Want You

by Frederick, Jen

  As Ms. B studies me, the silence stretches out in the small office and the collar of my white cotton button-down grows tight. I start to sweat under the school-mandated blazer, sweater vest and heavy polyester and wool pants. Are my answers too pat? Too practiced? I did spend several days role playing this with my roommate, much to her dismay.

  Why do you have to do this, Liz? You are going to miss out on so much fun.

  Because I do.

  "Have we treated you so poorly here at Boone?" she finally asks. “We have many fantastic events planned for you fourth-year girls. Most of the Boone girls cite their last semester as their best.”

  “I appreciate your concern and I will miss my friends here, but I want to go home. I miss my family.”

  “Your file says you live with your guardian." She cocks her head. "Is that the family you miss?"

  "Yes.” I brace myself for the pity that’s about to be thrown in my face. In the four years I’ve been here, Leka hasn’t visited me once. From the outside, it looks like he dropped me off and conveniently forgot about me. Hell, sometimes I feel the same way.

  “Is it possible that the memories you have of your home life have been colored by your absence, because when I look at your record—”

  “—my guardian’s never visited and I’ve spent every summer and every break except the winter one here at Boone. Is that what you were going to say?”

  “Yes.” Ms. B pins me with a concerned stare. "I must be truthful with you, Elizabeth, in hopes that you can be honest with me. I view each one of the students here at the Boone School for Girls like my own child and I come to care for each of you, no matter if you spend four years here or one. I've watched you grow from a child to a woman in these past four years and it's brought me immeasurable pleasure. What I fear for you now is not that you will refuse to pursue a post-secondary education but that you will return to an environment that is not good for you emotionally. It hasn't escaped my notice, nor that of the others in the administration, that your guardian has not visited you once in the past four years. Are you certain that home is what you remember it to be?"

  "Home is exactly how I remember it," I tell her. "But even if it wasn't, I'd still want to go."

  Part of the reason I’m going home is to find out the truth. Did Leka leave me here because he was tired of having to take care of some street kid who he wasn’t even related to? Or did he stash me here out of concern for my safety?

  But that’s a question only I deserve an answer to. Not anyone else.

  “He is fairly young. It appears he is only fourteen years older than you. When was it that he became your guardian?"

  I have no idea what it says in the file, so I've always hedged this part of the story. "Shortly before I came here for school."

  “Is he the only family you have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm.” She wants to ask more. They always do. “His job isn't listed here." She taps the folder. "Neither is his educational background. What exactly is it that he does?”

  My preferred response here would be none of your business, but because I need Ms. B on my side, I smile sweetly and say, “It’s a family business. Food and beverage.”

  “Ahh.” The information doesn’t thrill her. She adjusts her glasses. “The only reason I even bring this up is that children of families who do not have a history of college education often do not see the benefit of college as their parents or guardians appear to have succeeded without it.”

  “Not just appear to succeed, Ms. B. Did succeed.” I can’t help correcting her. “I wouldn’t be able attend this private school ”—with all of its very rich kids—“if Leka wasn’t successful.”

  No one gets to bad-mouth Leka. Except me.

  And, then, because I need Ms. B on my side, I continue in a more conciliatory tone. "I plan to attend college when the time is right, but for now, like I said, I miss home and want to spend some time with my family"—meaning Leka—"before I go off for another four years of school."

  Ms. B brings her fingers up to her lips. The corners of her mouth turn down and a furrow appears in her forehead. She taps her fingers against her closed lips for a couple of beats, appearing to be thinking hard about something.

  I fight back the urge to wriggle in my seat like a small child.

  Leka's connection to me has always been the source of speculation amongst the teachers and faculty. I've endured random but sly questions over the years from people who think that they need to know the truth. But I've known since forever—maybe since I was seven or so when that punk at elementary school accused Leka of being a child molester—that no one would understand. At least no one who wasn't abandoned as a child, left on the street to die or be taken.

  Leka saved me and that's all that matters. Our relationship is not fodder for anyone's lunchroom or textbook, but I have to endure these questions because part of the evaluation is my mental fitness—whatever that is.

  Ms. B still hesitates.

  "Haven't I been a good student?" I ask, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. "I've gotten perfect grades. I have a clean record. I can't remember doing anything I wasn't supposed to do. I busted my as—butt to get four years of classes in three and a half. I even have nearly a full year's worth of college credit under my belt from all the AP courses I took. With all due respect, I'm an adult, Ms. B, and I'm done here. There's nothing more for me here in Boone." Not that there ever was. My home has always been with Leka. The question is whether there’s still room for me there.

  "I'm just concerned that this isn't the right path for you," she says, but she picks up her pen and slides my early graduation form in front of her.

  "It is. I know it is." Boone was the detour. Going home—going back to Leka is my course correction.

  * * *

  "She signed it, didn't she?" Audie, my roommate, exclaims when I walk into our shared room.

  I wave the paper wildly in the air. "How did you know?"

  "Because you have that stupid grin on your face." My roommate tries to muster up a smile, but she fails because she hates this idea of me graduating early so I can go back to “the Deserter” as she calls Leka.

  It’s hard to blame her, because from her perspective, Leka brought me here when I was fifteen and has never returned. The only thing she’s ever seen of him is his handwriting on the label of the packages he has shipped here every month. Guilt gifts, she calls them.

  I received a particularly extravagant one a month ago for my nineteenth birthday. Four estheticians and five licensed massage therapists drove a couple hundred miles to give me and all the fourth-year girls in my dorm a spa day. I was very popular after that event. We wrote Leka nice notes which he acknowledged with a terse two word text. You’re welcome.

  Audie knows all about guilt-induced presents. She receives plenty when she goes home. Her mother, a narcissistic hypochondriac, makes Audie feel guilty for being alive while her stepdad actively ignores her. The one person that is decent to Audie is her grandmother, who Audie stays with over the winter break. After finding out that I spent my first Boone Christmas here at the school with the cows, goats and Ms. Blair, Audie made me go to Connecticut with her. I got a first-hand look at how intact families can be as messed up as ones that are stitched together by grit and determination.

  “Liz.”

  “Audie.” I pull out my suitcase and throw it onto my cream bedspread with the dark blue flowers.

  My roommate comes over and slaps a hand on the top of the case. The dark fringe of her bangs hangs low over her eyebrows, giving her usually round face a fiercer expression. She needs a haircut but refuses to get any work done here in Hicksville. Boone is a sweet, quiet town with a decent coffee shop and not much more. Main Street’s biggest store is a pharmacy full of walkers, motorized carts, and more shoe inserts than any geriatric truly needs. I’ve never been able to get that keratin treatment and eyebrow shaping the lady at the dress shop recommended. It’s on my list of things to do
once I get home, along with eating a decent piece of pizza.

  “Don’t go. Stay here until May and then come to the Hamptons with me. My grandma would love that. She thinks you’re fun.”

  “I have to go.” While I’ve been alone, so has Leka. For years, it was only the two of us. He misses me. I refuse to believe otherwise. “But don’t worry. We’ll stay in touch.” I reach up and pinch her cheekbone. “Otherwise, I’ll miss your face too much when I’m gone.”

  “Then stay!” She shakes the suitcase so hard that the wooden headboard rattles against the wall. “He’s not worth it.”

  “Audie.”

  “He’s a jerk!” she exclaims. She swings away in disgust. “He left you here when you were a kid and has visited you all of zero times. Worse, he’s not like my mom, who is so self-absorbed she doesn’t see how she’s fucking me over. He knows. That’s why he keeps sending you shit all the time as if boxes from Saks could be a replacement for someone who actually gives a shit about you.”

  “If he didn’t leave me here, we wouldn’t be friends,” I point out.

  No matter how many times I try to tell Audie that Leka did this so that I’d have a better life, she doesn’t believe it. My hands are tied to some extent. Leka won’t come here because he doesn’t want anyone back home to know where I am. He explained that to me in a text after he’d left me. And while he never explicitly said I shouldn’t tell people how we connected, I could tell by the careful way he always introduced me, how he gave the barest details, that private information should never be shared.

  “Right, and if you leave now you’re going to miss out on Friday movie nights and Saturday morning runs. Who else will watch Queer Eye with you and cry at the end when the dude’s life is totally transformed by a little hair gel and throw pillows? And what about my period? I can’t ever keep track of that without you. Our cycles are the same!” She throws her hands up dramatically. Audie says she's going to be a teacher, but I think she's better suited for the theatre. “Plus, track season is coming up. We all love track season. Why would you go away before you get to see Calvin Kellogg run the 400 meters in those tiny little shorts?”

  Calvin Kellogg is a distance sprinter for the Boone Bombardiers, the local public high school. Their outdoor track route and basketball facility can be seen from our third-floor lounge. A certain segment of the Boone girls has been, well, spying on him for years. He’s tall and lean with longish hair that he wears tied back when he runs. While a chance encounter on the streets of Boone will feed the fantasies of some of my classmates for weeks, he doesn’t move me.

  "You can Skype me during track season. I'll sign you up for a monthly subscription box of tampons and pads. Jeanette and Kira” —I jerk my thumb toward the suite next door—“will still be here for Friday movie nights, and the running club has fifty girls in it." I pull the smaller girl in for a tight hug. I would've never survived these past four years at the Boone School for Girls if it wasn't for her. “I know you think this is a mistake and that Leka is the worst person in the world and that I’m violating every feminist tenet in the book by going back home, but this is what I want. What I’ve always wanted.”

  “Then you’re dumb,” she mumbles into my breastbone.

  I release her and set to packing up the last of my things. Most of my stuff is already in boxes sitting at the end of my bed in hopeful anticipation. Or maybe, subconsciously, I’d been planning to leave regardless of the outcome with the Dean of Students.

  Audie folds my nightshirt and places it in the suitcase, but she’s not done questioning my decision. "I don't say this to be mean, but have you considered he doesn't want you home, Liz? He's a grown man and maybe he doesn't want you complicating things. That's why I got dumped here, remember?"

  "Yeah, and that sucks, but Leka had different reasons." Audie ended up here when her mom was dating the current stepdad. He didn't like kids, and so Mrs. Duetermeyer conveniently got rid of Audie.

  "And those are?"

  I saw a man get his throat sliced through with a steak knife and blood got all over the expensive dress Leka bought me to attend my first middle school dance. "He just felt it was for the best."

  Audie hands me the planner and my pen cup from off the top of my desk. “Listen, darling, you're sweet and innocent and I've never brought this up, but have you considered that at thirty plus—”

  “He’s not old.” Leka intentionally aged himself up on his identification papers so he could claim he was my guardian. I don’t know exactly how old he is, but I think it’s only an eight-year difference. Not that it matters to me.

  “—or however the hell old he is,” Audie continues as if I hadn’t interrupted, “that he's busy getting his freak on with one or two or ten different girls? A young girl at home is going to cramp his style."

  Innocent? One of my first memories is my mom humping some stranger for money. Before I could count, I was being forced to do things that adult women would be traumatized by. The only reason I got over that bad past was because of Leka. There was never a time that he didn’t catch me when I threw myself at him. I believe that will still be true. I’ll drive back to the city, go up to the apartment, and see him inside. I’ll drop my bag to the floor and run into his open, welcoming arms. Then, because I’m older, he’ll carry me into his bedroom and I’ll finally be fully his.

  I believe this because in all the years we lived together before I got sent to Boone, the only female that mattered to Leka was me. “He's not like that. He never, ever brought a woman home."

  "And he was there every night and every morning when you woke up?”

  I want to say yes, but Leka was often gone until the wee hours of the morning. But that was because, well, he was doing stuff that wasn't entirely legal, and most of those things are carried out at night. At least…that's what I've always presumed. The thought of Leka having sex with someone other than me makes me want to barf. He’s mine, my inner voice howls.

  At my silence, Audie clicks her tongue. "Oh, Liz. Sweet, virginal Liz who doesn't even use our showerhead like she should."

  “Kira wore it out.” We watched Secretary a month ago and directly after the credits, our suite mate Kira got up and went into the bathroom. The shower ran for a solid thirty minutes, and ever since then we can’t get the jet feature to work.

  I don’t blame the girl. I had lurid dreams of Leka that night. I hadn’t thought I was into that kind of sex, but the idea of Leka bending me over the desk and taking me forcefully from behind turned me into a hot, sweaty mess. I woke up shivering with my hand between my legs for a week straight.

  With a scowl, I retort. "You're a virgin, too. Just last week you were moaning about how you were going to die a virgin."

  “I was exaggerating. Once I’m out of Boone and in college, I’m going to find myself a bevy of nice young men to experiment with and that’s what I want for you. At least go out with a guy your age before committing to an old man.”

  “Leka is not an old man,” I’m starting to feel testy.

  Audie ignores me. “You have never even had a taste of guys our age, and that's a problem. It's like sushi. Remember how you swore you were never going to eat it because it's raw and gross and then you went on that trip and ate a bunch of it and said it's the best thing ever? Boys are like sushi!"

  "Raw and gross?"

  "And the best thing ever after you try it."

  "How would you know? Life isn't like"—I tap the back of my phone—"the fiction we read."

  "Exactly my point. We don't know if it's raw and gross or the greatest thing ever. We won't know until we try it."

  I scrunch up my nose. "Eating sushi is not the same thing as sticking someone’s penis in your body. I'm not going to have random sex with a stranger."

  The only one I want to touch me is Leka.

  "I'm not saying you should have sex with anyone. Just go and see what happens. Maybe you make out. Maybe he sticks his hand up your shirt. Maybe you get excited and decide to do
other stuff. The possibilities are endless." Audie rubs her hands together.

  “None of this sounds appealing.”

  “Look at this.” Audie shoves her phone in my face. On the screen is a picture of Calvin Kellogg, shirtless and sweaty, getting interviewed by the Boone Daily. “Tell me this doesn’t make you want to do dirty things in the shower.”

  “Negative.” I move the phone out of my face.

  Exasperated, she tosses the phone onto her bed. She stomps over to my closet and grabs my two coats. Under her breath, she mutters, “Bet that Leka of yours doesn’t have a body like Calvin.”

  I smile to myself. Wouldn’t she be surprised. Leka took care to always cover up around me, but when you live with someone you can’t help but catch glimpses of their bare skin. Leka has an eight-pack that would render my classmates speechless.

  Hell, everything about him would silence them immediately. He’s tall, golden, with a jawline so sharp I could cut myself against it. His nose is straight and long but fits in with his high cheekbones and firm chin. Really, the only soft thing about his face is his lips. When he talks, which is rare, I can’t stop staring at them. During the long nights at school, I imagined what they’d feel like—against my fingers, against my lips, against my skin.

  I rub my palm over my stomach. Abs don’t move me. Nothing about Calvin whatshisface moves me. When I close my eyes at night, when I dream, when I fantasize, only one person appears

  There’s only one man for me.

  “I give up,” she scowls.

  It’s a good thing because I made up my mind years ago. Leka brought me here because I was weak and lacked the ability to protect myself. I spent my years here at Boone strengthening my mind and my body. It’s a farm, so I’ve learned how to use a shotgun. I’ve killed chickens, filleted fish, and even cut up a deer that Ms. Darnell, our science teacher, shot last winter. Every Boone girl takes self-defense classes each year. That’s a mandatory class along with English, math and science.