Being Samantha Masters
an homage-sequel to Being Christina Chase

Chapter One: The Pamphlet

Samuel Masters stared at the clock on the wall in his grandparents’ living room. 8:45pm. “Where do all of these rugrats come from?” he said aloud, the sound of his voice immediately swallowed by the hubbub of little bodies and shrill voices that filled the modest living room to overflowing. Sammy regularly was inundated by screaming children; it was just part of being a Levchenko. At eighteen, on the cusp of finishing his high school education, he felt it unfair that he, a Masters and not a Levchenko, was still dragged into each and every one of these “parties.” Something about the rugrats being his cousins. He wasn’t even sure which one of these ‘cousins’ was having the birthday this time. It seemed like a Levchenko birthday party happened every two or three weeks. And he was the guy who sat here, stuck with the little kids, praying for the day he could arrange his escape.

He was not just idly daydreaming, either; today he’d received a very exciting piece of mail. He’d pored over the glossy pamphlet, reading it twice over in the car ride to his grandparents’. It seemed to be burning a hole into his belly from where it sat in the kangaroo pocket of his soft grey hoodie. He was going to show the pamphlet to his parents, and then everything would change. But first he had to survive this gauntlet.

The cousins all fell into two rough types: there were the big and beefies and there were the little waifs. Most of the big and beefies were the boys: they could almost field a whole football team, if everybody being the same age wasn’t necessary. They enjoyed, as they were enjoying right now, the diverting pasttime of pumelling each other into the ground. There were at least three wrestling matches happening on the living room floor, which tended to overlap and swap opponents every once in a while, especially when Gramma walked through and everyone pretended they were trying to smash each other’s faces in.

Most of the little waifs were the girls, and they were contributing the shrieks and cries that filled the room as the wrestling matches inevitably tumbled onto or close to them. Sammy closed his eyes as a particularly piercing objection went tearing through the room.

There were exceptions to the boy/girl rule, of course. There were a few wispy boys and a few beefy girls. They were just as shrill and violent as the rest.

And then of course there was Sammy, who was neither big and beefy nor a little waif. He was just sort of there, and unremarkable. The other thing that set him apart was that while everybody else was somewhere between pasty white to alabaster (even the half-Asian cousins, and Sammy had given up trying to figure out how either Aunt Lisa or Uncle Oliver were related to his own parents), Sammy was ruddy brown.

Samuel was adopted. And it seemed like every birthday, one of the cousins would have hit the age where they just finally realized that Sammy stuck out, and then they’d ask charming questions like where his “real” parents were, where he was from, and if he was ever going to bring some of “his” food to the family potlucks.

Kids from outside the family were even less tactful about it, and there had been a few years in middle school where some choice phrases had been scratched into his locker. The town of Oak Grove was not a large place, and everybody knew everybody else’s business. And so everybody in town knew that Samuel’s parents couldn’t have children of their own and they had to go to the Baby Store to get one. They knew that he didn’t share any blood with anyone in town. That he was there by sufferance. Everyone knew that everyone pretended that he belonged here, just by sticking around so long.

Last week, he didn’t mind it all so much. Or he did—the cousins were relentlessly loud—but he’d been inured to it. Resigned. He believed then that his byzantine family and their little mountain utopia Oak Grove was a prison. A pretty prison, as his mother was constantly trying to remind him. But a prison nonetheless. He didn’t belong here, but the friendly folks of the town were going to grind him down until he fit.

He was going to graduate high school, get a job either making furniture with his uncle or working at the family grocery store with his grandfather, get trapped into marriage by some local girl (not, preferably, a cousin), settle down, and get busy producing Levchenko great-grandchildren. He’d be folded into the fabric of Oak Grove life until nobody remembered he was adopted, until nobody remembered anything about him, in fact; until he was just another local.

But Today was different. Today he had the pamphlet. Today he knew that he could get out.

The party was winding down—you could tell by the rising crescendo of childish screams, indicating that a parent would soon be in to declare it time to find shoes and coats and get ready to get in the car. Which sounded like this torment was just about over, but then Gramma would insist everyone take leftovers. Then everybody would spend another half hour as the tupperware got broken out and the food was divvied up and distributed. Meanwhile everybody would sweat in their parkas, the smallest kids would somehow lose the shoes off their feet, and then parents would root around behind couches looking for them.

Seeing a soft shambling shape approach the living room door, Sammy leapt up to intercept his grandmother. “Gramma, can I help you clean up leftovers?” he asked, gesturing at the kitchen table heaped high with half-scooped-out casserole dishes. If the leftovers were packaged early, maybe they could all get out of here that much sooner. Sammy was feeling downright heroic.

But Gramma only patted his elbow. “Of course not, dear. You have fun with your cousins.” She nodded vaguely at the children trying to kill each other. “You show them a thing or two yeah? You’re so big and strong.”

“I’m… not,” Sammy sighed. He might have a few inches of height on his beefy cousins, but they could easily make up the difference in sheer power. And there was nothing quite so mortifying as being pinned to the ground by your younger cousin. Gramma was already moving away. He listened as she called over some of the older girl-cousins and set them to packaging up leftovers. Silver lining, at least: they’d be out of here that much sooner.

With a gusty sigh, he skirted the most tumultuous corners of the living room, opened the front door, and stepped outside. The January air was crisp and cold; he wrapped his hands around his shoulders. Down at the end of the long porch, the ladies of the clan sat in a circle of beautifully-carved wooden chairs. Their conversation was muted, punctuated by the clink of glass and bursts of throaty laughter. He stepped up to the edge of the circle.

“Hey there, honey,” his mother called, and the murmur of conversation immediately ground to a halt. His mother was all smiles (and reddened cheeks; there were at least five wine bottles lined up along the side of the house) and gestured him forward for a hug. “Did you need something?”

Yeah, a break from his cousins. But he was standing in front of his cousins’ mothers—all of them staring up at him, no longer talking, just putting up with his interruption—which didn’t seem like a very receptive audience for that kind of answer. “Gramma’s starting to pack up leftovers,” he said instead. “So party’s wrapping up soon.”

“I should help her,” his mother said, and shot up to her feet, only to wobble and then slowly collapse to the right. The other moms erupted in peals of laughter, and thin-wristed hands darted out to gently return her to her chair. “Or maybe I’ll sit,” she amended, and did so. She smiled again at Sam, without a great deal of focus. “You should probably tell your father that I’m ready to be poured into my passenger seat.”

Sammy looked across the yard to the barn, which was lit up in the inky night. More throaty laughter, of a far more baritone variety, echoed out of the structure. “Do I have to?”

“You know you’re eighteen, now,” Aunt Nina pointed out. “If you got tired of hanging out with the kids at these things, I think the men would be happy to have you.”

Sammy pursed his lips. He liked his uncles individually. He was less enamoured of them in a group. “Well at least they’ll be sober, right?”

The women snorted softly. “They’ll be mostly sober,” Aunt Steph corrected. “They take their turn to drive families home very seriously, but also think we can’t notice if they’ve had one or two.”

But Sam was already heading across the yard, trudging though slushy snow. It was only a moment before he stood before the barn door. He could hear the men on the other side talking, laughing. By the cadence of things, he could tell that his father was telling a story. He took a deep breath and pulled the door open.

Just as with the moms, the dads’ conversation stopped on a dime. The five of them looked askance; after a moment, his father said, “What is it, Sam?”

“Gramma broke out the Tupperware,” he said, hooking a thumb behind him. “So party’s almost over. And mom’s gonna need help getting to the car.”

“Aw, my passenger princess,” Sam’s father chuckled, to the amusement of the other dads. He nodded. “I’ll be out shortly, son,” he said with the casual finality that he thought was genial and Sammy knew was a pretty potent shut down. Dad wanted to finish his story, and to do so in private.

Thinking of Aunt Nina’s suggestion, Sammy screwed up his courage and asked, “Can I stay with you guys until then?”

His dad pursed his lips, but Uncle Olliver said, “Sure, Sam. Come on in.”

Sammy stepped fully into the barn and shut the door behind him. It wasn’t exactly warm in here, but it was certainly cold outside. This had once been Uncle Alexei’s workshop; in recent years it had been turned into a sort of collective man-cave. It had started with a dart board, and then a sideboard to hold drinks, and then billiards, and then a flat-screen television to watch football. To Sammy it always seemed just a touch sad.

“What were you guys talking about?” he asked as he approached the line of them.

“Nothing you need worry about,” Sam’s grandfather answered, with a finality that was far less genial.

And that about killed the mood in the barn. The dads looked uncertainly at each other for a few beats, and then started asking the usual questions: how was school (shitty, but he knew to say ‘challenging’), did he see the last comic book movie (he was so over those schlocky, childish movies, and yes, he absolutely had), was there a girl he had his eye on (not in fucking Oak Grove). What little conversation was generated by the boring questions and boring answers withered and died.

Sammy shoved his hands in his hoodie’s pocket. “Sorry for killing the mood,” he said. He fingered the pamphlet, hidden away. Later. That conversation was soon, but later.

The dads all voluably denied that Sam had, as he so clearly had, thrown a wet blanket on the proceedings.

He shrugged. “Aunt Nina just mentioned that since I’m eighteen, maybe I could ditch the kids and come… talk… manly things.” He sniggered at how stupid he sounded.

“Drinking age is twenty-one,” grandfather answered stoutly.

Sammy did a poor job of hiding his smirk. “I thought you guys were dry tonight.” Suddenly no one wanted to meet his eye.

Finally his father said, “We’ve been dry for the past ninety minutes. We may have started the evening with a few modest drinks, but we are very capable of driving home.”

“I am not,” grandfather said with a belch.

“You’re not driving,” Uncle Alexei reminded his father with a roll of his eyes.

Sammy nodded and started slowly drifting backwards towards the barn doors. “I get it,” he said, bobbing his head. “Okay. Well I’m gonna go pick out the biggest desert Tupperware before anybody else nabs them.” He turned to go.

“Hey Sam. Samuel,” called Oliver, breaking away from the other dads to come plant a solid hand on the boy’s shoulder. He didn’t stop Sam’s movement toward the door and instead walked alongside him. “Listen, don’t let it bother you. Next time why don’t you hang with us from the start?”

“Next time it’s your turn to drink,” Sammy pointed out, trying to keep the sour note out of his voice. “You still want me kicking around?”

“Maybe the birthday party after that, then,” Oliver conceded with a smirk. As the barn door rose before them, he tugged Sam to a stop. “Look. You’re at a rough age. I sympathize.”

“I don’t think it’s my age,” Sammy sighed and, what the hell, decided to confide in his uncle. “I don’t think it’s going to change.”

“I know it doesn’t feel like it now,” Oliver sympathized with a rough shake of Sammy’s shoulder, “but you’d be surprised how fast things can change. Sometimes so fast you never even see it coming.”

Sammy nodded morosely. “Yeah,” he said, for lack of anything better to say, and slipped out the door.

It was almost an hour before Sammy finally trudged out to the family Lexus, two paper bags of leftovers in each hand. (“Here, you take more,” Gramma insisted, “So big and strong!”) He fumbled for the back door handle, paper bag straps digging into the hook of his fingers, fingertips trying to coax the latch open. No matter how he twisted, however, the door refused to budge.

For a moment he considered putting the bags down, but the half-melted slush on the ground would seep through the paper bags in a moment. He tried lifting the bags to put them on top of the car, but the weight was too great and the bags too tall for him to manage. With a disgusted grunt, he dropped them back to his sides and waited for his parents.

His reflection in the car window stared back at him, sneering in shared frustration. A spiky mop of dark hair sat above his, let’s be honest, unremarkable features. He wasn’t sure if he still had a bit of a baby face or if his general lack of physical fitness qualified him for a fat face. His dark eyes just sort of sat there, swimming in facial features that never really came together. He just looked like a generic brown kid of indeterminate age.

He’d attempted a moustache last year, which he’d hoped would give his face a little definition and maybe make him look a little older. Like the brown late-teens characters he saw on television (for lack of a comparison here in town). But it hadn’t made him look older, just the same age but pathetically trying to look older. Despite the hairs being dark and thick, everything came in patchy, which did not anchor anything, face-wise. So he’d abandoned it. Most days he just sported a mess of stubble, now.

He looked away. Where were his parents? They were supposed to be right behind him. Saying endless rounds of goodbyes, probably. It took forever to escape Gramma’s house.

Finally the front door opened and disgorged his parents, his mother pressed up against his father with that lovestruck smile she sported so often. He strutted along, supporting her only slightly-weaving steps, with the proud air of a man with a prize. They carried on like this all the damn time. His parents were so immeasurably embarrassing.

After some shuffling, bag-juggling, and other jostling, the food was stowed and passengers buckled in. His father twisted around to look backwards as he pulled down the gravel driveway, his hand on the back of the passenger seat. His mother lolled dreamily in her seat, shifting slightly to press her forehead against her husband’s forearm.

Worried that his mother might be too sloshed for him to make his pitch, Sammy asked, “Just how hard did you hit the wine, mom?”

She gave him another broad, warm smile. “Not as hard as it looks. I’m also tired, and relaxed, and happy. Those flavours complement a nice pino grigio.”

“Can I… show you something?” he hazarded, fingers inside his hoodie and caressing the edge of the pamphlet. “Or should I wait till tomorrow?”

His mom’s eyebrow rippled at the surprise request, but she sat up a little straighter. “What is it?” she asked, sounding more coherent as she pulled herself together.

“Um, this came in the mail…” Sammy pulled the pamphlet out of his pocket and gingerly held it forward.

Having reached the road, Sam’s father turned to face forward. Glancing sideways at the pamphlet, he said, “Samuel, it’s pretty dark for reading…”

“That’s why we have these, dear,” his mom said and snapped on the reading light. She took the pamphlet. Sammy watched her eyebrows rise. “Preview Days? At Columbia?”

The car swerved slightly and his father swore. “What? Did you send away for this, son?”

“No, it just came in the mail,” he repeated patiently.

“How on earth do they know I have a college-age kid?” his father groused.

“Facebook data mining,” his wife answered readily and without looking up. She put a smile on her face. “Well this is very nice, Sammy. Do you… want to go? To Columbia?”

Sammy knew, like everyone in the car knew, that nobody at his high school expected Samuel Masters to go to college, let alone a prestigious one like his father’s alma mater. He had, in fact, assiduously avoided the topic last year when his mother started dropping hints.

“I’d like to go see it,” Sammy answered, which sounded like a compromise in his head. “I know I don’t have the best grades—”

“Columbia’s a very competitive school,” his father cut in, “with a very competitive applications process.”

“And I’m a legacy,” Sammy pointed out.

“I don’t think they really do that anymore, son.”

“Well I’d like to find out if they do,” the kid pressed his point. “I’d like to see what it looks like, I want to see what the classes are like. College is different than high school, right? Maybe what I didn’t like about high school won’t be a problem in college.”

And maybe, Sammy thought but did not say, he could go see the City. Maybe he could see, not just what school looked like, but what life looked like. Real life. Not the podunk knock-off that they had up here on the mountain.

His father leaned over to look at the pamphlet illuminated by the reading light. “It’s not going to work,” he said, all genial finality again. “That weekend your mother and I are in San Francisco for the trade show.”

This Sammy knew, was in fact planning on. Sammy wet his lips. This would be the hardest part of his pitch. “I thought maybe I could go on my own. An uncle can take me to Dover, and then it’s just a bus ride to the City.”

His parents looked worriedly at each other, and then his mother looked back and him. She had the distinct look on her face that she didn’t want what she had to say to hurt his feelings. “Oh honey, I don’t think… I know you’re eighteen, and you’re an adult, but… New York is… a hard place. And you’re not, well… very worldly.”

“You lived there, on your own, when you were my age,” Sammy responded with frustrated heat.

“And that wasn’t a very good idea,” she answered quickly, without any of her own heat. “Your grandfather and uncle had to come rescue me.”

His father was nodding at the road as it rolled underneath the car. “Your mother’s right. A weekend in the City, all on your own? You could get hurt. And we’d be on the other side of the continent.”

“I take a bus, I go to campus, I take some tours and stay overnight in a dorm, and then I get back on a bus—”

But his father was shaking his head. “Samuel, I know that sounds simple, but… you’ve no idea what the City can be like.”

I know, he muttered to himself. That’s why I want to go.

“Maybe we can go as a family some other time.”

Sammy gestured helplessly at the pamphlet. The magical pamphlet that was supposed to make this plan look safe and easy. “But all the presentations and things are during Preview Days. We’d miss all of it.”

“You can’t make a trip to the City all on your own,” his father told the rolling road. “You need somebody who knows the place, who can look out for you, who can keep you out of trouble.”

“Ooo!” squealed his mother, rather suddenly, and then sniggered. She looked sidelong at her husband.

He hazarded a quick glance at her. “Oh no, what now?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like it. What?”

Instead of speaking directly to his father, his mother turned her slightly-tipsy smile onto Sammy. “You could visit your uncles. You’ve got a cousin who lives there.”

“My what?”

“Christina—” his father growled warningly. Use of the first name, Sammy noted, was not a good sign.

“Your father’s brother, his husband, and their daughter,” his mother explained simply. “One of them even teaches at Columbia, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” his father grated. “He does.”

Mom shifted back into her seat and stared up at her husband. “Richard, dear. Your son wants to see your alma mater. I know you two have history, but for your son, you can call your brother and ask for a favor.”

Sammy had known he had an uncle on his father’s side; he knew that he was a university professor. He hadn’t known he was gay married, or that he had a kid. And he didn’t know he lived in the City. This changed things.

His mother was watching his father, waiting for the right moment to press her advantage. “It would make your son very happy,” she added. “It would make me very happy.”

“I know, I know,” he sighed. “And I already know you’re going to work on me until I agree to do it, so I’m just giving up now.” He looked up to the rear-view mirror to make eye contact with Sammy. “Okay,” he sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“The City is dangerous,” Uncle Alexei lectured, his mammoth hands wrapped around the steering wheel. He never looked up from the road, but somehow he was also looking at Sammy in the passenger seat. “There’s criminals, there’s drugs. The streets are full of cars and nobody looks where they’re going.”

“I’ll be careful, Alexei,” Sammy grinned, trying to cajole his uncle into a better mood. Usually Alexei was the chill one. Now he was… disturbingly intense.

“There are crosswalks,” his uncle went on. “You use them, okay?”

That one caught Sammy off guard. “I mean… sure?”

Alexei shook his head. “You don’t understand. Everybody else? Who lives there? They just walk out into the street. Into crazy traffic.” He took one hand off the wheel to point a thick finger at Sammy. “You don’t do that, okay? You go to the corner. You wait for the signal. You only cross at the crosswalk.”

Sammy couldn’t help but laugh. “I know how to—”

“Make eye contact with every driver you walk in front of,” Alexei insisted.

Sammy gave up and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy,” his uncle said, clapped him heavily on the shoulder, and then went back to driving.

A few miles passed before Sammy asked, “You’ve been to the City, right?”

“Many times,” Alexei nodded, and then thought better of it. “Well. A few times. I don’t like being there. It’s noisy. It smells.”

“Mom said you… rescued her?” he prodded gently. “From when she was living there?”

His uncle smirked at the road. “Your mother is headstrong, like the rest of the family. And when she was young, she thought she had to go it alone. Do everything herself. Get whatever job she could, pay her own rent. Be independent.” He put a sneering spin on that last word.

Oh great, more of this stuff. “You’re independent,” Sammy pointed out. “Or is that only for big manly men like us?”

Alexei spat out laughter. “That’s good, ha. That’s funny.”

Sammy scowled. He knew he wasn’t big or manly, but his uncle didn’t have to rub it into his face.

Alexei looked sidelong at him and his expression of amusement dropped when he saw that he’d somehow hurt his nephew. “I am independent now,” he explained carefully. “But I lived in my father’s house until I was twenty-four. I always had a job at the family store whenever I wanted it. My father gave me the whole barn to use as a workshop for years—years!—before I went professional. And then the only reason I was ever able to make money with my furniture was because of your mother running the business.”

“Because she’s your receptionist?”

“That’s a joke,” Alexei scoffed, with a roll of his eyes. He glanced over at Sammy, then did a double-take. “You know that, right? The family says that because… oh never mind. Old joke. She’s not the receptionist or the secretary, she’s my partner. She handles all the numbers, all the advertising, all the logistics. And now she does that for the grocery store, too. Don’t underestimate your mother. Things don’t turn out well for those who do.”

Sammy hid his smirk by looking out the window. He didn’t mind hearing his mother praised so highly. For most of his life she’d presented as an unassuming housewife, focused on the feminine arts and domesticity. But maybe that was just the side that he saw at home.

“Yes, I have a house and I pay my own bills,” Alexei went on. “But I didn’t do all that the moment I turned eighteen. And the only reason I can do it now is because I didn’t try to do it then. I relied on family. That’s what we’re here for.”

Sammy bobbed his head. “Yeah. Speaking of which, thanks for the ride.”

“You’re welcome, but you don’t get what I’m saying,” Alexei pressed. “You need your family. And your family is at home. In Oak Grove. Not where you’re going.”

“But I do have family there—”

Alexei snorted. “They may be related, but they’re not family. Hank Masters turned his back on his family to go be a big-city doctor. He doesn’t understand how a real family works.”

“Did you know him?” Sammy asked in surprise.

“A little,” his uncle said. “He was two years ahead of me in school. Theater kid. Loud. Worked in… ugh, the store that was where Abby’s place is now, I forget its old name. Anyway. He surprised everybody when he left for college. And then he never came back.”

Sammy nodded. That sounded like a great plan, actually. Leave and never come back. No more Oak Grove, no more sticking out like a sore thumb, no more smothering family. Suddenly Sammy realized that his uncle’s gaze was again on him. Oh. “I’m going to come back, Alexei,” he stammered. “It’s just a weekend.”

“It’s just a weekend now,” his uncle grumbled. “But you go there for school? Spend four years away from family?” He shook his huge head. “It’s no way to live, Sammy. And it does things to your head.”

Sammy rolled his eyes. “I’ll miss you, too.”

“Ha,” Alexei spat again, and reached over to playfully whack the back of his hand against Sammy’s shoulder. He did his best not to wince.

The winding mountain roads started to straighten out as they drove into Dover. Stop signs increased in number and then increasingly got replaced with traffic lights. It certainly wasn’t a big city, but Dover actually had a skyline, and soon they were driving between rows of buildings more than tracts of forest. The GPS informed them that the bus depot was just a few minutes away.

“Listen, Sammy,” Alexei said tentatively. His eyes remained on the road, but Sammy got the distinct impression that his uncle wasn’t just being safe: he didn’t want to look him in the eye. “You should go see Columbia. But if it doesn’t work out—”

Sammy heaved a sigh. “Nobody thinks I can get in.”

“It’s not that,” his uncle insisted, but he still didn’t make eye contact. “Just. If it doesn’t work out, you know there’s always a workbench at the warehouse for you, yeah? I can teach you everything you need to know. It’s a good job. It’s a good life.”

Sammy bit back his immediate response (Oh hell, no.) and forced a smile. “Yes sir. I mean. Thank you for the offer.” He could feel his head nodding and ignored the feeling that he was drowning, getting pulled down into the depths, from where he’d never escape.

“And we have the apartment over the salon,” his uncle went on. “We rent it now, but when the current lease ends, we could move you in there.”

Sammy gulped. This was getting serious. “You don’t have to put the Andersons out on the street for me.”

“You didn’t hear this from me,” his uncle said, the corner of his lip curling upwards. Gossip? From Alexei? “But they are expecting. And I say from experience that that apartment is very nice for a couple, but too small for a family with kids.”

“Well, good for them,” Sammy muttered. He rubbed his hands up and down his upper arms. The heater was blasting; how was it cold in here?

“Just think about it,” Alexei urged as he pulled into the bus depot parking lot. “You have options. You have family.” He pulled into a parking space and the truck lurched to a stop. “It’s a good life.”

Yeah, just not the life Sammy wanted. It wasn’t his life. It was, in fact, Alexei’s life, from twenty years ago. Sammy had no desire to be a carbon copy of his uncle.

By the time he collected his backpack and got out of the truck, Alexei was already walking towards the waiting buses, Sammy’s electric blue rolling suitcase in hand and sleeping bag under his arm. “I can carry my own luggage,” he sputtered, running a few steps to catch up. “Also that has wheels.”

“I’ve got it, it’s nothing,” Alexei shrugged, and leveled a finger at one of the buses. “That one’s yours.”

They crossed the parking lot as Sammy pulled up his ticket on his phone, and then it was time to board. Awkwardly, Sammy turned to his uncle, phone in hand to match the suitcase in Alexei’s. “Um. Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course.” The suitcase and sleeping bag were slung under the bus and a moment later Sammy was crushed in a hug. “You remember what I said, okay?”

“About the crosswalks?”

When Alexei spat his laughter while hugging, Sammy got extra crushed. “Yes. And also about the job, and the apartment, and family, okay?”

Sammy peeled himself off of Alexei’s chest. “Yes, sir.” He looked back at the steps into the bus. “Well I guess this is it. New York, here I come.”

“Stay safe,” his uncle said, backing away.

The steps up into the bus were steep and short, and Sammy had to go halfway down the length of the vehicle to find a window seat on the right side. He dumped himself onto the hard cushion and looked outside to wave goodbye.

Alexei was coming towards the bus, Sammy’s blue roller bag in hand. But hadn’t he already loaded it under the bus? A tall Black girl was trailing behind him, kind of pretty but looking vaguely discomfited. “No, it’s fine,” his uncle assured her. “It’s nothing.” She watched as he strode forward and slung the bag under the bus. Ah. Her roller suitcase. And Uncle Alexei’s weird proclivity for carrying everybody’s bag.

Sammy caught Alexei’s eye and waved. His uncle returned the wave with a smile. “I suppose when the universe gifts you with a body like that,” Sammy muttered into the window, “the least you can do is help people with their luggage.”

Movement caught Sammy’s eye and when he looked up, the girl was boarding the bus. He gulped involuntarily. She wasn’t kind of pretty; she was gorgeous. And she also appeared to be seething angry. “I’ll carry your bag, little lady,” she growled at nobody, “you’re obviously weak and incapable. Let me, a big strong man do it for you.”

Sammy considered saying something, apologizing for his uncle, even commiserating with her. Alexei insisted on carrying his bags, too, so it wasn’t just because she was a girl. But before he could figure out what to say, the girl turned and seated herself on the other side of the bus, five or six rows ahead of him. He barely caught sight of her popping in a pair of wireless headphones, and then she slumped against her window, settling in for the long trip.

With a contented sigh, Sammy did the same. Soon he’d be out of the mountains and finally on his own in the City.