Lessons in Love (21 page)

“This looks pretty all-inclusive.” I hold his book close to me, feeling that it’s sacred somehow, all that writing — those parts of him — of myself — we never share.

He takes it back, slowly, looking at me while reaching for it. “I’ve been writing so long, sometimes I forget I haven’t put all the stories on paper. Or I wonder what’s real in my day to day life versus what I’ve inferred.”

I grab his arm, enthused. “I do that, too. I spend so much time trying to give the characters dialogue that makes sense but that means something, too, that I’ll be in class or at the gym or something and put way too much meaning on everything.”

Dalton imitates us both. “Pass the salt.” He furrows his brow. “Now, does she mean pass the salt or she making reference to my salty attitude, or that day we spent on the Atlantic.”

“Exactly.” I sigh. “It’s exhausting, really.” I motion with my head to Fruckner. The downstairs lights are off, girls are all in their rooms — their stomachs filled with unbirthday cake — and I will soon be in mine, belly smiling from the brownies, and mind lighted with potential ideas. “I’ll make sure to keep your day life…” I pause and shuffle my feet. “I mean, what I know of your day to day life — out of your stories. I won’t read into them too much.” I say this, wondering if he’ll do the same for me. Or if he already did.

“Good deal.” He starts to walk toward Bishop and then stops. “You think you’ll continue with Amelia and Nick or try a different story?”

I shrug. “Don’t know. Is it better to go back and revise or leave it and move on?”

“Depends…”

I picture Amelia on the beach waiting, but also know there are other ideas, places I want to write about, descriptions and tensions I’ve yet to explore. “What about you? What do I have the pleasure of reading next week — an old story of your or something new?”

Dalton’s yards away now. The grass seems blue in the moonlight, the flagpole bright. “Maybe a combination.”

“A drunken sledding story?” I suggest, giving him a grin based on my great night, that good fit when your life feels tucked into place.

“You never know.” He stands there, near Bishop’s front steps, waiting for me to move the last few paces towards Fruckner. I imagine Dalton going inside, treading the path up to his room, and finding Jacob there — how they each have stories complete with dialogues and characters. Will Dalton tell him about ACW? Or does he keep that close to his chest, poker-faced about his writing the way Jacob is about his music? Briefly, I wonder if I’ll play into their conversation tonight. Or maybe guys don’t talk like that, spilling secrets while the moonlight seeps through the sides of the shades. I open my mouth to say goodnight, to thank him for the walk back, but by the time I do, he’s just gone in, leaving the door partway open behind him.

“This is the last fall Field Day!” I say while Chili sprints the length of the football field. Days have washed by bringing homework and time spent hanging out in the dorm. Now, though, we’re all benched, bleachered, and stuck on the grass while we wait for more events and games.

Chris and I are off to the side, sitting on a grassy hill, having already competed in a rousing game of capture the flag. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Aren’t you the slightest bit sentimental?” I pull my knees up so I can lean into them. “I keep thinking about all the things we won’t do again. All those lasts.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like…when it was the last September twentieth, or the last time I’ll have those back to school jitters.” We focus so much on firsts, I sometimes wonder about lasts. Then I think about telling Dalton this on the way to ACW this weekend. He’ll know what I mean, in a writerly sense, how first everything — sex, love, spelling bees, driving a car — all those times get top billing. But what about lasts? The last time you felt a certain way or ate licorice or cried until you had nothing left. Or took part in a semi-fun day, a remnant from when people still hauled tractors across the Hadley fields and had burlap sacks for reasons other than Field Day races.

Chris shoots me a look of disbelief. “You don’t think you’ll have tons of jitters going back to college for the first time? You will.”

“But it won’t be the same.” I sigh, looking out at the field that’s scattered with players, the ongoing games and bright red plastic cups filled with water littering the view. “All those days of high school you wake up and you know what to expect — and then, after all these ones we have now, we won’t know.”

“That’s the beauty of college — or of life after Hadley. Not knowing.” Chris pulls out stalks of grass and chucks them into the air. “Is this because you’re not falling prey to the Hadley sickness?”

I slouch. “Maybe. It’s just — everyone seems all set with college. You’ve got your top two places. You’ve got your middle ones, and even a few lesser-ranked colleges you’d be okay with. Mary’s been scouted by UConn for basketball so she’s all set. They even sent her a sweatshirt.” I scan the track and field for other faces, other stories. “Linus — another one of Chaucer’s disciples — he’s bound for NYU or Columbia, then no doubt to Iowa for fiction. Jon Rutter’s got his pick of places, Nick Samuels had been professing his adoration for Princeton since before he even started here” I gesture to Nick. “He’s already wearing orange and black socks…I could go one and on.” I lie back on the grass, my limbs in the soft green. “I can pick through the entire senior class and it seems like everyone knows what they want and where they need to go. Except for me.”

“First of all — you’ve done your apps. That’s just so annoyingly prompt of you I can’t stand it. Plus, it only seems like that — that everyone’s sorted.” Chris touches my knee and I sit up. “But you know, maybe that’s your thing. Maybe not knowing is what you need. The rest of us…” he sticks his arms out pretending to gather up the masses. “We’re just lemmings in the college process.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I’m just chickening out so I don’t have to deal with being disappointed.”

Chris furrows his brow. “First of all, it’s early yet. You could change your mind after interviewing. You know, get a spark of interest somewhere.”

I nod to him, agreeing. “You don’t know how much I want that award.” My voice is small, soft, like admitting how badly the Beverly William Award pulls at me will only make not getting it worse.

Chris leans forward like he needs me to say it again. “That’s huge — you want something.” He raises his voice. “Hello Field Day participants. Love Bukowski wants the writing award.” He smiles like a proud parent. “It’s just great to hear you actually vocalize a desire.”

I swat his megaphone hands away from his mouth and laugh. I do want it, though. I want the recognition, the knowledge that someone thinks my writing is worthy, and, most of all, the freedom that comes with it. The award is for young writers to travel and write, and comes with the assumption you’ll have a book by the end of the stipend money. A book sounds incredibly far-off. But applying for the award doesn’t — in fact, it’s soon and my plan is to ask Mr. Chaucer to nominate me after the next ACW meeting, though I suspect I’m not alone in asking this.

Chris squints at me. “Now just what other desires are lurking in there?”

I don’t answer. How can I muddle through the swill that makes up my emotional baggage? In my pocket is a scrap of paper that I tore out of the phone log. Someone wrote “Love B. got a call from Charlie. No need to call back.” First of all, the fact that anyone put my last initial down is funny. Like there are other loves. And second of all, I’ve been toiling endlessly with the “no need” part. Is that Charlie saying “just calling to say hi”? Or is everything with him just so banal that if I never called abck, he’d be fine with it? Either way, the scrap of paper feels small in my fingers. So does the memory of being with him.

Down the hill, Mary swigs from her sports drink and waves. She has yet to reveal the very covert Sweet Potato meaning, but as I look she gives me thumbs up. “Go team!” she shouts. Then she points to something in front of her — then I get it — not today. Tomorrow. Sweet potato. I return the thumbs up, even though I feel a little asinine not knowing what I’m agreeing to. Mary’s over by the rest of the super sporty girls, all legs and ponytails, taking Field Day way too seriously. Really, it’s an excuse to have a half day of classes, but they’re decked out in head to toe Hadley gear, big H’s painted on their faces. Maybe it’s sweet, too, that school spirit, but I know if I wore the H it would just seem like I was trying too hard, or like I had to do it for my dad. Dad’s not even here today. He left a message for me in my mailbox, an index card with his flight information and the approximate route he’ll drive with Sadie. When I don’t think about him, I’m fine. But when I picture our previous squash matches, or sitting by the ocean this summer with our iced coffees, my intestines feel empty. Or maybe intestines are always empty and I mean something else.

“I hope he has fun,” I say, not explaining who I mean to Chris.

He doesn’t need my words. “Sadie has every right to have your dad for the weekend. Just like you have every right to have her mom in your life.”

“It’s not like I mind….I just want it all, you know? The family, the friends…”

“The boyfriend,” Chris suggests, spying his own over the field. “Check out Haverford and the potato sack race. Too funny.”

I stand up, examining my legs for grass marks, and pulling my long sleeves over my arms. I got hot when we running but now I’m cold. “Yes — I want the boyfriend. The. Not a.”

“So you want the King of Hearts, not the prince.”

“Something like that.” Tomorrow I’ll be dressed up — or if not up, at least better than I am now, all ready for my Harvard tour and interview. And looming ahead is my turn for constructive criticism and praise at the ACW class. I’m curious to find out what Dalton’s writing is really like. I’ve read two poems and one story in the literary magazine, but Fusions isn’t ACW, and I have a feeling all of us in there will share more than anywhere else. Thinking about Dalton leads me to thoughts of Jacob and how, like Amelia and Nick Cooper, my abandoned characters, I haven’t leapt off the page to do anything. What’s the lesson learned there?

Chris hands me a red plastic cup and I take a long drink from it. “Did you tell Charlie yet?”

I hand the cup back. “We’ve talked on the phone — about other things…but not that. I keep putting it off. Because I don’t know what to tell him.”

“How about — you were a summer fling?” Chris holds his hands up. “Ooops — sorry, that was harsh.”

“He wasn’t just that. He isn’t. Present tense.”

“Well, you better figure out who and what everything is soon. You said it yourself — fall’s here, it’s partway done already. Your last one at Hadley.” Chris over-emphasizes so I know he’s kidding, but part of it’s true. When it’s down to the wire, you want to make it as real as possible — with real meaning what counts. “Make this year count!”

“I’ll do it tomorrow.” I check my watch as though it could suddenly put me a day ahead. “After my interview. I’m there, right? Charlie has his Read-a-Thon.” I say Charlie like I’m saying tuna fish or something just as blah.

“Ohh — and you can see the legendary Miranda.” Chris stretches, leaning far over to the right before he’s called to the track for the relay race. “Ten bucks says she’s a hairy troll and you’ve been paranoid for nothing.”

“You always say I’m being paranoid and nine times out of ten, you’re proved wrong.” I stick my hand out. “I’d be happy to take your money.”

The break-up. I feel decent about my decision. It’s time. I’ve put it off. Not that I’m one hundred percent committed to ending everything with Charlie, not that I relish the thought of hurting him or losing him. Only, I’m very sure I can’t be involved with him exclusively and still have feelings for a certain dark haired guitar player who is currently eyeing me from the soccer goal. There are, as I have noted before, many songs about making up your mind over two people, or having lusty thoughts about one while being with another. But none of those is quite what I have.

“Am I ambivalent?” I ask Chris.

“No…well, maybe some.” He flips my hair so that it’s parted on the other side, doesn’t like it, and flips it back. “You just have to try out a few relationships and see what sticks.”

“So I haven’t found my super glue, my peanut butter, my name something else sticky?” I try the same thing with his hair but he backs up.

“All I can say is that when I’m with Haverford — even when I was with him and not
with
him — I got this overwhelming sensation.”

“Eww….I might not want to know.”

Chris punches my thigh. “Shut up. Not like that.”

“Okay — like what?” He gets a look on his face and I have to retch. “Oh you are not going to say a fit — what are you, Cinderella? Let’s drop it, okay?” I laugh but inside it makes me feel hollow. I thought I had that kind of fit with Charlie, but I don’t. And what if thinking I could have it with Jacob is just more unfruitful wishing?

“How is your musical bard, anyway?” Chris tugs me so I’ll cast a quick look at Jacob, whose chest is pushed out as he runs through a purple ribbon at the end of a race.

“Pretty quiet.” We’ve been semi-avoiding each other since the sleep-in, primarily, I think, because he’s decent and didn’t want Chloe to feel worse than she already did, and because I’m still in limbo. “The last time I really hung out with him was the…the planet night.” I look to the sky like a moon or mars might appear, but nothing does.

“Hey — speaking of lasts…” Chris points to me. “You have to tell me what you want me to plan for your birthday.”

I puff out my cheeks and pretend to blow out candles. “Oh, yeah. My last Hadley birthday.”

“The big one-eight.”

“I can vote!” I say.

“Vote for me,” Chris pleads like he’s running for student body president. “Or at least tell me what you want so the big day doesn’t fall flat.”

“Since you’re asking…just something simple. Like a nice dinner someplace not super fancy. Friends. Not too many.”

“I know — you and your lack of wanting full attention. We could pretend it’s someone else’s birthday…” He smiles.