“I feel like my good and bad angels are wrestling. A part of me wants to lead Dr. Alexander to believe that permitting Haylee to go home for Thanksgiving will be a disaster because I’m not ready for it.”
“And a part of you wants to give her a chance?”
“Yes. Most of our lives, I’ve been the one who gives in. Especially during our early years, Mother wouldn’t let us do something if one of us didn’t want to do it. We had to like the same things. Haylee would always promise to like something I liked, even if she didn’t, as long as I gave in to her sometimes, but she had a way of showing her displeasure subtly, and Mother usually wouldn’t let us do what I wanted or get what I wanted. I used to believe, and now probably more than ever, believe that Haylee would get Mother to reject something I wanted just to prove she had more power than I did. There were lots of little things Haylee did to me when we were growing up, things I couldn’t think of doing to her.”
“Maybe you didn’t share the DNA the way you were told you did. Maybe you got most of the conscience DNA.”
I laughed, but this wasn’t the first time I had heard that. I had heard myself think it often.
“How do I look?” I asked him, thinking now of meeting someone in the dorm, especially Marcy and Claudia.
“As close to perfect as anyone I know.”
“No different?”
“Oh. Maybe a little more blossomed. And me?”
“Maybe a little more arrogant.”
He laughed and leaned over to kiss me, then opened my door and walked me to the dorm entrance.
“Call me when you get back,” he said.
“I will.”
We kissed again, and I went inside, pausing to glance at my reflection in one of the windows.
Here I go, I thought, feeling like someone who had been ordered to run barefoot over hot coals. Maybe I was always this way; maybe I was always afraid of revealing anything intimate. I didn’t have Haylee’s indifference and self-confidence. Humility was weakness to her.
My test was postponed for a while. Again, neither Claudia nor Marcy had returned yet. They’d push the curfew to the final seconds. I went about preparing for bed, and when they came into our room, they both stood there gaping at me. I was just pulling back the blanket.
“What?” I asked, my heart starting to pound. Was it true? Did I have a different look now? Was I like a blossomed flower? Was it simply impossible to hide what I had done, where I had gone, who I had become?
They looked at each other and nodded.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Marcy said. “We see it in your face.”
They didn’t look that sure.
“You’re just saying that to get me to admit it.”
They both laughed.
“And what’s so funny about that?”
“You just did,” Claudia declared.
I threw my pillow at them. Funnily enough, I felt relieved. I didn’t want to add any more deception to our relationships, and I didn’t want to constantly deny, deny, and deny. Besides, I was far from ashamed.
We stayed up well into the early hours, talking about ourselves, our feelings, and our fears. Sharing confidential innermost thoughts and actions with close girlfriends was another thing I had believed I would never do. I would always be the outsider, different, cold, and doomed only to observe, never to share.
But that had changed.
Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I’ve really defeated Haylee this time.
16
I was surprised my father was alone when he came for me. I’d thought he was bringing Dana with him. He had called before he set out and then called when he was close, so I went out to the lobby to wait for him. I had told Marcy and Claudia that my father was taking me to lunch and spending most of the day with me. Both went on about their own fathers and how the visits they would get were clearly “guilt” visits. I avoided giving them as much detail about my parents’ breakup as I could, leaving it cloaked in the typical generality: “They couldn’t get along. They had developed different tastes and just lost that magical thing that had first brought them together.” I could truthfully add that compromise was not in my mother’s vocabulary.