An Off Year (22 page)

The Sears Tower was not that fun, actually. After paying a ridiculous price for parking, we were herded into a room-size elevator with a bunch of tourists and whisked up to the 103rd floor. But instead of being inspired by the magnificent views, all I could see was cloud, and some smokestacks in Indiana.

“This is kind of boring,” I said.

“I don't feel too good,” said Mike, backing away from the railing.

“I just don't think there's that much to see,” I said. “I think this is why they only spent a few minutes here in the movie.”

“Do you mind if I go downstairs?” said Mike.

“Are you afraid of heights?” I asked.

“Apparently I am,” he said.

“Yeah, let's go,” I said. “Wow, I didn't know that about you—and heights.”

“Now you know,” he said.

“I feel so close to you, Mike,” I said, squeezing him around the middle.

“I'm going to puke,” he said.

“Leaving! Leaving now.”

 

 

The Art Institute went a bit better, although we realized that it was the first time that either of us had gone without a class or our parents. I had just found out the week before that I had passed my art history class (as opposed to failing, so I felt like quite the winner) and was ready to show off my skills.

“Where do we start?” Mike asked, our voices echoing inside the big marble hall. “I used to like the medieval weapons when I was little, but I don't think I need to see that.”

“Ooh, wait!” I said. “I know something.” I pulled him upstairs past a big bronze, muscular nude statue (“That's what I look like naked,” I said as we passed it) to the huge
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
, the painting of a bunch of French people strolling around on a sunny day in a park in the middle of the Seine. Then I told him everything I'd learned about it in art history. Not very eloquently, though.

“Um, so this is by Georges Seurat, and it's influenced by the Impressionists, but it's actually Post-Impressionist. And if you look closely, you can see it's actually made up of little dots. That's called pointillism. A lot of people think it's just a picture of a really nice day, but other people think it's a representation of social tensions between city dwellers of different social classes, who, like, gather in the same public space but don't, you know, communicate.”

“Very impressive,” said Mike. “Did you read that off the card on the wall?”

“What? No! I learned it in class.”

“Well,” Mike said, leaning forward, “it pretty much says all that stuff right here next to the painting.”

“What the hell!” I said, and then lowered my voice. “I don't get what the point is of learning this stuff in class if you can't impress people with it and make them feel bad for not knowing it. I think they should remove the thingies from the walls.”

“You know what else?” Mike said. “This is the painting they were looking at in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
.”

“Is it?” I said. “I guess you're right. No wonder it looks so familiar.”

After the Art Institute, we headed back down Lake Shore Drive, south toward Sox Park. “I'm excited for a hot dog. And fireworks,” I said.

“And baseball,” Mike said.

“Yeah, that, too,” I said. “I hope it doesn't rain.”

Of course, the skies opened the second that we took our seats, which were just barely beneath the small, flat roof. Rain poured down two inches past my knees. I stared at the fat guys on the field running to unroll the blue tarps.

“It might let up,” said Mike.

“I'm getting a hot dog,” I said.

After we devoured two delicious, smoked grilled-onion-covered kosher hot dogs apiece, it rained harder.

“I'm not sure I feel like sticking this out,” I said. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Mike said. “Not at all.”

I had brought a tiny travel umbrella with me, so we were only half soaked when we got back to the car.

“I'm afraid this day has been hit and miss, funwise,” I said. “But thanks for coming with me.”

“Hey, I thought it was pretty fun,” said Mike. “We saw a lot of things.” His cell phone rang.

“Hey, girl,” he said as he answered it. “What's up?” I tried not to eavesdrop as I pulled down the visor to look in the mirror. I took the rubber band out of my hair so that it could dry in a normal fashion without getting too frizzy.

“You should wear your hair down more, you know that?” asked Mike, once he had said good-bye.

“Aw,” I said, and hoped I wasn't blushing.

“It looks nice. Anyway. I think I know where we can have a little more fun tonight.”

“Where?”

“A party.”

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“Meg's house.”

“Ugh. No,” I said.

“Come on.”

“Mike, no. Seriously. It's okay. I'll drop you off, and you can go.”

“It's across the street from your goddamned house.”

“So?”

“What else do you have going on?”

“A lot, thank you very much,” I said.

“Cecily,” he said. “It's going to be fun. I wouldn't take you there if it wasn't going to be fun. When was the last time you saw anyone from school?”

“School.”

“You need to come.”

“You need to shut up.”

“Don't be such a fucking baby,” Mike said. “Maybe I'm not the best person to dispense advice on how to live your life, but this seems like the kind of thing that would be good for you to do. And I don't want to be friends with a shut-in anyway.”

I was quiet. I wasn't sure what the problem was myself. I had proven that I could hang out with college kids. I had a friend to take me to the party. It wasn't like I was afraid of there being any kind of fight with the people there. But I just wanted to go home and watch TV. And not see Meg.

Kate and I met in high school, but Meg had been my friend since grade school. Until about the end of junior year in high school, when suddenly she became this totally fake bitch. Also she made out with Mike one night and didn't tell me about it for four months.

I used to hang out with Meg and Mike separately until junior year, when the three of us were in a study group together in history. I didn't really notice, maybe, how much fun we were having, working and taking breaks to look at the yearbook and make fun of people. But Meg did. We began hanging out more together, the three of us, going to movies and a few concerts at the Metro, this noisy dark club in Chicago that was relatively close and located in a busy-enough neighborhood that Dad thought was safe if we had a male chaperone. One night Meg called up Mike and they ended up hanging out at his house. They listened to music. They kissed.

“I just thought you should know,” she had eventually told me. Our friendship was already strained at that point. We seemed to be pissing each other off more—I thought she was acting irritable and bitchy; she claimed I was immature and rude. She had asked to have lunch together that day, which I thought was kind of weird since we hadn't eaten together for a few weeks. We were sitting on a park bench downtown eating chicken wings, trying not to get too messy.

“I don't know if I still like him,” Meg said. “But nothing else has been going on. I just—”

“Thought I should know, thanks,” I said, cutting her off. “Anyway, I gotta get back to class.” I tossed my bag of bones in the trash and walked back to school, leaving Meg with her car. I never brought it up with Mike, he never brought it up with me, and it was all much easier, since he didn't seem to be hanging out with Meg anymore after that anyway.

Meg and I never had, like, a huge door-slamming, face-slapping, all-out fight. But after she told me that she made out with Mike, I think I talked to her about two more times, ever. It had been a little awkward avoiding someone who lived so close to me, but it's easier when she's trying to avoid you, too. I don't think Meg wanted to have to explain or apologize, which was fine because I didn't want to hear it.

“What do you think everybody thinks of me?” I asked suddenly, as we got closer to my house.

“Honestly? Nothing. I'm sure they'll be happy to hear what you've been up to.”

“What's everyone going to be talking about?”

“Themselves. Each other. You. All about you, Cecily, everyone's going to be talking and laughing and pointing at you.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Seriously, based on the other parties I've been to this year, you mostly have your people who are just happy to see each other and catch up. There are a few people who are going to try to act like they're all cool now, like maybe they think that they're more impressive because they drink or lost weight or lost their virginity. And then a lot of other people just seem cooler than before. Less high school bullshit.”

“Should I change my clothes at least?” I was wearing a denim skirt and a black tank top. I had wanted to be comfortable on our fun day but not look too much like I was a complete tourist. So the black socks and sandals and short-shorts and the visor and the camera on a strap and the CHICAGO: MY KIND OF TOWN! T-shirt were out.

“No,” Mike said. “You're fine. If you're going to be like this, I'm going to ditch you.”

“Don't you dare,” I said.

We drove up to my house and pulled into the driveway. I ran to the back door and yelled up to Dad's office, “Hi, Dad! I'm home! I'm going with Mike to a party at Meg's house!” Superhero tried to poke his head out the door, and I had to push him back inside.

“What?” Dad yelled, but I closed the door and ran back to meet Mike by the garage.

“Let's go.”

“Well, you're suddenly all business,” Mike said.

“I'm so nervous I could poop,” I said.

“Why?”

“I just feel weird,” I said. “But I'll deal with it. You're right. I shouldn't be such a baby.”

“You'll be fine,” Mike said. “People will either be happy to see you or not recognize you.”

“That's reassuring,” I said. “Besides . . .” But before I could even finish my thought (not that I really had one), we were already across the street at Meg's house, a modern white stucco rectangle broken up by a smaller rectangle of huge wooden doors. The rain had finally let up, leaving a fresh smell in the air, but the humidity remained. My back felt sweaty. I wasn't sure what to feel more nervous about: the party itself or seeing Meg. Fortunately I didn't have much time to think about it, as Mike was pounding on the door before I even had a chance to peel the shirt away from my back.

“Hey, Cecily,” said Meg, looking me in the eye as she opened the door. She waved at Mike as we walked into the front hall.

“Hey,” I said back. We didn't hug or anything, but the second we said hi to each other, I realized I didn't have a problem with Meg anymore. I had no idea what she had been up to. I didn't even know what school she went to.

“What have you been up to? What school are you at?” I asked. “You look good.” And she did. She looked a little slimmer than I remembered in high school, and she had cut her hair into a long sleek bob and straightened it, too. She looked like her own cool older sister. She had a long, upturned nose, and she used to wear her hair in big blond corkscrew curls, very sproingable (although she hated it when people—other than some guys—touched her hair), but now she looked prettier, more sophisticated.

“You know, same old school stuff I'm sure you're dealing with,” said Meg, which either was a mean joke or meant she really didn't know what I was up to. “I'm at Barnard. What have you been up to?”

“Not much,” I said. I wasn't technically lying, but I figured if we were going to bond, it would happen at a later moment. Realizing that I hadn't really spoken to her since junior year of high school made me realize that I couldn't really be mad at her, because I didn't really know her anymore. I think I felt ready to talk about my year, but I didn't want to mention it casually. It felt good when Mike listened and gave me advice, not so much when Kate offered uselessly that everything would be fine.

“Well, come in, enjoy yourself. There's a keg in the kitchen if you want,” said Meg. I looked behind her and saw a swarm of kids, some I knew, some I didn't, gathered around something, so many of them you couldn't even see what it was. It reminded me of those pictures of piglets fighting for room when they're feeding from their mother.

Mike and I began to push through the crowd in the kitchen, because even though we weren't hitting the keg, you still need some sort of beverage to hold onto at a party. I felt like I was having some sort of flashback as we moved past a bunch of people, a mix of people whose names I knew, whose faces I recognized but didn't know, and whom I couldn't tell if I knew or not. Then somebody shrieked my name.

“It's so good to see you!” Kate said, lurching through a few people and hugging me. She was wearing some white eye shadow, and it looked pretty flashy. Still the good hugger at least.

“I know!” I said. “I'm glad I came.” And I was, until a few more kids trickled in behind us and Kate widened her eyes in joy and opened her mouth huge, showing all her teeth.

“It's you!” she said, screaming and throwing up her arms in the direction of someone behind me. I didn't even bother to look to see who it was. I let myself be shuffled more into the house to make room for the people behind me.

Meg's house looked the same. Her mom had married Rudy, a fellow who was big at the Board of Trade. They'd been married since Meg was about eight. Rudy wasn't a bad guy—he just had sort of extravagant taste. The front hallway was all mirrors, and the floor was tiled with huge slabs of marble. It was nice and twinkly at night, though. Meg and I used to like tap-dancing on that floor when we were little.