UI 101

by M. K. Claeys

  “Not too much, I guess.”

  “You should have seen her before I moved to Illington. She kept going on and on about how you might take her back and how it was the greatest thing. You took her back, and she won. And now that you’re having second thoughts—and rightly so, I might add—she’s back to her old tricks. She’ll do anything to keep you, even ruin her own reputation.

  “If she succeeds and you do stay with her, then everyone will look at you. Even though you will have done the right thing, in the back of everybody’s mind, the situation will still be your fault. She’s banking on that streak of honor in you.”

  Dave shook his head. “I don’t know what I think anymore.”

  “You want to know what I think?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “I think you need a beer. Exams are next week, so they’re throwing a huge party down the hall in protest.”

  “A beer, huh?”

  “A beer. And this time I’m pouring.”

  I guess ex-boyfriends aren’t all bad, sometimes. They have feelings, too.

  The door opened, and Ryn stepped in with Paul. I sprayed some Strawberries and Champagne body mist in the air to clear any traces of smoke, and Dave helped me down from the windowsill. Ryn was busily chatting with Paul, and it wasn’t until she had hung up her cardigan and flung Paul’s vintage sweater on the futon that she noticed we had a guest.

  “Oh! Hi! I’m, Ryn, Rae’s roommate. I don’t think I’ve met you—are you in one of Rae’s classes?”

  Paul seemed a bit more perceptive than my roommate and gazed at Dave with a weary, as well as keen, eye.

  “Ryn, I’d like you to meet Dave, a friend from my hometown.”

  “Dave Baxter?” Ryn squeaked. She’d gotten enough out of me to know that his being here most likely didn’t bode well with me.

  Paul, ever the observant and tactful one, stepped forward and eased the introduction.

  “Hey, man, I’m Paul. I live across the hall. Good of you to come. We’ve all been dying to meet any of Rae’s friends. We didn’t think we’d be able to since Evansdale’s so far away and all.”

  Dave shook his hand warmly while I gave Ryn a warning look behind their backs.

  “So what brings you all the way to Illington?” Ryn asked pleasantly as she shook Dave’s hand, giving me a smug look that I was sure couldn’t mean anything good.

  Damn. She knew she wouldn’t get the down and dirty details out of me, so she went straight to the horse’s ass. Mouth. Other communicable end. Whatever!

  “Oh, well I, uh…” Dave looked a little sheepish, took a breath, and continued on like normal, “Auraelia and I go, um, pretty far back, and I needed help on a delicate errand that only she could understand.” They weren’t buying it. “And I was in the neighborhood. Relatives out here, you know?” Dave invented, wildly. “It was a twelve-hour drive, but seeing a pretty girl like Auraelia is a nice perk to add on to the end. She didn’t tell me her roommate was so good-looking, though.”

  Ryn was melting already. He’d won her over, and I could completely understand. After all, I didn’t date ugly boys, and Dave was one of the better-looking ones in the ex-boyfriend lot. Mitzy’s brother, Robert, though, now he was the most beautiful male specimen I had ever seen, hands down.

  Oh my God. I can’t believe I just thought that. Mitzy can never find out I think her brother’s hot. She’d kill me! That and he’d never, ever go for me. I mean, I’m a small-town girl, and he’s, well, he’s friggin Robert Callaway!

  But Paul wouldn’t be so easy to win over. Would he? Either way, Ryn and Paul had skipped eating lunch together, which was why they had come back so early. Since Dave was here, we decided to go out to lunch and make a huge affair of it. We picked up Mitzy and Jamaal and headed out the door, and I couldn’t help but smirk at the shocked look on Brad’s face as we passed him in the lobby when he saw Dave hold the door for me on the way to the parking lot.

  Lunch was a raucous journey, with Ryn, Mitzy, Jamaal, and I in my car and Dave and Paul in Dave’s truck. I don’t know what Dave and Paul had talked about in the five-minute drive downtown to Campus Burrito, but they seemed to put up a very united front once we’d all ordered and sat. When we got back to the dorms, the girls and I got ready for the party while Dave went with Jamaal and Paul to play Derek’s Wii. Surprisingly enough, Ryn didn’t ask me any questions while we got ready, and Mitzy just seemed overjoyed to meet anyone having anything to do with my life before Illington. We did two rounds of pre-party shots, and at eight o’clock we made our way to the room where the party was located, deposited our donation—Dave paid mine—and Dave and I made our way to the pony keg, which had been stealthily brought up in a hockey bag and hidden in the shower, where he even let me pour.

  “Cheers,” he said. “To starting over.”

  I grinned. “Cheers.”

  In all honesty, the party was pretty good, but the fond reminiscences of all the slamming ones we’d held on our own floor made us feel a bit nostalgic, so we made our exit before midnight, just as Jamaal notified us that he’d gotten the last cup of beer from the keg, and headed back down to my and Ryn’s room, bringing all the people from our floor with us. Hanging around our room was great, and Ryn and I were having a great time playing hostess.

  “What are you drinking, Auraelia?” asked Dave, eyeing my bright-red drink.

  “Sweet Tart. Want some?”

  He tried it and apparently liked it. “That’s awesome. How do you make it?”

  “Oooh, so easy! And the best part is it’s strong too. I’ll show you.”

  I grabbed a two liter of orange soda, deposited nearly half into my Nalgene bottle, and replaced what I had dumped with vodka. Then I held out a stack of Kool-Aid packets, and Dave picked one. Fruit Punch. I poured it in, capped it off, and handed him the bottle.

  “Now shake, slowly.” He did as I directed, poured himself a glass, and then topped me off when I finished mine. “Heh-heh. Welcome to Illington, Mr. Baxter.”

  The MP3s were cycling, everyone was mingling, that girl who always threw up hadn’t even made it out of the party on the sixth floor—so I didn’t have to worry about that—and my friends seemed to have accepted Dave right in. I breathed a sigh of relief; it was good to know that my past wasn’t completely full of skeletons anymore. Out of nowhere, Paul handed me my guitar.

  “Play the Becky Jackson song, Rae. One last time.”

  I nearly choked on my Sweet Tart. “Now?”

  “Now. Please, Rae.”

  The shouts were deafening, and all the while Dave was trying to cry out above them, “Play the what song?”

  “The Becky Jackson song!” cried Mitzy, innocently grabbing him by the hand and sitting him down at my desk chair so he could have a front-row seat. “You’ll love it, it’s so funny!”

  Oh my God. Did anyone even stop to think that Dave, being from my hometown, might actually know the song’s namesake? And did anyone stop to think that Dave, being an ex-boyfriend of mine, might actually be somewhat involved in the song’s lyrics, although never mentioned by name?

  Apparently not.

  I needed an excuse, and quickly. “No way,” I said, pushing the guitar away. “I can’t. Way too much Sweet Tart to be playing guitar right now. And I got a paper cut while I was studying this afternoon.”

  “Aw, come on, Rae!” pleaded Ryn. “You hardly ever play it anymore, and it’s so funny.”

  “Yeah, Rae,” said Dave, smirking smugly at me. “Why don’t you play the Becky Jackson song? I know I’d sure like to hear it.”

  I groaned. “No, Dave. I really don’t think you would.”

  “Wait a minute! Dave, you’re from Evansdale,” Jamaal pointed out.

  “Yeah! Do you know this Becky girl?” asked Mitzy, blue eyes widened to epic proportions.

  “I might.”

  “Oh, Rae, see, you have to play it! And then Dave can add lyrics since he knows her!”

  I seriously wanted to die. And the
n Dave took the guitar from Paul and placed it in my hands.

  “Play it, Auraelia. If anyone should hear it, it’s me. If it’s so funny, then I really want to listen because I could really use a laugh about that girl.”

  I winced. “Seriously? You know what it’s going to be about, and you seriously want me to play it?”

  “I seriously do.”

  “All right, I’ll play it”—cheers erupted around the room, but I cut them off—“if everyone takes a shot with me! You know the drill.”

  People took shots or downed the rest of their drinks, and I set my fingers to the frets, tuning up and sounding out the first chord.

  * * *

  Oh, you all know Becky Jackson,

  And you know she was a good friend of mine.

  Now if she’s such a good friend,

  Why was she hitting on my man all the time?

  * * *

  I went to a party with Becky Jackson,

  And we got drunk on keg beer.

  And before I knew it, we were talking,

  And the truth came out in the clear.

  * * *

  By now the entire floor knew the song. The only person who hadn’t heard it before was Dave, and I couldn’t look at him while I played. I watched the other faces in the crowd, feeding off their energy, and they jumped in on the loudest chorus I’d ever heard.

  * * *

  Bitch, fuck you, Becky Jackson,

  You’re a dirty, lying cheat.

  Whore, fuck you, Becky Jackson,

  I hope you die in the street.

  You can keep the bastard for all I care.

  He don’t mean shit to me.

  Oh, go to hell, Becky Jackson,

  You ain’t no friend to me.

  * * *

  I finished the song, and as the party resumed itself, I reverently set my guitar down and looked Dave Baxter in the eye for the first time since I’d started tuning. And he was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.

  “You know I never cheated on her, right?”

  “You didn’t? But that conversation in the hallway with Emily Wilson. About how she wanted to get together with you again.”

  “No, I didn’t cheat on her. I had a threesome with Becky and Emily because Becky wanted to. She thought it was a fantasy of mine and wanted to act it out to show how much she cared about me. Honestly, I think it was more that she had a crush on Emily and the only way she could act on it was through the guise of doing it for me. It was a little too weird, really, and it was more them being together and me sitting there like an idiot. Really, it felt as if she was cheating on me with Emily, right there in front of me, which was totally not cool. So I told Emily and Becky that I wasn’t down for it again.”

  I was shocked. “Well. That explains why she said I ‘didn’t know what I was talking about’ when I told her.”

  “Probably.”

  “God, she really is a freak.”

  Dave awkwardly ran a hand through his hair. “Huh. You’re telling me.”

  We made eye contact. “Shots?” I asked, just as awkwardly.

  “Shots.”

  And that was that. We drowned the nasty mental picture of Becky with Emily in vodka and partied the night away. Dave crashed on our futon and even bought a lunch pass so he could eat with us when we all woke up at two thirty the next afternoon. After our meal, he left, and the rest of us made our way groggily and still in our pajamas to the study lounge to bust open the books for a few hours before dinner. When we couldn’t take it anymore, we all piled into Mitzy and CiCi’s room to watch a video.

  Sunday morning arrived, and I stopped by the front desk to get any mail that had arrived on Saturday while we were all zombied out. Surprisingly, there was a slip indicating I had a package. I handed it to the rather frazzled-looking desk clerk, who had a copy of Organic Chemistry open in front of her—no wonder she looked so stressed—and she returned with a small basket wrapped in colored cellophane.

  “Yeah. I was here when it was dropped off. Seems the guy said you were really busy and didn’t want to be disturbed, so he left it with us.”

  I picked up the attached card and read it to myself and was surprised to realize that a grin was spreading across my lips.

  * * *

  Auraelia,

  I’m glad I got to visit, and you were right—Illington really is an amazing town. Everything was really fun, and your new friends are awesome, esp. Paul, but there’s one thing Illington is missing.

  Here’s a little piece of home, something you can look at, and hopefully it will bring back good memories of this weekend and maybe more to come. I’ve been thinking about applying to the University of New Mexico (remember those pamphlets I was looking at in Abigail’s Place over Christmas?), and now I have even more reasons to. Getting out of Evansdale certainly seems to have done well for you. Maybe it will for me, too.

  Thanks for all your help. I know everything will work out now. Keep playing your guitar, and next time I’ll sing with you. Who knows, maybe next time we see each other, you’ll be visiting me at school.

  Your friend,

  Dave

  * * *

  I pulled the ribbon and watched as the colored wrapping fell away to reveal what Dave thought Illington was missing, and I smiled.

  “A cactus.”

  Dave was right. Illington had a lot of things, but it definitely didn’t have cacti. I named my cactus Fred and decided that when I got back upstairs, he would hang out on my desk right next to my laptop to remind me that life is too short to hold grudges.

  26

  Kathryn

  Wow, was that test a killer. I wondered whether picking political science as my major might have been a bad decision, if that final was anything on which to base what the rest of my college career would be like. I’d never taken a harder exam, not even the ACT. Either way, though, it was over. I had studied as much as I conceivably could, considering I’d had four other tests to review for this week, and now that I had turned in my test booklet and answer sheet, there was nothing else to do.

  I exited the lecture hall and waited outside the door for Paul alongside some of my classmates who were presumably waiting for their friends as well. Paul always took forever when it came to tests. For some reason he found it beneficial to go over everything twice to make sure he had his answers the way he wanted them, but that drove me mad. Personally, I knew that if I were to go back and check my answers, I would start second-guessing every one of them, even the ones I had known the answer to before reading the multiple-guess options. I would inevitably change all my answers and unintentionally cause myself to fail due to my own neuroticism.

  Man, I really did retain a lot of information from Dr. Hector. I guess if I did end up failing, I could always become a psychiatrist instead.

  And so I waited. People came pouring out of the lecture hall in a steady trickle, some looking more elated than others. I guessed this was either because they knew they had passed or failed, or that they were done with exams or still had other ones to cram for. Lucky for me, I was finished. Political Science 101 was my final exam of my freshman year of college, and when it came down to it, I knew I had at least passed the class. In fact, I had passed everything this semester, and if the meetings I had arranged with my professors were any indication, I would be off the dean’s naughty list to boot.

  I sank down to the floor and leaned against the wall. No point in standing. It seemed Paul was taking all the time allowed to finish this bad boy, so I might as well make myself comfortable. I was bored stiff. Too excited to catch a nap, too bored to do anything else, and the only people I could call were all in finals too.

  Ooh, I’ll clean out my messenger bag!

  Now there was an idea. Looking furtively around me to make sure no one was staring, I turned my messenger bag over and let its contents come spewing out all over the floor around me. Books, notepads, pens, papers, receipts, a prescription refill from Dr. Hector—oops, I’d better get th
at filled at the pharmacy on the way home. My bag was a mess, not unlike my mind. I started making piles. Random lecture note from psychology? Toss it. Pen that Paul got me? Keep it. And so on.

  “You look pretty busy, but do you mind if I sit down? All the other wall space is full.”

  “I don’t mind,” I replied as I sorted through a bunch of torn out sheets of notebook paper.

  “Thanks,” the guy replied, popping a squat next to me on the floor. “I did the same thing yesterday after my chem final,” he commented, nodding toward the contents of my bag on the floor.

  “Yeah, I figured it was about time,” I said, absently, adding a pack of half-full gum to the throw-out pile and a ticket stub of the show I went to with Paul in Ann Arbor over Christmas to the keep pile.

  We were both silent for a few moments as I continued to sort, but then my floor companion commented on the ticket stub.

  “Against Me! I love that band.”

  I looked up at that one. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I saw them play a few years ago and never looked back. I thought about going to Florida to one of their shows, but I didn’t have the fundage.”

  “I saw them in Ann Arbor over Christmas,” I commented, more excited now. “They were awesome.”

  “Oh, Ann Arbor—is that where you’re from?”

  I shook my head. “No. Paul is from there. I live about a half hour north of Illington.”

  “Paul? Oh, is that the guy you always sit with in class? The one wearing the jean jacket with the patches and the old-school red Chucks?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” My gaze turned sharp. This guy was really interested in Paul. I wondered if that was why he’d sat by me on the floor in the first place, to try and get an in to my best friend. “He’s already got a boyfriend,” I said pointedly, even though Paul and Dani weren’t really boyfriend and boyfriend yet and were just dating.