by Lola West
I had one too, but since Lua, I couldn’t stand having him in my space. Every time he appeared, I’d send him off to clean my room or unpack something because I knew she’d hate seeing him with me. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I don’t know; I just knew she’d hate the idea of someone having to be my silent slave in order to earn the right to be my friend. I could hear her in my head every time I saw him, so I just made sure I hardly saw him. He’d show up and immediately, I’d say something like, “I wish someone would do my laundry no matter how long it takes.” And then he’d be gone for a couple of hours. And I’d be left to feel guilty that he was doing shit for me because I knew Lua wouldn’t like that either. It was not a win-win. About an hour before I joined Pete, Conner, and Katie in the DFP, I actually said, “I wish my silent service pledge would fuck off for the day and not tell a fucking soul that I instructed him to do so.” I thought that would give me an afternoon free of the little Lua voice in my head, but Conner and Pete’s silent service pledges were fucking with me just as bad.
My ever-missing silent service pledge was one of the things that tipped off Katie to my malaise. She quickly noticed that my silent service pledge was almost never around. I think he was assigned to me for less than forty-eight hours, when I found myself standing next to her while the guys were watching a football game, and without looking at me, she said, “Where’s Matt?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “Matt?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the screen.
“Your slave pledge. Matt Dickerson.”
“That’s his last name? Dickerson? That dude’s fucked.” I still didn’t look at her because I immediately recognized that she was a hound dog, sniffing around looking for clues.
She took a swig of a beer she was holding, and then said, “So, where is he?”
“Unpacking my room or doing my laundry or some shit.”
She knew something was up, but she didn’t know what. For a split second she turned to face me; her tone was angry, but she didn’t raise her voice. “Really? You’re not sure what he’s doing? Come on.” She took another swig of her beer and then shook her head and huffed, “Not buying it.”
I hated to upset her but the unwritten rules in our friendships weren’t honesty, compassion, or kindness. It was fucking circumstance and a twisted sense of loyalty. That meant keeping each other’s secrets, understanding each other’s vices, and backing off when you weren’t welcome. Period. We would cover up each other’s crimes, but we weren’t going to cry on each other’s shoulders. We were liars, cheats, and thieves. We were the children of those that stole from the poor to give to the rich. If you’re not from our world, it’s hard to understand because I would run into a burning building if Pete or Katie asked me to. I would die for them, but we could never be a team.
We were a pack of rabid animals; if one of us got too heavy to carry or too sick to go on, well then, we’d leave that fucker behind because that’s what animals do. They survive. That’s why in every media clip of Lua, Joe was in the frame, and when the media was tearing me apart, my friends were nowhere to be seen. Don’t get me wrong, I understood. I wasn’t angry that they didn’t come to my defense. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about me. They cared, just not enough to put themselves smack-dab in the center of a scandal. I wouldn’t have shown up for them either. It was every man for himself or herself. We didn’t have room for actual loyalty. We didn’t even believe it existed. This was as close as we could get. And that was the thing, I didn’t have to give Katie anything. I didn’t have an obligation to share my fragile parts or my sorrows with her. I didn’t owe her an explanation or an ounce of justification, and she’d have to swallow it because there were lots of things she didn’t want me to know, and I didn’t pry.
So, I said nothing, just let the emptiness float between us.
She looked back at the television. “Tomorrow, why don’t you send him to clean my room. In fact, if you want, he can clean all the rooms in my fucking sorority house. That ought to keep him out of your hair for another day or two.”
Since then, she’d been pretty cold around me, which was irritating, but not nearly as irritating as staring at me all furrowed brow. For a while I tried not to look at her, and then I was saved by the alarm going off on my phone telling me to go to my intro meeting for my community service assignment. Normally, I’d have been irritated that I had to go find this place and do whatever work they had me doing but a justifiable reason to escape Katie’s glare felt like a godsend.
I silenced the alarm and then stood up. “Well, community service calls.”
Without taking his eyes off the screen, Conner said, “That’s some stupid shit, dude. But if it teaches you not to partake in strange boy’s drinks, then I’m all for it, brother.” My jaw tightened at his comment. Katie saw. Since we arrived on campus a couple days ago, all the brothers had been making roofie jokes about me getting doped. Conner in particular thought it was hilarious. It never occurred to him or any of them that getting doped felt pretty fucking violating, and comparing my experience to getting raped was not only totally fucked up but also uncomfortable for me. And yet they kept doing it, because they didn’t know I didn’t like it because I didn’t want to seem like a pussy, so I just laughed along or just ate it. I told myself that even though that shit was creepy, and the fallout was a nightmare, it gave me one day with Lua, and that was worth it.
Katie turned her stink eye on Conner. “You’re an asshole.” Conner just laughed. Pete laughed with him. She stood. “Okay, that’s enough macho, chauvinist man cave time for me today. I’ll walk with you, Drew.”
Yay. I smiled and nodded. What else was I going to do?
Katie bent, grabbed her purse, and hung it on her shoulder. She was wearing white shorts and a navy-blue top, and she looked more like she was going boating than going to class. Did you ever notice how many preppy girls look ready to go boating at a moment’s notice? She gave Pete a lightning-quick, very chaste kiss on the cheek and scurried ahead of me, so that I was privy to her skinny little butt bouncing as she scooted up the stairs in front of me.
Behind us, Conner hollered, “Where’s my kiss, Katie-kins?”
She didn’t scream it back at him, but I heard her say, “Over my dead body, asshole.”
Once we were outside Katie paused to put on a pair of gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses and then looped her arm through mine so we were walking with our elbows linked. I wasn’t expecting her to touch me. She wasn’t a super touchy-feely kind of girl; in fact, beyond basic handshakes and euro cheek kisses, the only person Katie regularly touches is Pete, and only those chaste goodbye kisses. I get the occasional back-patting hug or a linked arm but rarely.
“You mind?” she asked, signaling to our linked arms by lifting hers a touch.
“No.” We strolled in the direction of my community service assignment.
Kate had a way of drifting. One minute she’s all business, all sergeant, and the next minute she was sappy, nostalgic, and wistful, all drama queen. So, it didn't surprise me when she said, “Feels all kinds of Victorian, walking arm in arm on a late afternoon stroll, very Bronte or Austen or something.”
It didn’t feel that way to me, too many elements off or missing, like for starters, I was severely underdressed for that scenario. What self-respecting Victorian gentleman would wear anything less than a three-piece suit, and I also felt that in all of Bronte and Austen’s novels, strolling was something done with potential lovers. Kate and I were not that. We’d never been that; sometimes I thought maybe Pete, but never me. Katie and I were lifetime conspirators; that’s all. So, yeah, I was thinking no in regard to the Bronte/Austen-themed stroll question, but since Kate seemed to be attempting to silence the ugly between us, I squelched my dickish desire to ridicule her more dramatic self and nodded.
“Particularly, because my intentions for this walk are clearly deeper than strolling with an old friend.”
So, fucking affected, right? Like, just say w
hat you mean. What’s with all the fucking buildup. I stopped, dropped her arm, and pushed my hands through my hair, annoyed. “Jesus, Kate. Let it be. I don’t fucking ask you to dredge up your shit.”
She took my arm again and tugged me forward, reinstating the strolling. When she spoke, she was still soft but with more realism. “I just want you to know that I get it.”
“Get what?”
She looked straight ahead while she spoke. “I saw it on your face when Conner made that stupid fucking comment. He’s such an asshole.” The shift from melancholy starlet to authoritative debutant was complete, her tone prim, tight, and unapologetic. “I want you to know that I get that what happened to you this summer was fucked up. We should have been there. We should have defended you. We should have at least asked you if you were okay. I should have. I should have asked you if you were okay.” I felt hollow at her words. No one asked me if I was okay, ever. She continued. “I get that it changed you, Drew. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you. All those years of us talking about not being them, not being like them, and then there you were having to be his lackey this summer, having to be one of them.”
I was one of them. I knew I was, but listening to Kate try to console me, albeit in a weird, waspy, I’m-going-to-delve-pretty-fucking-deep-into-your-psyche-without-making-eye-contact kind of way, it occurred to me that I didn’t feel the things that I could have felt over the summer because of Lua. If you knew me and you saw me on the news, then you would have thought that I was my father’s lackey, that I was motivated by his needs. But I wasn’t. I was acting of my own accord. Okay, maybe in the beginning I was doing his bidding, but ultimately, I acted to protect her, which was what I wanted. I created the plan and executed it. I had control and sure, I was a product of my upbringing, manipulative and full of spin, but not for him, not for the senator. I acted that way for Lua, and I felt no shame about that.
I smiled. It was nice to have Kate worry about me in her weird, contained way. I unlooped my arm from hers and draped it around her shoulders instead, pulling her to me in a ‘you’re a good kid’ kind of squeeze. I didn’t need to say much, just, “Thank you.” She was a little stiff beside me, because she was an anxious weirdo, but I pretended not to notice.
Just a few steps from the door, she said, “Drew?”
“Yep.”
“Can we count on each other?” It was a tiny question with no context, and she said it so softly that I almost didn’t hear her. It startled me a bit and I wasn’t quick to answer, so she started to qualify, “Like real friends. I need to know I have a real friend. That you wouldn’t let me weather a storm like that alone. God, I’m so sorry.” When she stopped talking, she brought her hand up to cover her mouth like she was trying to stop herself from saying more. I’d never seen her look so shattered. It was only a flash, but it was fucking weird. Looking at her, all I could hear in my head was Lua telling me that my perspective about my path was bullshit, that I could choose what I wanted. And much to my surprise, I wanted to be there for Katie; I wanted to be a better friend, like Lua and Joe.
“Yes.” Her eyes popped up, examining me. She was looking for spin. “I’m not placating you, Katie. If you need me, I’ll be here. I can’t promise that I’m going to be any good at this, but if you want someone to count on, I can be that for you.”
Katie exhaled a puff of air, huffing out stress. She didn't smile, but her shoulders relaxed, and she quipped, “Okie dokie, enough of that melodramatic emotional stuff for one day. You’ve got places to be, kiddo.” I pulled the door open, and she skipped through it. She was flippant as usual but so much lighter than she’d been a few minutes ago. I wondered what that was all about. Why did Katie need a solid friendship? And why me and not Pete? Or maybe she already had this conversation with Pete. Those were the thoughts bouncing around in my head when I heard Katie exclaim, “Oh my goodness.”
I was a step behind her, deep in thought, so I wasn’t paying attention to much around me. In the split second before I looked up, I thought about making a reference to our earlier Victorian conversation because who in the modern age uses the exclamation ‘oh my goodness.’ That made me think of Lua using ‘bed’ as a verb, and I smiled to myself. It occurred to me that maybe it would be good to tell someone all of that, to tell Katie about Lua, now that we were going to count on each other. And then my eyes landed on what had caused Katie to exclaim. Lua.
Lua, Lua, Lua.
22
Lua
Neither one of us said anything. We just stared at each other. It wasn’t like the death stare in the hotel in New York, more of a completely conspicuous cycle of, oh shit, I’m looking, look away, looking away, looking away, oh shit, I’m looking again, look away and so on. At least, that’s what I was doing. Drew’s pattern was a little more full-on creeper stare than look away, but somehow, he came off as more engaged in his surroundings, while I was struck dumb by his presence.
He arrived with a strawberry-blond, a tiny little waif of a woman. She was super preppy and screamed elite, like she would smell of money. She knew who I was right away.
“Oh my goodness,” she said for the second time, following it with my name, “Lua Steinbeck, as I live and breathe.”
Who did she think she was, Scarlett O’Hara? I was instantly irritated by her, but I was too thrown off by Drew’s gaze to engage with her in any way. Seeing him unsettled my stomach and I broke out in a sweat. I hadn’t forgotten that he was pretty, but man, he was pretty. He was wearing worn jeans and a gray t-shirt that hugged him in all the right ways. His hair was messy as usual. Despite all the sorrow and anger I felt, I wanted to run my hands through it. I wanted to jump over the desk and leap into his arms. I didn’t though. I just kept glancing, taking in all the pretty. He needed to shave. His mouth was lax, so to a layman he was showing no particular response to the moment at hand, but his eyes were smiling. Playful Drew was in there and seeing my face made him genuinely happy. That made me want to smile back, but I didn’t do that either. Instead, I tried to scowl and look surly. There was also something about his gaze that looked worn, like he was tired, hungover, or suffering from minor allergies. I’d have bet my tuition that the look had nothing to do with pollen. He wasn’t taking good care of himself, and I wanted to yell at him for it because he still mattered, and then I wanted to yell at myself for allowing him to matter.
I was sitting at one of the two computers that were located at S.A.F.E.’s welcome desk, and Raina was standing behind me, one hand on the back of my chair. She had been showing me how to fill out a call record sheet when they walked in.
Ignoring the waif’s comment, Raina addressed Drew. “Payback’s a bitch, huh, Scott, or would you rather I called you junior senator or maybe sir?” Her voice was gleeful not cruel, but it was clearly a gibe, one I wasn’t totally in on. Drew flinched when she mentioned the senator. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I started thinking that Raina knew who he was, and she sounded like she was expecting him. That made me more than uncomfortable. I started bouncing my knees below the desk, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to know why Drew was standing in front of me.
“Drew will be fine, thanks.” He was still looking at me.
Raina noticed the eye contact and asked, “Do you two know each other?”
Drew nodded, but the waif answered for him, “Of course they do. Don’t you watch the news? You are in the presence of this past summer’s most salacious news cycle. Lua Steinbeck and Drew Scott.”
It was strange; somehow, she was condescending without being a jerk. It was something about the tone of her voice; it was sweet and reserved, but steady and strong, like she cared for you and knew all the right answers but she wasn’t going to give them to you unless you asked nicely, saying please and thank you and remembering to keep your elbows off the table.
She crossed toward me. “Lua, lovely to meet you. I’m Kate, Katie Sullivan, Drew’s friend since grade school.” I was surprised that she wasn’t a date, but I was
more surprised to remember that I didn’t know much about Drew. When I met him, I felt like he was pretty friendless, like he had no one to count on, but this waif girl, waif-Katie, was a friend for years. It occurred to me that he might be more alone in his head than in reality.
Waif-Katie reached her dainty little perfectly manicured hand out in introduction. Her grip was soft, not sturdy like mine, and I got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t as comfortable as she appeared. I glanced at Drew, wondering if she knew the truth, that he and I were more than a news cycle–I wasn’t so sure what we were, but it was definitely more than a news cycle. Like he knew what I was thinking, he gave a little almost indiscernible shake of his head, signaling that waif-Katie was utterly unaware that if Drew and I had to pick a Facebook status, it would be something way beyond “it’s complicated.”
Raina watched the exchange between us and then started laughing, but not like, ha-ha; this is hilarious laughing, more like insane cackling. Then she said, “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that this was happening. It’s so spectacular.” She was full-on snarky manic joy, glowing with a mischievous desire to watch the drama unfold.
Releasing waif-Katie’s hand, I asked, “What is?”
Trying to maintain her composure, Raina looked at me and explained, “Drew is mandated to S.A.F.E. for the semester.”
I swallowed. That did not sound good. In fact, it was literally terrifying. My stomach rolled with anxiety. I hoped I maintained my outward dignity, but I wasn’t political royalty, trained in the art of social manipulation like others in the room, so it was absolutely possible that the internal meltdown taking place was readily apparent in my facial expressions. I turned to Drew, thinking he would explain further, but he still said nothing.