Reaction

by Jessica Roberts

Chapter 2

  Creed had to lean down when we hugged, and I wasn’t short by any means. I had to remind myself that growth spurts—even huge ones—weren’t uncommon for guys Creed’s age. Keeping in mind that we were both twenty-one now was also a little disconcerting. At eighteen I was considered an adult, but twenty-one’s when I was supposed to feel like an adult. I didn’t feel anything close to it.

  After the hug on the duplex doorstep, I walked into Creed’s apartment. His roommate was also tall, of Italian descent, an obvious intellectual, and familiar looking. And when he strolled out of his bedroom and joined us in the front room, he was introduced as, “Peter, he works at the aviation school in architecture and design for commercial aviation.” I placed him instantly as a student teacher in one of Nick’s previous architecture classes.

  “I think we’ve met before,” I told him. “Last semester—” When my words registered, confusion crossed my face; I hadn’t anticipated a slip like that. “I mean, a few years ago—”

  “I remember you,” he said. “You used to date Nick Richard’s, right? I haven’t seen that guy in forever.”

  I nodded, hoping to dart past the topic.

  With a wily smile, he went on, “So, you single now?”

  “And off limits to you,” Creed piped in unexpectedly. “I’m serious, man,” he persisted. “I don’t want her thinking the guy living in the house above her, and my roommate for that matter, is going to come on to her every time she comes over. Got it?”

  Peter raised his hands and made like he was backing up. “Whoa Turbo, cool the jets. Squeeze a stress ball or something. I didn’t even ask her out.”

  “And you’re not going to.”

  They were facing each other; not exactly facing off, because anyone could tell that Creed was the only determined one.

  Peter continued, “Now that I think about it, didn’t I hear something about Nick getting hitched?”

  I flinched, both of them turning to me as if I was the fresh target. “I’m not sure.” I shrugged a heavy shoulder, quietly flabbergasted the conversation was going there. But college towns were like that, everyone knew everyone’s business, especially if you traveled in the same circle, and apparently we did. “I dated him a long time ago,” I added. “And we weren’t even that serious.” It felt good and vengeful to say so, even if it wasn’t true.

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched Creed study me with a skeptical expression and I knew exactly what was coming. Creed was just like me; we couldn’t hold in our thoughts if our lives depended on it. All the same, I was surprised and bothered—especially with his roommate right there—when he said, “That’s not how it sounded when you called for him at the hospital a few weeks ago."

  My response didn’t skip a beat. “I must’ve been confused at the time. Anyway, it’s no big deal, I don’t even remember it.” As convincing as I could, I smiled casually at both of them and then turned to leave. “Well,” I said to the door, “See you guys later? I’m headed to campus to register for school.”

  “Do you need some help?” Creed asked.

  “No, no. It’ll probably take all afternoon. I’m going to buy my books and stuff, and then stop at the mall to get a few things for the apartment. I’ll be back later tonight.”

  “Is the furniture okay?”

  A couple weeks ago Creed purchased a few furniture items for my little studio apartment below the house he and Peter lived in. I tried to pay him back, with little success.

  “It’s perfect, Creed. You’re the best.” He really was the best, but I had to get away from him before I broke down like a baby.

  “I’m taking you somewhere for dinner,” he insisted. “So don’t eat without me.”

  “Sounds great!” I managed to say with rallied enthusiasm.

  *******

  Talk about an inexplicable day, on the way to school I stopped by Liz’s place. She had been in my thoughts the past couple weeks, but I didn’t want to pile the whole dramatic story on her until I was out of the hospital and in normal clothes.

  The rain was falling in thick sheets now. I couldn’t help but wonder if my mood was responsible for the foul weather. What happened this morning couldn’t have tilted my world more. To expect a temperamental but penitent boyfriend and receive someone else’s fiancé? Truthfully, I didn’t feel defeated or sad; I felt irritated. Like a colossal weed in the garden of my soul. Also, I felt physically weak, though Doc said I could start running as soon I felt up to it.

  Was it not enough to lose three years of my life? I thought in exasperation while knocking on Liz’s front door. Why does fate hate me so much?

  I had to stop thinking about it, at least for today. I was alive. I was healthy. And I had a lifetime of possibilities ahead of me.

  Since Liz’s car was in the parking lot, I didn’t quit knocking till I was sure Liz could hear me over the storm. That’s when I decided to crack open the door.

  “Liz?” I called out after poking my head inside and getting reacquainting with the crowded little townhouse.

  “Is on the toilet!” I heard someone bellow from behind the bathroom door. Already a grin was softening my face, and I knew the lively friend from my dreams was a reality. A welcome one.

  I closed the door to the monsoon outside. “It’s just me,” I hollered toward the hallway. The toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened. When the petite girl with straight black hair and those kind almond eyes entered the hallway, my smile broadened.

  “Heather?!” she exclaimed, running down the hall and almost knocking both of us over.

  I tried to hug back but my body was pinned by a pair of dainty but determined arms.

  “Where have you been?” she squealed.

  “You won’t believe me,” I responded as she released her embrace but kept hold of my shoulders as if to prevent me from disappearing again. “I was in a car accident.”

  The expression on Liz’s face didn’t change, but her hands lightened their squeeze. “Wait, just now?”

  “No, no. A long time ago. I was in a coma.”

  “No you weren’t!” It wasn’t that she didn’t believe me, just her way of addressing the unbelievable.

  Still, I felt the need to expound. “Yeah. My body went into a coma. For over two years, Liz.” My friend was speechless. “I know, it’s crazy. But true—I think. I can’t really remember most of it; I lost a lot of my memory from the trauma to my brain.” While explaining, I found myself turned around, lifting my hair to show Liz the back of my neck where the large, unsightly, horizontal scar cut just below the hairline from the middle of the neck to the edge of my earlobe.

  “Holy crap! Ouch!” I heard her exclaim.

  I dropped my hair and faced my friend, smiling inside at her familiar way with words. “I know, huh?”

  “But you’re okay? And you remember me?” she asked.

  “Of course I do. Although your hair’s a lot longer.” I reached my hand out and flung the silky black strands off her shoulder, laughing. “I remember everything about you!”

  She was overjoyed as she hugged me again, not so tightly this time. Then she led me around the coffee table and onto the grey couch while explaining, “I heard you dropped out of school, took off with some old friend and got married.”

  “What? Who told you that?”

  She shook her head, shooing away the distress on my face with one flimsy hand. “Doesn’t matter. I didn’t believe the marriage part for a second. But I called you a bazillion times, and I came to your apartment. I thought you fell off the planet! I can’t believe you’re here! And you remember summer and fall semesters together? All the fun we had?”

  “It’s mainly my childhood that’s gone,” I explained as we settled in. “And everything seems a little surreal. I don’t have the best handle on reality yet. But Doc says in time I’ll sort everything out and my life will all go back to normal.”

  In the quiet that followed, Liz seemed to be mulling over the wild story, again hugging and rel
easing me, and inserting little phrases like, “I can’t believe you’re here,” and “A hospital all this time? Really?” and “I thought I’d never see you again!” I noticed Liz pucker her brow at a thought that must’ve surfaced, but in the next moment she continued talking. “Some time you’ll have to explain how it all happened, but not now. Right now you need to tell me that you’ll be staying for a while. You will be, right? I mean, what are your plans? School and stuff?”

  “I’m going to register for fall semester, today actually. The schoolwork shouldn’t be a problem since I remember pretty clearly my last two semesters before the accident.”

  The same pucker in her brow came back, and then she asked, “Do you remember Nick?”

  The comment came suddenly, guarded but sincere, whacking my heart around a bit. Not wanting to tell her that his love was as current as the morning newspaper, and afraid to trust my voice on the matter regardless, I nodded.

  She persisted, with care. “Have you seen him lately?”

  Again, I nodded. But then I decided it wouldn’t work to nod through the rest of our conversation and ended up saying, “Yeah, earlier today.”

  “Stop.” It hit her the same time it hit my emotions. “And does he know what happened to you, where you’ve been—”

  Another nod.

  “Stop it.”

  “I know,” is all I could say. Obviously, Liz knew about the engagement. Perhaps she even knew the fiancé.

  I lowered my eyes to the linoleum floor and began visually tracing the diamond patterns there. Out of anyone, Liz knew the connection Nick and I shared. She was there when the first seeds had blossomed all those years ago in History class. She was the friend who heard the details of the first time Nick came to my apartment. She’d even sent us off on our first date. And she saw our relationship grow and solidify during those sweet summer months way back when. Seeing me again must’ve brought back all those memories, taking them to a more current place in her head.

  “Heather, what are you going to do?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Liz shook her head, not only in response, but also as a residual reaction to my fantastic circumstance. Her head persisted to shake.

  “So, what have you been up to lately?” I asked, forcing a smile.

  It might have been the way Liz’s face was sympathetically bent, or the tremor in my voice, or the sudden awareness of how unbelievably cruel life could be, but an uninvited chuckle finally surfaced. The puzzled look on Liz’s face only made me laugh more, and then I couldn’t stop myself. Before we both knew it, tears were gathering in my eyes. Little drops formed in their corners and then began a path down my cheeks.

  “Okay, this is worse than I thought,” said Liz.

  “I know,” I got out between the laughter, trying to keep my mouth from pulling into a frown and reversing the emotion.

  “Come here, sweetie.” Liz scooted closer and wrapped her arm around me. “If it’s any consolation, you still look like you just walked off the cover of a magazine. That hasn’t changed.”

  I rested my forehead on my friend’s shoulder, still laughing, and then lifted my head, confident I looked more like a psychopath than a magazine cover. “I’m not angry,” I tried to say as I breathed back my emotions. “I don’t even care.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Liz patted my back, properly sympathetic. Then she left the couch suddenly.

  “Where are you going?” I asked while wiping my cheeks dry.

  “The Philippines.”

  “What?”

  “I’m getting you a tissue, dummy.”

  “Oh.” I sniffed my nose and made another little laugh, because everything was funny and nothing was funny. None of this was supposed to happen. Not the breakdown, not a despicable get-together with Liz, nothing about this day! Sullenly, I realized this was no different than my dreams; once again my life was out of control.

  The thought caught me and I said to no one in particular, “Maybe I’m still in a coma. That would be interesting.”

  “Nice,” Liz responded, unamused. “No seriously, here’s the plan. Nick is still crazy about you. Two years doesn’t change that.”

  “Three years.”

  “Whatever,” Liz retorted, waving off the discrepancy. “He still loves you, Heather. I’ve never seen two people fall harder for each other, or two people more right for each other.”

  “What you fail to mention is that he’s with someone else now.” It was the freezing, impenetrable truth.

  “Nope, not the same,” she insisted. “She’s…well, she’s…”

  So I was right, Liz knew the girl. “She’s what?” I asked while calling up the still-shot in my head of the girl in the window.

  “She’s one of those Barbie doll types.”

  I flashed her a look that told her exactly what she could do with her unintentional compliment.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Okay, so here’s what we do.” She waited for my full attention, then continued, “You win him back. Simple as that.”

  “And how do you propose I do that?”

  “Easy. By annihilating the competition.”

  Her slow-growing grin soon turned into our united giggles. I sniffed up the last of my pity-party, exchanging my feeling of disappointment for a different one. Large seeds of another interesting emotion had already been festering since I saw the girl in the window.

  “The Barbie doll needs to go bye bye,” Liz joked.

  Needless to say, Liz’s thoughts were mine too. “Hm, let’s see.” I played along. “Well, being hit by a car doesn’t hurt so bad, as long as it’s a square hit. I can offer Penny,” I joked, somewhat seriously.

  “That’s a little disturbing,” Liz said, patting my knee as if to subdue me, but grinning back. “Listen, he couldn’t resist you then, and he won’t be able to resist you now. What we need is a line of attack. And an accomplice.” Liz raised her eyebrows up and down to let me know she was in. “This is your lucky day, girl!”

  I considered explaining the error in her logic, noting it would be better described as one of my bleakest days, but decided it a waste of time.

  “What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?” she went on, her tone more calculating than questioning.

  “I was on my way to campus to register for classes.”

  “Perfect, I’m coming with and we’ll talk in the car.” She was already grabbing her purse off the counter. “We can register for a class together too. Come on, let’s go.”

  “It’s okay, Liz,” I broke in. “You don’t have to come. I’m good. Really. Besides, I told my friend from home that I’d grab dinner with him later.”

  “I know I don’t have to come,” she said as she yanked me off the couch and out the door. “I want to. And we’ll be back just in time for dinner.”

  All through our outing at least twenty-one questions must have been turning in Liz’s mind. But instead of addressing them, she chose instead to focus on what I needed most, a good listener. It was on the ride home from campus when I realized that although we’d only known each other for six months back then, we had been good friends. And we would be again.

  Be it right and logical, but I found it frustrating and unfair that my friendship with Liz could fall right back into place, my connection with Creed was as solid as ever, my reunion with Bob the boss went without a hitch, yet my romantic relationship with Nick couldn’t do the same.

  As I saw it, there were three dilemmas eating at me—each one more severe than the last. First, the hideous scar on my neck; I never wanted him to see it. Second, all the lost time during our three estranged summers; how would I make up for that? And finally, the fiancé; what to do about the unwelcome Barbie doll….

  *******

  Other than a couple highlight moments, the first week of school was ordinary. But ordinary was nice for a change.

  The first highlight came during Health class with Liz. The class was officially called ‘Mental Wellness and Relaxati
on’ and when Liz asked me to register for the class with her, I figured some wellness and relaxation was just what the doctor ordered, literally.

  The first day of class, our mad-scientist-like female teacher, with a short, stocky build and black hair that looked like a rat’s nest, had us karate chopping square blocks of wood. The goal was to channel our energy and ultimately split the board in two.

  We started out by lying on the floor as our teacher walked us through an imagery exercise that taught how to center one’s energy. Then, one by one, she’d call a student to the front of the class, hold the piece of wood on either end and, while the student tried to summon up some power, she’d encourage them to break through the board with the palm of their hand.

  The class gasped when the biggest guy in the room went to break the board and instead knocked the teacher flat on her butt. But she was the type who could take a few punches, and dish out a few as well.

  When it was Liz’s turn she went up and did a few martial arts moves before trying to break the board. Liz must’ve had some martial arts experience because I could tell they were legitimate moves, but that only embellished her performance somehow, and out came my smothered sputter of laughter.

  When the teacher praised Liz for being able to search for her center and then admonished all of us to do the same and then told some of us to leave the room if we couldn’t be serious, Liz pressed her palms together and bowed to the teacher. She bowed. I couldn’t remember if I had ever been kicked out of class, but I didn’t think I had ever been kicked out the first day. I had to physically turn around and clamp my lips together.

  Even more amusing was how Liz’s five minute preshow to find her center produced an unbroken board and a sore hand, and my ten second recollection of Barbie in the window produced a clean split.

  The second highlight was later on in the week. Drowsily walking across campus after my Statistics class, I found myself tired and searching for a spot on the lawn to stretch out and take a power nap.

  Filling my senses when I sprawled out, was the smell of rich, damp grass. As I turned to get more comfortable, I noticed a clearing on top of a small hill where a little white office sat. The first door I excitedly recalled as the office of Teacher Jerry, a favorite professor from my Creative Writing class. The nap would be forfeited to a visit with a special friend who was hopefully still around.