“She’s not my girlfriend.” He stresses this fact like it’s absolutely necessary that I recognize it as truth. “Not for a long time.”
“But she was?”
He opens his window and takes out a pack of cigarettes. I don’t like the smell of smoke, but he’s trying to hold his hands steady while he gets the cigarette out and I worry he’ll light himself on fire with the way he can’t control the lighter. I’m about to offer to help when he gets it lit and tosses the lighter onto his dresser. He sits on his bed, smoothing down the covers, and takes a long drag on his cigarette, not answering my question and not looking at me. We’re definitely not supposed to be smoking in the dorms.
“Last night, you asked me if I ever feel alone. There are things I spend most of my time trying to keep distant, to leave in the past and let go, but yes, I do. I feel that way a lot. In high school, I had two friends – Alana and Dave. And now…” He stops and finishes his cigarette. I don’t push him, because he’ll tell me, but I want him to be ready. I just want to be able to listen.
He doesn’t close the window when he’s done, but he does look at me. “Dave’s overseas.”
“Traveling?” I think of Abby and her Europe adventures. She sends me emails once a week and texts when she can, but I miss talking to her. She keeps promising we’ll Skype, but then something always comes up.
“Army. He’s in Afghanistan.”
“Oh.” Of course he is. My friend is sitting in cafes in Paris and eating gelato in Rome, while Jack’s friend is fighting a war most of us have forgotten exists.
“We stopped talking before he left, though. He didn’t want to go and die and leave us missing him, so he just cut us out of his life. It really sucked.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you?” he asks. It’s a question that could be cruel, judgmental, or damning, but he’s merely curious. And he’s right. I can’t imagine. I say I can and I have my own secrets and fears, but I can already tell Jack and I come from very different places.
“Never mind,” he says. “Anyway, yeah, it was just the three of us for a long time. Maybe one of these days I’ll tell you the story, although trust me, it’s better just not talking about it. After a few years, I got used to the idea that everyone assumes a lot of things because of who I am.”
“Well, then, everyone’s stupid. You’re only who you decide you are.”
Jack laughs. “Funny. I feel like you’ve never believed that yourself.”
I feel weird standing in the middle of his dorm room, but he doesn’t have an extra bed and there’s a stack of books on his chair. I look between them and the corner of his bed, debating if I should just move the books.
“I don’t bite. It’s only a shitty dorm room cot, but I think there’s enough room,” he says.
I sit with him, leaning against the wall and he closes the window when he sees me shiver. Figures that fall decided just to skip right to winter in a day. In a year when I need change to happen gradually, it just happens in an instant.
“I only had one real friend,” I tell him.
“That surprises me,” he admits.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think I assumed a lot of things about you when I met you, but you deserve better than that. I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “I don’t think I’m a full person. It’s hard not to assume, when I don’t even know what’s real.”
“Don’t feel like you need to explain. If you want to, I’ll listen, but you owe me nothing.”
“Thank you,” I reply.
“There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s just decency,” he says. There’s a deep break in the conversation and I don’t know if I should confess or if I should push for his story, but it passes and he turns on the lamp on his dresser and starts his laptop.
“What brought you here anyway?” Jack asks.
“I need to work on my paper.”
“So you came here?”
“I guess.” I can’t explain why. I can’t even explain it to myself.
“All right then. Get writing.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask him.
“I have no idea. You just showed up with a laptop and a book,” he reminds me.
“Tell me your story, Jack. Tell me about Alana.”
“Another time. You want something to drink?” He gets up and goes to a small fridge near his wardrobe. I expect a beer, since I feel like drinking is synonymous with college, but he only has cranberry juice. It’s so ridiculous that I start laughing and he stares at me. “Something funny?”
“No, I just wasn’t expecting you to have juice. Especially cranberry.”
“Looks like we’re both shaking some assumptions, aren’t we?”
“Seems to be.” I take the bottle of cranberry juice and turn on my computer. For two hours, Jack works on something on his computer on the end of his bed by the window and I sit across from him with my own. I consider revising my essay on Elinor, but I think about the rules and expectations and what my professor said and then I start new. After all, like Kristen said, what’s the worst that could happen?
22.
Kayla didn’t let the book contest go. When the new girl moved into town at the end of the year and started in our class, I was introduced as “Lily, but don’t talk to her because she cheats and she’s think she’s better than everyone.” She was wrong, because I didn’t think I was better than anyone at all; I wasn’t even good enough to be me. But truth is rarely more than the right combination of words at the right time.
No one in our class had opinions except Kayla. Whenever a teacher would ask a question, Kayla answered and everyone agreed. She lived in the biggest house in town and her mother was French and baked treats and wore designer clothes and her father worked in the city. These were all things that impressed us at nine, because they impressed our parents and we were all still extensions of what we had learned at home. So when Mr. Chaves, our art teacher, came to our reading class for a “cross-curricular lesson,” and he asked us to describe our favorite illustrated books, Kayla said The Polar Express. We assumed that this was the collective answer, because Kayla had decreed it. It was a good book, so I didn’t mind really, even though my favorite was actually The Velveteen Rabbit.
“I love Maurice Sendak,” the new girl added. “Where the Wilds Thing Are is wonderful.”
The whole class looked at her. This wasn’t how things were done. A teacher asked, Kayla answered, and we agreed. If a teacher called on someone else, we waited until Kayla had made it clear what she thought before we offered anything. So when the new girl gave a secondary option, Mr. Chaves was excited. I imagined teachers preferred to hear variety, but none of us knew how to handle it. There was Kayla’s opinion and that was all. Kayla, of course, was not excited and she glared at the new girl.
“I said The Polar Express,” she reiterated.
“Great. And that’s your favorite, but there’s more than one book,” the other girl replied.
I didn’t like Kayla. She had been mean to me about the contest and although I liked The Polar Express and I was too afraid to say anything to contradict her, I hadn’t forgotten about it, either. I also didn’t forget the way she’d gloated at the Easter egg hunt. My dad had told me it wasn’t nice when I called her a stupid cow at dinner that night and I’d tried to be nice after that, but I couldn’t help getting pleasure from watching her face turn red now that someone else had an idea.
“Listen, new girl,” Kayla snapped.
“Abby. My name is Abby. It’s not hard to remember. It’s four letters.”
Kayla sputtered and her face looked like a violent tomato. I had to try not to giggle, because it made me happy to see someone argue with Kayla. I always wished I had fought back when she spread lies about me.
“I was nice to you. I warned you about her,” Kayla said to Abby and she pointed her finger in my direction. I was her nemesis, even though neither of us could spell the word and we wouldn’t kn
ow what it meant for another year. I never actually figured out why I had earned that privilege, besides beating her at something, but it served me well with Abby.
“Yes, you did, but Lily is my best friend, so you can just shut up.”
Abby took her things and moved to sit next to me and she put her arm around my shoulders to confirm that we were, in fact, best friends. Years later, we laughed about the silliness of it all, but that day, it was a battle and Abby intended to win. After Kayla moved away before high school, Abby and I were still close, all because a grudge about the reading contest had brought us together.
For the rest of the day, Abby followed me around and all week, whenever she would see Kayla, she would laugh as if I’d told a fantastic joke. I didn’t know any jokes and it took a while before I told Abby much of anything at all, but she became my friend that day because it made her mad that everyone else ostracized me. That ended up being what kept us close as we got older. Although I wasn’t interesting to ostracize by high school, Abby always felt like the only person who cared.
The following week, we were asked to read aloud from the books we were currently reading, and Kayla’s hand went up – obviously. But so did Abby’s. Miss Stephens, taken aback, called on Abby, because it was a voice she’d never heard. Kayla, shocked, slammed her book down.
“I’m telling my parents,” she announced.
“Kayla, you can read, too,” Miss Stephens said. “Abby’s just going to go first.”
“I always go first,” Kayla argued.
“Exactly, which is why we’re letting Abby go today. Everyone deserves a chance, right, Kayla?”
As mean as Kayla was to me, she wouldn’t contradict a teacher, so she sulked while Abby read and then Hannah went and several other kids read before she had her chance. Miss Stephens didn’t falter, despite Kayla’s loud sighs and complaints from her desk right up front. By the time she got to read, it was almost recess and no one was listening anymore and I was admittedly vindicated that Kayla could experience what it felt like to have your voice not matter.
At recess, she came over to me and Abby. We were sitting on a rock and talking about Abby’s aunt’s new puppy.
“You’re not invited to use my pool,” Kayla declared. This was the ultimate small town punishment, and she announced it with the full force of a judge meting out a sentence. Abby looked up at her, standing over us and trying to be intimidating, although she was just another nine-year-old girl.
“That’s okay,” she replied. “I live on the lake and it’s much bigger than your stupid pool anyway.”
Kayla didn’t know what to say, because no one had ever declined her mom’s cookies or her pool invitations. Those were the things that made her powerful in elementary school, but Abby went back to the story of Buster, the Pomeranian, and ignored Kayla’s further attempts to establish dominance. By the time recess ended, Kayla had been dethroned, but all efforts to set up Abby in her place went ignored as well. She just wanted to tell someone a story about a dog.
23.
Now that winter has shown its face, there’s an unspoken transition on campus. The airiness of the first month and a half of school is replaced almost overnight with focus. Everyone shifts from making friends and creating plans to following through and giving up. It was only a few weeks ago when all the tables were out for the club fair and groups of people were listening to music, playing hackey sack, and acting as if school were an afterthought. But with the cold, the light cotton of summer gives way to tweed, and earnestness settles.
Of course I feel like I’m lagging behind the tide, but it’s a space that’s inherent and the catchup doesn’t take as long. For me, the biggest change is the slow friendship I’m forming with Jack. Aside from his last name – Connelly – I haven’t learned much more about him, but he’s been helping with my paper and I spend my evenings studying in his room. I love the way I never have to work at anything around him, but I also worry that I’m just filling my life with him to avoid figuring out all I ever felt with Derek. I don’t want our friendship to be a replacement for something else. It’s only been two weeks since Columbus Day. It amazes me that two weeks in college can feel so much like a lifetime.
“I have band practice tonight,” Jack says. We’re in the cafeteria, although I haven’t felt like eating much lately. I can still hear my mother talking about my weight and every bite of food makes me nauseous.
“That’s okay. I need to finish my paper and I should go to the library. Research and stuff.”
“Ah, yes, stuff.”
I nod. “Stuff.”
“Do you… do you want to do something this weekend?” he asks.
“Like a date?” It hurts to swallow when I say that. I don’t want to confuse this. I’m enjoying Jack’s company, but the idea of dating anyone – especially with the still present Derek problem – makes me want to run until I can’t recognize anyone.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We broke up,” I say. “Sort of.”
“Oh. You haven’t mentioned it.”
“Well, it’s not a breakup. Maybe. We’re on a break. He needs time or something. But we have plans in a couple weeks. For my birthday. So I don’t know.” It all sounds ridiculous when said aloud and I’m angry at Derek all over again.
“Okay, then. Well, not a date anyway. There’s something I want to show you, but it would be one hell of a shitty date.”
“Yeah, I’m free,” I say.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks.
He’s barely eating, which I notice since I’ve been rebuttering a piece of toast since we sat down, trying to appear interested in being here, but he keeps watching my knife slather the yellow spread onto the soggy slice and his dinner is getting cold.
“Ask away.”
“Do you ever say no?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you don’t know me. You don’t know if I plan to take you out into a field somewhere and do horrible things to you.”
“Do you?”
“God, no. But I mean, you come to my room with no fear, yet you rarely offer an opinion. You nod and agree, but in the short time I’ve known you, you seem to spend a lot of time saying yes and very little arguing.”
“Not everything needs to be an argument,” I point out. “And I’ve snapped at you plenty.”
“About Marianne and Elinor. About abstract concepts, but it’s okay to say no.”
“Why does it matter? It just upsets people when you’re contrary and you haven’t given me a reason to treat you that way.”
He takes a bite of his pasta finally. I can almost feel the slimy noodles in my throat, but I’m getting fat. I salivate watching him eat the cold cafeteria pasta. Flipping over the heavily buttered bread, I start on the back side.
“I wasn’t kidding when I told you I had only two friends,” he says. “And all three of us are beyond fucked up. I’m not a good person. You should just know that, before you agree to do anything with me at all. There are things in a person’s life that you can’t stop knowing once you learn them.”
I think I’m a selfish person. At no point has Jack benefitted from knowing me. I go to his room and we talk and I do homework, but I don’t encourage him to talk about his life. He makes vague references and says he’s uncomfortable, and I allow that to be enough, but it’s also me. All I’ve done is think about what I did wrong to upset Derek, about my mom and how she would judge Jack, and about what I can do to be better and to put my life back in order the way it used to be.
“I’m sure you’re not a bad person,” I tell him, but we both know I’m lying. I’m not sure of anything. I’m not even sure what kind of person I am.
“Tell me about your boyfriend,” he invites. “Or your not boyfriend.”
I want to eat my nasty bread slice, but it’s too heavy now. I watch Jack spin spaghetti around his fork and it hurts insid
e of me, in my bones even, but my mom said I had gotten fat and Derek broke up with me and the pasta is to blame.
“What about him?”
“What’s his name?” he asks.
Maybe he’d let me taste just the sauce.
I peel the soggy crust off of the bread, careful not to get any of the butter on it before I eat it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wanted to look normal, like I was readying myself to eat it, but now it’s a Day-Glo yellow square in the middle of a cracked plastic plate. That feels like a metaphor.
“Derek,” I reply. Jack’s watching me pretend to eat, but he says nothing.
“What kind of guy is Derek? Does he read Jane Austen, too? Does he hate the fall or like the security of trees?”
It’s really strange how things happen. In the same sudden spark that makes you fall in love, you find yourself out of it. What a quiet, rainy summer day created suddenly explodes in a question that digs all the way through me.
24.
“That’s stupid,” Derek said.
“Okay, we don’t have to. It was just an idea.”
It was his Spring Break and the snow had melted. He was supposed to come over as soon as he got home, but it was Monday and he’d been busy and I’d missed him. When he’d asked what I wanted to do, I thought about us and our beginnings and I’d suggested driving up to New Hampshire, to the campground where I fell in love with him, but he was right. It was stupid. The ground was still frozen and the air retained its chill even though the sun was blooming. It was a long ride to sit on icy soil, but after a few months, we still didn’t have anything that was ours – except that one afternoon.
“Gas is crazy expensive.”
“It’s fine,” I agreed. “You’re right.”
“And it’s cold as fuck outside.”
“I know. I agree. Like I said, it was just an idea.”
“Look, Lily, it’s an okay idea in theory and I appreciate the thought, but let’s be honest that it’s dumb. Some dirt and trees aren’t why I love you and we don’t need to make things complicated and inconvenient and stupid to prove a point.”
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