“And why is that?” I said, trying to be playful.
“I’m mysterious,” she said. She wiggled her fingers in front of my face and the right side of her mouth drew up. Was that a smirk? Did Ingrid just smirk at me?
“Oh, is that what you think it is?” After so many intense moments, this moment of levity was like a cool drink for a parched throat.
“Definitely. What else could it be?” I wasn’t going to answer that.
“You got me,” I said, putting my hands up as if I surrendered. “I’m a sucker for a mystery.”
She nodded and I thought I spotted another smile, but it was gone quickly, stuffed away behind rigid lips.
“Thank you,” she said, so quietly that I almost didn’t catch it.
“You’re very welcome, Ingrid. Anytime.” I got up and brought her some pizza and a glass of water. I had the feeling she hadn’t been eating much recently.
She carefully ate two slices and had two water refills. The color in her cheeks come back.
“You must think I’m crazy,” she said.
“No. I don’t think that at all.” I wouldn’t think that about anyone, least of all her.
“Liar.”
“I’m not lying. Look at me.” I would never get used to the way her eyes seared into me.
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Ingrid. Not even a little bit.” Her eyes narrowed and I could tell she was assessing if I was telling the truth or not.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I believe you.”
“Good.”
She said she had homework to do, especially since she’d missed all her classes, so I offered to walk her back to her dorm room, which she accepted.
“If you need anything, I want you to text or call me. No matter how silly it seems, or how later or early it is,” I said when we got to the door to her building.
She stared at me again, trying to figure out if I was lying. I wasn’t. Again.
“Sure,” she said, turning away, but she stopped and faced me again.
“Thank you.” She’d already said it, but I still liked hearing it.
“You’re welcome, Ingrid. Have a good night.” She waved at me with her fingertips and vanished inside the building.
I walked back to my room slowly, texting Marty that he could come back.
He did, and he had a wide grin on his face.
“So you sealed the deal. Well done!” He held his hand up for a fist bump, but it took me a second to realize what he thought had happened.
“It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t feeling well, so I brought her here to crash for a little while. That’s it. Nothing else. Well, I got her pizza, but other than that, nothing happened.”
Marty gave me a puzzled look.
“So she slept in your bed? Just sleeping? You didn’t even get a kiss?” I shook my head and so did Marty.
“It’s fine. That’s not what I’m after with her. I mean, yes, that would be great, but it’s not everything.” Marty just gave me a sad look as he crashed onto his bed.
“Whatever you say. But I’m sure you’re getting tired of having do everything yourself,” he said while miming jerking off. I grabbed one of my pillows and threw it at him. He caught it effortlessly, as I knew he would.
“It’s not like that, Marty. How many times do I have to say that?”
“Enough times that I might actually believe you?” The pillow came sailing back toward me and I caught it.
My bed smelled like Ingrid and I couldn’t help but feel happy about that. My phone rang, startling me. It was my mom.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. Marty rolled his eyes. He wasn’t close with his family and couldn’t really understand why I still was.
“Hey, sweetheart. How are you doing?” I told her things were going fine. I hadn’t mentioned Ingrid or anything to do with her. If I did, she would know why I came here and what I was doing and I knew she would tell me not to do it. Try to talk me out of it.
That wasn’t going to happen. Nothing would stop me. Not even her.
I told her about my classes and mentioned Marty. He yelled hello at her and Mom updated me on things going on at home, including the latest trouble my brother had gotten into. She wasn’t at her wits’ end with him, but getting there. Ike was still pretty young. He’d get his shit together in time for graduation. Hopefully.
She told me she loved me and then hung up. Marty was watching me.
“You tell your mom everything, but not about the girl?” I was hoping he hadn’t caught onto my omission of anything Ingrid-related.
“Yeah, I don’t exactly discuss my relationships with her. She still thinks of me as her little boy. I’m pretty sure she thinks that I still think girls have cooties.” He snorted.
“Oh, man, that is fucking adorable.” He seemed to buy it, so I let it go and we talked about other things. He invited me to another party and I said I would go, minus Ingrid.
“She’s just not into that kind of stuff.”
“Maybe she would be if you invited her. Maybe she thinks that you don’t want to be seen in public with her.” That definitely wasn’t the case, but I knew Marty was going to pester me about it for the rest of the week.
I couldn’t catch a break, but I would go through it all a thousand times over if it meant that I could do what I came here to do.
For her.
She looked so much better on Friday. Much, much better. I had tea and, this time, a book. I’d made an educated guess about which one she wouldn’t have and might want.
“Slammed?” she said, reading the title. “What’s it about?”
“Well, I haven’t read it, but it just seemed like something you might like,” I said. I’d searched online for a while before going to the bookstore and asking a girl around Ingrid’s age what she would recommend. That was the first title she pulled off the shelf and after skimming a few pages, I bought it, along with a few others that she would get next week. I also bought the sequel, Point of Retreat, just in case she liked the first one.
Her eyes skimmed the back cover.
“Slam poetry?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess there’s a lot in it. Like I said, I haven’t read it, but it just said ‘Ingrid’ to me.” She raised both eyebrows. I loved it when she let her face be so expressive.
“Books talk to you?” she asked as we walked into class and took our seats.
“Oh yeah, all the time. Don’t they talk to you? They scream out ‘read me! Read me!’” She snorted and I wanted to congratulate myself on causing that reaction.
“Now you think I’m the crazy one,” I said.
She just pressed her lips together and shook her head as she put the book in her bag. I hoped she would read it this weekend and tell me about it on Monday.
My heart lurched when I read that the main character in the book Coen gave me had a dead father, but I tried not to show it. He didn’t know. He was just being Coen, as usual, doing nice things for me because of whatever reason.
I pulled the book out of my bag when I got back to my room. I didn’t have anything else to do tonight, so I started reading, but I had to stop pretty quickly.
It was just a little too much. The writing was good and the story was interesting, but I just couldn’t tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I set it on my desk and watched television instead, but the book kept calling to me, so I picked it back up and tried again. I pushed through the difficult parts and before I knew it, I had a few pages left, I was starving and I seriously had to pee.
I closed the book after reading the last page and just sat in bed for a few minutes. This book was something special. It picked at the wounds inside me, but didn’t rip them open. It distracted me from my own pain by letting me experience someone else’s for a little while.
I thought about texting Coen and thanking him, but it was the middle of the night. He’d asked me if I wanted to hang out again on Sunday, but I’d told him I had something to do this weekend, which we both knew was a lie.
 
; I was worried that I was taking too much from him and giving nothing in return.
Sleep was going to be impossible for a few hours, so I decide to get out my notebook and scrawl a few words. The start of my own poem. I just let the words come without thinking of their implications.
Here I am,
Your mystery,
But I’m not,
A mystery at all,
I’m just a girl,
A girl with a useless heart,
There is no fix,
There is no remedy,
There is only me,
Your damaged mystery.
I scribbled some other words and half-thoughts before putting the notebook back and closed my eyes.
Ever since that day I’d spent at Coen’s I’d been sleeping… not well, but better. The nightmares that plagued me had given me a short reprieve. They would be back, they were never far away, lurking in dark corners and in shadows. Still, I would take this moment and let myself have it. Let myself sleep.
Coen called me on Saturday and I almost didn’t answer. No one called me anymore, except for scammers from other countries. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually answered my phone and hadn’t let it go to voicemail. Yet another thing at which I was rusty.
“Hello?” I asked. I’d been re-reading my favorite parts of the book.
“Hey, what’s up?” He sounded like he was trying to be casual. Like we called each other on the phone all the time.
“Um, not much? You?” We were both failures at this. Should have stuck to texting.
“Yeah, same here. Look, you can absolutely say no to this,” he said and I heard someone say something in the background and then Coen reprimanding them. If I had to guess, I would have said it was Marty.
“Okay?” I said.
“There’s this party I’m going to tonight and I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me.” The words came out in a rush. He was nervous. Well, so was I.
“A party?” Past Ingrid would have been all over this. She loved parties and being around large groups of laughing friends. Current Ingrid wanted to throw up when she thought about it.
“Yeah. You can seriously say no. Absolutely no pressure.” I had the feeling he wasn’t the one asking, Marty was, and Coen had caved to pressure.
“Oh, um, yeah, parties aren’t really my thing.” Anymore.
“I figured, but I just thought I would ask anyway.” He stopped speaking and I thought I heard a scuffle and someone saying “You should come!” Marty was relentless, but he didn’t know me.
“Well, thanks for asking, but I’ll pass.” Forever. I couldn’t foresee a circumstance when I would ever go to a party again.
“Are you sure?” There was something in his voice that made me feel a little flash of guilt for saying no, but I let it pass. I couldn’t go to a party. Not now, not ever again.
“Yeah,” I said, chewing on my lip. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he said, trying not to sound disappointed and failing. “Maybe we can still hang out tomorrow? Actually study this time. Or we could watch movies or whatever. Whatever you want.” He was always so accommodating and even though it was sweet, it irritated me as well. I didn’t know what I wanted from him anymore. Everything was so screwed up now.
“Yeah, sure. How about you come here?” The instant the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to reach out and snatch them back. But you can’t unsay something.
“Cool, yeah.” I told him which room I was in and he said he’d see me at noon and would bring lunch. I told him he didn’t have to and he said he wanted to and he was going to do it even if I told him not to.
“Okay, see you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Ingrid.” That little shiver went through me again, when he said my name. I thought it would go away by now, but it jolted me every time.
Once my homework was done, I went out to my car and drove off campus. I didn’t have a destination other than somewhere else. Somewhere other than where I was.
I used to drive with the radio on, but now I left it off.
My mind wandered and I let it, as long as it didn’t get too close to certain things. Then I would divert it to something else, like making another turn with my car.
I didn’t know I was thinking about Coen until his face appeared in my thoughts. I was no closer to figuring him out than I’d been that first day when he’d told me I’d dropped my pen and we’d both known it was a lie.
He puzzled me. Intrigued me. Drove me crazy. Made me feel things I thought were dead and buried. His voice unlocked doors that I struggled to keep shut and put new locks on, but he just seemed to keep finding keys.
He was ripping me apart and I was letting him. If I wasn’t careful, he was going to see the shape of my soul and I couldn’t let him. I picked up my phone to tell him that we couldn’t hang out, but my hand refused to complete the action and instead I tossed my phone on the floor by the passenger seat.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash my car into a guardrail. I wanted it to break through and sail down an incline and smash into a tree. I wanted it to careen off a bridge and into the water, flooding the interior and sucking me down with it.
I wanted…
With shaking hands, I pulled the car over into a gas station and turned it off before resting my forehead on the steering wheel. My breaths came in rapid bursts.
Some of my thoughts seized their moment and flooded forward, bursting like fireworks.
Shattered glass. My sister’s eyes, the same color as mine, wide and unblinking. My mother’s hand, reaching for her. Pools of blood merging with each other. My dad, tied to a chair with his head thrown back, a bullet lodged in his brain and his face blown apart from the impact.
I forced myself to look and remember every single detail. Everything. The ticking of the clock, the drip, drip, drip of blood from Dad’s fingertips on the carpet.
A stain that would never come out.
With a gasp, I yanked myself out of the nightmare memory and raised my head. No one had noticed me. My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that my fingers ached. Breathing wasn’t easy; my lungs kept spasming and refusing to work.
It took a long time for me to regain control. At last, I was ready to drive again, but I had to grab my phone to use the GPS that would take me back to campus. I had no idea where I was.
There was a text from Coen.
What is your opinion of red velvet cake?
A simple question, but it hit me hard. Maybe it was the fact that he was thinking about me when he wasn’t with me just like I was thinking about him.
All of a sudden, my need to talk to someone, to talk to him was the only thing I cared about.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” I said, wishing my voice wasn’t shaking.
“Hey, are you okay?” Of course he picked up on it right away.
“Yeah, I just… I just wanted to talk to you.” I couldn’t lie.
“Yeah?”
“Uh huh.”
There was a beat of silence.
“I really like red velvet cake,” I said, staring out the window as ordinary people pumped gas and went about their lives.
“You do?”
“It’s my favorite.” I knew he was smiling.
“Lucky guess. I’ll put that in the Ingrid file.”
“The Ingrid file?” I’d completely stopped shaking.
“Right. The file I keep in my brain about you. About the things you like and don’t like. I’ll add red velvet cake to the ‘like’ column.”
“And what else is in the ‘like’ column?” He chuckled a little and the sound warmed me from the inside. He had such an effect on me, just with his voice.
“Green tea, Justified, purple pens, pizza, the color blue, books, stupid gifts, me teasing you.” My mouth dropped open. I wished I could see his face to see if he was joking or not.
“I don’t like it when you tease me,” I said. He laughed again, a deep
sound that made my insides quiver and twist around each other.
“Yes you do. Because you have to stop yourself from smiling and laughing when I do.” I almost dropped the phone. I’d been such an idiot to think that he wouldn’t notice that about me. Stupid. So stupid. It was shocking he hadn’t said anything about it until now.
“That’s not true,” I said, lying to both of us.
“My observations say the opposite.” I didn’t want to argue with him. Not about this. “Anyway, are you absolutely sure about the party?”
“Yes. I am.” I ground my teeth together so hard they made a sound.
“Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I didn’t want the conversation to end, even though he was irritating, but I couldn’t think of what else to say so I had to let him go.
“See you tomorrow.”
I was a little nervous when I showed up outside her door. I hadn’t seen her place yet. It was shocking that she even said I could come here. I never thought she would. I knocked and took a deep breath.
Her feet shuffled to the door and I could tell she was staring at me through the peephole. The door opened and there she was. Every time I saw her again, she knocked me out.
“Hi,” she said, leaning on the door.
“Hey,” I said, holding up the bags filled with vegan sushi and vegan red velvet cupcakes. I’d also brought my backpack with homework in case she wanted to do that.
“You didn’t have to do that.” She hadn’t moved back to let me in yet. It was a toss-up as to which one of us was more nervous about this.
“I know. I wanted to.” She seemed to shake herself and stepped back.
“Come in.”
Oh, wow. Her room was tiny. Microscopic. The first thing I noticed was her bookshelves crammed with leather-bound classics. I had the feeling those weren’t her books and she’d gotten them from someone else. Inherited them.
“So this is it,” she said, gesturing at the space. There really wasn’t even enough floor space for us to both sit and eat, so we’d have to use her bed as a couch and table.