by Joanna Bell
"I'm so embarrassed about acting like that," I started, but she shook her head angrily.
"Don't, Renner. Don't do that. You don't need to apologize for having emotions, OK? What do you think, that I never got worked up over a boy? And it's weird isn't it, the way it's always the kinda shitty ones who get you the most worked up? Anyway. Don't say sorry. I've spent entire days – weeks! – of my life ranting and raving about this or that guy whose name I can't even remember now. And they've done the same about us, believe me. This hurts. I know it hurts. I know how it feels. It's probably going to hurt tomorrow, too, and the next day. But you will get over it – and probably a lot quicker than you think."
***
It wasn't that anything Emma said to me the day of Brandon's rejection was wrong, it's that I was too caught up in it at the time to really see how right she was.
I think maybe I got a little cocky. I got to thinking that the person I was at Grand Northeastern was entirely different to the sad girl from River Forks, the unpopular girl with no friends and no life, the girl who watched her peers grow up, begin to get boyfriends and girlfriends, start going to parties, start getting jobs and cars as she hung back at the periphery, always watching, never participating. And the drama with Brandon just revealed my 'new' life to be the sham it was – or so it seemed to me at the time. There was no 'new' life. I was still me. Still insecure, still undesirable for anything more than friendship.
Looking back, I can see how silly my assumption that I was undesirable because swim team Brandon didn't want me. But I was 19, naive even for my age, inexperienced and, although I was improving, getting to know and like myself a little, still prone to fits of self-doubt.
My friends tried to help but most of them were normal, and for that reason most of them assumed I was normal, too. They didn't know about my dead mother, or that the only friends I had ever had before them existed in a different millennium. So even as they dragged me out with them to various parties or dinners or errand-runs and did their best to shore me up and support me, none of them really understood just how thrown off course I was.
I kept it together for the rest of the semester and most of the next one. I made it to most of my classes, and passed my exams. When summer started, though, and without the pressures of coursework and papers being due, I found myself drinking more. I liked drinking – I had liked it ever since Emma introduced me to red wine with our dinner parties. I liked the way it seemed to make everything look like it was in soft-focus, the way it made conversation seem more profound, somehow, more meaningful. I started looking forward to it, the warmth of the alcohol dissipating out to my fingers and toes, the exhalation of breath that came with tipsiness. Before long, I wasn't just drinking wine anymore. I was coming home from my summer job at one of the local grocery stores and mixing my own rum and Cokes and vodka and orange juices with the frost-fogged bottles of hard liquor we kept in the freezer for parties.
It didn't get too far. My roommates – Emma, Adam and Jake – noticed. Adam came home one Monday afternoon after a weekend away to find me sprawled across the sofa, drink in hand, music cranked up loud. He turned it down, sat on the chair next to me and asked me if I knew what time it was.
I sat up, struggling a little, and laughed at how drunk I was – sometimes it's difficult to tell just how much you've had until you try to do something like sit up or walk to the bathroom. "Uh, six?" I ventured.
Adam held up his phone so I could see the time. "It's not even three, Paige. You're drunk. I'm going to make some coffee."
"I'm not –" I began, but Adam was already headed to the kitchen.
College is a strange time. Like grade school, it involves throwing a bunch of people who have very little in common other than age together and waiting for them to cluster into groups based on – well, often on not much at all. A shared apartment, randomly sitting next to someone in class, dorm rooms next door to each other. Little things.
They stepped up, though, these people I had only known for not even two years. It went on for awhile, the afternoon drinking. There were a few embarrassing incidents, too. A shouting match at a party with a girl I thought had looked at me the wrong way, a ruined dress after a night at the bar and my own drunken inability to keep the spaghetti Emma was trying to force down me to sober me up on the fork and not in my lap.
"What are you doing?" She asked me the next day as we drank coffee in our living room and fanned ourselves with advertising flyers because our landlord, who paid the electric bills for the entire building, had forbidden air conditioners.
I was miserable, hung-over, shielding my eyes from the too-bright sun. "Drinking coffee," I replied, not having seen the look on her face.
"Paige."
I looked up, and saw it then. "Oh," I said. "Oh, what am I doing?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know," I smiled sadly. "It seems like I'm sliding down a short path to some kind of alcohol problem."
"And why are you doing that?" Emma asked. She wasn't lecturing. She wasn't being judgmental. She was being a friend. I couldn't take it though.
"Just a sec," I told her. "Just let me pee, I'll be right back. I promise we can talk about this."
But instead of going to the bathroom I went to the kitchen and turned the tap on so Emma wouldn't hear me opening the freezer door. And then I took a big, long swig of vodka right out of the bottle and stood there for a few seconds afterwards making faces and trying not to retch.
When I sat back down with Emma she was none the wiser. An hour – and a few more trips to the kitchen – later, I was nicely toasted. It made the conversation easier. The cloud of shame was lifted, temporarily.
"This isn't just about Brandon, is it?" Emma was saying. "I mean, it was months later that you started drinking – that thing with him at the party was so minor. He was just some boy you thought was cute, wasn't he? Is there something you haven't told me?"
I looked up at Emma as she perched on the chair opposite me, her golden-brown eyes full of concern and her long, auburn hair piled messily on top of her head. She wasn't cute, not the way the little blonde cheerleaders were, but there was something stately about my best friend.
"Yeah," I said, only just managing to keep the slur out of my voice, barely conscious of what I was saying because I was half thinking about Emma's stateliness. "Yeah there is something I haven't told you."
"Would you like to tell me?" She replied. "Paige, if anything happened with Brandon – if he tried anything, if he did anything to you that you didn't –"
"Oh it has nothing to do with him," I responded breezily, waving my arm in the air. "I just need to pee and then I'll tell you, OK?"
I stood up, then, and yelped in surprise when Emma grabbed my wrist hard and yanked me back onto the sofa. "Paige! Do you think I don't know what you're doing?! You're totally wasted! Seriously, just sit down and talk to me. Now."
She meant it. I could see it in her eyes. She'd threatened to call my father a few times over the summer already and that was something I really, really wanted to prevent from happening. My dad couldn't keep the pride and happiness out of his voice whenever we spoke on the phone, there was no way I wanted him to have even the slightest clue as to how bad things had deteriorated for me. So I sat back down, because I didn't want Emma to have to even consider calling him.
"Why are you doing this?" Emma whispered, her voice cracking. "If something happened to you, Paige, I swear to God I will kill the person who did it. Is that it? Do you – if you need someone to go to the police with you –"
"It's nothing like that," I sniffled.
"Are you sure? And Brandon –"
"It's nothing to do with him. He didn't do anything. I mean, I wanted him to – but he didn't."
"Is it your home life?" Emma continued, clearly desperate to find a reason for my spiraling situation. "You told me how it was for you in high school, Paige. About your father, too. Is it that? I know you think therapists are useless but maybe you could talk to
someone about this? We don't just get over our pasts, you know."
"I did have friends," I blurted suddenly, urged on from someplace in the depths of my drunkenness.
"You – what? I know you have friends, Paige! I am your friend! Adam and –"
"No," I cut her off. "I know I have friends now. I'm talking about back home, in River Forks. I said I had no friends but that was a lie. I did. I had two friends."
"OK..."
Emma was skeptical, looking at me like she wasn't sure if it was me talking, or the alcohol. And because I was drunk, it just made me angry.
"I know it's hard to believe," I spit bitterly. "Someone being friends with me, of course. Gross Paige Renner, Paige Renner the witch, Paige Renner the weirdo."
"That's, uh, Paige – that's not what I'm saying at all. Or thinking. You just haven't ever mentioned any friends from River Forks. You've actually been pretty clear that you didn't have any, and that it was really tough for you. I understand if you didn't –"
"They weren't in River Forks. They were actually in your country – in England. Well, not that they call it England but..."
"You have friends in the UK?" Emma asked. "Where from? You mean, like, internet friends?"
I laughed, even as a little voice spoke up from the back of my mind: Shut up, Paige. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
"Ha, no, not internet friends. They don't know what the internet is. They don't even know what a car is, or an airplane."
Emma's expression was curious. She wasn't upset with me, she was just trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about. And I, in my drunken haze, was quite enjoying dangling the secret in front of her.
"I'm sorry," she told me, "I don't understand, Paige. I don't know if you even know what you're saying right now."
"Of course I know what I'm saying!" I shouted. "How drunk do you think I am?! Not so drunk I'm just blathering nonsense."
"OK." Emma reached out and put her hand on my knee, giving it a squeeze. "OK, Paige. You don't need to get angry with me, I'm honestly here to listen to you right now – to anything you have to say."
And just like that my dumb, momentary bravado was gone and I was suddenly hunched over my own knees, crying, as memories of Caistley and Willa and Eadgar flooded my consciousness. "I miss them" I choked out, wiping my tears away on the back of my wrist and sniffling hard. "I miss them so much. I never even said goodbye, I just left. They probably think I'm – " I broke off, properly sobbing by then. "They probably think I'm dead!"
Emma grabbed one of my hands and took it between hers. "Hey, Paige. Paige, look at me. If you haven't talked to these friends for awhile, or if you've lost touch, we can find them online. You have their names, right? We can find them on Facebook and you can send them a message. I'm sure they'll understand, if they were real friends. They'll know what it was like for you, what a difficult time it was."
I laughed again, through my tears, as I imagined typing 'Willa' or 'Eadgar' into Google. As far as I knew, nobody back then even had a last name and between that and the whole over-a-thousand-years-ago situation, I didn't think Emma's plan would be very effective. She was trying to help, though.
"They won't be on Facebook," I said quietly, taking a few shaky breaths. "They won't be online at all."
"Are – are you sure?" Emma asked. "Even if they don't have any social media it's still pretty easy to find people online, you know. If they're in the UK and you have their names I'm pretty sure we can –"
"We can't," I said sadly. "I'm telling you, we can't. I haven't seen either of them for years now – their names were Willa and Eadgar, they were brother and sister. I spent half my childhood with them."
We were quiet for a few minutes. Emma got up and went into the kitchen and came back a short time later with a steaming cup of coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"You should eat, Paige."
I picked up the sandwich and took a bite to prove I was making an effort, before putting it back down. it was pretty good, though, and I remembered I hadn't eaten for hours, so I took another few bites.
"So," Emma said gently, "what's the story with Eadgar and Willa? Were they Amish or something like that?"
Although I was still quite drunk at that point, common sense was beginning to assert itself. I couldn't tell Emma the real story, of course I couldn't. "Well they're more religious than you or I, that's for sure. But no, they're not Amish. I shouldn't have even brought them up, that was dumb. I didn't lie, though, Emma. I want you to know that. I really didn't have any friends in River Forks – that's the truth."
Emma put her arm around me. "It doesn't matter, dummy! Like, even if you did lie – and I know you didn't – I know this is hard for you, I know you're still sensitive about it. I understand."
We left the conversation there and, over the next few days, I made a real effort – and a mostly successful one – to stop making so many trips to the freezer when no one else was looking. My roommates noticed, too. They didn't make a big deal out of it, because they didn't want to embarrass me, but they were quietly supportive, free with their smiles and hugs. It was a few days into the start of the first semester of our junior year that Emma yelled from the living room one day as I washed the dishes in the kitchen.
"Paige!"
"Yeah? What?"
"Do you spell Eadgar like E-A-D or just E-D?"
I rinsed the soap suds off the mug in my hand and walked into the living room, drying my hands on a kitchen towel. Emma had her laptop open on the coffee table.
"It's E-A-D," I told her, watching as she typed the name into Google.
"Were their parents weird hippies or something?"
"No," I replied, a little worried about where the conversation was going, because I didn't want to have to lie to my friend. "Why?"
"Because Eadgar is an ancient name. Anglo-Saxon. Hold on." Emma typed some more. "Huh, it looks like Willa is, too. Anglo-Saxon, I mean. Were their parents big history buffs?"
I shook my head and Emma looked up, noticing the look on my face. "I'm sorry, Paige," she said. "I was – I just thought maybe it would help you to find these friends of yours, and even if they are from some crazy internet-free family, there should be something online, some –"
"They won't be online," I reply. "I promise you they won't be. It's a waste of time looking."
Emma narrowed her eyes. "But," she responded, confused. "How do you know that? Why wouldn't they be? Everyone is online, even if it's just on one of those white pages sites or something."
I flopped down on the sofa and sighed. "I actually wish I could tell you this story, Emma. I've never told anyone – well, when I was older, anyway. I blabbed about it to everyone as a kid."
"Well why can't you?"
I looked up, catching her eye directly. "Because it would make you think I'm insane."
Emma balked at that, and laughed. "What? No it wouldn't. Unless you're joking with me right now. Why would it make me think you're insane? Paige I don't know how many times I have to tell you that I understand that things were different for –"
"This isn't just about things being different for me," I cut in, because some part of me was actually finding itself persuaded by Emma and I didn't want that to happen. "It's about what you would think if Adam walked in here right now and told us he had a pink unicorn back home in Ohio. Not a horse that got painted pink, or an imaginary friend or a toy or anything like that but an actual pink unicorn. Something impossible, something that can't exist, that can't happen. If he walked in right now and seriously told us that, what would you think?"
Emma laughed. "I'd think he was nuts."
"There you go."
I was just about to go back to the kitchen to finish the dishes when Emma spoke again, slowly and carefully.
"So what are you saying, Paige? Are you saying that your story would be the same as the pink unicorn story?"
"Yeah," I admitted, because it was the truth. "I am. You would definitely think I was crazy. You'd c
all my father. You might even call an ambulance."
Emma stared at me intently, trying to figure out if I was playing a joke on her or not, trying to reconcile what I was telling her with what she knew of me.
I'm not a woo-woo person at all. A week before that conversation in our apartment I'd annoyed Emma by making fun of her going with one of our other friends to get her tea leaves read. She knew I was pretty hard-headed about that kind of thing, so I can see why she wasn't totally convinced it wasn't all a big joke when I told her how unbelievable my story actually was.
"How about if I promise not to do any of those things?" She asked finally, as her curiosity got the better of her – not that mine wouldn't have, in the same position. "What if I promise not to think you're crazy or call anyone or tell anyone else? And you know I wouldn't, Paige, you know I wouldn't say a thing."
I did know that. I wished in that moment that Emma actually was an untrustworthy blabbermouth because damn if telling someone about Willa and Eadgar and Caistley and everything they – and that place – were to me wasn't tempting. Not some therapist who didn't give really give a damn, but someone who cared about me.
"I want to tell you," I said, sitting back down. "You have no idea how much I want to tell you this, Em. But I'm not kidding or exaggerating – you would not believe it. And I don't want you to think less of me. Even if you don't call an ambulance, I still don't want you to think I'm nuts."
"But you're not nuts. I know that – I can see it. I live with you, Paige! I think I'd know if you were crazy!"
"You're right," I agree. "I'm not crazy. It's just – it's not believable. If someone came to me and told me the same story, and none of the things that have happened to me had happened, I wouldn't believe them. Not in a million years."
"Oh my God!" Emma sighed, punching a pillow in mock frustration. "You're killing me, Paige. Damn!"
A weird recklessness descended over me that evening. After the mistake of telling my therapist as a child, and after the bullying in school, after all of it, I was still desperate, the way human beings are when something extraordinary has happened to them, to spill. Not to tell so much as to be believed. To have someone hear me out and talk to me about Eadgar and Willa as if they were real people, as if Caistley was a real place. Which they were, and it was.
