“Elinor.”
I kiss him in reply, my hands holding his at our sides. “I don’t think so. Not anymore,” I say when we move apart.
“Everyone wants to head out, to get something to eat. Do you want to come?” he asks.
“I do, but… did you bring your own car?”
“Yeah, do you want to ride with me?”
We make arrangements for Alana to take Abby, Kristen, and Lyle, and the four of them follow the band to the local diner. I tell Abby that we might be a little late and she just tells me to take my time.
“You ready?” Jack asks once the van is loaded with their equipment and everyone heads out. It’s starting to snow, but not enough to stick on the roads. It’s the perfect snow – light enough to make the world magical without interfering.
We drive for a while, holding hands but not talking. There is heaviness in telling him, even though I know he feels the same way. But Abby’s right. Jack looks at me in a way I always wanted to be looked at – by my mom, Derek, people at school. He looks at me like I’m actually perfect and now that I’ve accepted it’s an impossible standard, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint him.
“Let’s stop here,” I suggest. It’s a small playground and it looks like no one has been here in years. We walk to the swings after parking the car and Jack brushes off a clump of leaves so I can sit, before joining me on the other one. He digs the toes of his boots into the light layer of snow and dirt beneath him, drawing lines and patterns.
“I’m really glad you came tonight,” he says. “You look beautiful.”
“I need to tell you, about everything.”
“Okay,” he nods.
“It started with my mom. It was never enough, Jack. If I failed a test, I was a failure for life. I had a dog and…” I can’t talk about Lucy without crying. The tears come before the words. I tell him the whole story, the rules, how easy it was in the spring and summer, but then the math class. I describe the running and how ashamed she was for peeing. “My mom sent her back because I screwed up, but Lucy looked at me like it was her fault. She thought it was because she peed, because she’d let me down. Jack, she was perfect, and I messed up. What if no one came for her? What if they needed to make room in the shelter and she was the unlucky one? All because I was too stupid not to make a mistake. What if…?” I can’t finish. I hate it and it hurts to remember her.
He holds my hand and looks up at me. “That’s horrible, but it’s bullshit. You don’t really still think it’s your fault, do you?”
“Not exactly, but what if she died because of me?”
“She didn’t.”
“How do you know she didn’t die?”
“I don’t,” he admits. “But I know it wasn’t your fault. You can’t be perfect. That’s a ridiculous standard. I’m sorry your mom can’t see that, but no one can live up to that.”
“I have to. She might have died because of me.”
“God, Lily,” he says, pulling my swing towards him and trying to hold me. It’s almost impossible at this angle, but he tries anyway. “You can’t never make a mistake. That’s impossible.”
“That’s just it, though. I was supposed to – and I wasn’t good enough.”
“Good enough? Seriously? Let me tell you what you are, okay? You’re a girl who cares about other people, even when you have your own shit to deal with. You met me, and you walked through my life, and never once did you comment on it or judge me or tell me it was too much. You trusted me to be your friend for no reason but because we had shitty coffee one night. Someone that open doesn’t let people down, unless the people let down are incapable of being satisfied.”
“It wasn’t just her, though,” I tell him. “For all of high school, I thought my life would be perfect if only Derek noticed me. If only he saw me as enough. He had been with most of the girls in school, had dated the most popular and most attractive and smartest and everything else, but he didn’t even see me. I was right there in front of him, almost daily, and he never saw me. If I was invisible, if I couldn’t live up to those girls, I was obviously nothing.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” he says. “Not because I agree, but because it makes me angry. I want you to tell me, but you need to realize I hate the guy.”
“I know. And you should. I should, and I do in a lot of ways, but it’s hard sometimes. The thing is when he finally paid attention, when he told me I was sexy and he wanted me, I was willing to do anything. And I did. I gave up everything and he never appreciated it. It was just something to do, someone to be with, but I wasn’t any different than anyone else. Not for him.
‘We had broken up when you and I became friends. But I still needed his approval, my mom’s approval. But when he came to the dorm that night, when you fought, he made me feel worthless. In a way I didn’t know how to accept.”
Jack stands up and takes my hand, bringing me towards him. Brushing a hand across my cheek, he looks directly into my eyes. “Lily… I’m not a good guy. I’m not really anything special. I’m sure your mom wouldn’t approve.”
“She wouldn’t, but it’s not that. I’m not trying to make a point,” I argue.
“I know. I believe you. The thing is, if I ever make you feel worthless, which I don’t intend to do, but if I do… I want you to tell me. I never want you to be silent.”
“The night at the lake, you started to say something and I told you I wasn’t ready.”
“I love you, Lily. I am in love with you in a way I don’t think I deserve to feel. But I do love you. I tried to tell you the night we… the night after Thanksgiving.”
“I know. I told you I did, too, but I still couldn’t say it. But I do, Jack. I do love you.”
“I missed you a lot when you didn’t want to see me,” he says.
“It wasn’t right. I didn’t want to tell you, to be with you, unless I was sure. I didn’t want this to be a replacement for something else that was broken. I wanted this to be my choice.”
“And you’re ready now? You’re sure?” he asks.
I kiss him, the cold of the night an illusion. It’s like living in a snow globe, where it’s pretty and comfortable without any of the mess or damage of winter. He holds me in the playground, the moon peering through dusky grey swathes of cloud.
“I thought he was my future,” I explain. “I thought there was nothing else, and that night, it hurt to see how blind I had been. It was like staring into an endless eternity and knowing that it was all hopeless. The world looked bleak and I didn’t want to bring that into us. When you told me about your life, I felt like I should want to put you back together, to make it right, but when my own life shattered like that, I realized something. No one needs to put anything together. We’re fine just like this. I want this… exactly as we are.”
“Why? With all of the things that make me what I am? Why wouldn’t you want to fix it?”
“Because those are the things that make you the guy I fell in love with.”
“You really love me?” he asks.
“I do. I have for a while now. I didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to feel it, because I wasn’t ready for it. I wanted to move on, to be myself separate from someone else. It was bad timing, but it didn’t make it less true. I guess I thought, though, that if I moved on, if I didn’t miss you, if I didn’t yearn to see you every time I took a corner, then I would know.”
I take his hand, heading back to the car. “Jack, it was your eyes I saw when I fell asleep at night,” I say. “When I walked to the elevator every day before class and every afternoon after class, I waited for you to come through the doors, and every time you didn’t, I ached for you. I looked for you every night when I ate dinner. Every voice I heard sounded like yours. I never felt like that with Derek, when I thought it was everything I had ever wanted, but I felt like it with you and I couldn’t stop it. I don’t know why. Something about you, something in you just makes sense for me.”
“I know better than anyone what it feel
s like to be missing something. I don’t want to rush you. I can wait. If you aren’t ready.”
“I’m still trying to find myself and figure myself out. It’s not going to happen overnight and it’ll be a long road. But I wouldn’t mind the company,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s the only thing I’m sure about,” I tell him.
40.
“I expect you to work things out with Derek over break. This is getting ridiculous.”
Three days. There are three days left of exams and then it’s Christmas and break and she calls to tell me this. I listen to the message several times, waiting for it to change, waiting for her to say she’s kidding. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even mention Christmas or our plans or what I should get my dad. Just that I need to resolve things with a guy who sees me as nothing but trash.
Jack and I haven’t talked about the holidays, about options. I can’t imagine bringing him into my family, into the parade of questions, the passive aggressive comments that make you feel like you’ll never be more than a mistake. But the alternatives are not seeing him at all or telling my mother I’m spending the holidays with him elsewhere. And neither of those feels likely.
“Who was that?” he asks. I’ve been playing the message over and over again and getting angrier. The doodles in my notebook have gone from flowers to big black scratches of fury.
“My mom.”
“And?”
I don’t want to tell him, because it will hurt him, but I don’t want to lie, either. I just hand him the phone and let him listen to it.
“Well, then,” he says.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go home. Maybe I should apply to stay over break.” We have students from other states or out of the country who live in one of the dorms for the few weeks. It’s a bit of a process and I’d have to dig up the money, but it feels ideal right now.
“You have to go home. You won’t feel okay if you don’t.”
“I’d rather spend the holidays with you.”
He takes a carton of egg nog out of his fridge and pours some into a plastic cup. “Here. The holidays in my house. With less rum.”
“That’s depressing.”
“That’s the holidays,” he replies.
“I’m spending Christmas with you.” I make the decision here, but this is what I want. I don’t want to sit around in my house and listen to my parents tear each apart, to listen to my mother praise Jon for the same things she condemns me for doing. I don’t want Jack to spend Christmas alone or at his mother’s grave by himself.
“That’s a big step,” he says.
“I don’t want to spend it without you. I’m still going to have to deal with her eventually, so why ruin the holidays, too?”
“Will he be around? During break?”
“Derek?”
“Yeah,” he confirms. “Is he going to show up?”
“Probably. He’s always around. His parents are friendly with mine and he’s spent so much time at my house over the years that he’s almost like family. To them.”
Jack puts the egg nog back in the fridge, his palm pushed hard against the door, and I watch his chest rising with the slow breaths he takes, the ones he uses to tell himself not to be angry.
“I know you want to hurt him,” I say. “I know you don’t want me to think that of you, but in this case, I want him hurt. I just don’t want to drag you into a mess where you don’t belong.”
“I can’t stand the thought of it, the idea of him trying it again.”
“You trust me, right?”
He turns around. “Of course I trust you. Lily, I’m not worried about you seeing him and realizing you still have feelings for him. I just can’t bear to think about him trying again. I know you don’t want to say anything and I respect that and I won’t tell you what to do. I just hate that he’s walking around and he doesn’t even know it’s not okay.”
“He won’t. He won’t touch me,” I promise Jack.
“What about your mom?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know what to do about her.”
“If you need to stay longer… if you can’t deal with it…”
“I know, but I’m tired of running away from it. You’re right. I need to go home. I won’t be okay with it otherwise. It’ll just feel like hiding.”
“It’s just an option, okay?”
I drink my egg nog and hold out the cup, the milky white plastic coated in the creamy liquid. Reaching out, I draw along the lines with my pen, branching out until the black lines become a flower and then the flower becomes a garden. All on the cup and all connected.
“We have three days,” I tell him. “Three days where they don’t exist. I don’t want to talk about them now. They’ve owned too much of my life.”
“What do you want to do then?”
I pick up his game controller and turn on the system, sitting on the floor and leaning against his bed. “Teach me how to not suck at this.”
He sits down beside me and reaches over to turn on the TV, before settling back in and putting his arm around me. “Lily, I have terrible news for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You are simply unfixable when it comes to this.”
“You told me I could do anything I wanted to.” I mock pout.
“Okay, well, I lied. Anything but this. You are seriously, by far, the worst gamer I’ve ever seen.”
“Movie then?” I ask.
We stay on the floor, watching a movie we’ve both seen several times just because it’s on and we’re too lazy to look for something else. It’s distraction, but I’m happy in Jack’s room, just sitting on the floor, sipping his egg nog and eating candy canes he manages to produce from nowhere. Not once does he kiss me or touch me beyond letting me lean against his arm, but I don’t doubt that he would if I wanted it. It’s a relief to be with someone who doesn’t demand a thing.
****
On the last night of exams, and the day before we all have to go home, Lyle decides to throw another party. His “party” is him and Kristen and me and Jack, plus Kendra and Don and some other kids from our hall I’ve seen in passing. Paul’s nowhere to be found; several people have already left for the break since their exams ended a few days earlier so I figure he’s one of them.
“I didn’t want to do pizza,” Lyle says when we get there, revealing boxes of takeout chicken and sides from the diner. “But I don’t think I planned this very well.”
I’m trying to be better about eating, but there’s too much food and the whole room is stiflingly warm and smells like chicken. “Thanks, but I’m okay for food.”
“Lily, please. Eat some corn or something. I’m an idiot.” He looks heartbroken that his plan was poorly executed and Kendra is coming in behind us with her roommate. I take a plate from Lyle and scoop up some corn before sitting on one of the plastic bins he flipped over for chairs. Jack sits beside me, his plate full of chicken and potatoes and some kind of weird beet thing.
“What is that?” I ask.
“I have no idea.”
“Excellent. But you’re gonna eat it still, of course.”
“Of course.” He takes a bite of it and swallows.
“Verdict?”
“It tastes a little like feet.” I say nothing when he eats the rest of it.
“Everybody eat up,” Lyle says. “I think I got too much.”
“You got all of it. There are ten of us. Incidentally, that’s probably a fire hazard or something,” Don adds.
“We’re watching Rudolph,” Kristen announces and she leans over to turn on the TV and his Xbox, so she can stream the movie. It starts, too loud for the room, which is already full of noise, but with ten people talking, too quiet for anyone to actually hear it. The room’s an endless buzz of voices and eating and Hermey dealing with his life issues. I think of the uncomfortable quiet that’s waiting for me at my house, the silence between the comments my parents make to eac
h other, the unspoken judgments my mother thinks loud enough for us to know they’re there. I want to curl up in this room and bring this with me, to wrap myself in the living that exists here before I’m stuck in the vastness of failure again.
“Kristen, toss me a soda,” I yell.
“Watch out,” she says and she throws it over a couple people’s heads. I still don’t know their names. They’re just people and college is full of people. I remember the first night, how lonely I felt in the cafeteria, but I know that tomorrow I’m going to crave this.
“What are you guys doing for New Year’s?” one of the random people asks. It’s not directed at anyone in particular.
“My parents have a big party every year,” Kendra says, “and I’m looking forward to spending time with my sisters. Two are away at different schools and one’s married, so it’s one of the few times when we’re all together.”
“We’re leaving for Florida tomorrow as soon as I get home,” Lyle says. “We always spend Christmas and New Year’s down there with my grandparents.”
People go through their plans – parties, work, quiet nights in with friends or family – and I listen, trying to imagine other people’s lives. It’s like when you’re driving late at night, and there are only a few houses with lights on. You can’t help but wonder about the people inside. Are they having trouble sleeping? Maybe they’re night owls? Maybe they just got home from work? It always feels like when you try, though, you find yourself inserting your own story into their lives. It’s hard to truly see things as someone else.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Kristen says, pulling up her own bin. Rudolph is still doing his reindeer thing, but no one is paying attention anymore. Someone put on Christmas carols, too, so it’s just noise.
“I’m just going to miss this.” She looks over at Jack, who’s been drawn in to the struggles of the Island of Misfit Toys apparently. I follow Kristen’s eyes and then turn back to her. “Well, yeah, of course, but not just him, not just us. I’m going to miss all of it. I feel normal here.”
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