Saving Ben (2 page)

“Must be nice to have someone care about you like that,” she mumbled loud enough for me to hear.

An awkward silence filled the room. “Anyway. Enough about Ben. We need to decide what we’re going to do with all this mess.”

Emma leaned back against her dresser and crossed her arms, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “In case you haven’t noticed, new roomie, most of this so-called mess is yours.”

My eyes followed hers around the room. In addition to the mountain of pillows and comforters I’d just swept to the floor, a stack of hanging clothes was draped over my dresser and my desk was piled high with binders and packages of pens, a printer, my laptop, and my iHome. Emma’s side of the room, on the other hand, was empty except for a patchwork quilt on her bed and a digital alarm clock on her desk.

“I guess I got a little carried away. I had a hard time deciding what to bring, so I just brought it all.”

Emma let out a little laugh and I joined her.

“I would’ve brought more stuff too if there’d been enough room in the car,” she said. “The guy I rode with drives a Mini Cooper, if you can believe that?”

“Not only do I believe that, I applaud him for saving our planet’s natural resources. Where I come from, any car that has fewer than seven seats and gets more than fifteen miles per gallon is considered worthless.” I spread my arms wide. “Clearly I have enough to decorate three dorm rooms. Why don’t we share?”

Her smile faded a little, enough to make me worry I’d offended her, but she quickly composed herself. “I think that’s a great idea,” she said, rummaging through my mountain of PB teen accessories.

“But before we do anything, we need to cool it down some in here.” I opened the door and placed my box fan in the window to allow for circulation. “That’s better. The air is still hot, but at least it’s moving.”

Emma joined me at the window and together we stared down at the people moving around on the sidewalks below. “I’m not sure any excuse is reason to miss out on your daughter’s first day of college. But my father is an English professor. His classes started this morning.”

She didn’t ask outright, but the question regarding my parents’ whereabouts hung in the air between us like the humidity. No way was I going to admit my parents were playing golf. “I didn’t realize there was a college in Altoona,” I said instead.

She nodded. “Penn State, Altoona.”

“Wow. So I’m guessing your father started building your vocabulary at birth. Did you get a perfect score on your SAT?”

“Not quite but almost.” Emma’s cheeks reddened and she quickly changed the subject. “Just look at them.” She pointed at the sidewalk below. “How embarrassing for those poor parents to be hugging and slobbering all over their little darlings.”

“You know they’re dreading the long journey home to face their empty nests.” I jabbed my elbow in her side. “Think of all the pain and heartache we saved our rents.”

“Yeah. Besides, mine are old-fashioned. They would never have left me here to live in the same building with men.”

I pointed my thumb at my chest. “
My
parents have a special talent for blowing hot air, which is the last thing we need in this hundred-degree heat.”

“At least your parents blow something. Mine are as cold as icebergs,” she said, the bitter tone in her voice contradicting her smile.

“Our parents are the ones who missed out.” I draped my arm loosely across my roommate’s shoulders. “And if we don’t get started on this room, we’re going to miss out too—on our first night of college.”

For the next two hours, we scattered rugs and hung curtains and strung strands of white icicle lights along the perimeter of the ceiling. We were hot and sweaty and in desperate need of a shower, but by the time we finished, we had transformed our room into a cozy and inviting home.

“Now for the difficult decision.” I opened the door to my closet. “What does one wear to a fraternity party?”

Emma joined me and together we flipped through my clothes. “Ooh . . . this is pretty.” She removed a black sleeveless top with a low-cut ruffled neck. “I’m digging your taste.”

“My mother’s taste, actually.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, wide-eyed. “You mean your mother buys your clothes?”

I nodded. “Mainly because I hate to shop and she’s compulsive about it. She gets excited about going to Target to buy athletic socks for Ben.”

“Sounds like your mother and I would get along just fine. I’d shop all the time if I had the money to buy anything.” She went to the mirror, holding the blouse up to her body. “Besides, my parents feel the need to control every aspect of my life. My wardrobe is just another battlefield.”

“That bad, huh?” I asked.

She nodded. “But let’s not ruin our first day together by talking about them.”

I shrugged. “It’s your call. But just so you know, if and when you are ready to talk, I’m here for you. Deal?”

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Deal.”

I nodded my head at the blouse she was still holding up in front of her. “By the way, you should totally wear that.”

When I returned from the shower, I found Emma admiring herself in the mirror wearing the black top with a pair of low-rider white jeans. She had curves in places I was flat, and because she was at least three inches taller than my five foot six, the tank stopped well above the jeans and exposed quite a bit of tanned skin below her bellybutton. If her father was so concerned about his daughter covering her body, where had she gotten the jeans? They certainly weren’t mine.

She fixed her crystal eyes on me. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked, bouncing around on her bare feet. “I was just trying it on. I still have to shower and everything before I get dressed.”

“It looks great. Really.” I nodded enthusiastically.

“But you’ve already been so generous. I would never want to take advantage of you.” She was serious and sincere and grateful, so much so I would have lent her anything.

“No worries. I’m happy to share,” I said, towel-drying my wet hair.

Emma tilted her head to the side, watching me. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you ever thought of letting it grow long?” she asked.

I ran my fingers through my cropped locks. “No way. I have too many cowlicks and not enough patience for long hair.”

She looked at me from one angle and then another. “Not many people can wear their hair that short, but it works for you. You have that Winona Ryder thing going on.”

“Great.” I plugged in my hair dryer and turned it on. “How old is she anyway, forty?” I shouted over the noise.

“Maybe, but she’s still beautiful,” she yelled back at me.

When I was finished drying my hair, Emma came at me with a can of hair spray and her bag of tricks. For what she lacked in clothing, she made up for in makeup. She had one of every tube and stick and compact available at Walgreen’s. “Sit still and close your eyes.” I felt a tug at my eyelids followed by a flutter across my cheeks and a rubbing along my lips. “Okay, now you can open them.” She pulled a handful of silver bangles out of the bottom compartment of her bag and slipped them onto my arm. She held a mirror out to me. “That little girl look is now sexy innocence.”

“Me? Sexy? That’s a stretch, but thanks.” I handed the mirror back to her. “By the way, I met some girls down the hall. They invited us to make the party rounds with them tonight.”

“I’ll pass,” she said. “Big groups are not my style. But you go ahead.”

I shook my head. “No way I’m leaving you on our first night as roommates. I just thought it might be fun to get to know some of the other girls from our hall.”

“Oh! I do too. Just not tonight.” Emma placed her cosmetic case and mirror in her top dresser drawer and turned around to face me. “Let me ask you this. Do you have any interest in joining a sorority?”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Well
I
want to, and I don’t see how moving around from party to party in a big group, like a pack of dogs on display at the Westminster Kennel Show, will help my chances. Why would anyone want to put themselves in a position of having to stand out in a crowd?”

She pulled the tank top off over her head, and I watched her waltz around the room in naked perfection as she gathered her things for her shower.

Seriously? Emma lost in a crowd? Like that’s ever gonna happen.

“Okay, so I can kind of see your point,” I said, “but networking is the biggest part of rush. Who knows? One of those girls down the hall might have a sister who can help you get in the sorority you like the most.”

She considered this for a minute, and then shrugged it off, sauntering toward the door. “We have three days of orientation ahead of us,” she said over her shoulder. “Which is plenty of time for networking. Tonight is all about us. A time for new roommates to bond.”

I never understood why the others granted their allegiance to Ann Patton instead of to me when her father was as willing a participant in the affair as my mother, but their support boosted her confidence and fueled her anger. All throughout the winter months, Patton and her puppets staged vicious attacks against me. I never knew for certain which puppet was responsible for which prank, except for the most brutal of the assaults. One day in late January, Ann Patton faked cramps and broke into my gym locker while the rest of us were at swim practice. Not only did she put bleach in my shampoo bottle, which rendered my hair a disgusting shade of puke green, she used my phone to text an up-close-and-personal picture of a girl’s private parts, presumably her own, to everyone on my contact list.

The irrational part of me yearned for my mother’s touch when I cried myself to sleep at night. I wanted her to acknowledge my suffering as a result of
her
mistake. I wanted her to explain to me how she could’ve cheated on my father, and I wanted her to apologize for the disgrace she’d brought on our family. But the parents I once knew, the mother and father who’d raised me since birth with love and affection, were lost to me. My mother, immersed in her own pity party, retreated to her room with a pitcher of martinis every afternoon around four; and my father, engrossed in trying to save his marriage for the sake of his family, joined her with a dinner tray every night at six. He spoiled her with boxes of Godiva chocolates and bouquets of exotic orchids; but despite his efforts, the only thing that changed was the sound of their arguments, growing louder as my mother’s mood swings became more extreme.

Ben handled the crisis of our mother’s affair better than I did, but then again, he was older and more mature, in his tenth-grade year at St. Paul’s, the all-boy counterpart to St. Anne’s. Unlike mine, Ben’s friends not only stood by his side, they followed him around like little Ben wannabes. They played the same sports, dated the same girls, and applied to the same colleges. And because Ben protected me, his friends protected me.

So when I found the three of them waiting for me just inside the front door of their fraternity house that first night, I realized they would ruin my life if I didn’t establish some boundaries.

I looped my arm through Emma’s. “Meet Spotty Watkins and Reed Randolph, Ben’s best friends since birth. Literally. They were born in the same hospital three days apart.”

“I was first, of course,” Ben said, sticking out his chest. “Then came Spotty, and naturally, Mr. Always-late-to-the-game Reed was last.”

Emma turned to Spotty. “Do they call you Spotty because of these?” she asked, tapping the skin along the bridge of her nose.

Spotty’s face turned several shades of red. “No, Emma,” Reed answered for him. “Spotty is short for Spotswood. He was named after his grandfather and the two before him.”

“So, I take it the two of you are Lambda Deltas with Ben?” Emma asked Reed and Spotty who nodded their heads in unison.

I rolled my eyes. “Welcome to Virginia, Emma, where people are born together and die together and spend every day in between either sucking up to one another or stabbing each other in the back.”

“Ouch, that hurts,” Reed said, rubbing his arm as though someone had pinched him.

Ben waved me away. “Don’t listen to her. She’s been in a pissy mood all day.”

“Of course she has.” Spotty wrapped his arm around me and squeezed. “This is an emotional time for her. The start of a new chapter in her life—‘Hello Kitty Goes to College.’”

“Awh . . . ” Reed pinched my cheek. “Look at you all grown up.”

I gave him the once over. “And look at you all tan. Did you actually get a job this summer or did you surf the whole time?”

“I’ll have you know I worked as a lifeguard on the beach this summer.”

“Some job.” I rolled my eyes. “Saving damsels in distress in their thong bikinis.”

“Ha! The only woman I saved had no business wearing a bikini.”

I nudged Emma and cut my eyes at a group of cute boys across the room.

“No way,” Spotty said, stepping in front of me to block my view. “You’re here to listen to the band, right? Because if you came over here on the prowl, let me be the first to say that there is no man in this house good enough for you.”

I took a deep breath. “Listen up, you two.” I pointed my finger first at Spotty and then at Reed. “Y’all need to back off. I’ve already warned Ben about this earlier today.”

Spotty and Reed turned to Ben for help, but he shrugged them off. “I told you she was in a bitchy mood.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I’m in college now, same as you. And I’ve earned the right to be here, same as you. As far as I’m concerned, we are on a level playing field. So, you have a choice. We can work out an exchange where you introduce us to some of your more worthy friends, and we do the same for you with our pretty little freshman friends at the bar over there, or I can take my new roommate next door to the DKE house.”