Feeling like an intruder, I carefully moved some papers off his desk to make room for my laptop. There were lined papers covered in incomprehensible numbers and equations, sheets listing chord formations, and an envelope from a Patricia McGuire (his mother?). I was particularly surprised to find that Nathan was a doodler, and even more surprised to see that he mostly doodled…cats. There were little cartoon cat faces, a cat chasing a mouse, cats playing with yarn…Who knew that Nathan McGuire corresponded with his mother and had a serious thing for cats?
I think in Jungian dream analysis, cats represent the anima, or a guy’s feminine self. Whatever that means.
I sat down and opened up my laptop, resolved to work. After all, I had left my own room because of Ami and her constant distraction. One e-mail I did not want to write to Dr. Justus (who’s kind of gruff and old) was one with the truth.
Dear Dr. Justus, I just wanted to write to apologize for my failure to turn in a critical analysis paper. See, first there was this girl who just carried a watermelon, and somehow ended up dancing with the hired-help bad boy at a summer resort. Then I was in my boyfriend’s roommate’s room, and I just had to snoop around a little. You know, check out his DVD collection, whether he wears boxers or briefs, whether he keeps bodies of humanities or social science majors in a crawl space under his bed…that sort of thing.
(Boxers, by the way. And he has a lot of music DVDs, although I did see the first season of Flight of the Conchords. No crawl space…that I could find, anyway. But these math majors are tricky.)
After several hours, I had only ten pages and was already starting to flag. The glaring red numbers on Nathan’s alarm clock read 1:15. It felt so much later.
I stood up, enjoying a satisfying crack in my back as I stretched. For the past half an hour I hadn’t heard any more typing sounds coming from Andrew’s room, and when I knocked at his door there was no answer. Quietly, I slipped in.
He was sleeping! Andrew “I can’t afford to be sidetracked” Wieland had actually fallen asleep! I couldn’t believe it. And unless he always shuts down his computer and changes into pajamas while he works, he had gone to sleep on purpose. I wanted to shake him. How dare he go to sleep when I still had ten more pages to write?
He looked so peaceful while he was sleeping, though. Instead of waking him up, a part of me considered curling up next to him and getting some sleep myself. I was so tired.…
Ten pages. That’s what I had to keep telling myself. Ten pages and a Works Cited page. Then tomorrow I’d skip British and American drama (I swear, this is not becoming a habit, but that class is seriously lame) and sleep all day. All I had to get through was tonight.
I had been working steadily for another half hour when the door flew open and Nathan walked in, looking just as startled as I was.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped after I recovered my breath.
“What am I doing here?” he repeated incredulously. “This is my room. What’s your excuse?”
As if the whole scenario wasn’t surreal enough, I couldn’t believe I was actually experiencing the classic “what are you doing here” argument that is the staple of sitcoms and romance novels. But there I was, sitting in Nathan’s desk chair at his desk, while he stood in the doorway staring at me like he was seriously considering the state’s policy on involuntary commitment to a mental health facility.
“I needed a quiet place to work,” I tried to explain. “Ami was distracting me, and then I came here, but Andrew needed his desk to work, and there was some issue with duck sauce, and Andrew said you wouldn’t be home tonight, so…”
It was only then that I really took in Nathan’s appearance. He and Heather must have gone to the Olive Garden or something, because he was definitely way more dressed up than I’d ever seen him, wearing a crisp white shirt and dark green cargo pants. I didn’t think he owned anything but band T-shirts.
He also looked really tired. The cuffs of his shirt were rolled up and the top button unbuttoned, and his dark hair looked like he had been running his fingers through it all night. Or Heather had.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, gathering up my books. “I’ll be out of your hair in just a minute.” One thought about hair, and it was turning me into a babbling idiot. “Out of your room, I mean.”
Nathan gave me a bleary-eyed look. “How much more do you have to do?”
“Ten pages? And a Works Cited page.”
“And when do you have to turn it in?”
I was taking contemporary European history, so maybe I was mistaken, but I could have sworn that the Spanish Inquisition ended hundreds of years ago. “Um… tomorrow.”
His green eyes widened. “Tomorrow?” he repeated. “Nothing like the thrill of last-minute, huh?”
“Well, thanks for letting me use your room. Or, not letting me, exactly, but not freaking out more that I used it. Or…you know…” I realized I was rambling again, and I probably looked like a moron, because I was using my chin to hold all my books in place, and I couldn’t open my mouth all the way or else the books would topple over. “So anyway, I’ll be going home now. Thanks again and…I’m sorry.”
Nathan stopped me at the door, and for some reason I started thinking about his cat doodles all over again.
“Listen,” he said, reaching for the books. “We both know that if you go back to your room, Ami will be there and she’ll want to watch Pretty in Pink for the hundredth time. You’ll never get any work done there.”
All I could do was gape at him. “Pretty in Pink is a good movie,” I protested feebly.
He gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah, but it’s no Sixteen Candles, you have to admit. And you have ten pages left to write.”
“And a Works Cited page,” I added, still feeling a little overwhelmed.
“The point is, I’ll probably just crash anyway, so you can finish your paper here, since you’ve already started.” He rubbed the side of his jaw. “I mean, if you want.”
If I didn’t know any better, I would think that Nathan McGuire—my boyfriend’s roommate—who I’m pretty sure despises me—had just invited me to work in his room while he slept there. It was such a bizarre idea that I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it.
“Forget it,” Nathan said abruptly, stepping aside to let me pass. “I never should have offered.”
“No!” The word shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I mean…I really appreciate it. I do have a lot of work to do.”
His gaze swept over my face before he gave a terse nod and set my books back on the desk. “All right,” he said. He crossed over to one of his dresser drawers, extracted some clothes, and left for the bathroom. I had barely hooked up my laptop again when he returned, wearing a soft gray T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. I sat there, not sure what to say.
“You can leave the desk lamp on,” Nathan said, and then with a rustle of covers, he was asleep.
“Leigh!” The voice was low and urgent in my ear. “Leigh! Wake up!”
“Nathan?” In my half-asleep state, I thought it must be him. But then I cracked one eye open and saw Andrew’s face, staring down at me. I shot straight up in my chair, my back protesting as I did so.
“What time is it?” I asked, peering at the alarm clock on Nathan’s bookcase, which also served as his nightstand, his entertainment center, and, if the bottom shelf stacked with at least three pairs of Converse All Stars was anything to go by, his shoe rack. 11:17. I had a two-second panic attack until I remembered that I had finished at around five in the morning before finally falling asleep. Dr. Justus often checked his box right around lunchtime, which meant that I’d be pushing it if I stopped to print the paper on my own printer.
“Can I use your printer?” I asked Andrew.
For the first time I noticed how annoyed he looked. “Why don’t you just use Nathan’s?” he snapped.
I blinked. “I think I’ve imposed enough, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, have you? How do you thin
k I felt when Nathan came out this morning to tell me that my girlfriend was asleep at his desk!”
It took me a few seconds to register that Andrew was jealous. Andrew—normally so levelheaded and cool— was actually jealous!
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep the smile out of my voice. “I was working, and I just lost track of time. It was no big deal.”
Andrew grunted. “Well, it was obnoxious to hear how smug he sounded when he told me to wake you up and make sure you had finished your paper. As if he knows what’s best for my girlfriend.”
Even though we’ve been dating over a year, I still get a small thrill when I hear the words my girlfriend come out of his mouth, especially when he emphasizes the first word the way he was doing now. I had been awake for five minutes and already he had called me that twice. I kind of liked this possessive thing.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Leigh. I shouldn’t have put you in this position. I really didn’t expect him to come home last night. Heather must be losing her touch if she—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I cut him off. “Like I said, it was no big deal.”
Andrew reached out to touch the side of my face. “I know,” he said. “I just thought that if you were going to spend the night, it would be with me.”
It was the first time he’d brought up me sleeping over in a while, and I knew I had to tread carefully. “I want to spend the night with you, Andrew,” I said softly.
He smiled, his brown eyes warm on my face. “Really?”
“Really,” I assured him.
Andrew pressed a kiss to my lips. “Well, then, let me hook up my printer for you.”
SOCIAL FACILITATION: The idea that being in a group enhances performance of simple tasks, but actually hinders performance of more complex ones
UNFORTUNATELY, I only had the chance to grab three hours of sleep between my almost all-nighter and my big teenage pregnancy presentation at Simms Middle School. I was tired and kind of clammy, and the liter of Mountain Dew I’d downed earlier made me weirdly jittery and in desperate need of a bathroom. But at least this time, I was ten minutes early and I knew where to go. I was even wearing a pair of Ami’s dress flats for the occasion, though her feet were a size smaller than mine and the shoes were starting to seriously pinch. Somehow I thought that the whole “don’t have sex or you might have babies” message would be less convincing in a pair of beat-up Cons.
It took me a while to come up with my approach. After all, the D.A.R.E program was based on loads of research and years of application, and it still was pretty ineffective in preventing drug use. In fact, there was a whole group of kids at my school who thought it the height of irony to wear the old-school D.A.R.E T-shirts while lighting up a joint. Then again, these are the same kids who sit in the lounge and laugh uproariously over the latest reality show about people racing to win a million dollar prize or sleeping with the same guy in the hopes of being selected as his one true love in the end.
It was hard to figure out what I could possibly say in half an hour that would warn a group of preteen girls against getting pregnant. If this were one of my classes, I would just throw together a PowerPoint presentation and call it a day. But I’m pretty sure that the average middle school girl is more interested in watching Christina Aguilera dip to number four on TRL than in sitting still for a half-hour slide show presenting data and research.
Ellen was already there when I arrived. She glanced at my hands, nearly empty except for a small pile of index cards. “Aren’t you supposed to give some sort of presentation today?”
As if she hadn’t been hassling me about it for the past week. “Yes,” I said shortly.
Ellen raised her eyebrows, but at least she didn’t say anything else. A few of the other mentors started filing in, and then the final bell rang and the girls starting arriving as well. Rebekah shot me a deadly look, but Molly smiled at me as she sat down on the floor.
“Are you going to talk today?” she asked. “You’re funny.”
I was touched in spite of myself. “Well, thank you,” I said, fighting the urge to stick my tongue out at Ellen. I bet the girls found her as funny as watching C-SPAN. Last week, when we went around the circle and introduced ourselves, Ellen listed her research interests and the fact that she worked part-time as a file clerk at a law firm downtown. Everyone else had just discussed their pets or their favorite colors.
At that point, Linda came in and officially started the meeting. We had a couple new girls, so it was determined that we would go around the circle again, only this time she decided to focus our introductions.
“Today, why doesn’t everyone say their name?” she suggested, looking around the room with bright eyes. “And then after your name, say…what you would name your firstborn child!”
Way to discourage teenage pregnancy there, Linda. I bet D.A.R.E. never had to deal with this kind of crap. We’ll just introduce ourselves, and while you’re at it, tell everyone your drug of choice.
Not surprisingly, when it was her turn, Ellen said she didn’t want any kids. “My fiancé and I are just too driven,” she said with a breezy shrug.
Ellen would never make it as the heroine of a romance novel. In romances, the protagonist is always this very maternal, warm woman who doesn’t mind when the hero’s small niece blows her nose on a very expensive silk dress. Then the hero sees how different she is from his ex-flame, who freaked out when the kid sneezed on her designer dress, and he falls in love.
Finally it got around to me. “Rocky,” I said. “After Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion.”
Everyone laughed, but I wasn’t totally kidding. Anyone who’s watched any of the Rocky movies would be proud to raise a son named Rocky. I mean, who can’t get behind a namesake who defeated Ivan Drago and communism all in one amazing fight? Nobody who loves America, that’s for sure.
Once the blatant encouragement of procreation was wrapped up, Linda finally turned to me. “So, Leigh,” she said, that trademark fake smile pasted on her face. “Last week you had some interesting things to say about teen pregnancy. Would you like to share them now?”
“Sure,” I said, standing up. “But first, can I have two volunteers?”
Molly’s hand shot up. I noticed Rebekah was examining her nails as though spoilers for the latest CW show were written in her polish. I desperately wanted to pick her, but I had said “volunteers.” And unfortunately the research methods portion of Intro Psych had already drilled it into my head that experiments were now supposed to have participants rather than subjects. Stupid semantics.
“Molly,” I nodded my head in her direction. I looked around the room, and my eyes alighted on a slightly overweight girl with dirty-blond hair. I think she said her name was Kathy—or was that what she wanted to name her kid? I couldn’t remember.
“And, uh…you,” I said, pointing at Kathy or future-mother-of-Kathy. “Okay, you two can stand up here with me.
“Now, last week we talked about the effect an unwanted pregnancy might have on a made-up life, but let’s talk today about what you might do right now if you had a baby.
“What I have here”—I shuffled my index cards—“are scenarios that you might find yourself in if you had a baby. Molly, would you pick the first one, please?”
Molly glanced uncertainly at me, as though already regretting her decision to volunteer. Finally she selected one of the cards from the very end and turned it over to read it.
“There’s a big test tomorrow, and you have to study. Unfortunately, your two-month-old won’t stop crying,” she read, before looking back at me. “What would you do?”
“Anyone?” I looked expectantly over the crowd of blank faces.
Finally a girl whose name I remembered was Tawnya raised her hand. “I’d ask my mom to watch him, ’cause I got schoolwork to do.”
I shook my head. “Your mom is tired of having the baby foisted on her, and she’s busy watching her favorite reality show. You’re going to have to handle t
his one.”
Another girl raised her hand. “Just ignore it. The baby’ll stop crying.”
“What if he needs to be fed?” I asked. “Or changed? What if he’s sick? And what if he doesn’t stop crying—will you be able to concentrate on your homework?”
The girls started shaking their heads, catching on. Encouraged by their interest and the disgruntled look on Ellen’s face, I let Kathy/mother-of-Kathy pick another scenario, which involved having to miss a party because you couldn’t leave the baby. After that we did several more scenarios in a row, until I was confident that the girls were beginning to understand a small sliver of the responsibility that a child represented.
Finally, Rebekah raised her hand. The entire time, she’d been sitting in the back, blowing her long bangs out of her eyes and staring at the ceiling.
“Yes?” I smiled at her.
“What about abortion?” she asked.
I froze. “Abortion?” I repeated.
She nodded. “Yeah. If a baby’s so much trouble, why not just abort it?”
Ellen raised her hand (totally superfluously, of course, because she just started speaking without waiting to be called upon). “Isn’t it true that, by week eight, a baby’s major organs have already begun to form?”
“Um,” I said, “I don’t really know.” So far, we’d only made it through the sensation and perception and cognitive psychology portions of the Intro Psych book. Developmental wasn’t until after Halloween.
“It’s true,” Ellen said. “By week five, they have a spleen.”
How was I supposed to read ahead and know these things when I hadn’t even bought my textbook yet? And yes, I know that makes me a horrible student, but seriously, why would I spend a hundred dollars on a book when I can use Wikipedia for free?
“Thank you, Ellen,” I said, my voice sickeningly sweet. “As Ellen has just so aptly demonstrated, education is very important. Ultimately, it’s every woman’s decision what to do with her baby and her body, but the best thing that you can do is educate yourself and know what you’re comfortable with.”
Psych Major Syndrome Page 6
