“As you know,” he says, “this is something I have some experience in. And I’m not saying there’s a right way or a wrong way to do it. But if you’re asking how I did it…well, let me see.
“I always had the destination in mind—the question was, how would I pay for the ticket? I don’t mean that literally—although I guess it’s there literally, too. But I mean it more like, what’s the thing that’s going to get you from where you’re stuck to where you want to be? And don’t get me wrong—when I say stuck, I don’t mean that my parents were mean or my friends were lame. I loved them all. But I loved the idea of setting off, the idea of New York even more. And I realized my ticket was music. Even when I was twelve, thirteen, I knew it was my ticket. Not that I loved it more than my family or my friends—but I knew that of all the things I loved in my life, it was the one that could travel with me.”
I remember feeling that way about music. I loved losing myself to it—but then I guess I felt that was a dodge, that I wasn’t supposed to lose myself. Which I’m realizing was as unfair to me as it was to the music.
Johan continues. “I also told myself that leaving doesn’t mean what it used to mean. I’m half a world away from my home, right? But I can still call them every day and see them every day, if I want. And that’s the key part: if I want. I get to control it. I haven’t left entirely, just by leaving.” Johan stops. “I know I’m not answering your question. How do you leave? You tell yourself you can go home whenever you need to. You tell yourself you’re trying something out. And you find something you love to take with you. You give yourself a chance to be someone else, but you don’t turn against the person you were. You give yourself room to breathe, and then you breathe. Did I have to go all the way from Cape Town to New York City to find that? Probably not. This is just one of the many ways it could have worked. But it has worked. I followed my dream. And here I am. So you need to follow your dream.”
“I love that,” Li says. “Follow your dream. It’s such a great way to trick yourself!”
“What do you mean?” Johan asks, before I get a chance to.
“Well, think about it. We always talk about our dreams as if they come from somewhere else. Follow what you think—no, that’s too straightforward. We don’t trust ourselves enough to do that. But follow your dream—there’s a beautiful lack of acknowledgment in there that, guess what, dreams are ours. They’re not being beamed to us from some cosmic cable station—they’re coming entirely from our minds. Saying you’re following your dream is just a way of giving yourself permission to follow your mind. And I’m all for that. Here—let me give you an example.”
She turns to Ilsa. “When I say that I’ve dreamed about you, Ilsa, what I’m really saying is that I want us to be together in a way that’s even greater than what we’ve been before. When I tell myself that following my dream led me to kiss you, what I’m really saying is there’s always been a part of me wanting to kiss you, and I finally let it take control. Opportunities are the openings that appear without our control, but what we do with those opportunities—that’s up to us.” She turns back to me. “So how do you leave? You let yourself leave. It’s as simple as that.”
She goes back to looking at Ilsa. So do I. They were kissing? Part of me wants to cheer. And part of me, honestly, wants to tell her to stop stepping on my territory.
“I’m not sure simple is the right word,” Caspian says. “Maybe change is simple for some people, but not for everyone.”
“Did you just call yourself a person?” KK asks. “That’s priceless.”
Caspian ignores her and leaves his button eyes on me.
“You must find your allies, because sometimes leaving is…hard. People believe you are a certain thing, and if you’re not who they want you to be, they can get confused, like my mother, or they can get angry, like my father. It’s hard for me to explain to you where I come from. It’s not an apartment like this.”
“Is it more like a drawer?” KK can’t help herself.
“JUST SHUT YOUR UGLY MOUTH!” Caspian screams at her. Then he turns to the rest of us. “I apologize. It was a mistake to engage with her, on all levels. What I mean is that our home is much more…modest. My father is a janitor. My mother works at a dollar store. Their expectation was that I would work, so I have worked. Contributed. But when I understood my…situation, they were not understanding. My father mocked me. I don’t mean once or twice. I mean for years. But leaving wasn’t an option, because in order to leave, you need money, and at age twelve, I didn’t have any money. Even now, I don’t have much.
“But my mother—she became my ally. I started off in secret, and then she became a part of the secret. Because that is what allies do—they allow you to let them in on the secret, and then they become a part of the secret until you start to feel that maybe it doesn’t need to be as much of a secret anymore. More than anything else, that was the fortress I was in. I think you understand.”
I nod.
“You are not alone, Sam. There are some people who are very alone. I was very alone until I understood how to be unalone. You already have allies. With some, it may take time for them to understand. Some”—and
