TWELVE MINUTES

by Kathryn Hewitt

  “Well, anyway, let’s pretend that I didn’t think of you first as a friend and second as my therapist, because that’s awkward…Harrison. Harrison is just a random dude whose name happened to fall after mine in the class roster. He’s always bored with class, he’s always being prevented from doing whatever it is he’d prefer to be doing, yet he seems like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It’s a funny contradiction, but it makes him seem less intimidating. Like whatever life throws at Harrison, he’s cool with it, and then he moves on…fast. I guess I admire that about him. And he doesn’t seem to care to find out every detail about me, which is refreshing.”

  “And Charlie does?” She wouldn’t let this go. I thought we were talking about Harrison. But it did make me think.

  “No, Charlie isn’t like that. He actually talks about himself much more than he seems to expect me to talk about myself. Or he surprises me by knowing stuff about me, things I must have mentioned without realizing. It makes me feel special that he remembers stuff that I must have told him, like what I say matters?” This was something I hadn’t really looked too closely at. I wasn’t one to really throw out personal details about myself, but I was in my head a lot, so I obviously said more than I realized. Which was actually a little scary, but also overly normal, so I was torn about how I felt about it.

  “We all give off more than we realize, Cass. It’s just how we are programmed to interact with others. What we wear, how we smell, the expressions on our faces in response to external stimuli. And just maybe, he likes you.” Rachel smiled, attempting to both head off a spiral of anxiety and to make me realize that what I’d just come to the understanding of wasn’t necessarily bad. “But, we also can’t forget to remain guarded at times. It is important to strike a balance between openness and discrimination. It is up to you to determine who is worthy of what.” I just exhaled through my nose at her last statement, trying not to say something rude.

  “So anyway, to get to my point, I had fun today hanging out with someone, I didn’t feel pressure to be someone that I’m not, and I didn’t feel like I had to constantly be on guard. I guess I just wanted to share that with you.” I hoped that I didn’t sound as pathetic as this dissection was making me feel. Because I objectively understood that what I’d just described was something that happened all the time for people, and which they completely took for granted.

  “And you think that Harrison enjoyed hanging out with you? You make it sound like he doesn’t really have a strong investment in spending time with you.” I was clearly very poor at describing people, because when Rachel recapped my statements, it always sounded differently than what I’d thought I’d expressed.

  “No, I don’t think he has a strong investment in spending time with me. But that’s ok…actually, it’s something I kind of appreciate. It’s less pressure. And maybe we’d never have become friends, or whatever you seem to think our superficial relationship is, had we not been forced together by our class assignment, but he doesn’t seem to mind talking to me. That sounds wrong…I mean, it’s hard to say that Harrison enjoys hanging out, because he’s sort of seemingly put out by school, but he doesn’t seem put out by being in my company. It’s like, we fell together, but he’s cool with that. I mean, we laugh a lot, so that’s a good thing right?” I was seriously starting to doubt my initial thoughts about Harrison and my ‘friendship.’

  “Of course. It’s a sign of camaraderie and enjoyment of each other’s company. I’m not trying to make you feel insecure, and I want you to know that I respect your analysis of the situation. You’re not clueless, Cass. You are perceptive and have many more tools at your disposal than you give yourself credit for. I think that if you think Harrison is your friend, then he must be.”

  “Phew. And I know I sound like I’m searching, possibly for something that doesn’t exist, but despite the context, I feel like we have fun joking around with each other, when Charlie isn’t there.” Oops. That was the part that I was leaving out, mostly because I knew that Rachel was going to jump on it.

  “And you don’t feel like Harrison wants to be your friend when Charlie is around?” Rachel had just thrown herself onto it, as I’d predicted.

  “No, it’s just that we work when he’s there. We kind of goof off when he’s not. Not that Charlie is like our boss or something, but he is sort of the authority of our group since he’s not really a student.”

  “Yes, and I must say that I question your Professor’s decision to place him in your “group,” but that’s not my job.” Rachel shook her head disapprovingly. But she was right, that wasn’t her domain. It must suck to constantly analyze other people’s decisions and have no ability to do anything about it, or their choices. “And since we’re here for my job, sorry Cass, I think we’re done. I think I’ve given you a lot to think about, you’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’d prefer you to leave here as happy as you felt when you arrived. Because you’re right, this is a good step for you. I’m glad you have a friend whom you feel comfortable around. I’m not here to pick and choose your relationships, I’m here to help you do that.”

  Feeling relieved to have Rachel’s version of a blessing, I exhaled and smiled at her.

  “Thanks. I’ll see you.” I collected my stuff and left Rachel to whatever it was that she did when she wasn’t with me, and headed home, still feeling proud of myself for adding someone to my short list of friends.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I wasn’t always a super goober. I had plenty of girlfriends, and had dated a few guys. I had Kenny, my boyfriend, and we’d been together for almost a year, so it wasn’t like I was some loser. I was actually painfully normal. I goofed off with my girlfriends, many of whom I’d known from high school and some of whom were developed in college, and on weekends I saw movies and ate pizza with my boyfriend.

  Kenny was nice, he had been on my dorm floor, and we’d met because we’d both gone to the common room to watch TV and then needed to battle it out over whose show took precedence. I had argued that the reality dating show that I had been waiting for since last week took priority, while Kenny had claimed that his next installment of a documentary about a wrongly accused man clearly was the obvious choice.

  We’d ended up not watching either, instead sitting and cracking jokes and getting to know each other. When he’d left for a minute and returned with a bag of popped popcorn, hot from the microwave, I knew that we’d been meant to meet. Our relationship was easy, as easy as navigating romance for Freshmen was, juggling classes and new experiences, and parties, together. But Kenny was sweet, and smart, and we fooled around our fair share, but I’d never had much of a steady boyfriend before, so although we were committed, we hadn’t reached the point of introducing sex to our connection. It would have happened, I was confident, but something else happened instead.

  Well, not something else…

  Horrifyingly, sex was introduced, just not with each other.

  Kenny tried to be there for me, tried to be supportive and understanding, but it was an impossibility. Kenny could never understand, was not at a place in his life where he had the capabilities of such, and I was no longer the same girl that he’d fallen in love with. I loved Kenny from Kenny and Cass, but since I didn’t feel like Cass anymore, things were just too difficult to reconcile. So when I broke up with him, he acted appropriately, but I knew that somewhere inside of him the strongest emotion that he was feeling was relief. I did not blame him at all. It was a relief to cut ties.

  And when my girlfriends dropped off of the map, one by one until I hadn’t heard from any of them in months, I again felt relief. I felt horribly lonely, but I had too long of a battle with recovery to be able to focus on others. I knew that I had been a main contributor to our estrangement, because people didn’t really choose to hang around people who actively ignored them, or who never made an effort to connect. Also, I had been confined to a hospital for a lot of months and couldn’t really move, so that’s not exactly the best company. And
don’t get me started on my personality change during the immediate time following my attack.

  But the real reason for my girls to find it easier to move on, to pretend like I didn’t need them, was the very cause of it all: my assault and its brutality. Something so horrifying, so ‘close to home,’ was too difficult for them to reconcile. If it could happen to Cass, what was to say it couldn’t happen to them? And it happened in broad daylight, in public; it wasn’t at all like all of the warnings that we’d grown up with. My experience made us all feel too vulnerable, too afraid, and it wasn’t possible to live like that. It wasn’t a feasible way of life, to look too closely at how a roll of the dice could change everything, how sometimes awful things happened and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

  I understood. It had happened to me, and if I could have turned my back on the horrifying reality, I probably would have. So, as sad as losing my friends was in the abstract, it wasn’t actually as hard to understand as I would have thought. And truthfully, it happened during a period of such turmoil and physical recovery, that to me, it was almost like it happened overnight. In reality it had been gradual, but to my perception of everything at that time, it was very black and white. My friends slipping away fit perfectly into the dichotomy of my new life: before and after. Those were the two categories that colored my entire existence.

  As I got further away from that time and the loss of my social support network, I gained perspective, missing what I no longer had. But that aspect wasn’t special in that regard, too much had been lost for me to place as much importance on it as one would have thought.

  But either way, I didn’t have any friends anymore, I was a newbie at socializing after my experience and all that it had changed for me, which explained why I had been so excited about just chilling with Harrison. It had been so long since I’d just hung out, just laughed and not thought too hard. So, despite his not knowing, I appreciated Harrison for that.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “So what’s with you and Charlie?” Harrison asked, like maybe in a far-off galaxy he was interested, but not for long.

  “Not sure what you mean,” I answered, stalling. Because this may or may not have been a question that I had been asking myself a few…million times already. And Rachel and Diane, and now Kara…I seemed to be getting asked that a lot.

  “You’re like the only thing he wants to talk about, Cassandra,” Harrison unhelpfully supplied.

  “What. That’s my name.”

  “Oh, I know. So Charlie tells me all the time. When I met you, you specifically told me to call you Cass. And you corrected the Professor on the first day. So what’s the deal? Is it like a beautiful people thing? You guys automatically gravitate toward each other, requiring someone in your own realm, to be worthy?” Harrison smirked.

  “I hate to break it to you, Harrison, but you’re not exactly a pile of dog shit, yourself.” I laughed at his expression, which he quickly schooled into one of cool acknowledgement.

  “True, Cass, true. But come on…” Harrison smirked. “There is fine, and there are out of my leagues. Trust me.” I just shook my head, not caring for the direction that this conversation was heading…straight into an oncoming train.

  Harrison had started arriving early to our meetings, something about his job getting out and it not being worth it to go home in between. I knew that this was true, because Harrison didn’t beat around the bush and I knew it wasn’t so that he could have quality time with me. He was clear enough about that. Which was fine. That would make things a little more complicated than I cared for. And it certainly wasn’t so he could spend extra time with Charlie, since I was learning more and more that he really didn’t like the guy.

  “He’s kind of a douche, don’t you think?” was what he’d actually said. I didn’t, I didn’t think, but to each their own.

  Charlie always acted like he didn’t notice that Harrison and I were already there when he arrived, and he didn’t comment on it other than to once say, “Ahh yes. My two favorite students, hard at work as usual.” I wasn’t sure how much of that assessment was statement of fact and how much was tongue in cheek, but since I wasn’t so great at deciphering those two things anymore, I just ignored it.

  “There’s not a ‘deal’ with Charlie and me. We went out, and maybe he wants to go out again, but it’s not like a thing.” That kind of generalization was usually satisfactory for Harrison. I didn’t say that I really liked Charlie from afar, but being his sole focus was stress inducing and I hadn’t fully decided if I wanted to take things further with him. I liked him in the abstract, but the reality was daunting. I saved those thoughts for myself and my comforter at night.

  “Seems like a thing. Or like he has a thing for you. Must suck to always get what you want and then you come along and suddenly, it’s not so easy,” Harrison remarked. I guess he had been an observer to most of Charlie’s and my interactions, so of course he’d have formed an opinion. But Harrison didn’t know the half of it; Harrison didn’t know the 1/128th of it, and neither did Charlie. So things weren’t always what they seemed.

  “Whatever, I’m undecided.” It felt weird telling Harrison this, since Charlie hadn’t even been privy to my thoughts yet, but Harrison was easy to talk to and completely uninvested.

  “Ok, Queen Elsa,” he teased.

  “You are the last person who I would expect to make a Frozen reference,” I said, and of course, Harrison took it in stride. I, of course, was embarrassed that I’d even picked up on the reference.

  “Yeah, I have a kid brother. My mom works like all the time so I have a lot of kid duty.” Interesting. That seemed like more responsibility than I thought that Harrison was capable of.

  “How do you squeeze him into your busy schedule?” I joked, since Harrison had already returned his attention back to his phone. I wondered how many different people he was always so busy communicating with. It seemed like a lot.

  “Not many can boast to be Harrison Zane,” he replied with a smirk, barely looking up at me from his phone. Harrison smirked a lot.

  “No, I don’t doubt that you are one of a kind, Harrison.” This was why I’d been so happy that I had made a friend. Things with Charlie were always so heavy, everything feeling like it needed triple analysis and forethought…and afterthought, lots of afterthought. With Harrison, I could kind of relax and just talk, since he set the bar pretty low for conversation and care. I felt like Harrison’s motto on life was, ‘It is what it is,’ and by then, he’d moved on. It felt good not to constantly feel like I was the center of attention in our conversations, because neither was Harrison, we were just two people chilling, and pretending like we had been working, once Charlie arrived.

  “Well folks, glad you’re both here already, we can dive right in.” Charlie had appeared and commandeered our chat sesh and it was fine; I was stressing about this project and Harrison and I were apparently incapable of accomplishing much, if left to our own devices. I’d commented that maybe we could get some work done since we were already together, once, but Harrison had laughed. Like, he'd literally laughed as if I’d cracked the most hilarious joke. That was the last time that I decided to be the taskmaster while Charlie wasn’t around.

  We got to work and I tried not to think about Charlie sitting so close to me, or how every so often he’d turn to me and say, “Cassandra? Thoughts?” I did my share of work, but I didn’t interrupt Charlie when he was giving us his advice or guidance. Harrison just spat out what he thought and didn’t seem to care if we didn’t think it was a good idea. He’d just shrug and move on. Charlie may not have been a student, but he was definitely the captain of this ship. It wasn’t like he was doing our project for us, but he definitely steered us in the direction that he knew we should be going in. I did notice that when Harrison chimed in, he directed his thoughts toward me, as if trying to make a point that Charlie’s opinion, while theoretically valuable, didn’t really matter since it was Harrison’s and my grades on the line. I ac
tually appreciated that.

  Wrapping things up finally, Charlie said, “I know I don’t need to remind you guys, but next week is our last to be able to get together. Our final chance to meet and finish things up, so hopefully you guys will have most of this done by then and we can just do some last minute tweaks.” I had been avoiding both the due date for our project, and what I feared was the expiration date on my friendship with Harrison. Maybe he’d be able to add me to the seemingly endless list of people that he interacted with…even just a few paltry texts. I acknowledged Charlie’s reminder with a nod, as Harrison blatantly ignored it while grabbing his stuff and getting up to leave.

  “Bye, Harrison. Cassandra, could you wait around a minute?” I swear that Harrison snorted as he was rushing off, but it could have been my imagination. I felt like I was being held after class for passing notes or something. Except that this was Charlie, I reminded myself, so why was I so nervous? Oh, riiiiiight. Yeah. I was always nervous around Charlie, he just brought that out in me. I briefly wished that Harrison was still here and then felt completely stupid for the thought. Harrison probably didn’t even remember that I existed when he was away from our study sessions, and here I was bragging about my friendship with him to my therapist. I was so lame.

  “Cassandra, I thought we had a nice time on our date,” Charlie stated, his manner indicating that it wasn’t a question so much as a mutually agreed upon statement. Because we had, as sick to my stomach as I’d felt the entire night, I’d still been happy to be out with him, happy that he’d picked me to spend his time with. It felt good to have someone interested in you, especially after perfecting the art of striving to be invisible. Hard as I’d tried, Charlie had seen me and as much as that made me uncomfortable, it also sort of made me feel good.