“Miss Kaspen?” Professor Grubbs sang again, “where do you think you’re going?”
I turned slowly, plastering a smile over my gritted teeth. The obnoxious, insufferable, piece of….
“Good morning Professor,” I said sweetly.
His three chins were swinging beneath his grinning mouth like a pendulum. Caleb, whose head had been bent over his textbook a moment ago pivoted toward me in his seat. Caught. I looked over my shoulder longingly as two students slipped into the chairs I was headed for.
“Is there something wrong with your regular seat?” asked Professor Grubbs, motioning toward the front row. “Is it my breath?” He blew into his hand and pretended to sniff. There was collective snickering around the room.
I glared at him and quietly made my way to the front of the room.
Professor Grubbs was a three hundred pound bull with a penchant for being controversial. Students were intimidated by the professor's booming voice and over imposing presence. I found him loveable. But, not today—today I hated him.
“It looks to me like you’re hiding from someone.” He leaned on his podium, and for a second, I thought it was going to crack underneath his weight.
My eyes darted to Caleb. He was smiling.
Aaaargh!
“Hiding from someone?” I sighed as I sat. “Why would I be hiding from someone? And I thank you to not analyze my every move, especially for the entire class to hear,” I added with a hiss.
Professor Grubbs looked at me mischievously and then he cleared his throat into the microphone.
He kept his eyes on me when he said, “Is there anyone in this room who suspects Olivia Kaspen is avoiding them?”
Caleb raised his hand.
I dropped my head until my chin was touching my chest.
“Mr. Drake?” Professor Grubbs was openly surprised. “Please come and take a seat next to Olivia so I can watch her squirm.”
I heard his footsteps, then felt his presence next to me as he slid into a chair. I kept my head down.
“You’re quite a handsome boy,” Professor Grubbs said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this close before.”
I lifted my head and snorted. Professor Grubbs stared us down, his eyes traveling from Caleb to me with unveiled curiosity.
“I have a newfound hunger for knowledge, sir. I think I’ll be sitting this close from now on.”
“Now, I know that the rumors are true, Mr. Drake.”
“What rumors, Professor?” Caleb’s voice was cheerful, teasing even.
“You’re full of shit.” There was a rippling of laughter across the student body. Caleb smiled undaunted. He was basking in the attention.
“Feeling better?” he said, quietly, as the lecture had now begun.
“Yes. I’m fine.” I stared straight ahead and held my breath against his cologne.
As he reached into his bag, his leg brushed against mine. I jerked away, but it was too late, I already had that fairy wing feeling in my stomach.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, grinning. I scowled at him and slapped my textbook so hard on my desk that Professor Grubbs paused in his lecture to look over at me.
“Easy Slick,” he said under his breath. “If you start acting out every time you’re around me, people will catch on to how much you like me.”
My jaw unhinged.
I tried to listen to the lecture, I honestly did, but at the end of the fifty-minute class, I couldn’t recall a single thing that had been said. I had the smell of his cologne memorized, however, and I could tell you in detail about the patterns of movement that he made: tapping his pencil on his book in sequences of three, shifting his legs out from under his desk so that one bounced up and down on the toe of his foot and the other stretched lazily in front of him. When we were dismissed, I shot out of my seat like a live cannon ball and headed for the door. He didn’t pursue me. In fact, when I turned back to get a look at where he was, I couldn’t see him at all. My first reaction was that of relief and then disappointment. Perhaps, he finally got the message, and he was out of my hair for good.
He was waiting for me in front of my dorm building later that day. I straightened my back and took the next few seconds to get my emotions under control. Breathe, Olivia, he’s just another boy and they’re all made of the same junk. I stopped a few feet away from where he was standing, if I smelled him, I knew I would lose resolve. This was picturesque. Us standing under a streetlight in an emotional face-off, messenger bags crossed across our chests.
“Caleb,” I said my voice too high, “I’m going to be honest.” He nodded blinking slowly.
“I’m just not interested…in what you’re…interested in. I like you, but just as a friend.” I stopped to check his face, which was as unreadable as War and Peace, and threw in one last jab to bring my point home. “I just don’t think we’re compatible.”
“That’s not how it feels to me.” He looked alarmingly intense and I had to stare at my shoes to avoid being sucked into his eyes.
“Um, well I’m sorry. I guess we’re just on two different wave lengths,” I stammered.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I know you like me just as much as I like you. But, it’s your choice, and I am a gentleman. You want me to back off-okay. Goodbye, Olivia.” He walked away.
I looked after him in dismay. Had I really just done that? I wanted to chase after him and tell him that I only partially meant it and that every time I was around him I felt intoxicated, and if he could please just kiss me one more time so I could be sure I was doing the right thing.
I didn’t of course.
Caleb, true to his word, steered clear of me for the next five months. So clear, in fact, that sometimes when we passed each other around campus he would stare right through me.
I kept thinking about what my mother would have said about this situation.
“A real chunk of man meat and you screw it up because you’re afraid. You’re too much like your father, Olivia.”
I was a relationship retard. I kicked, shoved, and punched people out of my life, so they never had a chance to hurt me.
Life carried on, but all of a sudden it wasn’t the same. There was a change in me. I couldn’t put my finger on it but somewhere in my brain a new door had appeared and despite my hardest efforts to keep it closed, my thoughts kept going there, wandering around in the empty room, putting up images of Caleb. Sometimes I felt sad for days, then my mood would swing and I would feel incredible rage towards him for messing with my head. Around the second month of my emotional torture, I gave up the fight. Obviously, I no longer wanted to be an island. Maybe it was time to open up and experiment with relationships.
I became interested in boys almost overnight. I enlisted Cammie’s help and she gave me lessons on blow-drying my hair, doing my make-up, and, like any true friend, introduced me to the padded bra. This new, smooth and puckered look, along with great effort on my part not to be dour, got me one date and then two. By month four, I owned my very own pair of hot rollers and had accumulated a small group of ardent admirers.
I was seeing Brian the brain who was a pre-med major, Tobey who drove a Lamborghini and took me to swanky restaurants, and of course there was Jim, a poet who was too artsy fartsy for his own good. He smoked a carton of Marlboro’s day and could recite chunks of Tolstoy. He was my favorite, everything he did and said was so bold it gave me a thrill. There was of course, just one problem with all of these men: they were not filling that ‘Caleb room’ in my head. He was like an itch that never went away. I thought of him when I looked at trees, buildings, and when I was in the check-out line at Target choosing gum. I thought of him when I brushed my teeth and when Cammie was babbling on and on about the color of her new shoes (which she claimed were salmon, but were to my estimation, coral). After five months, I was sick and tired of seeing his face in my head. Caleb saturated my existence and I was screwed. To make matters worse—he was everywhere, involved in everything, and smiling at everyone. I cou
ldn’t get away from him. I stopped seeing Tobey and Brian and kept Jim on the backburner because I genuinely liked him as a person. I gave up dating, it wasn’t me anyway, and took up professional stalking instead.
I kept up on who Caleb was dating through Cammie’s gossip chain, a classic group of nosy freshman who had wagging tongues, and too little homework. I knew that he dated Susanna because she had killer legs, and Marina because she loved basketball, and she had killer legs. I knew that he took Emily to Disney World for their one-month anniversary and that Danielle got a Burberry purse for her twenty-second birthday. I knew all of these things, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him.
“You remind me of that slimy looking dwarf from Lord of the Rings,” Cammie commented one day. I had just finished quizzing her on Caleb’s evening at Passions Nightclub where she had seen him carrying on with a new blonde.
“He’s a hobbit.”
“Yeah. My precious, right?”
I flipped her the bird.
In early March, when the migrant birds spread their wings for home, Caleb started dating a Barbie doll. Her name was Jessica Alexander. She was a transfer student from Las Vegas, where she worked as a professional dancer in the Toni Braxton show. Her legs were endlessly long, her hair impossibly blonde, and it was widely rumored that her parents were the heirs to the Oscar Myer hotdog fortune. I stopped eating hot dogs and convinced myself that he would become bored with her, like he had with all the others. Blonde’s never had much brain activity going on anyway. It was just a matter of biding my time, looking hot and being available when the right moment presented itself.
My theory crumbled when the school paper issued its February cover story. I found Jim reading a copy at the café where I was meeting him for a latte. Jessica’s face was smiling up at me from the front page where a bold caption read, “Beauty and the Books.” I snatched the paper from his hands and stared at the article with my mouth twisted in a jealous pout.
“She has the highest GPA in her major?” My stomach felt sour. “What’s her major? Pre-Polka Dots?”
Jim laughed, flicked a cigarette out of its carton and struck a match all in one cool movement.
“Actually, it’s Pre-Law. She’s one of yours and obviously doing better than you at it.”
I felt my mouth go dry.
“Why haven’t I seen her in any of my classes?” I shot back, scanning the article to see if it was true.
“Maybe she’s already taken the classes you’re in. Maybe she skipped them because she’s so smart.” I grunted and took a swig of his coffee. This was a monkey wrench. I mean—wasn’t it enough that she had her sausage money coming to her? She had to take Caleb and a stellar GPA all in one sweep? If he was going to date a smart girl, it should be me. It should be me!
He wanted me and I turned him away because prude ran thick in my veins.
I decided to befriend the enemy. Breaking into Jessica’s cabbage patch of friends was the only way I was going to be able to cause trouble. She had to like me. I began an observation of Jessica’s group of girlfriends that stuck to her like denture paste. They were impossibly friendly, but without the true loyalty of a Cammie. I coined them ‘priends’ (pretend friends). They bonded by shopping and threw the word ‘like’ into every sentence. “It’s, like, so cool to shop with you. You, like, know my style so well.” “You have, like, the best hair.” “When Brad broke up with me, you were, like, sooo my support system”.
Jessica lived just a few doors down from me and I began smiling at her as we passed each other in the hallway. Gradually, I moved on to a polite ‘hello.’ Being popular, she responded glassy eyed and with a small smile that tugged automatically at the corners of her mouth. A few weeks in, she began noticing me—waving at first, then one day telling me she liked my shoes. I learned that pretty girls tend to notice other pretty girls, if only to size up their competition. I was somewhat proud that I had drawn the eyes of such a figurine of beauty. If she was noticing me, maybe her boyfriend was too.
Our first official chat came one afternoon, as I was in the campus laundry room. I had just collected my clean clothes from the dryer when she arrived with a basket full of her dirties. Seeing this as a kind act of fate, I dumped my neatly folded load back into the washing machine and started a conversation that went something like this….
“Watch out for that machine, it destroyed my Channel pajama’s last week.” She looked up, eyes big, her hand poised over the open washer. Of course, I didn’t have Channel pajamas, I didn’t even know if Channel made pajamas, but if they did, this girl would have a set.
“Were they the new ones? With the silver embroidery on the cuffs?” Bingo. I nodded.
“How awful. I swear this school refuses to spoon out any money for, like, decent amenities.”
I poured a capful of blue detergent into the machine and slammed it shut.
“Didn’t you, like, move here from Vegas or something?” I asked, as I casually walked over to the soda machine and slid my coins into the slot.
Jessica nodded. “Yea, I, like, needed a change. I came here for a semester to try it out, but then I met my boyfriend and decided to stay.”
“Who’s your boyfriend?” I jabbed the button that would give me a Coke and bent at the knees to retrieve it from the bin.
Her face changed when she said his name. I hated her for it.
“Caleb Drake. He’s on the basketball team. He’s a really cool guy—total gentleman.”
Her voice was unbelievably annoying.
“Yeah? That’s hard to find, guys now days are such…..” I was trying to find the right word, the kind she would use, “stupid jerks,” I smiled.
Jessica nodded at me, her graceful eyebrows furrowed. I felt the denture-paste pull. She was accepting me into her “preindship.”
“Literally, I’m never letting him go. I’m gonna marry this boy.”
I hated it when literally was used for non-literal things. I popped the tab on my soda can and returned her grin.
Over my dead body…. literally.
Florida was wet. The forever blue sky was wearing chunky grey clouds like accessories. It had been like this for a week and I was sick of seeing umbrella’s bobbing all over campus. I decided to take my textbook to the student lounge to study. I tucked a few snacks and my reading material into a bag and headed out the door scribbling a note telling Cammie to bring me dinner from the cafeteria.
I took the elevator down a floor and headed west toward the quieter of the two study lounges in my building. The room was dingy and smelled like dirty socks but it was hardly ever occupied and I kind of liked the leftover ambiance of the place. I rounded a corner and saw a familiar blonde head framed in the window. Jessica. I was about to offer my most cheery ‘like hello’ when I noticed the droopy way she was holding her shoulders. They were crying shoulders. I was very familiar with this scene. I looked around cautiously. Blondes in distress were never alone. There were usually friends, comforting, patting, reassuring…
The hallway was empty. I took a step forward and stopped. Maybe they had broken up. Hope tickled my chest and I swept it away annoyed. There was no use getting ahead of myself.
“Jessica? Are you alright?” I placed a hand on her shoulder and she turned to look at me with wet doe eyes. There was a collection of soggy tissues lining the windowsill. I wondered how long she had been hiding out here.
“Hi,” she said weakly, her voice hoarse.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
She turned back to the window and dabbed at her nose. She was quiet for a long time and I shuffled my feet wondering if she had forgotten I was there. I was about to say something when she started sobbing.
“I…. sob...think…hiccup—sob…that I’m…gasp—hiccup…pregnant…”
I let the news sink in. She had toned down her crying and was mewling softly into a tissue. I evaluated my position, her position, and his position. Things were looking shitty for all of us.
/> “Okay,” I breathed. “Have you told him yet?”
“No.”
“Does anyone know?”
She shook her head.
“My…sniff…parents would…disown me and …I’m so scared of…gasp…losing him.”
“Of course.” I sounded sympathetic, and part of me actually was. A part so miniscule it made an atom look like a fist.
“What are you going to do?” I plucked the dirty tissues from the sill and tossed them in the trash.
“There’s nothing I can do. I….I have an appointment on Saturday but I need someone to take me and I don’t want to tell any of my friends, you know? I’m still pretty new here. I don’t want them to look at me differently.” I highly doubted they would. The semester before Jessica arrived two of her closest preinds were rumored to have undergone the same procedure.
“Why don’t you tell Caleb? He would understand. I mean he’s halfway responsible for Pete’s sake.”
“Noooo,” she grabbed onto my arm and looked at me with her big eyes. “I told him I was on birth control…and I meant to start taking it again, I’ve just been so busy—school and him… I never thought this would happen. I was so careful about everything. I have no one that I can trust.”
She attached herself to me then; arms wrapped around my neck, head face-down on my shoulder. I realized with discomfort that she was hugging me, looking for some kind of consolation. I patted her back the way I would a smelly person and detached myself.