For Tiffany, with her spreadsheets and college applications.

For my classmates who talked about career paths with the kind of certainty I couldn’t even fake.

It felt like everyone else had been given a manual on how to be a functioning adult, and I had somehow missed the meeting where they handed them out.

What if I never figured it out? What if this was it?

What if I was always going to feel like I was waiting for something that wasn’t coming? That’s what getting older was, wasn’t it? Waiting and pretending. Pretending you knew what you were doing, even when you didn’t. Pretending the future wasn’t terrifying. Asking yourself why it seemed so easy for everyone else, why you felt like you were constantly two steps behind.

I stared at my hands, like somehow they might hold the answer, but all I saw were the same fingers that had always been there.

“I think I might be broken,” I muttered.

“Jesus, Bev. Dramatic much?”

I sighed, dragging my fingers through my hair. “I’m serious. Don’t you ever feel like you have no idea what you’re doing? And I’m not talking about college or jobs or whatever. I mean…everything. Your whole life. What are we even doing?”

She gave me a flat look. “Beverly. I’m deciding my entire future based on vibes. Of course I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, but don’t you ever feel like…” I hesitated, struggling to find the right words. “Like maybe you should have figured it out by now? Like there’s some… I don’t know. Some feeling you’re supposed to have? Some big realization that’s supposed to hit you and make everything make sense?”

Tiffany raised an eyebrow. “Beverly, everyone’s pretending. Everyone is faking it. Some people are just better at making it look like they know what they’re doing.”

I rubbed my forehead, staring at her. “That’s not comforting.”