Black and White

by Ludivig, K. R.

  “Miss White,” said Dean Crissenger. “We’ve been noticing your absence in room 401B for the last few nights. May we ask where you’ve been?

  “No you may not,” I said, the most grammatically-perfect, delightfully polite and non-rude as I possibly could.

  “Miss White, it’s our duty to protect your well being, we need to know where you’ve been at,” said the Dean’s secretary, Margret.

  “No you do not,” I said.

  “Alright then you leave me no choice then.” The Dean wrote me detention slips for two weeks straight.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, that I don’t skip classes, or am never tardy? But because I’ve been sleeping on the floor of my dorm room because the bed itself is uncomfortable, you have chosen to give me detention slips for two weeks straight,” I protested against the authority calmly.

  “In your dorm room, Miss White?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “The bed itself is uncomfortable.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to us about it?” asked Margret. “It’s our job to help you and make you as comfortable as possible while at Lightstaff.”

  “I’m not one to complain but since this came up in conversation then I thought why not tell the truth.” That wasn’t a lie. I really never did complain. And even if that was the case, I wouldn’t have said anything but right now I needed an ally.

  “We’ll order you a brand new mattress and get you a comfortable sheet so you’ll sleep better,” said Margret.

  This whole time I wondered why the Dean had been so quiet. Instead of saying something about my lies, he just ripped up the detention passes and sent me back to my dorm.

  As I trailed down the Administrative building stairs, I held up the fact that my purse was over my left shoulder. I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse.

  It reluctantly began to vibrate in my hand. On the caller identification, it displayed Chris’s name. I gave it a funny look and then answered it.

  “Hey.” I said answering it.

  “Hey baby what’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you want to go with me snowboarding this weekend?”

  “I probably shouldn’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the Dean just found out that I wasn’t sleeping in my dorm room and is keeping a watchful eye on me now.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I can stay with you.”

  “No go out with your friends.” And as much as I wanted to go snowboarding with Chris, I knew I should stay on campus so I didn’t get bitched at again for truancy.

  “I see…” he said as if I were making up excuses to not be with him.

  “It’s not you. I just don’t want to lose my diploma to a truancy act.”

  “Don’t want to do that!” he said agreeing with me.

  I knew how important his diploma was to him, considering that his father never graduated from high school. Chris always told me that he wanted to rub it in his dad’s face the moment he walked off the plane coming home from Afghanistan because his dad never graduated.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come stay with you?”

  “I have tests I need to study for, go hang out with your friends,” I lied. I didn’t want him to go hang out with his friends, I wanted him to be with me. But he was always with me and I didn’t need him right now, I needed time to myself before the “huge tests” I had.

  “Alright,” he said. “I love you babe.”

  “I love you too,” I replied. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up then, and sighed, wishing I could go with them.

  I went back up to my dorm room 401B and changed from my school uniform to a pair of PINK sweatpants for Victoria’s secret clothing line, and a perfect fit tee from American Eagle. I put my hair in its usually high ponytail and pulled out a text book and began to study for a tiny quiz that I didn’t need to study for.

  I put on my snowboarding pants, boots for my board and jacket. My friends, our boards and I could not all fit in my neon, so we took my mom’s Escape.

  The way to the park on the other side of town, by where Katie’s house was seemed to take forever. We all wanted to be there in an instant. Instead of being there right away we had to wait the car ride. I drove, Josh next to me in the passenger seat, Jesse behind Josh, and then Seth behind me. Jake was behind Seth in the very back along with Heather my ex. They were both sitting illegally in the back without belts on.

  By the time we got there, we were all so antsy to get on the slopes that we forgot our boards during check-in so we had to go back and get them.

  I began another one of my practice sessions, this time making sure Professor House was in the building with me. She had asked me how the musical study of Elsa was going. I told her good and I was glad that she had given it to me. The truth was that I hadn’t looked at it since she gave it to me six months ago.

  Josh, Jake and Seth found their boards and got comfortable on the slopes. With that they left Heather and me stranded. She and I talked. It wasn’t awkward unless someone made it awkward. She mainly just had trouble staying stationary on her board long enough to look down at the insane slope ahead of us. Let’s put it this way, I laughed a lot.

  After an hour of Heather, I remembered the care-free character she had, the love of winter and snow, her smile: irresistible to the eyes.

  “So how have you been?” I asked.

  “Good,” said her squeaky terrified voice. “But this whole Marcus thing is getting on my nerves.”

  “Why?” I frowned. She and Marcus used to be good friends.

  “I’m just having a hard time getting over it.”

  “Yeah.” Break-ups were hard, especially when you were dating your best friends.

  Heather and I went on the slopes a couple of times and then went to warm up and get something to eat in the warming house. You could walk in and get free coffee, cappuccinos and hot chocolate when you wanted them without paying for them. It had always been that way.

  While Heather grabbed us hot cocoa’s I found Jake, Jesse and Josh.

  “Thanks,” I said to them sitting down.

  “You chose to drag her along,” said Jesse.

  “No you did.” I pointed at Josh. “She’s your freshman cousin.”

  “She’s your freshman ex-girlfriend.”

  Heather sat in the booth beside me and cuddled up next to me to create warmth between us. I put my arm around her, being nice.

  “Chris,” said Josh warningly. What about Katie? I read in his eyes. What about Katie? She chose not to come. This was her loss. Yeah it should have been her sitting next to me, racing me down the slopes, but it was Heather instead. Should I flirt to make her feel better about Marcus or would that lead her on?

  I decided whatever. I could do whatever. I didn’t kiss her that day or hug her or do anything else to get me into trouble. The downside was that at the end of the day I wasn’t excited to go home and see Katie. Actually Katie was the last thing on my mind, because I now realized that I still liked Heather.

  That night Chris called me when he got home from snowboarding.

  “Hey!” I said excitedly. I wanted to hear how his day had gone.

  “Katie…” Chris began in a devastating tone. “I think we should just be friends.”

  “What?” I asked. My heart sank. Was this his idea of a joke? Was I being punk’d? Where was Ashton Kutcher?

  “Please don’t make me say it again.”

  “Why?”

  “I still like Heather.”

  “Isn’t she like in love with Marcus?” I asked still full of wonder.

  “She’s over him.” He laughed.

  “Oh okay.” I really didn’t think it was all that funny.

  “I’m sorry Katie.”

  “It’s okay.” I lied and hung up.

  Obviously it wasn’t okay. I cried myself to sleep for two weeks and five days before I
started to calm down. Started being the key word. Ella tried to include me in things with her but I just didn’t feel like it at all. Personally I didn’t want to spend time with anyone but Chris, but that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t doubt that he had completely forgotten about me by now. The contradiction was that he texted me day and night to see if I was still alive and moving around.

  I guess I sort of agreed to being friends. So he did have the right to text me. Chris was my real first love and the only boyfriend I had ever had. I was scared to let that go. If I did, would I forget? I didn’t want to. We had been happy. I still loved him no matter what.

  Chapter Eleven: Blake

  On February fourteenth, I went home after months of not seeing my family. I found the house soaked in pink and red flowers, curtains and lights. I ignored that fact that my parents were hopelessly in love and I was found with no one to love me. I passed the pink and red shaded balloons and went straight up to my room, ignoring the family I had.

  They wouldn’t have been much fun to be around anyway. I mean who wanted to be around love-soaked people who showed a tad too much PDA around the house in front of their daughter. I was in-love but the feeling wasn’t mutual. I also was supposed to have plans tonight and I bought a dress with Ella on the plaza two weeks ago for the occasion. Instead I sat loveless on my bed and pulled the out the ipod I had from my duffel bag. I put it on the iHome and pressed play. The first song I heard play was “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. And even though I loved her music and her as an artist, this was the worst time and place for this music, especially this song. It was Chris’s and my song. I was girlie that way. It felt like he left me. Boy was I lost, moreso now in life than ever, including puberty. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right or make anyone happy. All I wanted to do was cry all the time, but all of the tears I shed were gone. All I could do was stare up at the ceiling and wish for my phone to go off.

  I knew that throwing a fit and breaking my ipod wouldn’t break them up and make him come back to me, but I did it anyways. I picked up the Nano and threw it across the room. Then instead of just letting it sit there like a normal person would after they threw it, I got up and walked over to the ipod, poor and defenseless on the floor, and stomped my heal down on the screen. My Prada shoes wouldn’t just leave it at that, cracked and already broken and unusable. I stomped on it until it was in pieces. I felt no remorse for the ipod until I realized that my grandmother spent a ton of money on that ipod and I felt bad. The ipod had been my best friend until now, making me content with life every minute I was unhappy with life. And even though I knew I could walk the three feet to the computer and listen to music with that, I still collapsed where I was standing. I felt like a little girl who broke off her Barbie’s head.

  Hearing a loud thud, my parents both came up to see what was wrong.

  “Katie!” my mom pounded on the door. “Are you ok?”

  I began to cry feeling not only sad but pathetic that I was crying over a stupid Ipod. “Mom,” I said.

  She came in to comfort me and wrapped her arms around me like a good mother would. “I broked it.” I used the worst grammar making my voice sound childish and unintentionally immature. I needed to be a kid again, without worry and fear of losing the man I fell in love with to a girl he felt he had to date again.

  For some reason, Mom knew the pain of what I was going through, the reason why I was here. She had always told me she wasn’t born yesterday but did I listen? No. She could tell what was wrong and she knew everything that would have made me feel better. She offered me her credit card and to go shopping with her in the uptown Detroit mall and take me to a theme park. She could excuse me from school and make it seem like everything was perfectly fine when it wasn’t. But none of those things would make me feel better. None of those things would patch the hole in my heart made by Christopher Black.

  On Sunday afternoon when I woke up, I had the worst aches and pains. I had been crying all night, remembering every conscious moment I spent with Chris. I was sore from taking everything out on myself. I looked at my phone. Two missed calls, two voice mails, and fourteen new text messages.

  I assumed since the missed calls were from Chris, the voice mails were also. As for the texts, I saw three from Ella, two from Marcus, two from Josh and seven from Chris. I replied to the ones from Ella, thought about the texts from Josh and Marcus and didn’t even read the ones from Chris.

  I didn’t know why I still thought about Chris every waking moment and dreamt about him every sleeping moment. All he did was hurt me so there really was no point. So I decided that on Tuesday after Presidents’ Day, when we went back to school I would forget all about Chris and move on with my life. I had other things to focus my time on anyways. I knew that I didn’t want to mope around all the time either, so to put it all behind me I called him to officiate our break up and say we were done for good.

  “Hello?” His voice stopped me. What should I say? How should I say it?

  “Chris, I love you,” I squeaked. That wasn’t supposed to be what I said. UGH Katie you were supposed to end it forever so you didn’t have to put up with it anymore! I screamed at myself inside my head.

  “I love you too,” he replied. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

  “So what now?” he asked. I realized I had been silent for a while.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you later.” I panicked and hung up and took a deep breath.

  I waited but he never called me back.

  That next day’s classes were canceled because of the snow. I found an empty sound proof-ish room in Bach hall and dug out my French Horn. The music seemed like empty notes. I stopped playing and sighed. I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty. Almost lunch time. I got up, put my horn and music away. I grabbed my coat from instrumental storage and walked to the mess hall.

  As I walked in, I had Ella calling my name.

  “Katie!” she said. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Hey Ella.” I said.

  “Katie White meet Blake Angell.” She automatically introduced me to the only person I didn’t know at the table.

  “Hi,” I said, being polite.

  His dark brown hair covered his eyes, the dark shade of blue that they were. It was a color blue I hadn’t seen ever except on tee shirts and in oceans. He was wearing a green shirt with the blue recycling symbol on it. His pants reminded me of the kind of khaki Chris would wear. They were black and gray camouflage styled. His DC shoes were a spitting image of what Chris used to wear. Who was this guy? Why was he here? Why did Ella introduce us?

  He was cute, his ears stood out from his head like he could fly away. His nose was button enough for a toddler, one “only a mother could love.”

  I sat down beside Ella and kept to myself until Blake spoke.

  “So you live around here?” I realized he was talking to me.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  He nodded. “Oh,” I said. “For a second I thought….” I stopped.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “So,” he paused. “Do you live around here?”

  “My parents live up the um… that way,” I pointed, a bit flustered. I made a weird face at myself. Blake laughed. “But I live on campus.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “I suppose that’s why Ella said she lived with you.”

  “Probably.” I forced down a smile. I almost couldn’t.

  “For some reason I thought you might have meant something else,” He replied.

  “What do you mean? Like I’m a lesbian or something?” Why did I sound offended? I barely knew this guy.

  “Blake, damn it I told you I wasn’t like that anymore,” Ella interrupted.

  “Yeah anymore,” Blake emphasized. We laughed.

  “Hey Katie, just don’t listen to a word he says ok?”

  “Okay.” I said, disregarding the words she had just said.

  “How
old are you?” I asked.

  “Nineteen,” he replied.

  “Oh.” Two full years older than I was.

  “Katie don’t listen to him, his nineteenth birthday isn’t for three weeks,” said Ella.

  “Goddamn it Ella, would you pipe out?”

  “Would you quit telling my friend heart-broken lies?” she requested.

  “Wait, heartbroken?”

  “Shut it Ella!” I gave her one of those ‘I’m going to hurt you’ looks.

  “Katie?” Blake said. The look in his eyes was sad, pitiful even. “Heartbroken? No.” he didn’t believe me.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “Why?”

  “It’s not a big deal.” My eyes swelled up with tears, thinking about Chris and Heather together again. The thought made my chest hurt. I thought I was literally going to pass out from the pain.

  “Katie?” Blake said.

  “No its ok.” I got up and walked away. I wasn’t that hungry anyways.

  Even though it was a month after us breaking up in middle of freaking winter, I still outside without a jacket. It was better worrying about my freezing body than the pain of something that I was supposed to get over a month ago.

  “Katie.” I expected the voice to be Ella.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For making me freeze? Let’s talk, inside preferably,” I smiled, but it was subtle.

  “What’s this about?”

  “You want to know about my break up?”

  “No I want to know why you chose to sit outside on a day that’s forty below.”

  “It’s easier, you don’t feel the pain from your emotions. You really only feel the cold,” I said. “Wait, I barely know you. Why do you care?”

  I looked at the tiles on the floor. Blue, White, Blue, White. My arm was crossed over my chest and my hair covered one side of my face.

  “Ok whatever you say,” he said. “What’s your favorite thing to do?”