About a girl from Fernley.
In the packed corner of a Starbucks off Union Square East and E. 15th street, 18-year-old Laura Knightreads her book and sips a decaf coffee, leaving a bright red lipstick spot on her cup.
Speaking with a stutter through her freckles, makeup and long brown bangs she describes how weaning herself off caffeine has changed her sleeping patterns and consequently, her whole day.
“This week has been really weird for me,” Knight said.
“Usually all my homework would be done at like three or four in the morning ‘cause I always drink coffee because I like doing things at night,” she said while fidgeting with her fingers. “But I can’t do that. So I’m going to bed at more like two or three in the morning, so I have to rearrange my schedule.”
Since adjusting to a new sleeping pattern and finishing her homework at an earlier time, she’s returned to her usual pace of reading a book or two a week. Today she’s reading I Regret Everything: A Love Story by Seth Greenland.
It’s one of many impulsive book buys she’s made since moving to New York last August from Fernley, Nevada to attend Pratt University.
Her hometown of Fernley lies 34 miles east of Reno, Nevada. It houses five casinos, one Wal-Mart Supercenter and sits on 130 square-miles of desert.
“Don’t let the name confuse you, there are no ferns,” she said with a smirk.
Knight said there isn’t much to do in Fernley, but being situated only a couple hours from Black Rock Desert did give it some quirks.
“There was the occasional interesting thing, like Burning Man,” she said. “Everyone would stop by my town to go get water and supplies and stuff for Burning Man.”
In 2014, nearly 65,000 people attended Burning Man. Every year a chunk of these costumed festival-goers would stop by Fernley in their decorated cars and vans to buy water and supplies.
“It would just become an event. All of us in our town would just randomly go to Wal-Mart just to watch the burners,” she said, laughing. “It was fun and it was interesting and it was probably how Wal-Mart and Fernley made the most money.”
Newcomers to New York may struggle with moving from a small town like Fernley, but moving 2,600 miles from a town of 20,000 people to a city of 8.4 million felt natural to Knight.
“I just love the vibe of the city. I like how it’s always going and not stopping and I love that,” she said, smiling. “I feel more at home in the few months I’ve been in New York than I felt in the 18 years that I spent in Fernley.”
Knight said she didn’t appreciate the stillness and nosiness of being in a small town. “I just wanted something different. My mom graduated from the same high school I did, I didn’t want to do that,” she said.
When she, her friends or other teenagers got bored, they would do what many teenagers did no matter what city they were in: smoke pot and drink alcohol wherever no adults were around.
In Fernley that would be in secluded spots with nicknames like the “fossil pits” and the “salt flats.”
Knight recalls a particular story about some teenagers that went to the “salt flats.”
“These drunk kids went over to a nearby farm and tortured a goat,” she said.
She said she doesn’t know what exactly happened to the goat, but from that day on that part of Fernley became a common DUI checkpoint.
But Knight didn’t usually take part in these desert excursions. She mostly cavorted with her friends on the academic debate team.
“I was a nerd,” she said, describing her love for Doctor Who and literature. “The thing is, the nerds, because nobody suspected us, we ended up being the worst kids. We drank, we smoked pot, we smoked cigarettes.”
Though she had her share of reckless recreational activities, her passions have always been with the written word. Books were her best friends in elementary school and since the 4th grade she said she’s written an endless stream of poetry and short fiction.
Her love for literature and writing growing up in Fernley connects to where she is in life now, a freshman at Pratt University getting her BFA in Creative Writing.
Knight said she never wishes to go back.
“New York is its own little world and I enjoy that,” she said. “Once you get used to it, it just sucks you in and you don’t want to leave. You just become a part of it.”
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