A Little Something Different (18 page)

“Well, maybe, but still. If you like me you wouldn’t be doing that.”

“Lea, the Hillary thing had nothing to do with you, not really. And you haven’t exactly been forthright about your feelings. It’s like I need a decoder ring to understand you. One day you’re sitting with me in the diner and a few days later I see you flirting with some guy at the library, turning away from me, ignoring me.”

She shakes her head. “I just got tired. And embarrassed. It was self-preservation.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling,” he says. He must catch sight of my cigarette then. “Who’s over there?”

Lea turns around.

I step out from the side of the house. I try to smile, even though by the looks on their faces I’m about to get my ass whipped.

“Hey! How are you guys?”

“Victor,” Lea says.

“Long time no see,” I say, feigning friendliness.

“What are you doing here?” Gabe asks.

“I was at the party with my friends.”

“Are you spying on us?” Lea asks.

“Yeah, just like you spied on Gabe,” I say with a chuckle.

She scratches her nose nonchalantly. “Wow. That was quite the burn.”

Gabe scoffs and turns away from me. “I’m gonna go.”

“What? You’re just gonna leave?” Lea asks.

“Yeah, I drank way too much to talk about this right now. And I feel like anything I say is going to come out wrong. And I want to figure this out. But I need to sleep first. It’s not working right now.”

“Because you’re not listening to me.”

“I don’t think either of you are listening,” I interject.

They both stare at me for a long minute. Then Gabe turns and gives Lea a look of surrender. “I’m sorry,” he says.

We both watch him walk away.

“Maybe you should go after him,” I say.

“Like I’m going to take advice from you,” she snarls. She pushes past me and heads back inside, the door slamming behind her.

That didn’t go well for any of us.

Two seconds later, she’s slamming back out the door and calling over her shoulder, “No, really, I’m fine. I swear.”

Her friends file out behind her. “You can’t go alone.”

“I’m not,” Lea says. “Victor’s going with me.”

“Victor from creative writing?”

“Yes.”

“You hate him.”

Then a couple of guys fall out of the door. “Where’s Gabe?”

“He left,” she says simply.

“Where did he go?”

She shrugs and pulls me along behind her, leaving a herd of confused drunk kids in her wake. I wave at them.

I suppose I could use a walk.

Bob
(a bus driver)

I’m taking a break outside the student center and my old friend Gabe stumbles onto the bus. He nods his head at me and I can’t help but notice he looks distraught. I glance at him in the rearview and he looks kinda sick to his stomach.

“You gonna ralph?” I ask him, catching his eye in the mirror.

“Nope. Just a crappy night.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

He opens his mouth, but then we hear a girl’s voice right outside the bus.

“Perfect,” Gabe mutters.

“Okay, so thanks for walking me,” she says. I realize pretty quick that it’s Lea and that she’s maybe the source of Gabe’s crappy night.

“What?” the kid outside asks.

“Thanks for walking with me. I needed to get away from my friends and you did me a solid. But I need to be alone right now. I don’t want to hang out or anything.”

“Where are we?” the kid asks.

“Student center. Just head a block that way and you’ll get back to the party.”

“You okay out there?” I call through the door.

“Yup,” she says, turning and smiling sweetly at me. “We’re good.”

“I should go?” he asks.

“Yes, and don’t you dare ever tell anyone what I said to you on the way here.”

“I don’t … even,” the guy mumbles. “You said … stuff?”

“Good, keep it that way.”

He heads back in the other direction and Lea steps onto the bus.

“You sure he’s okay?” I ask.

She makes a guilty face and then shakes her head. “Yeah, he’s okay. His friends are still there and it’s not that far of a walk.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long slow sigh when she sees Gabe.

“Of course,” she murmurs.

“I’m on break for another ten,” I tell them.

They both nod. She takes a seat behind him.

They sit in stony silence for a few moments and then he turns in his seat.

“I’m sorry I was being so belligerent,” he says.

“I’m sorry I was so cold to you yesterday at Starbucks,” she says.

I start up the bus and I drive the route I’m supposed to. I don’t think either of them noticed they got on going in the wrong direction, so it’s going to take extra time to get them to their side of campus.

“I know I said I didn’t want to talk right now, but there are things you should know.”

She nods and looks less tense.

“So, here’s the deal,” he says.

I glance at them in the rearview mirror while we’re sitting at a stoplight. She’s leaning on his seat and he’s still sitting sideways, but he’s not looking at her anymore, instead he’s focused on his lap. There’s something about the way she has her hands folded under her chin that makes me think she wants to touch him but she’s holding back.

“First of all, this is really embarrassing, but I’ve never had a girlfriend or anything and I was worried that I would do something wrong.”

Lea shrugs. “I’ve only had one long-term boyfriend. It’s not exactly like I’m Elizabeth Taylor going on her fortieth husband or something.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That does make me feel better.”

“See? Look at how easy it is,” she says, smiling.

“This one is harder, because it’s not that big of a deal anymore, but it’s important for you to know, because I think you’ll understand me a little better.”

She nods patiently.

“January of last year I was in a car accident,” he starts. “Right after New Year’s.”

She gasps a tiny breath. I’m not even sure how I hear over the noise of the bus engine.

“I was driving back from dropping my little sister Becca off at a sleepover and I hit some ice and my car spun around and slammed into a tree, right in the driver’s side. I broke my elbow and I hit my head really hard on the door.” He touches his ear and the side of his head unconsciously.

He glances at her and I realize that I sat through this light twice already. Good thing there’s no one else around right now. I start driving again, but my focus is with the kids. I always say we shouldn’t be out on the roads when it’s icy.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

“It’s okay! That’s the thing. I’m okay. I was unconscious for a couple of days and there were a couple of weeks where I was in the hospital and everything hurt. And I needed help with pretty much everything and my mom bought me a lot of shoes without laces since I was in casts for so long and couldn’t tie my shoes.” He smiles at her then, but she looks too stricken to smile back.

“Okay.”

“But it turns out that when I hit my head, I basically … broke something in my ear. And that’s why I can’t hear out of it. There’s more to it than that, boring medical stuff, but that’s the gist. And the doctor said it might get better or it might not. I kept waiting for it to get better. And my elbow got better, and my head. But not my ear.”

She nods.

“And then I came back to school after being gone so long and I lost my baseball scholarship. Everything just sucked so much all the time,” he says. This kid is killing me. “I wanted you to like me, but I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. So instead I messed everything up.”

We’re at their stop now and I don’t know whether to tell them or not. Lea notices and stands.

“Thank you,” she says to him. “For telling me.”

“So we’re good?”

“Yeah. I just…” She pauses and sighs. “I feel like things have been weird and crazy and if maybe you had told me this sooner, I would have understood. But I had almost nothing to work with.”

He nods, but he looks like he’s bracing himself for a punch in the face.

“Can I have some time? To think?” Lea asks.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a lot to take in.” She crosses her arms and it’s like she finally remembers that I’m there. She holds up a finger, asking me to wait one minute.

“Oh.”

“It’s not a bad thing. But I lied before about how drunk I was, and you’re drunk, and I don’t know that we can resolve all these months of stupidity in one night.”

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Walk me home?” she asks. “Please?”

He nods and they walk down the aisle, both of them thanking me, always on their best behavior even when they’re obviously having an emotional night.

I watch them walk until they disappear into their building.

Casey
(Gabe’s friend)

I’m sitting on the porch pretending to read for my abnormal psych class. It’s a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. The sun is out, the birds are shitting all over my car, and the chair I’m sitting on is groaning underneath me every time I shift around. I probably shouldn’t have it tipped back with my feet propped up on the railing, but there’s something about living dangerously that gets any civil engineer’s heart racing. I’m testing the tensile strength. At least that’s what I’ll say when I get to the emergency room after it collapses out from under me.

“Why are you reading
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
?”

I didn’t even notice Gabe approach the house. The chair almost gives out as I flail around to right it. It does make a horrible squealing sound as the two front legs hit the floor.

“Abnormal psych,” I say, while he laughs at my near fall. “Stop laughing at me.”

He snorts, and then makes a serious face as he takes the other chair.

“So, what’s up?” I ask. I have at least four hundred other questions I would like to ask, but I figure I should start with a fairly innocuous one.

“Nothing.”

“Something’s up.”

“Well, yeah. But I don’t know how to talk about it.”

“We could play twenty questions. Starting with where did you go last night?”

“I went home.”

“Why didn’t you text one of us so we didn’t think you were dead?”

He gives me an exasperated look.

“Fine, we knew you weren’t dead. But you should have come back inside.”

“No way, it was too humiliating. I couldn’t deal.”

“She left, too.”

“Yeah, I know. We ran into each other on the bus.”

“Yeah?”

“And I pretty much bared my soul to her and she was like, ‘Cool, let’s pick this up some other time.’”

“Seriously?”

“I guess I was giving too many mixed signals and like … not giving her enough to work with. And she said we were both too drunk to come to any decent conclusions last night. And as we were walking into our building, she said she’d let me know when she was ready to talk.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah, what’s the next step?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I’m proud of you for acknowledging that there should be a next step.”

“Yes, there should be, but I feel like I need to take a cue from her. Like I’ll get a sign that she’s ready to continue the conversation or whatever.”

“You should go for some kind of romantic gesture.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds like me.”

“So, make it a Gabe-esque romantic gesture.”

“I can’t even imagine what that might entail.”

“Wait, before we get completely off track, was there a reason you came here?”

“Yeah, I was looking for some mindless entertainment in the form of video games.”

“I think we can manage that.”

MAY

Hillary
(creative writing classmate)

“Sorry I ran a little late. Allergies,” Inga says, rushing into the classroom at the last second. She looks like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I really can’t wait for this semester to be over. Particularly now that I know that Gabe thinks he’s too good for me. I’m tired of having to spend several hours a week in his presence.

“I’m making a last-minute change to the assignment that’s due on Thursday.” Inga’s nasally voice pulls me out of my daydream.

A groan erupts from the class.

“It’s going to be shorter than it used to be,” she promises.

I look at her suspiciously. I have a feeling this is some kind of trick. Nothing is ever short and easy in this class.

“You’re going to write a one-hundred-word description of someone without using any adjectives.”

“What?” I ask. I must have heard wrong.

“One hundred words, no adjectives, describing someone.”

“But adjectives are descriptive words.” I’m trying to understand why Inga thinks this is something normal people can accomplish. Like you have to be some kind of writing genius to do well on this assignment.

“Yes, thank you, Hillary, I know what adjectives are.”

“It’s impossible,” I say. I have to work hard not to mumble “bitch” under my breath. Maybe her allergy medicine is making her stupid.

That must be it, because she literally rolls her eyes. Teachers aren’t supposed to roll their eyes. I should report her for being a bitch. I look over at Gabe doodling in a notebook and then over to Lea, who’s chewing her thumbnail. A glance around the rest of the room shows that all of the other students are also blasé about this ridiculous assignment. I slide down in my chair and cross my arms.

“Okay. Here’s an example: ‘My mom has a chair in her living room and when she sits in that chair the way she holds herself is relaxed. When she reads a book in that chair, it’s like her habitat. When she settles down for an evening in that chair all is right in her world.’ Can you picture my mom? The kind of person my mom is?”

“I guess…” I say, making sure to keep my attitude at maximum strength. If Inga can be bitchy then so can I.

“You could also say that someone has the face of a weasel, and their hair is straw, and their demeanor reminds you of a poodle that thinks too much of itself.”