Steamy Dorm

by Kristine Robinson

  It was one of life’s greatest ironies, because less than a few months after the picture had been taken, the beautiful, happy girl in the photo had taken her own life.

  Tears began to sting my eyes for the first time in weeks. I didn’t cry anymore. I felt like a corpse, and corpses didn’t cry. But the pain had been stirred up again by that picture, as sharp and hurtful as my first terrible day without Tina.

  With trembling fingers, I picked up the yearbook and flung it across the room. It hit the wall with a bang and slid to the floor, its pages facing down. Good. I couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.

  There was a gentle knock, and my mother opened the door. “Connie?” she asked softly. Her eyes shone with concern, and she spoke with the hushed tones of someone speaking at a funeral. Ha. It was sort of appropriate. “What was that sound? It sounded as if you threw something.”

  “I don’t know,” I said listlessly as I turned back to the mirror and resumed staring at my reflection. I was somewhat relieved to see that the tears hadn’t fallen, although my eyes looked a little shinier than normal.

  I could see my mother frowning in the reflection. “Well, okay,” she said reluctantly as she dropped the subject. Instead she took a deep breath and asked, as she had every day for the past two and a half months, “Connie, are you okay?”

  What a dumb question. But I would never disrespect my mother by telling her so, nor by lying to her. So I replied as I always did. “No.”

  She fidgeted a little, not sure what to say. “Your father and I hoped that, by now, the therapy sessions would have helped, and you would change your mind about going to college.”

  Therapy. College. Now there’s a laugh. The therapy sessions—which I’d been forced into by my parents—were the biggest wastes of time I’d ever had the misfortune to experience. The therapist droned on and on about self-forgiveness and moving on, and chalked up my feelings of guilt and helplessness to nothing more than survivor’s guilt. Whatever. She couldn’t understand. She hadn’t killed her best friend.

  And college…before Tina’s death shattered my world, I’d had a full scholarship to the state university. A free ride. My parents had been thrilled, and I’d been beside myself with excitement, eager to start the next chapter in my life. Now, the thought of going to college made me physically ill. There was no way I could go to school and be happy and carefree while Tina rotted in the ground. So I’d turned down the scholarship and gotten a job at a clothing store downtown, if only to please my parents at least a little bit.

  “No,” I said, forcing my voice to be firm.

  My mother sighed. “It’s almost the end of July. You still have a little time left to call the dean and tell him you changed your mind—“

  “I said no. No college,” I said sharply.

  She rubbed her forehead wearily. “Tina would have wanted you to move on with your life and go to school,” she began, but at that my temper flared up.

  “You don’t know what Tina would have wanted,” I snapped, whirling around to glare at her. I knew it wasn’t my mother’s fault and I shouldn’t take my grief out on her, but at the moment I couldn’t restrain myself. Whatever. I’d apologize later. “She’s dead, she’s gone, and nothing—absolutely nothing—I do will ever make her happy again. So why should I care what she would have wanted?”

  My voice quivered and broke, and I quickly turned away from my mother and the mirror, flopping down on the bed with my face in the pillow.

  “All right. I’m sorry I said anything.” My mother’s voice was strained, as if she were forcing herself to be civil but was failing. “Stay in here and wallow in your self-pity all you want.” She paused, waiting for my retaliation, but when none came she added, “And don’t forget you have therapy this afternoon.”

  I wanted to protest, but I knew that she wouldn’t budge on that matter, so I didn’t say a word. After a moment the door closed, and finally I was alone again. Well, alone except for the haunting, whispering voices in my head accusing me of being guilty for pushing Tina into slitting her own wrists. Those never went away.

  I should have known, damn it! I’d known Tina for years, had thought I’d known everything about her. I should have sensed that she’d been planning to commit suicide, that her life had become so unbearable that she’d been forced to take it away. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t even had a clue. Her death had come as a complete and total shock to me.

  And the final bitter icing on the cake—it was almost definitely my fault.

  The day after graduation, the two of us had visited Nightlife, the only LGBT club in the area. It was a hotspot, a meeting place for gay people for miles around. One reason that Tina and I had been such good friends was the fact that we were both what we called ‘lipstick lesbians’. In a mostly conservative town where people like us weren’t always welcome, we stuck together. In high school, people had often assumed that Tina and I were a couple. That wasn’t true. I loved her, yes, with every fiber of my being—but only as a sister. She’d been my sister in every way but blood.

  The night after graduation still haunted me to this day. That girl…that stupid argument we’d had over who got to take her home…

  Tina and I didn’t speak for a week after that fight, and I never spoke to her again. On Friday, June 2nd, Tina had locked herself in her bathroom, taken her father’s Gillette razor blades, and slit both of her wrists in the bathtub. She’d left no note, and the argument we’d gotten into had gone unresolved. The last words I’d spoken to her—shouted, actually—had been, “You always have to get your way! Why don’t you want me to be happy for once? Why is everything always about you?”

  The words burned into my brain like corrosive acid, and as the tears finally slipped from their prison and soaked the pillow, I bitterly wished that it had been me that died that night instead of Tina.

  Chapter Two

  “This clearly isn’t working, Miss Wright.”

  “Huh?” I glanced up at my therapist, who looked back at me impatiently. I guess I should feel guilty for not paying attention to her—after all, my parents were paying her a lot of money. But I couldn’t bring myself to care too much.

  “I said,” she repeated, folding her hands neatly on the desk and peering at me underneath her glasses “this current arrangement isn’t working. You have an unhealthy relationship with your own false sense of guilt, Miss Wright. Your guilt is your subconscious’ way of avoiding the truth of what happened, and thus hiding the real root of your pain.”

  See? She’s useless, and I can’t convince my parents otherwise. What the hell does that mean, anyway? I know exactly why I feel guilty.

  “In other words, there’s nothing I can say to you that will convince you to let go of your guilt and move on with the healing process,” she said simply.

  “Good. Are we done here?” I meant to snap at her, but my voice only sounded flat and tired.

  She smiled. Uh-oh. I didn’t like the looks of that. “Not quite, no. See, I have another idea, one that might prove more effective than a traditional therapy session.”

  Great.

  “If my suspicions are right, it could go a long way to helping you face your pain, regardless of your issues with avoidance and denial.” She pressed a button on her desk and spoke into an intercom. “We’re ready, go ahead and send her in.” There was a reply, but it was crackly and I couldn’t understand it.

  “Now, Connie,” she said gently. It was the first time I remembered her using my first name. “This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but you have to promise me that you’ll stay here and listen to us. Okay?”

  “I’m not making any promises,” I said automatically. She frowned, and I sighed. “Okay, fine.”

  There was a knock at the door, and the therapist called, “It’s unlocked. Come on in, Miss Hudson.”

  Alarm bells began ringing in my mind as a cold suspicion filled my heart. I gripped the arms of my chair tightly, willing myself to stay put.

  The door swung
open, and my heart stopped in my chest as Tina strolled through the door.

  The tears sprung to my eyes and the apologies and the begging words froze on my lips as I realized almost immediately that it wasn’t Tina. It couldn’t be, Tina was dead. I killed her.

  It wasn’t Tina, but my mistake was natural enough. It was Tina’s older sister, Gabi.

  The resemblance between the two of them was shocking. I’d teased Tina about it when we were younger, told her that she was lucky to have a twin five years older than her. Gabi was slightly taller than Tina, and her eyes were hazel rather than blue. She was a little bustier, and her blond hair was long and pulled up into a high ponytail, but other than that, she was Tina’s mirror image, and it hurt to look at her.

  But I couldn’t look away.

  Gabi gave me a small smile. I was sure she recognized me. I hadn’t seen much of her; being five years older than Tina, she’d often been off with her own friends whenever I visited Tina, and she’d been away at college when Tina committed suicide. But we’d spoken a little bit here and there.

  “Thank you for coming today, Miss Hudson. Sit down, please.”

  Gabi obediently sat down in the chair next to me. I forced myself to look straight ahead. I didn’t want to look at her any more than I had to.

  “It’s no big deal,” Gabi said with a small shrug.

  “How are you feeling?” the therapist asked her.

  “I’m doing okay. I just take it day by day,” she replied.

  Anger flared up in me, hot and unexpected. “What right do you have to be okay?” I burst out. “Your sister is dead! Don’t you hurt?”

  She raised one of her slim eyebrows. “More than you know,” she said coolly. “But not all of us have a masochistic complex, you know.”

  Heat flared to my cheeks. I supposed I should apologize, but I was too angry. Not really at Gabi, but at the therapist for springing this on me so suddenly. My brain boiled with new emotions, ones that I’d kept closed off for so long. It was overwhelming.

  “Connie, that’s enough,” the therapist said firmly. “Gabi is here to help you.”

  “Nobody can help me,” I mumbled.

  “Well, yeah, not with that attitude,” Gabi replied.

  I glared at her, but couldn’t think of an adequate retort. I pulled my gaze back to the therapist. “All right, fine. How is looking at the spitting image of my dead best friend supposed to help me?” I gritted my teeth and forced back the impending tears.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a brief flickering of pain in Gabi’s eyes. But before I could say anything, the therapist was speaking.

  “I thought it’d be a good idea for you to talk to someone who’s going through the same thing as you, Connie. Perspective and a shared experience can work wonders for a person’s mental well-being. Simply put, I want you to start spending time with Tina’s sister; not just here, in my office, but in the real world in a natural setting.” She glanced at the two of us. “Talk to each other. Connie, allow yourself to really feel your emotions. Don’t hold anything back, no matter how much it hurts you.”

  How in the world was this a good idea? Panic fluttered in my chest. How could I survive this?

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Gabi said quietly. “Nobody’s forcing you to do anything.”

  As I gazed into Gabi’s eyes, I saw again the pain lingering within. With a jolt, I realized that I was looking at the one person (other than maybe Tina’s parents) who did know exactly what I was going through. Maybe Gabi blamed herself for Tina’s death, too. She was clearly dealing with it better than I was. Maybe there was something to gain from this, after all.

  I sighed and fidgeted. Finally, with reluctance, I said, “Fine. Okay. Let’s give this a shot. What can it hurt?”

  The therapist looked smug, and Gabi gave me a tiny smile.

  Oh, hell. This was a terrible idea.

  But a part of me actually longed to get acquainted with Gabi. It would almost be like speaking with my long-lost friend again.

  ***

  “The food here is terrible,” Gabi said as she sat down in the booth, “but the drinks are okay. After a couple of margaritas, you won’t care that the fajitas are dry.”

  “I can’t drink,” I said automatically as I sat down opposite her. “I’m only nineteen.”

  Gabi laughed. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting.”

  I mumbled a response. I was still in no mood to talk.

  But I couldn’t just leave. I couldn’t resist the temptation to be around Gabi. I drank in her presence like a cool glass of water. Incredibly, unbelievably, I felt a tiny bit better around her.

  The waiter came and took our orders. I picked the first thing on the menu that I saw. I wasn’t hungry in the slightest.

  I was shocked when Gabi ordered an entire pitcher of margaritas. “I told you, I can’t drink,” I said as the waiter sauntered away.

  “I know. It’s for me.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yeah. Why, is that a problem?”

  I met her challenging gaze. “No.”

  She smiled, breaking the tension. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her perfect white teeth and her soft, full, ruby-red lips. Against my will, I imagined myself kissing those lips, running my tongue teasingly across them and listening to her pant with desire. My heart raced and unease ran through me. What the hell was wrong with me? She was my dead friend’s sister!

  The smile faded from her face. “You agreed to talk,” she said, fiddling with her menu and staring at the tacky Mexican décor. “We’re away from that therapist now, so let’s talk.”

  So soon? My stomach lurched. I wasn’t ready.

  “You first.” Her eyes met mine.

  What on Earth was there to say? My lips seemed to be frozen.

  “You can talk to me,” Gabi said, her voice low and encouraging. Her hand inched across the table and grasped mine. Her skin was warm and soft. “I lost her too, you know.” She glanced away from me and let go of my hand.

  My lips trembled, and finally the words that I’d been restraining for a month burst out. “But it wasn’t your fault.” I swallowed back the guilt and misery that welled up inside me.

  Gabi openly stared at me, her mouth slightly open. That was it, then. Now she knew. She knew who was to blame for Tina’s death, who practically pushed her into her own grave! She probably despised me.

  “Jesus, is that what’s been eating you up?” she finally asked incredulously. “You really think it was your fault?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but at that moment the waiter reappeared with plates of greasy-looking food. He sat my plate of quesadillas in front of me, and gave Gabi her drinks. As Gabi poured a glass and drank the entire thing in one go, I pondered over her words.

  “Of course it was my fault,” I said dully. “We got into this fight…this huge fight…I never apologized to her. A week later, she died.” I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. I wasn’t going to cry in front of Gabi if I could help it.

  There was an odd expression on Gabi’s face. It was almost pitying. “I know how you feel. Taking the blame for her death…it helps make sense of the entire thing. If you can blame yourself, then you won’t have to question what other motives she might have had for taking her own life. And, in a way, it feels kind of good, doesn’t it? Torturing yourself with the guilt. It’s like, I don’t know, a penance for being alive. Survivor’s guilt.”

  My breath caught in my throat. What was she saying? It sort of made sense, but…

  “Of course it was my fault,” I said through clenched teeth, and I told her all about the fight between Tina and I. “There was this girl in the club,” I said. “She was absolutely beautiful. Really tough-looking, lots of tattoos. Sexy, really. She was interested in both Tina and I. We got into an argument about who could have her for the night…” I shook my head and let out a deep, pent-up sigh. “It was stupid. But we were really mad. I told her she was selfish
.” I stared at her defiantly, waiting for her to tear into me and blame me for her sister’s death.

  But she only smiled sadly. “I felt the same way as you at first. I really did. But I’m telling you right now, it wasn’t your fault.” She drained her second margarita. Her eyes were a little shiny and her voice a couple of pitches higher than normal, but otherwise showed no signs of getting drunk. “Connie, Tina killed herself because she had chronic severe depression and a manic-depressive personality disorder, which she hid from my parents and me. We all knew she’d been depressed for a long time, but we never knew it was that bad. She wasn’t getting the mental help or the medicine that she needed. You had nothing to do with it.”

  My eyes widened. “What? I had no idea!” But even as I said it, pieces began to settle into place in my mind. For about a year before she committed suicide, Tina had seemed, well…off. Every time I asked her what was wrong, she’d simply shrugged and said she was stressed. It had been senior year, after all, what with finals and senior projects and graduation and college applications, and of course I’d believed her. I hadn’t even questioned it.

  “But it’s still my fault,” I persisted. “I should have known. I was her best friend.”

  Gabi’s lips thinned as she frowned. “If it’s any consolation to you,” she said icily, “I was her sister and I didn’t know, either. If you’re to blame, then so am I.”

  Somehow I didn’t like the idea of Gabi blaming herself. “No, it’s not your fault.”

  “Then it’s not yours, either,” she said simply.

  The implications of what she was saying finally hit home. But my mind rebelled, insisting that I was to blame. Even if Tina did have severe depression, surely our fight had been the last straw.

  “Listen,” Gabi said in a low voice. She leaned forward and grabbed my hand again. My heart skipped a beat. “Tina loved you like a sister. She never stopped talking about you. You meant a lot to her, and I can tell you right now that she would be heartbroken to see you in this much pain. You need to let go.”