Love Her Madly (3 page)

The music started, and it was perfectly awkward. I got to my feet and began circling with the others. We all felt stupid, so with a few exceptions, we were all smiling. I spoke my own name, dusty classic that it is, so often that it began to sound alien to me. When the music finally stopped, I was facing a wall. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I spun around. It was the perfect blond girl.

“Howdy, partner,” she said, flashing me a smile.

The speakers screeched to life, and Dreadlocks' voice boomed across the sound system like a detonation. We all flinched and covered our ears. “Whoops,” Dreadlocks said, her voice reduced to a tolerable volume. I glanced at the blonde, her face a portrait of sarcastic bemusement.

She was even prettier up close, unlike some blond girls who can sell the package at a distance but flatten and fade upon closer inspection. She had cool blue eyes spaced evenly under pale eyebrows that seemed arched in perpetual contemplation of a private joke. Her nose was small and slightly pert in the Nordic supermodel vein and buttressed on either side by high cheekbones. When she smiled, dimples and even white teeth appeared, completing the circuit of devastation. She was so naturally stunning that I didn't even feel jealous.

“Now everyone sit down across from your partner, join hands, and close your eyes.”

The room filled with awkward murmurs. Blondie and I exchanged eye rolls.

“Now we do the traditional orientation séance, I guess,” she murmured as we joined hands. Embarrassed by the intimacy of touching a stranger, I clamped my eyes closed.

“Now everyone share something about yourself with your partner.”

Suddenly I had the distinct feeling that she was leaning in close to me, and I heard her whisper in my ear, “Oh, your hands, they're so . . . baby soft. Do you . . . exfoooliaaate?”

My eyes snapped open. She shot me a really lecherous leer and began circling the top of my hand with her thumb. She licked her lips and shifted her eyebrows almost imperceptibly. I realized she was putting me on.
Game on, weirdo
, I thought.

I dropped my head back and rolled my eyes around in mock ecstasy and moaned loud enough for a few surrounding parties to hear, following up with a strangled, “Oh yes!”

I opened one eye. Blondie looked startled, but her face quickly cracked into a smile, and she loosed a low, throaty chuckle.

“It's not funny. Why would you laugh at that? We're supposed to be sharing!” I stage-whispered, attempting outrage. Her face turned red, and she laughed harder. When she released my hands and shoved me, I broke. We tittered like hysterical preteens, rocking back and forth breathlessly, attracting stares.

Our mirth was just receding when Dreadlocks announced that we'd begin again and find new partners. As the music started to play, I got up, wiping my hands on my jeans with a show of disgust.

“Pervert,” I spat.

She nodded appreciatively, brushing a smudge of dampened liner from beneath her eyelashes. “I'll be seeing you around, missy.”

I proceeded to meet a few other unremarkable students, including an uncomfortable sit-down with my new roommate, Annie. We'd already met that morning as my dad was helping me move in. She'd appeared as a large, quiet shadow in the doorway, and as I was under my desk trying to jerry-rig an electrical hookup, I didn't notice her there until I heard my father say, “Oh, hello. You must be Ann.”

We knew this crucial bit of information because I'd received a letter from the school with Annie's contact information, just in case we wanted to get to know each other before the semester started. It seemed that mutually, we did not. After my dad left and we were alone, I attempted to build a conversational bridge (progress!) while watching her thumbtack photo collages above her bed. She nailed, with particular wistfulness, a smaller, framed collage that featured only photos of Annie with a tiny fella (Thomas, I would soon learn) who looked like a miniature Clark Kent. In one image, taken at prom, he sits on her lap.

Anyway, it was soon established that we shared virtually no interests, be they political, academic, or arts and leisure. Our conversational fount slowed to a polite, if meager, drip and stayed there, permanently. I foresaw Annie as a quiet and sufficiently amiable cell mate, and one unlikely to invade my shower time to test-run eye shadow. I'll say it: I was satisfied with the match.

As for the blonde, I ran into her again that evening in the quad. She was sitting on a bench, surrounded by several students, smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, you! Ginger!” she called out when she saw me.

I pretended to look around like I didn't understand. When I pointed to myself in mock confusion, she laughed, which I suppose was my goal.

“Yeah, you. What's your name?”

“Gloria.”

“Like an angel,” came a voice from the grass. I looked down and saw a guy with a great shock of spiky hair and a delicate build smiling up at me.

“She's no angel,” Blondie quipped. “My name's Cyn.”

“How appropriate,” I responded.

She grinned. “Short for Cynthia.”

“Right.”

Cyn laughed. “I've always wanted to befriend a redhead.”

“Well, in truth, earlier today I was sure I wouldn't like you because you're so very blond.”

“That's discrimination,” she protested. This topic was rapidly debated by the assembled group, while Cyn sat smoking, already their queen. She studied me from her bench. “Do you always dislike people on sight?”

I laughed, because it was true.

“I'm trying to improve,” I offered. “And you've already helped me so much because, although you are very blond, you seem utterly shameless, and I'm looking for a mentor.”

She clapped with delight and made space for me on the bench next to her. “Have a seat, my child.”

The evening hours passed easily as other new students drifted in and out of the orbit of Cyn's bench. Eventually Cyn looked at her watch and announced that she had to finish unpacking or risk sleeping on the naked rubber mat that served as our dorm beds. As she left, another student quickly took her space, but the magical hour was over. I left soon after.

CHAPTER TWO

The next few nights, I took to walking to the bay after dinner. The quay at the bay front was a thing of real beauty, and by far the college's crowning feature. An old mansion from the Roaring Twenties, now converted into classrooms, stood at the end of a long brick walkway. At its foot, a manicured lawn sprinkled with benches and palm trees offered an unimpeded view of sailboats. At sunset, the air filled with the scent of cheap tobacco and marijuana. By nightfall, the scene felt like
The Great Gatsby
transposed into the Summer of Love.

I found a quiet bench and sat alone for a very long time, trying not to think about the disaster I'd made of things in the fall, trying not to think about Mike. Laughter floated up from the students who splayed on the lawn not far from me. I suspected I could have approached any group and been received with friendship, but I just couldn't do it. The minutes lingered painfully as I remained trapped inside my head. When the agony of my stubborn shyness finally dug past paralysis to despair, I trudged back to my dorm alone. Annie was already asleep, oblivious to the party music floating up from the rooms below. I crawled under my comforter and felt with depressing certainty that I was destined to repeat all my mistakes and remain always alone, an outsider. I may have even squeezed out some silent tears of self-pity as the strains of “Space Oddity” echoed across the quad.

The next night, determined not to repeat my pathetic loner act from the night before, I walked to the bay again, a smile of pleasant curiosity plastered on my face. I would talk to someone, anyone, even if it killed me. As I rounded the mansion and the bay came into view, I heard someone call out, “Hey, Ginger! Over here!”

Under the glow of the lamplight, I spotted a halo of fair hair and a thin arm beckoning me over. My fake smile now authentic, I hurried over to join Cyn and her friends.

I sat on a low wall and was introduced all around. It was obvious to me that these, though mostly lowerclassmen, were the cool kids. They were more attractive, slightly more stylish (I say slightly because the hemp and Birkenstock ethos of the campus was worlds away from chic), but more than their exterior signifiers, they had an innate cockiness that advertised their utter confidence in themselves, in their intelligence, and in their right to assert themselves on the world.

Cyn lifted a bottle of amber-hued hooch and passed it to me. “Where you been, Ginger? I've been looking for you.”

“Yeah?” I took a gulp from the bottle and grimaced at its fiery sting.

“Great stuff, huh?” She laughed. “Don't worry. Max here says that tomorrow, when the rest of the school comes back to campus from winter break, we won't have to settle for Brand X.”

“Brand X?” I coughed. “More like Skull and Crossbones.”

Cyn chuckled. Max, the delicate guy I'd met on the quad a few nights ago, snorted appreciatively, and the conversation moved along fluidly. My presence unchallenged, I began to relax, and soon everyone and everything seemed perfect and right.

A while later, after the bottle had been emptied and the group was discussing how to obtain further intoxicants, Cyn leaned over to me.

“Hey, you wanna be my bathroom buddy? I gotta go.”

“Sure,” I said, hiding my surprise that she'd asked me instead of Clara, the buxom German exchange student, or Lila, a wan, dark-haired pixie who seemed to be Cyn's obvious alpha female partner.

We left the others and headed across to the side of the mansion, flanked by a wooded area and floodlit for safety.

“Buddy system was the way to go on this one,” I commented, wary of the inky darkness beyond the streetlamps.

“Right? They have those emergency call boxes, but no way those chubby campus cops could golf-cart over here in time to save us from dismemberment.”

Safely inside the tiny ladies' room, I checked out my skin in the mirror while Cyn ducked into a stall.

“Your friends are nice,” I offered, personally hating a too-­silent bathroom.

“Yeah. Hard to believe I met most of them only yesterday. There seem to be a lot of cool people here.”

“This is already so much better than my last school.” Cyn remained quiet behind the door, so I kept talking. “I was at Big U upstate. Hated it there. Where were you?”

The toilet flushed, and Cyn reappeared at the sink. “I was nowhere.”

I watched her wash her hands, which were loaded thumb to pinkie with ornate silver rings. “I got behind on the application. Missed the fall deadline.” She turned off the water, and our eyes met in the mirror. “Actually, the truth is, I was working to make tuition. Out-of-state fees are absolutely ridiculous, but I fell in love with this place, so whatever. I'll worry about the money part as it comes.” She opened her bag and fished out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoke?”

“No,” I said, and she snapped the pack shut.

“I don't really either. It's more of a social thing.” She tucked
the cigarette behind her ear and untwisted a strand of hair that had become entangled in the star-shaped silver charm she wore around her throat. “You smoke weed?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know,” she repeated. She studied me for a moment to see if I was putting her on. I shrugged, clownishly. “Glo, you are a character. I can already tell.”

“Yeah? Well, so are you. You're like Cinderella with cigarettes. And probably drugs.”

“That was my nickname in high school. Cynderella.” She lit the cigarette with a salmon pink lighter and inhaled, lost in her own thoughts. Then she quickly ashed it into the sink and focused her spotlight-blue eyes on me. “Listen, I'm planning a trip to the big beach tomorrow. You wanna come?”

I opened my mouth to accept the invitation, but she was already exiting the bathroom.

“You'll ride with me. I think some of those miscreants out there are going, too. It'll be fun.”

We walked back to the dorms together, chatting easily. She peppered me with questions about myself; the same investigative treatment I underwent with Annie a few days earlier, except a thousand times more fun. She interrogated me about my taste in music, books, movies, the countries I most wanted to visit, my ideal man. I found myself answering with surprising candor. I'd say something from the heart, and if she went quiet, I'd begin bracing for the inevitable rejection. But with Cyn, miraculously, it didn't happen. She wasn't judging me, and we were discovering loads of common ground.

Our dorms had been designed to be easily converted into apartments if our school failed, so each room had private entrances and its own en suite bathroom. It was a nice setup, even if our walls were a little moldy and the air conditioners leaked onto the carpets. Cyn's room was on the second floor, like mine.
As we ascended the open-air staircase, I saw a magazine cut-out of a wide-eyed toad taped to her door. Written above it in block letters were the words
LICK ME!

“Nice frog,” I said.

“It's a toad.
Bufo alvarius
. Its venom gets you high. My roommate hates Mr. Bufo already.” She opened the door a crack, revealing a dark room. “She's the early-to-bed type.”

“Mine's the always-in-bed type.”

“What? She sleeps around?” Cyn whispered.

I had to laugh. “No. Just a lot. She sleeps a lot.”

“Sounds fun. See ya tomorrow.” She pulled me in for a casual, one-armed hug, just like I'd seen girls do in the wild, before slipping silently into her room.

When I returned to my dark room and saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I noticed that my face was flushed, and not from the booze. I felt giddy. I felt great. It was almost like falling in love.

The next day, I sacrificed my top sheet for use as a beach blanket, and Cyn, Max, Lila, and I squeezed together along its narrow expanse. No one had a beach umbrella, and even in late January, the sun was intense. Lila and I fetishistically applied sunscreen while Max looked on, manifestly disappointed to not have been asked for help with those hard-to-reach spots. Cyn slouched lazily under a cowboy hat and an oversize men's Oxford shirt, her bronzed legs stretched out into the sand.

Max fiddled with a boom box so ancient that it lacked a compact disc player. No one had any tapes, so he scrolled through the dial, switching stations as often as he redirected the focus of his flirtatious banter. At first, it was entertaining. He was like someone's cute little brother brought along for the ride, desperate to commandeer attention. Lila, having explained
at length (truly, at length) that she had a boyfriend in Miami, batted back his weak come-ons like a churlish Siamese cat, while Cyn openly mocked him. Finding no success with either of them, his attentions turned to me.

He rolled in my direction, his eyebrows raised above the limits of his sunglasses, making them appear to be caterpillars in free fall. “So what's with the one-piece, Gloria?” he asked, reaching out to touch my racing suit. “Your synchronized swimming partner showing up later?”

“No. My fur bikini just happens to be at the cleaners.”

Cyn snorted behind her magazine.

He blinked. “I see. So what are you, a swimmer or something?”

“Used to be. Want to race? I'll give you a big head start.” I'd told Cyn a little about my swimming the night before. She whispered something into Lila's ear.

“Yes, Max. You should race,” Lila blurted, failing to keep a straight face. “It's hardly manly to insult a girl's bathing suit and then turn down a challenge like that. Hardly manly at all.”

“I'm being set up, aren't I?” he asked.

“Your chances of success are not for me to judge,” I yawned, rolling onto my belly. A shadow fell across our blanket, and I looked up to behold Clara, the exchange student, with two hippie-looking guys and a stout goth chick with a barbed wire tattoo around her ankle.

“We
habe
beer,” Clara announced to great approbation. They joined us, and the afternoon rolled along in fine fashion.

I sat by the edge of the water fingering the shells I had collected as the sky faded from fluorescent pink to violet. I thought of Mike, but only for a second. In contrast with my new life, he seemed so quaint. As I watched my new friends splashing around in the surf, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking up, I saw Tim, the very tall, skinny half of the pair of hippie dudes.
He raised a long, wet arm and pointed out the glimmering arc of a dolphin as it slipped between the waves.

Classes started and the first few weeks flew by in a beautiful blur. Cyn and I saw each other every day, without fail, and our makeshift family expanded to include Max, Lila, and Tall Tim, the second-year marine biology major from the beach whose lanky frame belied a startlingly deep voice. Cyn and I didn't cross paths much during class hours, since our studies were comically divergent. She was planning to major in chemistry and psychology, while I was hitting the humanities pretty hard. The only crossover we had was Spanish Conversation, led by a young and improbably handsome professor, Pablo Altasierra. Professor Pablo was Argentinian and spoke with an exaggerated lisp that we both adored and therefore mocked mercilessly.

Por ejemplo:

ME
:
Thynthia, your mithuthe of the path't tenth is thimply thaddening.

CYN
:
Theriously, theñor?

ME
:
Theriously.

CYN
:
Thuck me, theñor.

A month into classes, Cyn bounded into my room, her face lit up with excitement. She waved a hasty salute to Annie, who barely blinked, and leapt onto my bed like an oversize rabbit.

“Good news. I've made contact with the dealer.” Her eyes were unnaturally aglimmer.

“The dealer,” I repeated.

“Yes! Get this: his name is
Silence
. He's just what you'd expect. All hippied out, skinny as death, total space cadet, but he
seems like a cool dude, and he's got access to all kinds of shit.” She slapped my leg in excitement. I closed my book as a thousand doubts clouded my mind.