So I watch as the doors close again and then I head to the stairs.
The cab I called waits outside, engine idling, and I make a crushed ice trail from the dorm lobby, thankful for Hannah’s spare pair of boots, which are only a tiny bit small and which she forced on me when the first snow fell. (“You have no idea,” she told me.)
The cab driver steps out to open my door. I nod my thanks.
“Where to?” he asks, once we’re both inside with the heat going strong, breathing the stale cologne-and-coffee air.
“Stop and Shop,” I say. My first words in twenty-four hours.
The fluorescent grocery-store lights, all the shoppers and their carts, the crying babies, the Christmas music—it would be too much if I didn’t know exactly what to buy. But the shopping part is easy. Microwave popcorn with extra butter flavor. Thin stick pretzels. Milk chocolate truffles. Instant hot chocolate. Grapefruit-flavored sparkling water.
When I climb back into the cab, I have three heavy bags full of food, enough to last us a week even though she’ll only be here three days.
The communal kitchen is on the second floor. I live on the third and I’ve never used it. I think of it as the place girls in clubs bake brownies for movie nights, or a gathering spot for groups of friends who feel like cooking an occasional dinner as a break from the dining hall. I open the refrigerator to discover it empty. It must have been cleaned out for the break. Instructions tell us to label all of our items with our initials, room number, and date. Even though I’m the only one here, I reach for the Sharpie and masking tape. Soon, food labeled as mine fills two of the three shelves.
Upstairs in my room, I assemble the snacks on Hannah’s desk. It looks abundant, just as I’d hoped. And then my phone buzzes with a text.
I’m here.
It isn’t even six o’clock yet—I should still have a half hour at least—and I can’t help but torture myself by scrolling up to see all of the texts Mabel sent before this one. Asking if I’m okay. Saying she’s thinking of me. Wondering where the fuck am I, whether I’m angry, if we can talk, if she can visit, if I miss her. Remember Nebraska? one of them says, a reference to a plan we never intended to keep. They go on and on, a series of unanswered messages that seize me with guilt, until I’m snapped out of it by the phone ringing in my hand.
I startle, answer it.
“Hey,” she says. It’s the first time I’ve heard her voice since everything happened. “I’m downstairs and it’s fucking freezing. Let me in?”
And then I am at the lobby door. We are separated by only a sheet of glass and my shaking hand as I reach to turn the lock. I touch the metal and pause to look at her. She’s blowing into her hands to warm them. She’s faced away from me. And then she turns and our eyes meet and I don’t know how I ever thought I’d be able to smile. I can barely turn the latch.
“I don’t know how anyone can live anywhere this cold,” she says as I pull open the door and she steps inside. It’s freezing down here, too.
I say, “My room is warmer.”
I reach for one of her bags carefully, so our fingers don’t touch. I’m grateful for the weight of it as we ride the elevator up.
The walk down the hallway is silent and then we get to my door, and once inside she sets down her suitcase, shrugs off her coat.
Here is Mabel, in my room, three thousand miles away from what used to be home.
She sees the snacks I bought. Each one of them, something she loves.
“So,” she says. “I guess it’s okay that I came.”
chapter two
MABEL IS FINALLY WARM ENOUGH. She tosses her hat onto Hannah’s bed, unwraps her red-and-yellow scarf. I flinch at the familiarity of them. All of my clothes are new.
“I’d make you give me a tour, but there’s no way I’m going back out there,” she says.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I say, still fixed to her scarf and hat. Are they as soft as they used to be?
“You’re apologizing for the weather?” Her eyebrows are raised, her tone is teasing, but when I can’t think of anything witty to say back, her question hovers in the room, a reminder of the apology she’s really come for.
Three thousand miles is a long way to travel to hear someone say she’s sorry.
“So what are your professors like?”
Thankfully, I manage to tell her about my history professor, who swears during lessons, rides a motorcycle, and seems much more like someone you’d meet at a bar than in a lecture hall. This topic doesn’t make me a gifted conversationalist, but at least it makes me adequate.
“At first I kept thinking all my professors were celibate,” I say. She laughs. I made her laugh. “But then I met this guy and he shattered the illusion.”
“What building is his class in? We can do a window tour.”
Her back is to me as she peers out at my school. I take a moment too long before joining her.
Mabel.