I need to get out of here.
I walk out the door, and just before it shuts behind me, I say, “Please get help.” I don’t think she’s heard me until I see her shoulders slump a little through the crack.
Back in my dorm room I research bulimia on my laptop for an hour. I stop after that, because it’s depressing. My head is full of questions.
It’s lunchtime and even though eating is the last thing I feel like doing after the past hour’s reading, I’ve got to get out of this room. I need to think about something else. I’m fairly good at compartmentalizing my life. If something bad is going down I can focus on it for a while and then put it on the back burner when I need to. Managing a childhood like mine taught me that helpful lesson. I can’t let the bad consume me or it would eat me whole. The bad stays in the bad corner of my mind, I don’t let it through the door to mingle with the good, because the bad is a goddamn party pooper.
So I go across the hall and pound on Clay’s door. Peter answers. “What’s up Pete?”
He nods his head stiffly. “Kate.”
I reach out, take Pete by the arms, and shake him good-naturedly. “Relax Pete. Hey, is Clayton around?”
Peter opens the door wide and I see Clayton lounging on his bed reading a magazine.
“Hey Clayton. What’s up? I’m just headed down to the cafeteria to grab some lunch. You wanna come?”
“Good day, Katherine. Sure. This article is dreadful. It’s putting me to sleep.” He stretches and sets the magazine on his desk. Sometimes I wonder if Clayton was British in another life. Who else but the Brits say dreadful?
I look to Peter still holding the door. “You wanna come, too, Pete?”
“I don’t want to intrude.” He’s so formal.
“Pete, dude, it’s just lunch. Besides, Clayton and I aren’t even dating yet. He’s totally ignoring my advances.” I throw my best seductive smile and wink at Clayton.
He shakes his head. “Oh Katherine,” he says. I love that he gets my sense of humor.
“See Pete, it’s going to take a lot of creative scheming and some seriously old school courting. Clayton’s a tough nut to crack. You are so not intruding.”
Pete knows we’re messing around because Clayton told him last night that he’s g*y. He said he didn’t want things to be weird between them or to leave Peter wondering. Pete was cool about it. Somehow I knew he would be.
Lunch with Clayton and Peter was awesome. We just sat together, making jokes and telling stories. Turns out once Pete relaxes a little he’s actually funny. And Clayton, well Clayton is dry and sarcastic. We laughed our asses off. And considering laughter is like oxygen to me, I really needed it. I medicate with it. I found two people who make me laugh, like tears-in-my-eyes, almost-wet-my-pants laugh. Those are the kind of people I like to be around. And now I have two. Lucky me.
I return to my dorm room to find the place taken over like France during WWII. There is shit everywhere, hers and mine.
I wave to the girl standing, hands on hips, in the middle of the room. “Hey, I’m Kate.”
She looks over at me, blows a stray hair out of her face, and tugs the band out of her ponytail. Looking at me coolly, she smoothes all the stray hairs back before she fastens it tight again. “I’m Sugar.”
She’s pretty, like model-pretty. Long blond hair, big dark eyes, full pouty lips, and Jesus, is she tall. Her legs are practically as long as my whole body. She’s thin, but fit. And she’s got ginormous boobs. I can make a fail-safe judgment on her body because, well, she’s not hiding a thing. She’s wearing a bikini top and the smallest pair of denim shorts I’ve ever seen. When did they start making denim underwear? Yeah, this really doesn’t help me with the stripper image.
“I had to move a few things. It just wasn’t going to work for me,” Sugar says, shaking her head and looking around at the mess. “No, it wasn’t going to work at all.”
“That’s cool, we can figure this out.”
Sugar gives orders like a Marine corporal. After rearranging the entire room three times, she’s finally satisfied. I’m sweating like a pig. It seems suspicious that even though we each have the same amount of furniture, she’s taken up two thirds of the room. But whatever. I’ve got enough space for all my things so I’m not going to complain. It’s fairly obvious Sugar always gets her way. Me? I pick my battles.
There’s not a lot of small talk outside of interior decorating and furniture placement, but I ask questions. I learn that Sugar is eighteen years old, originally from Minneapolis. Her parents are divorced, and she has a three-year-old half-brother and a cocker spaniel named Mercedes. She knows “a lot” of people who go to Grant. She learns nothing about me. When people are interested in you they ask questions. I asked. She didn’t.
Oh, and she says nothing about stripping. And there’s no pole.
Damn. I feel cheated.
Sunday, August 28
(Kate)
“Who’s the guy? Boyfriend?” Sugar throws these questions at me the moment my foot crosses the threshold into our room as I return from the shower. She’s pointing at one of the framed photos on my desk. Guess she’s going to make up for not asking any questions yesterday.
“Nah. Best friend.”
She smacks her gum. “Hmm. He’s a hottie. Pretty eyes.”
It’s the same photo I have on my phone, cropped to show just his face. It shows up every time he calls. The one in the frame includes both of us. We’re laughing. I’m standing up straight with my head thrown back and he’s doubled over, his long hair hanging over one eye. His other eye is looking into the camera with an expression of joy and mischief, calm and wild abandon. It’s classic Gus. Our friend, Franco, took this photo a year ago when we were all at the beach. “Yeah, he’s got great eyes.” They’re so dark brown, they’re almost black. They sparkle.