being the shortest, Regina got stuck with bitch seat; Lucille sat next to her, resting her chin on her palm, watching the city stretch on and on. You’d figure four years would be a long enough time - that by the end of it, you could accept letting things go - but Lucille’s stomach rolled up into a knot at the thought of it.

Change wasn’t fun. Familiarity was where it’s at. Trains always moved down the same tracks at the same speeds, after all. Each semester, her drive to school always occurred on the same days and at the same times. And for the past four years, the routine was always commute - class - lunch (Macaroni Wednesdays, for example) - class - commute home - homework. Four years of that. Why’d it have to change, and why did the change seem so abrupt?

Lucille thought life oughta be more like the city. Whenever she drove down the highway, the sights were always the same - a sea of buildings, a row of skyscrapers and towers right until the city limits. The city had defined geographic boundaries. The city didn’t change. The city was the city, and life should’ve been life, but instead, things change and people move on and routines no longer apply, forcing you to scramble around and figure things out and fend for yourself in a brand new world. You have to start over.

That’s what Lucille told herself, anyway. That’s why tonight had to be perfect - it had to be the best send-off ever, otherwise she’d spent the rest of her life feeling nagged about unsaid reflections or realizations about that four-year era she could never go back to. There’s nothing worse than feeling ready to say goodbye only after the fact.

But cities do change. 

The Uber let them off near a brick building that should’ve been Big Wang’s. Instead, the three friends scratched their heads. The lights inside the restaurant were off. The awning over the doorway was gone. In fact, even the sign for Big Wang’s was gone - it had been replaced by a sign reading FUTURE SITE OF AMAZON FULFILLMENT CENTER.

Feeling the stares of the two cousins on her, Lucille sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck. “Heh…well, it’s only been four years, I assumed it was still in business. Guess I should’ve checked.”

She tilted her head, lightly tapped her temple, and stuck her tongue out, mimicking your favorite moe character after they make a clumsy (and cute) mistake. “Silly me.”

Jackie just shrugged. “Well, whatever. The map on my phone still had it, so I guess it wasn’t updated yet. But it doesn’t matter. There’s a shit ton of food places around here, anyway.”

And a shit ton of people, too. For a brief moment, Lucille was too overwhelmed by the sights to remember her own folly. College kids and adults in their twenties walked around, some hand in hand, some in dress shirts and ties and dresses, all of them over smoothly paved concrete sidewalks. Electric vehicles drove down the street while rows of standardized buildings looked on from above. That architecture style - the one that could be found in New York, Paris, even Melbourne - with its mid-rise height, boxy rectangular appearance, and simultaneously splashy-muted colors…that could only mean one thing.

“My God,” Lucille realized. “The whole area’s been gentrified.”

Jackie scratched her head. “Huh? What’s that mean?” But before Lucille could explain, Jackie pointed across the street. “Wow, I once bought pot from a guy who used to live there. But now that building’s a…craft brewery?”

The three walked around in a daze. Memories of freshman year flooded Lucille’s mind, forming a sharp contrast to the current conditions.

Where’s that urine smell?

Where's the homeless?

Where’s the griminess?

The rundown, raw reality that provided the core for her fond memories from this area had all disappeared. The three friends passed by modern coffee shops that could only be described as “chic”. The convenience stores with iron bars over their windows had been replaced by a Whole Foods. Cracked streets had been replaced by bike and bus lanes. The used needles in the alleys were gone. Nobody scruffy-looking asked her for money - in fact, based on the way everyone else in the area dressed, Lucille should’ve been asking them.

While waiting to cross the street (over a freshly painted crosswalk), Lucille leaned her head upwards towards the night sky, her hair spilling down her back. She closed her eyes to avoid the bright lights of modernity. 

Why do I feel so sad about things getting better?

Regina ended up finding the gentrified equivalent of Big Wang’s - an Asian fusion place simply titled KAWAGOE. At Big Wang’s, the owners’ son - a kid in elementary school - served as their waiter. At Kawagoe, they were ushered to mahogany seats by a woman dressed sharply in black. Big Wang’s had four types of drinks and didn’t take ID - at Kawagoe, Lucille had to thumb her way through a long list of creatively titled my tai’s and margaritas. Afterwards, she forked over her driver’s license - she displayed a wide smile in the photo. The twenty-one-year old Lucille in that photo still had a year to go before saying goodbye.

And there’s your answer. As Jackie and Regina talked on and on - well, mainly Jackie - Lucille sat on her chair, feeling utterly lonely in a crowd.

I don’t want to say goodbye.

Jackie spread her hands wide, talking about the biggest fish she ever caught. Regina pointed out she was there in that canoe, too. Lucille gave them an absent-minded nod.

Change is scary.

Jackie drank an entire scorpion bowl. Regina’s cheeks were flushed. Lucille swirled the murky liquor in her glass.

Even the city changes, too.

But that got her thinking. Even a city could change. Even a life could change. Even the planet would get swallowed by the sun some day. Was there anything that didn’t change? Seasides erode, mountains rise, metal rusts, continents shift.

Change was an inevitability. Nothing could ever remain static. Lucille would have to say countless goodbyes in her life. But, when she flipped that around, it made her think - she would say a whole lot of hello’s in her life, too. In fact, until that final change in her life, that one that put her six feet under, then every goodbye she said would be linked with saying a hello. It would never just be a goodbye in a vacuum.

And that applied even right now. Lucille looked at her reflection in the glass - her eyes looked bittersweet. But maybe that was just life’s general taste. For everything bitter, there was something sweet, too. And maybe, just maybe, tonight wouldn’t be just a goodbye - it could also be hello.

The life she lived for four years was changing. But change wasn't automatically a negative. 

Lucille picked up her glass.

Goodbye, young me.

She placed it on her lips.

And hello, old me.

As she drank, she realized that wasn’t quite right, either. Change wasn't always predictable, and you couldn’t always name a new era in your life before it began. 

Old? Sitting there in that booth while Jackie described how sick it would be to own a lightsaber, Lucille wasn’t quite sure.

She finished her drink and set it down with a satisfied sigh. She was only twenty-two, after all.

Hello, the me who experiences whatever comes next.

Jackie ordered another round of drinks, then gave Lucille a sympathetic look. “You alright?”

“Sorry we couldn’t go to Wang’s,” Regina offered.

Lucille waved their concerns away. “It’s alright. I feel like I’ve spent too long just looking backwards in life. It’s about time I started looking forward, too. Know what I’m saying?”

The Miads shared glances, then answered in unison.

“...no.”

==========

Drinks flowed and time went on. It started raining outside, so the three remained at their table, watching water cascade down the window. Finally, right after Jackie finished her second scorpion bowl, she raised a struggling hand as the waitress approached.

“Check, please.”

She returned a minute later with it. With one hand on her stomach, Jackie tossed her credit card onto the receipt. “Let’s give ‘em twenty percent for the tip.”

Through the alcoholic haze, through the bitterness and the sweetness, through the hinge of the final night of the old era and the first night of something new, Lucille awoke and gasped.

“T-twenty percent? For what!”

And that’s how Lucille got banned at yet another restaurant.

Some things never really do change.