by Minka Kent
I do enjoy my own company. Always have.
But I keep seeing Tessa’s stony gaze, feeling the coldness in her words.
And it hurts.
Snapping myself out of it again, or at least attempting to, I groan when I realize I’m out of toothpaste. I’d meant to run to the store earlier after class, but I came home to Tessa and Lauren and the night evolved into an impromptu hang out session.
It’s way too fucking cold to leave the house now.
With my toothbrush in hand, I tiptoe down the hall toward Lauren’s room. I’ll just use her toothpaste. If she were here, she wouldn’t mind. And I’d do the same for her.
Her door swings open with a quiet creak, and I step inside. It feels wrong being in here, without her, but I trudge ahead, flicking on the light and making my way to her bathroom.
It still smells like the perfume she sprayed on twenty minutes ago, moments before they loaded up their coats and scarves and boots and braved the cold for the love of fucking sushi.
The bottle, pale pink and cut crystal, rests on the vanity, unlidded. I lift it to my nose and inhale the sweet scent. Before I realize what I’m doing, I spray it onto my left wrist. The bathroom already smells like it and she won’t notice. It’ll be faded by the time she returns anyway.
The perfume warms on my skin, making the top notes richer and the middle notes more vibrant—I learned all about “notes” from Claudette at the department store. It’s Versace. I make note of it. Maybe I’ll buy that next? A girl should have more than one perfume, I think. A scent for every mood.
The left drawer of her vanity is sticking out, and I catch a glimpse of her extensive makeup collection. Clear bins fit together like some sort of puzzle, each one containing similar products—one for mascaras, one for foundations, one for eyeshadows, one for tweezers and clippers. Her right drawer contains skin products. Vitamin C serums. Eye creams. Acne gels.
I don’t spot a single drugstore brand.
Lauren’s bathroom is basically a mini Sephora and everything is calling to me. The pretty packaging. The gorgeous palettes. The delicate mink makeup brushes.
Reaching for a peach palette covered in gold lettering, I click it open and find a set of six cream blushes. Two of the six are mostly used up, the other four untouched.
Swiping one of Lauren’s favorites—a pale pink—onto the pad of my middle finger, I dab it onto my cheek. But it doesn’t look right. I need foundation.
We’re completely different skin tones—she has pink undertones and I’m more olive-skinned, at least that’s what the lady at the department store said to us one day. But I want to try some of these, I want to compare them to my own, see if they’re worth the extra thirty or forty bucks an ounce.
Selecting a bottle of Dior foundation, I apply it all over my face with my fingers before carefully rinsing my hands in her sink, using enough soap so that when I dry them, there won’t be so much as a trace of foundation on her pink hand towel.
Next, I return to the blush bin, only I try a different color. This one is a powder, which I apply with a bushy brush that feels like a million bucks on my skin.
By the time I’m finished, I’m not sure how long I’ve been standing here, but the girl looking back at me in the mirror has a full face of designer makeup on and she’s smiling.
I like this Meadow better than the ruddy-faced, pissed-off version.
This Meadow has doors opened for her, guys that pick up the pens she drops in classes. This Meadow gets compliments on her shoes from other girls. This Meadow has learned to stop blushing when she feels the lingering stare of the opposite sex. This Meadow raised her hand in class the other day, made a joke—which the entire class found hilarious—and then found herself stopped in the hallway afterwards by a tall drink of water named Brent Miller, who asked if she was new.
And she said yes. Yes, she was new.
Because it was true.
The way I carry myself has completely changed, and it’s only drawing good things into my life. I could never go back.
Never.
And fuck Tessa for feeling threatened by me.
She should feel threatened by me.
Fifteen
I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day.
But this?
This?
No. I refuse. I refuse to believe this.
This changes everything.
I wait behind a vending machine on the fourth floor of the English building because Lauren is headed this way. Lauren. My roommate. Whom I just spotted leaving Dr. Bristowe’s office with tousled hair and red lips suggesting an intense make-out session—or something. She was giggling. He was leaning in his doorway, one arm up as he glanced down at her. One of his shirttails was untucked—a massive red flag as his normal state of dress is nothing short of impeccable.
She twirled her hair.
And smiled.
He kept his voice low.
And smiled.
This wasn’t a professional interaction.
This wasn’t a faculty member mentoring a senior on her capstone project.
They did something.
My stomach rolls and I hold my breath, listening for the soft tromp of Lauren’s sneakers as she heads for the elevator.
She passes, not noticing me in my fur-trimmed parka—the one exactly like hers but black instead of green.
Sweet, oblivious Lauren.
We’re supposed to go out tonight. Wellman’s. Lauren, Thayer, Tessa, me, and some of the others.
I’m not sure how I can do that now. After what I’ve seen. The way they were looking at each other is going to be burned into my memory for the foreseeable future. Already I must have replayed their little interaction a half of a dozen times.
Doesn’t she know his wife is pregnant?!
Does destroying someone’s family mean nothing to her?!
I see red. And then nothing. When I come to, I find myself slumped on the floor and good old Margaret Blume asking if I’m all right. She doesn’t recognize me. Then again, she hasn’t seen me in a month. I probably wouldn’t recognize me either.
Rising, I brush my hair out of my face, suck in a deep breath, and nod before dashing toward the stairs. I won’t take the elevator. I don’t even want to touch anything Lauren has touched in the last five minutes. Maybe that’s petty, to feel that way, but I’m disgusted.
I want nothing to do with her.
If only it were that easy.
Sixteen
I said I had a migraine.
It’s a perfectly infallible excuse. No one can deny that I have one. They can’t see it. Can’t test for it.
The moment I got home this afternoon, I barricaded myself in my room and locked the door. When I heard Lauren’s voice an hour later, I slipped my earbuds in my ears and played my music. Bowie, Queen, Lynryd Skynrd. None of this Esthero, Tosca bullshit.
When she texted me about going to Wellman’s, I told her I had a migraine. She replied with some emojis. A sad face. And a blue heart. Ten minutes later she texted that she hoped I felt better, that they’d miss me, and that she was going to Tessa’s to get ready.
She also asked if I needed anything. Chicken soup. Hot tea.
This isn’t a fucking sinus infection.
I didn’t reply.
Maybe I should have. But technically someone with a migraine wouldn’t be on their phone. The lights are too bright or something.
Turning my music down, I wait for her to leave, listening for the gentle slam of the front door and the soft purr of her Lexus engine. A minute later, I watch her back out of the driveway, texting on her phone and nearly hitting our mailbox.
Funny how before I didn’t mind her texting on her phone. Now it annoys me. I think it makes her look careless, selfish.
As does sleeping with a married man.
Granted, I don’t know if they’re having sex, but a dashing thirty-something professor and a pretty little coed like Lauren wouldn’t be risking their academic careers for
blow jobs and titty fucks.
And furthermore, she’s a liar. A dirty, dirty liar.
And I fucking hate liars.
Even if she’s lying by omission, it’s still lying.
It’s insulting, offensive.
Did my friendship mean nothing to her?
She could ramble on and on about the details of her menstrual cycle and the particulars of her and Thayer’s robust sex life, but she couldn’t share this?
Does Tessa know? Does Thayer? Is that why he’s so possessive of her? Because he knows he can’t trust her? Does everyone else know except for me?
I stop pacing the apartment, but only for a moment. Glancing at my hands, I notice I’ve chewed my nails to the quick, my gel manicure demolished.
Fitting.
My stomach growls, but I couldn’t eat if I tried. It would all come up, I’m sure. Instead, I fix myself some hot tea, only the second I reach for one of Lauren’s mint jade green tea sachets, I stop myself.
I need to separate myself from her. I need to un-adopt all the things that have made me into a knock-off version of the very kind of person I never wanted to be.
Dumping the hot water in the sink and the tea sachet in the trash, I pour myself a glass of tap water—lead levels be damned—and march straight to her room.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it.
Shoving her bedroom door so hard the knob hits the wall, the coiled doorstop springs, and the stupid thing nearly ricochets back into my face, I step into a cloud of Lauren’s Versace perfume.
It makes me gag.
I’d open a window if it weren’t five degrees out.
Her room is immaculate. Bed made. Pillows fluffed. Clothes neatly hung in her closet. Her collection of perfumes resting in an aesthetically pleasing order on the clear acrylic tray on her bathroom vanity. Her makeup drawer is intact, still organized to the T.
One of her many spare purses—the Louis that she uses the most—hangs off the back of her desk chair. She must have taken her Chanel clutch tonight, the black leather one with the silver chain strap. Bet she’s wearing her black kitten heels too. The ones with the red bottoms. I check her closet to confirm, finding an empty spot in her shoe organizer where those heels are typically perched.
I laugh when I think about how well I know her. And then I laugh again when I think about how I truly don’t know her at all.
Taking a seat in her swivel chair, I rest my elbows on the desk and hold my head in my hands, breathing in, breathing out. I don’t know what I’m doing in here. I don’t know what I expected to find other than a bunch of pretty things.
This makes me feel dirty. And it’s all Lauren’s fault.
I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for her deceit, her double life, her phony half-truth friendship that I no longer wish to have.
Lifting the lid of her laptop, I type in the six-digit passcode to her phone on a whim, not expecting it to work.
A soft jingle plays and her screen comes to life.
Holy shit.
Everything is neatly organized into folders coded with her class names: ENG423, ENG370, PSY334, ENG430 and MA393. I double click all of them, examining every document, every subfolder, looking for clues or codes or hidden files intentionally mislabeled.
I find nothing.
It takes me an hour, maybe longer, but I go through everything. Except her email. It’s password protected and probably contains an entire collection of Lauren Wiedenfeld’s secrets. Exhaling hard, I adjust my posture and try to crack it. I try Thayer’s name, Bristowe’s name, her passcode backwards. I try her middle name (Aubrey). I try our address. I try her birthdate. I try endless combinations of every “Lauren” thing I can come up with.
I try and try and try until I’m finally locked out.
Rising from her stupid chair (that she casually mentioned cost a pretty twelve hundred dollars), I accidentally knock over her stupid Louis bag (that she casually mentioned cost a pretty twenty-two hundred dollars).
Bending to retrieve it and trying to remember exactly how it was draped over the chair back, I grab the lip balms and hand creams and perfume minis that fell out and freeze when I catch the glint of a familiar necklace.
A tarnished silver chain holds a silver-plated heart, the initials MRC engraved on the back.
My initials.
This necklace was a gift from my mother on my fifth birthday—the last birthday we ever celebrated, when my dad was still there and he wheeled out a pink bike with yellow training wheels and a giant purple ribbon attached to the handle bars.
He got me a bike. Mom got me a necklace.
I outgrew the bike but I kept the silver-plated heart, holding it as proof that once upon a time we were a happy, normal family.
It makes no sense why Lauren would steal this. The chain is chintzy and delicate, the heart discolored. This thing is hardly wearable and even if it were, it wouldn’t be anything that would coordinate with Lauren’s cashmere sweaters and designer jeans.
As much as it pains me, I slip the necklace back into her purse. If I take it back, she’ll know I was in here, going through her things. And I don’t want her to know that I’m onto her, that I’m going to find out exactly who she is.
And when I’m done?
She’ll wish she never met me.
Seventeen
Lauren didn’t come home this morning. She texted me saying she stayed at Thayer’s after Wellman’s last night and that she was planning to stay there all weekend. She then told me to text her and let her know if I needed anything.
I need the truth, Lauren. That’s what I need.
Once again, I didn’t respond. I sat at the kitchen table eating a cold bowl of fake Cheerios without a placemat (GASP), and I stared out the window toward the back yard with its patches of muddy, melted snow and ugly, naked trees.
I don’t know how I ever thought this was picturesque.
It looks like a toxic wasteland. Everything is dead.
Last night brought me three, maybe four hours of sleep. The rest of the time I tossed and turned, wrapping my head around all these theories and probabilities, trying to explain what the hell Lauren wanted with my necklace.
The Bristowe thing? That’s something else. The necklace has nothing to do with that, as far as I can surmise.
Sometime around three AM, I sprung out of bed and took inventory of my belongings. I thought maybe … just maybe … she was a klepto who got off on stealing. Kind of like Winona Ryder back in the nineties or whatever.
But a half hour later, everything was accounted for.
Dumping my cereal bowl and shuffling to the shower, I make myself presentable and decide lunch with Tessa should be on the docket for the day. Not because I want to, but because I have to. She’s Lauren’s closest friend, and if I can ask the right kind of questions, I might be able to glean a little more insight into Lauren’s character.
Perched on the edge of my bed an hour later, a towel wrapped around my wet hair, I suck up my pride and text her. Ever since that weird sushi night she’s been distant from me. Used to be she’d text me memes and pictures of hot guys from campus when she’d be sitting around bored in her business admin classes.
But those all stopped the last few days. She went cold turkey on me. On our friendship.
My message consists of the word “lunch” and a question mark. I follow up with a sushi emoji.
I will shove raw fish down my throat until I puke if it means getting some answers.
Three gray dots bounce on the screen before disappearing. She read my message, began to respond, then deleted it. She must be thinking about how to get out of this, how to say no. Or maybe she’s texting Lauren, asking if she wants to come.
God forbid Tessa does anything without Lauren.
I’m about to place my phone down when it vibrates in my hand.
Her message consists of the word “time” and a question mark.
We settle on one o’
clock.
Eighteen
I order the spicy tuna roll and a “saketini.”
Tessa doesn’t comment about me not liking raw fish and I don’t comment on the fact that she ordered tempura chicken. I bet she only orders real sushi when Lauren’s around. And I bet when you boil Tessa down to the bones, she’s a small-town girl just like me, who saw a bit of the girl she wanted to be in Lauren Wiedenfeld and somewhere along the line lost herself trying to become her.
We probably have more in common than Tessa realizes, but I’m not here to discuss that.
“Where’s Lauren?” Tessa asks. Like she doesn’t already know.
“She’s staying at Thayer’s all weekend.” I sip my martini. It’s disgusting. I smile. “This is so good. Want to try?”
Tessa sips from the clean side of my glass. “Amazing. I should get one next time.”
“You should.” I glance at her water glass. If Lauren were here, she’d be drinking.
For a Saturday, this place is dead, and our food arrives in record time. The tinkle of chopsticks on plates fills the booth we share, and I chase every bite of my tuna roll with a gulp of my martini. I’m going to be lit by the time this is over.
“Tessa,” I eventually say. She looks up, chewing, her rosebud lips neat and tight and her round eyes trained on me. “I wanted to ask you something …”
This feels like an episode of Real Housewives of Meyer State University, where two of the women are about to have a confrontation about an incident that happened earlier. All we need is a camera crew and a producer with a headset and clipboard.
“What’s up?” she asks, playing dumb. Girls do that. We play dumb. Especially when we sense impending conflict.
“Did I … did I do something this past week? Something that upset you?” I ask, forehead wrinkled and voice soft so as not to put her on the defense. I need this to go smoothly. I need her to feel comfortable opening up to me or she’ll never tell me anything about Lauren.
