In the weeks before the ceremony, I pictured them in the front section: my mother dabbing at her eyes, my father’s proud handshake, Ava looking at me with something other than her usual indifference. I used the image the way people use prayer, as a source of momentum when the reality was difficult. The all-nighters, the grinding monotony of data entry work during the days and lecture halls at night, the profound loneliness of a social life reduced to study groups and microwave dinners. I was doing all of this for a degree, yes, but also for the moment when the people who were supposed to be proud of me finally and undeniably were.
Connor Reed, master of data analytics.
I walked across the stage and shook the dean’s hand and accepted the diploma and scanned section 2B, row five, seats one through four. Empty. Not late. Not finding their seats. Empty in the way that chairs are empty when no one intended to fill them. I walked back to my seat and held the diploma in my lap and looked straight ahead for the rest of the ceremony. Afterward, while other graduates moved through the crowd to reunite with their families, I stood near a brick wall and stared at an email on my phone with the studied concentration of a person trying to look like they were not completely alone.
Three days later, the invoice arrived.
The knock on my door was sharp, authoritative, the knock of institutional purpose. I looked through the peephole. Two police officers, faces professional and unreadable. My mind ran through every possible explanation in the second before I opened the door, neighbor complaint, noise issue, something involving my car, and landed on none of the right ones.
