The Season of Shay and Dane (4 page)

shay

I move away from the
window.

Could he have seen me?

Why did it matter to me
that I looked to see if he was still there? It’s only thirty minutes before
Professor Richards gets into his office and I still want to find aspirin
somewhere for my head; I haven’t even unlocked my lab yet.

Maybe the storage
closet has a first aid kit in it.

I take the keys out of
my satchel and find the silver one with an S written on it in black marker. I
lean the bag against the door to keep it propped open just in case. I feel for the
light switch and see a faded white first aid box sitting on one of the metal
shelves. I flick the latch and fumble through it.

Off in the distance, I
hear footsteps getting nearer. I step out just in time to see Jenny unlocking
our office door.

“Shay! You scared the
crap out of me!”

“Hey, Jenny. Sorry,” I
say calmly, even though I’m surprised to see her here.

“
Are you alright
?”
she asks, stepping closer into me, her expression tightening into an inquiry. “I
thought I’d come and help you with your lab. . .,” she breaks off, the puzzled
look not fading.

“Yeah,” I offer reassuringly,
my face softening to ease her alarm. “One of the track guys and I ran into each
other in front of the building, but I’m okay.”

“Oh my God
—they’re
like gladiators! And no doubt an unsympathetic Neanderthal who got his way
bought here,” she winces, one side of her mouth turning up. I’m sure at the
thought of the cushy
life she goes on and on about that Yale athletes
have, and at the same time scanning me for
battle wounds
.

“No, really, he was
nice.”

“Nice!”
She folds her arms.

“Yes,”
I say slowly, trying to pace her. “He helped me up.”

“Unbelievable.”

I walk towards my door,
edging her along with me to diffuse the conversation.

“So you got harpooned
by an athlete—the biggest
face-titutes
on campus, and he peels you off
of the ground and now they’re
good guys
?”

I get my door unlocked
and slide my bag onto a counter with Jenny staying close behind.

“Jenny, listen, I’m
sure they’re not all
face-titutes
.” I keep from looking back at where
she’s bounced herself up on a corner of one of the lab tables and continue
making my way around the room, recalling which microscopes need which parts.
Sure, some of the athletes are here by the grace
of their parents good
fortune, but even then they have to be halfway decent just to be on the team.
And yes, their pictures are enshrined all over campus for that matter, but
calling them face-titutes, that’s pretty harsh.

“Fine,” she huffs, and
willingly surrenders to the topic. “There’s too much work to get done anyway.
What can I do to help?”

“Would you mind getting
me a cup of water to take these pills with? My head’s killing me,” I say with a
pleading half-smile, not to spark anymore debate. Jenny’s the kind of person
that doesn’t easily concede her opinions; if there’s a cause she believes in
she’ll be the one making buttons for shirts at 5 a. m. on her Cheerio strewn
table to pass out at a rally.

She rolls her eyes and
blows up a piece of black hair that’s fallen out of her ponytail, schlumping
herself down to go and find me a cup of water.

“Thanks!” I call after
her.

dane

It’s been half a day
since I knocked that poor girl to the ground, but the thought of her keeps coming
back. Maybe it’s just guilt and hoping that she’s okay. But I can’t shake it
away.

She didn’t want any
more help, not even a new coffee. Of course, why would she? Where would I just
get a random cup of coffee from that early, with most of the campus locked
tight?

But the look in her
eyes on the bench, it wasn’t the same as others; she seemed genuine, not even
letting me touch her hand in apology. Anyone else would’ve read the shirt and
feigned a little more theatrics with needing help. I’m getting used to the
hunters
knowing my face from the track posters, and the
luring
willingness I’ve
seen displayed to latch on for wherever they think this might take
me—propositions that might even widen the eyes of some of the guys back at
housing, and that have gotten all too familiar. Admittedly, sometimes they knew
just how to light off my testosterone and I’d have to get beyond actually
deliberating their proposals, usually with a run at the end of the day. But
this girl, she didn’t even seem to care about the letters stamped across my practice
shirt.

Still, she was looking
out the window. I’m sure of it.

The slap of Coach
Lewis’ clipboard against the table gets my attention. “Listen up!” he barks
over the banter. “I expect you back here at 8:00 sharp tomorrow morning—not
8:30!” The last person that showed up late got sent through so many test
sprints he broke down, literally, and curled up on the track crying with a damning
cramp.  “We need to hash out Harvard before we meet up this weekend—familiarize
yourselves some more! I expect input! Got it?!”
What a prick.

We all knew, I knew,
who my toughest competitors were, and not one of them was on the Harvard team.
I wasn’t too worried about winning my heat this weekend.

After he’s finishes
bashing at what team morale still exists, I’ll grab my duffel from the locker
and head out of the stadium and try to convince myself to take a walk past the biology
building just to see if she’s still around.

shay

“Finished yet?”

I don’t even have to
turn around and look at the door to know the attitude that’s hovering there for
my answer.

“Just getting this last
lens in place.” Jenny’s already left. Without her help for the first two hours
I would’ve spent several more here on my own being haunted persistently by
Professor Richards. But after the first check
he made and seeing that
Jenny was here with me, he kind of backed off for awhile. “There. All done.”

I turn to see he’s gone.

Creeper. If I didn’t
know his rudeness and expectations as well as I do, he’d seem half-stalker-half-professor.
And he doesn’t wear a wedding ring; I can’t imagine
who
could be married
to him. I know people try to turn their job off when they leave the office, but
he would have to have a pretty big switch. Maybe that was part of his problem;
maybe he had a jilted heart. Maybe he was just lonely—
right
—not for me
to think about. But for some reason he doesn’t scare me like he does some of
the others—granted, I don’t want too many encounters with him.

I scoop up the
bubble-wrap and the rest of the packing material lying about on the tables and
dump it into the trash can. Finished.

I turn to scan the room,
seeing everything in order.

What a day. Just the
pressure around it is enough to put me into a heavy sleep tonight, let alone
the ache in my body from falling this morning.

I slide my bag off of
the counter and hit the light switch, turning to lock the door.

dane

The building looks dead.
I’m sure anyone here would have left by now, including the unnamed girl who
keeps plaguing my thoughts.

I stand staring at the
front of it kneading the nape of my neck, when my leg goes forward before my
mind fully catches up— and I’ve given in to the
foolish
courage to walk
up the steps to the glass doors. They’re unlocked. Barely hesitating, I go in.

The campus buildings
are left open for students to walk through on any regular day, just because I’m
not in this program doesn’t exclude me from browsing, I tell myself nervously.

Really?

If she were to walk
into this lobby
right now
and see only me standing here she’d probably
hit the floor again, out of pure fear this time.

It wouldn’t be hard for
her to find me though, if she were even interested to, but unless I hang around
outside, and who knows what times or days, it’ll be nearly impossible for me to
try to know who she is on this size of a campus.

No doubt this is a science
building. The sterility of just the lobby says the only thing that needs to be
present here is a high intellect, not to mention the litany of esteemed faculty
whose somber pictures trail eye-level in glass cases down one side of the wall.

I step across to the
other side looking at a large grouping of much younger faces that take up a shorter
display length. The graduate students’ courses of study are listed under their
names below their pictures. . . Elliott Amesworth—Year 2-Dept. of Microbiology.
. . Evan Anscott. . . Attenburg. . . Avery. . . B’s. . . She had a large B on
her bag. I keep scanning. Pryce Baxter. . . Beatty. . . Bennett—found her! Shay
Bennett—Year 1-Dept. of Molecular Biology. . . I step closer in. I feel calm
all over, the way I had sitting next to her. Something about her face just has
an ease to it.

“Can I help you young
man?” The stark quietness in the lobby magnifies the voice and I lurch inside
turning around to see a short, plump man in a gray custodian’s suit with a
train conductor type hat resting lopsided on his head. He’s holding a mop
staring at me blankly, as if the only thing he has to protect himself with is
that mop and a giant ring of jangling keys.

I’m glad I have my
track suit on so I can get out here. “Nope, just looking around at the
pictures.”

“I’m about to lock up,”
he instructs still somewhat curious at the loitering.

“Yep, headed out now. Thanks,”
I say already walking towards the entrance.

shay

I unfold the note taped
to my apartment door:
Made tuna salad and brownies. Come up to eat when you
get back—if you can stand the mess. J.

I unlock my door and
step in just far enough to drop my bag and head up to Jenny’s.

The rushed noises of
returning from spring break can be heard coming from behind the closed doors in
the hallway as I walk past them.

As I get to the top of
the flight of stairs I prepare myself for the clutter in her apartment, knowing
that for her it’s organized chaos, and lightly knock.

“Door’s open!” she
calls over sounds coming from inside.

“Hey Jenny. Thanks for
the invite,” I say, looking at her effort of cleaning up, and actually it looks
pretty good. I can see she’s tried to mimic my apartment a little and it
flatters me, especially when everything else between us has always had me on
the needing side. This morning she had stayed as long as she could in my lab. Something
I didn’t even expect and was beyond grateful for, but after we got specimens
checked in she had to get home and have a head start on things for classes to
resume, having just gotten back a couple of days before me. I’m sure she’s been
working all afternoon. Her futon is covered with folded, washed clothes and all
of the dishes are stacked in a strainer beside the sink, even her old
university newspapers that she collects each one of and are normally lying
about everywhere like they’re wallpapering the floor, that she swears one day
she’ll have the time to read, are stacked in a heap the height of a chair.

The sound of the dryer
door slams shut from around the bathroom door. “Would you want to grab the red
bowl from the refrigerator?” She leans out and smiles as she finishes up with a
load of laundry, knowing I’ll be impressed with her effort.

“Sure. Looks great in
here,” I say, taking it out and removing the plastic wrap off of the top. She
already has plates and a loaf of wheat bread sitting on the small, old formica
table, a prized possession that used to sit in her family’s basement, that her papa,
nonno, and uncles would play craps at. She always says that Italians have these
great, three-story houses, but they live in the basements. I look past the sink
and see green grapes sitting wet in a colander. I grab a bowl from the cupboard
and finish shaking them, dumping them into it.

“Hey,” she comes from around
the corner. “How’d it go? You get everything done on your to do list?” She
grabs two sodas from the door of the refrigerator and sits one in front of me.

“I did. Thank God. And
not a moment too soon—Richards was never too far off after you left. Thanks
again for helping out this morning.” I help myself to opening the bread,
passing each of us two slices. “You’ve been a life saver and now you’re feeding
me,” I say almost laughing.

“We have to stick
together around here,” she grins, spooning tuna salad out.

It was the best tuna
salad I’ve ever eaten. And I ended up eating two sandwiches as we laughed and
talked about her eventful visit home with her brothers and sisters. Coming from
a big Italian family she wouldn’t have any excuse not to be able to cook and
lunch today proved that, right down to the brownies; that tasted like I bit
heaven doused in chocolate.

“Hey Jenny,” I call
from washing our dishes as she grabs the last load of towels out to be folded.
“Do you think I could look through your newspapers fast?” We both had a full
day ahead of us tomorrow and I didn’t want to hang around too much longer.

“Sure. Have at it.” She
pops the towels onto the cleaned table and starts folding them. “Looking for
anything in particular?”

“Well,” waiting for it,
“I thought I’d see who that guy was that hit me this morning.”

“You’re endless,” she
says, knowing most likely it had stuck in my head today, and whether or not she
would admit to it, I’m sure she was a little curious too.

I take four or five
papers off the top of her neatly formed pile and sit crisscross on the floor
beside them across from where she’s folding and can see me.

Flipping through the
first one, the sports section mainly boasts about the upcoming football
practice soon to be starting. I turn it upside down to keep it in date order,
placing it beside my leg, and reach for another one.

A headline this time
mentions track.
Yale Track Brings Home Wins.
It’s a lengthy article. All
articles are written by student staff trying to one up each other and doing their
best to get the attention of large papers reading an
unforgettable
article
and having to have them on staff straight from graduation. You find out a lot
of useful-not-useful information as you get through them. Reading on. . .
Continued
on pg. 5
.

I flip to the back to
page five. It has three pictures. The largest picture’s caption reads,
“Sprinter
Dane Montgomery claims personal best time in 100m, taking first place against
Big Red—Cornell.”

I bring the page closer
to my face, peering at the small figures in black and white all clustered together
running down the track, except one, who seems to have broke free and leads them.

“That’s him!” I
surprise myself at my reaction. I straighten my legs out of the stiffened
position and get up to bring the paper over for Jenny to see.

She leans in to where
I’m pointing. “Are you sure it’s him? That’s a pretty small image.”

“I’m sure—those facial
bones—his profile sitting on the bench. . . ” I stop, becoming aware of myself
and catch her eye and coy smile. “Alright, alright. I don’t know what’s gotten
into me either. . . at all.”

“Let me see more
closely.” She takes the paper for herself and reads the caption, “Dane
C.
Montgomery.
He’s a hottie alright.”

I grab it back. “It
didn’t say
C.
”

“Dane
Clod
Montgomery—you never know—that’s all I’m saying,” she hurriedly interjects as
I’m locating his name under the picture.

“Jenny!” I take one
more look at the picture before folding the paper and putting them back on the
stack. “You’re relentless, really.”

“Come on, Shay. His
only admission’s requirement may be that he needed to know how to put one foot
in front of the other—a little faster than most,” proud of her analysis.

I slap my forehead.
Sometimes her Italian wit catches me off-guard.

“No, really. How is it
that all of the athletes each year get this big send off after the
exact
four years here—no extra year or two to scramble getting their degree. When
half of the students here have to wait at least an extra semester with
pre-requisites—at minimum, just to get into the next sequence of courses? Think
about it,” she probes me.

How do I defend that? She’s
right. “Yes, yes. I hear you.” I pull a chair out from under the table and help
her finish folding the last few towels.

I let the busyness of
folding consume the few seconds of silence hanging in the air.

Finally. “Montgomery?
As in Senator Reginald Montgomery of South Carolina?”

“I don’t know Jen. I
have no idea. Could be,” I put out there, not having thought in the last few
minutes about the last name, just liking the sound of his first name. Dane
.

“Well, I hate to burst
your bubble as small as I know it is with your
dart and run
exercise
around any good-looking guy in our building, but unless your name is Little
Miss Sally May Yoo-hoo and your
daddy’s
in oil, there’s not a chance.
Those types are betrothed from infancy.”

In the short time we’ve
known each other Jenny knew me inside-out, and now, even with my timidity near
boys, I’m unable to conceal from her the slight curiosity I’m feeling—and that
comment mostly deflated the
little bubble
forming in me, but not
entirely.

“Right.” Still, he
could be talented
and smart
, and not from a wealthy family—not too
wealthy anyway.

I remember something my
dad said to me years ago, probably at the age when any other young girl might have
invited the idea of beginning to date.
“Just remember, getting a sense someone
is a delicate thing; it takes time. It took me a month of showing up at the
same 11:00 church service, when there were two other services on Sunday, just
to be sure I could see your mother as the greeter, and for her, she was asking
others if she could take their spots to be at that door just to get to see me.”
He had said it with a laugh, as if it was an intricate dance they performed,
each not knowing—but knowing.

Not a word to Jenny.
I’m going to be near that bus bench at 7:00 tomorrow and put dad’s theory to
the test. There aren’t too many risks in it; I have to walk past it obviously
to go up the steps to my building, whether it’s 7:00 or 8:00. And in all
likelihood he won’t be there anyway. Yes, what am I saying? I’m sure he has a
girlfriend, maybe more than one
girlfriend
. What type of guy would still
act that way—like any semblance of a gentleman, especially when so many girls
are in full pursuit meeting at after-game parties or one of the dozens of clubs
that snake the outside of campus. Even though it’s not for me, it seems to be
just about what it is for most everyone else.

“Thanks again for a great
late lunch.” Shifting my thoughts and stacking my towels onto hers.

“Take some brownies,”
she calls, headed off to the bathroom to put them away. “There’s plastic wrap
in the drawer beside the stove.”

I wrap up a couple,
dipping my finger into the icing on the top of the last one I set in, licking
it.

“See you in the morning
Jen!” I say loudly, opening the door to leave.

“See ya there!”

dane

“Gretchen, right?” I
ask, closing the door and walking further inside to see the two of them curled
up on the sofa watching tv.

She lifts her head up
to Vince for reassurance of being there and then turns to me, “Yeah, hey Dane.”

“Hey,” I say with my
back to them reaching for the phone to take into my room. She must possess something
the others don’t. It’s the first time the same girl has returned—at least two
days in a row.

I push my door closed
and kick off my shoes, falling back on my bed outstretched, staring up at the
ceiling. I know until I at least attempt to talk to this girl it’s going to
keep drumming in my head. I’ve got to find a way to run into her again—
Jesus!
—without
actually
running into her again
.

What’s wrong with me?

How stupid did that
sound?

I let out a long
breath, pushing away the thought of her and reaching for the phone I let drop
beside me on the bed. It feels good to lie down.

Kate and mom will be
expecting a call from me any day now and it’s as good of a time as any to catch
up for a minute.

I dial the number. It
only has to ring twice before Kate answers.

“Hey sis.”

“Dane!” The excitement
in her voice picks up. “Hang on, okay?”

“Sure.” I can hear her
palm scratch across the mouthpiece, covering it as she yells for mom to come to
the phone.

“Mom’s on her way. How
are things going out there?” She likes hearing about Yale. Even when the news
sounds the same to me every time, but I indulge her. Other than coming out here
to visit me, she’s stayed mostly near home to be with mom. When she decided to
get a nursing degree she chose a small university only thirty minutes away to be
home every night. Being left to feel like the man of the house since I was
little, I owe her a lot. “We saw Coach Malloy at the steak house last night. He
said he’s leaving Thursday to get to see you before your big meet this weekend.
He says you’ll have no trouble against them again this year.” Kate gets really
excited about the Yale/Harvard rivalry and that her brother has made the
headlines the past two years. I make sure to send her all of the papers with
track news—and she makes sure to show everybody back home, whether I like it or
not. She’s made a book of the clippings that she puts with all of my trophies
I’ve kept. Each time I get home she shows me the new additions to it.

“Yeah. I heard from him
a couple of days ago. It’ll be good to see him. How’s school?” I don’t want to
feel like I’m the only one working hard. I know she works harder than I do just
taking care of everything; the two of them there on their own.

“School’s great! It’s
going really well—no complaints. How about you? Were you able to get rid of
Vince yet?” she teases, knowing I’m stuck with him until the end of the term.

“Hardly.” If I say too
much more I’ll get myself frustrated just thinking about it. Luckily he took a
road trip to Florida over spring break and I spared them of his
ways
for
the short time they were here.

“That bad still, huh?”
she asks with sympathy in her voice.

“Just a couple of more
months, I’ll manage. How’s Mom?”