The first couple are about something funny Toni’s friend Eli said, and a Chinese restaurant that serves punch in glasses as big as your face. The next message is something about not realizing until now how much homework had piled up for the weekend. Another text time-stamped half an hour later says maybe we should think more about our plans.
I’m still trying to understand what that means when Carroll says, “Roger Davis.”
“Who?” I prop myself up on my shoulder so I can talk to him and look at my texts at the same time.
“Roger Davis. From Rent.”
I struggle to remember. “The musical?”
“Yeah. Roger. That’s who I always imagined my first kiss would be. I used to listen to the soundtrack all night and think about how everything would be all right if I could only meet someone like Roger.”
I glance up from my phone. “Wait, wasn’t Roger the straight guy?”
“You’re missing the point.” Carroll huffs. “Roger is the ideal man.”
“Roger was the junkie, right?”
“Stop it!” Carroll pulls a pillow over his face. “I am never telling you anything ever again!”
“Sorry, sorry!” I lift up a corner of the pillow so he can hear me. “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen that show since I was a kid. Look, we can download the movie sometime and you can tell me all about how fantastic Roger is, and I’ll admit the error of my ways.”
“Don’t need to download it,” he mumbles. “I have the DVD.”
“Then let’s watch it soon, okay?”
“Okay.” He pushes the pillow off us.
Toni’s last text, sent twenty minutes ago, says,
Don’t hate me, but do you think we could do next weekend instead? I just didn’t realize how much stuff had piled up. I’m so sorry.
My eyes fall closed. Suddenly all I want to do is sleep.
I should go back to my room. I don’t want to have to explain this to Carroll.
It’s just that I’m so, so tired.
And so...I don’t know. The word sad doesn’t seem right. Neither does disappointed. Devastated, maybe. But that doesn’t quite fit, either.
When I open my eyes, it’s light out. Juan still isn’t back, and I haven’t gotten any new texts since last night, but Carroll is sound asleep, curled up next to me.
*
I don’t get hangovers. Mornings like this, I wish I did. If I were hungover I wouldn’t have to think.
I’m wide awake by 8:00 a.m. and eager for distractions, so I sneak out of bed while Carroll’s still dead to the world and go meet Briana at the gym. Briana wants to do crunches and talk about the girl she met the other night. A girl named Rosa.
“I really like her, but I think she might be kind of psycho,” Briana tells me when we’re on crunch number thirty. “She asked me to make a list of all my ex-girlfriends. I could see her memorizing their names. Like she was going to go online and stalk them as soon as she got a chance.”
“Yeah, that’s sketchy,” I say.
“I mean, she’s not sketchy, though. That’s the thing. She’s way saner than anyone I went out with in high school. I asked if she’d ever been arrested, and she said no.”
“Why’d you ask her that?”
“The girl I went out with this summer was addicted to shoplifting. It was scary. We’d go to the mall and she’d sneak all this random stuff into my purse. I wouldn’t even notice until I got out to the parking lot and suddenly I had, like, twenty different leather wristbands from Hot Topic. Hey, why’d you stop?”
I’ve already counted out sixty crunches and now I’m sitting up with my head resting on my knees. My mind is racing, and Briana’s monologue isn’t helping.
“You know what?” I say. “I really have to do some cardio. I feel like I ate an entire pizza last night.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Briana counts out her seventieth crunch and stands up. She leads me to the treadmills. Perfect. You can’t talk on a treadmill.
We put on our headphones. I concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. It helps a little, but my brain still won’t shut up.
I think about my backpack, still sitting in my closet where Carroll nudged it aside last night. Maybe I’ll leave it packed for next weekend.
Maybe next weekend won’t happen, either. Maybe Toni just doesn’t want to see me.
No. That’s stupid. Didn’t we just make a big deal about me coming to this Halloween dance?
What if Toni cancels that at the last second, too?
I never should have come here. I’ve ruined everything.
And Toni is clearly having a blast at Harvard with people who aren’t me. Thinking about changing pronouns. Starting a whole new life and leaving me behind.
I run two miles and say goodbye to Briana, who’s already on her fourth. I go back to my room and take a half-hour shower while Samantha bangs on the bathroom door for me to hurry up. Then I text Carroll and meet him at the dining hall. I wolf down a plate of pancakes and eggs while everyone around us douses themselves in coffee and moans about how hungover they are.
Across the table, Carroll is quiet, stirring sugar and honey into his tea. So I tell him about the late-night texts. About the pronouns.