Stripped (6 page)

When it’s all over, I cling to Devin’s arm and try to breathe as we pick our way carefully through the grass and between the headstones. My heels stick in the ground, wet from a recent rain.
 

“Grey, wait!” I hear my father’s voice.
 

I stop and turn. I nod at Dev so she continues to her car. I wait for Daddy to run up to me. He’s fighting tears as he puffs to a stop in front of me.
 

He wipes his face with his palm. “I hate the way things are. You’re all I have left.”
 

His parents both died when I was nine, and Mama’s parents died before I was born. He’s all I have, too. “I hate the way things are, too, Daddy.”

“Then you’ll stay?” He sounds so hopeful.

I laugh/sob. “No, I’m not staying. I could stay if you could accept me for who I am. Support my decisions, even if you don’t agree with them.”

“You’re really going to move to Los Angeles, whether I want you to or not?”

“Yes, Daddy. I’m going to L.A., no matter what. You’re my father, and I want to love you. I want to have a relationship with you. But if you can’t understand that I’m going to live my life
my
way, why bother trying? You’ve never understood me and never wanted to try. You’ve never approved of anything I do, anything I like. You don’t understand why I dance. You don’t understand why I want to make movies. And the worst thing is, you’re not even going to try to understand.” I shift my purse higher on my shoulder and meet his eyes, pleading with him one last time.
 

He just stares at me. “Grey, can’t we compromise a little?”

“Compromise how? You mean I give up film school to make you happy?”
 

He rolls his shoulders in a half-shrug. “Well…not give up what you want, just meet me in the middle.”

“There
is
no middle in this, Daddy. I’m going, one way or another. Whether or not we have a relationship when I leave is up to you. Our relationship is on you.”

His eyes harden, and he stuffs his hands in his pocket. “Fine, then. Be a prodigal.”

I laugh. “God, you’re so dramatic. I’m not a prodigal, I’m doing what’s right for me. You just can’t accept that.” I straighten my back and harden my heart. “Goodbye, Daddy.”

“’Bye, Grey.”
 

Neither of us says “I love you.” There are no hugs. I wait for him to change his mind. He doesn’t. I turn away then, walk over to Devin’s car and slide into the passenger seat.

Devin asks, “Are you—”

“I’m fine.” I clench my jaw to keep from crying again.

“Well, that’s some bullshit, but whatever helps you through it.” Devin glances at me, eyes concerned.
 

“He doesn’t…he just won’t let it go. He doesn’t have any give to him.” I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms, trying to push away the burning. “He won’t accept what I want to do, and I ain’t—I’m not gonna let him run my life anymore.”

The tears come then. I can’t help it. Just a few trickling down, and I don’t bother wiping them away. I don’t care if my makeup is running.
 

“So now what?” Devin asks.

I shrug. “Now? I move to L.A.”

“Alone?”

I nod. “I guess so.”

The rest of the drive to Devin’s house is quiet. She doesn’t know what to say, and neither do I.
 

*
 
*
 
*

Devin walks me to the security gate at the airport. Everything I own fits in a suitcase and a duffel bag, which have been checked in. I’ve only flown once before, two years ago for my sweet sixteen New York trip with Mama. She had helped me through the process. I hug Devin, tell her goodbye. I’m alone now.
 

I turn and wave one last time to Devin, and then focus on the security checkpoint. An older man with thick glasses sits at a desk, his uniform shirt bright blue. In my hand I have the boarding pass Devin’s dad printed out for me.
 

“Driver’s license?” he says without looking at me.

I dig through my purse, find my license, and show it to him. He glances at me, at the ID, scribbles something onto my boarding pass, and then waves me through. Around me, people seem to know what they’re doing. I don’t. I watch the woman ahead of me step out of her heels, pull a thick black laptop from her carry-on bag and place that in a white container. In a separate one goes her purse, license, boarding pass, and shoes. I follow her lead, stepping out of my dance flats and putting them in a container with my other belongings. I wait my turn to step into a thing that looks like something from Star Trek, a spinning wall in a circular glass enclosure. I’m told to lift my arms over my head, and the machine spins around me.
 

What if they want to search me? I don’t have anything to hide, but I’m anxious anyway. They pass me through without a second glance, and I retrieve my things. The whole process seems…embarrassing, strangely intimate. Businessmen in suits traipsing around in dress socks, women in bare feet, juggling their belongings and trying to keep out each other’s way, and all the while the blue-shirted TSA men and women watch apathetically, shouting instructions and looking stern.
 

I find my gate after passing bookstores, duty-free shops, restaurants, and groups of travelers with backpacks and headphones, rolling carry-on bags with extended handles. Everyone is with someone else. I see one other solo traveler at my gate, a man in his thirties with a carefully trimmed goatee and an expensive-looking briefcase. He has three cellphones on his belt and a suit coat draped over his arm, and is reading a precisely folded
New York Times
. He glances at me, looks me over, and dismisses me. No one else even seems to see me.
 

I’ve never in my whole life felt so alone. I have my iPod and a paperback copy of
Breath, Eyes, Memory
that Devin gave me. I’m not sure why she thought I needed this book, but it’s something to pass the time. For the hour that I wait, I set aside my own life and lose myself in the struggles of other people.
 

The flight is long and boring. I finish the book halfway through and then I’m stuck with nothing to do but listen to my iPod on “repeat.” I leaf through a Skymall catalogue. The landing is rough and jouncing, and the airport in L.A. huge and confusing. It still feels like this could be a dream, like I can wake up in my bed at home, and Mama will be there, alive, and she’ll make me lunch. Eventually, I find the luggage claim and wait for my bags. There’s a new rip in the side of my duffel bag.
 

I follow the signs to the exit, and when the glass doors slide open, I’m assaulted by a wave of dry heat. Suddenly, it all seems more real. I have four hundred dollars in my purse; half of that is mine, saved from my allowance. The rest is a gift from Devin’s parents. It’s all I have. Four hundred dollars. A cab ride from LAX to USC costs $40, and I’m left with $360 dollars to my name. I haven’t eaten since I left Devin’s house, so my stomach rumbles. I’m too nervous and scared to eat. The cab driver is a huge, burly, silent black man with thin dreadlocks hanging to his shoulders. He doesn’t say a word. When we arrive at USC, he simply points at the fare meter and waits expectantly. I pay, parting with the money reluctantly.
 

USC is huge. I follow other young-looking people around my age, some equally as scared. Most of them have their moms or dads with them, some both. No one notices me. I follow the crowd to an office swarming with people. There’s an orientation, a tour of the campus. Maps are handed out along with cheap day-planners. My dorm room is a box with bunk beds on one side; a thin, shallow closet; and a tiny computer desk, which I assume belongs to my roommate. It’s off-white, and there’s a thin window in one corner with dirty white blinds tilted to one side, letting in a dull glow from outside.
 

My roommate is already there, sitting on the bottom bed, flipping through an issue of
Vanity Fair.
She’s a few inches shorter than me, several sizes smaller, and model-gorgeous. Her makeup is perfect. Her platinum blonde hair is sleek and polished and perfectly coiffed in a French twist. Her clothes are expensive, and perfect. Her nails are French manicured, and a Dooney & Burke purse sits on the bed near her, an iPhone peeking out of the top. She smiles at me, takes in my outfit, off-brand but not cheap clothes—a knee-length skirt, a fitted but modest V-neck T-shirt, much-worn dance flats—and her smile dims a bit. She’s clearly unimpressed.
 

“So, are you an actress?” she asks. She sounds like a movie version of someone from “The Valley.”
 

“No. I’m going into production.”

“Oh, like, those
behind
-the-camera people?” She oozes disdain as she says this.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re from the South,” she points out.

“Yes. I’m from Macon.”

“Is that, like, in Alabama?”

I stare at her, and I wonder if she’s joking. “No, it’s in Georgia.”

“Oh. I’m Lizzie Davis.” She doesn’t offer to shake my hand.

“Grey Amundsen.”
 

“Grey. Like the color?”

“Yeah, well…except it’s spelled with an ‘e.’ G-R-E-Y.”

“Oh. Like
Fifty Shades.
”

I shrug, not wanting to admit I don’t know what she’s talking about. She smirks self-righteously and goes back to strumming her guitar. Her phone chimes, and she sets the guitar aside, crossing her legs and tapping at the phone. This goes on the entire time that I’m unpacking. I have no posters, no decorations at all except the photograph of Mama and me in New York. I don’t have a laptop, or a phone. I see a laptop on Lizzie’s desk, a big silver MacBook.
 

When I’m unpacked, I’m at loose ends. Lizzie is still texting or whatever she’s doing. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, and classes don’t start until Friday, and then we have the weekend off before the semester really gets under way. I climb the ladder then lie on my side and stare at the wall, missing my Mama. She’d tell me to stop moping and find something to do. Explore the city, dance. Make a film.
 

Instead, I lie on the top bunk and wonder if I’ve made a mistake coming here.

Chapter 5

The rumbling of my stomach becomes a constant over the next year. The stipend my scholarship gives me to live on is tiny, barely enough for the meals at the cafeteria, which are generally awful and far between. My classes take up most of my day from morning to evening, and I often only have time for a bagel in the morning and something quick and nasty in the evenings. I make good grades, a 4.0 for the first semester, 3.9 for the second. I study film, and I dance. My haven, my sanctuary away from everything, is a quiet room on the top floor of one of my lecture halls. I’ve never seen anyone else there, since the floor is primarily faculty offices. The room is large enough for my purposes, and empty except for a lone filing cabinet in one corner, so I can dance freely. There’s a window to let in daylight, and an outlet near the floor where I can plug in my portable iPod speaker dock.
 

I retreat there between classes, keeping the music turned low and the door locked. I find a song that hits me in the place within where movement lives, and I let go. I just move, just let my body flow. There’s no choreography, no rules, no expectations, no hunger or grades or homework or loneliness. Just the extension, the leap and the roll and the pirouette and the power of my legs, the tension in my core. I can be totally me there.
 

My first year goes fine. I’ve gotten a lot of the prerequisite courses out of the way, the English and the chemistry and the two semesters of a foreign language. My second year begins with my first mid-level courses and a few introductory film production classes. The absence of funds means I rarely leave the campus. I spend my days in lecture, taking notes, or in my dorm room doing homework. Lizzie is gone most of the time, often coming back at all hours, reeking of alcohol. She invited me to a party once, but I declined. I’m not interested.

My father never contacts me.
 

My twentieth birthday passes unnoticed. I spend it writing an essay for
Metropolis
on the use of camera angles and shot length. I’m not making any friends. I don’t know how to make the effort.
 

The only thing keeping me sane through this whole process is school. To most people, college is work. It’s something they have to go through to get on with their lives; for me, this
is
my life. For me, it’s not just about sitting through lectures and writing essays, it’s about learning a craft, a trade. I’m soaking up everything I can about film, about the process of taking an idea from some notes scrawled on a legal pad to a film on a big screen. I watch films in every spare moment, and I dissect them. I have my Flip camera everywhere I go, making short films about anything and everything. Most of those pieces are vignettes, just momentary slices of life set to music. They’re as much expression to me as dancing.
 

I’m halfway through my sophomore year when I get summoned to the financial aid office. It comes by way of a letter written in vague language saying there’s an issue with my status. Or something. I barely read it. I find my way to the office with its gray tile floor and gray pillars and red leather ottomans and partial cubicle offices. After a thirty-minute wait, I’m summoned by a woman in her mid-thirties with mocha skin and short, kinky black hair.
 

“Hi, Grey. I’m Anya Miller.”

“Hi, Mrs. Miller. I got a notice from this office about my financial aid.”

“Call me Anya, please.” She takes my student ID card and brings up my file, reading it with an increasingly blank expression, the kind of look that says she has news I won’t like. “Well, Grey. Your scholarships have been covering nearly all of your tuition and your book costs, as well as room and board. Unfortunately, you’ve used up most of the scholarship funds. You have enough to finish out this year, fully covered. Or you can stretch it out and it’ll cover some of your tuition, but not all. You’re listed as an independent, which means you’re capable of supporting yourself. If you were listed as a dependent on your parents and their income was low enough, you would qualify for financial aid. But since you’re an independent, you can work to support yourself.”