Imperfect Chemistry

by Mary Frame

Three days later, I’ve confirmed what I suspected all along. Trying to make Jensen jealous was a bad idea, and it’s backfired in the worst possible way.

  “She’s back,” I call Freya one afternoon.

  “What? Who’s back?”

  “The leggy blonde.”

  “What the heck are you talking about? And why are you calling me now and not at seven o’clock in the morning? My whole world view is shattered.”

  “Remember when I was observing Jensen in order to ascertain his habits?”

  “Never repeat that to anyone but me. You sound like a crazy stalker. And yes, I remember.”

  “There was a blonde who came over a few times. She stayed for a few hours and left. She hasn’t been there since…well, since before Jensen and I, you know, but now she’s back. I just saw her go into his place.”

  “She stays for a few hours and leaves? Do you think she’s a hooker?”

  “What? No! I mean, I don’t know. He hasn’t talked to me since he saw me with Tony. I haven’t really seen him around. He’s avoided all communication with me, and now this!”

  “I can hear your hands wringing from here, Lucy. Listen to me. It’s going to be okay. Calm down, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  She hangs up on me before I can say anything else.

  I pace back and forth in my small living room. What do I do now? What do normal people do?

  My gaze falls on the iPod and speakers that Tom left the last time he was here.

  Twenty-five minutes later, there’s a knock and then Freya lets herself in. She stops in the entryway and stares at me with her mouth open.

  I’m on the floor in my PJs with an open pint of ice cream in front of me.

  “Are you listening to Taylor Swift?” she asks.

  “I get it now!” I wave my spoon at her. “I knew he was trouble when I walked in.”

  “When he walked in,” she corrects.

  “Right, and the story of us does look a lot like a tragedy now!”

  “Oh, Jesus.” She kicks the door shut behind her with her foot because her arms are full of groceries.

  “If I could play the guitar, there would be teardrops on it.” I take a bite of Chunky Monkey and consider that statement. “If I ever cried,” I add. “Which really only happens when I cut onions due to the propanethiol S-oxide.”

  “I’ve created a monster,” she moans.

  “You know, junk food really does make me feel better. At least temporarily. I suppose it’s the increased chocolate intake triggering a dopamine release.”

  “Well, then you’re in luck and we’ll really be working out those dopamine receptors because I brought more.” She walks to the kitchen and puts her bags on the counter.

  “Have you ever seen Bridget Jones’ Diary?” She holds up a DVD and waves it at me.

  Two hours later, she’s lying on her stomach across my small sofa and I’m on the ground near her feet with my back resting against the bottom of the couch while we watch Bridget kiss Mr. Darcy in the snow in her underpants.

  “I’m sorry about that whole thing with Tony,” Freya says.

  I try to hand her the bowl of popcorn but she waves it away so I put it on the coffee table.

  “That’s okay. I think we made a serious error in judgment. Jensen is still recovering from the loss of his long-time girlfriend to his best friend. He likely has trust issues and now I’ve exacerbated them, assuming he felt any small inkling of anything for me beyond friendship. Besides, this is what I needed after all, to experience emotions universal to people in my age group. And really, it’s not so bad.”

  “That’s the pound of chocolate cake talking,” she says.

  I consider that. “Maybe.”

  She sits up and puts the remote on the table next to me. “You’re lucky. The whole thing with Jensen ended before it got too serious. The longer the relationship, the more it sucks when it ends.”

  “That makes sense. Are you okay? About the whole Cameron thing?”

  “You know, for a while I didn’t think I would be. But now…I’m glad. You were right, I deserve better.”

  “Good. Did you ever tell Bethany and Ted about Cameron?”

  “Nope. I love them, I really do, but.” She wrinkles her nose, “They’re too honest sometimes. Sometimes I need that, and sometimes I need no questions asked. With Cameron, I already know I made a huge mistake; I don’t need anyone reminding me.”

  She leans forward and gives me a half hug. “This is why I love you,” she says. “You are so non-judgmental. And you’re not competitive or jealous. So many girls are like that, in an underhanded and sneaky way.”

  “It’s not really their fault,” I tell her. “A lot of females in our society are naturally competitive but they are forced to suppress those inclinations due to socioeconomic and cultural factors beyond their control.”

  “See? You even make excuses for the bitches.”

  I stand up and start picking up our trash. “Did you want any more frosting?” The tub is half empty and I wave it at her.

  “Nah.” She stands next to me and grabs a few pieces of trash and napkins off the table and we take everything to the kitchen.

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” she asks.

  “I’m going to my parents’ house for the day. They live in the highlands. You?” I put the frosting in the fridge.

  “I’m going home for the week, leaving Monday. Hopefully it won’t snow and delay the flights. I heard there might be a storm coming in next week.” She tosses everything into my trash and we head back to the living room.

  “It’s snowing now.” My pale white curtains don’t hide the outside world to a large degree, and I can see a few flakes flickering down in the street light. “You could stay here tonight. This is a sofa bed.” I thump the cushion with my hand.

  Her eyes widen. “You wanna have a sleepover?”

  “If that means you stay the night here, then…yes?”

  She squeals. “Yes! I haven’t done that in years! Come on.” She grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall towards the bedrooms.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If this is your first sleepover, we’re going to do it right.”

  A couple hours later, my hair is done in about twenty different braids of various thickness, and pinned back in multiple ways to make them form different sizes of circles around my head. My nails are painted and I’m attempting to do Freya’s toes. She’s sitting on the couch with her feet in my lap.

  “Isn’t this fun? It’s better to have sleepovers when you’re older. When you’re young, you run the risk of your friends putting your panties in the freezer, or the old hand in a water cup trick.”

  I finish her toes and glance at the clock. It’s well after midnight.

  “Hand in a water cup trick?” I ask.

  “You know, to make someone wet the bed.” She waves her hand at me and then inspects her nails.

  I close the cap on the nail polish. “That doesn’t work.”

  “How do you know?” She swings her legs off my lap and puts them on the floor.

  “Putting someone’s hand in water won’t prevent their body from producing the anti-diuretic hormone, which in turn suppresses your kidneys from excreting urine as you’re sleeping.”

  “Geez, you are such a buzzkill.” She yawns and stretches. “I’m exhausted. Can I borrow something to sleep in?”

  We head back to my room and I pull out a pair of flannel PJs and hand them to her.

  She gapes at them. “You own actual pajamas?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. I sleep in ratty shirts or sweats.”

  “Oh.”

  We change and brush our teeth. I have a package of spare toothbrushes under my sink in the bathroom that I open up for Freya.

  Once we’re finished, I head back into my bedroom to find Freya snuggled under the comforter on my queen bed.

  “Please don’t make me sleep on the sofa bed,” she plead
s.

  I shrug. “You can sleep in here.” I climb under the covers on the opposite side and turn off the light on the bedside table.

  I’ve never slept in the same bed as someone else before. I suppose it’s a common occurrence for most adolescents to share a sleeping space with your peers. I shift in the smaller space allotted to me and try to get comfortable. I can hear Freya breathing, and feel her shifting on her side as well.

  “Lucy?” she whispers.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course. Why are you whispering?”

  “Oh. I don’t know,” she says in a normal voice. “It’s about Cameron.”

  I don’t respond, instead waiting for her to continue.

  “Remember how I told you that I wouldn’t sleep with him and that’s when he stopped returning my calls?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that wasn’t entirely true.”

  I turn towards her on the bed, lying on my side. I can’t see her face very well in the dark; she’s just a lump in the darkness on the pillow next to me.

  “The truth is,” she continues, “well, I did tell him I didn’t want to sleep with him, but then it happened anyway.”

  What does she mean? “It happened anyway?” I ask, my voice escalating. “Freya, did he rape you?”

  “No,” she says quickly. “I mean, not really.”

  I take a deep breath. “Not really?” Something is building in my chest, another new emotion, foreign and burning. “Freya, if you said no at any point, and he didn’t listen…” I don’t finish my sentence. I can hear her next to me, sniffing and wiping her face with the sleeve of the flannel long sleeve shirt.

  She’s crying, but instead of making me panic like it normally does, it makes me want to—

  “If I ever see that arrogant, asinine, piece of…shit,” I finally say the word. It’s awkward on my tongue, but it’s the only one that seems to fit in this situation. “I’m going to cut his penis off with a plastic spoon.”

  A surprised choke of laughter erupts from Freya, shocking her out of her tears.

  “Oh, please do.” Her laughter and tears subside and then she says, “I don’t want to give you any of the gory details. But I did say no, and it didn’t stop.” She’s silent for a moment while I process this, and I try to suppress my own growing anger. The nerve of that man.

  “And then he wouldn’t return my calls and he did move on to someone else, but instead of being upset I was more…relieved,” she says. “Then I saw him, yesterday at the coffee stand over by the library and he acted like nothing had changed.” Her voice is quiet in the darkness, a whisper of pain and confusion. “He came up and put his arm around me and called me ‘girlie’.”

  From her tone, I can tell she’s rolling her eyes, even though I can’t see the motion in the darkness.

  “I told him to go fuck himself.” She laughs and I find myself chuckling along with her even though I still feel angry and confused on her behalf.

  “He was so mad at me. That I rejected him. Like, oh no, no one could ever not want the great and powerful Cameron.” She snorts and I can hear the smile in her voice. “It was very gratifying.”

  “You did the right thing,” I tell her. “You deserve so much better.”

  “Duh.”

  “We should contact the authorities,” I say after a moment.

  “I thought about it. But there’s no physical evidence. He didn’t hurt me. We had been fooling around before so there wouldn’t be any…tearing or anything.” She sighs. “It would be a lot of time and work, and in the end it would be my word against his.”

  I think over what she’s saying. It sounds logical but it feels absolutely wrong.

  “You know the weirdest part? I feel like,” she stops for a moment before continuing, “Like I need to erase his memory. No, not erase. Replace. I want to find someone else. Someone who is the exact opposite of everything that Cameron is and everything he represents. And once I find this paragon, I want to sleep with him a million times until the other memories have faded and are no more than a distant and vague recollection. Is that weird?”

  “No. I think whatever you’re feeling is completely normal,” I say, and I cringe at myself when my voice comes out sounding flat and unemotional. “I’m sorry,” I add. “I don’t think I can be much help for you right now. I’m still thinking about the different ways I can hurt him without arousing the suspicion of the local authorities.”

  She laughs. “You are helping, Lucy.”

  “Forget everything I said about how hiring someone to hurt him was wrong. If anything, it was the best idea you ever had.”

  We’re both silent in the dark room, lost in our own thoughts. I flip over on my back and stare at the glow of moonlight on the ceiling. I’ve gone from exhausted to wide awake in the last few minutes. I wasn’t kidding. I really do want to maim Cameron or beat him within an inch of his life. I’ve never felt such a violent inclination. I take a deep breath to calm myself and shut my eyes. Why am I so angry? The answer strikes me suddenly, forceful in its own obviousness: I care about Freya. She’s my friend and I like her. I don’t want her to be hurt in any way, shape or form.

  It’s very strange.

  “Good night Freya,” I say.

  “Good night Lucy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

  –Ralph Waldo Emerson