by Liz Botts
“And…and are you happy?” I asked after a moment.
Harlow nodded slowly. “You know, this isn’t the path I would have chosen. But, yeah, I am happy,” she said and paused, glancing over at Britney. “And I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I realized that I had never really known anything about my sister. In an awkward moment, I wanted to hug her and tell her how proud I was of her life choices. And the way she had taken responsibility of her life. My tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, though, and I couldn’t find the words. Instead I made a gurgling noise.
Harlow gave me a weird look, but let the moment pass without comment. She got to her feet, and lifted Britney off the sofa in one fluid motion. “Well, we need to get home,” she said. “Thanks again for watching her.”
“Not a problem. It was fun.”
Hayley walked in just as Harlow left. There was a brief exchange that I couldn’t hear, accompanied by Hayley kissing a sleeping Britney. After they said goodbye, Hayley turned her attention to me. I could feel her gaze linger on the bruise on my cheek, then drift to the mess of magazines and coasters littering the floor. She raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said with a sigh. Every muscle screamed with exhaustion. “I’m going to crawl into bed now.”
“Night, Hannah,” Hayley said as she walked toward her bedroom. A moment later, she let out a small shriek. Her door flew open with startling speed, hitting the wall with a dull thud. “What went on here tonight?”
I stared at her as I tried to process what on earth she was talking about. “Huh?”
“What did you do to my bed!”
Oops.
Chapter Seven
I inhaled the steamy scent of coffee and vanilla, hoping it would wake me up. My nights had begun to stretch into long bouts of insomnia. It plagued me when I got really stressed, and right now my stress levels were at an all time high. In the past I would have just called Josh and talked until I fell asleep. Since that wasn’t an option right now, I just waited until I was overcome by exhaustion. I stifled another yawn.
Angela plunked her mug down on the table. She dumped her backpack on the floor and sank into the chair with a sigh.
“I had such a huge test in design today,” she said with a shake of her brown corkscrew curls. “If I didn’t fail, it will be a miracle.”
“I’m sure you did fine,” I replied.
Angela moaned and dropped her head to the table with a dull thunk. “Why do people always say that?”
I laughed. “For moral support, I guess. What went wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Angela said. “Design just isn’t my thing, you know? That’s why I’m glad that theater is just one of my majors.”
I envied Angela’s drive and determination. “So what do you want to do after graduation?” I asked.
Angela pursed her lips and gazed out the big front windows of the student union. Piles of dirty snow lined the curbs. We watched students jump over them as they got off the buses. The sky was a pale gray. Everything just looked and felt washed out.
“Honestly, I want to manage a theater,” Angela said after some thought. “That’s why I picked up theater and hospitality management in the first place. It’s not like I’ll be able to get that right off the bat either. Hopefully I’ll just be able to find something close to what I want, you know?”
“At least you have a plan,” I said. I took a long sip of my now lukewarm coffee. “Why does coffee get cold so fast?”
“Everything gets cold fast these days,” Angela said. She chugged her coffee, draining it before she set the mug back on the table. “So what about you?”
“Hmmm? What about me?”
Angela rolled her eyes at me. “What are you going to do after graduation?”
I squirmed. A bitter taste filled my mouth. “I don’t know,” I said with a big sigh. “Go to grad school, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I met Angela’s eyes and sighed again. “I don’t know what I want to do. Grad school seems like a good enough idea,” I said. “I…don’t think I want to do anything with theater, though.”
“Whoa, really?” Angela asked. “Not to be nosy, but how long have you been thinking that?”
Despite the sudden heaviness weighing on my chest, I giggled. “You aren’t being nosy, just being Angela. I don’t know. Since November? I think that’s really when I started feeling…off. Pretty late to change my mind, huh?”
“Eh, lots of people don’t know what they’ll do after graduation,” Angela said. “It just surprises me with you, that’s all.”
“Really? Why?” I chewed my lip. I hadn’t told any of my friends about the reasons for my break with Josh.
Angela shrugged. “Out of all of us, you were the one I could see making it in the business.”
I vaguely remembered that feeling. There definitely had been a time when theater had been the only choice for me. But…how could I explain the feeling when it all felt flat? Sometime in the past year, the passion had fizzled, and while I still had fun with theater stuff, it felt more like a nice hobby rather than a lifelong career path.
“I want to do something that’s meaningful,” I said. To my surprise, I found that to be exactly what I wanted. “I don’t think that’s going to happen if I keep doing theater.”
“Do you want to teach?” The way Angela asked the question told me exactly what she thought of that idea.
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with teaching,” I said. “But no. I don’t think I’d have the patience. Honestly, I don’t have a clue what I want to do, just for it to be something meaningful.”
“That’s a good goal,” Angela said, giving me an encouraging smile. “What about Josh?”
Just hearing his name made me feel twitchy, like all my nerve endings suddenly woke up and started firing at the same time. I felt like I had when we first met, when just thinking about Josh could make me dizzy.
“I think he wants to go to grad school for physical therapy.”
“You think? What’s going on with you two anyway?” Angela asked.
I hesitated. I couldn’t help it. Angela was one of my best friends, but this thing with Josh was just so personal. Talking to Hayley had been hard enough. The thought of admitting everything to Angela scared me, but maybe I needed to talk.
“Okay, but please don’t judge me. I just…this is hard, okay?” I couldn’t look her in the eye.
Angela reached out and took my hand. “Hey,” she said softly. “I’d never judge you, Hannah. You’re my best friend. I’m just worried about you.”
As I drew in a shaky breath, I felt tears pool in my eyes. A lump formed in my throat making it hard to swallow. “Josh and I, we, um, we had a pregnancy scare in January, and I just, uh, couldn’t handle it.”
With a quick squeeze, I felt Angela’s support. “I had no idea,” she said.
“No one did,” I paused. “Not even Josh. I mean, yeah, we were sleeping together. I just didn’t tell him about the pregnancy thing. And please. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything,” I said. “I don’t want pity or sympathy. I’m just so…ashamed.”
Angela reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Why?”
Tears started to trickle down my cheeks. My breath hitched in my chest. “I just wanted to wait, and we didn’t and everyone thinks it’s Josh’s fault, but it’s not and I’m so confused.”
We sat at the table for a long time while I cried quietly and Angela held my hand. At last I was spent, and I sank lower into my seat, suddenly aware that we were in the middle of the student union.
Angela waited until my sniffles had tapered off before she asked, “So, basically your whole life is confusing. What are you going to do about it?”
“I…I don’t know. I don’t feel like I have any choices,” I whined, cringing when
I heard the tone of my voice.
“You always have a choice,” Angela said.
“I don’t have any choices with Josh,” I said.
“Hannah, I love you, you know that. You’re my best friend, but seriously this pity party has to stop,” Angela said. “You do have a choice with Josh. You have lots of choices actually.”
“Like what?” I chafed at her assumption that I was still mired in a pity party. I had left that behind weeks ago, I thought.
Angela shrugged and traced the pattern on her coffee cup. “Well, first you can decide if you want to get back together with him or not. Choice number one. If you get back together you can decide to start sleeping with him again or you can decide to wait until you are married like you said you wanted. Choice number two.”
“But…what if Josh chooses differently than I do? I mean, what if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore? Or what if he refuses to wait?” As I voiced the question that had been bothering me for weeks, I felt a little better.
“You can only control your own choices,” she said. “So sort out your relationship stuff, then focus on the school stuff.”
I took a deep breath. Angela’s phone buzzed, and she started to text. My gaze drifted out the front windows to the gray day. A bus had just entered the turnaround, the bright red of its body glaring against the drabness of winter. As people piled on and off, I tried to sort through Angela’s advice.
If I could get things figured out with Josh or with school, then naturally the other things should fall into place. What did I want to figure out? The thought made me giggle, which drew an arched eyebrow from Angela. I shook my head and she returned to her texting. Obviously I wanted to figure it all out.
What did I want with Josh? In my heart I knew I wanted to get back together with him. So I guess I had made that choice. The other choice weighed more heavily on me. I wanted to wait. That didn’t seem to be such a hard decision, but how could I execute that? If Josh and I got back together, how could we go back to the way we were before?
“How could I do that?” I mused aloud.
“How could you do what?” Angela asked.
I wondered, “How would we go back to not having sex when we already had it?”
“Anything is possible,” Angela replied. “You just need rules.”
“Rules make things feel impossible,” I said. “I’m not trying to be difficult, but I just can’t wrap my mind around this concept.”
Angela set her phone down on the table and glanced around. The noise from the student union swelled around us. I watched Angela lick her lips and swallow hard. “I’ve never told anyone this,” she said. “When I was in high school I slept with my boyfriend. We did it on prom night the first time, and for a while things were great. Then he went off to some camp the summer before our senior year and cheated on me with a girl there. I was furious, and I vowed never to let that happen again. I decided to renew my virginity. Spiritually, anyway. And I started volunteering with a peer-counseling center. That helped me maintain my accountability.”
I could feel my eyes get wide. My eyebrows stretched upward, and I blinked twice. Angela? “So you, like, did this through your church?” I asked. “Because, you know, I’m not that religious.”
Angela smiled. “I did do it through my church group, but it doesn’t have to be. And you don’t need to be super-religious. You just have to want to make the commitment to yourself.”
“It’s interesting,” I said.
“Hey, I’m doing peer counseling today. Why don’t you come with me? They can always use one more person,” Angela suggested.
I balked. “I don’t know anything about counseling.”
“You don’t need to. You just need to listen,” Angela said, tugging on her coat. “They won’t give you anyone difficult. You’ll probably just get to hear about some stupid roommate situation.”
Before I could overanalyze the situation, I pulled on my coat. “Okay,” I agreed.
“Okay?” Angela’s face lit up. “Well, come on then. We need to catch the L bus.”
The weight of my backpack was the only thing that grounded me as we slipped out of the student union into the bracing cold. When we climbed onto the bus, my head felt vaguely dizzy. What on earth was I doing? I was in no way qualified or equipped to help someone else with their problems when my own life was in shambles. And yet…I felt a giddy excitement that reminded me of the adrenaline rush I used to get before a show. I exhaled loudly and gave Angela a nervous grin as the bus pulled onto the street.
****
Twenty minutes later we pulled up to an old brick building near downtown. I recognized it as an old movie theater. As we climbed out, I gave Angela a curious look. She grinned at me.
“Come on,” she said. “The counseling center is on the top floor. It’s really cool, you’ll love it.”
We climbed a set of stairs covered in worn red carpet. Although the interior space was divided into various offices, some of the original theater features remained. My attention was drawn to the ornate banister with little scenes carved every few feet. Little remnants of a time long past.
Angela led me into a pleasant room that had been converted. Original sconces lined the burnt orange walls that enclosed the large, comfortable space. Folding screens partitioned the room into seven or eight counseling spaces that contained overstuffed green and gray striped chairs. A thin woman with a long white braid coiled around her head greeted us.
“Molly, this is my friend, Hannah. I thought she could help out today,” Angela said by way of introduction.
A frown flickered across Molly’s face. Then she smiled. “It’s not what we usually do, but I suppose you could field some simple issues,” Molly said.
Relief washed over me. “Yes, simple issues would work,” I agreed.
“Now if you decide you want to become a peer counselor, you’ll have to go through training, but for today we’ll have you sign the confidentiality agreement, and I’ll go over some basic ground rules with you.” Molly hustled over to a desk heaped with papers and began searching for what she needed.
Angela showed me where to set our things while we waited for Molly to get organized. “I’m really nervous about this,” I admitted.
“Don’t be,” Angela said. “You’ll be fine, and Molly won’t give you anyone too serious. Like I said, you’ll probably get to listen to someone whine about their roommate. No big deal. Just listen.”
I nodded. The way she said it made me feel like I could do it. Molly handed me a clipboard and a pen. “Fill these top three sheets out and sign the confidentiality agreement on the back,” she said. “I have twenty minutes to get you through a crash course.”
With a nervous giggle rattling in my throat, I filled out the paperwork. I sat on the closest chair to Molly’s desk. Several times I had to get up to rummage through my backpack for various bits of information including my driver’s license number and my class schedule. Why couldn’t I memorize these things? Especially the class schedule. I still looked at my little printed piece of paper one or two dozen times a day because I could never quite remember the classroom assignment even this far into the semester.
Molly looked over my paperwork then gave me some basic rules and pointers. She led me to a little nook across the room. “I’ll set you up here,” she said. “The only people you’ll counsel today are people who just need someone to listen to their frustrations. Roommate issues, class or work problems.”
I sank into one of the chairs in my section to look through the handbook Molly had given me. Other peer counselors began to arrive and settle into their areas, and the room began to buzz with activity.
The handbook described two types of peer counseling. One seemed to be weekly sessions with the same person. The other seemed to be on a walk-in basis. Obviously I would be participating in the walk-in style counseling. The door opened and a few people trickled in. Molly greeted each one quietly, and directed them to various counselors. I tried not to w
atch or stare, but I was curious about the people seeking out this peer counseling service. I was a little surprised to see they all seemed totally normal. I had no idea what I thought people seeking counseling would look like, but I supposed I had thought that the students would skulk in, maybe ashamed…like me. The thought jolted me.
As I peered around the room, I realized that all the girls here were so much braver than I was. Not once in all this time of confusion and heartbreak and angst had I considered getting counseling. “Hannah? This is Christy,” Molly said, appearing suddenly by my side with a petite girl who fidgeted with her short blonde hair.
“Hi,” I said. “Um, have a seat.”
Christy sat down across from me. She was so small the chair looked like it would swallow her whole. She shrugged out of her hot pink winter coat and set her small white purse on her lap. I studied her while she took her time to get comfortable. I had no idea why she was there, but I hoped it was something simple. Molly had promised me issues I could handle without formal training. This would be fine.
I swallowed my nerves and worked a smile onto my face. “So, Christy, what brings you in today?” I asked.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and said, “I heard that you guys give advice on things. Like, life things.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” I said with a nod.
Christy bit her lip. She looked at her hands, which she folded and unfolded on her lap. “The thing is…um, I need to talk about sex,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
My heart sank and my stomach twisted. Panic set in, causing bile to rise in my throat. I couldn’t advise some girl on sex. Molly had tricked me. Where was she anyway? I had to get her to switch this poor girl to someone who could handle her situation. When my gaze slid toward Christy, I saw her watching me curiously. I forced myself to calm down. It wasn’t Christy’s fault that I was a messy bundle of nerves. Molly had given her to me, so her problem couldn’t be too bad.