As much as I hate to cut things off with Mark, as much as I hate to not get to half the stuff on that list, I need to get out of this town.
Hi there,
It’s me, Elizabeth, and I’ve got exciting news. I’m going to college at UC Berkeley, starting at the end of August. So I was thinking of maybe changing my ticket and coming out a few weeks early, to get the lay of the land, and I was wondering if I could crash at your place or something. You said ages ago that I should visit and this way I don’t have to buy extra plane tickets or anything because I’m already coming and the fee to change is no biggie. Let me know what you think. Would be great to catch up before things get hectic with classes. Recent pic attached, since, you know, it’s been a while.
—Elizabeth
When I hit Send, I feel like something’s wrong with my head, like I’m having some kind of aneurysm. I can’t believe I did it. I have to tell Lauren. So I click on her e-mail and hit Reply and attach my photo before I forget.
How are you feeling? I am not good with puke. You should know that.
I am attaching a photo of myself with my favorite tree—yes, I have a favorite tree. BOTANY NERD ALERT!
So, call me young and restless, but I did it. Just now. I e-mailed my dad and asked him if I could come out early. Keep your fingers crossed for me because things here seem to be deteriorating rapidly. No need to get into details.
Meanwhile, as the world turns, Mark and I made a list of things to do together before we leave so I’m bummed that I may leave early and not get to do it all but I think it’s for the best. We decided we wouldn’t officially end things before we left—at least we said those words—but now that I’m sitting here and writing that it sounds ridiculous. Because if one of us DOES meet someone else at school, then we’re left with some horrible phone—or worse, e-mail! Text!—breakup and will probably hate each other forever. And anyway, I’ll have to end it when I tell him I’m leaving early, won’t I? Maybe come clean about the whole sordid affair on my way out of town? He’s going to Northwestern, which is pretty far. Where’s Keyon going? Will you guys try to still be together?
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.
(And yes, I am done with my soap opera references. Or almost done:)
Bold and beautiful,
EB
Yes: A bath mat. (Long story.)
No: My mother.
Maybe so: A broken heart.
I know it’s not the best e-mail, but I send it anyway because she hasn’t even properly responded to my last e-mail. Then I go back and reread the e-mail I sent my dad, which I decide is pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve ever written. That doesn’t make me want him to say yes any less, though. And while I’m hanging out in my sent box, I realize I’ve sent the e-mail I meant for Lauren to Zoe’s address.
Could I be more stupid? I dash off another quick e-mail.
Hi Zoe,
You don’t know me. Please disregard the e-mail I sent you in error.
Thanks.
No more need to explain, right? I feel ill. I forward the e-mail to Lauren’s actual address.
Dear Lauren,
I just sent the e-mail below to Zoe by accident. So sorry but I don’t think I said anything that will jam you up!
EB
Really, really ill.
Mark sends me a text that says Thinking about you. Missing you. I write back Me too and now all I want to do is cry.
SUNDAY, JULY 28
SAN FRANCISCO
On Sunday Zoe and I go to Target and do some shopping for her dorm room. All summer she’s seemed about a hundred times less nervous about going off to college than I am, and she’s actually leaving the state, like a real grown-up.
She’s puzzling over which of two sheet sets to get. “If I stick with a neutral color, it won’t clash with whatever my suitemates bring. On the other hand, neutral is boring so maybe I should go ahead and get the crazy pattern….”
Her setup is going to be totally different from mine and Ebb’s, with four or six—I don’t remember—sharing an apartmentlike space. She hasn’t expressed any worry about it or said if they’ve communicated, and I consider asking if she is worried and if they have communicated. But then I’d have to tell her about Ebb and I don’t want to get into it right now. I like keeping Ebb inside my computer and Zoe out here in the 3-D world.
“Get the crazy pattern,” I say. “Live your dream!”
“You’re such a dork.” But it makes her laugh and she puts the patterned set into her cart.
We stay up late, drowsily watching old Buffy episodes on Zoe’s iPad, both of us under piles of blankets on her queen bed, and as I drift off I think of the sleepovers we’ve had over the years, the hundreds of accumulated hours I’ve spent in this house. Sliding down her carpeted staircase in slick nylon sleeping bags, setting up stacks of pillows in the long hallway and hurdling them like Olympians, daring each other to go outside after dark in our pajamas.
I snuggle against Zoe and start to say, “Remember when…” but an e-mail notification pops up on the display and she does some fancy hand gesture to switch screens. I close my eyes, used to this. Zoe hasn’t had an uninterruptable moment since she got the iPad for graduation.
After a few seconds of quiet, she mutters, “Are you and Keyon Smith, like, a thing?”
Suddenly, I’m very awake. “What?” I sit up and pull the blanket to my chin. The only light in the room is the glow of the iPad, which I try to see, but she’s holding it almost against her chest now.
“I mean, some people said they thought they saw you guys kissing at Yasmin’s party but I know if that were true you would have told me.”
“Let me see that.”
“Right?”
I flop back down. “I was going to.”
She then proceeds to read me Ebb’s latest e-mail, which Ebb accidentally sent to Zoe’s account, of course, because I’m so technologically impaired that I didn’t bother to bring my laptop to Zoe’s, and so impatient that I couldn’t even wait to use hers to e-mail.
“Who is this chick?” Zoe asks when she’s done reading. I’m simultaneously processing the information in Ebb’s letter—that she probably will be coming out early because of course her dad will say yes—and trying to think how to explain all this to Zoe.
“My Berkeley roommate. We’ve been e-mailing a little.”
“A little? You sound like soul mates.” She waits for more but I don’t know what to say or where to begin. “So wait, though, first of all, Keyon. He’s so…”
Hot. Awesome. Popular. Nice. Smart. “I know.”
“And you! I’m trying to remember if he ever went out with a white girl before.”
She stares past my head, recalling Keyon’s social life at Galileo. “Asian, I think, and black, and then I guess for like five minutes there was that exchange student from Colombia….”
“You can stop,” I say, and think, He’s mine now, bitches! Did Joe invite you for dinner? Oh, no? Then shut up. The imaginary girls in my head look back at me like I’m crazy.
Zoe is still in shock. “I never would have imagined Keyon Smith and Lauren Cole. Ever. Are you guys trying to keep it a secret or something?”
“No, but—”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” She’s hurt. I hurt her.
“Zoe,” I say, rolling toward her on the bed. “I really like him. I guess I didn’t want to, like, put it out there.” I wave my fingers in the dark—out there is meant to indicate Twitter, Facebook, the universe. I didn’t want to make it real in that way. Because once it’s real it can become unreal. “Ebb’s just some girl in New Jersey. She doesn’t know him or anyone we know. It seemed easier.”
Zoe studies the screen again. “She looks pretty normal.”
“There’s a picture?” I sit back up.
“Well, yeah, you asked for one.” She finally hands the iPad over to me and I get to see the face that belongs to the name I’ve been telling all
my secrets to, the person who’s been telling me hers.
It’s weird. I wish I were alone while looking at this, so I could study it and match it up to the idea I’ve had of Ebb, but I’m self-conscious about looking too long with Zoe watching me. Ebb’s got her dad’s eyes, is all I can notice before I give Zoe her iPad back.
“Do you want me to delete this from my e-mail?” she asks.
“Can you forward it to me first?”
“Obvs. We could look her up on… you know, everything. I’m fast at this.”
“No,” I say, but can’t explain why. To Zoe or to myself.
Zoe, awesome Zoe, doesn’t question. She taps the screen a few times and then sets the thing down on the floor and the room goes totally dark. “Okay,” she whispers. “Tell me all about you and Keyon.”
Monday morning I do something I never do: I call the insurance company and leave a voice mail saying I can’t come in. I hate that place, to be honest. After turning off my phone, I get back in bed and we sleep for what seems to me like hours compared to my usual 6 AM Gertie-breath wake-up call. Then Zoe sets me up on her laptop. “I can’t believe you left yours at home, especially when you’re away for an indeterminate amount of time.”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Well, you’re a freak.”
I check my own e-mail to make sure I have Ebb’s message and picture. Yes, now I have them twice. And a message from Keyon dated yesterday, saying he knows it’s late notice, but can I make dinner on Monday? Tonight. I call my mom to find out what’s going on in the TB ward. Three out of five people still have a fever, she tells me, and says not to come home yet, not even to pick up more clothes.
So I’m borrowing some of Zoe’s, which sort of sag at the boobal area, where Zoe is abundantly blessed, and are tight in the butt, where most of my “development” happened at fourteen.
She’s lying on her bed and aiming her little digital video camera at me while I walk around the room getting ready to head to the sandwich shop. “How are you feeling in this transitional moment?” she asks.
“Between being here and going to work?”
“No, smart-ass. Between high school and college.”
“Who wants to know?” I experiment with one of her cool, crafty hairpins, but my fine hair slips right out.
“I’m doing a vlog series asking all my friends what it feels like to be finally growing up. Answer,” she commands.
I look into the mirror so that she’s filming me talking more or less to myself. “I’m moving across the Bay. Is that growing up? Or is it just leaving?”
“Ooh, deep. That’s good,” she says, before putting the camera down and wriggling back under the covers. She has no summer job or responsibilities and sort of lounges around like a princess until she decides what she wants to do with her day. It’s charming, in its way.
Other than her video camera in my face and the constant chirps and beeps and dings and whooshes coming from her various devices, it’s been so quiet here. Zoe’s parents are cool but busy and have more or less left us to ourselves. I actually wouldn’t mind a screaming toddler running through now and again.
“I’m going to be late tonight,” I say, pulling on Zoe’s 49ers sweatshirt. “Keyon’s dad invited me for dinner.” No big deal. Easy breezy.
It’s hard to interpret her silent stare. If she’s still hurt that I didn’t tell her about him, I don’t blame her. I come sit on the bed. “I’m sorry.”
“You are sorry. If you think you’re wearing that sweatshirt to dinner at Keyon Smith’s house, you are sad and sorry.” She throws back the covers and walks to the closet, studying its contents. “Here,” she says, shoving a midnight-blue flowy tee with elbow-length sleeves at me. “Change into this after work. This is your color.”
“Thank you, Z.”
She waves her hand like it’s no big deal. “Promise you’ll tell me everything when you get home.”
“If you promise me you’re not going to tell the Internet about this before I even figure out if it’s anything.”
She returns to her bed and leans back on her elbows. “The fact that you’re all protective of this alleged nonrelationship means it’s something already.”
Good point.
Keyon and I hang out late after work while Joe does the money stuff, then we drive together to Glen Park, where they live. Keyon sits in the backseat with me, and Joe jokes around about having left his chauffer’s cap at home. We all smell like mustard and pickles and I realize I didn’t change into the nicer shirt Zoe lent me. It’s quiet in the car; we’ve been talking all day at work so it’s not like it’s awkward. Lunch rush at the sandwich shop can tire you out.
When we get to their house, Joe excuses himself to change and Keyon’s mom—“Call me Sue”—gives me the tour while Keyon takes a shower. I’ve met her before, in the shop, but this is the first time we’ve really talked. “We try to keep Joe Junior’s room nice in case out-of-town family comes in,” she’s saying, swinging open a door off the hallway. “Of course normally he’s here with us on summer break but this year he had to go off to Europe to prove something so I’m borrowing one corner of his room for my craft table….”
I want to ask what Joe Junior had to prove and why he had to go to Europe to do it, but there aren’t what you’d call a lot of gaps in Sue’s commentary as we continue down the hall.
“… five years ago we went ahead and took a second mortgage so that we could redo and I finally got the master suite I always wanted when he took out the wood paneling, what an eyesore that was…”
A small, paranoid part of me wonders if she’s keeping up the constant chatter to avoid any awkward you’re just so white moments. Or that maybe she’s barreling through it so fast because she does it all the time—it’s her spiel, the one all of Keyon’s ladies get, and she’s had lots of practice. I don’t know where I get this idea he’s such a player. A guy having a bunch of girlfriends doesn’t mean he’s playing them, necessarily.
Another door in the hallway opens up and we both turn to see Keyon, from the back, walking away from us wearing nothing but a dark-blue towel around his waist. “Keyon James Smith,” Sue yells after him, “I didn’t buy you a robe so that you could go walking around the house half-naked in front of your guest!”
I stare at a frame full of family pictures before Keyon can turn around and see me taking in his muscular back and calves.
“Sorry, guest!” he shouts. It makes me smile.
“I’m good,” I say, now looking at the pictures for real. Keyon and Joe Junior were adorable kids. I’ve always thought black babies are the cutest, and I almost say that to Sue before realizing there’s no way to say it without being totally offensive or making Sue think I’m an idiot. Race. It’s so tricky, even though we’re all supposedly enlightened and color-blind. I don’t want it to be a Thing. But it kind of is a Thing, isn’t it?
When the tour is over, I go to the bathroom to change my shirt and wash as much of the deli smell off my hands as I can. It’s steamy and soapy and Keyon-y in there and I wish I could take a quick shower, too. There’s a bottle of lotion on the sink. I pump some out and sniff; flowery and not my style. But it’s better than eau de Grey Poupon so I rub a blob into my neck and arms hoping it will help.
Dinner is nice. Sue talks nonstop so there’s no chance to get uncomfortable, and she makes an awesome pot roast.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world,” she says. “You just spend five minutes in the morning putting it in your slow cooker and it always comes out perfect. Do you cook? Keyon can’t cook to save his life and I don’t know what he expects to happen when he gets out into the real world.”
“I can cook!” Keyon protests.
“I don’t count sandwiches.”
“I do,” Joe Senior says.
After dinner, Joe needs his car for something but makes Keyon ride the Muni with me all the way out to West Portal, which is walking distance from Zoe’s house. He walks me there,
too, in the dark, in the fog, and at some point he takes my hand and at some point after that his hand pulls me to him as he stops and leans me up against a random car.
He gets close. Very, very close. Then pulls his head back a second. “Sorry. You smell a little bit like my mom.”
The lotion. Oops. “I’m not, though,” I reassure him, laughing, and he kisses me like I’ve never been kissed before. I mean, really, he puts a lot into it. He applies himself to the task. It’s like he’s been saving it up for me since the party, maybe seeing a personal kissing trainer in preparation for the big event.
It’s that good.
Dear EB,
Writing from Zoe’s laptop, but my own account this time, obviously!
So, yeah. No big deal about the e-mail thing. I hadn’t aaaactually told her about Keyon yet so that sort of came up but I’m glad she knows now.
My tone in this e-mail is different than it has been. I can tell, and Ebb will be able to feel it, too. But I don’t feel so close to her right now. She’s not my best friend. Zoe is my best friend. She took me in after I ignored a bunch of her e-mails, she forgave me super-fast for not telling her about Keyon, and when I got home tonight and told her how it went she gave me some kissing tips for next time. Like breathing in Keyon’s ear. “Don’t, like, blow into it,” she said. “You don’t want to give him an ear infection. Just sort of… exhale. Warmly. It will be good, trust me.” She leaned over and showed me, and I jumped back and squealed, laughing. “Eww.”
I don’t want to worry about what to say that will make Ebb feel better, or write about whether or not I have hopes that Keyon and I will stay together. I only want to think about the next time I’m going to kiss him. But I feel kind of sorry for Ebb. I thought my life was complicated, but hers is no picnic. At least the people in my life behave like the adults they mostly are. At the same time, being sorry for a person isn’t the best basis for a friendship. It’s gone all out of balance somehow.
Roomies Page 12
