“Take it?”
“No,” Ami said gleefully. “He’d pee in it, and then he’d take it.”
I blew my nose. “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” I paused, imagining the looks on everyone’s faces if they caught Andrew doing something so crude and unsanitary. “And yet, oddly helpful.”
That was the pattern for days—I e-mailed my professors and told them I was sick, which I figured wasn’t exactly a lie. I did feel sick, except it was the kind of sickness that didn’t go away with some Vitamin C and a couple of Advil Cold & Sinus.
I missed a psych clique—or Intro Psych study group, whatever—meeting, too. Joanna sent me an e-mail saying that all I missed was Ellen’s talking more about her final project (she’d already coded over three hundred commercials and found a trend toward thinness in those for cars, alcohol, and clothes. Shocker). Jenny remembered her materials this time, but Joanna said she should have just left them at home, since all Sydney and Ellen did was rip her idea for a final project to shreds (something lame about the perception of symmetry in faces). Apparently, at one point, Jenny started crying so hard that Sir Wug actually got annoyed and left the room. Whatever works, I say.
Joanna didn’t tell me any of the things I really wanted to know, and I didn’t bother to ask. I wanted to know what had been said about me—with her nebulous connection to Nathan, Sydney surely knew about the breakup. And I think Ellen is friends with Heather, which just adds a whole layer of bitchiness to the kind of things they were no doubt saying behind my back.
Maybe it was because I didn’t really care about the opinion of that stupid group, or maybe it was because I found it hard to care about anything, but even their potential trash-talking wasn’t what was bugging me.
It was Nathan. The way I’d acted that day had been utterly cringeworthy, and the idea of Sydney and him laughing about it made my skin crawl. I also wondered how serious their relationship was—knowing Sydney, if they were together, she would have been gloating about it all over that meeting. But how could I possibly have asked Joanna about that? Hey, my ex-boyfriend’s roommate might be hooking up with that psycho hose beast, and I feel oddly compelled to know about it.
So instead, I just avoided the group altogether, ignored Sydney’s e-mails announcing the next meeting and the kind of materials we should be collecting soon. Who cared about a class that was only on the introductory level, anyway? Who cared about papers and final exams and transcripts? Who cared about Sydney’s naked pictures and her stale cheese dip and her freaky cat? What did any of it matter?
Unfortunately, the one thing that I couldn’t skip was the thing I most wanted to—the weekly mentoring group. How could I possibly advise a thirteen-year-old—or fifteen, what-ever—about life and love and school and sex and all of the stuff I basically sucked at? I should be labeled “Leigh Nolan: A Cautionary Tale” and shown in every high school health class.
This meeting wasn’t like the time Linda had us all join hands in a human pretzel and then work to untangle ourselves. At least that time, I barely had to say a thing, except for maybe the occasional “you go under, I’ll go over.”
Instead, this meeting was the Stiles campus tour, which had been hyped more than Episode I: Phantom Menace in the Star Wars series. A few weeks ago, Linda had decided that the girls needed a tour of the campus to kick-start their motivation to do well in school and, naturally, not get knocked up. Meanwhile, she was also hoping that the chance to interact one-on-one outside of their school environment would encourage the girls to open up more.
So far, it didn’t seem to be working. “So, that’s the marine biology building,” I told Rebekah, pointing. “That’s where people study fish, and uh…” Wow, I was totally the worst tour guide ever. I can’t believe all I could muster up about marine biology was that they “study fish.”
Looking around, I saw all the other mentors chatting and laughing with their mentees. Even Ellen was smiling, and although I’m positive I heard her outlining the merits of one professor over another, her mentee actually seemed to be smiling, too.
Rebekah still hadn’t responded to any of my overtures, and I continued to direct her attention to buildings I never went into and couldn’t care less about. Was I stuck with a dud of a mentee? Or was she stuck with a lousy mentor?
“Where are all the babies?” I asked her, noting an astonishing lack of strollers or those slings that some people carry their babies around in. I’d have worried that if I put my baby in one of those I’d get hit by a car or something, and we’d both die. At least if I had a stroller, I could push my baby out of the way at the last second, thus sacrificing myself for the life of my small child.
“Home,” Rebekah said.
Five single, teenage mothers roaming around a college while their infants were at home. How realistic.
“This is where most of my classes are,” I said, gesturing to the small converted house that was the psychology building. “Um…do you want to go inside?”
Rebekah shrugged, which I took as a resounding yes. I opened the door and almost ran right into Sydney, who was leaving.
“Leigh,” Sydney said, shifting the pile of notebooks in her arms. The books had caught on her shirt, and every inch she moved them meant another inch of bare flesh showing above the V-neck. Next stop on the tour: Sydney’s boobs. “I was just finishing up some data coding for my thesis. What are you doing here?”
“Just, you know…” I realized that it would be incredibly awkward to acknowledge that I was mentoring Rebekah with her standing right there. But then, if I lied, Rebekah would totally rat me out on it. There was no loyalty there. “Wandering around.”
Rebekah shot me a weird look, but I ignored her. Sydney was watching both of us with narrowed eyes. “Is this that mentoring thing you and Ellen were talking about? Where you hang out with underprivileged girls or something like that? Hey, like you said. At least it’ll look good on your eventual grad school application.”
I closed my eyes. What had that been, less than fifty words? And yet she had perfectly summarized every single thing I did not want said aloud. I couldn’t even look at Rebekah. It was official: I was the worst mentor ever.
“Why haven’t you been coming to the study group meetings?” Sydney asked, the books hitching her shirt down farther as she adjusted them in her arms. This was so not PG-13. “Is it because of what happened with Andrew? I meant to tell you how sorry I was—Heather is such a skank. Really, Leigh, you shouldn’t blame yourself. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
Desperately, I looked for the rest of the group, hoping I could at least use them as an excuse to end this horrific encounter. But they were down by the self-sustaining ecosystem some environmental science major had built for his thesis years ago.
With my misery accomplished, Sydney turned her attention to Rebekah. “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked in a cheery voice.
“Not a bitch like you,” Rebekah said, making that smacking noise with her lips. Had I ever not liked that sound? Now it was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.
Sydney just stood there for a few seconds, in complete shock. Then her lips flattened into a straight line, and she turned to me. “Nice job, Leigh,” she said. “Way to really mold our nation’s youth.”
Gathering her books close to her chest (thank God, now it was covered), she strode off toward her fully loaded Toyota Celica. I waited until she was speeding away before looking at Rebekah. “That was awesome,” I said.
Rebekah dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “It’s the truth,” she said.
“Yeah, but still totally cool,” I said. “You have no idea, that girl is like my worst nightmare.”
“Whatever,” Rebekah said. “She’s not as bad as she thinks she is.”
I realized we were still standing in the open doorway of the psychology building. “So, did you want to go inside?”
“Nah.”
For a second I’d really deluded myself in
to thinking there was a moment of genuine bonding here. Obviously, I was mistaken. Now we were back to incomplete sentences and near-monosyllables.
I shut the door and started strolling toward the ecosystem. Rebekah jogged a little bit to catch up. “So you never did it, huh?”
Maybe polysyllabic sentences were overrated. I sighed.
“Never really got around to it,” I said. “As you heard, we broke up.”
Her fifteen-year-old eyes were all-knowing. “Because he was a player and you wouldn’t do it with him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
I didn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Pretty much.”
“Bastard,” she said. Hearing the word come from her mouth shocked me a little, but it felt surprisingly good. I smiled for the first time.
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much.”
“Tyrone, he’s the guy at the Kmart, you know?” She glanced at me, as though expecting I wouldn’t remember, but I nodded. Her first time, and apparently the father of her five-hundred-dollar baby. I remembered. “He was the best one I ever had. Not the sex, I mean. He wasn’t any good at that. But he was the best guy I ever could have had.”
“So, what happened?”
Her eyes were very serious. “I got knocked up.”
Jesus. A part of me had expected this, but it still floored me somehow, now that it had been said aloud. “And you aborted the baby?” I asked, thinking of her question a couple of sessions ago.
She shook her head, surprising me. “I was gonna. Tyrone didn’t want me to. But then I lost the baby, and Tyrone couldn’t never forgive me.”
From the tremor in her voice, it sounded more like she couldn’t forgive herself. “How did you get pregnant in the first place?” I asked. “I thought you said you were on the pill, too.”
“My mom put me on after my older sister got knocked up,” she said, “but I wasn’t any good at takin’ it. I just couldn’t get it straight. But now I do, like vitamins. But Tyrone, he wants nothin’ to do with me. Then I was stupid, I hooked up with his friend, trying to make him jealous, and now he ain’t never gonna want me back.”
That’s right, the second time had been better. Apparently, Tyrone, for all his virtues, still couldn’t stack up to his friend when it came to the physical side of the relationship. And yet he was the one Rebekah was still hung up on, the father of her lost child.
I wished I had something to tell Rebekah, some words of wisdom that would put it all in perspective. Time heals all wounds, maybe, or everything happens for a reason. But the words would have been empty, and for once, the ability to lie completely escaped me.
Rebekah and I joined the group by the ecosystem, and then everyone walked to the events center to meet the bus. Rebekah was about to step on the bus when I called her back.
“Hey,” I said.
She just stood there, one foot on the step. The bus was idling, and the fumes made me want to gag. “Anyone who can tell Sydney off to her face,” I said, “is someone any guy would be lucky to have. Seriously.”
Rebekah rolled her eyes, but I swear I saw a smile touch her lips. She boarded the bus, and I waved as it pulled away.
I totally meant what I said to Rebekah, but I knew better than anyone that sometimes it’s not enough to know that you deserve someone. It doesn’t change the fact that you lost him. I mean, sure, Andrew and I weren’t fifteen, I hadn’t lost it to him behind the Kmart, and I didn’t lose his baby or sleep with his friend. But what if Andrew was my Tyrone and I never got over him?
What if time didn’t heal all wounds?
I was walking back from the events center when I ran into him—Nathan, not Andrew. Somehow it was way worse to see Nathan. Maybe it was because all I could think about when I saw him was a movie playing through my head of that last day, of how pathetic I must have looked trying to pick up pieces of broken glass on the ground, babbling about my first time.
He didn’t smile, but when our eyes met it felt like he had. I looked away, not wanting to see the pity I was sure would be there.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you?”
Gutted. Hopeless, thank you for asking. Shattered, depressed, helpless—crazy with the thought that if I had just gone through with it that night, maybe I’d still have Andrew. Angry with Andrew, blaming him for those doubts, for making me blame myself. Mostly, I just felt sad.
“Fine,” I said, tilting my chin. “How’s Heather?”
The question was supposed to come out ultracivilized, as though I were the kind of girl who could casually refer to the home-wrecking skank who’d stolen her boyfriend. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out like that, and I felt my bitterness and insecurity hanging between us like dirty underwear on a clothesline.
“She got hit by a bus,” Nathan said. “She lived, but she’s in a full-body cast and had facial reconstructive surgery using parts from a gorilla. Doctors say she’ll never be the same.”
I finally looked at Nathan and saw the small smile, the gentle light in his eyes. “That’s a shame,” I said through the lump in my throat. “And Andrew? Was he hit by a bus, too?”
This time Nathan didn’t smile. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t live with him anymore.”
Of course. Even though it’s not like he and Heather were picking out place settings, it still had to be awkward to live with a guy who was dating the same girl you’d just gone out with. Word on the street was that Heather was a rather loud girl…maybe Nathan had gotten sick of hearing her moan OhGodthatfeelssogood through the wall. I felt a new wave of pain wash over me.
“Oh,” I said. Then, feeling the inadequacy of that response, I added a lame “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Nathan’s eyes searched mine. “Really? I’m not.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I really didn’t have the energy to figure it out. So he and Andrew had a falling out—big deal. Andrew had been having a lot of those lately.
Nathan shifted his backpack to one shoulder, clearing his throat. “So, do you want to grab a cup of coffee?” he said, gesturing toward the Toad’s Monocle, which was where I had been heading. “Or we could go to Dunkin’ Donuts—my treat, of course.”
It was a really nice offer, even if it would be pity coffee. But didn’t he know how much it hurt just to look at him?
“I can’t,” I said with a small smile that I hoped looked apologetic. “I’m running late for class.”
His gaze pierced me, giving me that uncomfortable feeling I always got around him, as though somehow he knew I was lying. But how could he? It’s not like he’d memorized my schedule.
He swung his backpack around, unzipping the front pocket and rummaging through it until he came up with an index card and a pen. I watched as he scribbled something on the card before handing it to me.
There was some complicated math equation on one side of the card, and I stared down at it for a few confused seconds before flipping it over. In bold blue ink, he’d scrawled his name and his phone number, which I recognized as having a northern California area code. I frowned down at it, the ten digits of his phone number more cryptic even than the calculus on the other side.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
Nathan shrugged, but the movement was jerky. “Just use it if you need it,” he said. “Okay?”
“Sure,” I lied. “Thanks.”
He nodded. “See you around, Leigh.”
“Bye,” I said in a whisper that Nathan, already walking away, was not meant to hear. I slipped the index card into my purse, knowing as I did so that I would never, ever call him. After all, the ex-roommate of my ex-boyfriend, who probably moved out because his sex-crazed ex-girlfriend (okay, they only went on one date, but still) was now hooking up with the guy I’d planned to lose my virginity to at my senior prom? And, oh yeah, the guy who was the subject of a pretty intense dream I’d had only a few weeks earlier?
Not exactly at the top of my speed-dial list.
SEPARATION
ANXIETY: The protest and distress exhibited by a child at the departure of a caregiver
AFTER three months at college, of course I missed my parents. I mean, I have a soul. When I watched My Girl, I totally cried when Vada ran down the stairs at Thomas J.’s funeral, saying how Thomas J. wanted to be an acrobat and needed his glasses. But my parents had their psychic bed-and-breakfast, I had my schoolwork…my mother left me long-winded phone messages, I called once a week to check in, and that suited us just fine.
That’s not to say that my relationship with my parents was something out of Leave It to Beaver (which I’ve never actually seen, but people always reference it when trying to say that a family gets along just fine). My dad is, in my opinion, certifiably insane, with his eye patch and the tower he built on the roof when I was eleven, in the hopes of contacting “otherworldly beings.” As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough that we couldn’t have satellite TV because it would “interfere with the signal”—he also just can’t call them aliens, like normal people do.
My mom was always bugging me when my aura was murky or my planets weren’t aligned, as though I could really do anything about it. The scary thing is that, half the time when she was subjecting me to her “readings,” she was pretty spot-on. Not that I bought for one second that it was due to any true psychic ability. I just figured, isn’t that supposed to be the maternal instinct or something? She never baked cookies or sewed Halloween costumes, so it’s not like I’ve seen evidence of that instinct anywhere else.
Ami was flying out to Nicaragua to see her extended family for the long Thanksgiving weekend. She always said that you haven’t experienced Thanksgiving until you’ve done it with two hundred screaming, crying, laughing Nicaraguan members of the Gutierrez clan.
“Isn’t Thanksgiving an American thing?” I asked.
Psych Major Syndrome Page 16
