by Rachel Cohn
“What the hell?” Bryan said. His kinky brown hair appeared kinkier still in the glow from the outside streetlamps. That hair, so ungoopy on such a goop, was one of the more endearing features on his boyish face.
“Look out there,” Very said, pointing out the window. She didn’t bother to check out Jean-Wayne’s hair. That boy knew his way around some serious product and always looked good. Nothing goopy about him, despite the gelled goop often spiking up some of the short black pieces of hair at the front of his head.
A row of fellow students stood on the sidewalk on West 114th Street (their hair difficult to discern at such a distance). As the power went out, everyone assembled on the street suddenly flicked on a lighter and waved it in the air, concert-style. At Lavinia’s cue, the group yelled from the street, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRYAN AND JEAN-WAYNE!” Because it was Halloween, the assembled crowd included several superheroes, some movie stars, some cartoon characters, some monsters and zombies, a vampire here and there, a few princesses and French maids, a couple gangsta boys, and several “commuter” people chained together as if they were holding on to an overhead rail on the 1 train. The view from the dorm room was that of a complete freak show—just the way Very liked it.
The power turned back on in the building soon enough, and the party moved down the hall from Very and Lavinia’s room to the student lounge, which could accommodate more people, but already folks were buzzing about the success of the endeavor, wanting more. Very, dressed up as Lara Croft, had a dance with anyone of any species who’d have one with her, while Lavinia, dressed up as a sexy tennis champion, obligingly kept folks’ cups filled and kept the watchful sober eye on the group to make sure no superhero-daredevil’s drunken antics inspired any jumping from Jay balconies (which had an unfortunate, and tragic, history at Columbia).
Very had tried not to feel omnipotent about what she’d pulled off. She’d created a moment of complete darkness in an entire building in New York City, after all. Take that, Lord Voldemort. But it was hard not to ignore the requests from fellow students at the party as they danced the night away with her:
“Hey, Very, you should organize more stuff like tonight’s. I was thinking about a flash mob at one of the cupcake places the tourists go to. You know, everyone just shows up at once, talks loudly about how the cupcakes at another place are better, then abruptly leaves.”
“Very, you know that Chinese restaurant you always order from when people are in your room? I think we should all go there in person, and everyone scream ‘VEGETABLE LO MEIN!’ at the same time, then leave.”
“Tomorrow night, Very, everyone gathers in your room and puts flash mob ideas into a hat, and we choose the best one.”
“Hanukkah gelt equals guilt, girl. We lead a group of prospective students on a campus tour to Mondel Chocolates on Broadway, then we all assemble inside to talk in old-lady voices to the prospects about buying Hanukkah candy and ‘Call your mother already!’”
Very hadn’t liked this last suggestion.
She didn’t have a mother to call.
Some people took things so for granted.
Very had turned away and pulled Bryan, dressed as Larry of the Three Stooges (to Jean-Wayne’s Moe), for a slow dance rather than hear more about the Hanukkah plan.
“You do Lara Croft nicely,” said Bryan, who’d inspired Very’s costume by once telling Very she reminded him of what Lara Croft would look like if Lara were a freaky-haired redhead who replaced her hot pants with Very’s long, flowing hippie skirts and bare feet, and if Lara swapped her machete for an iPhone. (The slutty, tight-fitting tops remained the same.) “And thanks for the party.”
“I have another present for you,” Very said. “For Jean-Wayne, too. Where’d he go?” She looked around but did not see J.-W.
Bryan said, “Dude disappears at random times. Don’t bother looking for him. Once he disappears, usually late at night, he’ll be gone for hours.”
“Does he have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?” J.-W. was a fey one—hard to pinpoint on the sexuality meter.
“Not that I know of.”
“Curious,” Very said. “Maybe he’s a secret go-go boy at a gay club.”
“The guy has a terrible sense of rhythm. Doubt it.”
“Damn.” Very would very much have liked to have a friend who was a secret go-go boy. “He probably won’t appreciate the mix I made him, either, then. If he indeed has such a bad sense of rhythm.”
The party had thinned out, as these things did at three in the morning, and Very and Bryan returned to her dorm room so she could give him his birthday present.
Lavinia, already asleep on her bed, did not stir as Very and Bryan curled up next to each other on Very’s bed to listen to the birthday mix she had made for Bryan: “Mwah Hah Hah Scary Scary: Angry-Girl Bitch Tunes (A Happy B-day Tribute).”
“It’s the requisite angry A-girl name bitch songs, like from Alanis and Avril and Ani,” Very explained. “Along with some bhangra and soca for alone-in-your-room danceability. And ‘The Monster Mash’ song so you remember this is your Halloween-not-birthday birthday mix.”
“Why the angry-girl songs?” Bryan asked, placing his hand on Very’s hip in what Very hoped was a platonic way.
Very placed her hand on his hip in a most definitely platonic way. “To prepare you for the future bitches that might break your heart. Listen to this stuff and it’s like ammo. You’ll be equipped to deal ‘cause you’ll know what to expect.”
Bryan asked, “You know how college friends are, like, incestuous? How come we’re not?”
“Because we’re cuddle buddies,” Very said. “And because I’ve been known to make mincemeat of kind boys’ hearts.” She wanted to add, So don’t let me. “Do you like your mix?”
“Like? Try love. It’s awesomeness. Every guy’s dream for Lara Croft to make him one. How did you learn about all these different styles of music?”
Very shrugged. “The usual, I guess. The Internet. Plus, I grew up all over.”
“Where was your favorite place? Musically, I mean.”
“India,” Very answered. “The music there, it’s so sweet, and yet really passionate. Highly danceable and fashion-inspiring.”
“Worst place?”
“San Francisco, for sure. At least according to my mom. All those music-poseur snobs who think they know better than everyone else. Can’t just relax and enjoy a fucking song for what it is. She’d say.”
Bryan, in his cuddling, sometimes made Very feel too safe. She felt a cry coming on. Too close for comfort. She squirmed out of Bryan’s embrace, stepped out of bed, and walked to her desk. She powered on her laptop.
“The flash-mob thing?” Very said to Bryan. “I think we should formalize it.”
He, too, got out of bed. He sat down in Lavinia’s desk chair, next to Very’s.
“Yeah!” Bryan said. “I’ve been thinking we ought to make an online group for our friends at Jay, anyway.”
“Like, our own private networking site, for people here,” Very said, nodding.
Bryan’s hand touched Very’s on her keyboard. “A hot girl who can program,” he teased. “You’re kind of like the Holy Grail. Let’s do it. Stay up till we’ve finished.”
Total, total turn-on. But of the programming variety.
And so they consummated the dance of finger-tapping into the night.
But that had been months ago. The Grid, the site they’d created that night, had become an unqualified success, but Very and Bryan’s friendship, lately, since Spring Break … not so much. Obviously he’d learned nothing from the angry A-girl b-day mix she’d made him.
They must have been alone in the study lounge now, because Bryan leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I didn’t know what to get you for your birthday. I was going to organize something for you on The Grid, but then … you know. Feels weird. Is that okay?”
The iPhone lodged beneath Very’s thigh vibrated. She instinctively grabbed for it—was El Virus back? But no, i
t was just a text message from Lavinia. R U awake?
Very’s thumbs went into action. Study lounge. Bryan alert. Bryan alert.
Bryan said, “Very, I’m trying to talk to you.”
She didn’t look up from her iPhone. “What?” If only it would vibrate again and be El Virus. Very typically slept with the iPhone lodged underneath her thigh so she could be instantly alerted to new text messages. Prior to his disappearance, she’d received enough messages from El Virus in the middle of the night that now any mere electronic buzz against her flesh got her hot and bothered.
Why had El Virus turned off? He was the technological pusher who’d awakened the electronic beast inside her. And wasn’t the pusher supposed to keep the user using? Very needed El Virus to feed the beast. She’d go mad if he didn’t pimp himself back online, where he belonged.
“Very,” Bryan repeated. “Are you even listening to me?”
Big big big mistake, sleeping with a dear friend as substitution for an AWOL El Virus. Never never never do that again, Very resolved.
“Pay Lavinia some attention,” Very muttered. “I’ll take that as my birthday present.”
She considered texting Bryan the real message she wanted to convey to him: Please go away now. And return El Virus to me. Instead, she sat up on the sofa, giving up on the idea of more sleep, and placed her computer on her lap. She turned up the volume on the machine, which announced that her online handle, Very LeFreak, had joined an online poker round of Texas Hold ‘Em.
Bryan left the study lounge.
He got the message.
CHAPTER 4
End-of-March Madness, or,
Men Who Frequent the Library
When They Should Be Watching College Basketball
Great. Now another awesomely cheesy song owned Very’s soul.
Since you been gone
I can breathe for the first time
Very kept her head down low as she passed through the majestic marble entrance to Butler Library, but she couldn’t fail to notice the many students passing her and flashing her the thumbs-up signal and Hello waves. Very smiled in regal acknowledgment but spoke to no one as she approached the back elevator. She needed to study and not be distracted by friend or flirt prospects. Seriously. She dodged the hormone-racing enclave of the Main Reading Room, headed straight to her secret hiding spot in the remotest corner on the top floor of the library, and sat herself down in her favorite musty cubicle. It was the one campus sanctuary where she could truly hide, and finally get some studying accomplished. Sweetly, since March Madness had reached the Sweet Sixteen round, the library was relatively empty, and Very had her choice of quiet spots.
Out of the darkness and into the sun …
And breakaway … lalalalalalala.
Truly. How had people survived before the iPod?
Very was an hour into studying before she was aware that another soul lurked in the darkest crevice at the back of the sixth-floor stacks in Butler Library. Startled to feel a tap on her shoulder, Very looked up to see a pissed-off guy standing in the library aisle. He banged his hands against his ears, the universal code for Turn the Fucking Music Down.
Very hit the Stop button on her music, but did not take off her headphones. “Sorry, dude,” she whispered to Angry Man. “I didn’t realize the music was so loud. I’ll turn it down.”
She hit the Play button again and returned to staring at the book on her desk. She hated postmodern art. She wanted her art in the form of sly smiles and bare buttocks and heaving bosoms, please. Geez. She could paint splotches just as easily as that Jackson Pollock guy. Where was her exhibition at the Met?
Concentrate, Very, she told herself. She needed a 3.0 grade point average to maintain the New Haven Benevolence Society scholarship that was the primary source, after student loans and part-time jobs, funding her Columbia education. Very teetered at 2.7, based on midterm grades. But one mind-blowingly good Art History term paper, and Very could get to 3.0. She could.
Loud cough. Louder than the pop song’s guilty-pleasure wail.
Very looked up from her book again. Why was Angry Man still standing there?
Very turned the volume down and took the headphones off. “What?” she asked him.
“You were singing very loudly, too,” he said.
She inspected him more closely. He looked grad student age—ruffled hair, bewildered expression, Ivy League tweedy. Totally, legitimately old enough to buy the kegs for future parties Very might be commissioned to throw.
“And you’re complaining because of my taste in music or because I was making too much noise?” Very asked.
“Both,” he said.
“I take requests,” she advised.
He laughed. “I’ll take early Britney Spears, please?”
“Song or dance moves?”
“Wow, hadn’t thought about it in those advanced terms. How ‘bout both?”
Jackson Pollock was so very boring. Time for a study break.
Very spun the wheel on her music player to the appropriate song, then spun the chair she’d been sitting on out from under her. She didn’t have the outfit or, quite frankly, the body, but she could still perform a damn impressive rendition of Britney’s “Oops! … I Did It Again” dance routine. “I played with your heart, got lost in the game,” Very sang, but in a polite whisper so as not to disturb any other potential study-lurkers in the back cavern of the library.
The stranger applauded her act.
Oh baby, baby.
This was the problem. Very could recite song lyrics at whim, remember the step-by-step dance moves from bubblegum music videos she hadn’t watched since she was a kid, but her brain was no longer cooperating with the useful part of its usefulness. Despite a lifetime of moving from school to school, city to city, country to country, Very’s ability to excel at academics, to achieve near-perfect scores on standardized tests, had always been her one stabilizing reward; that is, until lately, until her brain had decided to care only about song lyrics in sync with any buzz that announced the sexy siren call of an e-mail or IM.
The stranger glanced at the book on her desk and asked, “Art History class?”
“Yeah,” Very said. “I’m calling my term paper ‘Jackson Pollock: A Window into the Modern Psyche, or Just a Contemporary Psychotic?’”
“He was both. I’m doing my master’s thesis on postmodern art in America.”
“Love you,” Very said. She’d have to hide out in the library more often—and call upon the cute-guy-summoning powers of fallen pop princesses more often, too.
It was only four hours later, mid-make-out-session, long after the lights had gone out and neither Very nor Not Such an Angry Man Anymore had bothered resetting the timer to turn the lighting back on, that Very discovered how not hidden her hidden spot was.
Deafening-*Ah-choo*-wrist-slash-inducing-squeak noise.
Very could recognize that sneeze anywhere—it sounded like a hyena had ferreted her out in the stacks. How could that un-sexiest of sneezes not cut short her otherwise extremely satisfying kiss-a-thon with the guy who’d just beautifully written the conclusion statement on Very’s term paper? No, written her term paper was not what the cute grad student had done. That would be plagiarism. Cute Grad Student had whispered suggestive sentences into her ear as she’d sat on his lap and typed the words herself. Very totally wrote the paper herself. She had a broken fingernail from tapping the keys to prove it. (Should the nail be saved in a Baggie as forensic evidence in case she was ever called to a Disciplinary Committee plagiarism adjudication? No, no. Worrying is for schmucks, as Cat used to say. Usually Cat said this the day or two before rent was due, the day or two before Very knew she and Cat would be moving again.)
A-hem.
Bryan. Poor Bryan. Hung up on the wrong girl, and allergies that always announced his presence.
Sex—just that one time—had changed everything between them. Herewith, Very vowed to stay the course on her newfound path—strictly ma
king out and above-the-waist fondling à la Ghana and Tweedy Grad Student, until the time came when Very and her true love, El Virus, could be together.
“Very!” Bryan said, not bothering with the library-etiquette whisper. “I need to talk to you.” He looked up at the ceiling while he spoke, to give the vixen and her victim time to disentangle.
“Text me,” Very whispered in the grad student’s ear. She admired his lovely rear view as he disappeared into the library stacks. Another one bites the dust.
Very turned her attention to Bryan. “Do we not think your approach is somewhat stalker-worthy?”
She didn’t mean to be so cruel. But she wanted to go back to being friends with Bryan, and the brutal route seemed the optimal way to return him to the platonic-without-any-false-hopes friendship track. And the crueler Very cut him loose, the more appealing Lavinia could appear to him.
Bryan said, “I’m over you. Don’t flatter yourself.” When he was so cruel in return, he could turn tempting again. Careful, Very. “Not going to make that mistake again.”
Bryan slapped a copy of the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, down onto her cubicle desk. A headline on the bottom of page two read: “University Vows Crackdown on Freshman ‘Grid’ Crowd.”
“Uh-oh,” Very muttered.
The narcs were closing in. Very could feel it. What to do, what to do? Someone at her work-study job—former work-study job, the one she’d been fired from for using the office photocopy machine to make two hundred copies of The Grid’s old-school-style paper newsletter—could easily have tipped off the Spec. Why, oh why, hadn’t she replaced the toner cartridge herself, or cleared up the paper jam that finally killed the ancient machine?