Breathless

by Jessica Warman

  But I don’t stop spending time with Eddie. By the end of August, we’re together almost every night.

  Two days before the end of the summer semester, Eddie asks me to come over and watch a movie. Instead of lying on the sofa in the common room of the frat house, we go to his bedroom.

  For a while, everything seems normal. We’re lying on his bed, watching the movie, our bodies barely touching. But after a few minutes, for no discernible reason, Eddie reaches over and turns off the light. A few minutes after that, he reaches out to hold my hand.

  This is okay, I tell myself. We’ve held hands before . . . like friends.

  He turns onto his side, tugging my body against his.

  “I can’t see the movie,” I complain.

  “Shh.” And he tucks my hair behind my ear and starts to kiss my neck.

  “Eddie,” I murmur, “what are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer me. He turns his body so he’s lying above me, and before I know what’s happening, he slides one hand up my shirt and cups my face with his other hand, kissing me on the mouth, wrapping his body around mine.

  I can’t move. I can’t breathe. And as much as I don’t want him to stop—as much as I feel like I’ve been waiting for him to do this all summer—I imagine what Renee might say, and how Drew would feel if he knew what I was doing.

  It takes all my willpower, but I push Eddie off of me and sit up. I’m almost gasping for breath.

  “I can’t,” I tell him. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Eddie . . . I just can’t.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a while. He’s breathing just as hard as I am.

  He stares at the ceiling. Finally, he asks, “Can I try again?”

  I can’t help but smile. “No.” I get off the bed. “I should leave.”

  He grabs my hand. His expression is frustrated, but there’s also a trace of the grin that I’ve grown so crazy about, like he thinks he still has a chance. “Come on, Katie. Nobody has to know about this.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll know.”

  “Katie, there’s a rule about this kind of thing, when you’ve got a long-distance relationship.”

  “What rule?” I cross my arms. “There isn’t any rule.”

  “Yes, there is.” He tugs at his hair with both fists, his grin slipping away. “If you’re in a whole different state than your boyfriend, it’s okay to sleep with someone else. Everybody knows that,” he says. “It’s practically in the Bible.” He rolls his eyes, and for the first time since I’ve known him, I feel like a little kid.

  “Sleep with you?” The words come out in a shriek. “I was never going to sleep with you, Eddie.” I feel almost panicked, like I’m suddenly in way over my head. I’m so used to taking things slow with Drew, it genuinely hadn’t occurred to me that Eddie would expect to have sex.

  “Why not? At first, sure, you might have been just a piece of ass.” He takes a deep breath. “But I really like you. I’ve been hoping all summer that you get accepted next year, that maybe we can even . . . Oh, Christ.” He pauses. “Katie—are you a virgin?”

  “Eddie, I have to go.” I don’t wait for him to try and grab me this time. I just leave his room and get to the door as fast as I can, ignoring him as he calls after me. When I reach the sidewalk, I run.

  Classes end two days later. Drew comes to pick me up. I haven’t seen him in over a month, and when we’re finally together again I stand on my tiptoes in the courtyard outside my dorm and kiss him, so long and hard that he eventually nudges me away. “Katie,” he whispers, “control yourself. There are people around.” He stares at me, only half smiling. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing,” I say, a little too quickly. “I missed you, that’s all.”

  “I missed you, too. Can you just wait a little bit? You’re hanging all over me.”

  I feel more than a twinge annoyed. “Can’t I even kiss you?”

  “Of course you can. Look, I’m sorry. Let’s just get your stuff. We’ve got a long drive.”

  We’re sliding my last suitcase into the back of Drew’s SUV when a voice behind us booms, “Katie! You weren’t going to leave without saying good-bye, were you?”

  It’s about eighty degrees outside, but I feel my whole body go cold. “Eddie,” I say, turning around, forcing a smile. “Of course I wasn’t.”

  Eddie gives Drew a wide grin. “Let me guess. You’re Drew, right?”

  Drew nods. He doesn’t smile. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Eddie.” He licks his lips. I can tell he’s doing his best not to smirk. “Didn’t Katie tell you about me?”

  “No. She didn’t.” Drew gives me a confused look.

  “Oh, well then, let me tell you myself. Katie and I have been like two peas in a pod all summer! Haven’t we, Katie?”

  I want to die. Even from a few feet away, I can smell booze on Eddie’s breath. It’s not even noon. “Right,” I say, “we’re friends. And Eddie knows all about you, Drew. Eddie, haven’t I been telling you all summer how much I miss him?”

  “She has indeed,” Eddie says. He reaches out to shake Drew’s hand. “You are one lucky man,” he tells him. “Girls like Katie are one in a million, and she is very devoted to you.”

  I make a gesture over Eddie’s shoulder like I’m chugging from a bottle, and mouth, “Drunk.”

  “Well . . . thanks,” Drew says. “It was nice meeting you.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” Eddie says.

  The three of us stand there for a moment in awkward silence.

  Drew clears his throat. “I guess we’d better get going, Katie.”

  “Right!” Eddie blurts. “You have to go . . . back to Pennsylvania?”

  “West Virginia,” Drew says. “She’s going back to school.” He looks from me to Eddie, then back to me, and finally says, “I’ll let you two say your good-byes. Okay?” And he walks around the car and climbs into the driver’s side.

  Before I can hurry away, Eddie pulls me into a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, suddenly sober.

  Thank God Drew can’t hear us. “So am I,” I whisper back. As we stand there holding each other, I realize how hard I’ve fallen for him. I want to stay here in his arms, instead of getting into the car with Drew. All of a sudden it’s obvious: I want Eddie because. I love Drew despite.

  Eddie gives me a kiss on the forehead. We pull apart. I notice that Drew is watching us in the rearview mirror.

  “I hope I see you again,” Eddie says.

  I feel like crying. “Me too.”

  Drew is quiet as we make our way out of New Haven. Once we’re on the interstate, he says, “You must have spent a lot of time with Eddie. He seemed really attached to you.”

  “We were just friends,” I say. “I mean, you don’t have to be suspicious or anything. I would never—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he interrupts, closing his hand over mine. “I trust you completely, Katie.” He winks at me. “You’re my girl.”

  “Oh.” I bite my bottom lip. “Good. I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

  “Katie, come on. I know you better than that. Besides, it was obvious you two were just friends.”

  “It was?”

  “Sure.” He fiddles with the radio dial, trying to find good reception. “I can spot gays from a mile away.”

  chapter 12

  From the highest point of the steepest hill that winds down into Woodsdale, West Virginia, tonight you can see the lights of Oglebay—the state’s oldest national park—caped in translucent ice crystals that cough gobs of wetness from the sky and slick the hills, filling the valleys. At the edge of the city, up a narrow unpaved road and through a curtain of pine trees, the entrance to Woodsdale Academy is gated and well lit and attended to at night by Papa Rosedaddy and Puff—a sweet Saint Bernard with late-stage canine arthritis.

  Papa Rosedaddy is also the bus driver and the groundskeeper and the school’s sole security guard, and he has been her
e longer than any of the students, longer even than most of the faculty. Tonight he and Puff walk by flashlight, slowly so as not to fall on the ice that has covered the sidewalks and all but snuffed out the streetlights, taking one long trek across campus for the last time before they go to bed, earlier than usual because of the storm. The evening has crept up on campus, through the weather; there are only a few lights still on in the dorms, persisting against the evening so that the silhouettes through the windows seem like ghosts moving behind a thick frost.

  Merriweather Hall sits on the farthest corner of campus, between the headmaster’s house and the maintenance barn, a three-story maze of antique construction with luxury updates: a few new rooms added here and there, which spill out on three of its sides, the bell tower boarded shut to prevent secret cigarette smoking.

  Merriweather is for prefect senior girls only. It has seven bedrooms, which are enough for fourteen girls, and a large downstairs apartment for the house mother, Mrs. Christianson, and her husband. It has always been Papa Rosedaddy’s last stop before bed.

  For people who live at Woodsdale Academy, it becomes their world, and tonight the world has become almost silent under the ice and rain, which have been falling for days and have crusted over Woodsdale, nearly erasing the skyline. Even the lights inside the houses can hardly be seen from outside. It isn’t October yet, but already the weather is too cold. This year, there won’t be an Indian summer.

  Papa Rosedaddy keeps one hand on Puff’s thick neck, as if comforted by the dog’s breath gathering in clusters of moisture. Puff’s panting is the only sign of warmth in the night. Papa Rosedaddy looks at the sky and squints into the wet. He seems to listen for a moment, then shuts off his flashlight and follows Puff toward the barn with his head down, leaving no tracks on the frozen ground.

  As I watch Papa Rosedaddy from the window of my room, I think about how I’ve been here for two years now, and it has become the only home I know anymore. When I’m away from Hillsburg, I don’t remember it really—I remember more than anything how ugly it is. The way people there dislike anything different out of sheer stupidity, never realizing how pathetic their own lives are. I remember neighbors standing on their porches as my brother screamed at me to help him, to love him, all the ignorance surrounding us like a dizzying funnel that sucked our family inside and whirled it to bits. Every time I go back—for a weekend here or there, always at the Ghost’s insistence, for things like my mom’s birthday or their twenty-fifth anniversary party—I always try to bring Mazzie with me. Ever since the last time I saw my brother, I don’t want to go home without her.

  Tonight it’s freezing in our room. There is ice on the insides of the windows. Mazzie and I are wearing our matching pj’s, covered in small puffy kittens, that my mom bought us for Christmas last year.

  I climb into the lower bunk, beside Mazzie. “I can’t believe it’s so freaking cold,” I say. I cup my hands to my mouth and blow warm air against my palms.

  She leans forward so that I can feel her breath in my face. It smells like fresh toothpaste. She pinches my cheek, digging into my flesh with her fingernails. “Does Drew think it’s a sign of the apocalypse? Does he think it’s going to start raining frogs soon?”

  The longer I know her, Mazzie only gets meaner.

  “Stop that,” I say, swatting her hands away. “And no.” What I don’t tell her is that he thinks this cold snap is good evidence that global warming is a liberal hoax.

  Mazzie wrinkles her nose at me. “You smell like chlorine and barf.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “It makes me want to puke. I might have to go sleep downstairs. You’re repulsive, you know that?” I don’t think she knows how to be any other way. She rests her head on my shoulder and says, “Oh, Katie. I hate you with every shred of my being.”

  “That’s funny,” I tell her, “because you’ve signed up to be my roommate again for the last two years in a row. Why would you do that?”

  “Because I feel sorry for you.”

  “The more you hate me,” I add, “the more I love you, you know.”

  She sighs. “I know. It’s a lose-lose situation. I might as well give up.”

  Mazzie’s tongue is like the kittens’ on our pj’s, small and delicate as she sticks the tip of it out at me right now. With her pinky finger, she scratches unabashedly at the edge of her nose, probing up into the nostril.

  The storm outside is violent; along with the ice, there’s thunder and lightning, which occasionally makes our lights flicker. We’ve laid towels along the window frames so they won’t rattle in their tracks all night, like something’s coming for us, shaking chains in its fists.

  We’re up later than usual, operating on the assumption there won’t be school tomorrow because of the ice storm. After lights out, we’re going to get drunk.

  I shuffle my legs and produce a pint of coconut rum from under the covers.

  Her finger is still up her nose. Her mouth opens in surprise. “Did you just pull that out of your vagina?”

  “Let’s do a shot,” I say. “Quit picking your nose.”

  When it’s just the two of us, Mazzie becomes a completely different girl than the one whom everyone else knows. In public, she has never had so much as a sip of a drink. She has never taken a drag from a cigarette or a joint at a party.

  But when it’s the two of us, alone, she’s up for almost anything. It’s like whatever happens when our door is closed is part of a different world where we can finally relax.

  We pull my comforter up to our hips and sit with our backs bowed against the wall, legs splayed and overlapping under the covers. Mazzie’s feet barely reach my knees.

  Even in her slippers we can hear Mrs. Christianson—who is on her second marriage and a lot younger and more laid back than Mrs. Martin ever was—from the other end of the dorm, her ratty bathrobe dragging against the floor as she opens each door after a quick knock. She pokes her head through each room’s crack to say good night, turns out the lights, and moves to the next room.

  Here’s what I love most about this place: even though it is so far from home for so many of us, Woodsdale has a way of being better than home ever was. I have explained it nicely in the Berkeley application that I wrote for Mazzie, which is in an envelope in the mailbox downstairs: students come here expecting to get into a good college and make some friends. Not only do we have that, but living on campus is practically like getting a hundred brothers and sisters. Having faculty living in the same building is like a few extra sets of parents at the ready, should we need them for any reason. It’s not like we love every single person—actually, I can’t stand most of them—but they’re always here. Like a family.

  Okay, it isn’t exactly like that, not all the time. But I’m sure the admission staff at Berkeley would like to think so.

  When I was writing the essay, I almost started to believe it myself. There are times when this place seems perfect, as though we are living in a tiny diorama of the Real World. It gives me a sense of relief to know there are worlds outside southwestern Pennsylvania. These other worlds are the places where people don’t look at you sideways when they hear that you go to prep school, where everyone—even me, now—owns a pair of white gloves, just in case, and knows which fork to use for each course and how to dress for each of the seasons. I like the rules here; I like knowing which ones it is okay to break, as long as everybody else is doing it, and which ones mark a person as being Trouble. I like the sense I get sometimes that other people are pretending just as much as I am. Like maybe I’m not the only one with a secret brother, miles away, whose name I haven’t said out loud in months.

  Mrs. Christianson knocks twice at our door, so softly that an untrained ear would never notice. I shove the bottle underneath my pillow. Light triangles against the floor as the door opens.

  She trusts us 110 percent. It’s amazing how, as long as you keep your grades up, you can get away with pretty much anything. She hardly looks into the
room at first. “Good night, ladies.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Christianson.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Christianson.”

  After a second’s pause, she squints her eyes at us, peering across the huge room into the dark. “Why are you girls in the same bed?”

  Mazzie pinches my side underneath my shirt, trying to make me squirm.

  I wait three, four seconds for her to answer for us before I say, “We’re just talking.”

  Mrs. Christianson taps a manicured nail against the door frame. Her cat, Wonka, stands beside her, looking upward, impatient for her to move on. “Okay. That’s fine. But you girls need to go to sleep soon.”

  “All right. We will,” I say.

  “Good.” And she shuts the door.

  We wait without talking, without even moving, until we hear her knocking, saying good night four more times at different rooms until she changes direction and heads back down the hall for the last time tonight, down the carpeted stairs, across the foyer, and we hear the click of the deadbolt in the front door. A few seconds more and then the Christiansons’ own door shuts, and the late news from the television in their apartment filters up through the ceiling. If we press our ears to the floor in a few minutes we’ll be able to hear the latest weather forecast: Stay indoors. Keep your babies close and your kitchens stocked. Everything is about to get covered in ice.

  Anybody could get the wrong idea. After almost three years in the same room, you get comfortable in ways you wouldn’t guess. The girls here get relaxed with each other in the same ways that boys on a football team do; it becomes second nature to touch each other, letting your bodies overlap without really meaning to, the same way your living space does. Without real families here, we all learn to improvise in ways that are tough to explain unless you’re here, living through it.

  I rest my head on Mazzie’s shoulder. It is, for our purposes, the middle of the night—the windows are so thick with ice we can barely see outside. There is no reason to go to sleep. There will not be school tomorrow. In the dark, on nights like these, even our memories can seem like dreams if we want it badly enough.