Sam had tried making a movie about Lorraine on several occasions (“In a world . . . where a beautiful rich girl with anger issues who at her truest most molten core only wants to be loved discovers that . . .”), but she’d catch him creep-shooting and blow her stack. As much as that girl loved a selfie, she wasn’t big on other people controlling the final product. What he needed was a willing subject, someone as hungry as he was. Someone who warranted a few minutes in the spotlight. Plenty of people craved attention. It had to be the right person, someone who naturally commanded it. Sam suspected most outwardly noisy people were boring on the inside. No more than the textbook swirl of insecurities and narcissism.
Penny would make a fascinating subject. All that twitchy energy. Plus, what was up with her bags of stuff? He could shoot an unboxing video where she could unfurl her possessions and explain the thinking behind it all. It could serve as a legend for a map of her brain.
Sam enjoyed texting Penny. They talked about work, sleep, food, random facts. It didn’t need to be anything important. Their last text had been what to eat for breakfast. Since Penny had seen him at his lowest, there was no reason to act cooler than he was. It felt easy, a bit like summer camp—their texts had no bearing on their actual lives. It helped that she didn’t seem to tire of him. No matter how dumb his questions.
Would you watch a documentary about a cat?
She texted back immediately.
Totally
Cats rule And then:
Some are assholes tho
There’s this super cool guy that lives under our porch now What else?
That’s pretty much it
K then maybe
At 2:34 p.m. Sam had cleared the tables, wiped them down, and steam-cleaned the espresso machine.
I have to make a documentary for a class Ah
Ergo cat
Sam enjoyed it as a response. Ergo: cat. He couldn’t call what his new friend would say next. He tried to remember the last time he’d slipped so easily into conversation without the added diversion of skateboarding or drinking or sex. Talks with Penny felt good. Wholesome, normal, and curiously productive since they mostly discussed schoolwork. They were lab partners.
EMERGENCY PENNY
Today 6:01 PM
Would you read a short story on zombie food Or nah?
Is this a legitimate concern of yours?
Maraschino cherries
are the undead
OK
Riveted
Please continue
Perfectly healthy stone fruit are drowned in calcium chloride + sulfur dioxide
BOOM
Total ghost food
It’s how come they’re see-through Hmm . . .
I admit my interest is waning
They gave me one on my pudding
Get it off
It’s so gross
I can’t touch it
Today 9:12 PM
Hey
?
What about a doc on a guy who’s sick?
What kind of sick?
Terminal disease
YES!!
YES!!?
Sounds depressing af
Into it lol
Healthcare is so messed up Sam wondered if Penny was super political or something. If she was aware of what was going on in the world outside her dorm. Sam was bad at politics the same way he was bad at sports. It was all made up. The more yelling there was about it, the more it seemed like a distraction from what was really going on in the world.
Totally
Sam Googled “American healthcare system” to brush up.
It makes me sick
NO PUN INTENDED
It’s sad
We criminalize the poor
Everything is broken
OK calm down
Don’t tell me to calm down I regret typing it I’m sorry
I know girls hate that EVERYONE hates CALM DOWN
Not just women (don’t say girls) OK
I’m sorry
Anyway
Healthcare What if the guy took matters into his own hands drives to Mexico for drugs Go on
He meets this other sick dude They start a drug ring And . . .
They sell it to poor people/downtrodden/no healthcare OMG
Is this the plot to Dallas Buyers Club?
Sam laughed in real life.
Today 1:45 AM
Top 5 fav things in the world don’t think about it just type Isn’t it a little late to be texting?
Shit were you asleep?
No
But I could have been
I can’t sleep for shit lately Me neither
OK
Top 5…
This feels like a trap
It’s not
I promise
No judgments
I don’t know your life
Your struggles
YOUR JOURNEY
Sam had been thinking about his favorites in bed. He loved the smell of the air before a thunderstorm. Or how Texas weather was so crazy and the landscape so flat that you could see the driving rain in a clean, straight sheet when everything that lay ahead of it was sunny.
Pringles
Pringles?
Sorry I’m eating Pringles
They’re so good
When’s the last time you had a Pringle I forgot about them
I’d miss them when I’m dead You’d miss Pringles when you’re dead?
You said no judgment
Wow
Well?
I guess it’s too late for texting But not for Pringles
It’s never too late for Pringles Then Sam texted Lorraine. Five weeks late and counting.
Last time they’d talked she promised to get a blood test and that was almost a week ago. She’d been flaky when they were together, but he couldn’t believe she’d leave him hanging about such a huge deal. This was literally life or death. Bad enough that Lorraine often said literally when she meant figuratively.
Sam stared at the screen, willing a bubble to appear.
Zip.
PENNY.
“Is this sheer?” Penny stood in front of the mirror in a white, knee-length cotton dress.
“Only when you’re backlit.”
“Is it slutty?”
Jude scoffed. An odd sound between a bleat and a laugh. “I don’t think you’re capable of slutty,” she said, sitting up in bed. “I mean,” she continued, “you’re wearing virginal white.”
Penny had chosen a summery sheath for her first date back with Mark. She wanted him to see her in color. Not that white was a color necessarily, but black extra-wasn’t, and she didn’t want to appear too funereal. If she was going to break up with the guy, she wanted to look good. Maybe her best. Humans were garbage like that.
“Is an official breakup necessary?” asked Jude. “I mean, you’re in college; he’s not. Everybody knows what that means.” Jude jokingly jerked off the air and mimed spraying the result into the sky.
“Ew,” said Penny, screwing her face.
“Listen, no shade,” Jude continued, laughing. “I don’t know your Tinder habits.” Her roommate nodded pointedly at the phone in Penny’s hand.
Penny smiled tightly.
Right then she and Sam were locked in a contest of who could capture the most boringly predictable Instagram photo. He’d just sent the most glorious sunset (#nofilter). Penny was dying to send back one taken from her car of someone posing in front of the “Hi, How Are You” frog mural on Twenty-First Street while wearing a “Hi, How Are You” frog mural T-shirt. It was meta and brilliant and a surefire winner except she first had to bumble through this awkward date with Mark first to feel proper triumph. Penny couldn’t wait for it to be over.
A breakup made sense. Anthropologically she and Mark were incompatible. When they were dating they only ever hung out one-on-one at each other’s houses to watch TV and make out. It was more a middle-school relationship than a real thing, and when he went to parties with his friends it was understood she wouldn’t accompany him. It suited them both most of the time. If anything, Penny was grateful he wasn’t big on conversation. She didn’t even know how to explain their arrangement to herself.
The plan was to drive home, see Mark, end it, and drive back. Celeste she’d deal with another time. Penny wasn’t in the mood to bond and chin-wag about boys and console her mother under the pretense of commiseration. This was between her and Mark.
Penny wondered if she was nervous and promptly yawned. Just as she cried when she was mad, she needed a nap when faced with anxiety. It wasn’t that she was disinterested. It’s that she became overwhelmed, went into overdrive, and shut down. Thing is, Penny hadn’t meant to blow everyone off. And she would have passed a polygraph when asked about it. She’d been meaning to go home the first weekend or else the second. Undoubtedly the third. By now, more than a month later, the natives were restless and thinking about it made Penny sleepy.
In the short while she’d been at college—a seemingly negligible sliver of time—her brain reset. The routine rhythms of her old life were booted from her operating system. Sure she missed having kimchi in the fridge or a Costco stash of triple-ply toilet paper stored above a washer and dryer you could operate for free, but whenever her mother texted or when Mark called, the interruption was staggering. Mind-blowing. She may as well have been getting messages from the spirit world. It was inconceivable that both college and home operated on the same space-time.