“No.” She sighed. “He’s been pushing me away, Jilly. I guess I didn’t really know what to do, and this just happened.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Not long. And it’ll stop really soon. I mean, I have to get serious, right?”
“Yeah.”
If there was more to tell, she didn’t volunteer it, and as usual, I didn’t ask. We drove on in silence, past bald trees and snow crusted lawns and big, black windowed houses. As we pulled into the Golden’s driveway and I turned the car off, she finally turned to me again, grabbing my wrist suddenly.
“I’m so sorry, Jill. It’s not like I didn’t consider telling you.” She paused. Her fingers were freezing. “But I couldn’t let anyone know.”
I thought of that moment with my ear pressed into the crack of the door frame. It’s no one.
“I know,” I said. “I promise, no one will know.”
It stopped in mid-March. I knew not because Rudy told me – we’d never spoken about it again – but because Skyler Warren got some kind of vague job working for a tech company in Kansas City and moved into a high rise apartment overlooking the Plaza and the kind of relationship he and Rudy had – which as far as I knew consisted of hooking up over drugs in the shadows at parties – didn’t seem like the kind of relationship you held on to long distance. On Rudy’s end, I studied her hard for clues – I compared her behavior before and after his departure, I casually peeked inside her purse and in her dresser drawers for some other very large and obvious sign of a problem, but when I found nothing I resolved the mistake must have been Skyler, and now the mistake was gone. She was the same – a little melancholy, a little moodier, but we were eighteen, we were all changing – at her core, I was sure she must be the same as she’d always been.
14
Senior Spring
When I was five years old, I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. For Christmas that year, I begged for and received a dress up kit with a white doctor’s coat and a red plastic satchel with one of those white crosses on the sides. Inside it, there were bandages and a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope that actually worked. I wore the coat every day during Christmas vacation, and I practiced examining and diagnosing my baby cousins, when they would stay still, and my baby dolls when I had no available human patients.
In the fourth grade, when the highly anticipated job-shadowing day rolled around, I had determined education was where my aspirations lay and I spent the day helping my favorite teacher pass out stickers and juice boxes in the kindergarten room at my elementary school in Boston.
When I received my letter of acceptance to the University of Missouri in March of my senior year of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I panicked during my first college counseling session at Ogden, when after a solid half hour of Mrs. Stuart, the sweet, Brillo pad haired counselor, prodding me gently about my interests and suggesting majors that might appeal to me, we had yet to come to any conclusions regarding my future. I liked art okay, but I was a terrible artist. I didn’t really like kids and teachers were underpaid anyway. I didn’t have the endurance to make it through enough school to become a doctor (and to be fair, I probably wasn’t smart enough either). Engineering, accounting and agriculture didn’t even blip on my radar.
I cried when, two weeks after MU accepted me, I opened my rejection letters from UCLA and USC. In some brutal twist of events, they arrived in the mail on the very same day Rudy received letters of acceptance from both schools.
“You’re not going without me, are you?” I could barely choke the words out through my sobs.
Rudy bit her lip and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Warm relief washed through my body. I could breath again.
“You can, you know. It’s your dream school. I could visit you on breaks and we could go to the beach.” Now that I knew she wouldn’t leave me, I could encourage her.
Rudy shook her head more fervently.
“They’re not my dream schools. They were just nice schools.”
By the time Boston College rejected me, I was immune; their letter bounced off my cool exterior. My father, however, was sorely disappointed.
I made mental plans regarding the decorations in the dorm room Rudy and I would inevitably share at MU.
Each year, in early April, Ogden rewarded the senior class with a break from school during the week when the freshman, sophomore and junior classes were suffering through standardized testing. I think they did it, in equal parts, because the seniors loved it and because it meant they could wash their hands of a bunch of students who would otherwise be flippantly roaming the hallways, distracting the test-takers. Ogden’s test scores were a thing of parents’ dreams, and they wanted to keep it that way. For our class, Deena had spearheaded a campaign to spend our four-day break taking a class trip to Panama City Beach. She began pushing the trip at class meetings in November, and by the end of February the plane tickets and hotel reservations were booked. Thirty-seven of our class members were going, including Rudy and me, along with five adult chaperones.
On the plane ride, Rudy and I sat together sharing the headphones to her iPod. She squeezed my hand when we took off and when we landed – plane rides terrified her, though she was far more well-traveled than I was – and as we dragged our rolling suitcases through the crowded airport terminal and out the sliding glass doors once we’d landed in Florida, we were hit with warm, salty air. Loading my bags into the back of a taxi van, I felt stuffy and overheated in the sweatshirt and jeans I’d dressed in back in 40 degree Missouri.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Rudy pushed her nose against the glass of the tinted window in the taxi as the beach came into view for the first time. She pointed at the blue waves rolling into shore and I squinted beside her.
It was. It was gorgeous, the yellow rays of sunlight reflecting off the white tops of the crashing waves, the white-gold curve of the beach stretching down the coast. I felt a pang, of guilt and disappointment, for what we would be missing in California the next four years.
But it didn’t last long, thank God. We were on break.
“Where do you want to put our towels down? Close to the water or the buildings?” Deena turned around to speak to us, shading her eyes with one arm raised to her forehead.
I shrugged.
“Water,” Rudy said.
We followed Deena and Teegan down the beach, kicking up sand like little kids as we went. Once we’d designated the perfect, sun-optimizing spot, we spread our towels and began basting our arms and legs with tanning lotion. I spread it across my stomach then passed the bottle to Rudy.
“Get my back?”
I turned and heard her squirt a glob of lotion onto her palm then massage it into the backs of my shoulders.
“Where are the guys?” Teegan asked when we were all sprawled on our towels, squinting up at the sun overhead.
“Drinking in one of their rooms before they come out,” Deena answered. I couldn’t see through her dark glasses, but I could tell by the tone of her voice the statement had been accompanied by an eye roll.
“What about Greg’s parents?”
When Greg Jennings’ parents had volunteered to serve as chaperones, a silent cheer had gone up among the seniors who were booked for the trip. The Jennings were perhaps the most notoriously lenient parents in our class. Not only were they known to provide alcohol to Greg’s friends, but it was rumored that once, Mr. Jennings – the manager of our community bank, who wore stiff suits and squeaky black soled shoes and once came to speak to my finance class about the importance of starting a retirement fund in your twenties – had crashed one of Greg’s small parties in a bright orange Hawaiian shirt and done shots with all of the boys.
“I’m sure they bought the beer. They’re probably drunker than anybody.”
It was early in the day, but the beach was already crowded with bodies and umbrellas. I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my e
lbows, gazing down the strip of sand.
“Rudy, Thomas is going to Yale next year, right?”
College had been the most popular topic of conversation at Ogden since the regular admission letters began arriving in February and March. It followed me around, hovering around me in the hallways and waiting to pounce onto my back when I entered a classroom full of seniors. I wanted to shove my fingers into my ears and refuse to listen.
“Right.” Rudy didn’t raise her head off the towel.
“His classes are going to be so tough. He’s going to be surrounded by all these brainiacs. Have you decided where you’re going yet?” The question was obviously directed at Rudy, but she didn’t answer.
“I’m going to Colorado. We finally picked one, last night while I was packing actually,” Teegan filled the silence. “It was between that and Kirksville, but I really just want to get out of the bubble, you know?”
“Hey,” Deena pointed an accusatory finger in Teegan’s direction. “Don’t knock Missouri.” Deena had been set on the University of Missouri for months; she had an entire collection of emblazoned sweatshirts to prove it. “You’re going to Mizzou, too, right Jillian?”
I nodded. “And Rudy.”
“Really?” Deena perked up.
“Probably.” Rudy shooed a fly away from her nose. “There are a few schools I haven’t heard from yet.”
I dug my toes into the sand and watched a group of bikini-clad girls pose for a picture by the water. A split second after the picture was taken, a seagull swooped down in front of them and they scattered, squealing with laughter.
“What are you and Thomas going to do when he leaves for Yale? You’re not going to stay together, are you?” Deena’s lips were pursed together in judgment. I braced myself for her impending rant.
“I don’t really know yet.”
“Honestly, you don’t want to be in a long distance relationship, especially not your first year of college. College is all about freedom and meeting new people. You don’t want to be tied to somebody who’s a thousand miles away.”
“We’ve talked about it, but we haven’t decided anything,” Rudy answered quietly, and that seemed like the end of the conversation. I reached into the big straw tote bag Rudy and I had lugged from our hotel and pulled out a magazine, flipping to an article about dressing for your body type.
“What if he cheats on you? You’d never know.” Deena was turned toward us, and I could see my distorted reflection in those huge lenses.
Quickly, I looked away, staring holes through the magazine and into the sand. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Teegan gazing intently at her fingernails.
“Not that I’m saying Thomas is that type of guy. But he is a guy.”
To this, Rudy didn’t even respond. Without a word, she flipped over and lay on her stomach, her face turned toward me.
Rudy had been in a funk for the past week or so, and I blamed it on Thomas. The night before we left for Florida, Rudy and I were packing, filling a duffel bag with bikinis and flip flops, when Rudy’s phone rang. Her face tightened.
“It’s Thomas.”
She answered and not even thirty seconds into the conversation, went into her closet and closed the door behind her.
In her bedroom, I kept sifting through the drawer, being as quiet as possible as I strained to hear Rudy on the other side of the wall, then feeling guilty when I caught bits and pieces of the conversation. When the door flew open, I was tilting in the direction of the closet, a pink and white striped bikini top in my hand. I bolted up straight, snapping my head forward and scrutinizing the top in my hands. Rudy’s mouth was turned down, her eyebrows furrowed over her glass-green eyes.
I held it up toward her. “Should we pack this one?”
“Sure.” She sat back down across from me and picked up where she had left off without saying a word about the phone call. I didn’t ask.
After two hours of lying in the sand, the four of us got up and made our way down the beach. Rudy was bubbling over now, exuding something we couldn’t help but catch. We giggled along down the boardwalk and she convinced us we should talk some guys into buying us frozen drinks from one of the beachside vendors.
The lucky gentlemen were in a group of four, throwing a football and clutching cans of beer, backward baseball caps pulled down over all of their heads. The one in blue and white swim trunks was cute, I decided, as he lofted the ball over his head. None of us wanted to approach them, and after two rounds of rock, paper, scissors, Deena was appointed our less-than-willing messenger.
They took our cash and returned with green plastic souvenir glasses, brimming with strawberry daiquiris. They told us they were on spring break from Ohio State University, and we told them the names of the colleges we’d be attending in the fall, in an attempt to distract from the fact that we were still in technically in high school. Late in the afternoon, when we departed, we exchanged phone numbers and made plans to meet up with them that evening. We trudged back to the hotel, dehydrated and tipsy from the alcohol and the sun.
Back in our room, Rudy fixed my hair while I sat on the gaudy floral bedspread and applied make-up over my pink cheeks, squinting into a hand mirror propped up against my bent knees. I wore a dress of Deena’s that was a little too big around my hips and Teegan borrowed the pink high heels my mom gave me for Christmas. We had all severely over packed, the contents of our stiff new suitcases overflowing out onto the dingy carpet.
We met up with the rest of the Ogden group in the dimly lit hotel lobby and we walked next door for dinner at a seafood restaurant with cushioned red seats and an enormous lobster tank in the middle of the dining room. I ordered crab, Rudy ordered shrimp, and we picked off of each other’s plates.
At nine o’clock, we left for a dance club in a pack of twelve. Rudy and Thomas walked on opposite sides of the group, but I was too excited for the night ahead of us to worry about their relationship. I was tired of the tedious drama. I was ready to let loose and have fun, and I was ready to find the football tossing guy from the beach.
Inside the club the air was hot and stale; the walls pulsed with music from the huge speakers at the DJ booth. Green and blue and pink lights swiveled from the ceiling over the middle of the dance floor, shooting strobes of color across the crowded room. Near the bar where they’d promised to meet us, Deena spotted our drink-buying friends from that afternoon and we made our way toward them through the throngs of tanned bodies. They proudly brandished their neon-braceleted wrists and slipped cash across the sticky bar counter and were rewarded with full cups of beer, which they handed off to each of us once we were out of the bartenders’ view. The boys from Ogden had disappeared as soon as we’d entered the club.
We stood in a tight circle and drank quickly while the guys from the beach recounted a story about their long drive from Ohio. Two quick beers later, we were dragging them onto the dance floor, moving to the beat of the music while the guys put their arms around our waists and tried to follow our motions. The guy I was dancing with wasn’t particularly good looking, but Rudy’s partner had striking features and nice green eyes and arm muscles that bulged beneath the sleeves of his white polo. Of course Rudy got the best-looking guys, even when she had a boyfriend, I thought with a pang of jealousy.
I twisted my neck and looked for Thomas in the crowd, but I couldn’t spot any of the guys from our class. I wondered what he would think if he saw Rudy with this hot college guy – not that she was doing anything wrong, really. I guess. For a second, I thought of the night I’d walked in on her at Skyler Warren’s. I wondered what was going through her mind while she moved across the dance floor.
My toes were aching, pinched into a pair of Rudy’s half-size-too-small heels, and my new dance partner, the guy who had been dancing with Teegan earlier, wrapped a sweaty arm around me. I pulled away and gestured to Rudy, nodding my head toward the bar. She was smiling and glistening with the faintest layer of perspiration across her forehead.
We
perched on two sticky, ripped stools at the end of the counter, and I rested my tired feet against the metal bar at the bottom of the stool. Once I had caught my breath, I turned to talk to Rudy, but she was staring daggers across the room, her jaw clenched and her arms folded across her chest. I followed her gaze over all the swaying bodies until it landed on the far side of the dance floor, where Thomas was wiping sweat off his forehead while he danced with his body pressed up against a girl I didn’t know. Before I could say anything, the guys we’d been dancing with appeared at our sides.
“You girls want some shots?” One of them yelled over the pounding of the music.
I nodded without looking to Rudy first. I wanted a shot. I didn’t want this trip, my senior trip, to end with me soberly following along as the third wheel to Rudy’s crashing relationship.
He passed a plastic shot glass, overflowing with yellow liquid, into my hands and some of it dripped onto Deena’s dress. The four of us lifted our shots to cheers and threw them back. It was good, lemon something. Before I could wipe my mouth, they were handing us another shot each, which we promptly tossed back as well.
I’m sure you can guess where things went from there – downhill very quickly. I had barely eaten in the past two days, irrationally afraid of stomach bloat and looking fat beside my friends in my swimsuit on the beach. It didn’t take long before the shots – and the beers that followed them – had me swaying side to side on my barstool, leaning into one of the guys who had plied us with those shots in the first place, probably with this exact scenario in mind.
I was twirling, watching my dress billow and fall, when Rudy pulled me close and whispered in my ear. “Let’s go hang out somewhere else.”
“You want to leave? Just you and me?” I half-whispered, half-shouted into her ear.
“They invited us to their room.”
“Rudy.” I turned to look at her and pressed my face close to hers.
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