Psych Major Syndrome

by Alicia Thompson

  “I think—” I started to say, but I never had the chance to finish that sentence. Instead I saw a look of horror on Ami’s face, and I turned around.

  Andrew had just walked into the café, and he was heading right for us. I rose as he approached, as though we were in some period piece and our genders were reversed. And even when he was standing right in front of me, it was somehow hard to register that Andrew was there. It was even harder to believe that, apparently, he was there to talk to me.

  “Hi, Leigh,” he said. He glanced down at Ami, giving her a perfunctory nod. “Ami.”

  “Jerkface,” she said, her polite tone and nod matching his.

  “This is the boyfriend?” Rebekah asked.

  Andrew ignored both of them. “Can I talk to you?” he asked me.

  I couldn’t seem to find my tongue, and Ami leaped to respond. “Why would she want to talk to you? I suggest you crawl back under that rock you slithered from and leave us alone.”

  “Wow, that was badass,” Rebekah said to Ami, impressed.

  “It’s okay,” I told both of them. “We should really talk.”

  I tried to give them a smile that let them know that, even if I wasn’t accepting their assistance, I still totally appreciated it. But Ami huffily picked up her drink, shooting one last poisonous glare in Andrew’s direction. “Fine,” she said. “Come on, Rebekah. But we’ll just be over there if you need us.” She gave Andrew another sneering once-over to make him aware of the likelihood that I would.

  They left, and Andrew pulled out my chair and gestured for me to take a seat. He’d never done that kind of thing when we were actually together, and I was struck by the irony of his doing it now.

  “What do you want, Andrew?” I asked, taking my seat and getting to the point. It came out more harshly than I had expected. Not that that was a bad thing.

  I guess he didn’t want to waste any time, either. “In a nutshell?” he said. “You.”

  Another irony—those four words would’ve completely melted me just a little while before, when I was standing outside his door begging him for a ride. They would’ve even given me serious pause if I’d heard them that day in C’est La Vie. Now? Nothing.

  A corner of my mouth lifted, and Andrew saw it and took encouragement, reaching over to grasp my hand. “The worst thing I ever did was break up with you,” he said earnestly, “and getting with Heather was a huge mistake. I can’t believe I was so blind.”

  That was exactly what Nathan had called me, but I felt like I had never seen more clearly. Andrew was all charm and no substance—and that was particularly unfortunate, because, frankly, he wasn’t that charming. I had no doubts that if we did get back together, it would quickly revert to what it had always been—Andrew’s selfish need to get his own way.

  “No, Andrew,” I said, reclaiming my hand. “I was the one who was blind. But it’s different now.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “I know that it seemed like things changed once we got to college, but I still really care about you. It’ll be just like it was in high school—you and me, together.”

  “Andrew, I’ve changed. As Gwen Stefani would say, I ‘ain’t no Hollaback girl.’”

  His eyebrows drew together. “What does that even mean?”

  I had actually only just figured it out myself, so I was kind of excited to explain it to him. Weird, given the circumstances. “Like in cheerleading, a ‘hollaback girl’ is one who just repeats back whatever the head cheerleader shouts. It means I’m not going to be the girl who just goes along with whatever you say.”

  Andrew shook his head. “You want to punish me, fine. I understand that—hell, I respect it, even. If I were in your shoes, I’d want to get some of my own back. But are you listening to me? I’m saying I’m sorry and I want you back. Don’t throw that away because you’re too proud.”

  “I’m not throwing it away,” I said, “because I don’t want it in the first place.”

  Andrew finally looked at me then, really looked at me, and he let out a low sigh. “You’re with someone else, right?” he said. “That’s the only explanation.”

  “Actually no, I’m not,” I said, but he wasn’t listening.

  “Let me guess—Nathan,” he said with a bitter laugh. “It has to be Nathan. Christ, he told me day one that he liked you. But don’t forget our history, Leigh. We were great together.”

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one who needed a history lesson. But right now I wasn’t interested in Andrew’s brand of revisionism. “Wait. Nathan did what?”

  Andrew snorted. “Come on, Leigh. Like it wasn’t disgustingly obvious he had a huge thing for you.”

  If I thought I was following this conversation, I had just completely lost it. “What?”

  “You met during orientation,” he said, “and Nathan had a crush on you.”

  “The stargazing,” I remembered dazedly.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Andrew said impatiently. “He came back to the room that night and kept talking about this girl he’d seen at the stargazing. He was shy, and so I told him if he pointed you out, I’d try to finagle a meeting.”

  I swear, Andrew’s the only person in the world who could use a word like finagle with a straight face. “But he was talking about me,” I said.

  Andrew shrugged. “When we figured it out, we had a good laugh about it,” he said defensively. “But of course you were my girlfriend. So that was that.”

  Maybe Andrew and I had had something in common, after all. Maybe we both were afraid of change—both in our relationship and in ourselves. But I was through with it.

  Even though I hadn’t been superfriendly to him, Nathan had come running the second I needed him. Andrew had lied about going home just to avoid giving me a ride. Nathan had known me for a semester, and still knew why I was so upset to win second place in a contest. Andrew barely understood why I’d entered it in the first place.

  The few times I’d hung out at Andrew’s dorm, Nathan had been the one I’d watched from out of the corner of my eye the whole time. Nathan was the one who made my skin tingle whenever he entered the room. In my dream, it was Nathan. It had always been Nathan.

  “Andrew,” I said, my voice quiet but firm, “we’re not going to get back together.”

  He was silent for a few moments, looking at me. Finally I saw something like resignation in the set of his shoulders. Still, he couldn’t resist a parting shot. “You’ll regret this. You know you still love me.”

  I thought I did. But then again, I’d assumed love was safe, like ordering the same thing at a restaurant every single time. I didn’t realize that it could be a greasy roadside sandwich and vomiting, followed by a conversation that made time slow down and my heart speed up. “Good-bye, Andrew.”

  He left then, leaving me staring wordlessly in the spot where he’d stood. Ami and Rebekah hurried back so fast that I knew they’d been listening, and Ami waited until the café door shut before leaning in.

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  I remembered what I had been about to say before Andrew showed up. Now I spoke the words aloud that had been echoing in my brain, teasing the tip of my tongue.

  “I think I’m in love with Nathan,” I said.

  Ami acted like I should immediately go to the middle of the quad and publicly declare my love or something, but of course, we had to drop off Rebekah first.

  Rebekah’s house was definitely run-down, with chipped paint and grass growing too long around the mailbox. But it was still nicer than I expected. Clearly she didn’t get along with her mother, but I wondered what her life at home was like otherwise.

  Obviously, when we got to the door, she didn’t want me to come in. But she did turn around before she disappeared inside. “Leigh?” she said.

  “Yeah?” I had to squint into the sun a little bit, and it was hard to see her among the shadows of the porch.

  “Are you gonna do the mentoring thing next year? I mean, when school starts back up
after break?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I said, and Rebekah smiled. “I mean, I kind of have to. I’m going to do this project next semester, about body image and adolescent girls.”

  Rebekah nodded. “Cool,” she said. “Anyways, thanks for hangin’ out today. And buying that drink from the weird toad place.”

  “It was no problem,” I said. “And hey—”

  Rebekah already had one foot in her house, which was dark inside. But she waited, still clutching Tyrone, Jr., under one arm.

  “You’ve got my number,” I said. “And you know where I live. So no matter what happens with the whole mentoring thing, you can always reach me if you just want to talk, or hang out again. Okay?”

  She didn’t say anything else before she closed the door behind her, but I saw her grinning.

  So, the quad was a little much, even for me, but I definitely wanted to contact Nathan to tell him how I felt. Ami and I made plans the entire drive home, and by the time we got back to our dorm, Ami had it all figured out.

  “Okay,” she said. “So you kind of rejected him. Big deal. He liked you the moment that he saw you, even though it was dark and bugs were eating you both alive. That’s not the sort of thing that just goes away in a week, right?”

  Ami’s words gave me a little hope, but I still had my doubts. “I don’t know,” I said. “I changed my mind about Andrew pretty fast.”

  “Totally different,” she dismissed. “Andrew was a complete douche.”

  I didn’t know exactly how feminine hygiene products acted, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t acted much better with Nathan. If I were him, I wouldn’t trust me.

  “I don’t even know where he lives,” I protested. I mean, I knew Nathan still lived on campus. But I couldn’t exactly go banging on the doors of every single dorm room in the school.

  If this were a movie, Nathan would have had a spot that he had just happened to reveal to me was where he went when he “needed to think.” That information, seemingly superfluous at the time, would later come in really handy in a situation just like this. I would go to the spot by the ocean, or under a tree, or in this one out-of-the-way coffee shop, and he would be there.

  I knew Nathan hung out in the math computer lab, but that was really too clinical to be conducive to the kinds of things I wanted to say to him. Or do to him, if things went well. God, I hoped they went well.

  “So, call him,” Ami said, rolling her eyes. “As if you haven’t worn that little calculus flash card to parchment by now.”

  Which was hardly fair, considering I’d memorized the number a long time ago.

  Still, I felt a frisson of excitement as I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers, my hand shaking slightly. Ami disappeared into the bathroom, and since she had just peed, like, twenty minutes ago, I knew that she was just trying to give me privacy.

  It rang for a while, and I mentally started to compose a breezy message that would convey my desire to talk without seeming desperate. But then the ringing stopped, and I heard a voice on the other end. “Hello?”

  It was a girl’s voice. In all of my worrying, I hadn’t really believed that Nathan would have found someone else by now. In the absolute worst scenario I’d pictured, he was completely over me and wouldn’t give me a second chance. But another girl?

  “Hello?” the girl’s voice said again, and she sounded so…nice. If I were a better person I might have even been happy for Nathan. But then, that’s probably why he’s with her and not with me. Because I’m not a nice person. In fact, I wanted to gouge her eyes out.

  You know, if that were even possible over the phone. And not so gross.

  I thought about hanging up, but I had an image of the two of them laughing over the weird crank call. What happened if he saw the number and recognized that it was me? I didn’t see why Nathan would have my dorm room number, but I didn’t want to take any chances and have him call me back.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh…” An ignominious beginning, to be sure, but at least I was talking. I floundered around for something else to say before hitting on an inspiration. “I’m calling about a futon for sale?”

  She cheerfully extolled the virtues of the futon, mentioning its cheap price and comfort, and I wondered if she were living there. She couldn’t possibly be, but once the thought popped into my head, I couldn’t shake it. Why else would she be answering his phone and selling his furniture?

  She offered to give me directions if I wanted to “take a look at it” for myself, but information that would have been thrilling two minutes before now just fell flat. Maybe she was a roommate, I thought. There were some relatively cheap apartments by the campus, but it made more sense to share with someone, right? And why not a friendly girl who sounded blond and fun and like she had never played mind games with a boy in her life?

  But her next words shattered my last hope. “Nate and I will be out to dinner until nine or so, but if you want to call back maybe tomorrow, I’m sure he could tell you more,” she said. “And of course, if you want to drop by, just call first, and it should be no problem for you to look at it.”

  They were going to dinner? Roommates could eat out together, right? I mean, Ami and I went out to eat sometimes…even if it was at Taco Bell and not at an actual restaurant. But somehow, the way she dropped that nickname—Nate—I just didn’t think so.

  “Okay,” I said, as though my heart weren’t breaking. “Thanks a lot.”

  I hung up, and when Ami emerged from the bathroom, I just gave her a watery smile and shook my head.

  “Ah, Leigh,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. She didn’t say anything else, because, really, what was there to say?

  I had had my chance, sitting back there on those steps in Arizona. And I could blame it on Andrew or on the timing or even on ten-year-old Kyle, but the truth was…I wasn’t a victim. I’d made this mess myself. And now it was too late to fix it.

  FICTIONAL FINALISM: A concept in Alfred Adler’s theory of personality, it is the notion that an individual is motivated more by his or her expectations of the future, based on a subjective or fictional estimate of life’s values, than by past experiences.

  THE Stiles Academic Showcase helped (somewhat) take my mind off Nathan. So what if I were destined to live out the rest of my pathetic life crocheting booties for other people’s kids and taping extreme makeover shows while at least six cats swirled around my legs? At least I would have my career. Right?

  I wondered if you could lead such an unfulfilling life and be a successful therapist. Viktor Frankl believed that mental illness and maladjustment stemmed from a life of meaninglessness. But my life wouldn’t be meaningless…just loveless, maybe.

  It always seemed strange to me that Vik could have been such a great therapist. I mean, he survived the Nazi concentration camps. If that were me, and I had to listen to people bitch and moan about their troubles, I don’t know that I could stand it. I’d be, like, oh, yeah? Try losing your entire family because some dude with a weird moustache was a crappy artist.

  I’m sure that’s what he would tell me if I were his client. After all, who am I to complain? I have my family and friends. I have my health. Then there are all those things that I secretly believe I have but am worried it would sound cocky to say I have: relative attractiveness (thank you, haircut), intelligence (more book smarts than common sense, but what are you going to do?), and confidence (some, anyway). When I’m given Likert scale questions about myself on a scale of one to five, five being the best and one being the worst, I usually bubble in a four or five on just about every one.

  If you averaged out scores on each aspect of my life right now, I would guess the mean would be around three or so. But that’s also because the mean is affected by extreme scores, like my love life, which would be getting a one at this point. If you took the median, which is not affected by outliers, I’d probably have a four overall. And that’s not so bad.

  Ami was still sleeping, and I plopped down on her bed, un
apologetically waking her up. She half mumbled, half spat something in Spanish that I’m sure was not tengo una fiesta in mis pantalones (I have a party in my pants), one of the only phrases I really remember from high school Spanish. Hers sounded a little less fun loving.

  “Are you going to the showcase?” I said.

  “Leave me alone,” she groaned.

  Some weaker-willed people might have considered that a sufficient answer. I didn’t. “Come on,” I said. “You really should go. Everyone’s going to be presenting their crappy undergraduate research, and there might even be some drippy kids from high schools there to check it out. It’s the last big event before winter break.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I poked her in the side. “You can network,” I said, a wheedling note to my voice. “You love to network. There might be people from grad schools there.”

  Ami’s mom had passed her real estate exam when Ami was in middle school, and now she’s a pretty successful real estate agent. Maybe it’s just because I really dig the ecological model of psychology, but I think that has a lot to do with the way Ami is. She’s constantly spinning things, selling herself. I admire it because, in some ways, it’s just another way of making stuff up on the spot, the way I like to do.

  Ami opened one blurry eye before shutting it again. “Forget it, Leigh,” she said. “I’m not going to grad school, anyway.”

  “Why not?” I asked, alarmed. I mean, I know I rebelled against everyone trying to shove it down my throat now, but that didn’t change the fact that I knew I wanted to go to grad school in the future. It was only the first semester, but Ami’s evaluations weren’t fantastic, and her activities, outside of a handful of art tutorials, were almost nil. But I thought that was just the beautiful, sickening thing about art programs. None of that really mattered.

  Ami grudgingly removed the pillow from on top of her head, shoving it underneath her as she propped herself up on one elbow. “Formal education is, like, the death knell of an artist,” she declared with slurred haughtiness. “I want to be on the streets, making art for the people. And you just don’t do that with a degree from Parsons.”