Broken Together

by Cassie Beebe

  He turned his now watery eyes back to his hands. He was surprised with himself for answering that question with honesty so quickly. When she asked, he just responded, not stopping to think about whether or not he was comfortable sharing that information with her. He frowned at his lap, wondering why that response had been so different from when Callie had asked him the same question.

  Now that the words were out, though, his nerves began to rise. Despite the admission, he didn’t actually want to talk about his sister and her death. He just wanted someone to know. He wanted to be sad without question, for someone to see the emotion in his eyes and simply accept it, without another word, because they understand where it came from and that it was always going to be there.

  Breaking Jacob from his contemplation, Jenna asked, “Do you want some ice cream?”

  Jacob narrowed his eyes in confusion as he met her patient, questioning gaze. “Um,” he began, chuckling a bit at her superficial question in such a serious moment. “Yeah, sure.”

  She gave him a warm smile, patting his leg as she got up from the bed to fix him a bowl. Jenna was one of those people who never seemed fully comfortable with confronting emotion, whether it be her own emotions or those of someone else, but Jacob smiled at her effort as she rifled her miniature freezer for the ice cream. After a moment, she returned to the bed with a bowl and spoon, handing it to him with a grin.

  “Thanks,” he said. Eying her as she snuggled back under her blankets, he asked, “You’re not having any?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, that was the last of it,” she said, laying back against her pile of pillows.

  “Oh,” he muttered, looking guiltily down at his bowl. “Well you don’t have to give it to me.”

  “Of course I do,” she smirked through a yawn as she curled up around one of her large pillows, closing her eyes. “You’re sad,” she stated. “Ice cream is a necessity.”

  Jacob chuckled once at her simple solution. Taking note of her relaxed frame and remembering their earlier conversation about her lack of sleep, he suggested, “I should probably get going, though. Let you get some sleep.”

  “Oh,” she said, sitting up and opening her sleepy eyes. “Actually, I just started this movie a few minutes ago,” she said, pointing to her laptop. “I could start it over, if you wanna stay.”

  “I don’t know…,” he trailed off, assessing her fatigue.

  She smirked at his hesitance. “Jacob, if you leave, I’m not gonna go to sleep. I’m just gonna watch the movie by myself.”

  Realizing she was probably right, he surrendered. “Alright, sure.”

  She moved over to give him room beside her, unplugging her headphones and setting up the computer between them. She backed the movie up to the opening credits and pressed play, pulling her blankets up to her chest and grabbing one of the many pillows that decorated her bed.

  “Where’s Anna?” he asked, glancing at the bed on the other side of the room, neatly made and untouched.

  “Marcus,” Jenna replied, confirming his assumption.

  Nearly ten minutes into the film, her head fell to rest on his shoulder. At the start of their friendship, her touchiness had made him slightly uncomfortable, but now it was just Jenna. She was a touchy person, and maybe that was good for him. With all the ways Jenna made him feel at ease, there had to be a few ways she challenged him, pushed him outside of his comfort zone.

  The movie they were watching was set in New York City, and as a stunning shot of the Brooklyn Bridge came across the screen, a thought occurred to him.

  “Hey, have you ever been to New York?” he asked, excited about the possible idea of getting to show her around the city someday. “Jenna?” he asked again when she didn’t respond. Leaning down to meet her gaze, he discovered that she was out like a light, her head laying softly against his arm as she clung tightly to her pillow.

  Knowing the difficulty she often had with sleep, he didn’t want to wake her by getting up. He stayed still for a few more minutes, idly watching the movie he didn’t care much about until he was sure she was in a deep slumber. Whispering her name one more time with no reply, he shut down the computer and closed the top, setting it on the desk beside him as he carefully slipped out from under her head, replacing his shoulder with another pillow. She instinctively leaned more firmly into the pillow and wrapped her arm around it. Smiling at her peaceful expression, Jacob turned the light off and locked the door on his way back into the hallway. With a sigh, he retreated to his room.

  Lying in bed, his heart started to race when he thought back to his conversation with Callie at the restaurant. No matter how the talk ended, he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which that conversation wouldn’t change the nature of their friendship. And with their project presentation coming up the next morning, he was anxious to see how those changes would affect their professional relationship.

  He let out a deep breath, and for a moment he wished he never would have known about her feelings. Things were so much easier before. Now everything between them was messy, awkward, and unknown.

  Glancing at the clock, he noted that half an hour had passed since he lay down, and he was getting more stressed with every second that he worried about Callie. He took a centering breath – in for four, hold for four, out for four – and tried to focus his mind on relaxing thoughts.

  He thought about dinner with the girls, but that just made him think about Callie again, so he moved on. He thought about the music in Jenna’s car on the way to the restaurant, but Guns N’ Roses wasn’t exactly a lullaby. His thoughts drifted further back as his medication started to kick in. A hazy memory of Jenna in the lobby – red-lipped and dolled up, tugging on his on his flannel shirt with a warm hand on his chest – popped into his mind, and his heart began to race again as sleep finally pulled him under.

  JACOB HAD OFFICIALLY MADE it through half of his first semester of college.

  It was Friday morning, and he found himself actually looking forward to the bonfire at the pond that evening, a celebration of making it through midterms alive. He knew Jenna would be there, and although things with him and Callie had been a bit awkward for the past few weeks, since he rejected her feelings for him, she had mentioned Monday, after their successful presentation in Psychology, that she and Angela would be making an appearance at the party that weekend as well.

  But before all of that, there was the Academic Fair.

  Every year, on the Friday after midterms week, the gym was transformed with lines and lines of booths for every major available in the academic catalog. Each booth had information on the subject, like what kinds of jobs you could expect to pursue should you choose to get your degree in said major, and each department put together a twenty-minute introductory class for any students who wanted to go the extra mile in preparing for next semester’s courses.

  Jenna was not one of those students. Since she was a Junior, and the Academic Fair was geared toward Freshman, Jacob had asked her about it that morning, to try to get an idea of what to expect.

  “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go,” she had shrugged, stretching her legs before their morning run.

  Running with Jenna had become a nearly daily occurrence. Once she had mentioned that he should join her on a run sometime, they had started jogging together. It started out as an occasional thing, but eventually they began running together almost every morning before class. Jacob would have been embarrassed by his lack of athleticism, if it weren’t for the fact that Jenna was always huffing and puffing even more than he was. But whether due to good discipline or plain stubbornness, when Jenna set her mind to something, she stuck with it.

  After a few weeks of the routine, Jacob could make it through their entire route around campus with no shin pain and only minimal wheezing, which he considered quite an accomplishment.

  “Why didn’t you go?” he asked, watching the way her back arched as she reached toward her toes. “You’re doing that wrong, by the way.”

  “Wh
at? How do you know?” she asked.

  “I watched a YouTube video.”

  “Oh, wow, sorry,” she put up her hands in defeat. “I didn’t realize you were an expert.”

  “Apology accepted. You’re supposed to keep your back straight,” he explained, reaching down in demonstration. “Like this.”

  “What was I doing?” she asked, repeating the same arched stretch as before.

  “You’re bending your back too much,” he explained, placing a hand on her lower back, and gently pulling her shoulders up to a straightened position. “Feel the difference?”

  Her muscles tensed under his touch, and she stood up and stepped aside. “Yeah, I got it,” she said, fixing the bobby pin that held her bangs away from her face. “Geez, why is it so hot out here? Isn’t is supposed to be winter?”

  “Do you want to put your sweatshirt inside before we go?” he asked, gesturing to their dorm building behind them.

  “Nah, I’m fine. Let’s go,” she decided, starting down the sidewalk to the walking trail.

  He ran to catch up with her. “So, why didn’t you go to the Academic Fair?”

  “I didn’t really need to,” she said as they jogged. “I already knew I wanted to write music, so it seemed like a waste of time.”

  He shook his head, in awe of her certainty. “Man, I’m so jealous of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “Being so sure,” he said. “I’m so much older than you, and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.”

  “You’re not that much older than me,” she retorted with a snort.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Really?” he replied, trying to do the math of how old the average Junior in college is supposed to be. Definitely a few years younger than that, he determined. “Huh,” he muttered, wondering why the long gap between high school and college. “Well, still. I need to figure this stuff out while I still have the time, so I’m going.”

  “Have fun with that,” she chuckled, stifling his hope that she would join him at the Fair. Given that she was a Junior and he was a Freshman, they didn’t have any classes together. When he heard that the Academic Fair was open to all students, he had hoped that meant they could go together, but apparently Jenna had different plans.

  “I will,” he replied.

  After his run with Jenna, Jacob headed back to his room for a quick shower and grabbed a power bar from his backpack before heading to the gym for the Fair.

  It was an open-house-style event, with students and teachers and parents coming and going throughout the day, so at 10am, the crowds were already insane. The ratio of floor space to bodies crammed into the gym elicited his anxiety, so he decided to check the list of classes at the first administration booth, as most people seemed to bypass that station. Given that the entire Fair was optional, nobody wanted to spend the Friday after midterms in a classroom. Well, with the exception of….

  “Callie?” Jacob asked as he stepped up to the administration booth.

  She peeked up from her meticulously organized binder. “Jacob! Hey! What classes are you doing? They have a list here, and you can sign up for as many as you want.”

  He laughed at her excitement. He had never seen her this energetic before, flipping through the color-coded tabs of her binder and jotting down the times and classrooms for each course on the list at the booth.

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said, picking up the sheet of paper to get a closer look.

  Callie stepped closer to him, her eyes never leaving the paper as she continued to record the list in her notes.

  He held it closer for her to see. “Which ones are you doing?”

  “Um…,” she paused and flipped to the front of her binder, her finger scanning down the list. “First up is Social Work. I’m taking Intro to Social Work next semester, so I figured it would be good to meet the Professor and get a feel for the class.”

  He smirked at her over-achieving nature. “Yeah, that’s a great idea.”

  “And then I’m gonna try to fit in as many as I can after that,” she shrugged. “Although, some of them are at the same time, so I’ll have to choose between them,” she frowned.

  He looked over the list of courses for the day. Brief introductions to social work, nursing, history, teaching, math, science. He was waiting for something to jump off the page, demanding his attention and screaming “this is it!” but the words stayed flat and still on the bland, black and white page.

  “Maybe I’ll join you,” he decided. He wasn’t entirely sure what “social work” was, but he had no desire to weave his way through the crowds to visit the booths in the gym, so he decided maybe Callie’s over-zealous plan for the day was the best route. “I mean, if that’s alright with you,” he added, not wanting to insert himself in her plans if she didn’t want him there. She was always friendly, but now that Jenna had pointed it out, he couldn’t un-see the unrequited longing that often touched her eyes when she looked at him.

  Thankfully for him, though, Callie was far too captivated by the full day ahead of her to pay him much attention. She just answered, “Yeah, of course!” and went back to organizing her self-made class schedule for the day.

  Once she finished recording the class list in her binder, they made their way to Module 2, where the typical white plastic tables had been traded for a circle of folding chairs. A gray-haired woman in a tweed skirt-suit with a large, peacock broach on the lapel was standing at the head of the circle.

  “Come in, come in!” she greeted them with an inviting grin, waving them inside to join the other two students already seated around the circle.

  Callie walked straight up to the professor to introduce herself. Jacob could have done without that part, but being that they entered together, it seemed rude not to follow suit. The woman – Professor Stein, he now knew – gave him a weak handshake with her cold, soft palm.

  Once they took their seats, the professor shut the door and began the introduction of the course.

  “Good morning, everyone. My name is Professor Janet Stein,” she began, slowly scrawling her name in barely-legible cursive on the white board. “And I’m here today to talk to you about why you should choose Social Work as your major,” she pointed her marker at the students with an Uncle Sam severity, made comical by her tiny, frail frame.

  “So, some of you might be wondering,” she put her hands on her hips and put on her best petulant teenager voice, “what’s the difference between Social Work and Psychology, anyway?”

  Jacob smirked and Callie chuckled, already furiously scribbling notes in her binder. On what, he hadn’t a clue, since the professor had yet to tell them anything but her name.

  “Well, that’s a good question!” Professor Stein encouraged with a smile. “Who here has visited a psychologist?” she asked, raising her hand in demonstration.

  Jacob’s face flushed, and he glanced around the room. The girl across the circle from him was looking around as well, but the boy beside her was picking at his nails, barely paying attention, and Callie was still writing away in her notes.

  “Oh, come on, now, don’t be shy. There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” the professor encouraged.

  She looked around the circle, her eyes landing on Jacob, and he slowly raised his hand a foot from his lap. When he did, he noticed the girl across from him follow suit.

  “Very good!” the professor said. “So, you’re familiar with what a psychologist does,” she continued.

  Callie’s hand hesitated on her notepad as she peeked over at Jacob. He tried to pretend he didn’t notice, and she went back to writing.

  “Most people are more familiar with that picture. A lot of what we see in movies – individuals attending therapy sessions, marriage counseling, neurologists researching the way the brain works – all of that would typically fall under the category of Psychology,” she explained. “The main point in which Social Work differs is that Social Workers generall
y work with the family or community as a whole, rather than just the individual.

  “Social workers work with families and communities, to help people overcome difficulties in their daily lives. While many facets of Psychology focus on biology and neurology, social workers primarily focus on the effects our environments have on our development. We aim to tackle issues like poverty, addiction, and family issues, to name a few examples.”

  Professor Stein went on to describe various careers social workers might choose to pursue and the different levels of social work, such as working with individuals and families, versus tackling issues within community systems, institutions, and government. She provided a comprehensive explanation of her Introduction to Social Work class, which Callie struggled to keep up with as she recorded each topic in her binder.

  Jacob found his mind wandering after the professor mentioned Child Protective Services under her list of potential careers in social work. The elusive saviors he was always hearing about as a kid, but never came to his rescue. He remembered the first time he heard about CPS, wondering why they had never come to take him and his sister away. Of course, once he was older, he knew it wasn’t as simple as people made it sound, and upon further consideration, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be taken away. Sure, he would have been out of the reach of his father’s angry fist, but would he also have been ripped away from his mother? Would he and Maggie have been separated, if they were fostered out to new homes? And if so, what would have become of his mother, alone with his father, with nothing left to fight for?

  “So, that’s what you can expect from next semester’s course, should you choose to sign up,” Professor Stein announced, turning back to the circle of students and pulling Jacob from his thoughts.

  “Now, if I can leave you with one thought as you go about the rest of your day, I would like it to be this quote from Lily Tomlin,” she stated with passion in her voice and severity in her eyes, and the room was silent for a moment. Even Callie stopped writing and looked up from her binder, and the boy several seats away from Jacob looked up from his fingernails for the first time in the past twenty minutes.