Love Her Madly Read online

  Cyn’s eyes glittered with understanding. “Girls can be total nightmares for each other, can’t they?”

  I shrugged and nodded, unsure if I’d be able to speak normally. She hugged me tight, and I had to swallow hard and concentrate on the absurdity of Joan’s vintage Phantom of the Opera poster to avoid tearing up. When Cyn released me, her face was thoughtful.

  “I’m really glad and touched that you told me that. And you’re right. We don’t have to be that way. We just fucking won’t.”

  “We’ll be nice?” I ventured, managing a smile.

  “Fuck no. We’ll be real, and true, and kind. We’ll love each other.”

  She straightened up to her full height, put a hand on her heart, and pronounced, with a full, Castilian lisp:

  “I Thynthia Dawn Williamth do tholemnly thwear to alwayth be your friend and treat you with the utmoth’t rethpect and thintherest affection. Do you, Gloria, whatever your middle name is—”

  “Melissa,” I said, hastily placing my hand across my own heart.

  “Melissa? Really? Huh. Do you, Gloria Melitha Roebuck, vow thimilarly?”

  “I thwear.”

  She gave me a hug. “Ugh. We do belong together. We’re equally ridiculous.” She went to her dresser and pulled out a tank top. “But I am glad you said something. It’s like, we make these solemn pledges with guys to treat them a certain way when we date them, but with other women, it’s all fast and loose, and loyalty is totally in question until it happens to be tested. But just so you know, I would have had your back anyway, pledge or no pledge. That’s just how I roll.”

  “I believe you. I think I knew that or I wouldn’t have said anything about my fucked-up psyche. I’m just scared of the world, I guess.”

  She blinked. “You don’t seem to be. But I guess a lot of people are.”

  “You aren’t?”

  She examined her reflection in the mirror, adjusting the spaghetti straps on her tank top. “I’m missing that gene, I guess. Or maybe my curiosity is bigger than my fear. It’s probably not a good thing.”

  I shrugged, wishing I were so lucky. Cyn tossed two pairs of cutoff shorts onto the bed and stared down at both, comparing. “I’ve been thinking about the infinite. Things that are limitless.”

  This was typical Cyn, her mind reeling toward the metaphysical while trying to decide between jean shorts.

  “Okay,” I gamely responded.

  “There aren’t many things that can be infinite, in my opinion. Time, maybe. Energy perhaps, but I’m not entirely sure of the math. Hope, certainly. Love.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I offered. No telling where this was going.

  Cyn decisively selected one of the near-identical shorts and stepped into them.

  “I guess what I’m saying is love is one of the few things we’ve got that is absolutely, unquestionably infinite, yet our nature is to be pretty goddamn stingy with it. Why is that?”

  “Takes energy to love? Energy might be infinite, but you aren’t sure of the math.”

  “Glad that you’re listening,” Cyn snarked, tossing her damp hair towel at my face. “It’s always puzzled me, why it’s our nature to exclude and reject. What does it costs us? There may not be enough natural resources, but there is enough love. Something is just deeply wrong with our programming as a species.”

  “That’s fucking deep, professor.” I collapsed backward onto Cyn’s pillow and examined the constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across the ceiling. “Probably competition screwed our chances for a love-based society. It’s not productive to love someone if you might eventually have to kill them and eat their bones to ensure your own survival. Must have caused angst in caveman times, so we turned away from it, closed ourselves off, trained ourselves to assume enmity. That way, if we’re wrong, it’s a nice surprise.”

  “Darwinism. That’s depressing.”

  “Consider your source. You just concocted a friendship pledge because I fear everyone.”

  Cyn smiled. “If I can save you, then maybe that’s one small step forward for humanity.”

  “Now that’s a depressing idea.”

  Cyn laughed.

  “So anyway, back to your original concern: tonight’s festivities. As far as smoking weed goes, you really don’t have anything to worry about. You won’t hallucinate or anything.”

  “Well, I know that much,” I hedged. Secretly I suspected that with me and chemicals, anything was possible, but I was determined to suck it up and be brave.

  “Okay, good. Just trying to reassure you. Worst-case scenario, you get a little paranoid and we’ll go for a walk and look at the phosphorescence in the bay. Either that or we’ll go to the mini-mart and you’ll get to reexperience ice cream as the most amazing thing ever.”

  “Either way, I’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, my sister. That you will.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I don’t remember much about that first time we all got high together, for obvious reasons. All I know is that it was not at all how I expected to feel, what with the tingly sensations in my feet and hands and my sudden, all-encompassing thirst, an outcome which we were prepared for, as someone had brought orange cola. I remember coughing so much and laughing so hard, and I remember that we all tried to make animal shapes with our shadows on the lawn from the glare of the floodlights around the mansion near the bay, and that the animals were all really deranged except for one giraffe shape that was pretty close. (Tall Tim was the neck.) The next morning, I had to contend with grass stains on my jeans and a really fuzzy head, but I was a new believer.

  We started to go to a lot of parties. Some were on campus, in someone’s heavily incensed dorm room, with the stereo blasting and video games flashing brightly across secondhand television sets. Others were more elaborate affairs held at off-campus homes. We would get dressed in our best party wear, which for Cyn meant ripped jeans that were just tight enough and a tank top, while I did my best with my wardrobe of cargo pants and T-shirts. We’d always walk, since no one lived very far away. Someone we didn’t know would answer the door if they could hear us knock. If not, we’d let ourselves in, the party noise wrapping around us like a protective spell. We’d saunter through rooms thick with cigarette and weed smoke, hunting our familiars from the forms sprawled across sofas and pillows strewn on the floor. We’d find the kitchen, find the plastic cups, find vodka, find cranberry juice (or anything sweet, but it was almost always a VC), and then we’d find the room with the loudest music.

  Unless the party was really good, with dancing and lunacy, Cyn would start to get this look in her eye that meant she wanted to find some drugs. Parties unearthed the worst of Cyn’s drug seekiness because, despite the veneer of good times, they were frustratingly predictable. Getting drunk and horsing around was still pretty tops for me on the entertainment spectrum, but Cyn wasn’t all that into alcohol. She also wasn’t satisfied, as I would have been, with passing a few hours trying out tipsy come-ons on cute guys. Partly this was because a cute, straight, single fellow was a rare beast at Tiny U, and when one did appear, he was quickly spotted and surrounded by haughty-­looking girls with well-presented cleavage. My faded Mr. Bubble tee did not give me much of an edge, so instead of hunting guys, I trailed Cyn.

  Cyn wasn’t looking for weed. We had that back in the dorms. If the good party drugs weren’t immediately apparent, we’d flip into search mode, in which I’d follow Cyn into bedrooms, bathrooms, and backyards. When we busted in on things we shouldn’t, like sweaty couplings or the very wasted, we’d hastily retreat with a few words about looking for a missing friend. The subterfuge was hardly necessary. The users, when we found them, were quick to make space for Cyn on the rug, their eyes widening as they took in her bright smile and great length of leg. She was careful to always engage the ladies of the room first, so they knew she came in peace and wasn’t after their fellas.
Only in these strange moments did I ever see Cyn acknowledge her pull on the opposite sex. She downplayed her feminine charms to the point that she seemed oblivious to them, but other women didn’t forget it. They shot me suspicious glances, their eyes warning of problems to come if Cyn created an attention vortex. Competition. Fear. Hate. But even when high, Cyn was too smooth and controlled to inspire any dustups. It was only when she couldn’t find what she wanted that I had to look out.

  On those nights, she’d become an unguided missile. Nothing could get her mind off the theoretical fun trip she wasn’t having, so irritable and jonesey, she’d begin to monologue. She’d get so lost in her rants that I’d have to monitor her like a Seeing Eye dog, lest she step off the curb into the path of an oncoming truck. But by the next morning, she’d snap back to her normal self. If I reminded her of how obsessed and seeky she’d been the night before, she’d laugh it off. She said college was the time to experiment, and despite my reservations, I found it tough to disagree.

  It was a typical class day when everything changed. I’d just finished lunch, a real bulge-inducer from the make-your-own-sub-sandwich bar, and I wanted to see if Cyn would join me for a repentance swim. Inside Cyn’s room, I discovered Joan shoveling clothing out of her drawers and into a pair of black garbage bags.

  “Hey, Joan,” I said when she didn’t respond to the sound of the door shutting.

  Joan glared over her shoulder at me. Her porcelain cheeks were unusually red and blotchy.

  “I thought I’d locked that,” she snarled.

  “Nope.” I sat on Cyn’s bed. “Open, just like always.”

  “Exactly!” she shouted. “I’ve fucking had it!”

  “Something wrong?” I offered blandly as I stooped to lift a book of photography from the floor. The cover featured a nice profile shot of an elephant, its small eye holding unknowable ruminations.

  “She hasn’t even talked to you about it?!”

  I made a point never to respond to Joan’s agita, a difficult feat at times like this, when she was shrieking in close quarters. I occasionally sympathized with her feeling steamrolled by Cyn, and remembering my own suite mate nightmare, I tried to be kind. Still, hearing Joan’s puritanical tirades on everything from the proper maintenance of the dorm fridge to the use of soft drugs on the front steps had eroded my compassion to the point where my dislike for her had crystallized into a manageable gem: sharp, but easy to hide. I took a deep breath.

  “Please, stop screeching. I haven’t seen her today. What is the problem?”

  “Oh, you haven’t seen her? Yeah, right! Fuck!” She kicked a garbage bag, creating a hole, and collapsed onto her bed. She emitted a long groan that morphed into choked sobs.

  I rolled my eyes but simultaneously felt a small tug of sympathy. I hate to see people cry, even extraordinarily irritating people.

  “Joan,” I ventured once the choking noise ceased.

  “I want to move out. I hate it here with her! Your stupid friend, she lets all these hippies traipse through here and mess with my stuff and sit on my bed. My blanket from home smells like patchouli! And yesterday, that guy, the one who looks like a strung-out Jesus . . .”

  “Silence?”

  “Yeah, that motherfucker! Well, I find him in here, on my side of the room, with this six-foot bong! And when he finally noticed I was there, he was like, ‘Yo, can you help me light this?’ Cuz obviously it’s six feet high and he can’t suck on the drugs and light it at the same time, so he asks me. So I screamed at him to get out, and I guess he got startled because he knocked the stupid thing over, and disgusting bong water leaked out all over my new rug!”

  “Ooh. Bong water. That is bad. Did you try rinsing it out in the shower?”

  Joan ignored me. “So I suggested to Cyn, very politely considering everything, that she speak with you about switching rooms. I’m in the middle of packing because I want this done now, and since I hadn’t heard anything against it, I figured everyone was okay with it.”

  I did a lightning-speed rundown of the pros and cons. Unless cohabitation led to another round of academic disaster for me (a possibility) or ruined our friendship via overexposure, I didn’t see what could go wrong. I did admit to myself that I didn’t relish the thought of the unwashed element of Cyn’s social sphere lounging on my bed, but that was a sacrifice I was probably willing to make, especially if I could negotiate for some control of the guest list.

  Right on cue, Cyn entered. She eyeballed Joan and the garbage bags warily before noticing me on her bed.

  “Hey. Heard we’re gonna be roommates,” I greeted her.

  “If that’s okay with you. And if you think Annie will go for it,” Cyn said, smiling through a flush of embarrassment.

  “Annie will go for it,” Joan stated flatly. “We’ve been talking about it for weeks.”

  This was news. I hadn’t known that Annie and Joan were acquainted.

  As if answering my unspoken question, Joan rolled her eyes and said, “We’re both bio majors. We talk.” She picked up the garbage bags of clothes and headed toward the door, stopping on the threshold to glare at me. “So are you gonna get packed, or what?”

  I followed Joan back to my own room, my plan to swim totally forgotten in light of the fact that I was suddenly moving. Joan’s ponytail swished its way up the stairs before me. Once inside, Joan dropped her bags by my bed. Annie was nowhere in sight, but her side of the room was suspiciously clean.

  “You guys have been wanting this for weeks, huh?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve been wanting it. Annie was just available. Oh, and in case you were wondering, she doesn’t hate you like I hate Cyn.”

  “That’s good. I don’t hate her either,” I said absently. My stuff was everywhere. Moving was going to be a total bitch.

  Joan stood by the door, watching me. “You know, your friend is on a path to total self-destruction. Not that I care about her at all. I don’t. She was a horrible roommate. But I hope that maybe you can help her out before she goes truly nuts and takes you down with her. You’ll see what I mean.”

  With that, she and her ponytail of doom were gone.

  Living with Cyn required a few adjustments. Back in the old room with Annie, the only person who would regularly pop in was Cyn. Now that Cyn and I were together and Joan wasn’t around to glare and hiss, our room was the new gathering spot for everyone we knew. Come sundown, friends slowly trickled in until the room was a veritable salon of slacking. It was fun, but I didn’t get shit done, so out of fear of Academic Meltdown: The Sequel, I began forcing myself to go to the library for a few hours every evening. Still, it was great to have the party come to us. Even though we were just some chill ladies with a cool room at a tiny school in the middle of nowhere, it felt like we were at the nexus of something big. Cyn’s chemistry buddies made the acquaintance of the poli-sci kids. The music hippies made nice with the art geeks. Everyone would trade ideas and swap books and CDs. Random new faces would appear and become regular visitors, and from my lookout point atop my dorm bed, I was pleased to see new friendships bloom. Little did I know that those first few weeks of cohabitation would be the halcyon days of our time together.

  The slow, downhill slide began when I returned from class to find Cyn crying. I rushed to her, assuming, wrongly, that someone had died. She gestured to a crumpled letter on the desk. It was from the financial aid office, stating in no uncertain terms that half of her scholarship was revoked. Evidently, she’d misreported her graduation date, because she feared the year and a half she took off would hurt her chances of a scholarship. Midway through the semester, the discrepancy was discovered. Cyn pointed a shaky finger at another paper, an invoice from the school with a sickeningly large number due and owing.

  “I’m so totally screwed,” she croaked through her tears. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “Can’t you appeal
it? There’s gotta be something you can do. I mean, your grades and your scores are all still the same.”

  “I tried to talk to the lady in Admissions. She’s a total bitch. She said that I’m lucky the school hasn’t kicked me out for lying on my application.”

  As Cyn continued to sniffle, I picked up the letter. She would have to come up with almost seven thousand dollars for this term alone. I felt a jolt of selfish terror as I imagined her leaving me at the school alone. I set the invoice down, feeling stunned.

  “It’s okay. I’ll figure something out. I’m not leaving this place, whether they like it or not.” She mustered up a broken smile.

  “Of course. You can be a student squatter. Or throw a shitload of very expensive bake sales.” I was struggling to stay cheery. The amount of money she needed to come up with was staggering.

  “Car washes. I will wash cars twenty-four/seven. When I’m not busy studying at this fine, benevolent institution,” she snarled.

  “You could double your money if you did it topless.”

  The smile that suddenly manifested on her face had nothing to do with happiness. “I should only do that on prospective student visitation days. Let them and their parents know the whole truth.”

  “Economics 101.”

  “Tit-onomics.”

  Silence poured in around us after the word left her lips. In the fading light, I saw Cyn had a strange look on her face. I should have seen what was coming next, but I didn’t.

  She dropped the bomb on me the next afternoon when we were out for a sunset jog.