Charmed Thirds

by Megan Mccafferty

  “What?”

  “You still want Jess so bad you can't stand it.”

  I expected him to deny it. So he surprised me when he fessed up.

  “We're all adults here, aren't we? Sure, I'd tap that ass,” he said, as if he would be doing my ass a favor. “What's the big fucking deal?”

  In high school, a comment like this would have sent shock waves through the entire Pineville High community, from the Upper Crusters down to the miscellaneous Bottom Dwellers Unworthy of Names. But college has a way of democratizing bad behavior. No one really cares what anyone else does, just as long as you don't lose control. There was a guy on our hall last year who everyone knew was a major cokehead. But he could tell a good joke and had a 4.0 GPA, so no one was really bothered by it. He seemed like he had his shit together. But if he had barged into my room and begged to snort lines off my bare titties—okay, it would've been time to get the RA involved. Another good example would be Dexy, whose sluttiness would have been an impediment to our friendship in the past. But as long as she isn't getting gangbanged on the floor of our shared bathroom, it's like whatever.

  The point is, after Scotty spoke we all looked at one another like, “What is the big fucking deal?”

  And in a flash, I had a vision. I saw myself finishing one Monkeyfucker, then a second, and a third, until I'd consumed twice the volume necessary to engage in sexual activity with a tree-swinging primate. And in that state, I would get on the dance floor and start grinding into Scotty until he dragged me across the sand by my hair and out of the bar and into the back of his pickup truck, where I'd ride him so hard he'd have to replace his shock absorbers.

  I was a free woman. He was an unmarried man. No big fucking deal. Right?

  Sara took my mind off this disgusting track.

  “AS I WAS SAYING BEFORE. IF MY BOYFRIEND JOINED A CULT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT I'D BE DEVASTATED . . .”

  “Who did that?” Bridget asked.

  “MARCUS. RIGHT, JESS?”

  “It's not a cult. He's at a school run by Buddhists . . .”

  “ARE YOU SURE? I HEARD SOMETHING ABOUT HIM QUOTE GETTING NAKED AND DANCING AROUND A FIRE WITH A BUNCH OF GUYS UNQUOTE . . .”

  “I heard that shit, too,” Scotty said, nodding what would've been a neck if he still had one. “Gay shit.”

  “From who?” I asked.

  Scotty shrugged. “Don't remember,” he said, checking out a hoochie in a cheerleader miniskirt. “Gay shit like that just has a way of getting around.”

  “I HEARD IT FROM MANDA, WHO HEARD IT FROM LEN.”

  “Well, they're both wrong,” I replied.

  “WHATEV.” And then she yanked up the top of her dress, which had been dangerously close to a nipple slippage.

  “So,” Scotty said lasciviously, resting his hand on my ass. “Do I have a shot?”

  I should thank Sara for reminding me that when it comes to my past, everything is still very much a big fucking deal.

  “Unfortunately for you, Scotty,” I said, removing his hand, “they don't serve a drink called the Idiotfucker.”

  This cracked everyone up, and Scotty surprised me by laughing harder than anyone else.

  “They do have the Idiotfucker,” Pepe said sagely, gesturing toward a hobaggy huddle at the bar. “But it's better known as Natty Light.”

  And then we all surprised ourselves by laughing our way through another round. If you didn't know any better, you just might have thought we were all the bestest of friends.

  the twenty-eighth

  The cicadas are gone and I'm still here.

  Why the hell am I still here?

  This is what I was thinking tonight, as I swung on the hammock in the backyard. The only light came from swirls of tiny fireflies switching themselves on and off and on again.

  “Jessie!” my mom's voice called. “Is that you out there?”

  She flicked on the floodlights, blinding me, the world, with the obnoxious glow of a bizillion artificial suns.

  “Come inside,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  I knew better than to resist. And with the lights on, the yard had lost its appeal anyway, so I pushed myself out of the hammock and followed her inside.

  Mom was sitting at the kitchen table. My father was actually sitting next to her. This was not a good sign for me.

  “Your father and I are concerned about your disappointing work ethic,” she said.

  “What? I've been busting my ass at school!” It was true. I had never studied harder in my life.

  “I'm not talking about your classes,” she continued.

  “We're very proud of your grades,” my dad added.

  “Very,” my mom said emphatically. “But I'm referring to how you complain about not getting enough money from us, and yet you don't find it necessary to hold up your end of the financial bargain. This is your second summer of unemployment!”

  “I had the internship last summer! For my résumé!”

  “What about now?”

  “I haven't been feeling well,” I replied meekly.

  “You were fine enough to go running this morning,” my dad argued.

  “I thought the fresh air would do me good,” I replied.

  “You were fine enough to go out with your friends.”

  “Studies have proven that an active social life boosts the immune system.”

  “Is that so?” my mom asked with a moderate, passing interest. “Well, at any rate, it seems like you feel like you don't need to make any of your own money, when we warned you when you picked Columbia that you would have to contribute to its costs.”

  “I worked all last month,” I said lamely.

  “But what about this month? You left your job, which was bad enough. But then you didn't even bother finding a new one at home,” she said.

  “I'm going back to my job at school . . .” My energy was waning by the second.

  “When?”

  “Uh . . . soon?”

  My parents made a sound that I can only describe as harrumphing, a word I have never used before that describes the noise perfectly.

  “You need to start earning money as soon as you can,” my mother said. “Because once we take on the new mortgage, we won't be able to help you anymore.”

  I rattled my head, unsure I'd heard correctly.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We can't give you any more money.”

  “But I'm almost out of Gladdie's inheritance. And I've already got a full course load and work study and student loans . . .”

  “Which is why your laziness for the past two summers has been so upsetting to us,” my mother interrupted.

  “How can you do this to me? For a house?”

  “We're doing it for you, honey,” my mom said. “Waterfront property will only increase in value over the years. It's your inheritance!”

  “But I need the money now, Mom,” I said. “Not thirty years from now when you're . . .”

  “Dead,” my dad said bluntly.

  I turned my attention to him, as the saner of the two. “Dad? Are you for this?”

  He rubbed the top of his head like a worry stone. “You made this choice,” he said. “You chose Columbia over a full scholarship to Piedmont. You chose to accept certain financial responsibilities. . . .”

  I usually zoned out when my parents launched into this particular spiel, but this time every “You” hit like a bullet to the chest. Was I being selfish and lazy? Was I taking them for granted? Despite my bitching, my parents had been throwing a few thousand bones my way each semester. It wasn't enough to forgo student loans or work study, but it did take the edge off. But that's all irrelevant now that I'm right back on the edge, staring into the fiscal abyss.

  “You have been lucky to benefit from our assistance up to this point . . .”

  “Stop,” I whimpered, resting my forehead on the kitchen table. “Just stop. I can't take any more.”

  Having run out of ways to ruin my lif
e for the time being, my parents left the room. I looked down at the pile of mail on the table. Sticking out from underneath the AmEx bill and the Restoration Hardware catalog was a beat-up but unopened envelope. It was the letter I sent to Marcus at Gakkai at the beginning of the month.

  The post office had helpfully stamped an explanation across the front:

  ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN. RETURN TO SENDER.

  the twenty-ninth

  I'd decided that I couldn't hide anymore.

  “Come in, come in,” Mrs. Flutie said, waving me inside her home. Every time I see Marcus's mom, I am struck by her commanding height, as she has the self-effacing demeanor of someone half her size.

  “I wasn't expecting to come,” I said, “but . . .”

  My eyes flitted around their modest living room, searching for a sign. Everything I saw was useless: plaid couch, blue wall-to-wall carpet, brick fireplace . . .

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Flutie said, her six-foot frame slumping. “He's not here. Did you think he was here?”

  “Uh, not really but . . .” I didn't finish.

  As she bustled out of the room, she gestured toward an overstuffed chintz armchair for me to sit in. The chair would have been wholly unremarkable if it weren't for the fact that I've sat on it once already—or rather, Marcus sat on it last summer while I straddled his naked lap until I brought myself to a writhing, roaring orgasm.

  My crotch blushed.

  I opted for the couch. When Mrs. Flutie returned, she was holding a glass of pink lemonade. Mr. Flutie followed her in a wheelchair.

  “Hey, kiddo!” Mr. Flutie bellowed as he rolled toward me. “I was about to shoot over to the park for some basketball but when the wife told me you were here, I thought, Hell, I can shoot on over there later.”

  “My god!” I gasped. “What happened?”

  “What? This?” he asks, pointing to the steel cage contraption keeping his knee together. “Ahhhh, it's nothing. Let's talk about you and my son. That's why you're here, right?”

  Mrs. Flutie gently tapped him on the shoulder. “Kid gloves,” Mrs. Flutie urged him. “Treat her with kid gloves.”

  “Well,” I said. “It's just. Uh . . .”

  Whenever I see Marcus's parents together, I get momentarily distracted. I can't help but look at them and think, Wow. So you're the ones responsible for bringing Marcus into the world.

  “Go on,” Mrs. Flutie said. She has a truly comforting manner. I bet she talks many a toddler out of tantrums at the day-care center.

  I took a deep breath, bracing myself for my second parental face-off in as many days. The house smelled like burnt cedar. Like Marcus.

  “I haven't seen or talked to Marcus since Christmas and I know he hasn't talked to anyone because of the silent meditation thing but then again maybe he's not even doing that anymore I have no idea maybe he is talking again and just not talking to me I don't know and I thought well even if he isn't here exactly you would know where he is because I sent him a letter to his school address because that's where the last postcard came from, oh, he's been sending me these cryptic one-word postcards postmarked from California, so I mailed my letter there but it got returned so now I don't know where he is and I guess I would just really like to see him and talk to him because I miss him even if he isn't my boyfriend anymore I just want him in my life and I'm so embarrassed to be telling you all this.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Flutie exchanged pained looks. About which part of my confession, I wasn't sure.

  “So. Uh. That's why I'm here.”

  “You mean he didn't write you about Pure Springs?” Mr. Flutie asked.

  “Pure—what?”

  Mr. Flutie whistled through his teeth.

  “Pure Springs,” Mrs. Flutie said. “Where Marcus will be for the next two years.”

  “He's not at Gakkai?”

  “Nope,” Mr. Flutie said. “He's near Death Valley, on the California-Nevada border.”

  “Death Valley,” I repeated, just to make sure I had heard correctly.

  “Yup!” Mr. Flutie beamed with pride.

  So maybe Sara was onto something after all.

  “Okay,” I said calmly. “What exactly do they study there in the middle of the desert?”

  “That is a more difficult question,” Mrs. Flutie said, tugging at the drawstring on her sweatpants.

  And so, for the next few minutes, Mrs. Flutie told me everything Marcus couldn't. Or, rather, could but chose not to.

  Pure Springs College was founded in 1915 by an oddball named Thaddeus Fox, a Harvard-educated steel magnate who thought that the traditional model for education bred “slow-witted, morally questionable dullards.” So he set up the Pure Springs College campus smack dab in the middle of one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Each year, a new class of fifteen young men (and only men) “with keen minds and unsullied hearts” who have grown disillusioned with traditional schools and “wish to pursue wisdom in its purest form” are admitted to the college after subjecting themselves to a rigorous application process that includes writing no fewer than ten separate essays answering questions on topics as varied as gravitational lensing and the semiotics of the Teletubbies. What makes this school like none other is that it is run completely by the student body. The Pure Springers are in charge of all the school's administrative duties, including admissions and the hiring and firing of faculty. Tuition is free, and the students support themselves by working on a cattle ranch.

  “So there's no one in charge,” I said.

  “They're all in charge,” Mr. Flutie said.

  “I don't get it,” I said.

  “Each kid has a job that keeps the place up and running,” Mr. Flutie said. “Rancher, butcher, mechanic, cook, and so on.”

  “So what is Marcus's role?” I asked.

  “He has two,” Mrs. Flutie said. “He's junior farmer and librarian.”

  I imagined Marcus in overalls and a straw hat. Pitchfork in one hand, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the other.

  “I know what you're thinking: that it's a cult, or worse, one of those boot camps for troubled kids where some poor child winds up dead from dehydration,” Mrs. Flutie said. “We thought the same thing.”

  “You thought the same thing,” Mr. Flutie interrupted. “I thought it sounded like the greatest place on earth.”

  Mrs. Flutie put her hand on his unmangled knee. “As crazy as it sounds, this place has molded the minds of some of the best and the brightest. Nobel Prize winners, politicians—”

  “That newscaster's son, whatzisname . . . ,” Mr. Flutie interrupted.

  “Billionaire businessmen, novelists—”

  “You know, that guy on that show . . .”

  “Once we found out more about it, we knew it was the kind of place that could unlock Marcus's potential.”

  I was still skeptical. “I still don't see how with all that freedom and testosterone it doesn't turn into Lord of the Flies. And add a keg . . .”

  “Well, we don't worry about that because there are only two strictly enforced rules, and the first is no drugs or alcohol,” Mrs. Flutie said. “You can understand why we found that one appealing.”

  “And the second?”

  A pause. And in the silence, I could hear every clock-tick of time passing me by. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

  “Total isolation,” Mrs. Flutie said finally. She folded her hands in her lap, a gesture of acceptance.

  “Meaning?”

  “If he leaves, he can't come back,” Mr. Flutie said. “And no one can visit.”

  “I know this must be very upsetting to you, Jessica. We felt the same way.”

  “You felt the same way,” Mr. Flutie said. “I thought it was just the thing to get his head screwed on right.”

  “I wish . . . ,” I began, not knowing exactly how I wanted to finish that sentence. I didn't realize that I had started crying until I felt the warm rivulets coursing down my cheeks.

  Mrs. Flutie therapeutically squeezed
my shoulder. Her voice got deeper, more serious.

  “Jessica, words cannot express just how much we loved seeing Marcus develop such a positive relationship with you.”

  “You were the best of the lot,” Mr. Flutie said, obviously unaware of how being referred to in that manner might be a tad upsetting to me.

  “Marcus was a troubled spirit long before you entered the picture.”

  “‘Troubled spirit,'” Mr. Flutie grumbled. “Pain in the ass is more like it.”

  “Surely you can understand why Marcus might need to put Pineville behind him,” Mrs. Flutie said. “There are a lot of bad influences around here. People from his past who don't understand that he's trying to live a life of sobriety. People who don't understand that he isn't interested in reliving his youthful foibles.”

  I thought about that girl Sierra, the one we bumped into at the park last summer, and how Marcus practically crawled out of his own skin trying to escape. I had been too upset to care about his discomfort.

  She continued. “There were only two reasons why he ever returned to Pineville. His love for us, and his love for you.”

  “And we told him to get the hell outta Dodge!” Mr. Flutie shouted.

  I stared at the chair on which we had once made love.

  “And I . . . wasn't enough,” I said softly.

  Mrs. Flutie let go of my shoulder and lifted my chin with her hand so we could see eye to eye.

  “I'm telling you this because I like you so much, Jessica,” she said with a sad smile. “I'm telling you this as a parent who loves her sons more than life itself.”

  Mr. Flutie stayed strangely still and quiet.

  “You need to let Marcus go and move on,” she said. “You are not the source of his problems. And he shouldn't be the source of yours.”

  She said some more stuff after that, but it was all just different versions of the same message. One that I needed to hear, I guess. One that I would have heard months ago, if I had bothered to listen.

  the thirtieth

  When I called to tell him that I'd be returning to the city today, he insisted on meeting me at the bus station. My heart swelled when I saw him waiting for me under the neon blue Hudson News sign, and nearly burst when he pressed his lips to one of my cheeks, then the other, as is customary in his country. His hair hung loose, and it seductively caressed my neck when he leaned in, and again as he pulled back.