From the momentum of running down two stairs at a time, I guess I banged on the door harder than I meant to. The heavy wood rattled against the metal jamb and André looked genuinely startled when he answered, rubbing his head and licking dry lips. “Do you guys have ‘Joshua Tree’?” I blurted out and as I did, I could see Stanley roll over on the top bunk – it was closing in on 1:30 p.m. and I was still in my long-john pj bottoms and slippers, headed down to the caf to study. I had that “desert sky” song in my head and desperately needed to hear it before I could even think about cracking open my Pre-Calc book, with its spine which had barely ever cracked before. “And pretty-please-can-I-borrow-your-discman?” I slipped in as fast as I could, as all one blurred request. Stan let out an affirmative hum from the top bunk, his hum hoarse from the night before, and André handed me the goods. It didn’t matter that my hair was unbrushed because Stanny was basically a brother to me (and André too by association, and by how many times we three had stumbled downstairs to brunch together unkempt and smelling like wing sauce).
Speaking of the night before, I was the reason Stanny was up to 4:00 a.m. (well we were equally each other’s reason), and that was because we were hanging downstairs in the laundry room, laughing about being little kids – like rattling off what striped or plaid shirt or pointy-collared dress we had worn in our school pictures every grade. And then he had his stories where no one noticed that he had sneaked off from the picnic or youth basketball event or the carnival, and I had my stories of unusual bug combinations in jars and getting lost on my bike, or winding up in the ER because one or another of my brothers swallowed a marble or fell out of a tree. We could barely get them out, there were so many ridiculous things to share. Some guy from the second floor came down to throw in a load around eleven – moved some other kid’s wet clothes out of the machine, piled them on top of the yellow Formica counter with the other piles of half crispy, half damp loads which people had forgotten to flip into the dryer, and pushed in his quarters, waiting for the click and drop. He added some powder from a swollen, faded cardboard box of Cheer that someone’s Mom had probably bought in the 70’s, spilling it all around the floor. We didn’t care about the white and green little soap grains all over our bare feet or that it stunk down there, like burnt heating system or whatever – we had a pizza coming from Gumby’s and they would actually deliver a large pie to the basement laundry room for seven bucks, eight including tip. Four each, Baby!
Really the only thing on our minds was the unspoken contest of who could store more intricate, insanely vivid memories for later use – of each other’s quirky sayings; of our favorite discontinued snacks from childhood; of sitcom opening songs of old, or the boys or girls we had crushes on. And beyond the laundry room, all we cared about was bringing up the other person’s ephemera at just the right, unexpected moment – the comedian’s callback – like last week when I was eating dinner with my suite mates and that guy Moose was telling the story of his bike getting stolen from the quad, when from the next table over, deadpan, Stan muttered, “Um, Gary St. Clair might want to know what happened to his bike.” And I seriously laugh/snorted so hard that my corn got stuck in that spot in the way back of your throat, and I tasted corn for 48 hours. But ultimately, what Stanny and I were going for ‘til 4:00 a.m. that night, and ‘til 2:00 a.m. the previous night, was this: Who was willing to spend and squander more time? Boy oh boy were Stan and I neck in neck in the squandering time department. He only had me beat in the mornings, and only because I always went to class (on account of a gnawing guilt that my parents got up every day to work their dumb, boring jobs to help me pay tuition). Otherwise I too would’ve been sleeping in Monday-Wednesday-Fridays like our old pal Stanyard.
I knew that everyone in my family wasn’t quite sure whether I’d make it in college – not because of my grades, but on account of being the baby. (But is the youngest always a baby?) And on account of homesickness and all. Because loving being home becomes a bad thing when you grow up, I guess. Anyway, I was determined to prove them wrong. It wasn’t long ‘til my fall semester became less about Liberal Studies and more about Stan the Man. We made up silly pretenses to knock on each other’s doors or slide funny magazine pictures and cryptic messages underneath; we called each other nicknames like “Bronco” or “Homeslice” to make fun of the cheesy kids upstairs; and we sat in the hallway on the third floor eating the giant (like, trash-bag sized) leftover bags of popcorn that André got to take home sometimes from his concession stand job. We might grab the Holy Grail videotape and watch it with the kids downstairs who had a VCR, or we might hide in the boy’s bathroom until someone went to take a shower, then steal their clothes and towel so they would have to take off the thick white industrial slimy shower curtain and wrap up in it to walk back to their room down the long dorm hallway. If we were really thoughtful (and we knew in advance who it was in the shower) we might have gotten their roommate involved and arranged for their door to be locked when they arrived, so that they’d have to walk down two flights of stairs in said slimy shower curtain to get the RA to come up and unlock it. The guys tended to take this better than the girls, and for whatever crazy reason Stanster didn’t really feel comfortable sneaking into the girl’s bathroom. You know, with periods and everything. I guess I didn’t mind going in the boy’s bathroom because I was on their floor a lot, and of course I grew up with all boys, and they were always snatching each other’s towels and stuff. With Stanny around as my co-conspirator, I was finally starting to think of college as a place I could feel myself. You know that thing, where you review what you’re going to say before it comes out, so you don’t sound like an ass? I think we even stopped doing that. I think we didn’t need to anymore. We were working on a game concept (still in the thought-experiment phase) called “Make ‘Em Eat it” where you hold down the person on the bed and make them eat the food that they think is the most disgusting, which for me everyone knew would be gummy worms. Stanny was lima beans all the way. So seeing as we shared long term plans and a consciousness already about what’s important in life, I didn’t consider it weird at all to ask to ‘permanently borrow’ the gray, worn, long-sleeve Nirvana t-shirt that Stan’s brother had boughten him at the concert last spring. I mean none of the kids thought we were together or anything when they saw me wearing it. They all knew Stan and I were brethren. Thick as thieves. Some girl on the A Side once asked me if we were cousins. Also, none of us had any idea that that t-shirt would become a collector’s item in a matter of only two years. I had coveted its threadbare, soft loveliness for months before that. He only acquiesced when I offered to trade him my down pillow for it. I went all Brer Rabbit on him over a very deliberate week or two, pretending I loved that fat neck-wrenching pillow. Totally worked.
One day at lunch in the caf they put out a basket of these really gross grayish-looking cookies that were individually wrapped and sealed in plastic. And I swear to god that inside the sealed plastic of one of them there was some pink fuzz, like a piece from someone’s pilly sweater who worked in the factory sealing up those cookies. Anyway, I pointed it out, and Stanny must’ve grabbed it because the next night, I’m reaching into my backpack digging around for my Chemistry book when there it is – the fuzzy, nuclear clay-colored cookie! So of course the next day after lunch I arranged with André to get into their room once Stan had left for class (making me late for my own 1:00 class, big deal). I shoved it in his pillowcase. The fuzzy cookie from that point on was hidden and found thrice weekly in various shoes, pockets, satchels, bed sheets, and couch cushions. After a while it just seemed like something on my list of things to do each week:
- Art History HW,
- Gym,
- Hide cookie,
- Call home.
Sometimes kids in the dorm would throw an ‘Around the World Party,’ where every room has a different cocktail and drinking game – you know: cement mixers and chandeliers in 308; kamikazes and quarters in 309. Neither Stan nor I could drink worth a lick – we weren’t much over 200 pounds put together – and the whole scene got pretty stupid pretty fast with everyone getting drunk and saying and doing dumb shit; getting written up. So we took the opportunity to go ‘Around the World’ musically. We would check out everyone’s tape collections, CDs, and on some rare, precious occasions, vinyl. We’d make note of who had what – like Amy from the second floor who had every album of both the Beatles and the Beastie Boys. Or that Belgian guy Hannes who had tapes of underground hard core punk in Flemish. Of course no one on the floor had a more extensive music collection than Stan himself. The next day, when all the parties were over, we’d knock on doors and borrow albums and make mac daddy mix tapes. So this one Friday night, we’re roaming around from room to room, and Stanny’s really killing me with the flares from my childhood, rattling off the name of my baby blankie (which of course I had with me at college); bringing up my ruined surprise birthday party in 6th grade. I had finally conceded that I was dealing with some kind of master memorist and that I was going to have to work five times as hard to get info out of him. So right then he cues up that song ‘You Better You Bet’ by The Who. I knew the words because my Dad had the album when I was little, and so I sat on the floor and sang along. “I call you on the telephone. My voice too rough with cigarettes…I sometimes feel I should just go home. But I’m dealing with a memory that never forgets.” And from across the dorm room Stan locks eyes with me and says above the music:
“Hey M- That’s me.”
“What’s you?”
“That line. That line in the song is about me. Except for the cigarettes.”
I just kind of stopped because it was uncharacteristically revealing for a party (though no one else but me was listening). There was a pause, and we quickly moved on to avoid it. But for just that second I realized maybe it wasn’t Stan’s choice to remember all of these things. That pause made me feel a little sick stomach, is all I can say. He remembered all of it, and it all meant the world to him, but not really to anyone else.
When basketball tickets went on sale, the guys on the B Side of the dorm decided that they would trick the freshmen and all the lame girls into donating their lottery numbers to them. Nice try! I put in for my lottery ticket on the first day and so did Stan and we made a pact in the caf that if either of us won, we’d get season tickets together. Because I mean, we were pretty much together whenever we weren’t in class and where else would we be on those basketball home game nights if not watching in Moose’s room or down in the lounge where they had cable? We had also started playing pickup basketball most nights before dinner at the court behind the field house. I wasn’t half bad for being five foot three. (Mom, you were right about being glad I grew up with four older brothers…)
Stan called at the crack of dawn and woke me out of a dead sleep.
“Did you check?”
“What??” (groggy, barely conscious, still half dreaming about a bus driving onto a giant boat).
“Did you check your lottery ticket?”
“Jesus Stan, I was just dreaming…Oh my god, I was on a bus and it was about to crash into the ocean… I think you just saved me from dying in my dream” I mumbled.
“You’re welcome. You know how you can repay me? By winning the season ticket lottery. What’s your ticket number?”
“Are you serious right now? It’s like 8:00am.”
I scooched over to the ladder at the end of my bed, and climbed down. And there was my lottery ticket pinned to the bulletin board. I snatched it off, climbed back up, grabbed the phone receiver and read out the 15 digits.”
“Mia – You won! You’re IN, You’re THERE. It’s AWESOME”
“I’m in. I’m there, I’m awesome…” I trailed off as the heavy dream in my weighted head swallowed me back up. It was a saying that would be echoed back to me many times that basketball season.
* * *
“He’s not like that,” I told my brother Jeff on the phone.
(He called my dorm room like once a month).
“Yes he is.”
“Not this guy — he’s different. He’s never even checking out the girls.”
(This wasn’t entirely true…there was one basketball cheerleader that Stan pined for at every game, with the long, silky hair. He called her SHC – Silky Haired Cheerleader – which just so happened to be his same initials. And I referred to her sometimes on non-game days, as in, “I’m pretty sure that SHC just saw you trip and drop your books down the stairs.”)
“Well then, is he checking out the guys?” asked Jeff.
“No, no, no. He’s just a decent young man, which is something you wouldn’t be able to relate to, Jeffrey.”
“Just watch it, Mia. That’s all I’m saying,” which was about the kindest, caring-est thing that my big brother could muster.
My roommate Marcella was a real old-fashioned sweetie kind of girl and totally naïve – she basically hadn’t ever left her family’s dairy farm, where she was homeschooled before coming to college. She wasn’t ever allowed to watch tv growing up and so might as well have been from another planet from all the rest of us whose entire vernaculars infused quotes from Larry Dallas at the Regal Beagle (“Just don’t block my view of the door”), Marcia Brady (“Oh, my nose!”) and J.J. Evans (“Dynomite!”). Marcella went to bed at like 8:00pm and sometimes we knew she was up there in her top bunk reading ‘Little House on the Prairie’ by candlelight or whatever, and Stanny and I might sit on the couch in the lounge area and play gin, and keep hanging out quietly. Just to crack me up, one night he says in an Irish whisper that he has to tell me a secret and I have to swear to god on my mother’s life that I would never ever tell a soul. He bit his bottom lip in that little way he does when he’s about to slay me, gesturing toward Marcella’s bed, and winking…Then he starts talking about going to a leather strip club in the city – which is completely ridiculous if you know Stan even a little bit, because first of all he looks twelve. Who on earth would ever give that kid a fake ID? Plus he always said that he hates those kind of places, unlike most guys on the floor. (See Jeff? Not your average meathead guy). But boy was Stanny spinning this yarn and getting more and more outrageous, and boy was I ‘mmm-hmm-ing’ and making pretend horrified little noises to get Marcella all riled up. He started describing in lewd detail how some ladies invited him into the back room, and were fawning all over him and then they brought out all these leather riding crops and chains and tied him up to the chair. And then this one big lady comes out and she’s like the queen of all of them, all in black lingerie and with her is three big dogs on leather leashes…and I’m shaking so hard trying not to bust up as he’s layering it on thicker and thicker with all of these insane particulars about her body and her outfit and the things she was saying and doing to him… and I’m rolling, losing my mind imagining what on earth poor little Marcella is thinking up in that lofted bed. Let’s just say that “The Lady with the Three Dogs” was the epic tale of our times, canonizing my friend as comedic prodigy extraordinaire.
When Stanimal’s 20th birthday rolled around a few weeks later, I got some art paper and collaged together a birthday card with a picture from a dirty magazine that Moose had – of a big woman in leather. I glued her into a scene with three of the cutest fluffy tan roly-poly puppies you’ve ever seen, attached to hand-drawn leather leashes. Stan went nuts over that card. You would’ve thought I gave him a Basquiat! He absolutely laughed his ass off. He said he was going to save that bad boy ‘til the day he died, and look at it when he was an old man in the nursing home needing to believe that life was worth living.
Now most of the basketball games were on campus but a few times a season they played at the Civic Center in the city, so on those nights we’d either have to take the smelly group bus or take Stan’s crappy, old maroon Renault and pay to park. Before one Thursday night game, we planned to hit that place Wayside Brews first, and as we walked in, there was Stan’s brother Ed at a table in the front. (A surprise for me, apparently). He looked a lot like Stan, but taller, more built, darker hair. And by the way, not only had I seen a dozen of pictures of Eddie throughout his childhood, I just happened to know every last thing about him – how he had seen the Chili Peppers at the Rathskeller before they made it big. How he had studied in Ireland, still had a girlfriend there. How he was allegedly the best at making 3-point shots. (Impossible, of course. That was MY brother). But as soon as I saw Eddie in person I knew Stan had done his exaggeration thing, making him seem larger than life – and then here was Ed just a regular, average 23-year old, with his flannel hiding an emerging beer belly over a snug long-john top, and Doc Martins. The place was packed, but Ed and his friend Nick had arrived probably 45-minutes prior and already had an empty pitcher of Natty Light on their prime location table and another on the way. Also they had ordered a bunch of nachos, jalapeno poppers (which I hate), onion rings and cheddar fries. Stan introduced me to Ed as we sat down on the metal stools, and I shook his hand – said I had heard a lot about him. Which triggered his grabbing Stan and putting him in a fake headlock, almost pulling him off the stool. From the look on Stan’s red, headlocked face, I had said something horribly wrong. “Oh yeah, what did this little man have to say about me?” – all condescending, like he was suddenly not at all the person who went to all of those concerts but one of those people that both of us hate at the bars, that live in the dorms up on the hilltop. “Mia loves Nirvana. I told her you saw them in the Nevermind tour in the spring.” (Nothing about the t-shirt, thank god). So Stan and I start working together to save the situation; to save ourselves from co-humiliation by his decidedly un-awesome brother. But Stanny looked like a completely different human in that setting, small and quiet and pasty and odd. He’s barely saying anything. And I can read his every gesture and expression and I know what’s going through his head. I’m feeling his feelings and I want to die. Weirdly, I also knew plenty of embarrassing things about Edward – the time he got beaten up in high school; the girl who broke his heart, Shelby Shea. But of course Ed has no idea that I know any of this. He’s yelling every word he says, even though we’re right there. He was calling everyone, even our waiter “Bro” or “Chief” like the people we make fun of. Just then Ed’s buddy Nick joins us at the table from the bathroom and I realize that we’ve only been here at this awful place, in this dystopian neon-signed holding cell, for a little over ten minutes. Stan introduces me and Nick shakes my hand but then as he’s still holding my hand, he looks away from me and toward Ed and whispers in a low voice that isn’t nearly low enough: “Ah, The Tease! And with a big rack too.” It comes out all beer breathy like venom from a snake. And it takes me a minute to even realize what he said. I fold my arms and look away. Stan has told his brother about me, who has told Nick. And what has been surmised by what Stan has said is that I have been involved in something deplorable. That my favorite thing on this entire earth – hanging with Stanny – makes me the most disgusting thing a girl can be: A tease.
Stan didn’t hear it, but he soon left the table for the bathroom and that’s when Ed turned to me, with knitted eyebrows, slurry and buzzed to say, “You know he’s in love with you, right? Are you gonna keep torturing him like this?” My Dr. Pepper arrived just then in a giant red plastic cup with ice and a straw and I took a big sip – turning my body toward the tv across the room, to quell the blood rising up in my face, the humiliating tears welling in my eyes. I grabbed a bunch of cold, two-toned yellow cheesy fries and pulled them onto my plate, and started ripping them apart one by one, the sickness of the greasy, soggy fries and the sickness of the layers of misunderstanding tearing at my stomach and throat. It was like the room was wobbling and my reality was falling away. Suddenly it seemed maybe that Stan had been making everything up – making up that his brother was cool and fun, and making up who he was entirely. And it suddenly seemed like I was the butt of a joke that had been going on for a very long time, all of those hilarious moments of complete comfort and joy ruined. It was like a horror movie when the creepy uncle looks at the young girl like he wants to have sex with her. But the creepy uncle is my best friend in the whole world who I have trusted with everything.
I looked around the room and for the first time realized that I was the only female in the entire wood paneled, sticky floored bar room. I felt my spine collapsing, but began to form and polish a single thought to hold me upright: I needed to call my brother Jeff right away. Stat. But there was no payphone in there and I didn’t have any quarters, and anyway, Jeff told me so. Suddenly the opposite thought replaced that one: that I could never, ever tell Jeff this as long as I live. If Jeff thought I was upset, he might show up at the pub, or the game, or the dorm – the thought of which made my desire to be dead rise and grow. Stan looked at my face and I knew he could tell what had been said. He was psychic like that. He was as white as a ghost. Eddie and Nick got the tab and assumed we were splitting it four ways even though they drank two pitchers of beer and ordered all these gross appetizers and I literally had three French fries and a soda for my last twenty bucks on this earth. I was dizzy, ears ringing, wondering whether I could possibly sit through two hours of basketball without losing my lunch.
I had no choice. I sat on the end of the row and I watched SHC with her flowy dark hair and copper skin, her pom poms and her giant lipsticked smile and realized how very different we are, she and I. How nodding, winking at the camera and repeating lines like, “Let’s go, Big Blue!” is not remotely a possible thing I could ever do or say. I couldn’t look at Stanny during the game, and he couldn’t look at me. We lost the game and I began to lose myself as well. Everyone was kind of bummed afterwards so that was a good excuse to not talk much. We left the stadium in a big snake of quiet fans. Thank god, because I could not bear to watch SHC another minute with all her bubbliness when I actually hated Ed and Nick and I actually wondered whether Stan was possibly a serial killer or whether everything else in my life was invented too. He put Nirvana on for the car ride home – the new cd, from MTV Unplugged – and turned it up pretty loud, so we could hear it over the engine. It was freezing cold. We arrived on campus and parked down below in X Lot and walked up the stairs in silence to our dorm and both said we were tired and Stan muttered something about having to study Sociology (even though we both knew that he had Professor Tebow who gave the same exams every semester and that that kid Jay on the fourth floor already furnished Stan with all of them). And since when could Stan care less about his fucking Sociology grade? I realized in that moment that it wasn’t the case that we didn’t know each other. It was the case that we knew each other way, way too goddamned well.
“Ok, see ya.”
So the next day I wore my baggiest Champion sweatshirt (belonging originally to my older brother) and dreaded coming home from class because I knew I’d see Stan at the caf and have to say something fake. And maybe I never wanted to see him again. (‘But what did he do wrong?’ was my next thought, and I couldn’t totally put my finger on that either). All at once I felt bad for Stanny for having such an asshole brother, and bad for both of us for living in an asshole, narrow-minded world where there was only one kind of lame-o close connection allowed. That every mixed-gender friendship was expected to careen toward someone to be owned by. And wasn’t our whole pact to be different from all of those predictable, scripted losers? By the minute, I would feel angry and hurt and embarrassed about my body, and then suddenly it would switch, like that green and blue poster above Marcella’s desk, where if you relax your eyes enough, a dolphin pops out. So I wasn’t sure what the heck to think when I walked in the side door of the caf. I just made a beeline get my lunch tray. It was hot and steamy in there, and the big picture windows were fogged up from cold kids coming into an overheated room. Everyone had rosy cheeks. It was burgers and fries for lunch and wouldn’t you know it: more of those gray, gross cookies in a bin by the desserts. Which made me suddenly realize that I had no idea where I last hid the furry cookie. Was it in the side pocket of Stan’s gym bag? Did he even find it yet? God knew he was the king of blowing off the gym. And now the house of cards that had become my new life (that I never even wanted, by the way) – far from home – started seriously swaying, was ready to fall. I focused on the metal tray sliding rails, grabbed my plate of food (sans cookies), and joined my roommates at the closest table so I could casually glance around the room. He was not there. He didn’t come to lunch at all that day. Like the stoic that he was. He could probably go weeks without food just to save face. But when he didn’t come to dinner that night, I put aside my sick and awkward ‘rethinking everything’ mode, walked over to the back table, and asked André where he was. André turned and looked at me oddly. He was genuinely surprised at my question.
“Mia, what are you talking about?”
“I’m not talking about anything, André,” I said a bit too defensively. “I’m just wondering where Stanny is.” “I have to ask him something,” I tacked on, to sound less desperate.
“Mia, what the fuck are you talking about? Stan went home with his brother last night after the game.”
But Stan most certainly did not go home with his brother last night after the game. He drove back to campus with me. André’s expression let me know that this was no longer about wading through an awkward room. We both left the caf in near silence, and next thing you know, we were up in their dorm room looking though Stanny’s stuff – his closet, his desk, I don’t know what exactly for, but it was like one of those movies where everything slows way down. After several minutes of lifting and opening things, it started to feel dumb – like what did we think we were detectives or something? After a while I went back up to my room to regroup, think, pace around, do some homework. That’s when I saw the note.
It had been shoved under the door, which must’ve been opened by Marcella, squished behind it, unnoticed. It was a sheet of lined notebook paper, folded the long way. The fringe was hanging off – long stringy white, haphazard. It was in Stanny’s back-slanted long hand. In pencil. And here is what the note said:
M-
I am really sorry for what happened tonight. I’m in love with you, as you now know from my dickhead brother. I don’t want to be but I am. I know that you do not share these feelings and it’s been a long time, and I am walking around with this unbelievable weight in my chest. I can’t live with it anymore. I don’t want to live with it anymore. Please understand. I’m very sorry to ruin everything. I know this ruins everything, and the last thing I want to do is to hurt you or my family. I wish I had been more of a regular guy. Guess not.
-S
His car was gone. We called the campus police. We called his parents. They called the town police. They showed up that evening and they started interviewing random kids in the dorm. When they got to me, I showed them the note. I vomited up my cheeseburger in the boys bathroom stall, and stood shivering there until my legs collapsed.
And then all night long André and I laid in their dark dorm room (he in his bed, me on the couch) while the light shined through from the volleyball court outside. André put this dumb Billy Joel song on repeat about army buddies in a world war or something. If Stanny wasn’t dead he was going to die of embarrassment at this scene, I thought for a minute. Then I felt sick for thinking that. Then I must’ve fallen asleep on their scratchy plaid couch. I wasn’t leaving that room. I wasn’t going looking. At 3:09 a.m. the phone rang and we both jumped up. The female cop had taken down the dorm room phone number and said they would call if they found anything out. There she was, calling the dorm room. They had found something out. André just looked at me from the top bunk– like he was paralyzed or something. If we didn’t answer it wouldn’t be true. I had a rock in my throat as I lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
And I heard not a police-lady voice, but the crackly small far away voice from a payphone, catching as if on a hook.
“Uh…Mia?”
It was him. Suicide Watch Kid himself.
“Stan?! Jesus Christ, Stanley!! We thought you were dead. The police were here. Where are you? What the F is going on?”
“Yeah. Um…I’m sorry about all that stuff. I’m 1500 miles away. In Topeka, Kansas”
“What the hell is wrong with you? This isn’t a joke. Your parents think you’re dead. We’ve held a Billy Joel vigil for the last six hours, for fuck’s sake!”
He chuckled in spite of himself. I could hear a faint hint of that biting bottom lip smile over the line – if hearing a bit-lip smile is possible.
“My car’s dead. Maybe that’s what the vigil should be for.”
“Have you called your parents?”
“Just did.”
“Are they going to kill you?”
“I guess since I’m not dead they are going to probably kill me. I triple dog dared myself to do it. I just drove and drove as far away as I could get. They bought me a train ticket home.”
“I’ll see you, then?”
“No… Um… I dropped my classes and sold back my books this morning. I guess I’m just going to have to get my stuff over break. My parents are making me move home.”
Then a crackling silence. My voice caught, too. “Stanny.” He just sighed into the receiver. And although neither of us called it, I think we both knew right there that that phone call was the end of MiaStan, Stamia, Manstia (we never did find the right name for our pocket universe, so swiftly and senselessly imploded and destroyed).
* * *
It was finally Spring Break and Jeff drove all the way to pick me up from school in his truck. He knew I was bummed to have to face everyone at home – feeling not at home in either place anymore – and he wasn’t about to rub it in by trying to cheer me up. Jeff was sincerely worried about me. He was the only one who knew the deal. And I was worried about myself too – on account of the fact that I hadn’t gone to sleep before 5:00am in weeks. I didn’t tell him that. My whole family was all just hoping I would make it: be a regular college kid. None of us were sure anymore. We rode quietly. But it was nice to feel the breeze on my face, as the ice was beginning to thaw to mud. We stopped at the creamery once we got into town, and Jeff knew to just order me a mocha chip and meet me at the picnic tables. I moped over to them, my head-down walk now well practiced after several weeks of it. And we sat and ate our cones in silence, ice cream dripping down my hand and onto my wrist, jacket sleeve in the newly warming sun. It was like I was wading through water in all of my movements; if he had thrown a basketball to me it would probably just hit me in the face. I finally managed to tip my cone upside down into a cup, which Jeff had jogged over to get from the counter, and I reached in my oversized windbreaker pocket for a tissue or a napkin, but instead I felt something plasticky way down inside the jacket, which had slipped beyond the ripped silky pocket’s hole; something in packaging. And wouldn’t you know – hiding there, deep in the insides of that nylon jacket, there like a ghost, was the clay colored, nuclear cookie – fuzzy and old and sketch! It turned its crinkly packaging in my palm and felt a wash of love and gratitude. Jeff looked puzzled as I suddenly bit my bottom lip and smiled. In the quickest movement I had made in a eons, I ripped off the clouded plastic packaging that had held that cookie for months (years!?) and shoved the giant gray dry caked ball with furry pinkness all at once into my mouth, swallowing and laughing and choking – little crumbs flying everywhere.
