room.”
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, Mom used to talk about how you’d follow her around the kitchen whenever you came over and she was making dinner. She thought it was so great that you asked if you could help and then did. She always said . . .” She trailed off.
“What?” I’d massacred my piece of pancake into nothing, and my fork slipped across the plate.
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Caro bit her lip. “She said you always seemed so lonely.”
“Oh.” I put my fork down and pushed my plate away, resting my hands in my lap, palms down and pressing into my knees.
“I didn’t mean to—look, she’s crazy. She’s convinced that if I stand up straighter I’ll get a boyfriend. Really, that’s what she says.” She laughed but it was soft, weak sounding, and I could tell she knew what her mother had said wasn’t crazy at all. I pushed my hands down harder, as if I could press through my jeans, my skin, my bones, and into something else, something more solid, more real.
I wanted to tell her that what happened at breakfast with my parents wasn’t weird, it was awful. I wanted to tell her that I hated them for trying so hard and hated myself for how much part of me wants to believe that they love me as much as they love each other.
I wanted to smack her, hard, and tell her to wake up, go after Mel, grab life and live it like Julia did. I wanted to tell her that people like me and her aren’t really living at all. We’re just here. I was lucky. I got Julia, even if it wasn’t for as long as I thought. Even though I ruined it.
“We should go,” I said, and got up, dug around in my pockets and found the twenty, dropped it on the table.
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“That’s too much,” Caro said, but I was already gath-ering my stuff and heading for the door.
She came after me. I was heading away from the university, walking toward home and those stupid muffi ns, when she grabbed my arm.
“You have to come or Beth will destroy me,” she said, and in that moment I actually liked her. She didn’t pretend she wanted to pay me back for her breakfast or act like she cared about what she’d said. She told me the truth. She needed me to come with her because when she talked to Beth, she had to bitch about me being there so she could be safe.
So I went to the university library with her. Mel was already there, perched outside on the stairs waving his arms around like he was talking to someone even though he was alone. Caro let out a little sigh when we saw him.
“I bet if you tried, he could be yours by the end of the day,” I said.
“I don’t want him,” she said, and before I could laugh, added, “Oh. He’s not talking to himself. Patrick showed up. I didn’t think he would.”
Patrick was indeed there, sitting beside the huge book-drop bin, almost totally hidden from view. Inside, Mel said something about being closer to the reference databases as we grabbed a table by a window and near 205
a door, but it was obvious that wasn’t the reason why because Patrick practically threw himself into the chair closest to the window and then stared out it like he wanted to be gone.
I wondered if that was how I looked to other people.
How I acted. Maybe it should have bothered me, but it didn’t. Patrick looked uncomfortable with life, and I knew that feeling.
Mel sat across from him and next to me. Caro sat across from me. They didn’t talk at first, but within three minutes they were arguing and we’d been glared at by a couple of bleary-eyed students slumped over laptops.
After a while, they went off to look something up, still arguing, leaving me with Patrick.
It was just like being alone. He didn’t talk, and every time I glanced at him—Caro wanted me to look through a list of things she’d written down, and it was so boring—
he was staring out the window. Mel and Caro came back after a while, still arguing and clearly having a good time doing it because both of them were fighting back smiles as they talked.
“We can look at the other articles. I’m just asking you to—” Mel said.
“No, you were telling me there’s only one way to talk about the Mississippi River’s role in the book.”
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“I’m not. I swear! It’s just that Patrick worked really hard on the multimedia presentation and I don’t think we should ask him to change—”
“I can put in other stuff,” Patrick said without turning away from the window. “Just tell me what you want.”
Both Mel and Caro shut up for about thirty seconds before wandering off again, their hands almost, but not quite, touching. I swear, I could practically see sparks flying around them. It was sweet in a nauseating way, and I couldn’t help but wonder why Mel had hooked up with Beth when it was so clear he liked Caro more.
“She told him Caro hated him.”
I glanced over at Patrick. He was looking at me.
“Beth did, I mean,” he said.
I laughed because of course she did. Classic Beth.
