text:  
  
  It’s officially winter break. You stumble toward your dorm room, brain turned to mush from taking five exams in three days.
  
  
  All you have to do is grab your suitcase, and then you’ll be on your way to NYC to stay with your boyfriend, Keith, and his parents for Christmas. You’ve never met them, but he’s told you that they have a large, luxurious apartment with a pool--which sounds awesome, but intimidating. 
  
  
  Anyway.
  
  
  Keith, the lucky son of a gun, has already flown out. (He’s a creative writing major. His exams consist of writing poems about his childhood and writing essays about the meaning of life.)
  
  
  You pause in the hallway (which is empty--almost everyone else has finished exams and gotten the heck out of here.) Like every college dorm room in every movie ever, there's a whiteboard on your door.
  
  
  Now there's an "I Heart NY" magnet on there. The magnet holds a postcard with a photo of the Statue of Liberty. You're pretty sure it wasn't there when you left this morning. 
  
  
   
  > You take the postcard from the board.
   
  
  In thick black Sharpie, it says
  
  
  “Dear Clara,
  
  
  If you leave, I’ll go too. So I can kill you.”
  
  
  No exclamation point. Like it’s a fact. 
  
  
  So, um...that happened. You aren't real big on taking risks...but then again, is this a risk or a weird joke? 
  > You why take chances? Stay and watch Netflix.
   
  
  Why take chances? You were nervous about meeting his family anyway. You don’t go.
  
  
  Your boyfriend is mad at you for about a month afterward, and you start to regret how cowardly you were--both about the note and meeting his parents. You clearly don’t have the capacity to think for yourself--and you’re selfish.
  
  
  In May, Keith gets a middle-management job at his dad’s company, which was always the unspoken plan (though Keith told people at parties that he was an aspiring writer.) He moves to New York City, and you are so bent on redeeming yourself for not coming to see him at Christmas that you follow him out there without really considering that you aren't in love with him anymore.
  
  
  A year later, you're engaged, and a year after that, you marry him. His father’s company promotes him quickly (so quickly his colleagues secretly hate him).You have two kids. You suspect he’s cheating, but you don’t really think about it until he comes home just before your twentieth anniversary. He tells you he’s in love with his secretary.
  
  
  Goblins haunt your dreams.
  
  
  After a two-year divorce battle over alimony and custody, you are angry, exhausted, and consumed with the need for vengeance. As the years go by, nothing much changes. You resent Keith for the way he controlled your life, but at this point you're too lazy to be proactive. This attitude remains basically unchanged until you die--which happens when you're an old woman, but jeez, what a pointless life.