It was a long evening, followed by an even longer night.
Learning the way from my own entrance to my car, I pulled to the back where my parking spot was. The walk was slightly shorter, and noting how big this football party was, I was surprised I’d even gotten that spot. The backyard had people spilling out of it, but not as many. Two smaller circles and the same thing as the front yard. No one paid me a bit of attention.
That wasn’t true. A few guys watched me. One started to come over to help, but Mia, the Gazelle Mean Girl, grabbed his arm and shook her head in a quick and savage motion. He resigned himself to sitting at their picnic table and just watching me. Every time I went back and forth, he took a drink. I noticed the whole table did that, too.
Great.
I’d been turned into a drinking game.
That was the only time Mean Gazelle had smiled for real. She was enjoying my humiliation.
Whatever. I trudged back and forth, shouldering my boxes and bags. I didn’t have a ton of stuff, but enough that it took five different trips, and once I was done, I eyed the shower and the bed. I was torn, but my stomach growled.
The coffee had been my breakfast and lunch, and I knew myself. If I took a shower, or lay down, I wouldn’t want to get up till way later, and then I’d have a whole day go by without eating. Sighing, I washed up a tiny bit, then grabbed my purse and headed out to grab some food.
There was a fast food place a few blocks away, so I loaded up. I’d have to find a grocery store tomorrow, and get real food, but until then, I had two chicken sandwiches to tide me over.
After that, with their cheering and booing upstairs, I settled in.
I showered. I ate. I made my bed.
I began to unpack, and then around ten that night, I sat at my desk, hearing blissful silence above.
Well, that was following a bunch of yelling, feet stomping, doors opening and closing, then voices outside, and car doors shutting.
They had left the building.
What’d I do? Remain in my bedroom like a good little unwanted thing. It felt wrong going upstairs and checking out the rest of the house when I knew at least two of the girls didn’t want me here, so I pulled out my school map and planned my day for tomorrow.
It was the first day of classes, and I was registered, but I still needed to go and do all the extra stuff like get my picture taken for my I.D. Actually, get the I.D. Set up a meal plan since they were requiring one because of my late acceptance. Get my books at the store. Find the library, that was the most important. And then just walk the campus, find where all my classes were going to be.
Since I was switching to marine biology, I was excited for the lab portion of the classes. I did the prerequisites at the community college near where I grew up, so those were all done and aced, but I knew it would be harder at this level. I was still surprised I’d gotten into Texas C&B, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I was here. I was doing it.
I’d always wanted to be a marine biologist since I was little, and this was the right time to pursue it. My other career choices fell away. Counseling. A language interpreter. A speech pathologist. They hadn’t been the ones I really wanted, and life was short. I’d learned that a few times by now, so I was embracing it with both hands, but leaving my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Tired, but feeling an odd contentment, I crawled into bed at midnight.
Boom!
Thud!
“Fuck,” someone yelled.
More feet shuffling above.
I could hear the laughter.
They were back. I was guessing they’d gone to a party or the nearest bar.
Rolling over in bed, pulling my sheet up around me, my fan pointed right on me, I waited and hoped. Maybe they’d eat, do whatever drunk people did, and then go to bed.
Boom, boom, boom!
They turned on music. Loud bass pounded through the floorboards. I could almost hear them rattling, so I rolled over and did what any girl in my place would do. I muffled a scream into my pillow. It was a full-body scream, too. Even my toes got into it, twitching. I needed sleep. Like bad. Like I would get sick if I went too many nights in a row without a full eight hours, and let’s not get into why I wasn’t getting my sleep. That tied into the whole reason I came to Texas, but I know people would say they could survive off four hours a night. Yes. I could, too, but not five nights in a row. I was on night six.
I. Needed. My. Sleep.
But really, what was I actually going to do? I was the interloper here. I’d have to endure, and I did. Until four in the morning. And even after that, the music was lowered but it was still a soft beat until finally, I drifted off to sleep. I swear, I went to sleep dreaming about Stone throwing his football down on my head each time, and it corresponded with the techno music blaring through my alarm clock.
My alarm clock.
It was going off.
And waking, realizing that particular dream had been a nasty one, I sat up and I was in pain. A supersonic nap would be needed later on. Pronto. Stat. Don’t get me started. I was feeling a bit punchy here.
After showering and dressing, the phone started in. It was Gail. Again.
This time I accepted and knew this would take a while. I sat down. I needed to preserve my energy here.
“Hi, Gail.”
“Sweetie!” Her voice was loud, and she was forcing a Southern accent. I didn’t know why. She wasn’t Southern. Never had been. “How ahr y’all?”
This was Gail. I didn’t need to reply.
She was already onto the next question. “How waas your drive? I hoped you took it easy. That’s a long way to drive by yourself. Your father left to have coffee with the men in town. You know how it is. He loves that coffee time. And how are y’all feahling today? Excited? Your classes start todaaay. Have you gotten in touch with Stone yet? He’s a big deal down there. I’m sure he’d be happy to show you the ropes, show y’all some places, maybe the best places to eat. You know.”
One, Stone was a big deal everywhere in this state.
Two, he wouldn’t be happy to show me the ropes. He loathed me more than I hated him, and that said a lot.
And three, I had a fealing my dad was sitting right next to her. He loathed going to get coffee with the men in town as much as Stone and I despised each other.
But, there was an upside to my relationship with Gail. I barely had to speak. It was mostly a one-sided dynamic, and to prove this, Gail kept right on chatting. She would exhaust herself, do both parts of our conversation so it went how she wanted it to go, and once she was happy she’d end the call.
Which is what she was doing right now.
“Stone is such a sweet boy.”
He was an arrogant prick.
“And you know, that family. They fell on hard times, too.”
His family was rich, and because he could, his dad fired mine shortly after turning their grocery store into a franchise.
“And Barb, she just looks so amazing. Her skin was glowing. She looks like she has trimmed down, too.”
Barb was haggard looking.
Stone’s mom was skinny because she smoked and drank champagne every day. Once every couple days, she’d throw in a piece of chicken, maybe a salad with that. And I knew this because we’d been their neighbors until we were forced to sell the house, and once upon a time, Stone and I had been great friends. I’d been at their house a lot growing up. All that changed once we hit puberty, of course, but Barb just kept getting skinnier and more gaunt-looking.
And people talked.
I mean, not Gail (in this circumstance.) She was almost the anti-gossiper here. She was literally spewing the opposite of what was true, but if she wanted to believe all of this, who was I to correct her? This was what she was choosing to think. So be it.
And by the end, after she was losing speed, I only murmured, “Sounds good, Gail. I should get going.”
“Oh. Okay. Have a great day, suh-weedie! Your father and I are thinking about you today. Call tonight. Let us know how Stone is when you see him.”
I wouldn’t do any of that, and she knew that. My dad knew it. And she would call tomorrow, repeating all the same until she would’ve convinced herself that I had reached out to Stone, that he and I were friends again, and she would go on thinking how amazing I was doing in Texas.
