Ami paused, as though she’d never considered that before. “I guess it is,” she said. “But tell that to mis abuelos. Any excuse to celebrate, they’re in.”
I asked her if they celebrated Cinco de Mayo, then.
“We’re not Mexican,” she said, offended.
I gave up. While Ami haphazardly threw clothes into two of the largest suitcases I’ve ever seen, I carefully folded outfits for my duffel bag. Whenever I go on a trip, I have a certain combination of clothes I always take. I bring a T-shirt for every day that I’m going to be gone, plus an extra one, to give myself some options. I make sure one of the shirts could double as a slightly nicer outfit if it needed to, and I pack a single cardigan in case it’s cold.
But the key, I’ve discovered, is the pants. Many a suitcase has bulged because of a few bulky pairs of jeans. The trick is to wear jeans and then pack one pair of other pants—no less in case you spill on that first pair, and no more so you don’t overdo it. I allow myself an extra pair per week that I’m going to be gone, meaning I almost never pack more than two pairs of pants.
Unlike many female stereotypes, I am a very light packer. Not the most hygienic, maybe, but light.
“You take care of yourself this weekend, okay?” Ami said, giving me the look I’d seen a lot of lately, as though she were a mother leaving her sickly child at day care.
“I will,” I said firmly, more to convince myself than Ami. “I’ll give tarot readings to the tourists, go for long walks, and pick up some good books. Just watch—I’ll come back so chilled out, you’ll have to give me an adrenaline shot.”
Ami laughed. “Well, enjoy your catatonic long weekend,” she said. “But have some fun, too, you know? Go to a club, meet a guy, get his digits and then never call him. Live a little.”
First of all, let’s just say Lindsay Lohan is not going to be making an appearance in Sedona’s nightlife anytime soon. It’s not what you would call swingin’. And secondly, I’ve never asked a guy for his number in my life—except for a group project or something, when we had to make plans to meet up together and work on the PowerPoint presentation. Or Nathan’s.
But I hadn’t asked for that. He just gave it to me. It’d been a week since the day I ran into him, and still that index card sat at the bottom of my purse, untouched. Well…not untouched, exactly, but unused at least. I had taken it out a couple times, turning it over, trying to figure out what possible motive he could have had for giving it to me.
It reminded me of the stupid things people wrote in high school yearbooks. Leigh, you’ve made algebra so much more bearable. Call me sometime! And then, inevitably, at some point over the summer I’d get so bored watching People’s Court on TV that I would call. And they’d be very taken aback: Oh, Leigh…I’m sorry, did you need something? No? Well, I’m kind of busy right now…. And I always wanted to say, Hey, I didn’t want to call you any more than you wanted me to. I just got bored and for a second pretended your message actually meant something.
Was that what Nathan’s number had been? A token number, dashed off to relieve some sense of courtesy or guilt? If I called, would it be a pleasant surprise or would he immediately invent some excuse to get off the phone?
Somehow I guessed the latter. So I just slid the number back in my purse and returned to ignoring it, until the next time my hand would brush against it, and I would feel compelled to take it out again, as though the numbers weren’t already burned into my brain.
I didn’t tell any of this to Ami. If she’d been the one to get Nathan’s number, she would have called him by now, cheerily brushed aside that initial awkward talk, and two hours later they’d have shared their secret phobias and most embarrassing childhood moments.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t even told her about running into Nathan. Ever since we’d discussed that dream, she’d waggled her eyebrows at the slightest mention of his name. She seemed really fixated on the idea that we were cosmically meant to be or something.
All I can say is, if a dream means two people are destined for each other, then why am I not with Jake Gyllenhaal by now?
Ami and I left at the same time, and I helped her load her bags into her ride to the airport. I’d offered to drive her, but she had seen some post about a carpool that she elected to take instead. It meant that she had to ride with some weird girl whose mouth always gaped open like Brendan Fraser’s, but I admit that I was a little relieved. The airport was an hour away, after all, and I still hadn’t seen any gas money for the time I drove her twenty miles out to the flea market. We never did find the Virgin Mary figurine she was looking for.
“You have fun, too,” I said, giving her a swift hug. “And not just Hispanic Thanksgiving fun, but your own brand of doing-the-robot-to-crunk-music type of fun.”
“You know it,” she laughed. And then she climbed into the car, waving at me as it pulled away. As much as I was looking forward to time by myself, I would miss Ami.
Since there are only seven hundred students at my school, the parking lots aren’t too large. And yet I felt as if I’d walked five miles by the time I was done walking from one end to the other. I could’ve sworn I’d parked in the first row. I remembered, because I’d picked up Ami from class, and we’d given a sitcomworthy high five when we saw that such a primo space was available. And yet my car was nowhere to be seen.
“Dude, where’s my car?” I asked aloud, setting my duffel bag down momentarily on the pavement.
“Miss?” I turned around to see a balding man seated in a little golf cart, with the words Parking Services emblazoned across its side. “Are you looking for…” He consulted his notepad, like Gretchen wasn’t totally memorable. “…a 1971 AMC Gremlin?”
I had a sinking feeling in my gut. “Yeah. Where is she?”
“Miss, your car was towed just twenty minutes ago,” he said. “You didn’t have a decal. And it was well past your third warning.”
It had been my fifth, actually, not that I was counting. I guess a part of me hadn’t believed that they would actually tow a car, no matter what the little note written at the bottom of each ticket said. Especially a car as cute as Gretchen.
“Look,” I said, thrusting my student ID at the man who apparently had nothing better to do than tow adorable antique cars. “Obviously, I’m a student. So can I have my car back now? I’ll get a decal, I promise, but I’m supposed to go home for Thanksgiving this weekend.”
“Sorry, miss,” he said, without even looking at my ID. It wasn’t my best picture, I’ll admit—for some reason I’m craned toward the camera, my neck stretched out like a giraffe’s. “The cars are taken to an impound lot. You’ll have to go down there to pick it up, and it’ll cost you three hundred dollars.”
“Three hundred dollars?” If I had that kind of money, I would’ve flown home. As it was, my parents had sent me just enough money to drive. “Do you accept creepy robotic babies as trade? I could get you one that’s worth five hundred dollars.”
“What?” he said, furrowing his brow until his entire bald scalp wrinkled. “No—cash or credit only. Here’s the address.”
He gave me a pamphlet from Parking Services, which included paragraphs about how many warnings you got before your car was towed (three), acceptable reasons to appeal a ticket (“I just haven’t bought a decal” was not among them), and what to do if your car got towed. Apparently, because it was a holiday weekend, I had until Monday to pick it up. After that, there’d be an extra fifty dollars per day added to my bill.
“Do you get a cut of this or something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Just buy a decal, huh?” he said, and then he drove off.
I stood there in the middle of the parking lot (which was noticeably sans Gretchen), my duffel bag at my feet and the parking pamphlet in my hand. It occurred to me that all these things about parking would have been helpful to know, like, three months ago. Then it occurred to me that I had known them, and for some inexplicable reason I’d chosen to ignore them. And now I
was totally stuck, because there was no way that I could come up with three hundred dollars before Monday.
I could ask my parents to lend me the money, but they wouldn’t be happy, considering the car had only cost four hundred dollars in the first place. Still, that wouldn’t help me get home right now.
Flying was out, and it was too late to join a carpool, but there was one other option. It’s not like I didn’t know someone from my hometown who was probably going home for the holiday weekend, but was more than likely still here working on a last-minute paper.
If he just happened to be my ex-boyfriend, well, I guess I’d just have to get over it.
Standing in front of Andrew’s suite, my hand poised to knock, I felt a weird sense of déjà vu. It would be easy to think of him as my boyfriend again, to forget everything that had happened and the reasons that we were apart.
Then the door swung open, and there stood one gigantic reason we weren’t together anymore, wearing layered tank tops and cracking her gum.
I don’t see why she bothers to layer her clothes. You’d think someone who loves sex as much as she does would wear less, you know, in the interest of efficiency. “Um,” I said, “is Andrew here?”
She gave me an assessing look before calling over her shoulder: “Andrew!”
In the five seconds before he appeared, my heart was like a hummingbird. I thought it would beat right out of my chest. And then I saw him, and he looked…exactly the same.
I don’t know what I expected—it had, after all, been only a few weeks. I wondered how I looked to him. I wondered if he missed me.
“Leigh,” he said flatly.
Okay, maybe not. “This is Leigh?” Heather said, sounding relieved.
Nice. “Andrew, can I talk to you for a second?”
“I don’t mind,” Heather piped up. I bet she would’ve minded a lot more if I had been the other, überfeminine version of Leigh.
I rolled my eyes, reaching to grab for Andrew’s arm until I realized that I couldn’t really do that anymore. Touching him was something I needed permission for. “Whatever,” I said, snatching my hand back. “Andrew, outside? Please?”
Heather gave him a long, sloppy kiss that I know was just intended to stake her territory and make me squirm. Well, it worked, and not because I’m jealous. Watching her kiss him was like watching someone lick a public toilet seat. It was just gross. It didn’t matter that it was Andrew, the guy I thought I’d lose my virginity to, the ex-boyfriend whom I thought I’d be with forever.
So I was jealous. Big deal.
Once Heather’s lips were sufficiently covered in saliva, he stepped outside. “Listen, Leigh,” he said. “I know what you’re going to say, and I just don’t think it’s a good idea—”
I held up my hand to stop him. “Before you embarrass yourself, I’m not here because I want to get back together with you,” I said. Right now, that was actually one hundred percent true. If he didn’t have an STD before, he almost definitely did now.
That was mean, but I didn’t care.
“So why are you here?” he asked.
“I need a ride,” I said. “My car—you know what? It doesn’t matter. The point is that I’m supposed to go home for Thanksgiving. I know we’re not really on the best of terms right now, but I hope that you can at least be civil enough to let me come with you to Sedona. I’ll split gas, of course.”
“I’m not going home,” he said. “Sorry.”
Wow, I totally had not seen that coming. “What do you mean, you’re not going home? It’s Thanksgiving. You have to go home.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “I have a lot of work to do, and besides, winter break is just a few weeks away. It’s completely illogical to go home.”
“Any chance you’d change your mind?”
“You mean any chance I’d put a thousand miles on the Beamer and get behind on my reading just so I can drive the girl who said she didn’t want to see me again out to a town I could care less about?”
Okay, so that was a no. And if I was wondering if Andrew was still an asshole, I had my answer. So why did I still feel a little tug when he went back inside to Heather, closing the door behind him?
* * *
My next plan of action was to call my parents. Maybe they could wire me money, like in those Western Union commercials. Maybe my mother had foreseen this happening and was already doing so. I moved around to the parking lot in front of the suites, glancing up to make sure I couldn’t be seen from Andrew’s window, and dialed my parents’ number.
Pick up, come on, pick up. Finally I heard my mother’s voice, that familiar slight Russian accent (she’s from Vermont, but says there’s nothing wrong with adding a little spice), and my shoulders sagged in relief.
It was the answering machine. “You have reached Astral Body B&B,” it said, “home of fifth-generation psychic ‘Mama’ Nolan…”
Normally, I got a real kick out of this message. “Mama’s” first name is Susan, and I’m pretty sure my grandmother painted a lot of T-shirts and worked in the garden. She died before I was born, but I never heard anything about her being a psychic.
But today it made me want to scream, and I gave in to it, letting out a high-pitched cry as I slammed my cell phone shut. Why weren’t they answering the phone when I needed them the most? What good was psychic ability if you couldn’t sense that your daughter was stranded with no car? Where was that maternal instinct now?
Maybe it was my encounter with Andrew and Heather, or maybe it was the fact that it was now two hours after I’d planned to set out and I was still in the parking lot with my duffel bag. But I just felt desperate, like solving this car problem was the biggest deal in the entire world.
Suddenly I remembered Nathan’s number, sitting at the bottom of my purse, and before I could stop myself, I was dialing. It rang once, twice, three times as I vacillated between praying for him to pick up and wondering what I would say if he did.
Finally, the ringing stopped, and there was a brief rustle before I heard his voice. “Hello?”
I’d started to worry he was one of those people who didn’t pick up calls from strange phone numbers. I hate those people. Now, I opened my mouth, tears slipping down my face again. It was just so good to hear someone’s voice that wasn’t a recording, an ex-boyfriend, or the girl who was sleeping with that ex-boyfriend…it was so good to hear his voice.
“Hello?” He sounded a little more impatient now, and I realized if I didn’t say something soon he might hang up.
“Nathan?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but a little tremble escaped through.
I heard another rustle. “Leigh? What’s wrong?”
I didn’t ask how he had known it was me. Since he’s seen me at my absolute lowest moments, I’m sure that my weepy, pathetic voice was a dead giveaway. “It’s m—my…” I felt everything hit me at once—that panic when I couldn’t find my car, the shock of hearing it had been towed, the way Andrew had kissed Heather. He’d never kissed me like that. It rolled like a ball of clay, getting larger as it moved faster and faster, until it couldn’t be stopped. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“What is it?” His voice was urgent. “Leigh, talk to me.”
Between hiccups, I told him about my car. I explained the bald parking-Nazi, the three hundred dollars, and the robotic baby. I almost told him about Andrew and Heather, but something made me stop. It just seemed like maybe there was a threshold for pathetic, and I’d reached it.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“The parking lot,” I said.
“In front of your dorm?”
“No, in front of the suites,” I corrected him. “I walked over here.”
Which was totally unnecessary, of course, considering that my lack of car was what got me into this situation in the first place. Nathan also now basically knew that I’d gone to see Andrew, and I had just shredded any last chance at dignity I might have clung to.
“Okay,” he said
. “Just hold tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I should have said something. No, you don’t have to do that, or If you have three hundred dollars to loan me, I could have my parents pay you back. But the truth was, I really needed someone there. I needed someone else to handle this, because I just didn’t feel like I could do it alone.
“Thanks,” I said to Nathan, but he had already hung up.
Even with the money, I would also need a ride to the impound lot, and there was no way I was going to go back and ask Andrew. It would look like I was trying to use the “door in the face” technique to get him to hang out with me. You know, like when politicians ask you to donate a hundred dollars to their campaign, and you slam the door in their faces. Then, if they knock again asking you to donate a dollar, you just do it because it seems way better than the hundred they were asking for before.
Like I would waste any persuasive techniques on Andrew.
I sat down on a tree stump to wait for Nathan. It seemed as if an impossibly short time had passed before I saw him emerge from his car, a pair of dark sunglasses covering his eyes. Seriously, he had to have broken the sound barrier or something to get here that fast, since he obviously didn’t live in the suites anymore. Or at least a couple of campus speed limits (which are set at 12 mph—what’s that about? As if Gretchen’s speedometer has that kind of accuracy).
“Hey, Leigh,” he said, coming to stand in front of me. I expected him to be smiling, laughing at me (who gets their car towed, after all, especially at a school that they go to?). But he wasn’t smiling, and he held out his hand. After a brief hesitation, I took it, and he pulled me up easily.
“Sorry,” I said, giving a shattered little laugh. “I kind of freaked.”
That had to be the world’s most obvious statement, but Nathan just nodded. “It’s understandable,” he said. “Your car means a lot to you.”
It was true that I already missed Gretchen, but that wasn’t the reason I felt my eyes start to well up. “I—thanks,” I said. “I know it was stupid of me to call you and make you come all the way out here.”
Psych Major Syndrome Page 17
