This was not the first time she had posed the question. I mulled it over for a moment, careful not to look at her. “Is this why you want to leave, Miles?” Mom asked. I could feel their pity as they scooped artichoke dip with chips intended for my imaginary friends, but they needed pity more than I did: I wasn’t disappointed. I could feel them both looking at me, waiting for me to burst into tears or something, as if I hadn’t known all along that it would go precisely like this. They left, and so I sat with my parents and stared at the blank TV and wanted to turn it on but knew I shouldn’t. The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by two vastly, deeply uninteresting people. “A lot of people came, I guess.” Marie was the sort of person to guess a lot.įinally, Will said, “Well, we just dropped by to say good-bye. My mom, however, can talk small for hours, and so she extended the awkwardness by asking them about their rehearsal schedule, and how the show had gone, and whether it was a success. I might have asked a question about Jesus Christ Superstar, except that 1. “That’s cool.” I nodded knowingly, and that about exhausted our conversational topics. “Hey, Miles,” Marie said as she sat down. Said cavalry consisted of exactly two people: Marie Law-son, a tiny blonde with rectangular glasses, and her chunky (to put it charitably) boyfriend, Will. and patiently awaited the arrival of the Good-bye to Miles Cavalry. She bought two dozen champagne poppers and placed them around the edge of our coffee table.Īnd when that final Friday came, when my packing was mostly done, she sat with my dad and me on the living-room couch at 4:56 P.M.

She festooned our living room in green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school. She cooked a small mountain of artichoke dip. Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years. Although I was more or less forced to invite all my “school friends,” i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public school, I knew they wouldn’t come.

To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically. THE WEEK BEFORE I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.

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