The Way Back
Arnold stared at his thesis advisor's empty coffee cup, his own hands wrapped around a cooling latte in the bustling campus café. The spring sunshine streamed through tall windows, casting shadows across his open laptop.
"An educational app?" Professor Chen raised an eyebrow. "That's quite a departure from your original thesis direction."
Arnold ran a hand through his still-untamed hair, now shorter but just as resistant to staying in place. At twenty-five, he'd grown into his football-shaped head, his face losing its childhood roundness but keeping its warmth.
"I know it seems like a shift," he said, "but looking back at my research on how children process trauma through creative expression, I keep thinking about practical applications." He turned his laptop around, showing a rough mock-up of colorful interface designs. "Technology could make these therapeutic tools more accessible."
Professor Chen leaned forward, adjusting her glasses. "Tell me more about what inspired this."
Arnold's mind drifted to the boarding house where he grew up, to all the kids who'd found their way to his room seeking advice. Even now, messages occasionally popped up on his social media from former classmates: Remember that time you helped me with...?
"Growing up, I saw how many kids struggled to express what they were feeling. They'd end up acting out instead—bullying, withdrawal, anger." His thoughts flickered briefly to a certain blonde girl with a perpetual scowl and hidden depths. "Sometimes, all they needed was a safe way to tell their story."
The semester was ending, and with it, his graduate fellowship at Berkeley. His apartment was already half-packed, with books on child psychology and educational technology stacked in cardboard boxes. The decision to return to Hillwood had come gradually, like rising tidewater.
Later that evening, Arnold video-called his parents from his small Berkeley apartment. Miles and Stella's faces filled his screen, the San Lorenzo sunset painting their research station in gold behind them.
"How's the packing going, sweetie?" Stella asked, her smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.
"Slowly," Arnold admitted, panning his laptop camera across the organized chaos of his living room. "But I'm sure about this move. Hillwood has the perfect demographic for the initial app testing, and the rent's cheaper than the Bay Area."
"And Grandma and Grandpa could use the help with the boarding house," Miles added. "They're not getting any younger, even if Mom still acts like she's twenty-five."
Arnold nodded, feeling the normal tug of responsibility. After the adventure of finding his parents in San Lorenzo as a kid, he'd learned to balance his connection to them with his role in the boarding house family. Now, with Grandpa Phil's arthritis getting worse, the timing felt right.
His phone buzzed—an email from a potential investor who'd seen his graduate presentation. They were interested but wanted to see more research on therapeutic outcomes. Arnold's thoughts turned to the article he'd bookmarked weeks ago: "Creative Arts Therapy in Child Psychology: A Five-Year Study" by Dr. Helga G. Pataki, PhD.
He'd read it three times already, each time feeling a strange mix of surprise and inevitability. Of course Helga had channeled her intensity into understanding children's emotional needs. Of course she'd turned her secret poetry into a force for helping others.
The boarding house was still there, its brick facade weathered but standing strong. Gerald Field had become a proper community park, though kids still played baseball there after school. The neighborhood had changed—new coffee shops, renovated storefronts—but its heart remained.
Arnold had already rented a small office space above Green Meats, now run by Harold's oldest son. He'd need a proper place to develop the app, somewhere separate from the boarding house's constant chaos. His savings from three years of part-time counseling work during grad school would cover six months of development time.
The dinner crowd at Chez Paris had thinned when Arnold finally closed his laptop. His notes on child-friendly interface design were interrupted by memories: fourth-grade poetry volumes falling from a pink book, the school counselor's office where he'd spent so many lunches helping peers work through problems, Gerald telling him years later that he should've become a therapist instead of a tech developer.
"You can do more good with an app that reaches thousands of kids," Arnold muttered to himself, repeating the words that had convinced his thesis committee to approve his change in direction.
He walked the old neighborhood routes automatically, muscle memory guiding his feet past PS 118, past the vacant lot where he and his friends had built countless adventures. The city felt smaller now, or maybe he'd grown bigger. Either way, something about being back felt right, like the story he'd started here wasn't finished.
In his temporary room at the Sunset Arms, Arnold opened his laptop one last time. Dr. Pataki's professional profile filled the screen, her blue eyes intense and professional in the headshot. His cursor hovered over the "Contact" button as distant piano music drifted up from Mr. Hyunh's apartment below.
Tomorrow, he'd start setting up his office. Tomorrow, he'd begin building his team. Tomorrow, maybe, he'd find the courage to send that email.
But tonight, he let himself remember a little girl who'd hidden poetry in volumes labeled "Math" and wonder what else she might have been hiding all along.