“I don’t want to end up like him,” he says.
“You won’t.”
“What makes you so sure?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I barely know you. I know that you are facing demons that I can’t even imagine outside of a bad movie. I know that you’re scared and that you aren’t really sure about letting me in, but I also know that you genuinely cared when it was late and I was lonely. You didn’t have to sit and have coffee with me that night. You didn’t have to walk in circles around campus and talk about fall. You certainly didn’t have to help me with my essay or invite me here, but you did. You’ve been my friend.”
“You know,” he says. “When I moved out here, I had to start high school all over again. So, that meant that not only was I the new kid, but I was also the killer’s kid. High school sucks and it’s bad enough for regular people. It’s unbearable for people like me. People shunned me and, worse, there were those who didn’t. They used to remind me every day of what I was. It took me forever to make friends. I had two for the rest of high school. Two friends. I couldn’t wait to get away, to go to college, to not be that kid anymore.”
“Has it helped?”
“College?” he asks. I nod. “Helped with what?”
“With escape.”
“Yes and no,” he admits. “On campus, I have school, the band, and even a few friends. Well, acquaintances. I still have to try not to get close to them, though, because I know what will happen if they find out. So, it’s escape, but I always need to be on guard.”
“I found out and I’m still here. I’m sure most people would give you a chance.”
“Percentages seem to dictate otherwise,” he says.
I feel sad for him, for what he’s been through, for the way he’s been treated. I know he doesn’t want my pity, but I can’t help it. It’s just so much to put on someone so young. “There will always be people like Dave and Alana,” I say.
“And you?”
“And me.”
“I worked so hard in high school,” he says. “Grades became everything, because if I did the work, I could get a scholarship and get out. Never underestimate the value of homework, I guess.”
I can’t help but laugh. Our worlds are vastly different, but in this way, we are exactly the same. “I still have to figure out Marianne and all her drama,” I say, since my paper is sitting on my laptop, incomplete. I have always loved the novel, but now I feel ironically connected to it more than ever. However, my professor isn’t going to care how relevant it is if I don’t get my shit together and write about it.
“We can head back soon. You can come over? To write the paper?”
“Yeah. How’d you get a single anyway?” I ask.
“The university doesn’t want the legal obligation of explaining to some kid’s parents that they paired him with a convict’s kid. I didn’t really want a roommate anyway and I requested a single. Turns out it works well for everyone.” Good thing you asked about that, I admonish myself.
“Does it get lonely?”
“Not having a roommate?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of Kristen. I feel like she was crucial in getting me through the homesickness and sadness that filled my days at the beginning of the semester. Although maybe Jack didn’t have anything to miss.
He shrugs. “Sometimes, but I’m good at lonely. It’s easier not to see the way people look at you.”
“They’re missing out.”
“Come on, Elinor. Let’s get you back on track. You don’t need this nonsense.”
I don’t argue with him and we head back to school, the conversation light – music, TV, classes – but I can’t help feeling like everything in my world is different because of him. Where he thinks something is wrong with him, that people believe the worst, I just see someone who has made me feel normal. I see a guy who makes me feel more like myself than I’ve ever felt with anyone.
26.
My parents didn’t really fight. Everyone else’s did, but mine got along. All the time. The only “discussions” they ever had involved me, because my dad felt my mom was too hard on me. But she wanted me to be better. She meant well and I needed it. I needed to be better. To be perfect.
When you’re young, you don’t think of your parents as people and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I understood what it was like to feel betrayed by someone you trusted. Like I said, they didn’t fight, but they did have passive aggressive conversations that I didn’t pick up on until I understood nuance. So even when I witnessed it in middle school, it didn’t register as an argument. It was just who they were.
It was the summer after freshman year. One of those stupid days that was too hot to do anything and no one was going anywhere. Except my dad, because he had to work. Since my mom was a guidance counselor, she had more time off in the summer. Everyone thought she was always off, but that wasn’t true. Still, she was home more, so Jon, my mom, and I were trying to clean because at least there was central air. Dad had said he might be late for a meeting or something and Jon was already complaining that he was hungry.
“I don’t want to wait until he gets home. Why can’t I just eat something now?” he asked my mother. She’d just come upstairs from the laundry room and was carrying a basket of clothes. It was a casual afternoon and there was nothing extraordinary about my mom doing laundry. When Jon asked about dinner, though, she lost it. She threw the laundry basket across the kitchen, socks and underwear freefalling around the appliances, and then she slammed the basement door.
“Do what you want. Who cares? You’ll do it anyway, won’t you?”
Jon didn’t know what he’d said, but he stopped asking about food and grabbed a granola bar before disappearing into his room. He muttered something about women being crazy as he went and my mom threw a plate after him, which shattered against the wall.
My mother never broke. She was perfect. She smiled and she said the right things and did the right things and everyone listened to her, but I was trapped behind the island in the kitchen, where I’d been filling a glass of water, and I had no idea what to do. I didn’t think she even saw me standing there when she collapsed onto the floor, crying. My brain was telling me to get out, but my heart broke watching her cry. I didn’t want anyone throwing a plate at me, but then again, I couldn’t walk away. I hated her for so many reasons, but I couldn’t watch her cry and not hurt.
“Are you okay?” I asked, which was stupid but there aren’t a lot of ways to address your crying mother.
“You need to work harder, Lily. You can’t let them down.”
“Who?”
She looked up at me and handed me something. It was a small locket and there was nothing inside of it. Silver that was scratched from running through the dryer and no chain. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. “Who am I letting down?” I repeated.
She didn’t answer. She looked at me and at the locket in my hand and then she stood up, cleaned the clothes and broken pieces of plate, and put everything away. For the next three hours, I followed her around and helped her clean the house because her emotions were scaring me, but I had no idea what to say or do about them. We ended up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I made in the darkened kitchen when it came time for dinner.
My father made it home a little after nine. Jon hadn’t come back down at all and I was still sitting with my mom at the table. I’d picked up our plates, so it was just us, the empty table, and the locket resting between us.
“What’s going on?” my dad asked, not making note of how dark the house was, and he opened the fridge. Usually my mom made him a plate when we ate and he peered in and then looked over the door at her. “Dinner?”
I loved my dad. He really wasn’t the kind of guy who thought women had to stay home and cook while men worked, even though the question was rude. I knew it was truly a question of surprise, because if there was one thing no one could beat my mother at, it was structu
re. Everything followed an order and nothing was ever out of place, so when there wasn’t a plate of food, the question was innocent even if it was dumb.
“How old is she?” my mom asked.
“Who?”
She picked up the locket and threw it at him. It hit the fridge and bounced off. He watched the slow arc from freezer door to floor, but he didn’t reply. Not at first. Then he closed the refrigerator and turned towards us.
“Lily, go to your room,” he said.
“She can stay. She should know.”
“This isn’t about her,” my father argued.
“Of course it is. She’s your daughter. Don’t you want her to know what it’s like? Don’t you want her to know it will never be good enough? That sooner or later someone will be better? That someone will replace her? How old is she?” she repeated. She was yelling, something she never did. Even when she was mad at me, it was still in a lilt.
“Maureen, it was a mistake. Two weeks. It lasted two weeks.”
“Where were you tonight then?”
“I told you. I was at work.”
“Why do you still have her locket?” she asked him.
He stood in the dark kitchen, a silhouette of a man I had grown up worshipping, a man who had taught me to play softball and who had helped me study and who was supposed to be the standard by which I judged all future men. I watched him shift back and forth uncomfortably and then he said, “It fell off and I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Fell off when?”
“Please don’t make me say it,” he said. “You know when.”
“Where were you?”
“It was in a motel. It was a sleazy motel. Does that make you feel better? That it was as awful as it should have been?” he asked.
“How old is she? Who is she? Where did you find her?”
“She’s an intern at work. But I promise… it’s over.”
“Answer my question,” she said. “How old is she?”
“She just finished her freshman year in college. Nineteen, I think.”
“You disgust me.”
“Maureen, it was stupid, I know. She was-”
“No. I never want to hear about it again. I’m going to bed.”
She got up from the table, her tears dried and her entire body free of emotion. She looked at me and spoke. “Lily, remember this. I want you to remember this always. You will never be good enough. Sooner or later, there is always a nineteen-year-old who is better. Anyone you trust will betray you because someone is always better.”
“Maureen,” my dad pleaded, but my mom pushed in her chair and went upstairs. I was left alone with him in the kitchen. I couldn’t see him; the shadows were too thick, but I was glad I couldn’t. It became easier to remember him that way as I got older, to remember all men that way. There was a distance between us because no matter how hard you tried, someone was always going to be better than you and loyalty didn’t exist. Even my father was a disappointment.
27.
Ten days before my birthday – and almost exactly two months since college started – I’m sitting in Jack’s room, reading, while he plays video games. To be fair, he’s playing for a class and he has to take notes and write a paper about the experience. Besides, I suppose reading is my entertainment, so neither of us can complain exactly about the workload.
“Do you have a highlighter? Mine’s dying,” I tell him.
“In the drawer. Top one,” he says without looking away from the seven-headed green eagle-cow monster he’s being incinerated by on the TV.
I stick my finger between the pages and reach into his dresser for a highlighter. Looking over, I try to find the highlighter, but the drawer is full – with handcuffs, a blindfold, and other things I’ve mostly only heard about in my travels. I’ve never seen them in person, that’s for sure. “Uh…”
Jack pauses the game and turns around. “Shit. I meant top drawer of the desk.”
“Okay,” I say and I close the drawer, not sure if we’re going to talk about these things and definitely not sure it’s my business. I get the highlighter out of the desk and open my book to start reading again. Jack can fill me in if he chooses.
“It’s a long story,” he says. “Well, I guess it’s not that long. But it’s a complicated story.”
“We’re not dating,” I remind him. “This is nothing like that. You’re my friend. I don’t need to know about what you do in your private time.”
“It’s not that, Lily. Please look at me.”
“Jack, it is seriously none of my business. It just took me aback.”
He sits beside me. “Look, I’ve said before that Alana’s story is hers to tell, and it is, but she’s had it bad, too. When we met, everyone was already saying terrible things about her.”
“Things like what?”
“She slept with teachers. There were naked pictures of her on the internet. She would suck your dick for ten bucks. But she wasn’t like that, okay? She wasn’t. She was the only person in that shit school who didn’t judge me and she was my best friend. When we started dating, she was confused. Things had happened in her life. She can tell you if she chooses. But we were both in need of someone. Of course, we were also both young. There were temptations and we were curious. It was something that grew between us naturally, but she was the only girl I’d ever been with and I was the only guy she trusted.”
“So she is your girlfriend?” I ask. It doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to make things weird between them.
“No. She was. But life isn’t that easy. There’s still… we aren’t good together. She needs someone stronger than me and I can’t stand who I am with her. It isn’t her fault. Please understand that. But some relationships are stronger when they have a foundation based on friendship. For us, though, the foundation is already weak for several reasons and we can’t be more than we are.”
“You still sleep with her, though, right?” I ask.
“I do. We do. For years, we’ve hung on to that part of our relationship. I love her, Lily. I just don’t love her in the right way. Physically, though, I’m an idiot.”
“I’ve only been with one guy. I don’t really know much about all that,” I admit, “but I kind of know what you mean. There’s a big difference between what happens on a physical level and then everything else.”
“Alana likes to… experiment. She needs something, I don’t know, something more. For a list of reasons that she would probably not want me sharing. But I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t normally expect that. I mean, God… I just don’t want you to think I’m an asshole.”
“I’m not a virgin, Jack. I don’t care that you like sex. You don’t need to protect me just because my experiences have been a lot less interesting in that area.”
I don’t want to say it, but with the drawer still slightly open and him this close, I’m tempted to ask him to show me. I have no interest in dating him. I don’t want to get back into a relationship. My birthday is still coming up and I’m supposed to call Derek or something, although I’ve kind of been letting that whole thing die, but I know exactly what Jack is talking about. All of the logic doesn’t stop the fact that he’s really close and he’s got nice eyes and his hands are soft and I wouldn’t mind seeing if it felt different with someone else. I just don’t want to damage this.
“Maybe you and Alana should meet. At least beyond that awkward moment,” he says. “I’ve told her about you.”
“You have? What did you tell her?”
“Nothing really. Just that we talked and I’ve been spending time with you. That we’re friends.”
He reaches over and closes the drawer. His arm brushes across my knees and I can’t deny the attraction, but I need more than that. I don’t want a boyfriend. I like being Jack’s friend. But when he leans back and his arm crosses a second time, I can’t stop from exhaling loudly.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
What’s wrong is that I was with the same guy –
the only guy I thought I was attracted to – for almost a year and he never made me feel the way you just did. What’s wrong is that the last thing I need is a relationship, but if you’re already having a physical “friendship” with Alana, I can’t help but think of suggesting it for us. What’s wrong is that I want to kiss you and I don’t want to want to kiss you. I want to have a friend and not feel like this with you, because it complicates things and I don’t need that.
“Nothing,” I reply. I desperately need to get out of here, to talk to Kristen, to call Abby, to find someone to tell me what to do. The problem is that Kristen’s with Lyle and Abby’s in Europe and we only talk over the internet. Even if she could Skype, I am certainly not going to discuss my fantasies online while she’s sitting in some internet café in a random European city. I’m already confused about how I feel; I really don’t need Jacques or Pierre or some other French-sounding guy to be privy to it.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. I didn’t realize how late it was. I should get going.”
He moves away from me and nods. I know he thinks I’m upset, that I think there’s something wrong with him, but the problem is that there’s something wrong with me.
“I want to meet Alana,” I say. “This weekend? Let’s do something this weekend, okay? I just need to finish this chapter and I’m sort of tired and I’ll probably just finish it in bed and go to sleep.”
Jack looks wary, but he agrees.
I can’t get out of there fast enough and I’m glad Kristen isn’t home when I get in, because I need to lie in the darkness and make sense of what I feel throughout my body. I’ve never enjoyed sex, but I enjoyed making Derek happy. Something about Jack, though, is changing everything.
28.
When you imagine the world working out the way you hope, you set up these unrealistic expectations for yourself, inevitably leading to disappointment. Throughout high school, I had watched Abby date and I’d heard stories about Derek and other kids in my classes and I’d never even kissed someone. During freshman year, Jake Johnson asked me to the winter semiformal and I went, but after one slow dance, he got bored with me and I ended up spending the night reading a book on the bleachers.
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