by Beth Hyland
Oh geez, there I go again. Having let myself get too dependent on a guy in the past has really screwed me up. Believe me, I know now how unhealthy it is to rely on someone else for your self-worth, but it’s easy to slip back into old habits. I can fix myself. I don’t need anyone to do it for me.
“Yeah, I’m good. But…thanks.”
Cassidy, in her infinite subtlety, is slightly behind him, making a bunch of wild hand gestures I don’t understand. No, she doesn’t know ASL. I flash her a WTF look.
“His number,” she mouths, her hand up to her ear like a phone. “Did you get it?”
Since I’m unsure how to convey to her that he has my number but I don’t have his, all I can do is ignore her. She’s been trying to get me to hook up with someone all year, probably because she’s been with a few different guys since fall quarter and feels slutty. (Her words, not mine.) But I’ve sowed those wild oats already and don’t plan to do that at PSU. My grades are my first and only priority.
Besides, how would it sound to Jon if I said, “Hey, I know I look like a crazy bitch crawling around on the White House roof and you’re kind of a celebrity on campus, but can I get your number so we can hook up sometime?”
That would be a big fat no. Besides, he’s seen me at my worst, and I’m not looking to go out with anyone. Plus, if that was him upstairs, he’s already got a girlfriend. The only thing I need to do is get out of here before Aaron comes around that corner with a bunch of his friends and sees me. Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl.
“Have a good night, ladies.” Jon Priestly gives my arm a little squeeze, releases it, then walks away from me and into the dark.
chapter four
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
~ Oscar Wilde
Ivy
The ability to lie convincingly is an important skill. When you’re in high school and your parents ask where you were the night before, you can tell them you were watching a movie at your best friend’s house and they’ll assume you’re telling the truth.
Or when you’re in college and you ask if they can put more money in your account, you can explain that your textbooks ended up costing a lot more than you expected. Or that the professor changed the edition number at the last minute and the bookstore won’t buy back the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar book you just bought.
And when a guy who scares the shit out of you demands to know whether you love him as much as he loves you, you can say yes and he’ll believe you, which will give you more time to figure out how to break things off with him.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been a good liar, but knowing your weaknesses can help you make better choices in the future.
When we get back to our dorm room and ditch Sara, Cassidy unleashes on me just as I expected.
“What the hell happened back there, Ives?”
I open my closet door and grab an empty hanger, wishing tonight had never happened. “What are you talking about?”
She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “Why were you crying? Why were you barefoot? Why are you wearing fucking Jon Priestly’s coat? What were you guys doing back there?”
“Fucking Jon Priestly’s coat? Gee, is that what I’m doing?” It’s a lot easier to be a smartass than to talk about what she wants me to talk about.
“What happened?”
Choosing to ignore her, I shrug off the jacket and give it one last whiff before hanging it in my closet. I consider a few other ways that sentence can be interpreted. “Let’s see…Jon, who is currently fucking, owns this coat.”
“Ivy, I’m serious.”
“Wait. Here’s my personal favorite. Because it smells so good and really did keep me warm, this coat is really fucking awesome.”
Cassidy huffs out her exasperation. “Okay, Macklemore, stop being such a grammar nerd. And stop trying to change the subject. Even though fucking Jon would be fun.”
For a second—maybe two—I picture him naked. He’s kissing me passionately, his muscular back and shoulders flexing under my hands because he’s—
Enough with that, Ivy. He’s not your type.
My inner voice is right. My world was almost turned upside down tonight, and I’m thinking about doing it with a hot guy I just met who probably has a girlfriend? How messed up is that?
Cassidy snaps her fingers at me. “Earth to Ivy. What. The hell. Happened.”
Okay. Fine. I need to figure out what I’m going to share with her. A partial truth is better than a flat-out lie. “I used to go out with the older brother of a guy I saw inside.”
She stares at me like I’m a trial witness and she’s on the jury. Am I telling the truth? Am I lying?
I ignore her scrutiny in the hope that she’ll just drop it and move on. Opening my closet again, I grab my plastic tote, where I keep my toothbrush and toothpaste. “Coming?”
She doesn’t move. She just stares at me. “And…?”
I pick at the corner of my tote, the part that melted when I stuck my too-hot curling iron against the plastic a few months ago. I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “And I didn’t want to see him.”
She looks confused. “Why?”
“My boyfriend—my old boyfriend,” I say, correcting myself. “His brother…” My voice trails off.
You can’t undo spoken words. They are unerasable. Once I tell her, I can’t change my mind and decide that I don’t want her to know. Do I really want to do this? After all, Cassidy isn’t actually the best keeper of secrets. I recall our conversation yesterday when she told me about Michaela down the hall who had a nose job last summer. “Shhh, don’t tell anyone,” Cassidy said. “I’m not supposed to say anything.”
I clear my throat. “He…uh…died a few years ago, and I didn’t want to dredge up old memories by talking to his brother.”
Her eyes go wide and she clamps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, Ivy. How horrible.”
I nod, continuing to pick at my melted tote. “I’m trying to put it behind me now, so seeing his brother unexpectedly like that…wasn’t something I was prepared for.” Which literally is the truth.
“Wow. I totally get that.”
“That’s when Jon found me. And then you showed up.” End of story. Please. No more questions.
She quietly grabs her pink Caboodle from the shelf under her raised bed. I start to relax, thinking she’s dropping the subject. And then, “How did it happen?”
I tense up again. “Car accident.”
“Jesus Christ, Ivy.” Then, like she often does when she curses, she takes out her cross pendant and gives it a kiss.
Pressing my lips together in what I’m hoping she’ll assume is a close-mouthed smile of thanks, I change into pajama bottoms and an old concert T-shirt, then head down the hall to the women’s bathroom. She’s quiet the whole time—strangely subdued and very un-Cassidy-like.
The overhead fluorescent lighting hurts my eyes, so I quickly brush my teeth and wash my face. Back in our room, I slip under the covers, shielding my eyes from the light with my hand. As soon as Cassidy puts away her Caboodle and climbs into bed, I turn out the light clipped to the windowsill near my head and feel myself relax.
I love the dark, the absence of light. It washes over everything, rounding out sharp edges and blending objects together.
“Thank God you weren’t with him,” Cassidy whispers from her bed a few feet away.
I don’t tell her that I was.
The ache at the base of my skull that I’ve been trying to ignore spreads outward, like a drop of red food coloring on a wet piece of paper. Cassidy says something else, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from inside a tin can.
The walls in my hospital room were a sickly, sterile white when I woke up. That I do remember. Something was in my mouth, going down my throat, choking me. Like the monster in Alien. It was on my face, a ridged tentacle reaching into me, and I was going to become its host. I needed to get it out. I tried to move my hands but couldn�
�t. I wanted to scream but there was no sound.
My head is really throbbing now. I try not to make any sudden movements as I get up and shuffle carefully across the floor to my desk and open the drawer. One pill rattles around inside the prescription bottle.
My vision is narrowing, which means I don’t have much time. Even in the dark room, I can see an inky blackness around the edges. Cassidy is talking to me, but all I hear is the sound of my pencil cup hitting the floor. She grabs my upper arm and a pill is thrust into my hand. I take it and with a hand on my shoulder, she ushers me back to my bed, tucking the covers around my shoulders like my mom used to do.
“Thanks, C,” I say weakly.
“Are you going to be okay? Do you need anything else? Should I, like, call someone?” I can hear the concern in her voice.
“I’ll be fine in the morning.” At least I hope so. “I always get this way when I think about what happened.”
“Well, then,” she says with finality, fluffing a pillow behind my head. “That’s an easy fix. We just won’t talk about it anymore. You’re here at PSU and it’s time to put your past behind you.”
I couldn’t agree with her more.
* * *
Jon
“Okay, here’s the last one.” I set the cardboard box on Stella’s dining room table, grab another cookie from the plate—still warm from the oven—and shove it in my mouth. The chewy gingersnaps are so damn good, I could eat a million of them. “Do you want any help going through this stuff?” I peer into the box. It’s filled with stacks of old pictures and books. No wonder it’s so heavy. She’d never have been able to carry it down the narrow attic stairs on her own.
Stella wipes her arthritic hands on her apron. “No, son, you’ve done enough. This is wonderful. Thank you.”
Although I’m not her son, I like it when she calls me that. Maybe it’s standard grandparent lingo, but since I don’t have any, I wouldn’t know.
I follow her into the kitchen, where she takes another batch of cookies out of the oven. The whole house smells like molasses and spices.
I pull out a chair from the small table near the window, turn it around, and straddle the seat. “Have you talked with Henry yet?” I leave off the part about him being a total deadbeat.
“I’ve left him a few messages, yes.”
“But he hasn’t called you back?”
“Not yet.”
What kind of son gambles with his mom’s money, anyway? An elderly lady on a fixed income. Now she’s having a garage sale to try to make enough to pay a few bills. I thought selling a little of her weed would help, but Chris fucked that up. I made a partial payment at the power company myself, but if Stella finds out I did it, she’ll be upset and insist on paying me back. It’s the least I can do for her, though. I’d have paid the whole thing if I had the money. If it hadn’t been for Stella sticking her neck out for me a few years ago, I’d most likely be in jail right now. Or worse.
“How are your plants doing? I can try to sell some more bud, even though this last time didn’t work out so well.”
She frowns. “I don’t want you doing that anymore. I’m sure your friend will pay me. You need to be focused on school and work.”
What she kindly fails to mention but that both of us know is that I’ve already gotten into trouble selling weed. Back in high school. And it wasn’t from the three plants she grows for medicinal use.
“Well, he should’ve gotten you the money already. He promised me.”
“I’m sure he’ll have it soon.”
She always sees the good in people. Her loser son. My loser friend. Me. It’s her fatal flaw.
The plastic bag I brought with me sits within my reach near the back door. I grab it and I pull out Ivy’s coat. “Do you think you could get the bloodstains out of this?”
Stella wipes her hands on her apron and takes it from me. “Why?” she asks, a hint of a smile on her coral-red lips. “Did you kill someone and need to hide the evidence?”
Very funny. “I...uh...got into a fight with someone and the blood sprayed all over this girl’s coat. I promised I’d try to have it cleaned.”
Shaking her head, she clucks her tongue at me. “A fight? Oh, Jonny.” My shoulders feel as though they suddenly weigh two hundred pounds. She only calls me that when she’s disappointed in me. But then, I’m good at doing that. I guess you could say I’m an expert. “Don’t stoop to their level. You’re better than they are. I know it’s hard, but…”
I don’t tell her that it was because of the weed.
chapter five
Never fear the thing you feel.
Only by love is life made real.
~ Sara Teasdale
Ivy
In the mirror, I see Cassidy lying in her bed with headphones on and her laptop open. This is her typical morning routine before class where she watches a few YouTube videos before doing anything else. I don’t know how she does it. I have to pee first thing when I wake up. She yawns loudly, not realizing how obnoxious it sounds, because she can’t hear herself.
After that disastrous White House party on Friday night, I stayed in our room the rest of the weekend, not even wanting to risk eating at the dining hall in case Aaron was checking out the dorms and the on-campus meal service. Cassidy, the sweetheart, brought me food and on Saturday night, we ordered pizza with real cheese. (She paid for it later with a stomach ache, spending the next hour in the bathroom.) Normally, she’d have gone out, but she claimed she needed to study for some big test and planned to stay in anyway. I knew she was feeding me a bunch of BS, but I appreciated it all the same.
Earlier this morning, before Cassidy woke up, I went running. With the migraine finally gone, it felt good to get out. The oppressive cloud hanging over my head since Friday night isn’t totally gone—it’ll never be completely gone—but the run helped.
I finger-comb my damp hair, trying to decide if I want to pull out the hair dryer. Since I don’t need to be to class for a while, I decide not to bother and let it dry naturally. I put on my favorite lip balm, slip a hairband around my wrist for later, and call it good.
Cassidy whips off the covers, looks at me, and frowns. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
I’ve got on my favorite jeans that are fraying out at the bottom, no-longer-white Toms that are getting a hole in the toe, and a large gray PSU sweatshirt with a coffee stain on one wristband.
Obsessed with fashion and makeup tutorial videos, Cassidy wouldn’t be caught dead walking out in public like this. In fact, she’s wearing cute PJ shorts with a matching shirt that says Sweet Dreams in rhinestone sequins across her chest. And if that’s not enough, the clothes she plans to wear today were picked out last night and are folded neatly on her chair.
“No, I’m just putting this on temporarily before I slip into the Tom Ford gown I have hanging in the closet.”
“Bitch.” She stands and yawns again. “What happened to that cute top of mine you were going to wear?”
Since we’re approximately the same size, we borrow each other’s clothes all the time. It’s like having two wardrobes for the price of one. Only she has a lot more clothes than I do.
“It’s brand new with the tags still on. You should wear it first.” Besides, I just wore her teal top on Friday night.
“I don’t mind. Seriously.”
Even though Cassidy comes from a really wealthy family, she’s not snobby or pretentious. You should see their house in Portland—it’s this huge three-story mansion. I’ve never been there, but from the pictures I’ve seen of her bedroom, it looks like it could be featured on one of those HGTV shows my mom watches. All she and her mom ever do when she’s home is shop. Half her clothes here still have the tags on them. But I still don’t feel right about wearing something she hasn’t worn yet.
She grabs her phone from the charging station—a narrow shelf above her desk that her stepdad was somehow able to mount on the dorm room wall without using nails—and scrolls through h
er texts. “Ivy, listen to me.”
Okay, here we go. I can tell I’m about to get a lecture.
“With the new quarter, you’re starting new classes and meeting new people.”
“Yeah, and your point is…?”
She huffs. “Hello?”
“New people. As in guys?”
“Of course I mean guys. Do you want that to be the first impression they have of you?”
I fold the ribbing on the sleeve of my sweatshirt to cover up the stain, then fold the other one to match. “See? All better.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. What if you run into Jon Priestly or someone equally hot?”
I grab the brush from my desk and throw it at her. “My run this morning kicked my butt and I’m too lazy to do any more than what you see here. Besides, I’m not going to run into him, or any other hot guy for that matter. And if I do, I’ll just walk on by because I’m not looking for a hookup buddy.”
I have no intention of repeating how I was down in LA when I visited my best friend Deena. In those few weeks, I slept with more guys than I’d been with the entire time I lived in Lincoln Falls. Which sounds impressive (or slutty, depending on how you look at it) but wasn’t all that much, because there were exactly two guys in high school.
And because I know you’re curious, they were:
1) Arturo De Luca, AKA smoking hot exchange student from Italy. (Yeah, I lost my virginity to a guy with an accent, which I have to admit is way better than Deena and obsessed gamer Perry Rogers on the floor of his parents’ basement. When she snuck over to my house that night to tell me about it, I actually plucked a Cheeto out of her hair.)
2) Chase Marquette, AKA all-time leading scorer for the Red Devils football team. Blond hair, blue eyes, and totally gorgeous. The darling of Lincoln Falls. Everyone loved him. Including me, or so they tell me. But honestly, I don’t remember ever loving him.
Cassidy’s phone beeps. As she’s reading the message, I look at my face in the mirror again and decide she’s right about the mascara. Grabbing it out of my makeup bag, I put on a few coats.