The only reason I asked is that I recognized Owen the instant Tina collided with him. He’s my statistics TA, and I made an ass of myself in front of him just this morning.
“Hey, he’s single if you want me to set you up with him,” offers Craig with a wide, toothy grin.
I look up at him wide-eyed and shake my head vehemently.
“Hey, he’s an okay guy! You should really...”
“Craig, no. Drop it,” cautions Tina, and she shoots him a glare that could kill kittens from a hundred yards.
“Okay, forget I said anything. But seriously though, I’ll introduce you if you’d...”
“Craig!”
He shuts up instantly at Tina’s angry hiss.
I let myself sink into the deep, comfortable cushions of my chair and manage to relax a little as I sip my beer. The thick, bitter drink feels so heavy as it goes down my throat that I know I’ll never be able to finish the whole thing. It’s perfect for a lightweight like me.
I watch Tina and Craig chat happily together start to unwind. This is fun. I can deal with going out when I’m not the center of attention—when I’m safe with friends and apart from the crowd.
I tense up again almost immediately as Craig turns his attention back to me.
“Dang, Maria – you’ve barely said a thing all night. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m... I’m fine,” I stammer awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.
“You sure?” he asks, looking at me curiously. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable again.
“Maria gets nervous in crowds and doesn’t go out a lot,” explains Tina, coming to my rescue and drawing his gaze away from me. “She’s a bit of a shut-in, and I’m trying to help her get out more.”
He glances back at me, and I nod in agreement with Tina’s tale. Her story is just true enough to hide the real truth.
The attention is off me again, and I relax again. I can feel the beer starting to take effect, and I both like and hate it at the same time. It’s making me sleepy and making everything feel okay to me, but I also feel like I’m not myself. I feel exposed and weak because of it.
Maybe I don’t drink very often because I’m terrified of not being in control. It makes sense to me in a stupid, Psych 101 sort of way.
I lean back and relax in the chair until Craig’s voice grabs my attention away from the softly spinning ceiling.
“You know what? You’re just like Owen,” he says, staring intently at me, and he tips his bottle back and takes a big drink. I wrinkle my nose as I catch a whiff of the strong, acerbic odor of his deep yellow beer.
“How so?” asks Tina curiously, as if I’m not sitting right next to her and listening to the two of them talk about me.
“Damned if I can get him to go out and do anything,” he answers. “It took me weeks of nagging to even get him to say he’d come out tonight, and after all that work, then he went and had some kind of panic attack or whatever.”
“Wait, seriously?” Tina and I ask in unison.
Craig seems a bit surprised by my sudden interest, but he simply shrugs and nods.
“Yeah, I’ve got no idea what’s up with him. Dude’s skittish.”
For one brief second, I almost want to meet Owen. I want to see what he’s like—maybe he’s broken like I am. Maybe I could trust him after all.
Reality catches up to me in a hurry, smacks me in the face for being so stupid, and slams the door on the idea. I couldn’t even hand him a test paper without panicking. How on earth could I possibly handle meeting him? Besides, all sorts of people have panic attacks, not just messed-up people like me.
Craig downs the rest of his beer, slams the empty bottle down on the tray so hard that I nearly jump at the noise, and then grins as if he’s proud of scaring me. Tina looks like she wants to gouge out his eyes, and I almost wish she would.
“Here, this is for you, Tina. Happy birthday,” he says, and with a tipsy grin, he pulls a yellow sticky-pad and pen out of his pocket.
“One: it’s not my birthday, and two: a sticky-note?” asks Tina, looking disdainfully at him as he scribbled something on the paper. “Oh, and if this is your phone number, I’m gonna rip your throat out.”
“You never told me when your birthday was, so I just made up a date. Here you go,” he said.
He gets up from his chair and then bows politely to me.
“Good night, Maria! It was nice meeting you, but I’ve gotta go before Tina murders me. Have a great weekend.”
I smile back at him and watch over my shoulder as he heads out the door. He’s a weirdo but seems safe enough, I guess. Tina had fantastically weird taste in guys as a freshman.
I turn back to her just in time to see her tear the yellow note in half.
“What, did he seriously try to give you his number again?” I ask with a laugh.
She smiles awkwardly and then slowly nods. Tina is never shy about anything, so I immediately recognize the lie. Craig must have written something terribly embarrassing for her to be nervous.
“Oh come on, let me see it. What else did he write?”
“No way!”
“Come on, I’m not going to call him or anything!”
I lean in and quickly snatch the two halves of the note out of her hand before she can protest. My eyes go wide as I read the note, and I suddenly feel cold.
Owen Maxwell: [email protected] - 607-918-8218.
Introduce Maria. Now.
I look back up at her and shake my head.
“No, please don’t. He’s my TA in stats.”
“You never told me that part! What’s he like? Tell me everything!” she gasps excitedly. She seems way too happy about this.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I answer, shrugging. “You know how I am. I just keep my head down and take notes.”
She stares at me as if she doesn’t believe me, but it’s really all I can tell her. It’s almost the truth.
“Tina... please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
“Relax. I wasn’t going to – that’s why I ripped it up.”
She smiles understandingly, shoves the shredded note into her pocket and then gets up to order another Cosmo.
I let myself sink back into the chair again and try to calm myself down.
There is something else I could have told her: I could have told her about Owen’s soft, gray eyes and how I can’t get them out of my mind.
She’d take that the wrong way, though. I know her—she’d think I have a crush on him.
Friday, February 15 – 11:40 PM
Owen
It’s nearly midnight, I’m still a train-wreck, and I’ve only got two tests left to grade. This is the first time I’ve ever wished I had more work to do. I’m going to run out of things to keep my mind occupied at this rate.
I don’t know what came over me while I was out with Craig. When I saw Maria, that one quick glance, that fear in her eyes... it’s as if all the bad memories just burst back to life all at once. Every bad thought, every nightmare, they were all right there, fresh in my mind again.
I absentmindedly chew on the end of my pencil with my eyes closed tightly as Samantha stares blankly up at me from the bottom of the stairs. She’ll never forgive me for betraying her. How can she? She’s dead because of me.
The pencil crunches between my teeth, and the sound snaps me out of my waking nightmare and back to reality. I throw the broken pencil into the garbage, grab a fresh one, and I’m chewing shamefully on it again before I know it.
Two pages left on the test.
Grading this student’s test isn’t keeping my attention away from Samantha because not a damned thing’s been wrong yet. It’s the first one of the night without a single wrong answer, and the next page proves no different. I glance up at my laptop to check the grade-recording spreadsheet. The current average score is a sixty percent. This one’s going to blow the curve out of the water.
There is one mistake on the final page, but I’m not sure I should e
ven mark it. The professor makes me grade students on their work as well as the final answer, and while her answer is right, the girl’s handwriting is so tiny that I can barely trace her work. I think she transposed a number on paper but kept it straight in her head.
“Hell with it, she’s got the right answer,” I mutter, and I subtract a single point. Her 99% grade just wrecked every other student in the class.
I type in the score, turn back to the first page of the test to grab her name, and nearly flip out as I read the name scrawled in tiny, nearly illegible script.
Maria Ayala.
“What the fuck...”
I’m dumbfounded. I’d written her off as an idiot who failed the test so badly she was nearly in tears, and I couldn’t have been farther from the truth. My nervous, green-eyed student just broke the curve for everyone else in the class.
She wasn’t scared of failing at all. She was scared of me.
Dark, terrified eyes fill my mind, and I can’t tell if they belong to Samantha or Maria anymore. The fear is the same.
Why is Maria scared of me?
I drop her test on the wobbly coffee table, flop down on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. Most of the furniture that came with this apartment is garbage, but the couch is top-notch. I love how I sink into it—it feels like the couch is going to swallow me. My thumb instinctively traces along the scar on my jaw as my thoughts wander. My mind, not willing to give me even a moment’s peace tonight, immediately drags me back down into a deep, dark, and scary place inside me.
I’m twelve again, and Dad is towering above me in the kitchen. His face is twisted and his eyes clouded with rage.
I turn away and cower as Dad hurls the coffee mug at me. It shatters against my face, opening a long, deep gash in my skin, and I cry out in pain. I can feel the blood pouring into hands as I cover my face, but I don’t dare open my eyes to look. I don’t want to get glass in them and go blind, too.
“You’re the worst fucking son on earth, Owen! How did I get stuck with a stupid shit like you?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t even apologize because I don’t know what I did this time.
My mother screams in horror from somewhere behind me, and for the last time I can remember, she comes to my rescue. Her arms are around me, shielding me from my father’s hatred as he continues to lash out at me. Another glass breaks, and but I still don’t open my eyes. If it hit Mom, I never found out.
I fell, of course. At least, that’s what they told the doctors. I was out riding my bike, and I fell over and hit the sharp corner of a mailbox. Nobody questioned it. Why would they? My dad was a great guy; everyone in our small town knew that.
Never mind the glass shards the surgeon had to extract from my face before stitching me up.
Mom never came to my aid again after that. I can’t even imagine what Dad did to her for defying him.
I shake away the terrible thoughts and try to focus on the last test. The first question is completely wrong, and I let my frustration out in a brutal flurry of red ink as I correct it. Minus fifteen.
Maria’s beautiful green eyes are still staring into my soul, and elsewhere in my mind, she is laughing and smiling as she walks alongside Craig’s friend Tina.
Why can’t I get her and Samantha out of my mind? What the hell is wrong with me?
Mark Williams’ forty-seven percent would have been roughly a C before Maria’s score entered the calculation. Tough luck. I enter the final test grade into the spreadsheet just as a text message hits my phone.
Owen – you’re going skiing with us next weekend. Don’t you dare chicken out.
I groan as I read Craig’s message and then lay on my back on the sofa as I reply. The ceiling fan spins around and around above me, creaking from a slight imbalance. I haven’t been skiing in years, and I was never good at it. I may be the world’s worst skier.
Who is *us* ??
“It could be anyone,” I think as I stuff the graded tests into my backpack. Craig has so many friends that I rarely meet the same one twice.
The apartment is already spotless thanks to the combination of my earlier cleaning binge, so instead I water my plants on the windowsill and get ready for bed while I wait for Craig’s response.
My phone beeps again minutes later, and I stare at Craig’s message in disbelief.
You’ll see. Don’t stand us up.
Sunday, February 17 – 12:00 PM
Maria
I know I’m asleep. I can tell because I hear my pulse pounding somewhere off in the distance. I recognize this dream and I'm starting to get scared already.
I’m fifteen again and I’m sitting on the couch in my brother Micah’s apartment. He’s about to come down the stairs; I’ve seen this all before.
“Hey Micah, where are you going?” I ask as my older brother jumps down the last four stairs and lands in the living room.
“I’ve got class, remember? Spring break doesn’t start for me until next week,” he answers, and he scoops his red backpack off the sofa as he passes me.
“Oh.”
Micah catches the disappointment in my voice, and he turns on his heels and comes back to sit down next to me.
“I’m sorry Maria... I’ll be back at five and then we can go do stuff, okay? I promise.”
He hugs me and I feel a little better. I missed him so much when he left for college, but when Mom and Dad arranged for my trip to visit him during my high school’s spring break, they forgot to check his break schedule. Our vacations didn’t line up at all.
“The fridge is all yours, okay? See you later!”
I wave goodbye to him from the couch and sit back with my book in a little patch of sunlight. Bilbo’s adventures in Mirkwood will tide me over until Micah gets home.
I remember my Psych 101 professor talking about lucid dreaming, how sometimes you know you’re asleep and can shape your own dreams, but mine are definitely not like that. Mine are pretty much the exact opposite—I can’t get away from them, and if I try, they sometimes start over. I have no choice but to relive them again and again.
Even worse, I already know how they end. I was there when the dream ended the first time.
I scoot across the sofa, following the square of warm sunshine as chapter after chapter flies by, until the sound of a key turning in the front door grabs my attention away from my book.
I look up excitedly, expecting to see my brother, and my heart sinks into my stomach as the door opens and Darren, my brother's friend from high school, walks in instead.
He seems surprised to see me, but the shock doesn’t last long. His eyes latch onto me, and I feel myself start to wither.
“What’s a little pea like you doing here?” he asks in a low, silky-smooth voice.
“I’m visiting my brother,” I squeak, trying desperately to break eye contact with him. I can’t seem to look away.
Something about him has always made me feel uncomfortable, and the feeling grows stronger the longer he stares at me. The way he looks at me makes me feel afraid. He’s not looking at me like I’m a guest sitting on his couch, but instead as if I’m a piece of meat.
“Oh... what time’s he supposed to be home, anyway?” he asks, not taking his eyes off me for a second. “He has class today, right?”
“He should be back by five,” I answer, my voice almost cracking as a strange, paralyzing fear courses through my body. I feel cold.
“Oh, that’s fine then,” he says, and I try not to tremble as he tosses his muddy, black backpack on the floor and sits down next to me on the couch.
A loud bang shatters my nightmare, and I gasp as I bolt upright in bed.
I’m twenty-two again. I’m back in my own bed, in my own apartment, and Darren is long gone. My shirt is soaked with sweat and my heart is racing at a million miles an hour as I glance frantically around my tiny room.
It’s nearly noon and I’m still in bed. So much for getting anything done this weekend.
“Damn it,
Maria, wake up already!” shouts Tina from the hallway, and I leap out from under the blankets as she bangs on the door again. At least I know who to thank for breaking me out of my nightmare.
When I unlock the door, Tina is leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, waiting for me.
“Okay. Talking time,” she snaps. “What’s wrong with you? You can’t just sleep all damned weekend, you know! You missed grocery day yesterday, it was your weekend for vacuuming, and...”
“I’m just really tired,” I interrupt.
“Liar.”
There’s no point in me trying to make up an excuse; she’s not buying it.
“Tina... I don’t want to go outside. I’ve been having a really bad weekend.”
Without a word, she turns and heads downstairs to the kitchen. As I hear her rummage through the cabinet, I know exactly what she’s looking for. It’s an old tradition of ours—my idea, I think, but it’s been so long that I don’t remember.
We’re about to have a long, uncomfortable talk, and she’s getting out the bowl of chocolate kisses. Chocolate makes everything go down easier.
“Alright Maria—to the couch with you!” she calls from the kitchen, and I obey without question. I’m as big a sucker for chocolate as she is. That and pomegranates. The best is chocolate-dipped pomegranate pips; they’re like a little taste of heaven.
The sun shines in the window and makes a bright, welcoming rectangle on one cushion of our comfortable green sofa. I plop myself down right in the middle of it and bask in the warmth.
She sits down next to me, lifts the glass lid and offers me a chocolate. I gladly accept, and I grab one wrapped in green foil.
“Guess how many times I saw you yesterday, Maria?” she asks, and I pretend I’m thinking about my answer as I unwrap the chocolate.
“Zero. I never left my room.”
“And why is that? Why did you never once come out of your room yesterday?”
My nerves stand on edge at her tone. I don’t like being scolded any more than I like being around guys. Instead of answering, I reach into the bowl and toss her a red-foiled kiss. She deftly snatches it out of the air with one hand without taking her eyes off me.
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