I hug her back and though it’s hard to let her go at the end, I do.
15
Annika
THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
1991
“What are you going to wear?” Janice asked. She was standing in front of my closet sliding hangers to the left as she surveyed the offerings of my college wardrobe. What I wore had always been more important to Janice than it was to me. Before I started living with her, I chose a top and bottom based on how they would feel against my skin. The fact that they didn’t match and often clashed horribly had literally no bearing on my choice, and I couldn’t recall a single instance where my parents or brother had commented on my choice of clothing. Janice gently pointed out that I’d been walking around campus looking like a fashion “don’t” for weeks and helped me put together complete outfits so I could dress myself if she wasn’t around. It was yet another example of all the things I felt stupid about.
“A skirt,” I said. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what she was doing, because I had my nose buried in a book.
“That’s all you ever wear.”
“Then why did you ask if you already knew what I’d say?”
“Because I thought you might want to wear something different for your first date. I thought I saw a pair of jeans in here once. Where did they go?”
“I left them in the laundry room and someone took them.”
“You never told me someone stole your jeans.”
“I left them there on purpose because I hate jeans. You already know that.”
“What about a dress? I have a really cute floral dress and you can wear my little white T-shirt underneath it. It’s long. I bet you’d like it.”
“The T-shirt will be too tight.”
“You’re smaller than I am. There’s no way it will be too tight.”
“I don’t want to wear a dress.”
“Do you know where he’s taking you? Maybe that would help me decide.”
“Was I supposed to ask?”
“He didn’t mention it?”
I’d given Jonathan my phone number a few days before the practice tournament and he’d called last night to confirm our date. “He said we would go get something to eat.”
“If you insist on wearing a skirt, can I at least pick out the top? And do your hair and makeup?”
I’d taken a shower and washed my hair, and that had been the extent of my pre-date beauty routine. I hadn’t bothered to get dressed and instead I’d put on the bathrobe I’d owned since I was fifteen and had been lounging in it most of the day. I figured I’d select one of my usual outfits a few minutes before Jonathan was due to arrive, and we would go. Already this was becoming more complicated than I’d expected. Janice treated me like her own live-version Barbie doll sometimes, coaxing my hair into elaborate styles and painting my face with things that felt heavy and goopy and smelled weird. If I acquiesced on the hair and makeup, she’d probably get off my case about the outfit. “I don’t care.”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She returned with a makeup case the size of a tackle box and sat down on the bed next to me. “I don’t want any of that foundation stuff,” I said, in case she’d forgotten how much I hated it.
I put down my book and did what she asked, closing my eyes when she stroked shadow across my lids and opening them as she applied two coats of mascara to my lashes. They felt heavy and I tried not to blink. “Are you almost done?”
“Just a little blush and you’ll be all set. Do you want lip gloss?” Janice loved lip gloss.
“No! Last time you put it on me the wind whipped my hair around when I got outside and some of the strands stuck to my lip.” It had been the grossest feeling ever and I’d freaked out and wiped the lip gloss off on the sleeve of my shirt.
“Oh. I forgot about that.”
Janice picked up my brush and had me turn around so that my back was to her. I hated brushing my hair, but Janice couldn’t handle seeing it tangled, so I’d long since agreed to comb it every morning before I left the apartment if she’d stop trying to get me to do anything else with it. Usually that meant a few haphazard strokes with my brush, and I’d call it done. Janice had asked me more than once why I wore my waist-length hair so long if I didn’t like styling it, but I was never able to articulate why I didn’t want to cut it. It just felt right to me the way it was.
“I know you don’t care for perfume, but it might be nice to wear a little on a date,” she said as she brushed my hair and then began French-braiding it into a single plait down the center of my back. “It will only give me a headache,” I said. Smells were mostly bad, except when they weren’t. “Don’t make my hair too tight, okay?”
“I won’t. I’m going to leave it a little loose so it looks polished, but soft and romantic.”
Janice handed me a mirror when she was done. “There. You’re all set. What do you think?”
“I can hardly tell I’m wearing makeup, but I look really pretty.”
Janice laughed as I crossed to my closet, dropped my robe, and pulled on my favorite elastic-waist skirt and the thin cotton sweater she’d picked out for me to wear with it. Socks and knee-high boots with a flat sole would complete the outfit, and no one but me would know the socks didn’t match underneath. Janice smiled when I turned around, because she’d given up the fight about my clothes a long time ago. I knew the outfits I wore were shapeless, but wearing them felt like having a security blanket with me at all times, one that I happened to wear on my body.
“You look great,” she said. “You’re going to have a wonderful time.”
Jonathan knocked on the door at six o’clock exactly, and when I opened it, he took one look at me and said, “Wow.”
It made me feel so good, and since it was clearly an acceptable thing to tell someone on a first date, I said it back to him.
He smiled, and I told myself that maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.
* * *
He drove us to an area of campus lined with bars and food carts and parallel-parked at a meter on the street. I had never driven a car before, and attempting to fit a vehicle into a tiny space between two other cars would have paralyzed me, but he made the maneuver seem effortless.
We bought meatball sandwiches at one of the food carts and because the evening was crisp but not too cold, we sat at an outdoor table to eat them. It was sort of like sitting across from Jonathan at chess club, except there was food in front of us instead of a game board. No one would know it was my first date, because we looked like all the other couples eating together, and I relaxed a little.
“What would you like to do next?” he asked.
The question threw me. I struggled when presented with too many choices, but being given none at all was almost worse, and I had no idea how to answer him.
“Whatever people normally do on dates is fine with me.”
“We could go have a beer?”
“Okay.”
Jonathan threw away our trash, and we walked down the street. He stopped in front of Kam’s. It was the place to be seen on campus; at least, that’s what Janice was always saying. She spent a lot of time there, but I’d only made it as far as the sidewalk out front.
Jonathan and I were having such a good time that I didn’t want to tell him the reason I never went to bars was because they were way too loud and smoky for me. Janice had tried a couple of times, but I never lasted more than five minutes before I gave up and went home. I told myself that I could handle it just this once and that it wouldn’t be a big deal, but the minute he held the door open for me and I stepped inside, I knew it was a mistake. Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love” assaulted my ears, and the cloud of cigarette smoke we walked into felt like a one-two punch to my senses. It was standing room only, and we were shoulder-to-shoulder with half of the student body as Jonathan took me by the hand and pulled me through the crowd. I clung to him, feeling as if I might throw u
p.
He carved out a small pocket of empty space for me. “I’ll be right back. Wait here,” he said, and he went to stand in line at the bar.
It was so loud that the only way to communicate was by shouting or letting someone talk directly into your ear. How did everyone do this? How could they stand it? Was this really what people thought was fun? Though Jonathan had situated me out of the line of traffic, it didn’t stop a girl from weaving her way toward me and clipping me with her shoulder as she stumbled by. More followed, and pretty soon several people began to invade my tiny slice of personal space. They stepped on my feet, and someone’s beer sloshed onto my hand. I wiped it off immediately, hating the smell and how cold and wet it felt on my skin. Jonathan was still waiting his turn three people deep at the bar.
I was hanging on by my fingernails when I saw Jake, the guy I’d had the massive crush on my sophomore year, and who I’d mistakenly thought was my boyfriend. He was sitting at a table with a group of guys, and when he saw me he elbowed the one sitting next to him. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” was now playing on the sound system, but suddenly all I could hear was Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and instead of a bar, I was in Jake’s room at the fraternity house.
He’d slipped me a note in class and asked me to come over that night, and I could hardly contain my excitement because I’d been waiting for him to find some time for us to be alone. For the rest of the day, I didn’t pay attention in class. I daydreamed about our first kiss, and how he’d probably invite me to one of the fraternity’s parties or formal dances. When I returned to my dorm room after my last class, I scribbled my own note for Janice and left it under the Kermit the Frog magnet stuck to the front of our dorm fridge so she’d be sure to see it and wouldn’t worry when she came home and discovered I wasn’t there. With Jake. In his room, it said, and I’d drawn a little heart next to it.
I knocked on the door of the frat house and told the guy who answered it that I was there to see Jake. “Jesus, there’s, like, seven Jakes. Which one?”
“Weller,” I said proudly, and waited for him to say, “Oh, you must be Annika,” because Jake probably talked about me all the time.
“Upstairs. Third door on the left.”
Jake answered my knock, and I smiled when he dropped a quick kiss on my mouth. He’d never done that before, and it made me feel warm all over. “Hey, babe.”
He closed the door and led me over to the bed. There were three other guys in his room, but Jake would ask them to leave now that I’d arrived. A pungent, smoky smell hung in the air, but no one was holding a cigarette.
“You were right,” the one who was sitting at Jake’s desk said. The other two were sitting on the bed across from Jake’s. “She’s hot. What about her body?”
“Don’t know yet,” Jake said. “Can’t see it under those baggy clothes.”
Everyone laughed. I did, too, although I didn’t know why. If Jake didn’t like my clothes, Janice would jump at the chance to help me pick out an outfit he’d like better. I made a mental note to ask her about that.
“I thought we could hang out for a while,” Jake said. “Relax a little.” He held a Bic lighter in his hand, and I will never forget the scraping sound it made when he sparked the little wheel and the flame shot straight up. One of the guys handed him a glass tube with a little bowl on the top, and Jake put the flame down inside it and sucked the smoke into his mouth. He passed it around and one by one, the boys took their turn. The small room filled with smoke, and I stifled a cough.
Jake’s bed was pushed up against the wall, and he’d slung his arm around me when they began smoking, which felt nice. “Now you try,” Jake said, holding the pipe up to my mouth.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want any.”
He shrugged and put the pipe to his lips, but after he sucked in the smoke, he acted like he was going to kiss me but blew the smoke into my mouth instead. It tasted horrible, and I coughed and sputtered while they laughed. But then Jake kissed me again, and it was the kind of kiss I’d been waiting for all my life, soft and gentle and sweet. Somehow during the kiss we’d ended up almost horizontal on the bed as the pipe made another round. I should have been happy, but something didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. I wanted Jake to kiss me again, but only after he told his friends to leave. It wasn’t fair that they were keeping us from being alone together. Then Jake took another puff on the pipe and when he blew the smoke in my mouth again I found it harder to struggle even though I still didn’t want it.
Someone knocked on the door and one of Jake’s friends opened it. I felt floaty and odd, and for the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend why Janice would be standing there. “Yeah?” Jake said.
There was a long pause where no one said anything, and then Janice said, “I need Annika to come with me right away.”
“She doesn’t want to go with you.”
He was right. I didn’t want to go with her. Or maybe I did? I was having such a hard time keeping my thoughts organized. The kiss was so nice, but the pot and Jake’s friends were not.
“There’s an emergency at the wildlife clinic. They need Annika to come in right away. She’s on call.”
I didn’t think I was on call. I would never have agreed to go to Jake’s if I had been, but maybe I’d forgotten. A hawk with an injured wing had been brought in the previous week, and I’d taken to it with an enthusiastic zeal, doing whatever I could to nurse the hawk back to health. I was one of the few people it trusted, and when I wasn’t tending to Charlie, the injured opossum, I tried to help with the hawk’s feeding and the care of its wound. I sat up, which was a struggle because my body suddenly felt very heavy. “Is it the hawk?”
“Yes. Yes, it is the hawk and you need to come with me right away because everyone is waiting for you.”
Jake put his hand on my elbow. “Come on, are you sure you need to go?”
“I have to. It’s the hawk.”
Janice crossed the room and grabbed on to my hand, which was good because there was no way I was getting off that bed and upright under my own power. My legs felt wobbly and Janice practically carried me out of the room and down the stairs.
Outside, she pulled on my arm. “Come on. I had to park at the end of the street. It’s not much farther.”
It seemed like we walked for miles before she opened the passenger-side door and poured me inside. She walked around to the driver’s side and got in, but instead of starting the car, she rested her forehead on the steering wheel.
“We have to go,” I said. “They need me at the clinic.” But how could I help the hawk when I could barely walk?
“They don’t need you. I just had to get you out of there. Don’t you understand what was going on?”
I think it was safe to say I didn’t understand anything that was going on.
“What did you think was going on?” I asked her.
“I don’t know for sure. I only know what it looked like,” she said.
“What did it look like?” I cried.
She turned to me, and I knew what the expression on her face meant, because I’d seen it a couple of times before. Once, when she was waiting to hear how she’d done on an important test our freshman year, and the next when her grandmother had gone in for open-heart surgery and they’d given her a twenty-percent chance of living through it. “It looked like he might have told his friends they could watch.”
“Watch us kiss?”
“Annika, I think he was planning to do more than kiss you.”
The fear and shame that washed over me when I finally understood what she was getting at, and how horribly wrong I’d been about the situation, shattered me. I shook and cried and Janice leaned over the gearshift and put her arms around me until I stopped crying. When we got back to the dorm she put me to bed to sleep off the effects.
The next day, when I arrived at class, I took a seat on the other side of the lecture hall. Knowing how scared I wa
s that Jake might seek me out, Janice attended the lecture with me.
That’s the day I discovered what it felt like to have not only a friend, but a best friend.
Now, at Kam’s, in a situation that had already pushed me clear out of my comfort zone, I had the added misery of coming face-to-face with someone I’d hoped never to see again. I must have been staring at Jake while I relived the painful memory, because he raised his glass and crooked his index finger at me, beckoning. He wasn’t smiling this time.
The terror I’d felt that day bubbled up from the place deep down inside where I’d hidden it away, never to be thought of again, and I bolted, fighting my way through the crowd as if I were swimming upstream against a strong current. It was like being in the diner without shoes, but worse because this time, there was nothing preventing me from being there but my own bad memories. On the outside, I looked like everyone else. But on the inside, I remembered that I didn’t belong.
I burst through the door onto the sidewalk, and I kept going.
“Annika! Wait!” Jonathan caught up to me and grabbed my wrist moments before I would have darted in front of an oncoming car. “Jesus,” he said. “You have to stop doing that. Please just stop for a second.” He waited until the street cleared and then interlocked our fingers and led me gently to his truck. “Are you okay? What happened in there?”
“It’s too loud. And I can’t handle the smoke and there was a guy—”
“What guy?”
“Nothing. He was just this guy I used to know. He was sitting at a table with some people.” Tears sprang to my eyes, and I was glad it was dark and that Jonathan couldn’t see them.
“Would you rather go to my place? It’s quiet there.”
I couldn’t help but compare it to what had happened the one time I’d accepted a similar invitation. But I felt safe with Jonathan and knew he wouldn’t hurt me, so I said, “Yes.”
The Girl He Used to Know Page 8