Sam slipped out of the WNYC studios at four thirty, waving off cheers of "Have fun!" and "Take me with you!", hurrying through the lobby, jogging a short block to catch the uptown C. She needed to pick up a daughter and possibly husband in Brooklyn, then be back in Manhattan for the 5:41 p.m. train to New Haven. Reunion check-in closed at eight. If the train arrived on time, she'd make it easy.

If not? If any of the dizzying array of pitfalls inherent in teenagers and public transit popped up? Sam guessed they were sleeping on the street.

Half an hour later, she hiked three flights of stairs with key at the ready. The apartment was unlocked.

"Joss?" she called. "You are packed, yes?"

Her daughter's door was closed, but guitar chords thwanged through. Sam stepped around French bread pizza and a stack of indie music magazines to pound twice.

"Not telling you what to wear," she yelled, "but I suggest a dress or dress-like garment for Saturday night."

The music inside dulled, indicating Sam had been heard. The warning bell had been sounded. She found an oversize duffel bag in the hall closet and tossed in her stuff: toiletries, three-odd outfits for the weekend, Zoom audio recorder.

About outfits: Sam both cared and didn't care. She was forty-three. Her classmates were forty-three, give or take. Nobody should go rocking a prom dress, but they weren't dead yet either. She brought dark-red sleeveless, plus yellow floral in case of glorious weather.

"Leaving twelve minutes!" she said through Joss's door. "Zero wiggle situation."

Tight timelines didn't bother Sam—the studio commonly dropped post-production on her for shows that were airing in mere hours. Packing now, she thought pleasurably of the friends she'd see at the reunion. Laurel in from San Francisco. Jen Pereido. Naomi, even though she was still recovering from the birth of her fourth(!) child.

From her own daughter's room came a squeal, streaked with joy. The noise pinched Sam's heart. Her husband Abe was in there—they'd probably harmonized on some new melody. Which was awesome. Truly. Except that it was 4:48.

She opened the door. "I hate to be Yoko, but the time's come to break up. Leaving in five minutes."

Fourteen-year-old Joss looked up from fingering the neck of her guitar, still grinning. Abe sat cross-legged on the floor with the Yamaha across his knees, a kind of strung-out, hipster Dalai Lama. Both appeared stumped.

Sam said, "Yale? My alma mater, where you've been dying to go for months?"

Joss's grin vanished. "Dad said you were leaving whenever! Isn't it like an all-weekend thing? Today's only Thursday."

"Yes, but in order to check in Thursday night, as I hope to," Sam said, patiently as she could, "we need to arrive on campus by eight o'clock."

"That's ridiculous, I've barely even looked at clothes."

"Then look quickly. I'm winging it myself."

Joss shot upright, dropping her guitar with a clang against the bed. "I'm not going to Yale on, like, zero notice. You can't just spring this on me."

"I sprung no thing on no body. We discussed timing last night, and this afternoon I sent your father four texts—every hour, on the hour—reminding him."

"But those go to his phone," Joss said. "Remember, I don't have one? Because you won't let me?"

Sam stretched one arm laboriously toward the ceiling, focusing on good breaths. Apparently, they were skimming right over Abe's not passing along the messages. His long-running campaign to absolve himself of any and all responsibility—waged by a steady pattern of never giving a crap for anyone but himself—had succeeded at last.

"Look, we can argue about phones again or we can try to make this train. Otherwise, we basically miss half the reunion. We might as well skip."

This genuinely spooked Joss. Her face hollowed even more deeply than usual. (She'd grown three inches this year, causing Sam to marvel at this moody, suddenly supermodel whose laundry she washed every week.) They'd been talking about the reunion forever, what architecture couldn't be missed, whether student activists would be around for Joss to connect with.

Sam hated to use fear, that blunt-force instrument of the parenting arsenal, but she knew a reasoned argument would produce nothing but gridlock.

Joss started packing.

Abe, who'd disappeared to the bathroom, emerged now with drawstrings dangling from his sweats. He nodded to a pair of shiny heels in Sam's duffel.

"Somebody's dressing to impress."

"I haven't seen these people in twenty years," she said. "I'm erring on the side of adequate."

Her husband snorted, seeming to take the comment personally. Twelve years older than Sam, he'd been an already-aging rocker when she had met him in her late twenties. Between drugs and alcohol, and having nowhere in particular to be for the last twenty years—no office or classroom mores to adhere to—Abe had aged poorly. His leatherette skin belonged to a person decades older, and beige hair had fled the top of his head for his ears and nostrils.

"You're more than welcome to join," Sam said, stuffing in a toothbrush. "But we are leaving mucho rapido, so..."

He ambled a step away, picked up Joss's guitar and set it in its case.

She heaved the duffel's halves together to make the zipper zip. "You're passing, correct? I just want to confirm with a verbal yes or no answer."

Sam knew with four hundred percent certainty that some future argument would hinge on this point—whether or not Abe had been invited. They would be sniping back and forth about Yale, how phony or not phony her friends were, what first-world problems they were finding themselves crippled by, and he would break out his trump card.

You were embarrassed. You didn't want me there, dragging you down.

And here it came, earlier than expected.

"You don't have to faux-invite me," Abe said. "You prefer to go alone. Oh, you'll tolerate Joss. Joss is an acceptable accessory. Perfectly cool, I get it. I won't ruin your triumphant return."

Sam again focused on respiration.

In, out. In, out.

"This is a real invitation," she said. "Just like the one I offered in April, and in May. You are absolutely welcome at my reunion. Come. Please. Joss would love having you there. Maybe you could jam with Thom—he's supposed to be playing Toad's."

As convincingly as Sam delivered these words, her husband was right. The invitation wasn't real. Abe thought Thom's music was derivative and had zero interest in strumming out tired chords while Activist Boy preened at the mic for the ladies. If Abe went, he would grump and sulk and criticize, and ruin the whole thing.

"Pass," Abe said. "Thom can play 'Better Man' solo. That is where he opens, isn't it? Pearl Jam? Or is it the first encore?"

Sam chuckled with relief. Complicity with ragging on her own friends? Fine. Fine, she'd do it—so long as he stayed home.

Their daughter's voice came through the wall, "What's the formality situation for Saturday night dinner?"

"Less stuffy than a cotillion," Sam called back, "but expect mosh-pitting to be frowned upon."

As she waited on her daughter, Sam kept tabs on a few text conversations by phone. People were arriving into New Haven and wondering where Demery's had gone, or at the airport dreaming of hugs on the quad, or annoyed because they had to work tomorrow which royally sucked!

Sam grinned at this last but didn't tap back a response. Abe was watching her, surely guessing what the rapid-fire chimes were about. For Sam to actively join in would risk an argument or, worse, a change of heart.

She didn't think her husband was capable of attending the reunion for spite, enduring a rotten weekend just to play the killjoy. But why push him?

Finally, Joss emerged. She had changed into a clingy ankle-length skirt and carried a backpack.

"Thank you for hurrying," Sam said. "Excited?"

Joss rolled her eyes but couldn't completely suppress a smile. Sam clutched her hand. After double-checking the cat dish had food, she slipped on her jacket and pulled her cell charger out of the wall, jamming it into the side of her bag.

Abe tilted his head. "Why're you taking the Zoom?"

Shoot. Sam inwardly punched her brain for not packing last night.

"Ah...I'm kicking around this audio doc. Just ideas. Might record some clips."

"Topic?"

She hated how he asked, all aggressive and pedantic.

"I doubt I'll have time." She considered lying outright. Joss was watching, though, and the idea of cowering in front of her daughter—who was learning how to relate to others and respond to adversity and be an assertive female—repulsed her. "It's about pinebox. How it affected our class, et cetera. Of course the vendetta's been done—this would try to get at it through the lens of our class at Yale. We had one Pruitt, one Gallagher, that death freshman year. Kind of the whole feud in miniature."

She shrugged, pretending to be flip, and started for the door. It was 4:32.

Abe asked, "Is Rock Pruitt going to the reunion?"

"Dunno," Sam said. "We didn't exactly run in the same circles."

"Really? That seems disingenuous given you were bosom buddies there with the immortal Jamie Gallagher."

Sam felt her chest constrict. Let it go, she told herself. Let it go like Elsa. Turn yourself to ice, and everything slides right off.

Except she couldn't.

"Jamie despised Rock. You could walk the earth and never find two people with more diametrically-opposed worldviews than Rock and Jamie."

Abe huffed. "Those beautiful people and their worldviews. What rarefied air you'll be breathing again."

Sam opened her mouth hotly to speak. At the last moment, she stopped and finished zipping her bag instead. She stood tall-shouldered, smiled, and invited Joss to lead the way out.

"The audio doc does sound right out of This American Life," said Abe, evidently unsatisfied with the fight's resolution. "Who produces that? Must be one of those Yale ninety-sixers working there you could pitch."

She felt like asking how he could possibly believe in mythical Ivy League connections after this life of theirs: Sam's twelve years bouncing around the periphery of pseudo-academic film, hustling after grants, performing peon tasks in job after job to bulk up a CV so it could sit on her Patreon page getting a half-dozen page views per month. She had finally risen to prominence at WNYC but almost in spite of Yale, which carried significant prima donna baggage in the field.

Again, though, Sam restrained herself in front of Joss.

"Hey, quick Zoom question," she said. "You think forty-eight/twenty-four-bit, or forty-four/sixteen is better? It'll be mostly outdoor clips."

Abe tipped his balding head left, then right. "Forty-eight. File sizes won't be that different, and at sixteen, the Zoom gets super noisy."

Sam crinkled her nose. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's right. Thanks."

Mother and daughter both pecked Abe goodbye and bounded off to catch a train.

Joss seemed to study Sam down the stairs, and she wondered momentarily if her ruse had failed—if Joss understood that Mom had forgotten more about sampling rates than Dad had ever known—and had only made this final query to escape the apartment on a positive note.

Other fictions existed between the couple. That Abe respected her managerial position at WNYC. That she believed his vow to start playing shows again—that those freelance audio-tech Fiverr gigs he'd parlayed fairly successfully into income were just temporary and not his professional endgame. That reuniting each night for dinner, they asked about the other's day with anything like genuine interest.

Sometimes Joss would make comments indicating she knew. "Gee, Dad, bitter much?" or, "I'd rather not be involved in this," swirling her hand as though over a cesspool. Other times, she seemed oblivious, just a regular kid consumed by regular kid stuff.

Either possibility broke Sam's heart.

#

The L train was late. As Joss practiced pirouettes idly on the platform, Sam stared up the track, squeezing the handle of her bag, her toes nudging over the yellow stripe. Her phone had continued its chiming, Laurel and Terri texting about meal times, shoe choices, whether Naples still served pitchers.

Joss caught her checking her screen. "What? What're they saying?"

Sam stashed the phone in her jacket. "Oh, just blabbing about how I'm missing out."

"Which one, Naomi—the one who's writing a novel? Or the famous blogger?"

Laurel had written some for HuffPost, but "famous" was pushing it. Sam was okay with Joss idealizing her alma mater. Joss's academics were solid, dance extracurriculars would help, but she hadn't yet shown the kind of passion that propels kids to big-time achievement. Maybe meeting Laurel and others, and being exposed to Yale's vibrant undergrad activism, would spark it.

And if not? There were worse fates.

"All of them," Sam answered. "It's a grand conspiracy to make me jealous."

She peered up the track again. Still no train.

Next to her on the platform, a young guy in bikewear groaned. He flashed his phone around to his group, and they trudged off for the stairs.

"Excuse me," Sam said. "Sorry to bother you, but did you—er, is something up with this train?"

Bike Guy raised his screen for her to see. Sam squinted. Some app she had no idea even existed reported a forty-three-minute wait for the L line with the reason Signal malfunction.

Joss said, "Can we just get an Uber?"

"No. Uber all the way to Manhattan is way expensive."

"It's like ten dollars."

"It is not like ten dollars," Sam said, starting for street level, pulling up her mental city transit map. "More like thirty or thirty-five, and given the reunion fees pretty much wiped our bank account, we need to economize."

Joss dragged a step behind. "Dad said he got two new gigs today. That's like a hundred fifty dollars right there."

Sam bit her lip. How to explain to a teenager about budgets, and debt, and the way expenses keep coming at you like luggage off an airport carousel—only you have to grab every last one?

She decided to keep it simple. "We live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is expensive."

She could've added So are private ballet lessons.

"Dad said he'd buy me new guitar strings," Joss said. "Can we not even get those? They're twenty dollars, basically how much an Uber would be."

They were crossing Willoughby Avenue now, Sam hurrying to enter the intersection ahead of the next traffic wave—which gave her cover to ignore her daughter's niggling response.

Abe never joined Sam on the financial-responsibility front, content to shower Joss with records and music goodies, reaping all the credit, making Sam the spoilsport. In fairness, he never spent a dime on clothes or gadgets for himself. He simply loved seeing Joss happy.

In a marriage chock-full of grievances, Sam found this one hard to prosecute. Abe's gig income from Fiverr roughly equaled hers from WNYC. The money was no more hers than his. He poured himself into Joss. Music instructor, English tutor, after-school snack chef: Abe was all these and more.

Maybe he'd lost interest in Sam, but for Joss? Anything.

The next best route to Penn Station was via the crosstown Fifty-four. Sam caught her mopey teenager by the wrist and urged her down Willoughby, shortcutting through Maria Hernandez Park, bags bumping thighs. Her friends' texts continued furiously, each ding bright and fun and begging to be read.

If they missed this 5:41 train to New Haven...ugh. Just thinking about it soured Sam's stomach. Missing the first night on campus. Limping back to the apartment. (They couldn't actually sleep on the street.)

At last, they reached the corner of Myrtle and Hart—the bus stop.

The Fifty-four had pulled away from the curb and was nosing into the center lane.

"No way!" Joss stamped her clog on the sidewalk. "We're totally missing this reunion, aren't we?"

Sam tuned out her own accelerating panic. "Nope. We are not freaking, got it? We shall not freak."

After briefly considering whether the Visa could support the Uber charge—in case she decided to cave, ceding all standing in the eyes of her only child—Sam consulted the posted schedules. There was a third transit route: the M.

She hitched the duffel bag securely up her shoulder, oriented herself as necessary to the map's colorful lines, and headed them for their new waypoint. A faint throb above her left heel heralded the start of a blister.

The station was a straight shot up Myrtle. They needed to hustle.

They needed that next M train.

As her subcortex steered them past strollers and idling taxis, Sam's larger thoughts were on Yale. Those sunny, blanket-lined quads where she and Laurel and Jamie Gallagher had discussed Nietzsche and taught each other linear algebra. Where Thom had founded the Razorlicks. Where ideas were big and you didn't have to sweat signal malfunctions or feign ignorance about sampling rates.

Sam knew forty-three-year-olds wouldn't have the same conversations as twenty-two-year-olds. Once you've changed diapers or dealt with a rotten boss, you can't go back to debating abstract versus figurative art. Not with a straight face.

Still, she wondered if some core magic might remain. New ventures hatching over hors d'oeuvres. Common struggles discovered over a second glass of Chardonnay. She imagined the delights coming not from her closest friends, whose stories she knew from Facebook, but from refreshed acquaintances. Some boy she'd argued with in English 120. One of the food services workers she used to scoop shepherd's pie alongside.

Maybe she would connect with no one particularly but find the spark inside. Maybe this pinebox documentary could be it.

Sam didn't know quite where the project would go. She'd conceived it partly in memory of Jamie, whose life had been consumed by the Gallagher-Pruitt feud. Whatever had happened in Africa, she felt sure it traced back to the feud somehow. But maybe there was some greater underlying truth to be surfaced. Maybe as she talked to classmates about this conflict that played out across all their newsfeeds and televisions, something more would emerge—some comment on the way they lived.

In another five minutes, Sam lugged her duffel bag onto the platform of the Myrtle Ave station and got her first break of the afternoon: a westbound M train, easing up to the curb.

She exhaled, standing aside for Joss to board. Her daughter dumped her backpack and collapsed into the first seat by the door, forehead damp with sweat.

She asked, "Are we gonna make it?"

Sam wedged both their bags underneath the bench seat,careful of the Zoom. "Yes. We're absolutely making it."