“Ryan’s special. Ryan’s been there for me since I was a freshman.”
“And if he’s the one he’ll be there for you when you’re a freshman in college, too, even if he’s not there physically. He’ll want you to do what’s best for you. The right one will never ask you to sacrifice your future for his pleasure.”
“He didn’t ask me to sacrifice anything, okay? He wanted to know where I was going. I didn’t know. This was mostly my idea. I just thought you might understand. That you might support me.” Ugh. I hated arguing with my mother. I knew that she was doing her best to understand. But giving in to her on this wasn’t going to make it easy for Ryan and I to be together.
“We’ll think about it,” she said in a clipped tone. I had hurt her feelings. She changed the subject. “How’s Kelli doing? Any news about her condition?” I had told her I’d gone with Kelli to her parents’ house when in fact I was staying at Ryan’s last night.
“David asked her to marry him. They haven’t set a date yet, but she’s not planning on going to college right away, either.”
“Is that what this is all about? You can’t compare your situation to hers, Kara. She’s got other factors weighing in on her decisions. And Ryan hasn’t asked you to marry him, has he?”
“What? No!” As much as I loved him, the whole idea of getting married so young was terrifying to me.
“Well, there you go. As I said, the situation’s different. And I’m sure your father would agree that we wouldn’t want to just put you up in some apartment in Albuquerque so you could live with your boyfriend for a year with no commitments of any kind. We didn’t raise you to be that kind of girl.”
I sighed heavily into the phone. My mom had a painfully honest way of stating the way she saw a situation. I know it didn’t exactly look right, but I felt right with him. In fact, Ryan had been the only person to truly make me feel this way since I’d been back. Or even to really make me feel all kinds of emotions—sensations one has when they are completely engaged, thrilled, humbled, full of desire, and loved. He made me happy, happier than I had been in a long time. I needed him. But how could I tell my parents this? Like everyone else, they thought I had been okay all this time. It was really only me who knew it took Ryan to make me so.
Chapter 26
Scratch
What did she want? Monday morning I grudgingly took a seat in Dr. Matthews’s office, wondering if my mom had called her and asked her to talk some sense into me about going to college right after high school. Our conversation didn’t end in any kind resolution yesterday.
“I asked to speak with you this morning, Kara, because I have something very important I need to discuss with you.” Her tone was matter of fact, as if she sensed my reluctance to be there.
I braced myself. I didn’t want to argue about college, especially not with someone who had always seemed to me a day late and a dollar short. I had turned eighteen. In the end, I could make my own decisions. I arched my eyebrows at her in response and waited.
“Christie Navarro is coming back to school today.”
“What?” I could feel all the air catch inside my lungs, taking away any poise I had before.
Dr. Matthews leaned back into her chair. “She thinks she’s ready. She wants to graduate with her friends. Her parents and physician have asked the school to let her try.”
I stared at the pen cup on Matthews’s desk. For more than a month Christie had been out of our lives, and it almost had begun to feel like she had never existed. Ryan and I were just getting to where we would stop in the halls and talk to each other freely, or sit next to each other in class. I didn’t think she would stop any of this, but I had enjoyed the lull in feeling like I was fighting against a negative force to be with him—a force I had battled this entire semester before now.
I glanced into Dr. Matthews’s eyes for an instant, then looked away. “Oh,” I said, feeling a heaviness roll over me.
“I’ve talked with her already, and I will speak to Ryan about this as well. I am asking you and Ryan to be discreet with each other around her, and above all not to engage in any arguments with her. I want to hear from you if you feel like she is threatening you in any way, or of course, if she threatens herself. I will be speaking with her on a daily basis for the foreseeable future. That was one of the conditions the school asks that she meet if she came back.”
She had to meet Dr. Matthews every day? I felt sorry for Christie; I really did. Everyone in our class must know by now that she had overdosed, and they all had an opinion. It would be a hard thing to come back to. “We’re already discreet,” I said.
“Good.” She nodded her head. “On another note, I’m not sure if you realize it, but the University of Arizona is offering preference and full-ride scholarships this year to the top ten percent of students who have maintained a 3.7 or higher in their high school career and scored over 28 on the ACT or 2100 on the SAT in the Four Corners region. I believe you qualified with your March testing.”
“U of A, huh? I thought it’s a little late for scholarships?”
“The deadline’s May first for this one. You still have a few days. Why don’t you try? I have an application here for you.” She thrust a neat stack of paper into my hands. “It’s a sure thing and would always be a good backup if you don’t like any offers that come in. Not many students get full rides. Plus, they have a good law school. You marked it as an interest area in your aptitude test in January, and I noticed you and Ryan are both interning with the offices of Judge Vargas soon.”
I took the papers from her. Ryan and I just wanted to be together downtown for the two weeks of internships coming up that all seniors at Trinity did before graduation. Judge Vargas’s offices were right off Civic Plaza and looked like a fun area to hang out. But back in Australia, I did enjoy legal studies at one point. The debates in class were always challenging, and the subject wasn’t offered at Trinity. I let myself take a moment to shift my thoughts from having to deal with Christie on a daily basis back to an internship and more time with Ryan. “What about Nicole Oyuela? You should tell her.” If I qualified, she must have, too. Being in the same place with Nic next year would be fantastic. The prospect built on the previous happy thought of being somewhere out of Christie’s presence.
“Nicole just got her acceptance offer from Cornell last Friday. I think she’s planning on going to school there.”
“But…” She hadn’t said anything. “Oh.”
Dr. Matthews didn’t seem to notice that the fact that Nic must have kept this to herself all weekend brought me down again.
***
“Hey, what’s up? Can I come in?” I asked Nic when she opened her door to me after school.
Sure.” I had heard her chair scrape the floor before she answered. On her desk I spotted a calculus book she must have been studying.
“Congratulations! I heard you got into Cornell. You didn’t say anything.” I opened up my arms to give her a hug. She quickly embraced me in return, but something felt off.
“Thanks. You were heading out with Ryan, and Kelli was going home for the weekend, too. I thought it could wait.” Her voice was calm, less emotional than I thought it would be when sharing such good news.
“You’ve it made now!” Her small smile felt at odds with the huge grin I could feel expanding across my own face. “I’ll be able to say, ‘I knew you when.’ Have you told your parents?”
“Yeah, but they’re so busy fighting with each other.” She grimaced. “It’s still going to cost a lot because it’s only a partial scholarship. But my advisor said they might be able to help me get a job on campus.”
“But that’s awesome.” I reached out and grabbed her hand again to give it a squeeze. “I am sure you’ll get something. What did Cooper say?” Cooper and Nic had gone out several times since Spring Fling, and I had started to beli
eve he wasn’t the player I’d once thought. Her ability to call bullshit when she saw it while still being a good friend was good for him, and I’d seen him look at her with admiration.
She shrugged, but squeezed back a little, avoiding my eyes. “Cooper and I broke up.”
“Huh? Um…Why? Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.” I became more conscious of the fact that my hand still held hers. I didn’t want to let go. “Did all this happened this past weekend?”
“Yeah. But don’t be sorry. You were right. He was really pressuring me.”
That jerk. Maybe some people never changed after all. I really wished Nic could have had a better dating experience with him. “Then it was the right thing to break it off.”
“Was it?” She let go now and folded her arms across her chest. Her shoulders sunk down with a big sigh. “You and Kelli got lucky with all the boyfriends in high school. I’m starting from scratch next year with very little experience. How am I going to meet someone studying all the time?”
“Maybe that’s how you’ll meet him.” I smiled at a mental picture forming in my head. “I can just see you meeting someone in a lab coat in chemistry—wearing goggles and rubber gloves.” I laughed. “And he’ll be a thousand times smarter and more interesting than Cooper.” She laughed too and released her arms, taking the seat by her desk. “And hopefully less kinky with those rubber gloves.” We exploded in laughter together now and I sank down on her bed, still giggling.
“But seriously, there’s something to be said for being professionally ambitious and waiting on the right guy until you get your education and know more about who you are,” I continued. “You can always fall in love—at least, that’s what my mother told me this weekend, by the way.” I smiled at myself—and at how I sounded like her.
“So, are you going to follow your own advice? Have you decided on a school yet?” She pursed her lips at me, playfully mocking and dubious.
“Mmm, well. No. Not yet.” This wasn’t the time to tell Nic about my idea to take off for a year. “Dr. Matthews is still pushing applications my way. I’m keeping the few options I have open. Nothing is as compelling as Cornell on that front.”
“Well, what about Ryan?”
“He hasn’t decided either.”
Nic looked at me as if she could see right through the subterfuge of my evasive answers, but then she looked back at her book.
“Do you think Kelli is going to be okay? She’s pulling away from us,” she said.
Kelli had been spending more weekends at home and more time on the phone with David. Now that I was dating Ryan, Kelli and I mainly saw each other at meals and sometimes after study hall. When Nic was dating Cooper it seemed like we were all in the same time crunch, but now that I thought about it, maybe she hadn’t seen Cooper as much as Kelli was away, or as much as I saw Ryan.
“I don’t know.” Talking about Kelli made me sad. Nic and I had never talked privately about her, and we didn’t have to have this discussion for me to know how Kelli’s health issues weighed heavily on both our minds. “She’s okay for now.”
Nic sniffed. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Of course.”
She shook her head at me, giving me one of her “you can’t fool me” looks. I didn’t realize until now she may have worried about me in the same way.
“You never told me about Ben.” Nic opened her desk drawer and took out a piece of gum from a small package. I wondered what made her bring him up. “Want some?” After all this time, something still made her curious. Even after all that had happened with Ryan, she was asking me this.
“Sure.” I took a piece and started chewing. Big Red. My favorite. “I was at my weakest point ever when I met Ben,” I started, trying to find the best way to explain it, “but my relationship with him was one of the strongest I’ve ever had. He was a mentor; he helped me. But we weren’t supposed to date. My exchange program didn’t like it when they suspected we might share a non-platonic attraction and they wanted to separate us.” I looked at Nic. She was taking in what I was saying, not shocked at all like I thought she might be. “A self-sufficient girl like you wouldn’t be proud of me to know how crazy I was about him at the time. I mean, really crazy—maybe even Christie crazy—in that I just felt completely lost when I found that they were going to transfer me away from him, even though there were other reasons for the move—like treatment for my teeth. I guess that’s why I’ve never discussed it with you, or anyone, really.” I blew a bubble. “I was super-fragile.”
Nic blew a bubble, too. I had a flashback to when we were fourteen again and she offered me gum the first time I arrived at the dorms. Perhaps that’s when we became friends. “Well then, what about Ryan?”
The memory was like a salve to the darkness that emotional confession brought up. It was good to finally confide in her. It didn’t hurt as much as it once did.
“Ryan’s healing from all that went down. The funny thing is, with Ryan I feel strong, and all that has happened this past year has led us around opposite ends of a circle, back to each other. It’s hard to explain. He makes me feel cherished. I hope he feels the same. Cherished, I mean.”
“I guess you know that Christie’s back again?” She’d repositioned herself in her chair, and the calculus book dropped to the floor. I picked it up, setting it on the bed between us.
“Yeah. I thought she looked a little healthier, at least from a distance. Didn’t you?”
“I guess. She’s gained back some weight. What are you guys going to do about her?”
I shook my head lightly. “There’s nothing to do. Live with it. We’re not supposed to act like a couple in a noticeable way around her. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Huh. That is some dramatic love life you have, Kara.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue, as if she was thinking about something she wasn’t saying.
“What?” I nodded my head toward her expectantly.
“…Well.”
“Come on, out with it.”
“You said before you thought they had a lot of sex. Do you? Have a lot of sex? With Ryan? Now?” Nic’s face grew progressively redder with each qualification of the question.
Though I was surprised at her budding nerve on broaching the sex topic, what she said took me back to the most recent images of spending the weekend over at Ryan’s.
“Um…” I started. “There must be some sort of mathematical equation for it.” I picked up her book and flipped through the pages. “Oh yes, here it is: ye/es=sex2,” I said, pointing to an imaginary part in the text.
“Oh, Kara, I’m going to miss you. Never mind.”
Chapter 27
Mirror
I slipped off my T-shirt in a dressing room stall at Marnie’s to try on the blue blouse. Sober and smart enough for a law office, I could probably use it after the internship. Maybe even for a job interview, I thought as I took in my reflection. I couldn’t remember having a shirt with cuffed sleeves before. I grimaced a little from knowing it required ironing, and checked my back view, noticing the sound of someone pass by my stall and open the one next to mine. The department had been quiet for a Saturday afternoon, but for all I knew this was normal for this section. I usually shopped Junior’s, not Women’s Career. I took one last look before I started unbuttoning again. This would do, and it would feel good to wear something representing a new chapter in my life. The last two weeks of the school year when seniors did their internships marked both a beginning of possible career choices and an end to our daily high school routine. I was ready.
Most of my classmates seemed ready, too. Since Christie came back to school, I noticed people were nicer in terms of daily courtesy, even to Ryan and me, and yet more distant in terms of emotional investment. I imagined that like myself, most people were moving beyond such teenage desperation and entertaining the wealth of possibilitie
s that loomed ahead in adulthood. I had even begun to think that people truly did not blame us for her actions, though we continued to be careful about touching in front of anyone. We didn’t even hold hands unless we were in private. Despite the behavior modifications, I was sure Ryan and I were bound to put what happened behind us. I hoped Christie would too, but I was looking forward to not seeing her anymore as a daily reminder of someone who was having trouble with being mired in the past. There was nothing I could do for her except give up Ryan, and even if I did that, he would never go back to her. She had to realize that fact.
I heard a snap from the next stall as I put my shirt back on, and a piece of a hanger bounced under the partition toward my feet. “Uh-oh. Cheapo plastic hangers,” I said in the silence, stooping down to pick up the piece and placing it on the floor under the modesty wall between us. The person grunted and shuffled on the other side, moving the piece out of my sight again, but neglected to say thank you. Her stall door opened. I shrugged, picked up my purse and the blouse, and unlatched my own.
The door swung open with a force that caught me off guard. I reached for a wall to brace myself, staggering back towards the mirror with my purse teetering off my shoulder. Christie’s face appeared before me.
“You bitch!” She lunged at me, pushing me back into the stall. The ragged end of a plastic hanger tore through the skin on my forearm. I had raised it just in time to protect my face.
“You? What the hell?” I sputtered in shock as my shoulder hit the side of the partition wall. The back of my calf and knee slammed into the shelf bench, and my legs buckled against it. I landed on the edge of the bench and looked up at Christie’s distorted face towering over me, screaming.
“I hate you! I hate you, you bitch! You ruined my life!” The sharp edge of the hanger grazed my neck and collarbone this time, and I tried to raise myself back up against her pushing and swiping. In my peripheral vision I caught the reflection in the mirror of a trail of blood that ran down my arm. My blood.
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