Archives:
January 27-February 2, 2008

January 27, 2008

I rub my eye as Dave pulls the band's van to a stop outside McCarthy Hall. It was a late night last night with the band, walking from bar to bar after the show. No one carded the band, or half the crowd following them around. I feel like I hardly slept at all, woken up time after time in the hotel by someone's snoring or one of the guys getting up to fart in another guys ear, then the retaliatory fart in turn.

We rolled back into town around eight tonight. I helped the band unload all of their stuff back at the house, and was content to walk home, when Dave insisted I let him give me a lift home.

“I had a good time with ya on this trip, Presto,” Dave says. “Glad you could be there.”

“Yeah, it was fun.” I stare straight out the windshield. “Actually, it was the best weekend I can remember having for a while now.” I turn to face him. “We should hang out again soon.”

“Definitely,” Dave says with a nod. “We're getting to be old men here—won't be in college for long. Gotta take advantage of the time we've got.

“Amen.” I pick up my book bag from my feet. The front pouch is open, and I can see Dave's pack of cigarettes in there. I fish it out. “Guess I oughta leave these bad boys with you.”

Dave waves his hand. “You keep them.”

I turn the box, pushing open the top.“Come on, man, it's practically a full pack.”

“You keep them.” He cracks a smile. “See if they grow on you.”

I look back and forth between him and the cigarettes, then push the flap shut. “All right.” I push open the car door, in that second thinking of everything I'm stepping back into once I set foot outside the car—the fight with Teri I skipped town in the middle of, the RA job, classes. I look back at Dave and reach out my hand. “I'll see you soon, man.”

Dave shakes my hand. “Later, Preston .”

January 28, 2008

I scratch at my chin. There's a thick stubble forming there. I didn't shave this weekend, and rolled out of bed just in time for class this morning. I blink away the glassiness in my eyes, and hope that the words tumbling from my mouth make sense to the class. Benjamin, for his part, nods, looking interested.

“I think that's what I struggle with most with this piece,” I say. “It's supposed to represent a childhood experience, but the conflict between the present tense and the author's voice is really striking. There's no way this narrator is eight years old—and even the kid's dialogue isn't matching up with the prose he's narrating.”

Benjamin nods. “Is there a way that the narration of this piece could show this level of sophistication, and make sense in this story.”

“I think you'd have to take it into third person,” I say. The author, the pony-tailed girl sitting across the way, sort of scowls, making it clear she has no intention of following that suggestion. Of course, I wouldn't take that suggestion either. If it was my piece, I'd crumple up every hard copy, extinguish the file from my computer, and try to forget I'd ever written such crap.

“Interesting idea,” Benjamin says, standing up and walking to the chalkboard. “And if we do that, how does it affect our story?”

I peer down to where Chang has scribbled a note in the corner of his notebook, reading, ‘it would make it suck less?'

I stifle a laugh as Benjamin's eyes fall back on me. I look away.

When I look back Benjamin has turned away, writing on the board. “Is anyone familiar with the concept of an unreliable narrator?” he asks, writing the words in long, sweeping strokes.

January 29, 2008

“What do you think about Chicago ?” Teri asks, pushing up and down on the wheel of her mouse, eyes fixed on her laptop screen.

“Never been. Don't know much about it,” I say, shifting as I sit on Teri's bed, back to the wall. I look back down at the piece I'm reading for my non-fiction class. It's not much better than the ones we workshopped in the last class, this one about a girl's first time having sex with her high school boyfriend. It's the sort of piece where you can tell the author's conscious people she knows are going to be reading it, and she glosses over any detail that might be interesting, or unique.

“There are a couple PR jobs that pay really well there. And they're only looking for two to five years professional experience. I could probably get away with telling them about everything I've done for SA and the paper, don't you think?”

I shrug. “Isn't it a little early for you to be applying for jobs like that? I mean, you aren't graduating until May.”

“You have to start early these days,” Teri says, reaching over, dumping a handful of Reese's Pieces from her bag to her palm. She stuffs them into her mouth, and starts talking again, voice muffled in the candy, “You'll see soon. It's a competitive job market.”

It's scary to think about searching for a job. I've been a student at Taylor for two and a half years now—a student for fifteen and a half years all told. I'm not sure how to be anything else, full time. When I think about the prospect—figuring out what I want to do, where I want to go, and then how I can go about getting a job—it starts getting hard to breathe.

I shake my head, inhaling deeply, as I look back down at the page. “Well, fortunately that's in the distant future for me.”

“Maybe,” Teri says. “but you shouldn't let it sneak up on you.”

January 30, 2008

The Off Beats are standing on stage. It's strange, though, because I don't recognize any of the girls. I can't spot Emma in the crowd. They sing this one chord in unison, then start to split, and all of a sudden, Veronica walks up from the back. The crowd goes insane.

The girls fall silent and a guitar starts to play. A spotlight shines to the left of the stage, and Dave's there, playing his guitar. He's playing the national anthem, and sounds just like Jimi Hendrix. At “the rockets red glare,” Veronica begins to sing along. I look around me, and realize everyone is standing.

There's something wrong with the lights. The spotlight on Dave shines insanely bright, then goes off.

I open my eyes, and blink them. I find Teri peering over her camera, smiling.

I rub my eyes, rolling over to look at her clock radio. The flash goes off again.

“Cut it off, will ya?” I ask.

“What?” Teri asks. “I like the way you look when you're just waking up. You look rough.”

“Rough?”

“All stubbly, and your hair messed up.” She snaps another picture.

“All right, seriously, you've gotta stop taking my picture.”

Teri drops her arms. “Don't be cranky.”

“Well stop taking pictures of me,” I say, hand on my forehead, my head pounding. I turn back to the clock, actually processing the time now. It's 9:48 . “Shit!”

“What's the matter?”

I roll out of bed, and snatch my jeans off the floor. “I've gotta be at class at 10.”

“Well, relax. Where do you have to be?”

“Central Hall,” I say, picking up the fleece I wore the day before, and sniffing at it. It'll do.

“You don't have to snap at me.”

“I don't mean to snap,” I say, trying to at least sound calm. “I just don't like getting woken up with a camera flash, and now I'm in a hurry to get to class.”

“Well then you're lucky I woke you up at all.”

I decide it's better not to say anything than to say what's on my mind. I grab my bag, and hurry out of the room.

January 31, 2008

“I before E, Gary,” Jonah says, hading back a construction paper cut-out of the letter E.

“My bad,” Gary says, picking up the “I” from his stack, and handing it up to Jonah, where he stands on a chair, stapling the letters up at the top of the bulletin board we're putting up in the lobby, about fire safety. “So Preston , I think the real question here is, if you're fighting with Teri so much, what you're doing sticking around this relationship?”

I jam my stapler in the lower corner of the bulletin board, making sure the backing paper is firmly in place. “She's my girlfriend. We've been together forever.”

“Which would still beg the question, why?”

“Not to side with Gary ,” Jonah says, taking the next letter, “but he's got a point. If it's not fun, what's the point of staying with the girl?” He looks back up at the board. “Is this straight?”

“It's fine,” I say. “And I didn't say it wasn't any fun. I just said we've been fighting a lot lately. It's just like our lives are going in different directions. But it's not like we've talked about breaking up or anything. I mean, I don't even know what I'd do if we did.”

“Well, for starters, there's that red head on your floor,” Gary says, flashing me a smile.

Jonah clears his throat. “Who is off limits, because she's his resident.”

“Yeah, because that's been keeping them apart so far.”

I smile. “What are you guys talking about?”

Gary hands off the next letter. “Everyone knows there's something cooking with you and girl with the dyed red hair. You're always hanging out. She's always your place, or your always at her's—”

“We're just good friends,” I say, planting one last staple, before I fold my stapler back to its natural shape. “We used to date—but that was a long time ago.”

Gary lifts one of the photos we're putting up on the board. It shows a dorm somewhere with bright orange flames coming out the side of it, smoke billowing out. “These kids who start fires in a dorm—it's usually an honest mistake. They throw away cigarette in trash can, or put Styrofoam in a microwave. And there's stories about these people who let the fire go for a little while, just watching, thinking it's cool.”

“It's pretty stupid,” I say. “Fire's tough to control.”

“Tough to control,” Gary nods, “And sometimes, a fire isn't going to go out, just ‘cause you're done playing with it.”

February 1, 2008

I sit straight up in bed, letting my paperback fall from my chest to the floor. I must have fallen asleep reading. A glance at the clock shows it's just past 5 in the afternoon.

There's a pounding on my door again. I run a hand through my hair, wondering how long I was out for, and get up.

The second I open the door, Emma rushes past me, into the room. It must be snowing outside—her hair is sparkling with rapidly melting snow, and her pea coat is all wet. “I just can't believe how stupid guys can be sometimes.”

I let the door swing shut. “What's going on?”

“It's Bud—he's just such a moron.”

Not exactly news to me, I think, but say, “What did he do?”

“I'm going to meet him for coffee and I find him talking to this girl, Poison.”

“The girl's name is Poison?”

“It's not her real name,” Emma says, pulling her at green knit scarf loose, so it dangles out in a loop in front of her. “But she's this total goth chick—dyed black hair, black lipstick, fishnets all the time. A real mess.”

“Got it.”

“But he's been hanging out with her a lot lately. And last night he told me they used to hook up—and I was mad because he hadn't told me about it before.”

“Yeah.” I try to straighten out my bed a little so it's not evident I had been sleeping before she came. It's not as though I would expect for her to notice at this point anyway.

“And then when I get closer to them today, I can see he's touching her arm.”

“He's touching her arm how?”

“It's like they both have there arms on this counter,” she says, placing her arm a little harder than I'd like on my TV, her sleeve a little wetter than I'd want for her to have there. “And his fingers on her elbow here.”

“Elbow to finger contact,” I nod, “that's—uh—something.”

She rolls her eyes. “It's about the context.”

There's another banging on my door. I suppose I'm grateful people are knocking at least. I pull it open, and I'm a little surprised to see Cameron standing there, her hair shining from the snow as well.

“Hey—”

“Have you seen Dave?” she cuts me off.

“Na—not since last weekend. Why—”

“He's missing.” A drop of water trickles down from her hair, down the side of her face. “Dave's missing, and I don't know what to do.”

February 2, 2008

“Go fish,” Chang says, seated cross-legged on the ground, across from me. I reach for the center pile.

I find it more than a little odd that Chang, Teri, Emma, Cameron and I are all seated here in my room, playing Go Fish. Cameron called this morning, and said she didn't want to be alone, waiting for Dave to return her calls, for the campus police to call her back. I called Chang to tell him what was going on, and he said he'd join us. Then Emma showed up. Then Teri.

The only card game we all knew how to play was Go Fish. And so we play.

Cameron has looked most anxious of anyone. She loses her place in the game, and we have to remind her when it's her turn, or ask for cards two or three times before she'll respond. She's chewed on her nails. She's chewed on tops of the cards before catching what she was doing, and pulling the cards away from her mouth.

In a strange turn of events, Chang looks like the surrogate boyfriend for her. He's the one to rub a hand over her back, or give her hand a little squeeze when it's clear she's struggling.

I saw Emma's eyes shift between me and Teri as Teri came in, and it was as if I could watch her weighing the situation in her mind—deciding if it would be more awkward to stay or leave.

Cameron checks her phone every few minutes—sometimes multiple times in the same minute, making sure she hasn't missed a call.

There's a knock on the door. Our heads all spin to face it. I bolt to my feet. It's only as I'm fumbling the doorknob that I realize there's no reason to think this visitor has a thing to do with Dave.

“Mike?”

“ Preston ,” Mike Weaver says, grinning in the hallway. “How's it going?”

We shake hands. He looks a little different, a deep stubble on his face, his hair longer than I'd seen it before. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, you're looking at the new twelfth man for the Austin Knights,” he says. “It's official, I'm an NBA player.”

“You're kidding.”

“Not in the least,” Mike says, grinning again. “I mean, there are places I'd rather be than Texas , but at least I'm stateside again for the rest of the season.”

“Definitely.”

Mike peers around me. “Chang, what's up, man? Hey Teri.” He turns to me. “You having a party in here? What's the occasion, bro?”

I lose my smile, stepping aside so Mike can step into the room.