Читать книгу What We Lose - Zinzi Clemmons - Страница 27

My college was four hours away by train, up in New England, one of the top places in the country. When I was accepted, no one was surprised—I was always known as a brain—but there was a renewed interest in me, both positive and negative. My teachers smiled at me in the hallways. A few from junior high made the mile-long trek to my high school to congratulate me. The white students who were disappointed in the admissions process—who ended up with their last pick, or somewhere low on their lists—were envious. Some started ignoring me, rolling their eyes, or snickering as I walked by. Two students went so far as to question me outright, calling me an affirmative action baby. It was always something besides that I was simply better than them. Anything but that I was better than them.

At college, at least I didn’t have to deal with the problem of being exceptional. Everyone was exceptional in some way. Almost everyone was smart, and the ones who weren’t were either amazing athletes or super rich—celebrities, aristocrats, or children of celebrities.

I flitted in and out of various groups—black kids, artsy kids, and, for a brief time, stoner kids. I never settled on one group, because I was preoccupied with what was going on in my family. Between that and my studies, I had no room for close friends.

Instead, I stayed close to Aminah, who was in New York studying literature at NYU. I was proud because I recognized for the first time her desire to be independent, the way she was drawn to a life outside of the one she seemed so comfortable leading in our hometown. It was most likely this choice that encouraged me to keep in touch with her after we had moved out of our parents’ houses, that made me call and ask if I could sleep on her floor when I visited New York for a weekend concert, that led me to send e-mails and ask about her new life in the big city. That, in our first few years out of our respective nests, made us friends, not just sisters.

When Aminah left for NYU, Frank headed to Georgetown, and after never being apart for more than a night, they were five hours away from each other with little opportunity to visit. But somehow they seemed more blissfully in love than ever, and I realized that the divergence between our love lives—which had begun in high school—would be permanent.