Even in Paradise

by Chelsey Philpot

  When she moved to let go, I made her stay a beat more, hoping she would understand that it meant I was sorry.

  “Well,” Rosalie said. “This is awkward.”

  “Thanks for coming. It means—”

  “Your boyfriend called me . . . and Amy and Jacqueline, too. I guess Julia told him about tray sledding, and he thought . . . who knows what he thought.” She frowned. “How he got Jacqueline to come—”

  “Considering she hates me, too,” I said, crossing my arms. “I have no idea—”

  “I don’t hate you,” Rosalie interrupted me. “Remember, you’re the one that dumped me.”

  “I didn’t dump you.” I leaned against the rows of art encyclopedias behind me more for comfort than support. “I’m just . . . look.” I kicked my sleeping bag just to have something to do with my feet and ran my hands across the spines from “C” to “T” just to have something to do with my hands.

  “I didn’t mean to dump you. I did a bad job of trying to make people happy.” I looked at Julia shaking one of the bottles so hard her whole body moved. “And balancing being a good friend.” I pushed the “M” volume back and forth on the shelf, not looking at Rosalie. “A really, really awful, terrible job.”

  Rosalie slid out a book and passed it back and forth between her hands. “‘Terrible’ doesn’t begin to—”

  “I don’t know what more to say. I’m sorry.”

  “K.” Rosalie shifted the book a few more times, then used it to gesture toward the others. “Let’s just have some fun, eh? First night of our last spring break.”

  Now Julia was perched on the edge of a study table, a paper cup in her hand. Jacqueline and Amy were on the floor with their own cups beside them. They weren’t smiling, but they weren’t frowning, either.

  “Okay,” I said. She had at least listened to me. That was something.

  When we joined the other girls, it was still weird. But it was a little better than before.

  By the time Sebastian arrived with his roommate Vinay, a guy who talked and acted like a California surfer but was actually from outside Chicago, we had all finished a cup of Julia’s “library moonshine.” When they walked in from the rotunda, Amy was demonstrating how long she could hold a back bend, while Rosalie and Jacqueline had a headstand contest. Julia was standing on the radiator and reading from a book of puns she’d found on one of the chairs.

  “A hole has been found in the bathroom wall. The police are looking into it.”

  “I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down.”

  I was laughing so hard that when I saw Sebastian, I had to pull myself up using the side of a table. “Hey. Pour moi?” I kissed him and slid a large bakery box out of his hands.

  “Yeah. Cupcakes. I picked them out,” said Vinay. “Happy birthday, Charlie. Eighteen. So now you can buy porn and cigarettes.”

  “I can vote now, too,” I replied, giving him a one-armed hug around the large box. “Don’t forget the civic duty part. It’s nice to finally meet the famous Vinay in person. You pick up Sebastian’s phone more than he does.”

  “Only because his side of the room is neater than mine,” Sebastian said, kissing me again, letting his hand rest on my hip. “I’m not surprised he forgot the voting part.”

  “I thought of them, ’cause those are my gifts, man,” Vinay said, zipping open his messenger bag and handing me a cigar and a plastic-wrapped magazine.

  “Thanks,” I said, turning the magazine so the cover was against my chest. “I’ll give the cigar to Boom. And the magazine . . . I hide under my mattress?”

  “Oh, it’s feminist-approved porn. My older sister’s a women’s studies major. She picked it out. You should display it with pride.” Vinay pointed to the girls, who were now sitting on their sleeping bags and watching us. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the rest of the party?”

  I was leaning comfortably against Sebastian when I thought of it. He was warm and I was warm, full of sugar and library moonshine. I didn’t want to move ever, but my idea was too fantastic not to share.

  “Julia.” I thought I had whispered, but everybody turned to look at me. “Didn’t Gus write poetry for Dr. Blanche for her senior project?”

  “Oui.”

  “Well. They. Keep. All. The. Projects. Here.” I pointed to the floor so she would understand.

  “They have them in back near the war books,” Amy said from the other side of our circle, where she was sitting very close to a very happy-looking Vinay.

  Julia grabbed my elbow.

  “I’m a library aid,” Amy said. “I know where they are.”

  Vinay looked at her like she had just revealed she was a superhero.

  Amy struggled to stand up, swaying enough for Vinay to raise a hand for her to grab.

  “Thank you,” she said before she started walking.

  Julia and I fumbled to our feet and followed her.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait.” Julia was laughing so hard that her words came out in gasps. “Écoute. Listen.

  “There once was a man from Nantucket, whose . . .

  Ha, ha, Dr. Blanche. I would never.

  But as limericks go,

  That one steals the show.

  And now you’ll know it forever.”

  “I want to read one,” Jacqueline said, snatching the thin book from Julia’s hands. She flipped until about halfway through. “Really?”

  “What?” Rosalie leaned over her.

  Jacqueline elbowed her away. “This one’s called ‘His Feet.’

  “His feet are always dirty.

  Always caked with soil,

  Always covered with grass.

  His hands.

  His hands are always callused,

  Always bent as if holding a tool.

  His skin.

  His skin always smells of all my favorite things:

  Salt. Earth. And time.

  When he’s with me, it’s always spring.”

  “Who writes a poem about feet?” Jacqueline looked up, her forehead wrinkled, her glasses slipping down her nose.

  “My turn,” Amy said, pulling the book gently from Jacqueline’s hands. “Oh, this one sounds pretty.” She cleared her throat. “Okay, ‘Be Not Proud.’

  “Death be not proud, so the poems say.

  The poems I read on a summer afternoon,

  Just me, my boat, and the wide-open soon.

  And I can’t help but wonder, what is death this day?

  I am invincible on the water. The sun guides my way.

  At one with the wind, sun, and waves.

  To feel so alive—this is all I crave.

  Death be not proud, not on such a day.”

  I felt Sebastian’s arms stiffen around me and I knew that, like me, he was searching Julia’s face for a reaction. She had her eyes closed and her face tucked toward her shoulder. What she was feeling was as fuzzy as my thoughts.

  “Dude, that’s deep. I got the next one,” Vinay said. He flipped through Gus’s book until he found another semi-dirty limerick. Then I read a haiku and Jacqueline took another turn. Everyone read but Sebastian. With each poem his arms around me tightened, and I could feel his pulse through the veins in his wrists.

  I wanted to stop for his sake. But then Julia started smiling, and then she laughed. So I smiled and laughed, too. The whole time I held Sebastian’s hand as if my touch could protect him from the outside from whatever was hurting from within.

  We read until the library moonshine was gone and our heads were too heavy to hold up anymore.

  I couldn’t have been asleep for more than an hour when I felt someone shaking me. “Hmmmm.”

  “Charlie, come with me.”

  I opened my eyes to see Sebastian’s face inches from my own. I smiled and then closed them again. I was so sleepy.

  He shook my shoulder once more, this time with a little more force. I grumbled into my sleeping bag, but sat up.

  Sebastian gestured for me to follow h
im. He grabbed his sleeping bag, so I grabbed mine, too. We walked across the rotunda to the room on the other side. My feet felt like I had concrete boots on, and my mouth like I had fallen asleep with a sock in it. I was going to feel terrible in the morning, but I was too tired to care.

  Sebastian dropped his sleeping bag between the first stacks of books and sat cross-legged on it, running his hand through his hair in the way he always did when he was thinking. I tried to snap out my sleeping bag like a waiter spreading a tablecloth, but I ended up hitting the bookshelves as much as the floor. I shrugged and plopped down, my crossed legs mirroring Sebastian’s.

  He pulled the edge of my sleeping bag toward him, making me fall on his lap. “Still tired, birthday girl.”

  I suddenly was not, so I raised my head and kissed him. My head was a different kind of cloudy when his lips were against mine. His knee pressed into my hip, but it was a good kind of hurt, one that made me sure I was awake. I twisted myself in his lap so I could unbutton his shirt. I slid it off him, one arm, then the other, all the while thinking how good he smelled and how warm his skin felt.

  He shifted so I was leaning against a shelf of books and started to pull my shirt over my head.

  “Sebastian, wait.”

  “You okay?” He dropped my sleeves.

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I’m not losing my virginity with the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin looking down on us.”

  He pulled my shirt back down so my stomach was covered and then shifted a little away from me. “Charlie, I didn’t think we were going . . . or that you were a . . . or that you weren’t either . . . I—”

  “Sebastian, unless you count Aston Bose kissing me behind my dad’s garage the summer after freshman year, you’re my first boyfriend.”

  “Well, now I really hope I didn’t mess up your birthday gift.” He reached into the bottom of his sleeping bag and pulled out a small jewelry box. “Open it.”

  I did. Nestled on a tray of navy velvet was a set of earrings, diamonds set in a cluster of gold seashells. Looking at them, I felt like I was choking.

  “Sebastian, I can’t keep these,” I said once my voice returned.

  “You don’t like them?” He grabbed my hands and pulled me so our foreheads touched. “I wanted it to be a big deal. You’re turning eighteen, and you’re basically responsible for Julia making it through her senior year and you’re her best friend. It’s the least I could do.”

  “I couldn’t even get her to finish her college essay on time.” I tasted tears in the corners of my lips. I hadn’t realized I was crying. I didn’t know why I was crying. “They’re beautiful, Sebastian. Thank you, so, so much, but I can’t keep them.” I forced myself to laugh as I wiped at my face. “They cost more than my dad’s truck.”

  Sebastian sat up so quickly that he hit his head against the row of biographies behind him. “Ow.” He rubbed the back of his head. “So I can’t get you a gift because your dad drives a junky truck?”

  My back stiffened. I dropped the box and moved away from him. The shelf of books behind me was the only thing that stopped me from going farther. “Do you know how stuck-up you sound?”

  “Jesus, Charlie. That came out wrong.” He kept a hand pressed against the back of his head. “I was . . . was hoping for a better reaction. I spent a long time picking them out.”

  I felt dizzy, like the room was a merry-go-round with me in its center.

  Sebastian raised a hand as if he were going to touch my face.

  “Please. Please don’t touch me right now,” I whispered, turning to curl my side into the books, so I didn’t have to look at him. “It’s more than your stupid truck comment. It’s the stuff you said about Julia being my responsibility—”

  “Charlie, I was joking.”

  “It’s not a joke. It’s a lot, Sebastian, to be responsible for another person.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “You’re right. Okay.” His face was etched with hurt, but I had to keep going.

  “You, Boom. Maybe Julia doesn’t need protection. Maybe she doesn’t need saving. Maybe she just needs a friend. That’s all I can be to her is a friend . . . I’m just as confused as everyone else sometimes.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you were looking for someone perfect, then maybe . . .” I pressed a hand against a book spine, grateful for the scratchiness of cracked leather under my fingers. “Maybe, I’m not good enough for you.”

  Sebastian picked up the earring box and pressed it between his palms, his head bowed. For minutes the only sounds were the occasional squawks from the birds that claimed the quad as their own during the night.

  Finally, he spoke, his eyes still on the earring box. “Charlie, most of the time I think you’re too good for me.”

  “I want to believe that,” I said, my temples pounding. “But right now . . .” I stood, grasping the bookshelf when my head started spinning. “I don’t.” I reached down with one hand and pulled half my sleeping bag under an arm; the other half I let drag on the floor as I walked away.

  “Charlie,” I heard Sebastian call, but I didn’t pause in my stumble across the rotunda.

  When I unrolled my sleeping bag next to Julia, she said nothing. When I settled into the flannel, with its stubborn scent of campfire smoke and plastic tent, she didn’t even open her eyes. But when I finally lay still, staring at the library ceiling, my heart racing so furiously I felt like it might pound out of my chest, she scooted until her sleeping bag overlapped mine. She worked her arms out and threw them around me, holding me until I fought my way to sleep.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “JULIA TOLD ME YOU’D BE here.” Rosalie dropped into the pew. “Seriously, who does a walk of shame away from her own birthday party at six in the morning . . . to a chapel?” She looked around as if noticing for the first time where we were.

  “It’s my hiding place,” I said, leaning forward on my arms, which were folded across the pew in front of me. I turned my head so I could look at Rosalie. “Did the other girls take off?”

  “Yeah, but Amy had to be pried off Vinay. Poor guy didn’t know what to do with himself.” She snorted and crossed her arms. She was still wearing the T-shirt she had slept in, with a zip-up St. Anne’s hoodie over it. “Sebastian was gone even before you were. Wanna tell me what happened last night?”

  I shook my head, then turned my face so it was buried in my arms. My head felt like a giant was trying to crush my skull between his two hands. The wood smelled like furniture polish. It was an oddly comforting smell. “We got in a fight.”

  “About?” Rosalie scooted down until her bent knees each rested against a hymnbook in the rack on the back of the pew. She crossed her arms again, letting me know she was prepared to wait me out even if I didn’t want to answer.

  “He was snobby . . . and asks too much . . . and sometimes . . . he’s not telling me something . . . he cages up and I know he’s not being a hundred percent honest.”

  “Charlotte, nobody is. We are solitary creatures that come together in packs so we can survive as a species. We’ll do anything to preserve the social status quo, including omit, deny, and lie. Complete honesty would be detrimental to the survival of the race.”

  I twisted my head and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “What? I want to major in anthropology. It’s a theory I’m working on.”

  “What happened to psychologist Bernard?”

  Rosalie examined the ends of her hair. “I’m over my crush on Mr. Campion. Our imaginary children turned out to be brats.”

  It hurt my head to smile. I set my forehead back on my folded arms, grateful for their coolness. “I don’t even know what I’m doing with him. He’s probably going to be president and I’m probably going to get denied from the one school I really want to go to and have no idea what to do with my life.” I breathed heavily out my nose. “Look what happened with my parents. My mom thought she could handle being married to a guy who loved working on cars. That
sure turned out well.”

  “Who do you think you’re fooling with the tough-guy act? Look. Do you like him?” Rosalie said, dropping her knees from the back of the pew and sitting up as abruptly as she had sat down.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled into my arms.

  “Do you love him?”

  I paused as if I had to think, but I knew the answer even before she asked the question. “Maybe.”

  “Then stop being such a wimp and just jump in. What the hell do you have to lose, eh?”

  “Umm, my sanity, my dignity. My concentration and ability to say no were gone a long time ago,” I said, sitting up and clasping my hands in my lap. “Whatever we’ve got, Sebastian and I, it’s not even cracked and I’m worried about breaking it.”

  “What’s that phrase? ‘If it’s not shattered, don’t glue it.’” Rosalie nudged my shoulder with her own, keeping her eyes on the shadow-crossed altar.

  “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it?”

  “You know what I’m trying to say.”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring up at that endless ceiling. A ceiling built to contain prayers and heartaches, dreams and wishes. “I do.”

  After the echoes of our words faded, the walls and the stained glass windows themselves seemed to press down with silence. It wasn’t a bad silence. It was the kind of quiet that happens naturally on long road trips when the sound of the wind through a sunroof is conversation enough.

  I was the one to break the stillness. “When’d you get to be so smart?”

  “Must’ve happened when you stopped bringing my IQ down with those dumb movies you like to watch.”

  “Those aren’t movies. They’re films.” This time I bumped her shoulder, shoving her hard enough that she had to catch herself on the other side of the pew.

  “When did you turn into such a brute? I think you left a mark.” Rosalie pretended to examine her arm for a bruise.

  “Does this mean you don’t hate me anymore?” I said.

  Rosalie chewed on her lip before answering. “I didn’t hate you. I was just really, really pissed at you for a while.”