Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle) (2 page)

“
Look here, Introvert Lynn,” he said, calling me by my superhero name, the name he teased me with anytime I did something particularly antisocial, “there’s like this big meet-and-greet thing on the parade grounds later this afternoon. You should come check it out. See if there’s anything that interests you.”

“
I’ve got a full load this semester, Jeff. I don’t really want anything else on my plate.”

“
At least just come look,” he said. “You don’t have to join anything; just come see all the stuff they’ve got.”

Jeffery, of course, was a member of a whole slew of clubs, organizations, and social initiatives.
He had a big Robert Heinlein poster in his room that said: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Which is a manly quote and all, but having that stern, bald, Gene-Hackman-esque face staring down at me mid-coitus was seriously like applying moisture-absorbing packs of silica gel straight to my vagina.

“
Fine,” I said. “What time?”

“
Four to six,” said Jeffery.

“
Can’t,” I said. “I’ve got Calc, and then I have to meet my Chemistry professor during his office hours.”

“
Bah,” he said finishing off his sandwich.

After lunch, Jeffery gave me another showy good-bye kiss.
I knew he did that kind of stuff because he was proud to be dating me, that he wanted people to know he was dating someone pretty. I mean, it was a compliment, and I couldn’t think of any good reason to dislike that level of PDA, but still… it occasionally irked me.

Two years with the same guy.
We’d just started dating when my older brother died. Sometimes I thought that loss solidified our relationship in an unnatural way. We might have dated six months or a year otherwise. But two?

I didn’t know.
Maybe.

I only thought this way sometimes.
I was happy with Jeffery. He was smart and creative and he didn’t ask me to be anything I wasn’t. Sure, he tried to nudge me out of my shell sometimes, but he never tried to dictate who I was. After all we’d been through, he was probably the only one who really knew me, and he genuinely loved me in spite of that.

I had a perfect boyfriend.
What more could a girl really ask for?

I shook off these thoughts because they never really led anywhere.
Logic said it was a good idea to be with him because he was good to me and he was going places. My heart said it was a good idea to be with him because he loved me and because I loved him. What else was there?

Jeffery went to his next class, and I headed to the library to kill an hour before mine.

Right outside the door, my phone buzzed. Ashley.

I paused in the cigarette-smelling threshold of the library and answered it.

“What’s up?”

“
Hey Lynn,” said Ashley. “You might want to stay away from the Union.”

“
News crews, right?” I said.

“
How’d you know?” she asked, her voice concerned. “Did they already talk to you?”

“
Jeffery warned me,” I said. “No worries.”

“
Good,” said Ash. “Where are you now?”

“
Library,” I said. “When you done?”

“
Five. You?”

“
Same,” I said. “Normally I’ll be done at four, but I’ve got a meeting with a professor. Want to ride back together?”

“
What professor?”

“
Chemistry. Giacomo.”

“
Oh. My. God,” said Ashley. “Don’t you just want to climb onto that dick? I had him last semester. So hot.”

“
Right,” I said. It was true that my new chemistry professor had a heart-fluttering effect on me, but Ashley had crushed on every professor she’d ever had.

“
I’ll meet you at the bus stop,” she said. “Later, chica.”

I hung up and ducked into the library, eager to get out of the haze of cigarette ghosts that hung around the entrance.

Air conditioning fell over me like a cool blanket, and I relished it. I weaved through the swarms of students and past a gallery of hung artwork and made my way up to the computer lab on the third floor, which had become my favorite study place.

I grabbed a spare desk and logged in.
Then I googled “LSU Suicide” and found a recent article.

I
’d heard about it, of course. You can’t
not
hear about something like that. But my friends were good friends, and they’d been trying to shield me from it all week.

‘
Alan McAllister’ was the kid’s name. He’d committed suicide just before school started this semester.

He left no note, just like my brother.

That happened, though. Lots of people committed suicide without leaving a note. Nothing particularly interesting there, except—as I already knew…

Alan McAllister had
jumped off the Geosciences building. Just like my brother.

I swallowed the coal in my chest, closed the window, and
just breathed for a while.

I stumbled out of Choppin Hall. In spite of the heat, I was shivering. I had to lean against a thin white tree until my breath steadied.

My heart fluttered in my chest, and I felt strangely happy and spent.

I noted the low sun. Odd.

My mouth tasted dry, and I looked around, disoriented.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out.
Ashley. The time in the top corner said it was five o’clock.

I thought back and hit a familiar gray wall.
I had no memory of the previous few hours.

I answered the phone.
It was jarring, because I felt like I had
just
talked to her. For her, that had been almost three hours ago.

“
I’m done,” Ashley said. “You ready?”

“
Yeah,” I said, my voice weak.

“
How’d your rendezvous with Dr. Smolder go?”

I looked back at Choppin Hall and realized that must have been what I
had been doing.

“
Oh yeah,” I said. “Dr. Giacomo.”

“
So hot, right? What’d you two kids talk about? D’ju suck his cock?”

I frowned, mentally retracing my day.
It cut off vaguely in Middleton Library, and then picked back up right outside of Choppin Hall.

“
I don’t know,” I said.

“
You can’t remember if you sucked his cock?”

“
No, but I’m sure I didn’t. I just can’t remember right now.”

“
You damn amnesiac,” she said.

“
It’s not amnesia,” I said. “I don’t
lose
memories, it just sometimes takes me a while to remember things.” I pushed off the tree and started toward the bus stop.

“
Oh right,” Ashley said teasingly. “I think they have a word for that. Oh right. Amnesia.”

I
’d only known Ashley for a year now. We’d both gone with the random roommate potluck freshman year in the dorms and we wound up hitting it off great. We moved into an apartment together over the summer. Because she’d only known me for a year, my condition was still a novelty for her, not a source of constant irritation like it was for me and (sometimes) Jeffery.

“
My long-term memory is fine,” I said. “But sometimes the short-term frazzles and it just takes a little while to percolate over to the long-term. But I don’t lose anything. Amnesia is memory loss. What I have is just, like, memory delay.”

“
Semantics,” said Ashley. “I’m at the bus stop. Where are you?”

“
On my way,” I said.

We waited on a
pebble rock bench for the right bus amid a small crowd of chatting, ear-bud-wearing, backpack-hauling students. When our bus finally came, it was standing-room-only, so Ash and I clung to greasy steel poles and leaned against each other.

“
How hard is this class really?” I asked.

“
Chemistry?” Ashley asked.

“
Yeah,” I said.

“
It’s not hard so long as you go to class,” said Ashley. “But Giacomo being such a panty-soaker makes that easy.”

“
So he, like, tests from the lectures?”

“
Oh yeah,” said Ashley, tossing back her frizzy mane of hair. “If you just go and pay attention and keep your eyes locked with his gorgeous baby blues, you’ll be fine.”

“
What’d you make?” I asked.

“
B, I think,” said Ashley. “And I didn’t even have to suck his cock. But don’t get me wrong, I would have taken a C just for the
opportunity
to suck his cock.”

“
Jesus, Ash,” I said, laughing.

“
Seriously,” Ashley said. “Only class I’ve ever attended that was schlick-bank material. I probably could have had an A if I didn’t spend half the class fantasizing. He’s probably so hard and experienced and deliberate and…”

“
You’re awful,” I said.

But as she talked about him, I felt a kind of frisson move down from my stomach and slip between my thighs.
An electric kind of heat that I tried to ignore.

The bus lurched to a halt outside our apartment complex and clusters of people pushed through the masses to disembark.
When we stepped into the apartment, Ash tossed her keys into the peppermint-filled candy bowl on the coffee table. “Wednesday,” she said. “Half-priced calzones at Rotolo’s.”

“
God, I’ve missed Calzone Wednesdays,” I said.

Ash pulled out her phone and made the call.

At the same time, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Jeffery.

His text said,
DTF?

“
Yes, I’d like to place an order to pick up. Ashley.”

I typed back,
Calzones.

“
Two supreme calzones. Yes.”

That too
, he said.
Order me one?

“
Add one for Jeff,” I said. “Pepperoni.”

“
And a pepperoni,” said Ashley. “No. A pepperoni calzone. Not pizza, calzone. I said… yes, that’s right. Okay. All right. No problem. Thanks,” she hung up the phone. “Jesus, that place is hopping on Wednesdays. It sounds like there’s a concert or a war going on over there.”

Done
, I texted back.

“
For real,” I said. “I hate the atmosphere there.”

“
That’s because you hate people, troglodyte.”

“
I don’t hate anybody in particular,” I said. “Just when there’s lots of them together I hate all of them equally. So dibs on not picking up.”

This was a joke.
Because of my epilepsy, I didn’t have a driver’s license.

“
Like hell,” said Ash. “I made the call.”

“
If we stop abiding by the law of dibs, Ashley, society falls into chaos.”

Walking over
, said Jeffery. He lived in the apartment building next door.
You manage to dodge the news crews all day?

“
There’s only one honorable way to settle this,” Ashley said.

Yeah
, I said.

“
How’s that?” I said.

How was the club fair thing?
I said to Jeffery.

“
Make Jeffery pick it up.”

“
There’s no honor in throwing ourselves on the mercy of the patriarchy, Ash,” I said.

“
Isn’t getting men to do stuff for us, like, the opposite of patricide?”

I looked at her.
“Patricide, Ash? Really?”

“
You know what I mean.”

The door opened, and Jeff stepped in.
“Fun,” he said, completing our text message conversation. “You should have come.”

“
Next time,” I said.

“
I’ll come for you, Jeffery Miller,” Ashley said, shooting him an exaggerated wink. Then she added in an overly-sultry voice: “But
only
when you tell me to.”

He laughed.
“Maybe when Lynn’s not here.”

I felt an ancient
current of jealousy pour through me, but I had to play nice. It was all just fun and games, and I didn’t want to be the clingy bitch.

“Tell you what,” I said, “I’ll let you borrow him if you pick up the Rotolo’s.”

“Ladies, please,” said Jeffery, sitting down on the couch next to me. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

“Plenty, huh?” said Ashley. “Would you say that you’re…” she licked her lips and glanced down at his jeans before meeting his eyes again, “well-endowed?”

I clinched my jaw.

Jeffery laughed.
“I yield. Too much for me.”

“Seriously, Lynn,” Ash said
, turning to me. “Is he packing an anaconda? It’s like a roll of cookie dough, isn’t it?”

“Gross, Ash,” I said.

“Whoa, hey,” Jeffery said. “That’s my penis we’re talking about, here. Let’s not throw around words like ‘gross.’”

“No,” I said, thinking on my feet.
I was teetering across the tight-rope of being a good-spirited friend above the abyss of being a can’t-take-a-joke, stage-seven clinger. I had to scramble to find a way to protect his pride while still playing the game. “I was answering in German.
Sehr gross
, Ash.” I forced a playful whisper. “Very big.”

I owed it to him to be a good girlfriend, after all.
He’d been such a good boyfriend to me.

“All right,” Jeffery said, sighing the sigh of the long-suffering.
“Let’s just get this three-way over with.”

“Actually,” I said, seeing an opportunity to steer the conversation away from this much-hated banter, “we do need to have a three-way.
Right now.”

Jeffery blinked, for a moment taking me seriously.

I held my left palm face-up and placed my right fist on it. “To see who has to pick up the calzones,” I said. “It’s the only honorable way.”

Jeffery grinned with understanding, but I couldn’t help but note that flicker of
genuine disappointment. He and Ash held up their fists too, and we all threw at once.

Ashley and I went paper.
Jeffery went rock.

“Dammit,” said Jeffery.

“You’re too predictable, Jeff,” said Ashley. “Like you’re
not
going to throw rock after we just got done talking about your big penis. Freudian much?”

“Just cough up the plastic,” Jeffery said, and we gave him our cards.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Ashley said, “Okay, level with me. Really big?”

“Ash,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“What?” she said. “I mean, he’s practically perfect in every other way. I mean, there’s
got
to be a downside, right?”

“No.”

“So he is packing heat, then,” Ash said.

“I mean ‘No, I’m not answering that question,’” I said.

She shook her head and flipped on the television. “He really is awesome,” she said, suddenly real. “If I had a guy like him, I’d lock that down quick.”

“I know,” I said.
“He really is.”

“Especially,” Ash said, switching back to being playful—the serious moments never lasted long with her—“since you’ve got me curious about his dick.
Now, I’m just going to have to step up my game even more.”

“Not cartoons,” I said, motioning toward the screen.
“And you can step up your game all you want. Have at it.”

“You’re not worried that his sex-soaked man-brain won’t eventually crumble to my
allures?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Why’s that?” she asked.

I looked right at her.
“Because I know how much he loves me,” I said, hoping the
real-ness
of this statement would crush the conversation for good.

And it worked.
Ashley let it drop.

We all ate dinner together and then Jeff went to play
disc golf with his friends for a few hours while I did my homework. There wasn’t much of it, but I wanted to go ahead and get that chemistry problem set out of the way. After submitting my assignment—which was an easy re-cap from last year—I slipped out of my clothes and stepped into a steaming hot shower.

Working the chemistry problem
s had reminded me of class, of my embarrassing and noisy entrance, of all those eyes staring at me, all those hushed voices snickering. I leaned into the shower’s stream and let the hot water wash the day off of me. I breathed in the steam and relished the soap-scent of my bathroom.

Apartment showers were hands-down better than dorm showers.

In the dorms,
sixteen girls had all shared the same showers. There were curtains for privacy, but you had to wear flip-flops and it always smelled like a big cake of mold, all iced over with a creamy glaze of bleach.

In my apartment, showers were a heavenly-scented sanctuary.
They weren’t something I
had
to do, they were something I
got
to do.

Over the summer, I’d cultivated a small alchemist’s lab of soaps and shampoos, and
all the colorful bottles lined the inset shelf. Jeffery’s AXE looked like a misplaced motor-oil container among them.

I’d been experimenting with lavender and peppermint.
Lavender for the body wash and conditioner, peppermint for the shampoo. Together, they made for a crisp-but-soft aroma that tingled my scalp and made my skin feel like silk.