The Sun Is Also a Star(8)

People say these things to make sense of the world. Secretly, in their heart of hearts, almost everyone believes that there’s some meaning, some willfulness to life. Fairness. Basic decency. Good things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people.

No one wants to believe that life is random. My dad says he doesn’t know where my cynicism comes from, but I’m not a cynic. I am a realist. It’s better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be. Things don’t happen for a reason. They just happen.



But here are some Observable Facts: If I hadn’t been late to my appointment, I wouldn’t have met Lester Barnes. And if he hadn’t said the word irie, I wouldn’t have had my meltdown. And if I hadn’t had my meltdown, I wouldn’t now have the name of a lawyer known as “the fixer” clutched in my hand.

I head out of the building past security. I have an irrational and totally unlike-me urge to thank that security guard—Irene—but she’s a few feet away and busy fondling someone else’s stuff.

I check my phone for messages. Even though it’s only 5:30 a.m. in California where she is, Bev’s texted a string of question marks. I contemplate telling her about this latest development but then decide it’s not really a development.

Nothing yet, I text back. Selfishly I wish again that she were here with me. Actually, what I wish is that I were there with her, touring colleges and having a normal senior-year experience.

I look down at the note again. Jeremy Fitzgerald. Mr. Barnes wouldn’t let me call for an appointment from his phone.

“It’s a very long shot,” he said, before basically shoving me out the door.

Observable Fact: You should never take long shots. Better to study the odds and take the probable shot. However, if the long shot is your only shot, then you have to take it.





ON HER LUNCH BREAK, Irene downloads the Nirvana album for herself. She listens to it three times in a row. In Kurt Cobain’s voice she hears the same thing Natasha hears—a perfect and beautiful misery, a voice stretched so thin with loneliness and wanting that it should break. Irene thinks it would be better if it did break, better than living with wanting and not having, better than living itself.

She follows Kurt Cobain’s voice down down down to a place where it is black all the time. After looking him up online, she finds that Cobain’s story does not have a happy ending.

Irene makes a plan. Today will be the last day of her life.

The truth is, she’s been thinking about killing herself on and off for years. In Cobain’s lyrics she finally finds the words. She writes a suicide note addressed to no one: “Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.”





I’M ONLY TWO STEPS OUT of the building before I dial the number. “I’d like to make an appointment for today as soon as possible, please.”

The woman who answers sounds like she’s in a construction zone. In the background I hear the sound of a drill and loud banging. I have to repeat my name twice.

“And what’s the issue?” she asks.

I hesitate. The thing about being an undocumented immigrant is you get really good at keeping secrets. Before this whole deportation adventure began, the only person I told was Bev, even though she’s not usually that great with secrets.

“They just slip out,” she says, as if she has absolutely no control of the things coming out of her mouth.

Still, even Bev knew how important it was to keep this one.

“Hello, ma’am? Can you tell me your issue?” the woman on the phone prompts again.

I press the phone closer to my ear and stand still in the middle of the steps. Around me, the world speeds up like a movie on fast-forward. People walk up and down the stairs at three times speed with jerky movements. Clouds zoom by overhead. The sun changes position in the sky.



“I’m undocumented,” I say. My heart races like I’ve been running a very long way for a very long time.

“I need to know more than that,” she says.

So I tell her. I’m Jamaican. My parents entered the country illegally when I was eight. We’ve been here ever since. My dad got a DUI. We’re being deported. Lester Barnes thought Attorney Fitzgerald could help.

She sets an appointment for eleven a.m.

“Anything else I can help you with?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “That will be enough.”

The lawyer’s office is uptown from where I am, close to Times Square. I check my phone: 8:35 a.m. A small breeze kicks up, lifting the hem of my skirt and playing through my hair. The weather is surprisingly mild for mid-November. Maybe I didn’t need my leather jacket after all. I make a quick wish for a not-too-freezing winter before remembering that I probably won’t be around to see it. If snow falls in a city and no one is around to feel it, is it still cold?

Yes. The answer to that question is yes.

I pull my jacket closer. It’s still hard for me to believe that my future is going to be different from the one I’d planned.

Two and a half hours to go. My school’s only a fifteen-minute walk from here. I briefly consider heading over so I can have one last look at the building. It’s a very competitive science magnet high school, and I worked very hard to get into it. I can’t believe that after today I may never see it again. In the end I decide against going; too many people to run into, and too many questions like “Why aren’t you in school today?” that I don’t want to answer.