The Girl I Was Before (8 page)

“Let’s go, Leah. Time for pre-school,” my mom says, grabbing her granddaughter’s hand. Mom makes a face at me as she passes, her eyebrows raised excitedly. She’s still hung up over Paige.

“Stop it,” I mouth, making her laugh. I watch them leave, Leah’s hair swinging side-to-side, slapping at the base of her neck. I wish Bethany could have seen this. She would have loved our little girl’s hair.

“You want to slice the meat or prep the deli foods today, Houston?” Sheila asks, her hand already on the slicer. I smile because she’s already made the decision for me.

“I’ll get the side dishes,” I say, and I move to the back. While I pass, I notice an orange notebook on the floor under the table where Paige was sitting. I pick it up and flip through a few pages, realizing it’s her biology notes. The ink is purple, and her handwriting is perfect—not loopy or bubbly, but more like a traditional cursive, thin letters and straight lines. It doesn’t seem like her. But then again, it does.

I walk out front to see if I can still see her along the sidewalk, but she’s already gone. I’m sure she needs this for her final, and I half consider jogging down the roadway until I get to the walkway that leads to the sorority houses. But the lot is starting to fill up; there are a few regulars who I know can be difficult, so I turn back and join Sheila behind the counter, dropping the notebook on my school bag, hoping to reunite it with Paige soon.

T
he day drags
, but I was able to squeeze out a little early and Chuck still offered to pay me for the hour. I’m moving my bag up higher on my shoulder when I feel my phone buzz. It’s Casey.

I do always have things. What I should be doing is reviewing my history notes for my final exam tomorrow. But instead, I’m walking up the steps of the Delta House, an orange notebook in my hand. I feel like Prince Charming, but a really nerdy one—no glass slipper, just a laundry list of bones, intestinal mapping, and the phases of cellular division.

“Can I help you?” There’s one girl sitting out on the porch, her feet curled up in her lap along with a heavy book. She has a pencil stuffed in a twist of hair piled up on her head.

“Yeah, uh…I’m looking for someone. Paige Owens?” Her eyes turn to slits quickly, and there’s a flash of a menacing smile on her face. It’s strange.

“She isn’t here,” she says.

I can’t explain why exactly, but I don’t believe her.

“Do you want me to tell her something?” she asks, closing her book and dropping it in the seat next to her. She stands and pulls her hair down, letting dark waves from the twist fall over her shoulders. She’s trying to distract me. This is getting stranger.

“Just a notebook. She left it…somewhere,” I leave that vague, suddenly not wanting to tell this chick how I know Paige—why I know Paige—where I saw Paige. “Anyhow, I think she needs it to study,” I say, taking a step back as she approaches.

“You can leave it with me,” she says.

Yeah, that’s not happening.

“No, it’s okay. I have to talk to her about something too,” I say, making quick note of the disappointment on her face. Mission failed.

“Oh, well, I’m not sure when she’ll be back. Maybe try later on today,” she says, walking back to her seat, as if she’s suddenly lost interest.

“I’ll wait,” I say, sitting on a wood bench at the other end of the porch. The girl freezes when I do. It takes her a few seconds to move again, and when she finally gets back to her seat, she smiles at me in a way that says I just ruined her day.

“Suit yourself,” she says, one last attempt to make me leave.

I pull out my phone and check my text messages while I wait.

I don’t write back. Instead, I flip through the pages of the notebook while I wait, peering up every few seconds to check the status on the girl at the other end of the porch. When she seems lost again in her own studying, I slip the pencil out from the spiral part of the notebook and draw a few doodles in the margins of the first few pages.

Once I reach the middle pages, I start to draw arrows at a few of her graphs, making commentary on her diagrams.

“What is this supposed to be?” I write next to a penciled sketch that I think is a cell. I draw legs, a tail, and a pig nose on another, and add a few more artistic additions to the page until I’ve basically left her with an elementary sketch of various farm animals.

I spare one more glance to the girl, waiting for her to look up at me. When she doesn’t, I write one more note to Paige.

I pause for a few more seconds before finishing my note, adding in my phone number so she can call me. Now she has it twice. I read the note back to myself, each time thinking I sound more desperate, my attempt at humor becoming less and less humorous. By the fifth read, I poise the pencil’s eraser over my phone number and get ready to erase.

“What are you doing here?” As if she just announced the end of time for my SATs, I put the pencil down, folding it in the pages of the notebook. I push my phone back in my pocket and stand, my feet squaring with Paige’s as she steps out from the main door of the house. She looks so pissed at first, but then she glances over her shoulder at the girl I was just speaking to. This girl is way too invested in our conversation.

“Biology notes. Thought you might want them,” I say, holding up the notebook with one hand, handing it to her, and glancing over her shoulder noticeably so she knows this conversation—it isn’t private.

“Oh,” she says, sucking in her bottom lip, smile tight. She got my message. “Thanks.”

An awkward pause develops over the next several seconds, and it feels a lot like torture—no, it’s actual torture—long seconds that tick by slowly, like the way everything feels when I’m sick with the flu and drugged on Nyquil. Paige is looking at me, but not quite in the eye, thankful I brought her notebook back, and perhaps also glad I gave her the option of moving into our house. She’s also staring at me like she can’t match up my roles as both
deli guy
and
dad
.

And then there are these little flits of moments in between where she’s looking at me in a different way, like maybe she’s looking at me and liking what she sees. Now that I’ve had that thought play out in my head though, in a full sentence, I feel pretty stupid.

“Yeah, so…I’m just gonna…go,” I say, pointing over my shoulder, pushing my hands into my pockets and backing down the steps. I should turn around, but now I’ve walked backward for a good six or seven strides, and I know I’m at the stairs; I’m going to gamble I won’t trip and fall on my ass in front of her. I could turn around completely, but I’m also keeping an eye on that other girl, the one very much interested in Paige.

Once I clear the steps, I spin around and pick up my speed, pulling my phone out to text Casey back:

It’s sort of a lie, and Casey’s been my best friend for years; he knows I have mountains of personal shit to deal with—I’m usually buried by it.

When he doesn’t write back, I figure he must have gotten busy. I move to put my phone in my back pocket, but stop when it buzzes one last time. I’m expecting a note from him, something snarky written back. But instead, the number is unknown. The small portion of the message I see tells me who it is.

I smile, and I smile big, and I feel stupid walking down the street with the growing grin on my face. But I can’t help it; I love that she wrote back.

Damn. I’m actually glad she wrote back. I type a quick response.

I keep staring at the phone, waiting for her to write more, but almost a minute passes without hearing back from her. I’m close to our neighborhood by the time she writes back.

At that rate, she spent about eleven seconds on each letter she typed. I wonder how many messages she started and finished before settling on that one simple word.

I try to keep it simple back, but before I step inside my house—into my world of layers upon layers of responsibility, I add a little more.

There are no more messages from Paige for the rest of the night, and even though I keep looking, through dinner, through Leah’s lessons, through her bedtime preparation, through conversations with Casey where I pretend I’m not looking at anything at all, I know she’s not writing back tonight.

But I have a feeling she will…eventually. And I smile about it.

P
aige

I
’ve read
that last text from Houston maybe once an hour for the last twenty-four hours. I open it every time I get that feeling in my stomach saying I should run—abandon this plan and this version of college life. But then the other part of my brain kicks in and tells me to be stubborn because being a Delta, being
this
girl—is what I’ve always wanted.

This is what I wanted…

Funny how when I imagined this in high school, I wasn’t sitting alone in my room, staring at my packed bags and wishing for time to speed up so I could return home faster.

I was going to take a shower, freshen up before I could finally call a cab to take me to the airport, but I had a feeling something was…
off.
I’m meticulous. It drives my sister nuts, which is weird, because I probably get this trait from my father, and Cass is so much more like our father. This one trait seems to be the one thing I got from him that she didn’t.

When I grabbed my basket from under my sink, I noticed the bottles were out of order. Honestly, if someone took the time to put them back as they found them—I may have never noticed. But they didn’t, whoever
they
are; and I did notice. I unscrewed the cap on my conditioner first, pouring a little over my fingertips, rubbing them together and sniffing. Everything there seemed normal, so I did the same with the shampoo. I thought I was being crazy until I felt the tingle on my palm.

It’s been exactly thirty minutes since I’ve done the test on the small strip of hair I clipped from the back of my head, and the longer I wait, the more washed out that color becomes—the gold dissolving and whiteness taking over. The chemical smell is faint; whoever did this—they knew what they were doing.

Ashley walks by my room quickly while I’m cleaning off the small strip I’ve bound together, dipping it in a cup of cold water and holding it to the light just to confirm it’s different.

“Hey, come in here,” I say, not bothering to look at her as she passes. She’ll either stop, or she won’t. I half expect both.

“Oh…you’re still here,” she says; those words hit me in so many ways.

“Uh huh,” I say, now flattening the strip of hair on a paper towel at my desk, folding it over to dry it well. I hold it up again against my own hair, noticing the massive difference in shades. Even though I’m not really focusing on Ashley’s face in the background, I see her swallow. With a slow blink, I change my focus, reopening my eyes on her. I have found one of
they.

“Bleach…or something else?” I ask. Ashley takes in a quick breath, preparing to lie.

“What?” she asks, exaggerating her pinched brow.

Looking to the side, I let out a sigh. She’s never going to own up to her part, let alone throw Chandra under the bus with her. “Never mind,” I say, tossing the hair back on my desk and turning my attention to my bags and belongings.

Ashley lingers for a few seconds, but finally lets her balance fall back toward the hall. Her coyness pisses me off. I can’t help but cast one more line to see if I can catch her.

“Hey,” I say, and she pauses. I walk toward her with my small basket of hair products, holding it out to her. Her eyes grow a little wider, and she sucks her bottom lip in. “My flight leaves soon, and I’m not packing these. It’s expensive product…if you wanna use the rest.”

Her eyes flash to mine, and for the first fraction of a second, there is panic. But frostiness takes over. “I think we both know I don’t want any of that,” she says, tapping her finger over the bottles. Her lip curls into a smirk, a sign she’s telling me without telling me—giving me a warning, and also letting me know whose side she’s on.

I breathe in deeply, filling my chest, my lips pushed together tightly, and my eyes never once leaving hers. Her newfound power and confidence trying to stand against mine. “No, Ashley. I suppose you’re right,” I say, letting my lips slide into a smirk. “You don’t want any of this.”

Her pupils give her away. I know as tough as she’s being in front of me, she’s scared shitless of choosing wrong. I don’t like her enough to tell her it’s too late, she better cling to Chandra with all she’s got. Once you burn me, you don’t get back in. That’s how
my
circle works.

She slides her hand along the edge of my desk as she turns to leave, pulling the knob of my door behind her, and shutting me off from the world on the other side. I don’t let my smile slip until I hear the door click. But when it does, I allow myself to feel the rejection.

My fingers work on their own accord, scrolling through my messages, landing on Houston’s, and hitting VOICE DIAL before I’m able to really think it through. By about the fifth ring, I’m aware of what I’m doing, and I’m feeling foolish—readying my arm to pull my phone away from my head so I can hang up before leaving a really desperate message.

“Hey—” Houston answers, his voice sounding a little out of breath.

“Hi, sorry,” I say, not really sure why I feel the need to apologize. I was ready for his voicemail, for hanging up. Now I feel pitiful. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“Paige? Can I call you back in just a few minutes? I’m sort of in the middle…just…I’ll call you right back, okay?” His voice is partly muffled while he juggles his phone and whatever else.

“Yeah, sure. I’m leaving soon, so if you get a chance…” I say, before he talks over my words.

“Great. Thanks. Call you back,” he says, ending the call barely after his last word.

I stare at my phone in my hands. The time stamp reads 27 SECONDS. I sit on the edge of my bed and let my eyes wander to the towel at my desk and the science experiment from moments before. I can’t stay here.
They
will never stop making it clear they don’t want me here. When Houston calls back, I’ll tell him I’d like the room, and I’ll move my things. I’ll come back early from holiday break to do it. And I’ll find a way to talk to my parents about it—to make it okay. Then I’ll fix my relationship with my sister.

I’ll find my way. I always do.

These thoughts circle in my head for the next three hours until finally I can call for the cab to take me to the airport. When I hang up, I scroll back to those twenty-seven seconds from the morning and delete the record of the call. Then, I roll my bags down the hall, down the stairs, and out the door of the Delta House.

H
ouston

“
D
ude
, it smells like vomit in here,” Casey says, his arm folded across his nose as he steps into the kitchen with a small bag of groceries.

“She just threw up again. Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to really get the smell from that last round out of the house yet. I think maybe I’m immune to it,” I say, rinsing out the yellow bucket that I threw up in when I was a kid and have now passed along to my daughter. What a gift.

“So you just, what…like…hose that shit out?” His voice is still muffled in his sleeve.

“Yeah. Didn’t you throw up when you were a kid, man? Is this so foreign to you?” I ask, wiping down the inside with a dry paper towel, and setting the bucket on the floor, then unhooking the plastic bag from Casey’s thumb.

“My mom wouldn’t let us leave the bathroom until we were done spewing,” he says, letting his arm fall away, but only for a second while he speaks. I chuckle and roll my eyes.

“I guess I don’t like the idea of making her sleep on the bathroom tile,” I say, pulling out a packet of soda crackers, removing two, and placing them on a napkin.

“So what is it, like the flu or something?” Casey asks as he follows me back up the steps, bucket and crackers in my hands.

“I think so. She’s been at it since two this morning. I had to call in to work, which sucks ass,” I whisper, not wanting Leah to hear as we get closer to her room.

“Nah man, you’re looking at this wrong. You got a sick day without being sick. When she’s napping, you should totally hit the Xbox,” he says, finally letting his arm drop. Casey’s gotten used to it too.

“All I see is six less hours of pay I’m going to get this week,” I say as I lean into Leah’s door to slide it open.

“Un-co Casey!” Leah says, coughing when she screams Casey’s name, her voice hoarse from being sick.

“Take it easy, kiddo. Don’t overdo it,” he says, reaching out his hand and ruffling Leah’s hair, which is wild and juts in a million directions. We didn’t really do the
brushing
thing today.

Her face bunches when I set the napkin on her lap. “I don’t like those,” she whispers, her voice lacking the enthusiasm it had when she greeted my friend.

“I know. But here’s the deal,” I say, sitting down on the bed next to her, rolling up my sleeve and resting my forearm on her forehead, feeling for a fever. We’ve been lucky so far, and she’s still cool now. “If you can eat two of these and not throw up for…” I look at my watch, trying to think of a safe, but arbitrary time, “thirty minutes…” Leah looks up at me, her bottom lips sucked into her mouth so far that her chin is white. “I’ll let you try a sugar cookie next.”

Leah grabs a cracker fast, stuffing the entire thing in her mouth at once.

“Slowly. Eat them slowly. Remember…they have to stay
in the tummy,”
I say, standing as she moves on to the second cracker, this time taking nibbles, her eyes wide on me with hope. She’ll get a cookie anyway, because that face does me in. But I’m exhausted, so this throwing up thing needs to stop too.

“I’ll come check on you in thirty minutes, okay? Watch some of your show,” I say, pressing START on the iPad, propping it on her night table and backing out of the room, but not before leaving the bucket by her bedside along with about a million prayers that she doesn’t need it any more.

“So…does that mean you have cookies?” Casey asks. I stare at him. “What? I’m just saying if you have cookies, then…maybe…I can have one?”

“Do you have food of your own? I mean, like…could you even survive without me?” I say, moving back to the stairs.

“I have food, douchebag,” he says, paused at the top of the steps. “I just like yours better.”

I take a few steps, then something halts me. I don’t know why suddenly the empty room to the right catches my attention, especially since I’ve walked by it at least forty times since Leah woke me up before the sun was up, and another twenty since Paige called hours ago, but it hits me now.

“Shit!” I grit through my teeth, rushing down the stairs to the charging station next to our refrigerator. My phone isn’t even on. It was so dead when I got off the phone with her the first time, I plugged it in and turned it off, thinking I’d give it a good charge and call her back when Leah was napping. Only Leah never napped, and I never called. “Goddamn it!”

It takes my phone
way too
long to power up, but it finally does. I sort through my missed calls and text messages. Nothing from Paige, just an update from my mom that she’s only putting in a half-day at her job at the church and will be home to take over Leah in an hour.

I move to the call log and redial Paige, something I promised to do…
shit!...
five hours ago now! The phone rings twice before going right to voicemail. I hang up and dial again, only to get the same result.

“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” I groan, tossing the phone into the middle of the counter. I flip open the lid on the plastic container and pull out a cookie. When Casey’s eyebrows light up, I hand him one too.

With his mouth full, and sugar coating his lips, he finally talks. “Gonna fill me in on that little dramatic display right there?” he asks, taking another bite and leaning into the table.

“I was supposed to call someone back about renting out the room, but I forgot. Kinda got into the whole vomit-bucket routine and lost track of time,” I say, leaning my head back against one of the cabinets and shutting my eyes. When I open them, Casey’s reaching back into the cookie tub. He arches a brow and shrugs when I catch him, then closes the lid and takes another bite, getting comfortable on one of our kitchen stools.

Casey’s staring at me while he chews, his mouth doing that annoying thing he’s always done where he waits on the verge of laughter. He used to look at me like that across the room in grade school until I finally broke out into laughter. I’d always get in trouble, and that fuck nut would turn around and pretend he was doing homework. I reach across the counter and put my palm on his forehead, pushing him off balance from the stool.

“Quit looking at me like that. It’s annoying,” I say.

“Like what?” he says, still
almost
laughing.

“Like…like a creepy asshole,” I say.

“This is about that girl you want to move in, huh?” he says, finally letting one chuckle out—one big, loud, punctuated chuckle.

I take the rest of his cookie from his hand. “It’s about me blowing an easy three hundred a month we really could use right now. That’s what this is about,” I say, throwing the rest of his cookie away. I know it’s a waste, but dickhead doesn’t deserve one of Mom’s cookies right now.

“First off, dude? What the fuck?” he says, actually pulling the cookie out of the trash and inspecting it before deciding it’s still good and eating the rest whole. “And second, you could rent that room in a day if you put a listing up—so don’t give me that shit.”

I look at him, processing what he said. I don’t respond, because he might be a little bit right, and that only pisses me off more. I run my hand over my chin and look to my phone, pulling it back in my hand and scrolling to Paige’s number.

“You’re right,” he’s already grinning. “But it’s not about
the girl.
It’s about the fact that I don’t like being an asshole. I made an offer to her, and then kind of blew her off. I just don’t want her to think I’m a dick. That’s all.”

I dial her number, ignoring the penetrating stare of my friend. I don’t care what he thinks, and I don’t care if he’s a little bit right. Even though, yeah…there’s a part of me that sort of likes the idea of Paige living here, because she’s a hot girl who I find interesting—but mostly I like the idea of a friendly, non-threatening girl who I don’t mind being near Leah or alone with my mom. The fact that she needs a place to go—badly from what I could tell—is also sort of important.