by Sara Ryan
“Yeah!” I say, warming to Doug. “They’re totally excellent for climbing.”
Doug nods enthusiastically. “Oh man, I loved climbing those trees! The best thing was to climb one late at night and smoke a bowl–oops, should I be saying that to you guys?”
Anne and I laugh. “I guess your RAs weren’t really strict,” I say.
“Man, I was an RA, ”says Doug. “But it was a while back. Things are probably different now. It’s so cool that’s where you guys are from! Well, follow me over this way and I’ll show you our fine dining selections.”
Doug walks in front of us, and he looks like Battle again. It’s uncanny.
“I think he’s flirting with you,” Anne whispers. “Are you mad?”
“I look at her, confused. “I don’t know if he is or not,” I whisper back, “but why would I be mad?”
“Because he’s a guy!” Anne whispers more loudly.
“Oh! No, that wouldn’t make me mad,” I say.
Anne shakes her head. Obviously, I keep failing to act the way she expects.
Doug is leading us across the parking area toward a small white vehicle that looks sort of like an ice cream truck.
“O’Riley’s Food Service” is painted on one side in bright blue letters. “These guys come every day that we’re here. Their stuff’s not bad, but a lot of us bring our own lunches and keep them in the coolers over there.” He nods toward a spot over in the tall grass where there are several wooden picnic tables in addition to four large orange coolers.
“Were those here when you guys started?” I ask, pointing at the tables.
“No, they weren’t–one of the donors gave them. Dr. Francis was really angry, because we’re just going to have to take them down once we finish, and they don’t do us any good, any they cost a lot more than you’d expect. It’s nice to have somewhere to sit for lunch, but in the grand scheme of things it’s fairly gratuitous.”
Anne and I get in line for O’Riley’s Food Service while Doug gets his lunch out of one of the coolers. As we approach the front of the line, I see that it’s apparently run by the Mexican branch of the O’Rileys.
By the time we have our food, all the tables are filled. Doug says, “If you don’t mind sitting on the ground, there’s a nice shady spot over a little closer to the dig. Just don’t leave any garbage!”
The three of us walk over to Doug’s spot, which is underneath a giant oak tree. I sprawl out on my stomach, as does Doug. Anne sits cross-legged against the trunk of the tree.
“How long have you been doing archaeology?” I ask Doug, taking a bite of my tostada. It’s quite good, particularly in comparison to what the dinning hall likes to think of as Mexican food.
Doug rests his chin on his right hand and looks up as though the answer to my question is somewhere in the clouds overhead. “Uh. . .well, let’ see. Did my first dig back in undergrad, so that would’ve been . . . Jesus, I guess it’s ten years now.”
“You don’t look that old,” Anne says, and then blushes.
Doug laughs. “Thanks!” he says. He takes a banana, a Tupperware bowl, and a fork out of his lunch sack.
“Did you know for a long time that this is what you wanted to do?” I ask.
Doug shakes his head. “I got my undergrad in anthro, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. The first dig I went on, I got onto because I was dating somebody who was on it.”
“That’s so random!” I say. I don’t know if these are the kinds of questions Ms. Fraser wanted us to ask, but I’m very interested in Doug’s answers.
“Yeah, I know. Funny, isn’t it? If I’d known when I started how much lab work there is in proportion to stuff like this, I don’t know if I would have gotten into it. I might have been a forest ranger instead.”
I’m slightly appalled. “But aren’t you interested in the analysis?” I ask.
“Oh, definitely! But that doesn’t mean it’s fun to sit in the lab doing testing on soil samples, or spectrographic analysis on a pottery fragment. You have to be willing to put up with the scut work if you want to get into this.”
“Ms. Fraser was telling us that it’s kind of hard to get jobs,” Anne says.
Doug peels his banana. “It is. But it’s not that bad. What happens is that you get to know people, and then when they’re going to write up grants for projects, they let you know, and you get included in their grant proposal.”
“It seems like it’s a lot more about money than I thought it would be,” I say.
“Everything is, Nicola,” says Doug, taking a large bite out of his banana.
August 6, 11:42 p.m., My Room
Field notes:
positive thing since the end of me and battle:
1. talking with anne on bus
2. finding out about archeology from doug (who asked for my e-mail address)
3. a couple of evenings with katrina before she got so obsessive about her giant programming project
4. walking by the river with isaac, except for the weird kiss thing
. . . but none of these really signify. i’m walking around with a giant hole int the middle of my chest. i’m just trying to ignore it and hope that everyone else does too.
Nicola lancaster’s brain is:
the skin underneath a scab someone’s just ripped off. pink and raw and painful and likely to get infected.
problem w/this analogy:
skin underneath a scab isn’t capable of being stupid.
I just want to hide, and run away, and be anywhere in the entire world but wherever she is except that part of me still wants to be with her more than to be anywhere else.
talking to ms. Fraser was a good thing, i guess, but it didn’t change anything. maybe i’ll get a better grade because she feels sorry for me, but that’s it. didn’t bring battle back. didn’t strangle kevin with one of his guitar strings.
dominant feeling: anger, at self, this was supposed to be a summer class in archaeology, not some idiotic soap opera mess. [except that no soap operas would have a love affair between girls as a storyline, unless one of us died tragically in a car crash, and then the other one was comforted in her grief by some charming young man.]
damn it.
this isn’t helping.
I close my notebook. Perhaps, in honor of Doug, I should climb the big tree in the courtyard, though I have no bowl to smoke.
It’s chilly tonight, though. It doesn’t feel like summer at all. I’ll need my sweater.
I have my hand on the sweater before I remember what’s underneath it.
I remember I thought it felt like a rope. But is it enough rope to hang myself? God, Nic, stop being so melodramatic. I lift out Battle’s braid along with my sweater. I didn’t use much of it to make the Empress. She’s under the sweater, too.
I study archaeology. They’re artifacts.
I open my notebook again, and turn to a blank page. Since Battle left me, I’ve been playing my viola a lot, but I haven’t drawn at all, except for class. I put the mass of hair and the Empress on my bed, and begin to sketch them.
Really, all the braid is, is pattern. The subtle gradations of color, the way it catches the light, the curves created by the braiding. If I squint my eyes just right, I can forget it was ever attached to someone I love.
Except for that very faint scent of lavender.
Suddenly there’s a very loud banging on my door. “Open up, in the name of the law!” It’s Katrina.
“Hold on,” I say, picking up the braid and the Empress and tossing them back into the drawer. “Okay, come in, what’s up?”
“I’tell you what’s up, what’s up is that we are going to go commit an act of sabotage right now and ‘we’ does in fact mean you and me and Battle, and I don’t care how angsty you feel, I am sick of dealing with your bullshit, you are going to go and get her right now, or else I will stand here and sing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ over and over and over again, until you go insane!”
“I though
t you still had that massive programming project,” I say.
“Well! You thought wrong, little missy! I’ve left all that behind me! Carl Sutter the Evil Toad can just kiss my big fat hairy white butt!”
Her eyes are red-rimmed with dark circles under them, her hair is standing on end. Her “If I Had Known Grand-children Were So Much Fun, I Would Have Had Them First” T-shirt looks like she’s been wearing it for days.
“How long have you been awake, Katrina?”
She looks at her giant digital watch. “Thirty-seven hours, twenty-three minutes, and fourteen! fifteen! sixteen! seconds! Now it’seventeen! Why do you ask? Why aren’t you going to get Battle? Climb . . .. eeeee-vr’y moun-tain! Ford . . .. eeee-vr’y streeeeeem!”
I hear doors opening all up and down the hall. “Shut up!” someone yells.
“Would it be completely useless for me to ask you to calm down?” I ask.
“Yes! It would! That was perceptive! You! Are! So! Perceptive! That it’s! Amazing!” She sounds like somebody in a Lynda Barry cartoon.
“Katrina, are you on drugs?”
“No! I just get high on life! And America! Are you going to go get Battle or not? FO-LLOW EEEEV’RY RAIN-BOW!!”
Katrina can’t sing. At all.
“Shut up, just for a second! What’s really going on?”
“Nothing’s going on! I’m going off! Pow! Like a bomb!”
“Is this some bizarre strategy to get me to talk to Battle?”
“Oh, you, you, you, why does everything always have to be about you? Daaarr-ling, we don’t have much time! Carpe carpem! Seize the carp!”
“So why don’t you come with me to get Battle?”
“Because, silly—somebody has to get the supplies together! I’m off! Be at my room in ten minutes, with Battle, or I’ll come back here and start in on the John Denver!”
She flounces out of the room.
Now what?
Even if I was going to go along with this psychotic episode Katrina seems to be having, it’s past midnight. Battles’s probably asleep.
Guess you’ll just have to wake her up, then! Katrina’s voice says in my head.
Well—what the hell. What do I have to lose?
It’s not like she can leave me.
Deus ex Katrina.
Just act natural, I think as I knock on the door, with my tell-tale heart beating loudly enough to wake Poe from the dead.
The door opens. She’s holding the book I gave her.
“Hi . . . did I wake you?”
She shakes her head. Her hair’s longer, almost to crew-cut length. She looks tired.
“Katrina wants us for something. She wouldn’t explain what. She’s been up for almost two days straight, and she’s pretty scary right now,” I sound astonishingly normal.
“All right.” So does she. “Let me put some pants on.” She stands in the doorway for a minute, obviously debating whether she should invite me in.
“I’ll wait.”
I look at the carpet. It’s dull gray with tiny black diamonds. Probably they picked it because they thought it wouldn’t show the dirt. I wonder how many diamonds there are per square foot.
“Okay, let’s go.” She’s wearing the jodhpurs that she wore the night we went to the woods.
Don’t look at her, doofus. Look at all those fascinating tiny black diamonds on the carpet.
The distance between Battle’s room and Katrina’s has never seemed so far.
I’m so relieved when get to her door that I don’t hear it immediately.
“All right, we’re here, what do you want us to do?” I call out.
“I don’t think she wants us to do anything. Listen,” says Battle.
Battle and I used to try to get Katrina to come to breakfast with us, and it was always an ordeal, because Katrina sleeps more deeply and snores louder than anyone I’ve ever met. And it’s that irregular, snorting sound that I hear now, through her door.
“Oh, god. She must have crashed.” I lean against the doorway, my legs suddenly rubbery.
“Sounds like she needed to.”
“Yeah, she definitely did.”
Now what?
We stand outside Katrina’s room for five minutes, listening to her snore.
“So,” I say, finally. “Hi.”
My voice sounds weird and hollow.
“Hi,” says Battle.
Her voice sounds just like mine, except shakier.
It would take more than a knife to cut this tension. It would require at least a chainsaw. The thought of brandishing a chainsaw strikes me funny, and I want to tell Battle, and I look up at her for an instant before I remember that I can’t tell her, because that would be acknowledging that the tension exists. It’s in that instant that I see the tears running down her cheeks.
“Come on. Let’s not talk in the hallway,” I say abruptly.
Without waiting to see if she follows me, I start walking back to my room. And I hear her footsteps behind me, and her breathing.
I unlock my door and sit down on the floor, my back against the bed. I start pulling out a loose thread from the bedspread.
She sits on the floor, too, on the other side of the room.
She runs her hands through her hair distractedly. I can feel it as though it were my hands in the soft blonde fuzz.
I have no idea what I’m going to say to her. The tears are starting to come for me, too, and the lump in my throat. Damn it. I don’t care any more.
“I love you,” I say. It sounds like I’m saying, “Fuck you,” because my voice is so angry.
She just looks at me.
I wrap the loose thread from the bedspread around the index finger of my left hand, tightly enough to cut off the circulation. I watch my fingertip slowly turn from red to purple.
“I love you, too.” She enunciates this very carefully, like a mother speaking to the child who’s just broken her favorite vase.
“Oh sure–‘as a friend,’ right?” I accuse her with the biggest cliché of teenage romance.
“Yes–but that’s not all, and you know it.” Now she sounds angry, too.
“Do I? How about Kevin? What does he know?” I let go of the thread, and the blood throbs back into my finger.
“Kevin is not relevant,” Battle says coldly.
“Oh, really? Well, he seemed pretty goddamned relevant to you in the elevator! Not to mention all those times you went strolling all over campus hand in hand.”
She expels her breath quickly–it’s too explosive to be called a sigh.
“Well?” I demand.
Battle says, sounding incredibly irritated, “Look, I can’t give you a perfect explanation.”
“Did I say I wanted one?”
She looks straight at me and says simply, “You always do.”
All the anger rushes out of me and is immediately replaced by shame.
“Whatever you want to say or do is fine.” I try to keep my voice neutral, but it comes out small and pathetic-sounding. My eyes hurt in a way that’s half wanting to cry and half simple fatigue. This makes me realize just how tired I am, how little sleep I’ve gotten since Battle left me, how drained I already was when Katrina showed up at my door. What I really want right now is for us to hurry up and finish reconciling.
There’s a long silence. I shiver. My fatigue has made me cold; I can see the goose bumps on my legs. But I don’t feel like pulling the blanket off the bed. That would be too comforting, and that’s not what I want right now.
“What if I don’t have a good reason for what happened with Kevin?” Battle’s voice is low.
“What do you mean? What would a good reason have been?”
I don’t know what she’s getting at. I’m trying not to sound angry, but I don’t think it’s working.
Battle sits silent again for a minute and then says all in a rush, “A good reason would have been that I didn’t care about you any more.”
“But you said you didn’t have a good reason
.”
She nods.
This is ridiculous. We’re not communicating, we’re having a contest to see who can be more indirect. Words really don’t work, do they? Without meaning to, I start to laugh, and once I start, I can’t stop. This must be hysteria.
“Why are you laughing?”
I wheeze a few times and manage eventually to get enough breath to say, “Us. We’re acting like teenagers, you know.” My voice is shaky. At a certain point, it really is hard to tell the difference between laughing and crying.
“We are teenagers,” Battle reminds me.
“I know. But this is so dumb.”
“Dumb–uh oh, that’s dangerous. Think they’ll kick us out?” Battle’s voice is. . .edgy? Brittle? I can’t think of the right word.
“Kick us out? Isn’t it a little late for that? I don’t know where she’s going with this.
“For being dumb. We’re at gifted program, get it?” She tries to laugh, for about three seconds. Then she just looks at me. Battle has more eyes than other people. It’s like everyone else’s eyes are sixty watts and hers are a million. I look away.
“You don’t hold anything back, do you?” she asks in a flat voice.
“Should I?”
She sighs. It’s as though she’s thoroughly exasperated that telepathy doesn’t work. That I can’t read whatever the neon sign she thinks she has flashing on her forehead is saying. Is this a Southern thing, to expect people to understand you without you actually having to say anything?
I wait.
“It just doesn’t seem to be hard for you.” She’s talking to the floor, not to me. But then again, that’s where I’m looking.
“What doesn’t?”
“Intimacy.” She does look up when she says that.
“Should it be?”
“It is for most of us.”
“Doesn’t seem like it was that hard for you with Kevin.”
She laughs a short laugh that’s almost a bark. “I think I said a total of twenty words to Kevin during our involvement, and ten of them were ‘Really?’ He doesn’t know I have a brother, he doesn’t know why I shaved my head, he doesn’t even know I have dogs.”
“What does he know?”
Battle shrugs, reminding me of Isaac. “That I’ll listen to him blather about composition for hours on end. Oh, and that I’m a ‘babe,’ apparently.”