“It says you’re at a crossroads.”

My freshman year roommate, L, holds my palm in her right hand and her iPhone in her left, squinting at the indentation between my thumb and index finger. Her gaze shifts to the screen, reading wikiHow: “Intro to Palm Reading.” 

I should be analyzing 16th century Spanish art, and L should be writing a bio lab report, but when it’s 2 a.m. during midterm season, there’s nothing better to do than devolve into an existential crisis—it’s just a bonus that we’re not alone.

“Yep… crosses through the head line… something about momentous decisions? Does that mean anything to you?”

We both laugh. Nightly shenanigans have destroyed both of our sleep schedules, and this isn’t the first time a “side quest” has completely replaced what were supposed to be strict lock-in hours. 

It’s a slippery slope to an all-nighter, and we’re both teetering on the edge. But our astrology rabbit hole feels absolutely worth the dark under-eye circles. Plus, our fridge is fully stocked with Celsius for precisely this reason.

Maybe the stars, or the lines on my palm, or the creators of that webpage knew something even L didn’t. Because at that moment I was, in fact, at a crossroads. Earlier that day, I’d walked all the way to the registrar’s office to request my official transcript for transfer applications. The private tab on my computer screen displayed the Common Application, completely filled. Still, I couldn’t commit. In the days that followed, I found myself glancing repeatedly at the indiscriminate lines etched into my palm. Curse all these creases, I thought to myself. This “momentous decision” was eating me alive.

I finally hit the submit button 2 minutes before the Brown application was due—not unlike my class assignments that still somehow get submitted at 11:58 p.m. for a midnight deadline.

What’s funny is that I’d always wanted to end up at Brown. It was my dream school in every sense of the word. In fact, when I got rejected the first time, I promised myself it wasn’t over ‘til it was over. So, the difficulty of going through with the transfer was like the universe laughing in my face. I suppose I kept my promise, given that I am now writing this while under a pile of blankets in the middle of the night in Perkins, a building I’d heard legends about (not the good kind) when I was first applying. I can’t believe I’m sitting here complaining about a dorm room just a minute too far from the Ratty, or that I’ve grown accustomed to a college life I’d once equated to Hogwarts in my head. A lot happens in a year.

Saying goodbye was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Especially to L, one of the few people in this world who I believe truly knows me. It’s funny how endings work—how they drift away and bleed into beginnings.

L and I downloaded an app called Costar during our week of astrology. It’s basically the glorified version of a newspaper horoscope, but give it enough information about your birth, and it’ll basically map out the entire trajectory of your life (for better or worse). That sounded ideal to me and L at the time, and, to be honest, it still does. Since that day, we would (un)ironically rely on it to make the bad days good, the good days better, and justify our wallowing if need be. I can almost hear L debating whether to skip class because her horoscope that day said, “You deserve a nap.” Before I left, we linked our accounts so that we could keep track of the moods, life-altering romances, and even catastrophes on each other’s horizons. 

L recently sent me a screenshot of the app. It read: “If it seems like you’ve known Yana all your life, there’s a good chance you were always meant to be friends.” Maybe it had something to do with the Sun’s alignment with Neptune in Aries?

Perhaps certain things are written in the stars. Or maybe we’re the ones who write them.

On the last day of freshman year, L and I engraved our initials into the edge of the door to our dorm—knowing that it would surely be renovated in the next 5 years, and that’s being generous. (Is there such a thing as a decent freshman year residential building?) Nonetheless, evidence of us is etched there forever.

Our room has since been occupied by people who will also think they’re original for marking their initials in Sharpie. I am now far enough away that I can’t just decide to wake up and visit the building or L, or anyone from the life I was living last year. But I think about it all the time. I thought about our initial writing today when I trudged up the stairway of the List Art Building and saw hundreds of names I’ve now memorized after taking that route every day. I wonder where the owners of those names are now.

This year, a lot happened: I turned twenty, said “I love you” for the first time, declared my major (shoutout art history), dyed my hair dark to feel cool, transferred colleges, perfected my egg-and-cheese recipe, and took up weight-lifting. I’m halfway through college, and it seems that since it started, everything has changed. Yet in more ways than one, I am exactly the same. Each day, I brace myself as I refer to my horoscope. When I accidentally shrink my favorite wool sweater in the Perkins dryer, I FaceTime my mother for emergency laundry assistance, knowing full well a YouTube tutorial video would suffice. I still feel a pang of jealousy at the fact that my little sister can solve a Rubik’s Cube faster than I can. I call L when I’m feeling down, up, and everywhere in between. My fridge is fully stocked with Celsius. I know I will leave my initials in this room, and in List, and anywhere else on this campus I can do so without getting punished for vandalism. 

My horoscope today says: “Reach out to the person you used to be.” I guess this is me reaching out to her. Because in every way that counts, I am her. My palm will always be full of crosses through the headline. I will always be at the end of something and the beginning of another; always enduring some sort of existential crisis. We are all at a crossroads. And still, the stars align.