Love Her Madly Read online

  “Sure,” I said, hiding my surprise that she’d asked me instead of Clara, the buxom German exchange student, or Lila, a wan, dark-haired pixie who seemed to be Cyn’s obvious alpha female partner.

  We left the others and headed across to the side of the mansion, flanked by a wooded area and floodlit for safety.

  “Buddy system was the way to go on this one,” I commented, wary of the inky darkness beyond the streetlamps.

  “Right? They have those emergency call boxes, but no way those chubby campus cops could golf-cart over here in time to save us from dismemberment.”

  Safely inside the tiny ladies’ room, I checked out my skin in the mirror while Cyn ducked into a stall.

  “Your friends are nice,” I offered, personally hating a too-­silent bathroom.

  “Yeah. Hard to believe I met most of them only yesterday. There seem to be a lot of cool people here.”

  “This is already so much better than my last school.” Cyn remained quiet behind the door, so I kept talking. “I was at Big U upstate. Hated it there. Where were you?”

  The toilet flushed, and Cyn reappeared at the sink. “I was nowhere.”

  I watched her wash her hands, which were loaded thumb to pinkie with ornate silver rings. “I got behind on the application. Missed the fall deadline.” She turned off the water, and our eyes met in the mirror. “Actually, the truth is, I was working to make tuition. Out-of-state fees are absolutely ridiculous, but I fell in love with this place, so whatever. I’ll worry about the money part as it comes.” She opened her bag and fished out a pack of cigarettes. “You smoke?”

  “No,” I said, and she snapped the pack shut.

  “I don’t really either. It’s more of a social thing.” She tucked the cigarette behind her ear and untwisted a strand of hair that had become entangled in the star-shaped silver charm she wore around her throat. “You smoke weed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” she repeated. She studied me for a moment to see if I was putting her on. I shrugged, clownishly. “Glo, you are a character. I can already tell.”

  “Yeah? Well, so are you. You’re like Cinderella with cigarettes. And probably drugs.”

  “That was my nickname in high school. Cynderella.” She lit the cigarette with a salmon pink lighter and inhaled, lost in her own thoughts. Then she quickly ashed it into the sink and focused her spotlight-blue eyes on me. “Listen, I’m planning a trip to the big beach tomorrow. You wanna come?”

  I opened my mouth to accept the invitation, but she was already exiting the bathroom.

  “You’ll ride with me. I think some of those miscreants out there are going, too. It’ll be fun.”

  We walked back to the dorms together, chatting easily. She peppered me with questions about myself; the same investigative treatment I underwent with Annie a few days earlier, except a thousand times more fun. She interrogated me about my taste in music, books, movies, the countries I most wanted to visit, my ideal man. I found myself answering with surprising candor. I’d say something from the heart, and if she went quiet, I’d begin bracing for the inevitable rejection. But with Cyn, miraculously, it didn’t happen. She wasn’t judging me, and we were discovering loads of common ground.

  Our dorms had been designed to be easily converted into apartments if our school failed, so each room had private entrances and its own en suite bathroom. It was a nice setup, even if our walls were a little moldy and the air conditioners leaked onto the carpets. Cyn’s room was on the second floor, like mine. As we ascended the open-air staircase, I saw a magazine cut-out of a wide-eyed toad taped to her door. Written above it in block letters were the words LICK ME!

  “Nice frog,” I said.

  “It’s a toad. Bufo alvarius. Its venom gets you high. My roommate hates Mr. Bufo already.” She opened the door a crack, revealing a dark room. “She’s the early-to-bed type.”

  “Mine’s the always-in-bed type.”

  “What? She sleeps around?” Cyn whispered.

  I had to laugh. “No. Just a lot. She sleeps a lot.”

  “Sounds fun. See ya tomorrow.” She pulled me in for a casual, one-armed hug, just like I’d seen girls do in the wild, before slipping silently into her room.

  When I returned to my dark room and saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I noticed that my face was flushed, and not from the booze. I felt giddy. I felt great. It was almost like falling in love.

  The next day, I sacrificed my top sheet for use as a beach blanket, and Cyn, Max, Lila, and I squeezed together along its narrow expanse. No one had a beach umbrella, and even in late January, the sun was intense. Lila and I fetishistically applied sunscreen while Max looked on, manifestly disappointed to not have been asked for help with those hard-to-reach spots. Cyn slouched lazily under a cowboy hat and an oversize men’s Oxford shirt, her bronzed legs stretched out into the sand.

  Max fiddled with a boom box so ancient that it lacked a compact disc player. No one had any tapes, so he scrolled through the dial, switching stations as often as he redirected the focus of his flirtatious banter. At first, it was entertaining. He was like someone’s cute little brother brought along for the ride, desperate to commandeer attention. Lila, having explained at length (truly, at length) that she had a boyfriend in Miami, batted back his weak come-ons like a churlish Siamese cat, while Cyn openly mocked him. Finding no success with either of them, his attentions turned to me.

  He rolled in my direction, his eyebrows raised above the limits of his sunglasses, making them appear to be caterpillars in free fall. “So what’s with the one-piece, Gloria?” he asked, reaching out to touch my racing suit. “Your synchronized swimming partner showing up later?”

  “No. My fur bikini just happens to be at the cleaners.”

  Cyn snorted behind her magazine.

  He blinked. “I see. So what are you, a swimmer or something?”

  “Used to be. Want to race? I’ll give you a big head start.” I’d told Cyn a little about my swimming the night before. She whispered something into Lila’s ear.

  “Yes, Max. You should race,” Lila blurted, failing to keep a straight face. “It’s hardly manly to insult a girl’s bathing suit and then turn down a challenge like that. Hardly manly at all.”

  “I’m being set up, aren’t I?” he asked.

  “Your chances of success are not for me to judge,” I yawned, rolling onto my belly. A shadow fell across our blanket, and I looked up to behold Clara, the exchange student, with two hippie-looking guys and a stout goth chick with a barbed wire tattoo around her ankle.

  “We habe beer,” Clara announced to great approbation. They joined us, and the afternoon rolled along in fine fashion.

  I sat by the edge of the water fingering the shells I had collected as the sky faded from fluorescent pink to violet. I thought of Mike, but only for a second. In contrast with my new life, he seemed so quaint. As I watched my new friends splashing around in the surf, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking up, I saw Tim, the very tall, skinny half of the pair of hippie dudes. He raised a long, wet arm and pointed out the glimmering arc of a dolphin as it slipped between the waves.

  Classes started and the first few weeks flew by in a beautiful blur. Cyn and I saw each other every day, without fail, and our makeshift family expanded to include Max, Lila, and Tall Tim, the second-year marine biology major from the beach whose lanky frame belied a startlingly deep voice. Cyn and I didn’t cross paths much during class hours, since our studies were comically divergent. She was planning to major in chemistry and psychology, while I was hitting the humanities pretty hard. The only crossover we had was Spanish Conversation, led by a young and improbably handsome professor, Pablo Altasierra. Professor Pablo was Argentinian and spoke with an exaggerated lisp that we both adored and therefore mocked mercilessly.

  Por ejemplo:

  ME: Thynthia, your
mithuthe of the path’t tenth is thimply thaddening.

  CYN: Theriously, theñor?

  ME: Theriously.

  CYN: Thuck me, theñor.

  A month into classes, Cyn bounded into my room, her face lit up with excitement. She waved a hasty salute to Annie, who barely blinked, and leapt onto my bed like an oversize rabbit.

  “Good news. I’ve made contact with the dealer.” Her eyes were unnaturally aglimmer.

  “The dealer,” I repeated.

  “Yes! Get this: his name is Silence. He’s just what you’d expect. All hippied out, skinny as death, total space cadet, but he seems like a cool dude, and he’s got access to all kinds of shit.” She slapped my leg in excitement. I closed my book as a thousand doubts clouded my mind.

  “Are you sure you can trust this guy?” I ventured, predictably. Drugs had been a frequent conversational topic throughout our intensive crash course in best friendship. Cyn’s view on drugs was overwhelmingly pro-experimentation and pro-legalization. She’d read tons of books and scientific studies about the profound effects different chemicals had on consciousness, mood, and perception, and more to the point, she made getting high sound like a fucking blast. Having had no personal experience with drugs, I was intrigued by her tales of chemical adventures past, but because she was honest enough to include both the highs and the lows, I was wary enough for both of us.

  “Of course we can! Everybody does. He’s ‘the guy’ for the whole school. You know how many kids here do drugs, and so far, other than people stupidly mixing stuff, there’ve been no incidents with the product.”

  “Incidents with the product? You sound like a sixties-era mafioso.”

  “Maybe.” She studied my face. “Okay, full disclosure, there have been two suicides, but no one blamed them on the drugs.”

  “Suicides? Are you kidding me? Cyn—”

  She mockingly mirrored my horrified expression and fell backward on the bed, laughing. “Glo! No one commits suicide after a little smoke, okay?” She slowly pried a small plastic Baggie filled with something green out of her too-tight jean shorts pocket and tossed it at me. “Check it out.”

  I caught the bag and tossed it right back. She grinned, amused by my discomfort. My fears made me too spooked to even handle the Baggie, but inside, my curiosity was churning. I wanted to experience the strange visions and new perspectives that Cyn rhapsodized about. Also, pathetically, I was terrified to suddenly be left out. If my friends were doing it, prudence be damned. I wanted in.

  “Fine. I’ll try it. Then we can all jump off the bridge together.”

  Cyn smiled widely and crammed the Baggie back into her pocket. “So dramatic, Glo.”

  “And you have to look out for me. Make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

  She opened her mouth to respond with the wisecrack that I’d carelessly set myself up for, but I was faster. “I mean too stupid. You know what I mean.” I shoved her, and she rolled off my bed and onto her feet.

  “Sunset at the quad. Be there, and you’ll no longer . . . be square.”

  “Get out,” I said, tossing my pen after her as she darted out the door.

  After Cyn left, my misgivings began thundering away like jackhammers. I tried to finish the essay I was reading, but the words just blended together, my consciousness only tightening into focus when I’d think about sunset. I shut my eyes, hoping that a quick nap might clear my mind. Across the room, Annie had nodded off, the rumble of the air conditioner muting her soft snores. I turned my face toward the wall and tried not to think of anything.

  The dream that followed was as softly textured as a watercolor. I was by the bay, surrounded by people. Someone was repeating “Isn’t It Great?” over and over again until it seemed that Isn’tItGreat was the voice of the surf itself. A blond, Cyn-like figure appeared; her smile, when she flashed it, startlingly jagged and overly toothy. “Isn’tItGreat,” she hissed, before turning away and disappearing into the crowd. The faceless pastel throng that had surrounded me abruptly vanished, leaving just me and the flat silver sea. In a flash, the water surged forward, rushing around my ankles and quickly rising. It was astoundingly warm, and I felt pieces of slimy filament wrap around my bare legs as the tide rushed in. The water continued to rise, its surface churning with foam. I turned to look for Cyn but saw only tiny figures on a distant shore, miles of water between us. I wanted to yell out, but the roar of the surf drowned my voice. I wanted to move, but the water had stiffened around me like concrete. The sea rose to my neck, and then to my lips. A piece of driftwood appeared at eye level, rushing toward me on the tide. I watched in horror, unable to move as it spun wildly on a crash course for my forehead. I couldn’t duck, couldn’t even close my eyes. I stared in frozen terror, awaiting the devastating impact of coarse wood into flesh.

  “Gloria! Hey. Gloria, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes and discovered Annie nudging my shoulder. I sat up quickly, the dream image of the log still careening dangerously in my mind’s eye. Annie was already backing away to her side of the room.

  “You were having a nightmare,” she explained, redundantly.

  “Yeah. I was. Thanks for the rescue. I think I was about to die.” I closed my eyes, struggling to review the dream images before they faded completely. “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream, and I was about to drown. Did I scream?”

  “You were moaning.”

  “Oh.”

  I stared at my desk, my sneakers on the rug, my dirty coffee cup, taking in all the real things around me, trying to sort myself out. My mind kept returning to the sensation of being sucked into the warm, quicksilver waters. But that wasn’t what had filled me with terror, nor was it the spinning driftwood. What truly chilled me was the indifference of the people on the shore, toothy Cyn included, who couldn’t be bothered to notice me die. I could discount the dream as a meaningless specter born of worry, but I wondered if there weren’t some truth in it. Perhaps my subconscious was giving me a little heads-up that my treasured new social stature wasn’t as secure as I believed. In truth, the sum total of my life experiences suggested that I was past due for a huge social takedown. I felt my dormant terrors shake to life and rise like hungry zombies.

  It’ll happen tonight, taunted a too-familiar voice. Those people you think are your friends see your selfishness, your sad vanity, your fear and every other failing you think you’ve hidden. It’s coming, it’s coming . . .

  I shook my head violently, trying to clear the voice away, and locked eyes with Annie. She averted her gaze and sunk deeper below the rim of her textbook.

  My gratis shrink from Big U would nail this emotional whirligig as a negative thought pattern. Back in treatment, she said the best way to handle it was to do something positive to counteract all the negative thoughts. Actions are key, she repeated over and over, actions and self-compassion. Since I couldn’t toss out my paranoia like a busted pair of flip-flops, or generate much in the way of self-love, I decided the next best thing was to see Cyn. She was compassionate. She said she’d be there for me, and as much as I desperately wanted to trust her, I had to be sure. I told Annie’s textbook that I was going out for some air, and I’m sure she was relieved to see me go.

  Moments later, as I was climbing the stairs toward the psychedelic toad, Cyn’s roommate, Joan, emerged, slamming the door behind her. Cute in a mousy sort of way when her forehead wasn’t contorted with repressed rage, Joan was a poor roommate match for Cyn. As Cyn explained it, Joan had essentially disliked her on sight (as had I, it amused me to remember), her disdain escaping in passive-aggressive snorts at Cyn’s conversation and the rearrangement of dorm furnishings in Cyn’s absence. Joan was engaging in what Cyn described as a one-sided silent turf war. That Cyn tended not to notice Joan’s timidly malevolent antics stung her all the more.

  She didn’t like me much either, as to her, I was an extension of Cyn. But becaus
e I was among the more orthodox of Cyn’s visitors, she was passingly polite.

  “She’s in the shower,” Joan said, throwing her abundant brown mane over her shoulder. It was long enough that she could sit on it, and though it was shampoo-commercial thick and shiny, it gave her a strangely rural air, as if she might have just escaped from a cult in Texas. “If you’re lucky, she’ll be out in an hour.”

  I entered Cyn’s room, heard the water running, and crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows that covered one wall, overlooking the palm-studded pavilion that was the social hub of campus life. It was an enviable room. My own sweeping windows faced a brick wall.

  The shower turned off, and Cyn appeared a moment later, wrapped in a towel, with her hair in a tight emerald turban that made her look like a fifties movie star.

  “Hey, what’s up,” she said, always unsurprised to find visitors on her bed. “Joan leave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wonderful. I’ve been entertaining the idea of keeping a water pistol handy to shoot at her when she misbehaves. She’s like a mean tabby. I think it might work.” She smiled over her shoulder while she shimmied into her underwear. “Something wrong, babe?”

  She walked over to me, and seeing her concerned expression, I suddenly felt stupid.

  “Yeah, kind of.” I felt my face flush.

  “Oh no. What is it? Is it the weed? You know you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

  This statement was so after-school-special obvious, I almost laughed. “I know. No. I want to. I want to try it with you. I guess I’m just nervous, because sometimes I have strange reactions to things and I guess I’d feel better if I knew I had someone looking out for me.” It felt so raw to say the words, I could have died of shame.

  “Aw, Glo,” Cyn said with a soft laugh. “Of course I’m going to look out for you. What kind of friend do you think I am?”

  “A great one, I think. But, I might as well just lay it all out now so you’ll at least know what kind of a head case you’re dealing with.” My words came out sounding strangled and weird, but I pressed on, determined to get the humiliation over with in one go. “I haven’t really had many good girlfriends, at all. I mean, ever. There were a few way back who said they were friends and turned on me, and I basically gave up after that. So I spook easily, and I get paranoid. But I don’t want that to happen with us. So . . . that’s my deal. Just so you know.”