From an outside perspective, Sam seemed fine, but internally she was fuming. She thought she had left this in her past. She thought that she’d grown up. But she had just done something that she hadn’t done in years: swiped something that wasn’t hers. As Sam cursed at herself in her head, she gently moseyed across the quad, gliding across the brick path she knew so well as a third year undergrad student. Her mind was zoned in on the small shiny object sitting at the bottom of her backpack. Why oh why did she need to grab that thing? She didn’t even want a screwdriver. Hell, she didn’t know if she’d even used one before. Had no projects to tend to, no furniture to assemble, no screws to drive. Yet just mere minutes ago when she walked by her friend’s hallmates hanging cheap shelves in their dorm room, their tools strewn along the hall, those girls with their light lives and their bouncy giggles, she glanced at it, that screwdriver, within arms reach, and knew that she had no choice but to obey the whisper in her head that lured her to just take it.
Sam was in third grade the first time that she stole, and she didn’t steal because she needed to. She was sitting at her singular beige classroom desk, the one with her name on it with little fishes surrounding the S. She was staring at one of the fish, the one that looked like an angel fish but with a human-like smile, staring right at her. Ms. Stillard was reading some story about a sad boy and Sam was zoning in and out. The only thing tempting her attention was the smell in the room — the smell of peaches. Sam didn’t even know if she liked the taste of peaches, she had never had one before. But as Ms. Stillard flipped through the story at the front of the room, pausing to check for understanding, Sam sat with the smell of the peach lotion that Ms. Stillard lathered on her teacher hands every morning. As she sat there half-listening to the words coming out of Ms. Stillard’s mouth and fully smelling her peachy hands as they flipped the page, Sam realized she wanted her own smell. One that someone could smell as she passed them in the hall and be like, yeah, there goes Sam, I smell her peachy lotion.
Sam was an all around good kid. The kind that raised her hand and smiled and focused with her furrowed eyebrows and shushed other kids when they weren’t paying attention. Every teacher she’d ever had adored her, and Ms. Stillard was no exception. Just last week Ms. Stillard had let Sam pick a treasure of her choice from the treasure chest for being a considerate classmate. She had given Greg one of her snacks when he had dropped his on the floor. So Sam was surprised by herself when, after reading time, she lingered in the classroom as all the other students shuffled single file out of the room to head to recess. Without realizing what she was doing, she quickly tip-toed to Ms. Stillard’s desk, peered into her small wicker basket, grabbed the peach lotion bottle, and put it in her pocket. She was out the classroom door and in line with the rest of the group before anyone could notice.
As soon as Sam got home that day she ran to the bathroom, took out the lotion, and stared at it. Her heart was racing and she felt like she was going to throw up. She shoved the lotion in the bathroom drawer and ran outside to jump on the trampoline, blow off some steam. She bounced and bounced and bounced, wore herself out. By the time her parents called her in for dinner she had completely forgotten about the peach lotion incident.
But then the next day came and she had to confront Ms. Stillard. Surely, she would know her peach lotion was missing, and surely she’d suspect that Sam was the culprit. But Ms. Stillard greeted Sam that morning how she greeted her on all days, with a smile and a hug. Throughout the day Sam paid extra close attention to any cues she might pick up on indicating that Ms. Stillard was onto her, but the lady was clearly oblivious. Sam exhaled real deep.
What Sam wanted to know was why the heck she did what she did. Because now, in hindsight, she was stuck. She couldn’t return the lotion without risk being caught, and she would continue to be tormented by her guilt if she kept it at home. If she wanted the same peach lotion Ms. Stillard had, Sam knew that her parents would get it for her in a heartbeat. The problem wasn’t that they weren’t willing to help Sam. The problem was that Sam had forgotten how to ask for help.
Here she was, walking across her prestigious college campus, feeling just like she did in her childhood bathroom. Her throat felt tight and her neck and cheeks flushed red with shame. Sam no longer felt like the econ major, climate club treasurer, dean’s list student she had identified as for the past couple years. Those flimsy titles rolled overboard like an empty paper cup on a boat at sea, easily toppled. Instead, she could almost smell that peachy lotion, almost taste that shame.
As Sam finished crossing the quad and arrived at her dorm, she clocked the fob, rushed up the stairs, and slammed the door behind her. She let out a deep breath. She pulled out the desk chair and took a seat at the beige desk. Here she was again.
Sam opened her bookbag and fished out the screwdriver. She held it somberly in her hands and began to weep.
Just last week, Sam’s life had been at the peak of an uphill climb. If her life was a graph, the line was a maximizer’s dream, ever-climbing upward. Sure, there had been hiccups here and there, but year by year Sam’s life was objectively getting better and better. Sam had realized a few key life lessons since joining college and she was eager to put those lessons into practice.
The most important lesson was fake it till you make it. No one knows where you’re from, no one knows what you know, so act like you belong and you will. No one had explicitly taught her this lesson, but Sam had long been an observer. Within her first two days on campus her freshman year she could sense the shut-downs happening in front of her before they even happened. She’d watched a girl in the cafeteria approach a large group of girls and ask to sit with them. It wasn’t the words she used to ask the question, but the way she carried herself that earned her a cold shoulder from the group. On her first day of classes Sam watched another girl tentatively raise her hand and answer the professor’s question with a soft voice and a word that came out like a question. “Is that a statement or a question?” the professor barked back. The class had chuckled and the girl shrunk in her seat.
No, Sam was not going to be that girl. So she spoke firmly and looked people in the eyes, even when her inner voice was shaky. She acted like she didn’t need new friends, wasn’t overeager. And after a couple months of the faking it, she felt freer. More her. Less fake. As classes went on she realized that what she didn’t know she could learn. And more importantly she made friends. She was a bit of a social butterfly, a drifter. She had a close friend in the climate club, Tiara, who had introduced her to the club in the first place. They talked about their shared love for National Geographic articles and talked about the myriad little heroes working to combat climate change on a local level all over the world. She had Leigh, her econ classmate turned study buddy. They quizzed each other while eating popcorn on Leigh's dorm bed, spent late nights in the library together, debriefed classes afterwards. There was Sarah, her running buddy. They’d meet bright and early before classes or on the weekends and run long stretches through the quaint neighborhoods, hypothesizing about the neighbors.
Sitting there at her beige desk with the cold hard screwdriver heavy in her hand, Sam thought about calling Tiara or Leigh or Sarah. The problem was she didn’t know where she could even begin. Even though Sam was friends with these girls, there was a whole other world she existed in that they didn’t really know. Sam’s college friends knew her as Sam in college. And Sam felt like Sam in college. She felt herself. She made decisions that were her own and was living a life just as her own, too. Her friends didn’t know much about her family since she only ever talked about them in surface level ways.
Last Tuesday, after taking an exam, she opened her phone to see three missed calls from her mom. Everything is fine, but call us back, a text from her mom said. Sam’s mind went a million places and her heart felt big and fast. On the phone with her mom she heard about Jeremy’s suicide attempt. Heard about the way her brother was found. Heard about how he was now recovering at the hospital. Heard about how he was okay and about how we are lucky and about how things are going to get better. Sam nodded and listened and thanked her mom for the update on her brother before hanging up. Then, Sam stood up, put on some chapstick, redid her ponytail, and walked to her next class.
Sam once knew how to ask for help. Back when she was in second grade she had been described by teachers as shy and nervous. She would cry when her mom dropped her off at school and she’d cuddle her when she came home. Then one day something happened. She still doesn’t know exactly what, but she knew that something happened with Jeremy, something that scared her parents, and that things shifted after the incident. Sam noticed that Jeremy smiled less and stayed on the computer more. Her older brother who used to play tag with her, tickle her, tell her silly stories, was now a shell of a boy. She gave him space. She stopped asking to play.
When she’d come home from school her parents would ask her questions at the dinner table.
“How was school today sweetie? What did you learn?”
Sam was bubbling with the real questions living in her throat. What is happening to Jeremy? Is he okay? But instead she gave them the simplicity that their eyes seemed to plead for. “I learned fractions today. Mrs. T said I’m doing a good job with them.”
She’d notice the way their expectant faces settled into relief, a calm that she had created. She could create calm.
How would she create calm out of this mess? Sitting there at her beige desk, she traced the screwdriver in her hands with her index finger. It was cold and hard and heavy. It was useless. She looked at the clock. Tiara had invited her to a bonfire that night and she should start getting ready soon.
Sam first pulled out a pen and paper. When she was younger, she used to write her parents little notes, corny messages that came from an elementary school student’s brain. Her letters to them later on in life doubled down on her calm-making abilities. When it was windy and the sailboat of their lives was on the verge of tipping over, she’d say just the right thing to smooth the sails, steady the boat, ride the wind.
With the screwdriver in one hand and a pen in the other, she says all the things she felt she shouldn’t when she was younger. All the negative feelings that she wished away and that later bubbled up — the confusion, the shame, the fear, the anger. She wrote them down. There were questions, too. About Jeremy and about why they never really talked about what was happening to him. What he was going through. What was he going through?
By the end of the letter, Sam’s sobs had turned into the long and muffled whimpers that indicate the end of a cry session. She folded the letter and put it in her back pocket. She grabbed her purse and phone and headed to the bonfire.
Tiara greeted her as she entered the house. They caught up about their weeks. Tiara had just accepted an internship for the summer. Sam had one lined up too, so they’d both be living on campus again. They did a little squeal-dance.
“Listen,” said Sam. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, and I’m not really ready to talk about it yet, but something’s going on with my family and I’m having a hard time processing it. It’s hard to explain.”
“Aw Sammy,” Tiara squeezed her hand. “ I’m sorry. You don’t need to explain. I’m here to listen if you ever want to talk.” Tiara gave her a big hug. “Anything I can do to be supportive right now? Take a shot with you? Be your wing woman? Leave this place and watch a movie?”
Sam chuckled. “Just one thing.” She grabbed Tiara’s hand and brought her to the backyard, toward the fire. They stood in front of it, close, too close. Other students at the party started looking at them, but Sam didn’t care. She took the letter to her parents out of her back pocket and threw it into the fire. She watched it burn, its ash floating upward, releasing into the air outside of her. She felt lighter.
