(You) Set Me on Fire (17 page)

“Okay so. Okay. I’m just going to tell you this.”

“Okay.”

“Just. No agenda. Okay? I know you know I don’t like Shar, but this is not about that.”

True. Fair. I nodded. My chest did a pre-emptive nervous squeeze.

I had no idea what to expect. I thought maybe she was going to say something about Rattles, whose smiling face was still periodically projected against the back part of my brain.

“Okay. So there’s this girl in film club. I wanted you to meet her, actually, before. She’s really nice. Her name’s Jewel? Maybe you met her. She’s super cute? She does yoga with Sarah and Tori?”

The Patties?

I had a vague image. “Maybe.” I shrugged.

“Yeah, she thought she might have met you but she wasn’t sure. Anyway she’s been doing makeup for the film club. She’s the most amazing artist. She does the best zombie faces. Anyway.” Carly took a deep breath. “After Danny and I saw you and Shar outside last night, she and I were talking about you.

I mean, I was telling her that I’d seen you and that I was worried about you. I mean, with the fire and everything. And with Shar …”

Carly f eleventh-floor residents d cck“lexed her fingers on the table, then looked up at me for a moment. A strand of green hair fell out of place and she scooped it back into the fold.

“You don’t have to be worried about me.”

“Anyway. So I was telling her about you. And she was like, ‘Shar?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, Shar.’ And I couldn’t remember Shar’s last name, which is strange for me, but I described her and Jewel was like, ‘I know Shar! I went to school with her.’”

“High school.” I picked up my mug and swirled my watery mix of soy and coffee together. The soy looked like it was separating from the coffee a bit, breaking free in shaggy strands.

“Yeah. So I was like, ‘Oh.’ Right? Like, not like I’m looking for any information. And I’m not, right? But then Jewel said, and remember this is JEWEL, said, ‘That girl is crazy. When she was in senior year she was dating this guy and when they broke up she lied and told him she was pregnant.’”

Carly pulled her hands off the table and wrapped them around her coffee mug, her big silver ring clinking against the ceramic. It was only then that I noticed my mug was painted with little devils and
hers with little angels. Like the way a kid draws angels and devils, with the same square bodies, four sticks and a circle, a halo and wings versus horns and a pitchfork.

“What do you mean? She pretended she was pregnant? Like a soap opera with a foam belly?”

Carly shook her head. “She TOLD him she was pregnant. Told the whole school. Like, BIG DEAL. HUGE FREAK-OUT. But then he went to her parents, right, because he was freaking out? Jewel said that her parents made Shar get a pregnancy test. Which was negative. Shar told everyone it was a false negative. Then her parents took her to the doctor.”

“Shar’s dad lives in England,” I mumbled.

The café got quiet, all the clinking fading into a soft hum circling around my head, Carly’s voice fuzzy like a TV turned up too loud. The ants in my mouth wrestled each other, the soy coffee separating in my intestines.

Carly paused. Looked at me as though decoding my facial features. “Jewel said. Allison? Jewel said that after the whole pregnancy thing, Shar went, like, psycho. Like MEAN psycho. She said Shar was always telling people that her boyfriend hit her. She used to show up with these bruises all over her arms and say that he did it. She used to go to parties and be all over him, then they’d get in
these huge fights. Jewel said she’d heard that, over Christmas break, Shar rear-ended this guy’s car at the mall.”

“What was his name?”

“What?”

“The boyfriend.”

Carly frowned. “I could ask her.”

“Whatever.”

“Hold on a second. Allison. Okay, I don’t want to get all, like, after-school-special on you. Okay? But did Shar push you last night? Push you off the curb? Are you sure you tripped?”

“No.” My head hurt. “No, she didn’t. She didn’t push me. Obviously.”

Without thinking I chugged down the rest of my coffee, regretting it as soon +er, cas the gooey bits of soy began their slip-slide down my throat. Pushing my chair back, I managed a quick “I have to go.”

Carly tossed some change on the table and followed me through the scatter of chairs as I struggled to get out of the café before I threw up my coffee. Which I did. In the street. Like, projectile. It looked like it did in the mug. Barfing reminded me I hadn’t eaten anything all day.

In my peripheral, as I leaned forward, spitting into the street, I spotted Carly’s big black boots.

“Carly”—a line of puke-drool dripped out of the corner of my mouth—“seriously, just leave me alone.”

I headed up the street, trying to push my face forward into the wind. I sucked in as much oxygen as my lungs could hold.

“Just.” I could feel her jogging behind me. “Allison. Wait up.”

“WHAT?!” I spun around. I think she thought I was crying. I wasn’t.

“She doesn’t have a sister.”

“What?”

“Look. If you don’t believe me, I can give you Jewel’s number.”

“I don’t want it.”

Carly moved forward, maybe to hug me. I put out my hand, kind of accidentally hitting her in the shoulder. She looked mad. Mad and hurt, like her face was about to crack into little pieces. Because of me somehow.

The idea that her feelings were hurt because of me made me inexplicably furious.

“Look. I mean, like, thanks for butting into my life and basically telling me the whole thing is a MESS. But now, just … Just leave me alone, okay?”

Carly’s face blurred as I twisted around and started speed-walking up the street, not waiting for a reply, in a hurry to go nowhere.

Back at Dylan people were studying, writing papers, chilling in their rooms. You could hear the clicking of keyboards down the halls, an endless, soft-spoken Morse code, the clicking mixed with various genres of study music. Walking down the hallway, it felt strange to be so close to so many people in such a seemingly relaxed state. A subdued and orderly crowd of floormates.

At some point I’d left my window open and my room was the rough temperature of an icicle or a Korean ice treat. In the dark, I pulled off my clothes and grabbed my robe. Opening and closing my hand was becoming more and more difficult so I just pinched my robe closed, shuffled on my flip-flops, and headed for the shower.

When I was little my parents used to send me to the bathroom for “time outs.” My dad thought it was a good room for one to collect one’s thoughts, which is kind of gross. Although. It was.

SIXTEEN

Scream

The morning after my coffee with Carly, I felt unknitted. I lay in bed for what felt like minutes but was probably hours, staring at the sky through my window. Shar still hadn’t called. Other than the Christmas holidays, it was the first time since the beginning of the semester that I’d been out of contact with her for that long.

I got up and walked around the hallway. Carly wasn’t in her room (not that I was especially excited about seeing or talking to Carly). A couple students were on their way to class and paused to ask me about my face.

Eventually I went to Women’s Studies class, late, if only to see Jonathon. (As an aside, it cracks me up that after years of getting in trouble for being late at high school, in college no one gives a shit about
people being late for class. Which makes me wonder what the big deal was.)

Jonathon was MIA, so I slipped back out and decided to head on up to his dorm, because I couldn’t really think of anything else to do.

I knew, somehow, that +CC c runningJonathon lived in Trident Hall, a coed residence that had a rep for being a “party dorm.” The top two floors were for engineering students. Fifteen years ago some kid took acid after exams and jumped out a window, plummeting eight floors to his death. Right before he jumped he made himself a pair of tiny wings out of toothpicks and gum. Now Trident was the only dorm where the windows had little grates on them, even though there were engineering students, and crazy students, and gum and toothpicks, in just about every dorm.

There was a crowd of boys playing hacky sack on the pavement outside when I got there.

I watched a couple rounds (of what turned out to be a pretty ridiculous way to pass the time) before butting in. “Um. Do any of you know where Jonathon lives? What his room number is?”

I knew the college had a policy of not giving out information about dorm residents unless the person had a name and a room number.

“WHICH Jonathon,” a guy in a lumberjacket and torn-up jeans smirked, side-kicking the hacky sack up and to the left. “Dude, there’s like a million Jonathons here.”

“Um. I don’t remember his last name.” I wondered briefly if I looked like the kind of girl who’d be inquiring about Jonathon with some sort of flirty motive and whether or not that would help me get inside.

Another guy, with a huge beard, who was also (more appropriately it seemed to me) wearing a lumberjacket, tipped the hacky up, snatched it out of the air, and said, “Dude, you should give us more info. Is he a black guy?” He tossed the hacky back up, smacking it with the side of his foot. “White guy?” Volley. “Yellow guy?” Volley.

More kids showed up, expanding the circle to camp singalong size.

“Yo! Buddy! Over here!”

Pushing back against the crowd, I struggled to maintain eye contact with the lumberjacks. “He’s a white guy? He’s kind of a …”

How to put this? His face is like …? No. Avoid metaphors.

“He has kind of bad skin?” I finally offered.

I was assuming this detail would only level the field but instead they all burst into hysterics. “The PISSER!” Lumberjacket #1 laughed, missing the hacky sack in the process.

“Dude!” Lumberjacket #2 shook his head and widened his eyes in a less than subtle warning to shut the fuck up. Picking the hacky up off the ground, he leaned toward me and apologetically mumbled, “Dude! Sorry. That Jonathon’s in room 502 but he’s not home, man. I think he’s moving out.”

“What?” Where the fuck was everyone going?

Hacky sacking continued. The crowd pushed together, looking not unlike the circles that penguins form in the cold to keep themselves warm.

I turned down the hill. Two steps and I plunged my foot into a cold icy puddle.

“Fuck.”

“HEY!” Lumberjack #2 poked my back. “HEY! Do you want us to leave him a message?”

“No.”

I was about halfway down the hill when I caught what I could only describe as a tiny chill, a puff of cold air+A5 cck“ that crawled up the sleeves of my coat and into my chest like a ferret.

Shar?

I only saw her from the back but I knew it was her, standing on the sidewalk outside the little coffee shop on the hill between the dorms. She had her black coat on, the one that wrapped around her body and tied around the side. When she swivelled slightly I noticed she was holding a book against her chest. She had her head cocked to the side, looking up at a boy. He was tall, with a blue baseball cap covering what looked like short or non-existent hair, wearing a bright blue football team (of some sort) jacket and grey sweatpants.

Sweatpants and sneakers.

He was standing over her like a crooked but dominant telephone pole. Smiling.

I’d walked up to them before I even realized what I was doing or had any idea what I would say. I touched Shar on the shoulder and she spun around. Smiled wide. The kind of deflective smile used by the polite as a way of escape.

“Oh. Hey.”

“Hey! I’ve been calling you.”

“Yeah,” Shar said, throwing another quick smile at the boy.

“Oh.” I stood. Waited for Shar to separate from the boy, to explain where she’d been, why she hadn’t answered my calls. She was standing differently, like her whole being had gone through the dryer or been cooked soft.

“I think my phone’s on silent,” she finally added.

“Okay. So. What are you up to?”

Shar took a step back, bumping into the boy who leaned forward over her shoulder. Smiled again.

“Allison, this is Jeremy. Jer, this is Allison, from Dylan.”

“Hey. Nice to meet you.” His teeth were picket fences of perfection and his hands were the size of baseball mitts.

“You too,” I said, reluctant to stretch out my hand, although I did.

As Jer grabbed and quickly released my paw from his mitt, Shar stared at me and then at the empty space behind me.

Finally Jer straightened, grabbed Shar by the waist, and twirled her toward him into a hug. “Okay, well. I gotta go. But um. You should come to Trident. Fifth floor. You can bring, uh …” Jer jerked his head in my direction.

“Allison,” I repeated.

I turned away and began walking very slowly down the hill. I could hear the soft squeal of the college shuttle bus’s brakes on the hill, the scuffing sound of boots on the sidewalk. Eventually Shar came up next to me and then passed me at a brisk pace. I followed.

I didn’t want to be the first to say something. The first person to say something in situations like these—awkward situations where one person starts acting differently before the other one does—has the disadvantage. Finally Shar sighed and ground to a halt.

“You’re being a bit weird, Allison.” Strands of her hair lay across her face like spiderwebs.

I picked the most convenient course for the time being. “What? No I’m not. I was just wondering why you didn’t call me back.”

“Wow. After seven phone calls?” Shar’s voice cracked with sarcasm.

“Yeah.” So her phone wasn’t on silent.

“Not that you need any of these details, Allison, but I met Jer last night at a diner. You were all MIA so I was eating solo. He just happened to be at Sam’s.”

“Okay.”

“He’s helping me with my paper.” Shar tipped the book she was carrying so that I could see the bright green lettering: SOCIOLOGY. Green on red, with a picture of a split pomegranate. Since when was Shar taking sociology, I wondered.

“That’s great. Why are you saying I’m weirded out? I’m not weirded out.”

“Allison.” Leaning forward, Shar grabbed and squeezed my elbow. “You look like you just swallowed, like, a fucking tampon or something! Shake it off.”