Roomies (14 page)

The days started to feel really long, especially the ones without a peep from Lauren, who I guess was too busy feeling holier-than-thou to write. I started wondering,
Is this what life will be like in college, if me and my roomie don’t hit it off in the flesh?
Suddenly I could see it going that way—a whole freshman year of fights about who ate whose last package of ramen noodles or who never picks their dirty clothes up off the floor, a whole year of sharing a room with a hostile.

Surely there is something fundamentally flawed about the idea of the freshman-year roommate. Because on the one hand, yes, you’ve got this sort of friend forced on you when you most need one, so you
don’t have to walk into the dining hall or orientation meeting alone, but on the other, when has forcing friends on people ever worked?

It was probably loneliness—and a few more texts from Morgan—that drove me to pick up the phone and call Justine. I’d been thinking about her a lot—and actually
missing
her, too—and I’d been wondering what Keyon’s dad would tell me to do about the situation. I had a feeling he’d tell me to call her, to be the better person.

And so here we are, at a local coffee shop in the middle of the day on a Thursday. Already it feels wrong because we’ve never gone out for coffee or tea or any kind of beverage before, but we go through the whole routine of ordering and getting a table and then sitting and sipping. We’re quiet, and I think about telling her about Lauren, whose e-mail I’ve just gotten, or about my mom and Mark’s dad—or just about Mark—but there’s so much catching up to be done before I can get to anything of substance that the mere thought of it makes me tired.

After another long minute of silence she says, “This is weird.”

I say, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and we both laugh.

We put lids on our drinks and decide to take my car, and leave hers, and go to the beach because it’s sunny and hot in town and it’s always cooler by the water. We don’t talk at all in the car. It feels like maybe we both know that we’re on our way to a better place to talk about the stuff we need to talk about—because it’s big stuff, or maybe because it feels like there’s an ocean between us.

After we park I grab a blanket out of the trunk and think of all the times Alex and I sat on this same blanket on the sand, and I figure he is as good a topic as any to start with. After I spread the blanket out beyond the dunes that separate the beach from the boardwalk I say, “I guess you heard about me and Alex.”

“Yeah.” Justine sits down and wipes some sand off her hands, brushing them together. “Are you okay?”

I nod and study a big group of people sitting near us as the sun starts to fade. Judging by the coolers, chairs, and umbrellas, it looks like they’ve been there for hours—or plan to be. They’re mostly older, not quite as old as my mom, but way older than me, and there are some kids who are maybe around six and twelve and everything in between, coming and going with boogie boards and paddle games. I can’t imagine I’ll ever have a vacation like that. Not unless I marry into some massive clan.

I say, “It always sounds like a lie but it was totally mutual.”

She kicks off her sandals and buries her toes in the sand but I can still see a slice of silver from her toe ring. “You guys never seemed like that great of a fit to me.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” I say.

She shoots me a look. “Yeah, you would have loved that.”

I shake my head. “It’s true, I guess.” I think about Alex in detail for a minute—his love for at least two sitcoms I can’t stand and the way he wore that baseball cap all the time—and already I can’t imagine how we were ever together.

“I was mostly bummed for myself,” Justine says, nudging me. “No more six-pack.”

I am about to say, “I always hated when you called us that,” but she says, “Anyway, Karen’s okay.”

I feel my whole body tense.

“Karen?” I say, raising my voice even though I don’t want to.

“I figured you knew.” Justine wiggles her toes free, then starts to burrow again. “He’s been hooking up with Karen Lord.”

I sort of know her from school. She’s on the soccer team and has a party girl reputation.

“Are you jealous?” Justine asks, and it annoys me because it almost sounds like the answer she wants is yes.

I shake my head. “I met somebody, too. So no. Not really. Not at all.”

And in saying it, I realize it’s true. I’m over him. Over it. Between Alex and Mark there’s simply no comparison.

“Oh,” Justine says. “Well, that’s cool. Who is he?”

“I want to tell you about him,” I say, “I really do. But I don’t even know what to say. I mean, I’m going away in a few weeks anyway so it’ll probably end. It hardly seems worth talking about.”

“EB,” she says seriously. “Everything used to be worth talking about. With us. Everything and anything. Farts, even. Or the best way to shave your legs. Or shrubbery.”

“I know!” I say. “I want that again!”

“Me too!”

What I don’t know is whether I want it again with her—if that’s even possible—or if I want it with someone else. For a while I was hoping Lauren was going to be that for me but now I’m not so sure. It’s one thing for me to get all judgmental about my mother; it’s another thing for someone else to.

“I’ve been thinking about e-mailing my dad,” I say then. “Maybe seeing if I can go out west a few weeks early. You know, get the feel of the place before classes start and stuff.”

Justine raises her eyebrows.

“What?” I say. “He told me I could come visit. The last time he wrote.”

“He
did
?”

“He did!”

Her eyebrows only move higher.

“It’s complicated.” I sigh. “My mom seems to want me gone, though. In a big way.”

“Your mom doesn’t
want you gone
.” Justine lies back and pushes her sunglasses up to the top of her head. “Your mom is just having a hard time dealing with the fact that you’re leaving and she’s going to be alone.”

I’m not sure why I’m so surprised to hear Justine’s precise assessment of the situation—even without her knowing all the messy details—but I am. It’s like I’d forgotten why we were ever friends in the first place and for a moment, at least, I’ve been reminded. Then she says, “The woman needs therapy,” and I’ve sort of had it.

“Why is everyone suddenly picking on my mom?”

She holds a hand up to her eyes to block the sun and says, “Who’s everyone?”

I don’t feel like explaining. “I just mean she’s not all bad. She got dealt sort of a crappy hand with my dad.”

“Everybody has a crappy hand.” Justine closes her eyes again.

“You don’t believe that,” I say, and I watch as one of the kids of that big group starts putting together a kite shaped like a dragon. It has a long double tail made of gold- and-red fabric.

“Maybe not, but anyway, it’s not about the hand all the time. It’s about how you play it, whether you can bluff or not. And your mom has no poker face. You get that from her.”

“I have a poker face,” I say, and the kite is up—the kid did it all alone—and whipping in the wind but way too close to the sand.

“You do not.”

“I’m hiding all sorts of aces from people these days, trust me.” The dragon dips and dives and then plummets nose-first onto the beach.

“Doesn’t sound like you,” Justine says.

“I don’t even
feel
like me. Everything is changing so fast. And I’m about to leave everyone and every place I’ve ever known….”

“You chose that, you may recall. You don’t have to go. You could stay.” She is propped on her elbows now, watching as the kid tries to get the kite up again. Why isn’t anyone helping him? They’re all just
sitting there
.

“I don’t know.” I stand. “That doesn’t feel right, either.”

I walk over to the boy and say, “Need a hand?”

He says, “Sure,” so I take the kite and walk a few paces away from him and turn and say, “Ready?”

“Yeah!” He smiles.

I run a bit with the kite and hoist it high and let go and it catches and my work is done.

Back at the blanket, Justine lets her head fall a little to the right, and half smiles. “Morgan’s on her way,” she says, and I’m sort of irritated. I mean, I like Morgan a lot but I get tired of all the posse togetherness sometimes. Then Justine says, “You could come stay with me. I mean, if you want.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking a seat again. “You’re the best.” I look out at the ocean and wonder how different the color will be of the water on the opposite coast: More blue? More green? More what? “But you’re right about my mom having a rough time. I should probably stick it out.”

“I’m telling you. Therapy.”

I decide not to get irritated, because it’s true that my mom could
use some help, and also, the kite is still up and really soaring high now and for some dopey reason that makes me happy. I say, “My mother needs therapy to figure out why she won’t go to therapy.”

We both laugh then, and it feels like old times for a minute. But then Justine says, “We should hang out more. I guess beach mornings are weird, though. ’Cause, you know, the boys.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What about Saturday? Danny has some family thing and I’m not going. Are you around?”

“I’m supposed to go to that water park in Seaside with this new guy.” This was Mark’s idea—his friend Vic is a lifeguard there—and it sounds like fun but also involves bathing suits. For some reason picturing the scene—me in my suit and him in his, shirtless—makes me sort of tingle with fear. Or something. We’ve been kissing a lot but always with clothes on. Lifted and pushed aside some but still
on
.

“And the next day?”

“Working. But I have Monday off!”

She wrinkles her nose. “Great Adventure with… some friends.”

I shake my head as I picture Justine and Danny, Morgan and Mitch, and Alex and Karen Lord riding roller coasters all day. “How easily I’ve been replaced.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No? Then what’s it like?”

She gets up. “Good luck in California, EB. Maybe I’ll see you around Thanksgiving or Christmas if you’re not too busy.”

“Justine, come on!” I grab the blanket and follow her. “Let’s figure something out.”

“The whole thing sucks,” she says. “You guys breaking up.”

“But I was miserable!”

“But I wasn’t!” As soon as she says it, she laughs at herself. “It just sucks.”

“We’ll do something fun together. I promise. And I’m sorry about missing your birthday.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she says with a sigh. “About the stuff I said to you. Really sorry.”

“So did you… you know?” I ask, sort of sheepishly, looking over my shoulder to see if Morgan’s appeared on the beach yet. “After your party?”

“Nah,” she says. “I chickened out. Him, too.”

“Well, when it’s right it’ll feel right.” I know it’s a cliché but I believe it. I don’t necessarily think I’ll wait until marriage or “the one”—just the right time.

Justine shrugs. “I think it’s more likely to feel right in a dorm room than the back porch of his parents’ house, you know?”

“Totally,” I say.

Morgan’s voice calls out, “Hurray! My two besties are besties again.”

The house is quiet when I get home and my mother has left a note on the kitchen table that says
Hope you ate!
The fridge is so empty it’s like she might have actually dumped stuff just so I couldn’t eat it.

I fix myself a bowl of cereal and take it up to my room. Then I start looking through the drawer in my desk where I keep important things because there is a letter from my father in there. It’s the one in which he told me he had bought the gallery in San Francisco and was moving. It’s not like we’d been in touch or had seen each other in years,
even when he’d been living in New York—a measly two-hour drive away—and I was pretty sure I got that letter because he had a legal obligation before moving clear across the country, but I’d saved it out of some kind of misguided sentiment. After sifting through a lot of junk that I end up tossing into a recycling bag, I find it and read it again and, sure enough, at the end he says
PS You can come visit!

So maybe it’s not the
craziest
idea.

I lie down on my bed, wondering whether Mark would be a good person to talk to about this kind of stuff, and I send him a text that says
Hey
and he writes back
Hey yourself
.

A minute later, he texts
Psyched for Saturday
and I write back
Ditto
.

Then I reread Lauren’s e-mail.

I sort of can’t believe she’d do that with you in the next room.

Well, me neither!

I don’t know if I could keep that a secret from someone I cared about.

If you don’t
know
, then don’t judge!

I actually type
Dear Miss High and Mighty
before deleting and trying very hard to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Dear Lauren,

Nope. No sex in six months. Shocking, I know. Especially when you consider that I’m already thinking that having sex with Mark is something I might actually want. Even though we haven’t known each other a long time it feels like we have. Totally scared of getting pregnant, however. Alex and I made out a lot, and there was some touching and, um, targeted rolling around (for lack of a better way of saying it?) but that was pretty much it.