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Authors: Samantha Strokes

Curved (9 page)

BOOK: Curved
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Walking across campus, I caught up with Lindsay, mainly because I had to ask her some questions about our homework from the day before. Her eyes were watery, red in the center. She snapped her neck up at me as if she were fighting in combat and fending off a much larger stranger.

 

“What?” Lindsay said.

 

“Did you—”

 

“Of course not.”

 

I casted my eyes off to the side. She was being bitchier than normal.

 

“Anything going on with you?” I said. Even if she was a nasty individual, I tried to treat everyone with kindness and openness.

 

“No,” she said. “Homework. Lots of it. Clubs. I’m vice president of the speed dating association now.”

 

I cupped my hands over my mouth to stop from laughing. Her?

 

“Yeah, you surprised or something?”

 

“No, no,” I said. “It’s just… I never thought.”

 

“How’s sleeping with the boss?”

 

I glanced at her, nervously. Did she know? Did other people know? Had rumors erupted around town, spread throughout all of Manhattan?

 

“I’m not… Sleeping with him,” I whispered. Some passersby looked my way—did they hear what I said? “Anyway, I’m not that close with him.”

 

“It must be nice at the top,” she said. “No problems.”

 

“It’s still a lot of work,” I said.

 

“Sure,” Lindsay said. We walked into the auditorium of macroeconomics, a PowerPoint presentation set up at the front. We grabbed some seats on the right side wing, my phone blowing up with texts from Zena and Ricarda, as well as some of the other girls.

 

Even when they wrote to me they were passive-aggressive, sending pictures of them and incredibly hot jocks from their little party.

 

I turned my phone off because the professor was walking in. Just then, I noticed Lindsay’s eyes growing watery again, and she stood up, bolting for the back room.

 

Everyone craned their necks, as if we were on the road looking at a crash and passing by.

 

Before the professor could even greet us, I stood, rounding the side of the auditorium, my purse at hand.

 

Lindsay made a beeline for the bathroom. Did she have… Diarrhea or something? No. This had to be much more stark—she was crying.

 

“Lindsay,” I said, following her in. People stared at us as we ran by. “Lindsay.”

 

She burst into the bathroom. I chased her down to a stall.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” I said, the lights dim and unclear around her. Other girls put on make up, flushed their toilets, stepped out and about Angela and I. She yanked for a ream of toilet paper, patting her eyelashes, her wet eyes.

 

“It’s nothing,” she said, wadding the tissues together. Of course, there had been a problem, but she wasn’t going to explain it to me outright.

 

I squatted on the ground, looking up at her. “If you need me, you know where to find me,” I said.

 

Heading back to class, I hated to leave Lindsay there. But she protecting herself with this wall of negative energy—she constantly berated people, always maintaining her rough exterior.

 

It was a farce, I knew that much.

 

In class, I listened to my professor drone on about whatever. Same as before. Honestly, I always was so good at school, that I barely even needed to study.

 

By the halfway point, I checked the clock, seeing that Lindsay still hadn’t come back. Afraid and fearful for her, I went to go see if she had encountered… Trouble.

 

She was on the toilet seat edge, her eyes puffy, her face glowing in the light. Red. Bold.

 

“Hey, there,” I said, trying to open the door, which she had locked. I cupped my hands over the dividing wall, knocking gently. “Lindsay. Lindsay, come on.”

 

“I’m not coming out,” she whispered.

 

Then she flushed the toilet. Only me and her were there, so whenever I spoke again, she just flushed to shut me out.

 

“I want to help you,” I said.

 

“No, you don’t,” she said. “People like you only care when it benefits them on a primal level. There’s no real true altruism in you. You just want to feel right in the world. That you’ve done something.”

 

“Not true at all,” I said. “Let me talk with you, let me see you.”

 

“I’m only going to do this.” Lindsay cranked the toilet lever. Slumping against the wall, I crossed my legs on the ground, watching Lindsay’s shadow arch out from underneath. “Leave me alone, please.”

 

“Lindsay,” I said, “we don’t always get along. But if you don’t go back to class, you’ll miss out on fifty points of today’s quiz.”

 

“Is it a group quiz?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I can take the hit,” she said. “The semester’s almost over anyway. I would’ve dropped if I were close to failing.”

 

Overachiever. Both of us. Neither she or me could deal with a low grade—anything less than an A- was failure to me. To her.

 

“You calculated?” I said.

 

“Yeah,” she said. “If I make a C on the final, I’ll still pass with a ninety-one.”

 

“Well, then,” I said. “Me too.”

 

“So?”

 

“I don’t feel like leaving you here. It wouldn’t be right.”

 

“I’ll be fine.”

 

“People only say that when they’re not,” I said. “Haven’t you seen the movies before?”

 

“Too busy smoking pot,” Lindsay said, giggling. She unlocked the door, leaving a slit available for me to see into. “Look, I’m having a difficult time with my personal life. That’s all.”

 

I rose up onto my feet. “Okay.”

 

“My mother… She died.”

 

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Lindsay.”

 

She sobbed, her hands catching her face, the tissues at her eyes again. She squeezed her cheeks, rubbing the skin seemingly raw.

 

“I’m not okay,” she said. “It’s whatever though. I knew she was passing anyway.”

 

“Yeah,” I said, not knowing what to add. “I’m sorry.”

 

I fiddled with my purse as a pretext to do something more. Otherwise, I would awkwardly have been standing next to her. Nothing said, nothing done.

 

Even though Lindsay could be a wicked bitch, she had her moments. At the very least, she was funny, in a cruel, sadomasochistic way.

 

And here I was, thinking about Joseph. When other people had much bigger problems going on.

 

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

 

Lindsay pushed me away. “Whatever. You can just sleep with your man and get away with anything. I still have to do work. Lots of fucking work, not just fucking.”

 

Walking out of the stall, I put my hand on my hip, shaking my head. “I don’t do anything like that,” I said. “Joseph and I might be… Friends… I’m not sleeping with him though.”

 

I predicted a future with Joseph meant only heartache and struggle anyway. Could he ever see me as anyone more than a college girl? As someone who was lesser than him?

 

He also had so much business going on. Deals, sales—he led Placarm Rhodes, for Christ’s sake. The largest banking firm in all of the world. Everyone in high finance had their name on his lips—because if they didn’t, they would need to know soon how to work with him.

 

Where could I possibly fit into his life? How?

 

The details weren’t clear to me.

 

To someone like Lindsay, who apparently knew everything, it was all very clear.

 

I guess because of her weeping, the world got washed out and cleaned.

 

“I have tons of shit on my back,” Lindsay said. “Tons of it all on me. My boss never lets up—Antonio? He’s not Joseph. Alpha Suites isn’t Placarm Rhodes.”

 

She balled up more tissue paper in her hands, sitting down on the toilet. “You can pretend to understand what it’s like to slave at a job with no respect. But you’ll never really.”

 

“I’m not sleeping with him.”

 

My heart thumped whenever I said the words. How could I help her? My mind churned solutions out, but none of them stuck until I intently reasoned.

 

“I have an interesting proposition for you,” I said. “Since we both do the same work.”

 

“Damn, you’re really a fucking uptight bitch, eh?”

 

I rolled my eyes. “Lindsay, this is serious. What you’ve told me. I can help you out.”

 

Lindsay crossed her arms, the toilet paper in her hand streaming like a banner of defeat. “What you mean? How can you help me? What’s in it for you?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

We stared at each other.

 

Lindsay began laughing, laughing and laughing and laughing.

 

“Nothing?”

 

“The goodness of my heart wills it for you,” I said.

 

“Okay,” Lindsay said. “Okay. What do you want for me?”

 

“I’ve developed a series of programs that automate my job,” I said. “You’re a junior associate, I am too. Our business is investment banking, which means everyone’s favorite: Excel spreadsheets. They’re endless. And I hate having to go through them all every night. It sucks. I get that. But…” I rummaged to my purse now, again wanting to give my hands something to do. “But, if you use my programs, you’ll never have to work again. Literally. They’ll do everything for you. Just click some buttons and… Well, I’ll teach you.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes,” I said, handing her my flash drive. “You can do whatever you want with these. I have them in Ruby, Python, and some of the other ones.” I clenched my eyes shut, trying to remember which code I had authored them in.

 

“Thanks,” she said, taking my flash drive.

 

“It’s not C++ or Java, but there are others on there,” I said.

 

“Yeah,” she said, holding a hand up. “Girl, I can figure it out. I’m not stupid.”

 

Shrugging, I closed my purse.

 

Helping people always made me feel good, but with Lindsay, I didn’t get the same resonance in my heart.

 

I felt like I’d strapped myself to an electric chair; it would only be a matter of days for the voltage to amp up.

 

“Just give me the flash drive back when you’re done,” I said. I had spares, extras, but I usually stocked them all in my room so I knew where they were.

 

“All right then,” she said. “Thanks, girl. I mean that. Really. I’m sorry for being such a loser cunt.”

 

She sniffled, and I came to her side, wrapping my arms around her.

 

“You’re not a loser for literally losing your mother,” I said. Thinking back to my childhood, I summoned my parents, their summer voices at my beck and call. They always helped me out when I needed it, in the end, so empathizing with Lindsay hurt me too. What she could never manifest again was her mother’s voice, her mother’s touch, her mother’s way of life.

 

Her love.

 

“I’m sorry for you,” I said, “I can’t even imagine.”

 

She held me back, rocking me forward, standing slowly. “Yeah, well, that’s true of a lot of things.”

 

We returned to class, having missed the quiz. Fine by our standards—we were ace queens, dominating the academic landscape. Which was why we often paired ourselves up together—even if our personalities grated and never really jived, we knew how to make top marks.

BOOK: Curved
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ads

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