Before We Were Strangers Read Online Free PDF Page A

meeting you. Maybe we can hang out again?”
    “Yeah. I’ll see you around.”
    “I’ll be hard to miss. I’m right next door, remember?”
    She skipped out of the door and then a moment later, just as Eddie Vedder sang the final lyrics, I heard the deep strains of a cello through the thin dorm walls. She was playing “Release.” I moved my bed to the other side of the room so that it would rest against the wall that Grace and I shared.
    I fell asleep to the sound of her practicing late into the night.
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    MY FIRST MORNING in Senior House consisted of eating a stale granola bar and rearranging three pieces of furniture until I was happy with the tiny space I would call home for the next year. On one pass, I discovered a Post-it note stuck to the bottom of the empty drawer in the desk I had brought from home. It read: Don’t forget to call your mom in my mother’s handwriting. She wouldn’t let me forget, and I loved that about her.
    I found the payphone on the first floor. A girl wearing sweats and dark sunglasses sat in the corner, holding the phone receiver to her ear.
    “I can’t live without you, Bobbie,” she cried, wiping the tears from her cheeks. She sniffled and then pointed to a box of tissue. “Hey, you! Will you hand that to me?”
    I took the tissue box from the end table near a worn-out couch that smelled faintly of Doritos and handed it to her. “Are you gonna be long?”
    “Seriously?” She moved the glasses to the end of her nose and peered at me over the top.
    “I have to call my mom.” I sound pathetic. More pathetic than this girl.
    “Bobbie, I have to go, some dude has to call his mommy. I’ll call you in fifteen minutes, okay? Yeah, some guy.” She looked me up and down. “He’s wearing a Radiohead T-shirt. Yeah, sideburns . . . skinny.”
    I threw up my hands as if to say, What’s your problem?
    “Okay, Bobbie, wuv you, bye. No, you hang up . . . no, you first.”
    “Come on,” I whispered.
    She stood and hung up the phone. “It’s all yours.”
    “Thanks,” I said. She rolled her eyes. “Wuv you,” I called out to her as she walked away.
    I pulled my calling card from my wallet and dialed my mother’s number. “Hello.”
    “Hi, Mom.”
    “Matthias, how are you, honey?”
    “Good. Just got settled in.”
    “Have you called your dad?”
    I winced. I had transferred to NYU to put a whole country between me and my father’s disappointment. Even after I had won photography awards in college, he still believed I had no future in it.
    “No, just you so far.”
    “Lucky me,” she said earnestly. “How are the dorms? Have you seen the photo lab yet?” My mom was the only one who supported me. She loved being the subject of my photos. When I was young, she gave me her father’s old Ciro-Flex camera, which started my obsession. By ten, I was taking photos of everything and everyone I could.
    “The dorms are fine, and the lab is great.”
    “Have you made any friends?”
    “A girl. Grace.”
    “Ahhh . . .”
    “No, it’s not like that, Mom. We’re just friends. I met her and talked to her for a minute yesterday.”
    Wuv-you girl was back. She sat on the couch, leaned over the arm dramatically, and stared at me, upside down. Her weird, upside-down face made me uneasy.
    “Is she into the arts, like you?”
    “Yes, music. She was nice. Friendly.”
    “That’s wonderful.” I could hear dishes clinking around. I thought idly that my mom wouldn’t have to do the dishes if she were still married to my dad. My father was a successful entertainment lawyer while my mom taught art at a private school for a meager salary. They divorced when I was fourteen. My dad remarried right away, but my mom remained single. Growing up, I chose to live with my dad and stepmother, even though my mom’s tiny bungalow in Pasadena always felt more like home. There was more space at my dad’s for my older brother and me.
    “Well, that’s nice. Did Alexander tell you that