Back When You Were Easier to Love (14 page)

The dance doesn’t end. The dancers struggle for breath and mimic dying so many times I realize death won’t signal a stop. Maybe that’s the point—maybe “dead” is just another label I’m willing to throw on these people, the same as I would label someone a vegan. Gray-eyed. Dead.

My inability to open my mind frustrates me. All I can think about is Zan. Caucasian. Facial-haired. Loved by Joy.

Finally, the lights come on before I realize the dance is ending. The harshness of the bright overheads overwhelms me.

The girl in the bun rushes over to me. “So what’d you think?”

“The lighting was great!” I say too quickly, with too much enthusiasm.

She nods and plies off to another group.

Noah gives me a helpless look. “Can we go home now?”

I nod. “Yes, please.”

It’s Friday night
at Ballad of the Sad Café, and the air smells like melodrama and espresso. The place is packed with girls wearing Scripps College hoodies and guys with too much facial hair. Noah asks for Sprite, of course, and I get hot chocolate. I’ve seen how much whipped cream they put on top and then sprinkle with cocoa powder.

There’s a hand-lettered sign telling us the poetry reading is downstairs, so I’m holding my hot chocolate mug very carefully as we go down a circular staircase. “Let me take that,” says Noah, and he does, and he carries both drinks and he doesn’t spill a single drop and I could never be like that. I could never carry two drinks without spilling like the perfect Noah Talbot.

The whole upstairs of the Ballad is funky-chic Craftsman-style, with these great old light fixtures and cool moldings. But the downstairs is stuck in a much less sought-after era. The tables are made of scratched, avocado-colored Formica. The light fixtures aren’t “great old,” they’re seventies old, made of brass with burned-out bulbs—dim enough so that you almost don’t see the green shag rug. Almost.

“Let’s sit here,” I say, and we sit at a table in the back corner, where we can see everyone come in but, because of the shadows, they can’t see us.

A guy in a newsboy hat and an oversize tweed jacket is adjusting the microphone up front. We’re early, so the room is still pretty empty, but I do see one girl who’s obviously been here a while, because when she walks in carrying a string of lights she says to Newsboy Hat: “Found them!” At first I think she’s going to hang them, and apparently, so does she. Noticing nowhere to hang them from, she finally decides to wrap them in a big circle beneath the microphone.

“I need a refill,” Noah says, standing up.

“Already?”

He holds up his empty glass as proof, and I realize that while I’ve been staring, taking it all in, he’s been drinking, more literally taking it all in. “You want anything?” he asks.

I haven’t touched my hot chocolate yet. “No, I’m good.”

Noah takes off, and I see the girl look up; she hadn’t noticed we were in the room until now. She gazes into the corner, then steps off the “stage” and comes over to me.

“Hey,” she says. “I’m Lizzy.” Lizzy’s wearing a wraparound miniskirt and a shirt with a brown stain on the shoulder. “That’s Preston.” She motions at Newsboy Hat. “We’re co-presidents of the Poetry Society.”

“Hi.” I try to smile, but not too big, not a fakey-fake Haven smile. “Nice to meet you.”

Lizzy waits two beats. “And you are?” she prompts.

“Oh, I’m . . . I’m Joy.” I fumble. “And my . . . friend, that’s Noah who just went upstairs.”

“Cool. You guys freshmen?”

“We’re on a college visit, actually. Checking out the campus.”

Her eyes light up. “Seriously? I give campus tours.”

“We took a tour today. Guy named Dave.” I look at her and she nods. She either knows him or is willing to pretend like she does.

“What did you think of Pitzer?” she asks, excitedly. So excitedly that she doesn’t wait for my response. “It’s great isn’t it? I love this place. It should totally make your short list.”

It embarrasses me to admit, even to myself, that I don’t yet have (nor am I even formulating) a short list. No way I’ll admit it to her. So why did admitting it to Mr. Daniel, College Counselor De-strodinaire, not embarrass me at all?

“So, you’re into poetry?” Lizzy looks genuinely interested. I wonder if it’s a look she’s had to acquire as a tour guide—feigning interest in potential recruits—or if she really is, for whatever reason, interested in what my hobbies are.

I think about poetry, about the poems Zan used to write me in Estar. “Yeah.”

Lizzy smiles. “Excellent.”

Noah comes down the stairs and Lizzy says, “You must be Noah,” and we make introductions and it hits me. We’re actually here. This is actually all real.

Something in the front of the room falls, or at least there’s a crash. It startles all three of us. “I’d better go help Preston,” Lizzy says sheepishly. “Nice meeting you.”

“Ditto,” says Noah. Anyone else saying that—
ditto
—and it would sound stupid to the extreme, but with Noah’s natural ease and friendliness around people, it just sounds right.

As we’ve been talking to Lizzy, the room has slowly been filling, and I’ve been scoping it out. No Zan, of course, but there’s a decent showing. And even though it shouldn’t matter, I notice that Noah is by far the best-looking guy here. He’s not overly clean-cut or preppy, either—he doesn’t stand out in a pretty boy way.

His all-the-right-shades of sandy blond hair falls in his face. I love how his hair’s grown out just slightly long—long enough to look hip but not mangy, like so many of the guys here. Somehow his eyes look bluer in the lack of light. Not an ounce of him looks out of place.

Meanwhile, I’m guessing that
every
ounce of me looks out of place, as out of place as I feel, but I don’t care. This is the kind of out-of-place feeling I love; the kind of out-of-place feeling that makes me tingly all over and numb from my shoulders down to my elbows. This is not my uncomfortable brand of out-of-placeness. This is the out-of-placeness I thrive on. The out-of-placeness I felt with Zan.

Zan. I still haven’t seen him. I’ve seen a girl in fishnet stockings, embroidered with a rose pattern winding down the leg. I’ve seen a guy in the world’s largest pair of glasses. I’ve seen a token old lady, gray-haired and overweight. I’ve seen a black dachshund wandering around, in what is surely a violation of the health code. I have not seen Zan.

Everybody has their own book with them—a brown leather journal seems to be standard issue. I can’t help thinking of purple velvet, and then not knowing what to think.

Maybe that’s why it feels so out of place when Noah puts his hand on my hand. Maybe that’s why my skin heats up to three hundred degrees in record time. Or maybe it’s because I’m psychic, and I already know what he’s going to say, which is, “Heads-up, Joy. Look who just walked in.”

Recognition comes to
me in bits and pieces. Dark hair, shiny like Zan’s, only longer. Goatee like Zan’s, only thicker. Brown eyes like Zan’s, only darker. True, he’s wearing cutoff cargos (he never wears shorts) and a slightly too-tight shirt with orange sleeves and the words GRAND CANYON on the front, but it’s definitely him. My heart doesn’t finish beating before another beat begins. I’ve found him. I’ve found him.

Then I see someone following, winding down the circular stairs holding onto his hand. Right then I want to jump up and save Zan from whoever this is, whoever is leeching onto his hand, because doesn’t she know Zan doesn’t hold hands? Why would she do that? Why would he let her?

She has hair halfway down her back, and it’s the color of a million shades of sunrise. A row of shiny studs curve around her ear, and her white halter hugs her body and reveals broad, tanned shoulders. She’s wearing a pair of those shorts with the half-inch inseam.

I’m not jealous, but I still remember how I’ve never been able to grow my hair past my shoulders, how I never pierced my ears even once because I fear fainting, how I never wear halter tops or spaghetti straps.

“Why is she holding his hand?” I ask Noah.

Noah just looks at me, and his eyes hurt. His hand is still on top of mine but ice-blood has cooled my skin to a chilly negative-one-hundred-degrees. Squared.

He doesn’t see
me. And part of me knows I’m in the corner where he can’t see me, that I’ve chosen to sit where I can observe without being observed. But that common-sense part of me is long gone by now, and all I can think is,
Why doesn’t he see me?

I watch him sit down with the girl, at a table near the front, and I look at Noah and open my mouth but no words are there. He nods, though, and his hand is still on my hand, and he lifts me up and we move to a closer table.

There are already two other people there, girls in berets, but they just smile like it’s cool, mainly smiling at Noah, I think, but I can’t tell because my eyes are on Zan. I don’t want him to see me, but I do want him to see me, and I want both those things so much and why doesn’t he see me?

Lights shine blue against the green carpet and Preston and Lizzy are at the mike, welcoming everyone to the first poetry reading of the year. There’s clapping and thankfully no snapping, and everybody seems nice enough except the skanky girl still clutching Zan’s hand. Her breasts ride up a little too close to Zan’s face as she whispers something to him. I know I’m staring, and on one hand I know that’s tacky, but on the other hand I think about how Zan’s not looking at me, and it hurts triple-time because why doesn’t he see me?

Everybody starts with their poems and I might hear one or I might hear twenty, but it’s just one long stream of words I don’t understand or even want to understand. And I think I might be crying but I can’t even tell anymore, because my body and I haven’t been on speaking terms for awhile now.

Until something halfway wakes me up.

He stands in the circle of blue lights, standing there like that circle on that shag carpet belongs to him. He’s so sure of himself, like always, but this time it doesn’t look right. Now he’s here, with his people, the people we were never as good as, but he still looks like he’s better than we are. Or is it just that he
thinks
he’s better than we are? I can’t tell.

Seeing his bare legs for the first time, covered in so much thick, black hair, nauseates me. I never thought about what Zan’s legs looked like. He never showed them to me, to anyone, as far as I knew. Here he is, exposed, but he’s still wearing that same smirk that used to irritate Mattia beyond belief.

Then I see it. I see it and I swallow the scream because he’s wearing flip-flops. I’ve never seen Zan wear flip-flops. I’ve never seen him wear any shoes besides his signature brown loafers. Even in the middle of summer, he wore his loafers. Zan without his loafers—it’s like he’s left behind who he was.

Who he was with me.

I can’t finish
thinking a thought, because each one gets interrupted midway through. But I do hear Noah mutter something I’ve never heard him say before: “That guy is truly an A-hole.”

While the next poet gets up, Noah borrows a pen from one of the bereted girls, takes the napkin from underneath his drink, and starts scribbling furiously.

All around me there are words, being scribbled, being shouted, being elongated for rhythm. There are so many words, but no words for what I’m feeling, for what I’m seeing.

Then Noah picks up his napkin and stands, walking over to Lizzy and whispering something in her ear. She gets up and straightens her miniskirt, which has slid halfway around her waist. Everyone is looking at our table, and the bereted girls shrug, and I see Zan, and finally he sees me, and his eyes register nothing. He turns back around.

“We’re pleased to welcome two potential Pitzer students here with us tonight,” Lizzy says, smiling. “Joy and Noah are visiting the campus and wanted to check out the poetry scene here. Turns out Noah’s a poet, too, so we’re going to slightly amend our program to let him share his work.” She smiles again, then nods to him.

I have the first clear thought that I have all day: This cannot be good.