by Andi Feron
John seemed insistent on living college life in his dorm room or at the pool table. No amount of prodding him with the possibility of agoraphobia creeping into his lifestyle would persuade him to alter his mind. He would relent upon my insistence but would appear afflicted the entire interval.
I once took a psychology class during my junior year in high school. I learned the disparity plaguing John and I—he suffered as an introvert due to my lack of empathy as a continual extrovert. Yet there was never anyone else I would rather have by my side than John Trammel.
Despite this, lately I had been more focused on Lucius, who was a junior I met in the astronomy club. On our fifth date, Lucius took me back to the campus planetarium. We were high above campus life, four stories in the air, in the astronomy club building. The roof retreated into the walls, making the swirls of galaxies and far-off worlds visible in the night sky.
He had directed the telescope to Saturn, the particles of its rings were a magnificence that I had never experienced before. I envisioned the ice that made Saturn’s rings had found itself intertwined in Lucius’ frosty hair. They seemed one and the same.
The blue color of his eyes was the one thing that put me at the greatest of ease. His eyes stood out as his first noticeable feature due to the fact that the shade made it impossible to avoid them. They were blue like the Caribbean Sea.
This made us alike, as the bane of my existence was the deep purple eyes that I possessed since birth. I endlessly resented the questions regarding the legitimacy of my eyes. I was certain that Lucius probably felt the same.
He motioned for me to join him on the makeshift bed that he had created from pillows and blankets. We curled up to watch the constellations forge their nightly journey. The air was crisp, and the blankets added enough of a layer to fend off the chilly breeze. I laid next to Lucius and placed my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around me, reaching my hip.
He leaned his face down toward mine. “Althea, kiss me.”
His words captivated me. I kissed him, and I had never felt a kiss so pleasurable in my life—not that I possessed much experience, as I had only been kissed twice before. My first was when I was twelve, and the other was on my way home from prom when I was fourteen. Lucius and I laid back, exhausted from the ferocity of our make out session. We both seemed content with that being the furthest it went. I fell asleep, feeling like his kisses were almost a sedative.
The next morning, Lucius grabbed a portable grill that he kept in a cupboard. He pulled bacon and eggs from a fridge and cooked them on the griddle. He poured two glasses of orange juice and handed one to me.
After we ate, Lucius brought the roof back across the building. We packed our stuff up, ready to leave for classes. I wasn’t exceptionally short at five foot six but Lucius’ five foot eleven form peered over me as I tiptoed up to give him one last kiss. The reminiscence of the pleasure carried me to my first class, Anthropology 101, the one class I shared with John.
“What is it?” John asked as I met him at our shared table.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re grinning. Almost goofy like.”
“I’m not allowed to be happy about anthropology?”
“People who died a long time ago? It would make sense you would even find them preferable to hang out with than me. But no, this is something more. Lucius?”
“Maybe.”
Our professor began going over the quiz from the last session. I wasn’t quite ready to share with John the proficiency of Lucius’ kissing. I needed to find Seraphine. I sent her a quick text to meet me at noon. John left class ten minutes early. He had never left class early before. I would catch him later to ensure he was fine. Part of me thought he was upset because our skylights mission had been scrubbed when I started dating Lucius. John seemed fixated on them being more, but I had quickly lost interest in the entire thing.
Seraphine was practical and would give me a clear idea of how fast I should pursue things with Lucius. John seemed more interested in protecting me from the damage a guy might do to me mentally and physically. Boyfriend conversation with him usually needed to be filled with words of caution.
I admired Seraphine extensively. She exuded confidence wherever she went. Her red hair made her easy to spot in a crowd, but it was her presence that demanded she be heard. We bumped into each other on our first day on campus. I had been caught up with my head in my class schedule and walked right into her.
Luckily she was gracious about the coffee that had splattered across her white overcoat. Instead of getting angry and demanding penance, she had offered me a firm handshake and invitation to better-contained drinks. We had only known each other for the few weeks since then, but I felt like we were old friends.
The campus café had become our spot to chat about the gossip of campus and was the chosen location for our meeting about Lucius. We sat in a booth in the corner where I felt we would have optimal privacy.
Seraphine sipped her tea. “I wouldn’t jump into anything serious. I mean, it’s your freshman year. You get to test boundaries and push limits, but don’t let him rush you into anything.”
“There’s something different about him. When we kiss, I feel it everywhere.”
“Those seniors are usually pretty good kissers. They have a lot of experience, which also makes it easier for them to manipulate you.” Seraphine sounded more serious than I had anticipated she would.
I tried to conceal the frown forming on my face by taking another gulp from my smoothie. “No, it’s more than that. I can’t explain it. I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s like I feel captivated with everything Lucius says to me.”
Seraphine frowned. “Only do what you enjoy, not what you feel obligated to. You are young, and it’s the exact time not to lock yourself into anything.”
“I think I will see how it goes. Right now I’m just enjoying the planetarium with him.”
“Yes, definitely sounds like you are.” A smile curled on her perfectly painted red lips. We deposited our drinks in the trash. She continued, “Let me know how things go. I don’t mind juicy details.”
She headed out the door and I walked to my next class which was Biology. The professor droned on about invertebrate life phases. I pulled out my phone and pretended to type lecture notes. I began to text John.
Stranger, your avoidance of my lifestyle must cease tonight while we check out the new club on Slater Avenue.
My phone lit up, but unexpectedly it was a call from Talon. I excused myself to the hall.
“Hey sis, I wanted to let you know I can’t come visit this weekend. I know it’s been a few weeks now, but I promise to make it back soon. Wanted to know if there’s anything new?”
“Nope, not really. I had a smoothie with a friend. You haven’t met her yet, but I’ll introduce you next time you are down.”
“Alright. If anything changes, you have my number. Love you, Allie.”
“Love you too.”
I avoided telling him about Lucius because I thought the news might make him cancel whatever was impeding his weekend visits. I began to wonder if I would ever be able to tell Talon about how my life really was. I would possibly be married for several years with a couple of kids before I told him I was in a serious relationship. Talon was an amazing brother, but he often treated me as though I were made of glass. I was tougher than he gave me credit for and his discouragement of me living the way I wanted seemed too much at times.
Any talk about college was something he avoided with me for a long time. Finally, he decided to give in to my pleading for a college road trip. After that trip, college was something he thought was a good idea for me. He took me up two weeks early and told me not to leave the college town without letting him know.
He started visiting every weekend and calling me a few times a week. The calls were always under five minutes and they sounded a bit off, like there was a distortion preventing clarity. If I wanted to give too many details, I would hav
e to wait for our weekend visits. He’d been missing visits for the last few weeks, which I didn’t mind. It meant I could avoid the Lucius conversation with him a little longer.
The class ended, and John still hadn’t texted me back. I would have to track him down. I checked the gaming lounge where he had been intent on raising his pool game using geometric angles. He read the concept in a book for his physics class and decided it would be good to put into practice.
I asked Leona if she’d seen him. Leona had told me she liked John a lot. I tried to convince him to take her downtown, but he felt she wasn’t his type. I didn’t know what his type was. He casually dated throughout high school and had a short relationship with a girl named Mary Ellen, who was three grades ahead of us. Every time I tried to set him up on a date, he would immediately make up excuses.
“It’s just coffee, Trammel,” I would say to him.
“Yeah, but coffee leads to other things I’m not interested in.”
I would shake my head. “Yeah, like love and happiness.”
We had this conversation repeated several times, but it never seemed to persuade him. Now we were in college and not much had changed. Leona hadn’t seen John since a couple days ago. With a disappointed glance directed toward the red pool tabletop, she said that he appeared distracted and didn’t talk to her too much.
I would have to have a talk about Leona with John again. One date to at least give it a shot, and maybe he could get out of his shell a little bit. Part of me selfishly wanted to double date with John. What could be better than time with my best friend and my boyfriend? I was running out of places to locate John. I checked his dorm twice, and according to his roommate Lance he was out all day. I gave up and called it a night.
A couple days passed with no text from him, and I couldn’t find him anywhere. My best friend had vanished without a trace and that raised my anxiety. Forget texting, I would give him a call for the first time in months. Three rings and I began to believe he wouldn’t pick up. The sound of his voice brought relief.
“You okay, Allie?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. Why would you ask me that?”
“You’re calling me. You never call me. Texting is kind of our thing,” John said.
“I think it’s the thing of our generation. Plus, you aren’t answering my texts, which has me worried. I haven’t been able to find you anywhere, and you left class so quickly the other day that I wondered what was up.”
“I’m at the molecular biology lab. You know those lights we saw? They hit that tree. I decided I should go find the tree and study the bark. I’m gathering the equipment I’ll need. After looking through the lab, I think I will bring the sample back here. Better microscopes than my portable one.”
“So you haven’t gone yet? Want some company?”
There was a pause before he said, “I figured you’d be off to some romantic encounter with pretty boy ice hair.”
“Umm… yeah, no, I wanted to talk to you. And what better way for some best friend bonding than trudging into the swampy woods again to find a random tree in a space containing thousands?”
“Alright, meet me at the science trails.”
We hung up and I walked to the trails. I spotted John walking up the path. “Should we leave bread crumbs?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you think is best.”
“Is something going on that I’m unaware of? Someone stomp on your airplane models?”
John turned away from me. “Let’s get going so we can get back before night. I have flashlights, but I’d prefer not to use them. That gives us a couple hours to find the tree.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m not going until you tell me what’s going on. I know you better than anyone, and something is up.”
“You don’t have to come. I can do this alone, as I have been doing with this entire investigation.”
“I didn’t know this investigation was obligatory. I figured out a long time ago it was the Northern Lights or government experimentation, then I went on with life.”
John started down the trail and, not willing to walk away from the argument, I followed him. We trudged for a good twenty minutes in silence. I was unsure of the trail John was hiking, but I followed every twist and turn. We were now immersed in the woods, surrounded by towering pine trees. They scaled twenty feet or more into the sky, and the ground was getting muddier.
I started to become aggravated with our journey and said, “Why don’t we head back? We’re never going to find this tree. You don’t even know how to find it again. We didn’t keep track of where we were, and it took us a couple hours to find the main road.”
“Go make out with your lover boy some more!” he snapped.
“Excuse me?! Why would you say that?!”
John stopped walking for a second, then kept going. “I saw you at the planetarium. I was stopping by to see if I could find out more about the astronomy club and I saw the roof was open. I went up to the top floor and saw you and Lucius tongue-locked under a blanket. Three weeks, Allie. You’ve known him for three weeks, and you’re willing to give it up.”
“What are you implying? You spied on me and think you have the right to call me easy?”
“I didn’t call you easy. I’m only saying, don’t you think you should know Lucius better before sleeping with him?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation. And we didn’t sleep together, only kissed. Whatever. Find the damn tree on your own. I’m going back.” I looked around and couldn’t locate a trail. We had been trudging so quickly that I was unsure of the way back. I pulled my phone from my backpack and opened my GPS app. No signal but out of pride, I chose the opposite direction as John and began walking.
“Allie, wait! Not that way!”
John’s warning arrived too late as I fell flat on my face into a swampy mess of mush. The slosh of slimy muck seemed to creep into every cranny of my body. Even my nostrils filled with mire, and I found it hard to push myself free. Brilliant, the end of Althea Cooper: death by mud. What a lame obituary I created for myself.
Arms pulled me out of the mud and a cloth rubbed across my face as John quickly freed my nose and mouth. Mud caked any exposed skin, and I envisioned the sort of dubious swamp monster I now resembled.
“Allie, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have gotten upset. You okay?”
I nodded and scanned the ground for my phone. John attempted to call it, but it went to voicemail despite its full battery. Finally, after feeling the ground, I discovered my phone thoroughly waterlogged, in a large mud puddle. I stood up and started walking. It took me a bit of redirecting, but I found the main trail that led back to campus.
Chapter Three
John-October 23, 2012
I was a complete idiot. I followed Allie back to her dorm, where she was met with intense stares and wide-eyed glances. The glazed wave of her dark brown hair was straightened and intertwined with small branches and mud. Had she been speaking to me, I would have cracked a joke about mud being good for the complexion. Allie slammed her door, and I sat waiting for her.
A few minutes later she stormed off to the shower room. Before disappearing, she shot me a look that I knew meant to give her space. I’d seen the look before but it was always directed at Talon. Unlike he seemed to, I understood the message more clearly than I wanted to. I couldn’t stand still. Allie and I didn’t fight.
The closest we had ever come was in the fourth grade when I told her I wanted to forgo the team science projects for the first year since first grade. I loved time with Allie, but I worked better alone. She had stayed annoyed with me for a couple of days until she realized she could do something much more interesting than prediction techniques of weather patterns.
Allie didn’t have a phone now, and part of me wondered if she’d get an entirely different number and never tell me. Her being mad at me sat in the pit of my stomach like a large boulder.
I extensively despised Lucius for taking Allie from me most of t
he time. My mind couldn’t handle what I’d seen: the two of them under the blanket kissing, and her laying on top of him. All of it simmered at the surface until it exploded at the first opportunity I had to ignite it in her face. I had known the explosion was coming, and that I was out of line.
I headed back to my dorm but slept poorly. My mind pestered me on a good day, but with Allie pissed, it wouldn’t let up for me to breathe. I wasn’t sure if I should go to anthropology class or instead let her have another day to cool down and hopefully forgive me. I tried her number and it was still dead. I decided to go play pool. Today was Leona’s day off, making it a good day to go.
Leona had asked me to coffee a couple times and would watch me play pool. I felt bad turning her down every time, but it would be pointless to pretend. Leona was nice, but she wasn’t Allie. An hour into pool, Gabriel joined me.
“So, everyone has heard about the creature from the Blue Lagoon.” Gabriel laughed a bit as he grabbed his cue.
“Nice. I’m sure Allie is loving that reference.”
“People are saying you were trailing behind her a bit disoriented. What was that about? In fact, what was all of it about?”
I told him everything, careful to avoid any mention of my feelings for Allie. Not only would analyzing my feelings not be manly enough, but I hoped I hid them well.
Gabriel assured me I’d failed. “Why not just tell her the real issue is you wished you were the one under the blanket with her?”
I glanced up from calculating the proper trajectory of my next move. “No, I mean she’s my best friend. We aren’t like…” I stuttered out my words, desperately trying to detract from the truth buried in his statement.
“I have known you, what, two to three months now? I knew the moment I saw you watch Allie unpack everything from her car that you were smitten. The only question I had was why you hadn’t nailed that yet.”