Breathless (21 page)
But I do. And as soon as I’m settled, I know why Mazzie comes here sometimes. The space evokes the same claustrophobic feeling as sharing a twin-sized bed with another person or being underwater: so suffocating that it winds all the way to the other side of the spectrum to feel liberating.
I pull my knees tightly against my chest. It’s cool under here, quiet as can be, and I let myself breathe and cry.
But I freeze when I hear the bathroom door open. I hold my breath.
Mazzie opens the door to the cupboard. She shakes her head. “That’s my spot.”
And before I can respond, she closes the door, opens the second door on the farther end of the sink, and climbs in with expert, almost acrobatic grace. It takes her only a few seconds. She rests her head atop her knees, legs folded, and smiles. “It’s nice,” she whispers, “isn’t it?”
I nod.
“You’re upset.”
“No, Mazzie. I just wanted to be as close as possible to human waste.”
She nods. “Estella probably forgot already,” she says. “She was just being . . . you know. A bitch.”
I shake my head. “That’s not all.”
“It’s what Dr. Silva wrote, isn’t it?”
I nod again.
Mazzie appears at a loss for words. We sit together in silence for a long while. We listen as a handful of different girls come into the bathroom, the sounds of the toilets flushing loudly. And then, when they wash their hands, I notice that one side of the pipe nearest my legs has a slow leak. The pipe itself is cool and damp with condensation. Beneath it, a small puddle of water has accumulated on the cabinet floor.
“Mazzie,” I whisper once we’re alone again.
Her eyes are closed, head against the wall. She probably naps in here sometimes.
“Can you reach my shoes and socks? Can you take them off?”
She reaches toward me—she’s so much smaller that there’s wiggle room for her—and removes my shoes, tucking them into the space between her thighs and heels. Then she rolls my knee socks down, one at a time, and slides them off to reveal my bare feet.
I put both feet in the puddle of water between us. I smile at her. “Thank you.”
She reaches toward me again with both arms and puts her tiny hands over my own long fingers. She squeezes my hand and whispers, “We can turn the phone on at night, if you want.”
“It’s been on,” I say. “He hasn’t called.”
I expect her to let go of my hands after a few moments, but she doesn’t. I expect her to get up, to go back to class, but she stays put. We stay there like that for the rest of the hour, together under the sink, with my bare feet loving the feel of cool water against their soles, until the bell signaling the end of the period rings, and we have no choice but to go our separate ways.
Everything is different my second summer at Yale. I’m a year older, sure, but it’s more than that. For one thing, Drew is so busy working for Habitat that he’ll be able to visit only a few times, if that. But there’s something else—something Drew doesn’t know about. His name is Eddie.
It’s a couple of weeks into the summer. This year, on top of all the swimming, I’m taking two classes, Romantic lit and early British lit. Even though I love to read, they’re tough; I can already tell it will be a struggle for me to get all my work done, especially if I want to have any fun.
I’m leaving class on a Thursday afternoon, thinking about the nap I’m going to take as soon as I get back to my dorm. It’s so hot and humid outside that it might as well be raining already. I’m standing at the corner of Chapel Street, waiting for the light to change. My mouth is open, and I’m staring up at these big gray clouds, kind of waiting for a raindrop to hit my tongue, when somebody tugs at my sleeve. It’s Eddie. He’s in my Romantic lit class, and he’s a
real
student at Yale. He sits a few seats over from me in class. Half the time, he’s either asleep or on the verge of unconsciousness.
I stare down at his hand on my sleeve. “Can I help you?”
“I know who you are,” he says. He’s a little out of breath; he must have run to catch up with me. “My buddy Sam is on the swim team. He told me there’s a high school girl who gets in the pool with him every morning and tries to keep up.”
He’s still holding on to my sleeve. I yank my arm away. “I don’t
try
to keep up. I
do
keep up.” But this isn’t exactly true. In addition to all the homework I’ve had to do, I’ve been going out to parties with my roommate, Renee, almost every night. Why shouldn’t I get the chance to have some fun? I’ve been drinking a lot, and smoking too much, and Eddie’s friend Sam is right: the past few days, it’s been a struggle to keep up in the water. But I’ll be fine; my body just needs time to adjust.
Annoyed as I am to have to delay my nap, I can’t stop looking at Eddie. He’s what Estella would describe as “empirically good-looking.” As in, it isn’t a matter of opinion. He looks a lot like Drew, except he has straight blond hair instead of curly. But there are other things, too.
As we’re standing there together, it starts to rain—hard. Without saying a word, Eddie takes my arm again and rushes right into the crosswalk, holding up his free hand so all the traffic will stop for us. He leads me down the street into a little deli, both of us running with our full backpacks smacking in rhythm against our bodies. By the time we get inside, we’re soaked.
We stand there dripping, breathless. Eddie grins at me. “Wow.”
“What?” I ask, wringing my hair out over the doormat.
His smile gets so big that I can see his top gums. “I feel like we just took a shower together.”
Eddie gets two hand towels from a waiter so we can dry off. Then he asks if he can buy me lunch.
“I don’t even know you,” I say. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
“I told you. My buddy Sam—”
“What does that matter?” But I sit down at the counter beside him anyway, almost without realizing what I’m doing. “Do you swim?” I ask. “I haven’t seen you at the pool.”
He shakes his head. “I play soccer. And I like to talk to interesting . . . women.” He looks me in the eyes the whole time he talks to me. It isn’t like talking to high school boys, with their eyes looking all over the place and their dumb flirty lines. It isn’t like being with Drew, who I’m so comfortable around that sometimes he feels more like a friend than a boyfriend. Eddie seems obviously interested in me, and just looking at him makes me feel like there’s electricity dripping down my spine. I can’t help but want to stay and talk to him.
He orders lox for lunch.
“That’s salmon, isn’t it?” I ask.
He nods. “You’ve never had it before?”
“I’ve had salmon, sure. How is lox different?”
Eddie licks his lips. He leans toward me, until our faces are only a few inches apart. His complexion is flawless except for a single, tiny mole in the center of his chin. “Where are you from, Katie?”
For some reason—even though he’s an honest-to-goodness Yalie, even though he’s probably the son of a senator from Westchester or something like that—I don’t feel embarrassed to tell him, “I’m from a little town in Pennsylvania.”
“A little town?” he repeats. “That’s super. I grew up in this little town in upstate New York. We had only one traffic light. People here call me a country boy, but it had its charms.”
I shake my head. “Mine didn’t.”
“Well . . . you’re here now, aren’t you?”
I nod. “Sure. I guess I am.”
“Then you’ll probably never have to go back.”
“I wish,” I tell him. “Sometimes I feel like, no matter where I go, I’ll never be able to completely
leave
.” It’s crazy—I don’t know why I’m telling him all this. But he doesn’t seem to mind. For the first time since we’ve been talking, his eyes flicker down the length of my body. “That’s interesting,” he says. “I know exactly what you mean.”
We watch as the waiter brings our food. I ordered a chicken salad, which looks almost embarrassing—
very
small-town—compared to what’s on Eddie’s plate.
“Want to try some?” he asks.
I nod.
“Okay. Wait a second—close your eyes first. Open your mouth.”
And right there at the deli bar, with people all around us, Eddie takes his bare fingers and places a piece of lox on my tongue. I keep my eyes closed while I chew. When I open them, he’s staring at me—his eyes are the same shade of blue as Drew’s—and I swear to God, I could slide right off my seat and onto the floor if I weren’t holding on to the counter.
“I have a boyfriend,” I blurt.
Eddie picks up another piece of lox. “Who said anything about boyfriends, Katie? I just want to get to know you a little better.”
He brings the lox to my lips. I can’t stop myself; I close my eyes and open my mouth again.
• • •
When I get back to my dorm, Renee—another high school student here for the summer—is sitting on the floor, smoking a cigarette and reading a play for her drama class. Renee’s mother is a famous actress from New York City. Renee goes to a boarding school in Connecticut, and she has this confidence that I’ve never seen in anyone else. I know her family has money, but she’s so
dirty.
She wears long skirts that swish against her ankles when she walks, and she goes barefoot almost everywhere. Girls aren’t supposed to walk
anywhere
after dark without a guy, because there’s so much crime in New Haven, but Renee does it all the time. Plus, when any boy tries to talk to her—and plenty of them do—she just kind of nods, listening to everything he says, and then giggles in a way that probably makes him feel ridiculous for expecting her to care. It isn’t that she’s trying to be mean or make them feel insignificant, it’s just that she doesn’t crave acceptance the way everyone else seems to.
When I tell her about Eddie, she puts her book aside and sits up straight. “Oh, Katie. You don’t believe that he just wants to be friends, do you?” Her long black hair hangs over her shoulders in two loose braids.
I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s
possible,
isn’t it? That a boy could be interested in a girl for something other than sex?”
She already knows about Drew and his commitment to virginity. “I guess it’s
possible
—I mean, you know it is. But I know Eddie—he’s a Phi Gamma Delta,” she says. Their frat house is right around the corner from our dorm. “He’s gorgeous, Katie—hell, even I’d like to sleep with him. And you know, I’m very selective.” She crosses her legs. The bottoms of her feet are so dirty, they’re almost black. Our room is a mess of clothes and books and makeshift ashtrays.
“Drew is gorgeous too,” I say.
“Right.” She nods matter-of-factly. “And Drew barely wants to touch you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well . . .” She chews at the edge of her thumbnail, considering. “Are you going to tell Drew about Eddie?”
I shake my head no.
“Why not? I mean, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then why keep it a secret?”
I try to come up with a good answer. I don’t have one. I know what she’s getting at—if I’m not doing anything wrong, then there shouldn’t be any reason why I can’t tell Drew about it. And I know I probably shouldn’t get to know Eddie any more than I already have. I also know I might not be able to help myself.
It’s funny what you remember about people sometimes. As I’m standing there talking to Renee, I remember how, the first time she and I ever went out together at night, we were walking back to the dorm when she decided she had to pee. Instead of waiting until we got back, or trying to find a real bathroom, she just ducked into an alley, hiked up her skirt, and squatted in the dimness while I stood there waiting for her.
“People are going to think you’re homeless,” I said.
She just kind of shrugged as she stood up. “So?” Then she smoothed her skirt and kept walking, like nothing had happened.
I think that’s the thing I’ll remember most about her once the summer is over. Renee is smart and pretty and has money and everything else people are supposed to want. But she isn’t preoccupied all the time with making sure everybody notices, like Estella. She doesn’t seem embarrassed by her shortcomings, either—like the way her nose is a little big, and she’s so pale despite all the sunshine this summer. I can’t imagine how good it would feel to be so confident—how easy and free she must be, even in her sleep.
Over the next couple of weeks, Eddie and I start spending a lot of time together. He takes me to a few parties at his frat house, and he always makes sure I have a drink and that the music isn’t too loud for me, and then afterward he walks me back to my dorm and we sit outside for a while and talk. Sometimes we talk all night. And every time we’re together, he does little things that make it clear he doesn’t just want to be friends. Like, he keeps his hand on my waist and stands a little too close while we’re talking at parties, or else he puts his arm around me while we walk back to my dorm. I know I shouldn’t let him, but it all feels so good, so
exciting,
that I keep telling myself I’m not doing anything all that wrong.
One afternoon before class, we’re watching TV in the attic of his frat house. As he’s flipping through the channels, he stops at a rerun of
Sesame Street.
“Hey! That’s me!” He points to the screen, where there’s a little boy singing a duet with Oscar the Grouch.
I can tell from the blond hair that it’s definitely Eddie. He looks about six years old. He sings with his thumbs hooked in the straps of his overalls and has a sweet, high voice.
“Oh my God,” I say, leaning forward to get a closer look. “It
is
you!” I shake my head. “You were a child star!”
“Aw, no, it was nothing like that. My mom was a producer for PBS. They’re always using staff kids for extras.”
“How many episodes were you on?” I can feel my heart beating faster.
Eddie grins. “Ten.”
On-screen, he and Oscar finish their song, and a few of the other characters come into frame. Little Eddie, his smile wide and familiar and sweet as pie, does his best to wrap his arms around Oscar, Elmo, and Big Bird, all at the same time. “I love you, my friends!” he says.
I look at the grown-up Eddie. He opens his arms wide. “Come here, my friend,” he says, giving me the same sweet grin. That’s when I know I’m in trouble.