Harrison was the quintessential college campus: two-story brick buildings with large stone columns facing their front entrances; brick paved sidewalks circling the entire campus; bronze statues of revered men and women who had died long ago were intricately placed in conspicuous places; a natural stone fountain in the middle of campus on a grassy lawn–it all screamed academia.
My dorm building was one of the oldest on campus. The plaque on the front of the building said “Henley Hall Built 1801.” It was a brick building with large glass windows and wood panels. The windows were one of the reasons I had chosen it. I wanted to be able to open them and let the fresh air come into my room. I took one of my suitcases out of my trunk and carried it with me to the front door. I punched in my code on the number board and pushed the old, creaky wooden door open.
The building had a distinct smell about it: aged and musty. To my left was a room with a television set, a couple of slip-covered sofas and a ping pong table. It was supposed to be a break room, a hang out room, but it didn’t look very welcoming. I walked up the narrow staircase. The ceilings were low, even for me, and I searched for my room. It was toward the end of the long hallway. I punched in my code and opened the door. The room was cramped and confining. Two twin beds were separated by one desk. On the left hand side of the room was the closet. I opened the closet door and cringed. Two girls sharing space this tiny could only spell disaster.
A refrigerator–big enough for a few cans of Coke and left overs–sat against the cream-colored concrete wall with a microwave on top of it. A purple bulletin board with pictures of who I assumed were Sidney and her friends, hung above her bed. She liked purple. Her bedspread was purple and had lots of purple pillows on it. I sat my suitcase down on my bed and decided to get the rest of my stuff out of my car so that I could unpack and make the place feel more like me.
The beds were elevated off of the ground with dresser drawers attached beneath them. I was thankful for the extra storage space. I looked around the room. My side seemed so bare, so boring. Sidney’s looked lived in. Mine looked temporary. I wasn’t the type to hang up pictures or posters, though. Even in Graceville, I didn’t decorate my room. I had hung up a few pictures of Jesse and me, but that was it.
I hung my dad’s painting up on the wall above my bed. Even though it looked so insignificant surrounded by all the empty wall space, it was still eye capturing. It stood out and was noticeable. Looking at it made me think of home, which I really didn’t want to do. I wasn’t ready for nostalgia.
The bathroom was right next to my side of the room. It was just as small as the room–nothing but a tiny shower, toilet and sink. This would take some getting used to. The day’s drive had gotten to me and I slowly found my way to the bed–fully clothed, shoes on and all –I flopped on top of my covers and fell asleep immediately.
***
Sidney woke me up. Not on purpose. It’s just, she was so incredibly loud. She walked loud, breathed heavy, smacked her gum, and did this constant sniffing thing out of her nose. I opened my eyes and saw her hanging clothes up in the cramped closet. Her curly dark brown hair was pulled back in a tortoise shell hair clip. She was wearing a black turtle neck sweater and a red wool mini skirt with black tights and black knee-length boots. I sat up in bed and said, “Hi, Sidney.” I was still groggy from the drive.
She turned to face me, her grin broad. “Hi Finley, I mean Finn.” She came closer to me and sat down on my bed. We had different ideas about personal space. “I tried not to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” I lied. I yawned and asked, “What time is it anyway?”
“After twelve,” she said.
“I slept that long,” I said in disbelief.
She shrugged. “You haven’t eaten lunch yet, have you?” she asked.
I shook my head no and wiped my eyes, getting out the crusted remnants that had grown overnight.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
I thought about it for a second. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Great!” she said enthusiastically. “Let’s get lunch. I know the perfect place.”
“Okay. I need to shower and get dressed first.”
“Take your time. I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed.
I got out of bed and headed to the bathroom. The shower was better suited for a small child, not a young woman. I couldn’t move - it was about three feet wide all around. When I stood in it, I had a choice: face the ugly tiled wall or the frosty glass door. Shaving my legs was next to impossible and the water was luke warm at best, definitely not hot, not like at my grandparents’ house.
After I took my shower, I got dressed and dried my hair. Sidney was sitting on her bed texting, waiting patiently for me. “Do you want me to drive?” I asked.
“We’re just going across the street. Ready?”
“Yeah.” I grabbed my purse and followed her out the door.
The walk wasn’t bad. Jenny’s Casual Cafe was literally across the street from the campus like Sidney had said. It wasn’t anything special, but seemed to attract enough customers because of its prime location and affordable prices.
Sidney talked non stop and was very perky, exactly how Nana had described her and how I suspected she might be after we had talked on the phone. I learned she was from New Hampshire and came from a big, extended family. She had a younger sister and an older brother. Her father was an attorney; her mom a doctor. She was majoring in pre-med and had chosen Harrison because it was far enough away from home.
We ordered our food at the counter and found a booth to sit in.“What about you, Finn? What are you majoring in?” She had tiny light brown freckles on her nose and cheeks and light brown eyes.
“I don’t know,” I said. I used to know, but that had changed when I went to Graceville. I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to study.
“Doesn’t that scare you?” She leaned in closer to me like she was about to find out some deep dark secret.
“Surprisingly, no.”
“Wow. I wish I was like that. But my parents put the pressure on me, you know what I mean?” she said. Sidney had a habit of ending each of her sentences with “you know what I mean.” It was a habit I was going to have to learn to get used to.
The waiter brought us our food. “Hi,” Sidney said flirtatiously.
“Hey,” he answered.
“You’re new,” she said and poked at him playfully. She bit on her lower lip and fluttered her eyelashes. Sidney was a pro.
“Yeah. How’d you know?” he asked her.
“Because I would remember you,” she said and giggled. Sidney was not what I would call gorgeous. She was attractive but not beautiful. Still, somehow she knew exactly how to get a guy like our waiter to respond. Her cutesy attitude and overconfidence were probably what attracted men to her.
Hook, line and sinker, he was falling for it. He smiled at her. “Well, I guess we’ll see each other a lot then.”
“I hope so,” she answered and then he walked away, but not without doing a double take first.
She looked back at me and whispered, “He was hot.” She glanced at him again and then at me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Good. We can pick up guys together.” She bit into her sandwich.
I should’ve lied and told her that I had a boyfriend. Going out to pick up guys did not sound very appealing to me. I couldn’t imagine going on a date with anyone for a very long time. I’d just compare them to Jesse and that wouldn’t be fair to them. I sipped my soup and geared the conversation toward her, hoping it would keep the focus off of me.
***
I had forgotten what it was like to sit in a classroom. I was used to getting up early, going to work, and being on my feet all day at the diner. It had been my daily routine,
my ritual, for more than half a year. The idea of sitting for so many hours, listening to long-winded lectures from professors with no inflection in their voices and then studying the same boring material I had just been subjected to did not appeal to me.
I wasn’t focused; I was restless. I couldn’t seem to make myself study. I don’t know if it was because I missed my grandparents, my dad, Meg and Hannah. I missed Jesse, too, but it seemed like a moot point to even think about how much I missed being with him. So many times throughout the first week of school I was tempted to get on my phone and call him, to tell him about my day. But I couldn’t. We were through and not having my best friend in my life anymore was a difficult thing to swallow.
My once meticulous studying habits had disappeared. I just didn’t study. I wandered the campus, read books that I had wanted to for a long time, and found my own personal havens in the quaint town that Harrison was located. The downtown was charming and one of my favorite places to hang out. I loved the bookstore and the adjacent coffee shop. I spent a lot of time alone in both places but didn’t seem to notice or care that I was all by myself. In fact, I relished in the solitude.
After receiving a low C on one of my exams, I realized I had to make some changes and fast. Otherwise, I was going to lose my full scholarship. And I couldn’t afford to do that because if I lost that scholarship, I’d have to leave Harrison and then what would I do? It had been what I had worked for all of those years, what I had wanted, and if I lost it, it would mean I failed. I had failed in a relationship; I couldn’t fail in this aspect of my life, too.
I tried to study in my dorm room, but with Sidney there, that was out of the question. She talked on her phone a lot and played really loud music. Even when I put earphones on, I could still hear her talking and the booming and thumping sounds coming from her stereo. After a couple of weeks of that, I had enough, and searched the campus for a more peaceful spot.
The campus library was open twenty four hours a day–seven days a week. I loved the library. It was my favorite building on campus. On the fourth floor–a floor that didn’t get visited by many students because it was the records floor–was my perfect place for solace. Two glass French doors led to a cozy corner room filled with a plethora of different shape and sized pillows scattered all over the shaggy carpeted floor. “The pillow room” had become my second home. It was the most comfortable place to study, to nap, to think, and to get away.
I lay on the floor, with my books sprawled out around me, and sent a text to Meg. I hadn’t talked to her in a while and wanted to talk to her. She sent me a quick text telling me she was on a date with Noah and would call me later. Since the bonfire, the night of my birthday, they had been talking and decided to exclusively date within the last month. She seemed happy and I was glad she found a nice guy. Noah had gotten a job in Greenville, so his commute to see her wasn’t a long one.
Their voices carried all the way into the pillow room. Since it was so quiet on the fourth floor of the library, any talking, whether it was a whisper or a normal audible tone, could be heard. But they weren’t speaking in hushed tones. One of the voices was easily recognizable – it was Sidney– and I could hear every single word she was saying.
“Where is this stupid document anyway?” Sidney whined.
“I don’t know. I never come up here,” the other girl responded. “So are we going out tonight?”
“Yeah, of course!” Sidney said.
“Are you inviting your roommate?” she asked. I hadn’t heard anything about it so I knew the answer to that question was a big, fat “no.”
“No,” she scoffed. “Finn’s nice and all, but she’s all gloom and doom, know what I mean? It’s like, lighten up a little, quit being so emo,” she said.
“At least she’s the brooding type. Mine is way too nosy. She’s always butting in to my conversations. It’s annoying!”
I didn’t listen to the rest of their conversation. I tuned them out and lay there thinking about what she said about me. I was shocked. Stunned. Hurt. I’d never been described as a “gloom and doom” type. I wondered if I had really turned into a depressing person. I hadn’t really thought about the way I had been acting until she described me as being the type of person someone avoids. Maybe she had a point. Since I had gotten on campus, I’d only gone out with her a few times, and spent the rest of my time downtown or locked up in the library. Was I diverting back to my old self–the Finn who didn’t experience life? The Finn who did nothing but study and shut herself out from the rest of the world. Here I was in college, and all I could do was hide away in a dark, corner room in the library. Something had to change.
I picked up all of my text books off the floor, threw them in my back pack and got up off that comfy floor. No way was I going to continue wasting away in pillow land. It was time to make some changes.
Chapter 11
Sidney gave me a second chance. It was a quality that I liked about her–that she was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. After we got to know each other better, her opinion of me changed from “Miss Anti-Social” to “Friendly Finn.” She blatantly told me that she didn’t care too much for me when she first met me.
“You were so emo-like. It was like living with my younger sister all over again. She’s all into depressing music and just walks around the house sighing all the time, giving people dirty looks. Know what I mean?” she had said to me one day.
Going out with Sidney and her friends, who had become mine as well, became part of my normal routine: wake up; go to class; study and do work to maintain scholarship; nap; go out; sleep. That’s what I did on a regular basis. I still frequented the Pillow Room, but I didn’t live there anymore. I finally made my dorm room my home.
I had misjudged Sidney. She was fun to be with and was always upbeat–the perfect remedy for getting over a break-up. I missed Hannah and Meg, though, especially Meg. They were just closer friends. They got me. But I wasn’t in Graceville anymore and knew the only way I could adjust was to open myself up to making new friends.
We made plans to go to a party our friend Aaron was having. Aaron was a student at Georgia State–the nearby co-ed college. He and I had met at Jenny’s Casual Cafe. He worked there, and since I ate there at least four to five times a week, we had gotten to know each other pretty well. Most of our conversations were surface, focusing on movies, books, or any other basic stuff. Aaron was a nice guy, and I enjoyed his company, but there was no spark. He was just a friend.
During my senior year of high school on my campus tour, I remember one of the girls asking the tour guide if it was hard to meet guys being at an all girls’ school like Harrison, and the tour guide actually laughed at her. She told the girl that with the other college nearby there were plenty of guys to go around. Sidney was evidence of that. She always had a date and seemed to have a knack for meeting a different guy each week.
I wasn’t really looking. That was the furthest thing from my mind. Breaking up with Jesse was like a five-step grieving process. I had gotten past anger and denial, as well as bargaining. Where I was now was somewhere between depression and acceptance. Within a few months, I hoped to be at acceptance.
Sidney wasn’t a fashion queen like Meg was, but she was all about wearing labels and dressing in expensive, well-made clothes. Her parents had money growing out of their ears and had no qualms about giving Sidney her very own credit card so she could be a spending fiend. She got dressed up for the party and decided to wear a light blue dress. I looked plain next to her in my jeans and lime green short-sleeved t-shirt. The weather was becoming warmer. It was spring, and my coat had been packed away in the closet.
“You can borrow a dress of mine if you want,” she offered. “I’m sure Aaron would like you dressed up.” She gave me a mischievous grin.
“That’s okay. I’m good in my jeans. Thanks.”
She rummaged through her purse. “Ugh! I’m out of condoms,” she said. She looked in my direction. “Do you have any?” I blushed, which told her my answer in so many words. “Wait. You mean you and that ex of yours never did it?”
“That’s personal,” I answered. My arms folded against my chest in a defensive position. Hearing “ex” out loud still stung a little. In a late sleepless night, Sidney and I had shared some secrets–her more than me–a lot more than me. But I did open up about Jesse, about how we had dated most of the summer up to the holidays and then how it ended.
“It’s okay, Finn. I just assumed...”
“Well, we didn’t okay?”
She shrugged. “Don’t get mad. You take things slow. I get that. I wish I had waited a little longer my first time.”
“You do?” I unfolded my arms.
“Yeah, of course. It was awful. Imagine your senior prom, a night that is supposed to be epic, and you’re in the parking lot losing your virginity in the backseat of some piece of crap car with a guy that smells like weed.” She sighed and made a disgusted face. “He dumped me like two weeks later and found some other sucker.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It made me stronger. I was hurt for a little bit and then found there are a lot better guys out there.” She curled her lips to a smirk. “Guys are a dime a dozen.”
I didn’t agree with everything she said. There were other guys out there, but that didn’t mean I was willing to just go out with them for the sake of going out with them, or lose my virginity just for the sake of losing it. I needed to feel a connection, or at least something that resembled love.
“Just make sure when you do finally do it, that you’re ready to handle all the consequences.”
The Year I Almost Drowned Page 11
