I knew better than to argue with Ami. “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’ll grab some brochures for you in case you change your mind.” Which she would. In a week she would be listing the copious benefits of grad school and whining that she had missed the showcase. But Ami’s opinions, while often transitory, were impossible to budge while she held them. So I just didn’t bother.
When I got to the showcase, the student center was filled with…well, students. There were also booths set up all around the room, with mainly seniors and juniors and a handful of underclassmen standing around posters displaying their research.
I saw the psychology section and headed toward it, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. Not surprisingly, the only two people manning the booth were Sydney and her new sidekick, Ellen, the most psychotic pair to study psychology in the history of Stiles.
“The kind of networking you do today will be your greatest asset in your academic career,” Sydney was telling Ellen. “As we all know, personal impressions are very important, so it’s crucial that you nail the interview. There are over two hundred other people applying for the same spot, so you can’t just rely on perfect test scores or letters of recommendation. I mean—”
Sydney broke off, obviously noticing me for the first time. God forbid she give my ungrateful ass any of the same advice. “Hello, Leigh,” she said.
“Hey, Sydney,” I said. “Ellen.”
I waited for Sydney to start her presentation of her thesis project, which looked like the most boring topic ever. She tried to jazz it up by titling her poster “What’s the Buzz About Bees?” and putting a cheesy cartoon bumblebee border around it, but it didn’t change the fact that it was a serious snoozefest. Now it just looked like a second-grade science fair snoozefest.
But apparently I wasn’t even good enough for that. “Did you ever pick a topic for your final project?” she asked. “You were supposed to meet with me about that, you know. I’m your TA.”
“I know,” I said. “But I just talked with Harland. I’m doing a meta-analysis of a bunch of studies using the International Eating Disorder Database.”
Sydney snorted. “Well, good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, as though she’d meant it.
Her eyes narrowed. “I heard about you and Andrew,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I was really looking forward to me and Nathan being able to double with you two, but I guess that’s not going to happen now.”
All this time I had been so worried about what others were thinking about me, it never really occurred to me that other people might be scared, too. I couldn’t believe there had ever been a time when I’d legitimately worried that Nathan would actually go for someone like Sydney. He was way too smart not to see through her crap, and too good a person to respect someone so petty and mean.
Until a week ago, he had also been too interested in me for Sydney to have a chance.
I could have played that card, ignoring the fact that in reality, I had blown my chance with Nathan. It almost would have been worth it to see the look on Sydney’s face. But instead I just gave Sydney a beatific smile.
“That is truly a shame,” I said. “But hey, great poster. I love the border.”
I spun on my heel and walked away, but as I did I saw Ellen out of the corner of my eye. She’d looked up at Sydney’s poster and actually blanched.
I was halfway to the British and American literature table when Ellen caught up with me. “Leigh,” she said. “I just wanted to say…your project sounds really cool. With the database and everything. And I’m really sorry to hear about Andrew.”
It was weird, but she actually sounded sincere. Stranger still—two weeks ago the very mention of Andrew’s name would have sent me into an emotional tailspin, but now I felt only a vague sentimentality. It was funny how quickly things could change.
“It was a long time coming,” I found myself admitting. “We’re better off this way.”
Ellen’s hands fluttered in jerky gestures of sympathy, and I realized that most of what I had seen as bitchiness was really just social awkwardness. “That’s just like me and my fiancé,” she said. “We broke up a few days ago.”
“Congratulations,” I said, a small smile touching my lips. Instead of getting offended or upset, Ellen just laughed.
“It’s weird not being in a relationship, you know?”
Did I ever. But if there was one thing I had learned this past week, it was that fear of being alone was not a sufficient reason to have a relationship. With Andrew, I had taken the word commitment to a whole different level. It was as if I’d gotten in line at the supermarket, and the person in front of me was sifting laboriously through every coupon in the Sunday supplement before writing a check for the total. I knew I should probably bail out and try another line, but it felt as if I had no other choice than to stick it out.
With Nathan, it had been the opposite. I was in the right lane, but when it came time to check out, I just couldn’t go through with it.
Ellen’s gaze skittered to mine uncertainly. “Listen, I know that we’re in the same field of research,” she said. “And I could really use a second coder for these commercials. Do you think you’d want to help me out? I could help you find articles for your project, or I could buy you coffee or something.”
“Um…” I totally appreciated that Ellen was trying to extend the olive branch. But, with Ellen, who knew if she were going to turn around and try to gouge your eye out with it? God forbid I might not code her commercials exactly right.
“I’ll make it Dunkin’ Donuts,” she said. “You like their coffee, right? I always see you walk into class with one.”
Then again, that was a pretty convincing olive branch. “Sure,” I said. “You have yourself a deal.”
Once I’d made my rounds of each department’s area at the showcase, I decided to hit up the admissions representatives from grad school. I know—it was a good three years before I would even have to worry about that.
But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to get a head start. I had my eyes on the UCLA booth when I bumped into someone.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, and then I looked up.
My heart slammed into my chest. “Nathan?” I said, although of course I knew it was him. He looked exactly the same—that tousled dark hair, those steady green eyes. But there was something slightly different about him, too. Those few days I had spent with him had made him seem so familiar, but looking at him now I realized I had no idea what was going through his head.
“Hey, Leigh,” he said, and even though it wasn’t really cold in the room, I felt goose bumps rise on my arms at the rumble of his voice.
“Hey,” I answered lamely. It was situations like this when I kind of wished my mother had been a real estate agent, too. Because if there were ever a time when I really needed to sell myself, it was now, and all I could think was, You break it, you bought it.
That might work for a crystal unicorn, but I didn’t think it worked for hearts.
“How’s—” I asked just as Nathan started to speak, and we both stopped. I gave an awkward laugh that came uncomfortably close to a titter. “You first,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “How’s Gretchen?”
That was it? He wanted to know about my car? Granted, the last time he had seen me, my car was doing time in an impound lot. But still, I was fairly sure that most professions of undying love didn’t start off with a question about a girl’s car.
Gretchen had come back from the impound lot intact but a little sadder, somehow. Her specialty license plate proudly declared her an antique, but she really just seemed old, and I was conscious of the fact that she was getting on in years.
“She runs,” I said with a shrug. “I never did repay you for that breakfast.…”
Nathan dismissed the debt with a wave of his hand, looking uncomfortable at the very mention of it. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
We stood there silently for a few moments, and I was
painfully conscious of how the old Nathan would have filled that silence. He would have made some joke about pineapple cream cheese, or asked for an update on the robotic babies. He would have found something to tease me about. He would have asked me which school I was there for.
But this wasn’t the Nathan I remembered from Arizona, and I really had no one to blame but myself. Because I’d lied about how I felt, this was polite Nathan, who had a new girlfriend who answered his phone and made his futon arrangements for him. This was Nathan, who, although his politeness prevented him from saying it, probably hated my guts.
“Did you ever sell that futon?” I asked casually.
“Yeah,” he said, and then his eyebrows drew together. “Did you call about it?”
Crap. “What?” I asked, stalling.
“Joanie said a girl called and stayed on the phone a little while, asking about the futon. I figured it had to be someone who knew me, since I didn’t put my number in the e-mail. But it was you, wasn’t it?”
Never in my life had I felt so mortified and so elated at the same time. Joanie, Nathan’s sister, had answered the phone! She must have been visiting him. It explained everything—the nickname, the comfort with which she’d answered the phone, the dinner plans. I mentally apologized for wanting to gouge her eyes out, however hypothetically.
I thought about denying it but figured there was no point. “How’d you guess?” I asked, giving him a rueful smile.
“I didn’t,” he said quietly. “I hoped.”
Something inside me took flight at those two words. I hoped. Maybe there was a chance he didn’t hate me, after all. And maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance that I could make things right.
People were milling about around us, but neither Nathan nor I noticed as his eyes searched mine. “So why did you call?” he asked.
There were a thousand questions in that question, and I thought carefully about how to answer them all. The old Leigh would have shot something off about needing a futon, but I didn’t feel like hiding anymore.
“I met Andrew at the café the other day,” I began, and it was as though a shutter had come down over Nathan’s eyes.
Immediately I knew I had made a terrible, terrible mistake, and I rushed to explain. “He came in, actually,” I said. “And I was there with Ami and Rebekah, and we were hanging out. I was really in the mood for one of those Bee’s Knees, you know, the one with the honey?” I shook my head, as though physically shaking off the need to babble. “Anyway, he found me, and started talking about how he wanted me back—”
Nathan held up his hand. “It’s okay, Leigh,” he said. “I get it. I’m glad everything worked out for you.”
I felt like I was swimming in molasses, trying to get somewhere but just unable to do it. “No, but—” Someone rushing to one of the tables bumped my shoulder, and I rocked a little. Maybe if we could go somewhere quiet, somewhere where we could talk, I could finally tell Nathan how I really felt. “This is kind of hard to talk about here,” I said. “Do you want to go get some coffee? Or maybe a BLT? I won’t puke on you, I promise.”
I shot him my most appealing smile, hoping that the inside joke would get him to smile, or at least to give me another chance. But his face remained completely impassive.
“Listen, I have to go,” he said. “I’ve got work to do and a bunch of stuff to unpack.” He looked at me, and I think I could probably devote my final Intro Psych project to analyzing that one look. “Take care of yourself, Leigh.”
And just like that, he was gone. I wanted to shout his name, tell him to come back. I wanted to run after him and explain everything, whether he wanted to listen or not. But instead I just stared at his retreating back until he disappeared through the double doors.
Maybe karma does exist.
Really, I wanted to go back to the room, cry my eyes out to Ami, and immerse myself in every heartbroken female stereotype of soap operas and pints of Ben & Jerry’s. Instead I wandered listlessly around the academic showcase, picking up brochures and free pens with all the energy of the undead—and not like the fast-moving zombies of modern movies, either, but rather the persistent sloths of the original George Romero films.
I ran into Joanna by the UCLA booth, and not that she was the last person I wanted to see (because there was a list about a mile long of those people), but I just didn’t feel up to talking to anyone right now. I thought about just spinning around and heading in the other direction, but she’d already seen me and waved.
“Hey, Leigh,” she said. “What’s up?”
And it all came spilling out. The way my relationship with Andrew had ended. The way I’d blown it with Nathan. The way he looked at me now, like I was a semi-interesting painting in a museum, but not one that he’d bother to buy the postcard for.
“Wow,” she said when I’d finished. “You know, usually when I ask that, I just get a token ‘not much.’ But no, this is way better. I really respect your honesty.”
That was a laugh.
“Why don’t you try the applied mathematics table?” she asked.
“Thanks,” I said. “But seriously, I doubt that math is going to help me right now. I’m not even that good at it! I only like statistics because you can use it to find answers about other stuff, instead of just numbers for numbers’ sake.”
Joanna laughed. “No,” she said. “I meant, why don’t you try asking someone at the applied mathematics table if they know where Nathan lives?”
Okay, as if I could feel any stupider than I felt before. “Oh. Do you think they’d know? I mean, just because they’re math majors doesn’t mean they know anything about Nathan.”
Joanna gave me a leveling look. “You think we’re the only major that’s superinsular and clique-ish and gossips about everyone else in it? Believe me, if Nathan bought a new brand of toothpaste, those math nerds probably already know about it.”
“You’re totally right,” I said. “Oh my God, Joanna, you’re a genius.”
Joanna acknowledged that with a little shrug of her shoulders. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll walk with you over to the table.”
Okay, the first thing I have to say about math majors is that they have really impressive theses. Like, they make my whole idea about body image seem like I need to buy some Elmer’s glue and go back to kindergarten. The guy who was presenting at the showcase had a very professional-looking board with a superlong title about correlative effects of binomials and logarithms or whatever. It made no sense to me, but that just made it more impressive.
“Um…hi,” I said, once Joanna gave me a little shove. “Does anyone here know Nathan Maguire?”
“I’m his TA in Regression Analysis,” the thesis student said.
“He’s in my calc class,” another student piped up.
“Does anyone here know…where he lives?”
And it was that easy. Two minutes later, I’d found out that he lived in C-Dorm (weird), didn’t take notes in class (he was probably too busy doodling cats) yet seemed to know all the answers, and that he lived in dorm room 341. I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn’t forget it.
I’d definitely looked better, and he had pretty much dismissed me less than half an hour earlier, but when everything falls into place, you don’t tend to think about what the logical or sensible thing to do is. You carpe diem, which I’m pretty sure is Latin for seize the address.
Or, as Rebekah might say, you just stop being dumb, grow a pair, and go after the guy.
PEAK EXPERIENCE: A profound and deeply moving experience in a person’s life that has an important and lasting effect on the individual
FIRST I’d ventured by the math table, and now I was hanging around the sketchiest dorm on campus. I wondered if he kept his desk in the closet. I wondered what he thought of the communal bathrooms.
This was definitely love.
I was breathless when I arrived at his door. At least I thought (hoped) it was his—the tarnished brass number read 341, just like the sli
ghtly smeared number on my hand. Before I could think myself out of it, I gave the door three sharp knocks.
At first I thought maybe he wasn’t home, and I felt a huge wave of disappointment wash over me. But then I heard sounds from inside, and my anxiety came rushing back. I reached up and grabbed the elastic band from my hair, running my hands through it and letting it fall around my face. A little vanity might not help, but it wouldn’t hurt, either.
The door opened just a crack, and a sliver of Nathan appeared. I gave him a tentative smile.
He shut the door in my face.
I stood there, stunned. Okay, so I had jerked him around a little bit. Basically, I’d been a jerk. But I didn’t realize until that moment just how much I had been counting on Nathan at least hearing me out. He was too polite not to. Wasn’t he?
I was staring at the brass number on the door, debating about whether to knock again, when the door opened. Nathan was partially hidden behind it, but he was holding it open, waiting expectantly for me to come in.
It was then I noticed the kitten. Cradled in Nathan’s hand was more a tiny ball of orange fur than a cat, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it as Nathan closed the door behind me. Somehow it was easier than looking at him.
“You got a cat,” I said, Captain Obvious. That must have been the reason behind the shut door. He’d been making sure the kitten didn’t run out. We weren’t really supposed to have pets in the dorms, but Stiles kind of looked the other way. As long as it wasn’t a ferret, that is (those were persona non grata at Stiles, ever since the college had had to pay a two-thousand-dollar bill to clean a room postferret).
“Yeah, well.” He kneeled down, and the kitten leaped from his hand and scurried under the desk in a flurry of orange fluff. Nathan’s desk was not in his closet, as I’d assumed. Instead, it was under his bed, which was now lofted. “I always wanted one.”
“What’s its name?” I asked. It was always awkward, I felt, calling an animal “it” when you weren’t sure. Some people, the same ones who buy little sweaters for their dogs, really take offense at it.
Psych Major Syndrome Page 24
