“You ever read this one?” he asked as he held up one of the books that he had moved in the shift to make room for me to have a seat. He turned the novel so that I could see the cover. Anna Karenina. Leo Tolstoy. I shook my head.
“One of the greats,” he said. “A personal favorite.”
He handed me the book. For a moment I stared at it then I reached out. Our fingers met on the cover and I looked at him. He let his grasp on Anna Karenina linger for a moment after I reached for it.
“Thank you,” I took the book and brought it protectively to my chest. He had an unnerving way about him. It was like he could see right through your pretenses. It wasn’t that he was undressing you with his eyes, but you were naked in front of him. He could smell fear. He was a predator of the highest order. And I found myself spellbound by him, like a moth staring dreamily into the beautiful glowing blue maw of a bug zapper.
“I’m having a small get-together at my house this weekend, if you’d like to come,” his statement was a shock to my system. I’d heard of the parties, of course; they were the fabric campus lore was woven from. And here was my very own personally addressed invitation to one of them. It was the sort of thing that others in the class—both male and female students—would have killed for. Undergraduate students fought for the sparse invitations to Dr. Wolsieffer’s parties; they were primarily populated by graduate students and professors.
“If you’re busy,” he let his sentence trail off.
“I’m not,” I recovered from my shock, too enthusiastic. He raised an eyebrow. “I’d love to come,” I clarified.
He smiled. He told me that I could bring someone if I wanted to. Of course, the first person that came to mind was Birdie. I waited until the last minute, not presenting the idea to her until the afternoon before the party. Part of me hoped she would refuse to go, and maybe part of me hoped she would convince me to do the same.
But she agreed to go. Her motivation for attending was different than mine, I knew. Like someone who’d just shot up for the first time, I wanted another fix. I wanted to see if that electricity that I’d felt between myself and Tom had been a fluke or if, perhaps, there was something there. I pushed that line of thought back deep into the vein from which it had bled, nicked open by Tom’s charm.
We got ready in the room that Birdie rented in an old house east of campus. The place swarmed with a party thrown by the other girls who lived there. Any other time I would have been content to play beer pong or flip cup on the beaten old walnut table in the dining room, but tonight I felt possessed by a force entirely foreign to myself. I got ready with an uneasiness about what I was doing and what my motivations for it were. I knew they weren’t entirely pure. There was a part of me that wanted more from Dr. Wolsieffer than he should give me.
Birdie’s eyeliner winged out sharply enough to slit a throat. She looked purposefully disheveled from her ripped sweater to her scuffed boots and wild hair. Her dark eyeshadow was smudged below her eyes, but that eyeliner was perfect. It always was.
I fidgeted with my own sweater and applied and reapplied my dusty rose lipstick until I couldn’t look at it anymore.
“Anxious?” Birdie raised an eyebrow and locked her phone. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Why would I be?” I bluffed, and a nervous laugh came out. She smiled, but there was no happiness there. I sensed something shifting between us, like the slow unstoppable movement of a single continent becoming two.
We took my car and rode in silence to the party. I turned on the radio and quickly switched it from the country station I’d been listening to in favor of something I knew Birdie would like. She didn’t seem to care, though. We parked on the side of the street a few houses down. Cars piled into the huge driveway. The house echoed the architecture of the university.
The sounds of the college town coming to life on a Friday night drifted down from campus corner: laughter, shouting, music pouring out of bars. Part of me wished that we were walking into one of the restaurants we’d begun frequenting that fall instead of Dr. Wolsieffer’s house. But I walked on, Birdie falling slightly behind.
Dr. Wolsieffer’s house stood back from the road. An imposing structure, it hovered like a sentinel in the October fog. It was an unseasonably cool night. The chill didn’t usually roll into Oklahoma until after Halloween. But this year, it had come early.
The mist curled around and softened the sharp corners of the building, it was a fragile heirloom wrapped protectively in a blanket. The windows glowed a warm yet dim yellow, and the main illumination emanating from the house came from the central-most parts, like its heartbeat was glowing. I stepped up on the porch and reached to knock on the door, but noticed it stood slightly ajar. The sounds of music and laughter seeped out at the crack in the wood where the double front doors met.
I let my hand fall uselessly to the side as Birdie stepped onto the porch.
“Spooky,” she wiggled her fingers in a fan-like motion beside her face, raising her eyebrows in mock fear. She stepped past me and pushed the door open.
The noise from inside grew louder as the door yawned inward. After her, I stepped into the front hall. Painted dark, the house maintained its creepy air from the outside. I crossed my arms and hugged the sleeves of my sweater. A student emerged from a room and crossed our
