He blinked at me, as though wondering what any of this had to do with him. Finally he asked, “What hurts?”
I didn’t understand the question until he stepped forward and put his hand on my forehead. His hand was cool, strangely dry.
“Your head?” His hand moved to my stomach, and my body went rigid. “How about here?”
“Cramps,” I almost whispered.
His hand moved south, right above my pelvic bone. “Here?”
Everyone would be home soon. My head felt thick with panic, my groin fluttering madly beneath his unmoving hand.
“Can I come inside?” he asked, just like last time.
“Okay.” It came out a squeak. He retracted his hand, and I reminded myself to breathe. I wiped my hands on my jeans, fiddled with a button on my shirt. I said it again, steadier. “Okay.”
He let himself inside. He moved right past the kitchen, right for the stairs. I opened my mouth to protest, to forbid him, but instead I followed. I was letting him do this because the other apprentices might return soon, and he couldn’t be seen in the kitchen, I decided. I was letting him do this because it would be rude not to let him stay, just for a little bit.
Upstairs, Kip walked a slow circle around my room, scanning the titles in my bookshelf, glancing furtively at the papers on my desk, touching the small ballerina figurine on my bureau from my recently deceased Great Aunt Betty, who didn’t know me well enough to not give me a ballerina figurine. I watched him nervously, ready to defend or explain anything that might be construed as weird. “Neat,” he said.
“Thank you.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant in the sense of coolness or cleanliness. I stood watching him, unsure of myself in my own bedroom. Having him there was like seeing a teacher in the grocery store—no, like a celebrity step out of the TV screen.
“This isn’t what I expected.” He set the figurine down and looked at me.
“My room?”
“Yeah.”
“What had you expected?” The flirtation was back; it was unimaginable that he had thought anything of me.
“I don’t know. It’s just … plain.”
“Oh.”
“Not in a bad way,” Kip said quickly, sensing my disappointment. He was still across the room; we faced off like sparring partners. “It just doesn’t seem like you.”
I had no idea what a room that seemed like me would look like. I didn’t have a favorite movie or band, nothing I felt compelled to display on a poster. There was no one color I loved; the purple-and-pink-striped reversible bedspread my mom had purchased for me because it was on sale, the plain white walls were as bare as they had been when I moved in. I didn’t have photos. My bedroom, just like my childhood bedroom, was nothing like my sister Joni’s: twinkle lights strung from the ceiling, records hung on the wall, every inch of blank space colored with the essence of Joni.
“Is this where she slept?” I asked it on a whim, playing at casual. Truth was I’d been thinking about her a lot: the other apprentice, the one Kip had so offhandedly mentioned the first night we spoke.
Kip didn’t follow the way I thought he might. “Who?”
“The girl. The other apprentice you used to hang out with be…” I let the explanation trail off. It was too soon to say, before me.
“Oh. Kaya.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember her name.”
He laughed. He was at my window, flicking the blinds open and closed. “Relax. She was whatever. I haven’t talked to her in forever.”
I wasn’t sure how long forever was to him, or what whatever was to him. I wasn’t sure why I felt suddenly angry, almost violently so, towards a girl who’d done nothing to me.
“Hey, Imogene?”
I felt a rush of warmth at the sound of my name from his mouth.
“There is a reason I’m here.”
“Okay.” I watched him shift from foot to foot, unnerved by his nervousness. The Kip I knew—in my mind, at least—was never nervous.
“Can I do something?” He snapped the blinds closed and released the cord, a decision.
I imagined my heart pounding madly out of my chest and through my T-shirt like a cartoon character’s would. I knew exactly what would happen. I’d always known—from the moment I saw him on my front step, before that even—what would happen. “Sure.”
He crossed the room towards me, licking his lips in a way that seemed more like a nervous tic than a threat. He reached out and put his hands on my hips, preparation for a slow dance. He leaned in and put his mouth to mine.
No relationships outside that of student and apprentice.
No, I thought. No, no, no. But still I allowed his wet tongue to slip between my lips, my mouth to open and let him in.
He was Joni’s age. He was the age of my baby sister. But thinking back to the summer before—to her soft womanly curves and practiced flirtation—my sister was not that young anymore.
* * *
I walked in on her once, Joni, with B.K. the rock-climbing instructor. It was a week before we would leave for New York—me for Vandenberg and her for freshman year at Hunter—and I’d gone into her room without knocking, looking for a book of mine that I’d lent to her but I’m sure she never read. They were in bed, Joni’s knees spread, B.K.’s orange shag of hair resting on her navel, slurps and grunts and other inhuman sounds that couldn’t possibly belong to them (were these sounds borrowed? Imitated? Innate?) somehow brought to existence with their mouths. I’d never seen pornography, had never watched two people engaged in such erotic intimacy. I’d never once considered my sister—though she’d had boyfriends before—as sexual. I’d stared before silently shutting the door. I’d never be able to forget the sounds I heard my sister make, another damning secret for me to keep.
With Zeke Maloney, I was silent. With Zeke Maloney, I found myself looking at his roommate’s posters on the wall or the crumbled pile of socks in his closet or the distant lights winking outside his window and sometimes forgetting there was a body on top of mine.
* * *
Kip and I had been kissing for what felt like hours but was probably minutes when the front door opened. I’d slipped into a strange floating place—a place where walls surged and shuddered and the floor shifted up and down, a place where it didn’t seem odd to hold someone you didn’t know and kiss them (Who was this person? When did he get there?) as long as it felt good—but the familiar sound jolted me into disquieting consciousness.
“Whoops!” I pulled away and stumbled backwards onto my bed. Kip sat down next to me, taking it as invitation, and reached for my face. I let him plant two more kisses on my lips before I pulled away again.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Someone’s back.”
We sat quietly, listening. A cabinet opened and closed in the kitchen. A plate clattered into the sink. Then I heard the click of heels approaching the stairs.
“Chapin,” I whispered.
“Is that the really skinny one with the—” He gestured to the top of his head, making a circle with his hands, “—hair thing?”
I nodded. I felt pleased that we apprentices were known by the boys, identifiable like celebrities, as well as by the fact that Kip’s description of Chapin was less than erotic. Perhaps Chapin was not as beautiful as I thought she was, or rather, as I thought others thought she was.
The heels clicked up the stairs. I turned to look at Kip to find that he was already looking at me. We stared at each other, our faces so close I could see every eyelash and every dark scruffy hair above his upper lip. I thought suddenly of the angry red blemish that had appeared on my chin the night before—the one that I’d carefully concealed with foundation and a makeup brush hours before that had no doubt become smudged and exposed with all the kissing—and put my fingers to my bottom lip. His hand rested on my hip, and he drummed his fingers slowly.
Chapin’s footsteps reached the top of the stairs. “What should I do?” I asked, not sure why I thought Kip would
have the answer but desperate enough to ask. I could think of nothing but that hand.
He grinned, amused. “What can you do?”
Her bedroom door opened and closed.
“Should you leave?” I was asking questions I knew the answer to, but didn’t want to answer myself. I was stalling because Adam Kipling sat on my bed with his hand on my hip.
He raised a brow. “Should I?”
“Should you?” I giggled.
“But should I?”
“I don’t know, should you?”
Music played through the wall. Kip pulled me back on the bed, back into the strange floating place, and we continued kissing, his tongue pushing once more into my mouth, his hands in my hair then down my arms then around my back. Kissing! I’d never noticed how odd it was, had never been so conscious of it before—the slurping–sucking exchange between two eager mouths wanting to feel something and say nothing.
A toilet flushed, and I shot up, reawakened. The sink turned on and off, and then Chapin padded past my room on the way back to her own. Kip tried to pull me back down and I flinched, surprising us both.
“What’s—?”
My stomach churned. I imagined the doorknob turning, the other apprentices’ horrified faces waiting on the other side. What was I doing? What the fuck was I doing? “You need to go.”
“She can’t hear us.” Kip tugged lightly on my arm.
“No, Adam. You have to go.”
He dropped my arm, his brows creased in confusion and—was that hurt?
I tried to smile, tried to soften the blow, but my stomach was twisting itself into queasy knots, the stomachache I’d felt coming on earlier finally materializing. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool.” Kip had recovered, smiling easily back. Then, again, almost to himself, “It’s cool.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. I felt fresh off a spinning ride at the fair, my head a pinwheel, my feet struggling to plant themselves in a straight line on the ground.
He reached out to touch my arm and then stopped, sticking the hand into his pocket instead. He got up and started towards the door.
“Just be sure to be—”
“Quiet. Yeah. I will be.”
We smiled at each other, willing the discomfort to pass.
“So long,” he said.
“So long.”
He crept down the stairs and out the door, so stealthily I wouldn’t have heard him if I hadn’t been listening for it, and then I crawled under my sheets. Dizziness overwhelmed me. I lay there for only a few minutes before I had to sit up and reach for my trashcan, where I retched until I shook from the effort.
* * *
I didn’t leave my bed for three days. I woke up later that evening dozy and disoriented, the room nearly dark and my head so thick and heavy I could barely lift it off my pillow. When I didn’t come to dinner, ReeAnn brought me two slices of toast and a banana, which sat untouched on my nightstand until the toast crumbled and the banana browned. I emailed Dale and Coach Larry the next morning to let them know I wouldn’t be in class or at practice, a task that exhausted me into another daylong slumber. I slept off and on for the rest of the day, getting up only once to pee and stumbling down the hall clutching the wall as though attacked by a spell of vertigo. Another time I woke, I conducted an online search for “Kaya apprentice Vandenberg” to no results, and I wondered, strangely, for the first time, whether Kaya ever even existed. The day slipped into the night, which slipped into the next day, and I slept the sleep of the dead, dreamless and undisturbed.
When I finally rose that third night, feeling drugged, feeling as though I’d stepped out of a time machine or a rocket ship, out of another world entirely, I was unsurprised yet still disappointed to find that the world had gone on without me. It was October. The girls were downstairs watching TV, laughing. The banana on my nightstand was soft and mushy and inedible.
I reached for my phone and checked my messages. Twelve new texts, all from the same familiar number. Without reading any, I deleted them one by one.
EIGHT
I kept up with my morning runs, even as the weather cooled and I was forced to bundle in extra layers before going out the door. The cold was coming on faster than any fall I could remember, quick and careless as disease, and I felt scared, though of what, I couldn’t say. I’d wear spandex leggings and thick socks and a yellow wool hat with a pom-pom on top, not caring all that much if I looked ridiculous. This was my favorite time of day on campus, when it was nearly empty, and I could get away with wearing just a little makeup. On the running trail, I encountered only a few professors and the rare student who was up at this hour, and we would nod to each other in early-morning-runner solidarity. The Running Club, I dubbed this group in my head. I wondered if the other runners recognized me from day to day, their fellow member, the girl with the yellow pom-pom hat. I liked to think that they did.
I still looked out for Kip, even though my perception of him had shifted slightly, and I didn’t think of him as an early-morning runner anymore. I just wanted to see him. More accurately, I wanted him to see me. A runner, an early bird. I wanted him to see different sides of me, to wonder what else I could be.
During my cool down, I always walked past Perkins Hall, the fourth-years’ dorm. I looked up to the window on the end of the third floor, a window I’d arbitrarily decided was his (and, as I’d later learn, wasn’t). I watched for a slit of light between the curtains, a flit of a shadow, a hint of life.
* * *
I met with Dale in his office for my midsemester evaluation that Friday. I thought it would just be the two of us until Ms. McNally-Barnes burst through the door a few minutes after me, combing through her hair with her fingers and apologizing for her tardiness. Dale and I had been discussing nice weather anticipated for this weekend, and I felt myself stiffen when she sat down beside me. It seemed now less like an evaluation and more like an intervention.
“So things seem to be going very well for you, Imogene,” said Dale, bobbling his head. “I can see you gaining confidence in the classroom. The boys really seem to be responding to you, too.”
I nodded, unsure whether “thank you” was in order.
“You need to work on projecting your voice at times, but the content of your lectures is always spot on. You’re always prepared for lessons, even when you’re under the weather.” He paused and leaned forward. “How are you feeling, by the way? You seem to be feeling much better.”
Ms. McNally-Barnes looked at me curiously.
Were they plotting together to catch me in my lie? Dale’s eyes were warm and concerned, without misgiving. I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “Yes, much better.” I paused and then added, “I think it was the flu. I hear it’s been going around. It’s that time of year, you know.”
Dale and Ms. McNally-Barnes nodded in assent.
“But I’m feeling much better.”
“Well, that’s good to hear!” Dale beamed at Ms. McNally-Barnes and me from across the desk. “Other than that, it seems this semester is going quite well.”
Ms. McNally-Barnes shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, a prelude to an interjection, and I froze, knowing already what she would say.
“That, and the incident with the field trip.” She pursed her lips and smiled at me knowingly, a reprimand fit for a small child. Hot shame washed over me, itchy and unbearable. I hated her in that moment. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dale raise his eyebrows curiously, but he didn’t ask for explanation. I thanked him silently.
“But that’s all in the past now.” She patted my shoulder, and I tried not to flinch.
Dale nodded, hoping to edge the uncomfortable moment along.
“I think we’re all set then.” Ms. McNally-Barnes clasped her soft hands together, then pushed off from her thighs to stand. “Well done, Imogene.”
Dale continued nodding, a bobble head on a dashboard.
But the meeting had soured. I left with a nagging fe
eling, a little bug bite in a hard-to-reach place that I kept forgetting the source of throughout the rest of the day but that kept returning in searing, insatiable bursts: I didn’t belong there, and they were beginning to notice.
Worse still: Kip didn’t belong in my head but he was there, and I couldn’t make him leave. I wasn’t sure I wanted to either.
* * *
As short-lived as my romance with Zeke Maloney was, I liked to think it was something more. Once, in conversation with ReeAnn, I’d said, “My ex was obsessed with those Marvel Comics movies.” It didn’t matter that this fact was based entirely upon the sole Fantastic Four poster that hung from his dorm-room wall. That word, “ex,” slid out so readily that I’d nearly fooled myself.
I’d felt—imagined or not—like I knew his roommate, Todd, and the girl Zeke was rumored to have been hooking up with for a few weeks during freshman year, Brittany, and his ex-girlfriend from the crew team that I knew he had lost his virginity to. I felt like I knew them the same way I knew what sneakers Zeke always wore (blue and silver Nikes with white laces) and what his favorite TV show was (The Sopranos, according to his profile page) and the way I could pick his laugh out of a crowded dining hall, braying and hiccupy like a goat’s.
After I saw Zeke make out with that other girl at the bar, after I knew for sure that it—whatever “it” was we had—was really over, I tried not to talk to my old roommate Darby about Zeke (I wished I could constantly). But when I did, I would try to sound offhand, casual: yeah, we used to hook up, but it was whatever. It’s over now.
But Darby knew, and I knew, that it was not whatever. I’m not entirely sure I was ever attracted to Zeke Maloney, or if I even liked him. What I felt certain about—because we both listened to the Arctic Monkeys and talked about maybe seeing them in concert together, and because I’d listened to his snores and snuffles the one time I’d spent the night, and because he had taken my virginity—was that he was the first great love of my life.
After the second time that Zeke Maloney and I had sex, we took a shower together. He suggested it, and I hesitated; I was okay with my body—skinny, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, not exemplary but not unappealing—but the idea of being stark naked with Zeke in the pitiless light of the bathroom rather than under the bedroom’s cover of darkness was terrifying. “It will be fun,” he promised. I slipped out of bed and felt for two towels in my closet, which we wrapped around our bodies before making our way to the bathroom down the hall.
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