Crashing Into You (4 page)

“All I’m saying is, go out
tonight, have fun. Our first final isn’t until Monday.” He shot me his cheesy signature
grin, the kind that was always able to put a smile on my face no matter the
sour mood I was in. “I think it’d be good for you.”

I thought about it. I didn't
want to commit to anything. “We'll see,” I said, with a shrug. “I mean... you
might have a point.”

And I knew in my heart he
did.
 

Chapter 5

Lukas and I chatted for
another half-hour, during which I told him every detail of what happened in
sociology class. He was so impressed that he gave me ten high-fives by the end
of our lunch. When we parted ways a little after 3, he said he’d be in the
library all weekend, that I should drop by tomorrow if I wanted to study. I
told him I’d probably see him sooner rather than later.

I stopped off at Jamba Juice for
a mango smoothie, and headed back to the dorm. I didn’t see Melanie at her
desk, and I didn’t see her on her bed, either. She could have been up there,
though. I had to check. I always had to check.

Our room was double the size
of our freshman dorm—the dorms in Doheny Hall were barely big enough for
a bed and a sink, let alone people—but it was still pretty cramped,
especially with Melanie’s stuff taking up more than seventy percent of the
room. She had a huge desk, a bean bag chair, a refrigerator, a bookshelf (which
didn’t have a single book on it), a DVD shelf (this did have movies), a 36-inch
screen TV, and a dresser drawer for her clothes that towered all the way up to
the ceiling. There hadn't been a lot of space for our beds, so the two of us
decided on bunk beds, with the top bunk so high and private you could only hop
up to it with the assistance of a wooden ladder. We’d both wanted the top bunk,
so we flipped a coin. Tails, Melanie. Sometimes she slept so soundly up there I
didn’t even know she was in the room; when she slept against the wall, it was
impossible to see her or hear her from the floor.

“Melanie?”

Nothing. I set my drink down,
stepped on the ladder, and climbed to the top.

“Melanie?” I asked, again.
“Are you up here?” I lifted up her bed sheets. “Are you—”

“Sydney?”

Her voice was so loud and harsh,
right behind me, that she caught me off guard. I tensed up, held in a scream. When
I turned to look at her, I accidentally pulled back on the ladder.

“Sydney, what are you…”

“Oh shit!” I shouted. I slipped
and slammed my back against the bean bag chair, not the hard carpet, thank God.
The ladder, though, wasn’t as fortunate; it struck the corner of Melanie’s
dresser and shattered in two.

“What the
hell
?” Melanie rushed over to me. “What
happened? Are you okay?”

I sat up. It all happened so
fast. The room, which had been so clean and tidy mere seconds ago, now looked like
a construction zone. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“Wow.” Melanie crossed her
arms and looked at the bottom of her dresser. “With one week to go, you finally
did it.”

“Did what?”

“You destroyed that stupid
ladder.”

Melanie’s only route to her
bed was now in two broken pieces on the ground. I waited for her to scold me.
Instead, she started laughing.

She helped me to my feet. “It’s
fine,” she said. “It's not like I use it much anymore.”

“You don't?”

“Lately I've been hopping up
from my desk. It's faster.” She grabbed the bottom piece of the ladder and
handed it to me. She took the smaller part, and held it above her. “I don’t think
these will fit in our trash can.” She laughed, again, and waved me to the door.
“Come on.”

We walked down the hallway,
toward the big trash can near the vending machine. The students with their
doors open glanced at us in bewilderment, like we were heading to the roof to
battle. We tossed the ladder remnants in the trash, and I closed the top.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Thanks? I broke the thing.
Thank
you
.”

We walked back toward our
room. “It’s kind of cyclical, isn’t it?” Melanie said, after a few seconds of
silence.

“What is?”

“Remember when my chair broke
that first week freshman year? The one my dad built from scratch from IKEA?”

“Oh my God, that's right,” I
said, and let out a loud chuckle. “I haven't thought about that in forever. Your
dad was so ticked off.”

“Remember when we spent that
first Friday night trying to put it back together?”

“And then we just—”

“Threw it in the trash!”
Melanie said, finishing my sentence.

“That’s right! Then the next
morning we went to that garage sale that had a chair for, like, ten bucks. And
your dad…” I couldn’t finish, I was laughing so hard. It had been almost a year
and a half, but I could still see the expression on her dad's face when he
walked in the dorm.

“I know,” Melanie said. “He
walks in, and he’s so impressed we put the chair back together. I’m like, Dad,
the chair you built was black. This one’s red.”

“He thought we painted it!”

We stumbled into the room,
both of us laughing, and wiping tears from our eyes. Melanie and I hadn't
shared a laugh like that in a long time.

She let out a nostalgic sigh,
and leaned up against her dresser. “But it’s all come full circle, you know? We
began by breaking a chair, we ended by breaking a ladder. I’ll miss you next
year, Sydney.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” I bit
down on my bottom lip. I didn't want Melanie's kindness to end, but I knew I
had to ask her. “So... you’re not mad at me?”

“Mad at you? About what?”

“You know. Evan hugging me.”

She smiled, dipped her head a
little. Melanie was so beautiful, but not in an annoying way. Her skin was super
tan, with a distinct little mole on the upper part of her left cheek. Her blonde
hair was long and straight and came down past her shoulders. She had on the
smallest trace of eyeliner, but unlike most of the sorority girls at LMU, Melanie
didn’t wear a lot of make-up; she didn’t need to.

“No, not at all,” she said,
after a moment’s hesitation. “It looked a little weird from a distance, I'm not
gonna lie, but Evan said he was just trying to make you feel better. He said
you blew up at the class, about that car accident you were in senior year?
Sydney, you told me about the accident, and that your boyfriend died, but you
never told me a little boy and his mom were killed that night, too. That's so fucking
sad
. How come you hid that from me?”

I leaned against the bunk
beds, crossed my right foot over my left. “It's not that I hid it. It's just...
it was horrible, Melanie. The worst experience of my life.”

“I can't even imagine,” she
said.
 

“And despite what happened in
class today,” I continued, “I really don’t like talking about it. Even though
it’s been more than two years, it’s still way too fresh in my mind.”

“That makes sense. Again, I'm
really sorry.” She took a deep breath, and attempted a lame smile. “You wanna
change the subject?”

I nodded, and said, “Please,
let's.”

She sat down in her chair,
and bumped her legs together. “I can't believe we're living together for just
one more week.”

“I know! I can't believe it,
either.”

“When are you moving out
again?”

“I have an 8 AM final next Friday
morning. Gender Communications, it sucks. Lukas and I aren’t allowed to move
into our new place until Saturday, though, so it works out, I guess. What about
you?”

“My last final’s on
Wednesday,” Melanie said. “So Thursday, probably. Where are you guys moving?
Century City, right?”

“No, Culver City. It’s a cute
two-bedroom off Alameda.”

“Oh, that's right. That'll be
nice. You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”

I smiled. “I would love that.”

She headed to the bathroom, and
closed the door. I thought the conversation was over—the shower turned on
almost right away—so I sat down at my desk and sorted through my binders
on the floor. Melanie was likely getting ready for a party. Would she invite
me? I wasn't sure. I figured I was in for a long night of studying.

I thought I’d start with sociology.
We had to memorize 120 terms and definitions for the final. I took out the
packet and dropped it down on my lap. I looked at the first term.
Acculturation.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t
want to look at these words. I loved school, a lot more than most girls my
age—but tonight, I needed an escape.

A few minutes later, Melanie
re-entered the room all wet, wearing only her yellow towel. She opened her
underwear drawer.

“What are you getting ready
for?” I asked, tapping my fingers against my desk. “You and Evan going
somewhere tonight?”

“Yeah, my friend Lea’s throwing
a party.” She grabbed a black pair of underwear and walked back toward the
bathroom. She stopped at the door, and turned to me. “You know what?” She paused,
pursed her lips. “You should come.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah, why not?”

Lukas insisted. Melanie
asked. Part of me even wanted to go. Still, though, I said, “I’m not sure…”

I attended the occasional
party freshman year, and the same thing happened every time. I drank enough
Sprite to send me into a sugar coma, as others around me descended into lower
forms of primate, slurring their words, breaking out in fights, blasting the
music so loud they were practically begging the cops to come. I had barely touched
alcohol since the night James died, so I could get bored, fast.

But Melanie and I were
bonding like we hadn’t in months, and I realized after next week I wasn’t going
to be seeing her much anymore. I looked up into her puppy-dog eyes.

“It’ll be fun,” she said.
“Super low key. It’s not even that far away, it’s just off campus. You can walk
home if you want to leave early.”

I turned my computer to SLEEP
mode. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“Really?” She stepped toward
me and did something crazy, even for Melanie; she gave me a big hug. “That’s so
exciting!”

I didn’t exactly hug her
back. I knew she was happy because this was my first yes to a party invitation
after about a dozen no’s—but she was still naked under that towel. “Yes,
it is,” I said, and kept my hands to myself.

She stepped toward the
bathroom again. “Okay, so in an hour or so how about we get some food and then head
over to Evan’s. I think his roommate’s gonna drive us.”

“
Zach
?” Also known as the ultimate jerk, the ultimate womanizer. Almost
as bad as Todd. I loved Evan, but I hated Zach.

“Yeah. Is that cool?”

I sighed. It wasn’t cool at
all. What was I getting myself into? “Sure,” I said, and faked a smile. “Sounds
perfect.”
 

Chapter 6

I got to sit by Evan in the
car. It wasn't much, but it was something.

Zach drove us to the party. I
didn’t trust him. I didn’t really trust any drivers anymore—not even
me—but Zach was a special case. When I spent time with him, which was
seldom, he always had a drink in his hand, and anytime I tried to make conversation
with him, it was like talking to an inebriated sheep.

“Nice to see you again…
uhh...” Zach said, into the rearview mirror, obviously trying to remember my
name.
 

I waited for his attempt.
Last time, he called me Sarah. When he said nothing, I said, “Sydney.”

“
Sydney
! Of course. How are you? It’s been a long time.”

“Sure has,” I said. “Watch
the road.” I tugged tight on my seat belt. It was the only thing that saved my
life two years ago.

Evan tapped me on the
leg—by accident or not, I wasn't sure—then immediately tore his
hand away. “You can just leave your hand there,” I wanted to say. “You can keep
it there for an hour, or a day. I don’t mind.”

Instead, I stayed quiet, and let
him be the one to start the talking. “I don’t know how much Melanie told you
about the party,” Evan said. “It shouldn’t be too crazy. There probably won’t be
more than thirty or forty people.”

I crossed my arms, and
scoffed. “Why are you guys treating me like a child? I’m a big girl. I can
handle a stupid party, all right? I’m not
that
much of a loser.”

Evan's mouth dropped open a
little, like he wanted to take back his words. “I don’t think you’re a loser,
Syd. That’s not what I was saying.”

“Yeah? What were you saying?”

“I just want you to have fun,
that’s all.” He smiled at me, revealed his cute little dimples. He ran his hand
through his wavy, gelled hair. “The
really
big party’s tomorrow night, at Reece’s place. That one's gonna be so crazy I'm
not sure if I wanna go.”