Lex went. I stayed in and studied.
Eventually I grew bored and left our room, with its cramped corners and stray pieces of Lex’s drum equipment scattered about like fossils. I dragged my feet down from the third floor, descending to earth slowly, slowly. The halls hummed with fluorescent lighting, but the dorm was ghost-ship still, every space abandoned pre-curfew on a Friday night. No one lingered in the common room with the television on or out in the hall with the stereo up too loud. I was alone. I was friendless. I slipped into the icy spring night and stole through campus. A glance into the student lounge told me the freshmen were having hot chocolate and warm cookies. I could have gone in, but the thought of eating made me uncomfortable because I’d recently started abstaining from food whenever I got too tense or had too many nightmares. Not eating felt less risky than some of the other things that came to mind, only now, when I did get hungry, I felt burdened by this latent weight of guilt. And the easiest way to avoid the guilt was to not eat some more. Kind of a lose-lose cycle, but not without its thrills—I’d blacked out once in film class. After, Lex covered for me and said I had the flu, which wasn’t far from the truth. These days I felt wildly delirious.
I stuck my hands into the pockets of my jeans and walked around and around the campus, then into town, where everything was already closed. On my way back, I saw a group of girls, including the ballerina, sitting on the steps to their dorm, watching the flurries come down. Despite the cold, the girls were in their pajamas, done up in pinks and pastels and glittery lip gloss. They laid their heads in each other’s laps and played with each other’s hair. I held my breath and my chest tightened. Everything about them was unimaginable, untouchable. They laughed and waved to me and said happy last snow. Part of me wanted to stop and talk, but I didn’t trust myself. The pressure inside was too much. Self-preservation won out. I simply skulked in the shadows, then headed back to the dorms long before our midnight curfew.
Being back in my room meant more dark thoughts. I turned on Lex’s computer to watch some of his porn, but even that didn’t offer any relief or release. Seeing all that thrusting and sweating just brought on a gloomy sense of panic and a dull ache in my gut. I shut it off before I finished. Zipped my pants back up. Switched on a local jazz station instead.
There was a soft knock on the door. Against my better judgment, I turned the handle and found myself looking into the wide doe eyes of the ballerina’s roommate. Lex’s girl. She stood there, a true vision, almost achingly lovely with thick black hair that spilled down her back in shiny waves and a smattering of brown freckles that splashed across the warm glow of her skin.
“Can I wait here?” she asked, her voice husky and low. “You know, for Lex?”
I gave her a hard look. “Lex is gone.”
“He’ll be back.” She walked in tentatively, brushing against me. She smelled of smoke and peaches. “God, your side is clean,” she said, looking around. She moved toward my bookshelf and ran her fingers horizontally across the spines.
I followed.
“Your walls.” She gestured.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s nothing on them.” This was true. A number of syllabi and study guides were pinned to a bulletin board that hung adjacent to my desk, but other than that, the only item I’d put up was a small, framed photo of a brown-and-white collie. A long-dead friend. The girl studied it briefly but didn’t comment.
“Well, make yourself at home.” I lay down on my bed.
The girl said nothing.
I closed my eyes.
The radiator hissed and gurgled. John Lee Hooker strummed his guitar and sang sadly. The trees outside whipped violently in a sudden wind. Snow continued to fall. We were quiet for a long time.
“I love this book,” she said suddenly. I opened an eye and saw her sitting on the floor, holding my worn copy of The Chocolate War.
“You’ve read it?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
I shrugged and put my arms behind my head.
“You think a girl like me doesn’t read?”
I smiled.
Five more minutes passed.
“What kind of name is Winston?”
“Excuse me?”
“Is that your first name? Or your last name?”
“I wasn’t aware we were on a first-name basis.”
More silence.
“Winston is my father’s name,” I offered after a moment.
“Oh, yeah? What’s he like, your dad?”
“He’s an economics professor. Or, he used to be.”
“He sounds smart,” she said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Like father, like son.”
I didn’t answer.
The girl got on her hands and knees. She crawled toward me.
“So, is it true?” she whispered.
“Is what true?” I whispered back.
“That you … that you’re as crazy as Lex says. He says you’re, like, anorexic. Or something.”