In the town where I grew up, anonymity wasn't an option. It wasn't even a concept. You were born into a story that started before you arrived, and your name came pre-loaded with everyone else's opinions—kind ones, mostly, but fixed all the same. I couldn't stand it. Growing up, my father's accomplishments pushed onto me. My mother's kindness, it was assumed I would be of the same nature. There was no room to become, well, myself.
Our street sat off a two-lane road that ran past the grain elevator and the only stoplight. In summer, the air always smelled faintly of cut grass and sun-warmed asphalt. In winter, the wind came in flat and hard, as if it had nowhere else to be. People didn't lock their doors because they trusted each other. They didn't lock their doors because, even if they did, everyone knew where to find the spare key.
My mother used to joke that I had been introduced to half the town before I learned to walk. She worked at the elementary school—nothing glamorous, nothing that ever made anyone clap at a banquet—but she knew every family in three generations. She carried their stories like she carried stacks of papers: organized, quietly heavy, never dropped.
My dad worked with his hands. He was the sort of man people went to when something broke, not just because he could fix it, but because he made you feel foolish for apologizing about it in the first place. "It's a thing," he'd say, and then he'd set about making it right. He had that unshowy competence that makes a kid believe the world is solvable.
If you asked someone in my hometown what I was like, they'd probably say I was "a good kid." It sounds small, now, like a compliment you give a neighbor's dog. But in a place like that, "good" was a role you could wear like a uniform. It had rules. It had expectations. It came with applause that was never loud enough to embarrass you, and criticism that was never cruel enough to break you.
I got good grades. I worked a few shifts after school. I helped my dad on weekends. I carried groceries for Mrs. Haskins when her hip started giving her trouble. I showed up when people asked. I laughed at the right jokes. I didn't cause problems. When people said "good," what they meant was predictable.
And for most of my life, predictable felt safe.
There was comfort in being known. There was comfort in being seen. My mother used to watch me get ready for school like she was checking a list in her head—lunch, keys, homework—and then she'd tell me, "Be smart," as if intelligence was a choice you made daily, like brushing your teeth.
My dad's line was simpler. He'd clap a hand on my shoulder and say, "Just be you."
I would nod like that was easy. The truth is, I didn't think much about who "me" was until the first time I realized I could be something other than the "good kid".
It was little things, at first. The way a teacher would tell a story about me in front of other students and everyone would laugh, and I'd feel my face heat—not because it was embarrassing, but because it was fixed. Like the story had been nailed to a wall and labeled, and now I was expected to keep matching it.
Or the way people assumed my future was an extension of my past. You'd hear it in casual sentences:
"He'll do great wherever he goes."
"He's going to make his parents proud."
"He's not the kind of boy who—"
They didn't mean to trap me. They didn't think of it that way. They thought of it as love. But love can be an uncomfortable shape you're forced to fit into when you don't know there are other options. Sometimes the love of others, it ends up feeling like a goal you must achieve to meet expectations rather than because it is who you are. In my hometown, I wasn't just Evan.
I was Evan—their Evan. The Mercer boy. The kid with the teacher mom and the fix-it dad. The one people spoke about like the ending had already been written, as if my personality came bundled with my last name and my parents' reputations. It wasn't malicious, it was affectionate. It was also suffocating.
Eventually, I grew up and college was just around the corner. The summer before college, my mother made lists for what I needed: sheets, towels, a desk lamp, vitamins she insisted I'd forget to take. She made lists for what I should remember: call once a week, don't skip meals, don't waste money. She made lists for what she wouldn't say out loud: that she was afraid the world would hurt me in ways our town never had.
The morning we left, the whole house had the strange, quiet feel of a place that's already been emptied, even though everything is still in it. My bedroom looked wrong without my posters. The hallway seemed too wide. The kitchen smelled like coffee and something sweeter—my mother had baked cinnamon rolls at dawn like she was feeding an army.
I ate two even though my stomach felt tight.
My mother hovered, and then, when she realized hovering wasn't helping, she turned practical. She straightened my collar. She handed me an envelope of cash "for emergencies." She tucked a small picture of us into the side pocket of my bag without comment.
When it was time to go, my mother hugged me longer than usual, and I heard her take a breath against my shoulder like she was steadying herself.
"Be smart," she whispered. My dad stood by the door with his keys in his hand, waiting for mom to finish her goodbyes before opening the door, letting the fresh air sweep into our kitchen, breathing life back into the room. Mom was crying as walked out and dad shut the door with a shake of his head.
He pretended he wasn't sentimental. He threw my duffel bag into the trunk and grunted about traffic. But he kept clearing his throat, as if something was lodged there that wouldn't go down. My dad pulled me into a rough hug, the kind he never gave unless something mattered. Then he stepped back, looked me over like he was trying to memorize me, and said the line that had always sounded like a blessing.
"Just be you." He gave me a pat on the shoulder and got into the car.
I remember smiling as I climbed into the passenger seat. I remember telling him I would always be me. I remember meaning it, in the way you mean things when you don't know how complicated they can become.
The drive to campus took a few hours. The landscape shifted from familiar stretches of fields and diners to denser exits and louder roads. The sky stayed the same—big, open, indifferent—but everything beneath it grew more crowded.
When we pulled into the university, I felt it immediately: the sense of being one person among thousands. Not special. Not recognized. Not watched. It should have made me nervous. Instead, it made my chest loosen, as if someone had unknotted a rope I didn't realize was there.
Students moved in clusters, carrying boxes and rugs and mini-fridges. Parents stood around looking emotional and trying not to show it. Everyone had a destination, a plan, a label. The noise was constant—car doors, laughter, shouted goodbyes, rolling carts over concrete.
My dad parked, killed the engine, and said, "Looks like a city."
We unloaded my things and followed a stream of people into my dorm building. Someone held the door open for us without looking at my face. Someone else brushed past me and apologized without caring if I forgave them. A tall kid with a baseball cap knocked my shoulder with his box and said, "Sorry, man," like I could have been anyone.
In the elevator, a girl with bright red hair glanced at me and smiled, then looked away. She wasn't flirting. She wasn't making a judgment. It was just reflexive politeness. A brief acknowledgment that we shared the same space, but meaningless none-the-less.
That was when the thought flickered across my mind, small and harmless:
She doesn't know me. I was a stranger to her and she, a stranger to me.
Not my name. Not my parents. Not that I was "a good kid," or the "nice guy." Not anything.
The dorm room was a rectangle of beige. Two beds, two desks, two closets. My roommate hadn't arrived yet, and the emptiness made the space echo. I fussed with the sheets absentmindedly. My dad wandered to the window, stared down at the courtyard like he was assessing an unfamiliar job site.
"Call if you need anything," he finally said, turning to face me.
"I will," I said, because it was what I was supposed to say.
When he finally left—after another hug, another reminder, another hidden cough and clearing of his throat—I stood in the doorway and watched him walk down the hall toward the elevator.
I thought he'd turned back, at least once and wave, like he didn't want to stop seeing me. But my dad want's that kind of man. He didn't turn. He kept his shoulders straight, like if he didn't look back it wouldn't hurt to let me go.
The elevator doors closed a moment later and suddenly, it was just me. No one in that hallway knew my history. No one knew who I was supposed to be. No one expected me to behave one way or another. No constrictions. No limits. Nothing to live up to.
I went back into the room and sat on my bed. The mattress was stiff. The air smelled like fresh paint and someone else's detergent. Outside, voices floated up from the courtyard—bright, unbothered. My mind felt empty. I took out my phone and looked at the contacts list. My parents. A few friends. People who had known me forever.
For a moment, the weight of that knowledge returned: all the eyes that had watched me grow up, all the opinions that had formed around me like a shell, forcing me into a shape I thought was me. With the quiet of the dorm room pressing in, another thought came—No one here knew what they were supposed to expect from me. What if I didn't have to be the same person?
A flood of questions filled my mind, almost immediately after the first. Who was Evan? If I was not living to fit the mold everyone had created for me, how would I know who to be? How to be? Could I create a new Evan?
It wasn't a plan. It wasn't a scheme. It was just a possibility. A small curious thought create from a few decaids of never having the option to be anything other than "a good boy."
I stood up and started unpacking. Shirts in drawers. Books on the desk. Toiletries in the bathroom caddy. Each item placed where it belonged, as if arranging my things could also arrange my mind. I followed the same motions I had watched my mother make through out my life. Placing things in ways and places I knew she would agree with.
When I found the small notebook my mother had slipped into my bag—"for notes," she'd said—I stared at it for a long moment. It was cheap. Spiral-bound. The kind of thing you buy at a cheap grocery store.
I picked it up and held it with gentle fingers, I felt something unexpected: a sense of control. Not the control my parents had given me through routine and expectation. A different kind. A private kind. I sat at the desk, opened the notebook, and stared at the blank first page.
For a minute, nothing came. My thoughts were too loud and too vague, swirling without landing.
Then I wrote the date out of habit.
Underneath it, I wrote a single sentence:
Hi, my name is Evan.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't even particularly clever. Just a true statement regarding the only thing about me that I felt was true. My name. As I looked at those words, I felt my mouth curve into something that wasn't quite a smile. In that sentence was a strange freedom.
If no one knew me, I could be anyone.
I could be better.
I could be worse.
I could be nothing at all and no one would notice.
There was a knock on the door then, and I jolted, like I'd been caught doing something illicit. A guy stood there, holding a box, smiling easy. "Hey," he said. "You my roommate?"
I stood up. "Yeah," I said automatically, holding out my hand to greet him.
He stepped in, set the box down, looked around with the casual confidence of someone who believed he belonged everywhere. "Cool. I'm—" He paused, his own hand hovering in the air and for just a second his eyes flicked to the notebook on my desk. Then he looked back at me, grin still in place. "I'm Drake." He said as he shook my hand. "And you must be, Evan?" He asked. Amussment in his voice.
It was such a small question. Such a normal one. And yet, in that instant, it felt like the first choice of my new life.
"Hi, I'm Evan," I said.