Suddenly, two decades have passed, and she still hasn’t felt what the grown-ups used to call “growing up.” Not that she’d ever been one to imagine castles in the sky or knights on white horses, but she did imagine a bright future, one where she had friendships like the characters on TV seemed to have. They laughed and had adventures together and dropped by each other’s apartments and got beers every night. She imagined she’d have a job as an artist or a writer or a baker or something. The details were so blissfully vague, like watching a Spanish soap opera in soft filter. But it’s two decades into her life, and she feels sadder than she thought she would at this age, beaten down by life like she’s nearly done with it when all she wants to know is whether she’s going to have a job after she graduates. She makes semester-long friendships that end when the class does. She wonders if she can pay her bills on time. She thinks about the future in terms of the number of years it’ll take her to pay off her student loans. She thinks of her future as not much more than a long series of what-ifs and if-onlys.