Kate McKean last wrote for The Toast about the malls of her childhood. When I was about eight or nine, I spent a lot of time in our finished basement playing Super Mario Bros. My father had a fancy stereo system that I was scared to touch, but I did know how to do one thing: turn on the 7" reel-to-reel tape player and start the five Beatles albums he'd recorded on the big…
It’s after midnight on a Saturday night in mid-August in upstate New York. My husband signals and turns right onto the ramp to I-87 South. I’m in the passenger seat, trying to sleep and failing miserably. I haven’t drunk any coffee, but adrenaline courses through my veins like caffeine. Just go to sleep already, I tell myself. You have to drive soon. Sleep. Sleep.
I didn’t know it was the last time I was talking to him so I didn’t know to pay attention to everything: the view out the window, the chill in the air, the way that particular moment would come to just smell like finals week of college, the exact rhythms of his voice. Sometimes I go back there and stand next to myself. If I could I would whisper: Skip studying
