My best friend at home’s older sister’s boyfriend goes to Cornell Law School. Yeah, he is a genius. He came to Baltimore for Thanksgiving this year.

“Hey, when are you going back?” I asked.

“Sunday,” he said.

“Want company?”

“How were you planning on getting back?” he asked.

I hadn’t actually thought about it. I figured something would come up.

“Yeah sure,” he said, “we are leaving after the Ravens game.” So I had all of Sunday to hang out, because we didn’t leave until 8 p.m.

As I took the trash out Sunday night, I thought about what the neighbors thought of me, home when all the other college kids on the street had left already. They probably assumed I just wasn’t going back. Do people do that?

I could just say I got really sick, and hopefully the teachers would just give me all A’s, I figured. Or I could just say I didn’t know we had to. What would the school do? They would be so confused.

When I realized that not going back to school would mean staying at home, I knew I had to go back. Being at home is great in the sense that it’s free, but a nine-day Thanksgiving break is long enough.