I Was Here(5)
Author: Gayle Forman

I go back downstairs. The music has changed from Phish to something a little more rocking, The Black Keys, I think. Which is better, if a strange turn. There’s a group of people sitting on a purple velour couch, divvying up a pizza and a twelve-pack. Tree is with them, so I walk on by, ignoring them, ignoring the smell of pizza that makes my stomach gurgle because I haven’t eaten anything except for a Little Debbie snack cake on the bus.

Outside, it’s misting. I walk a ways until I get to a stretch of diners. I sit down at one and order a coffee, and when the waitress gives me a dirty look, I get an anytime $2.99 breakfast and figure that this earns me the right to camp here for the night.

After a few hours and four or five refills, she mostly leaves me be. I take out my book, wishing I’d brought some page- turnery thriller. But Mrs. Banks, the town librarian, has me on a Central European author kick these days. She goes through phases like that with me. Has done ever since I was twelve and she spotted me reading a Jackie Collins novel at Tricia’s bar where I sometimes had to hang out when Tricia worked. Mrs. Banks asked what else I liked to read, and I rattled off a few titles, mostly paperbacks Tricia had brought home from the break room. “You’re quite a reader,” Mrs. Banks said, and then she invited me to come to the library the following week. When I did, she got me signed up for a card and loaned me copies of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. “When you finish, tell me if you like them, and I’ll get you something else.”

I read them in three days. I’d liked Jane Eyre best, even though I hated Mr. Rochester and wished he’d died in the fire. Mrs. Banks had smiled at that, then handed me Persuasion and Wuthering Heights. I tore through those in a few days. From that point on, I would go into the library at least once a week to see what books she had for me. It seemed amazing that our tiny branch had such an endless stock of books, and it was years later that I’d learned that Mrs. Banks was special-ordering books through interlibrary loan that she thought I’d like.

But tonight the contemplative Milan Kundera she gave me is making my eyelids heavy. Every time they flutter closed, that waitress, as if possessing radar, comes by to refill my coffee even though I haven’t touched it since the last refill.

I hold out until about five in the morning and then pay my bill and leave a big tip because I’m not sure if the waitress was being rude by not letting me sleep or if she was keeping me from getting kicked out. I wander around the campus until the library opens at seven, and then I find a quiet corner and fall asleep for a few hours.

When I make my way back to Meg’s house, a guy and a girl are drinking coffee on the porch.

“Hey,” the guy says. “Cody, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Richard,” he says.

“Right. We met before,” I say. He doesn’t seem to remember. He was probably too stoned.

“I’m Alice,” the girl says. I remember Meg mentioning a new roommate moving in for the winter term, taking the place of some other girl who transferred out after one semester.

“Where’d you go?” he asks.

“I stayed in a motel,” I lie.

“Not the Starline!” Alice asks in alarm.

“What?” It takes me a second to realize that the Starline is the motel. Meg’s motel. “No, some other dive.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Alice asks.

All the coffee I drank last night has turned acidic in my stomach, and though I’m hazy and exhausted, I can’t fathom drinking any more. I shake my head.

“Wanna smoke a bowl?” Stoner Richard asks.

“Richard,” Alice swats at him. “She has to pack up all that stuff. I don’t think she wants to be stoned.”

“I’d think she’d wanna be stoned,” Stoner Richard replies.

“I’m good,” I say. But the sun is fighting its way out of the thin haze of cloud and it’s making everything so bright that I feel dizzy.

“Sit down. Eat something,” Alice says. “I’m practicing making bread, and I have a new loaf.”

“It’s slightly less bricklike than usual,” Richard promises.

“It’s good.” Alice pauses. “If you slather it with lots of butter and honey.”

I don’t want the bread. I didn’t want to get to know these people before, and I certainly don’t want to now. But Alice is gone and back with the bread before I know it. The bread is kind of dense and chewy, but she’s right; with butter and honey, it’s decent.

I finish it up and brush the crumbs from my lap. “Well, I’d better get to it.” I start toward the door. “Though someone already did the heavy lifting. Do you know who packed up her stuff like that?”

Stoner Richard and Alice look at each other. “That’s how she left the room,” Alice says. “She packed it up herself.”

“Girl was on top of shit till the bitter end,” Richard adds. He looks at me and grimaces. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It saves me work,” I say. And my voice sounds so nonchalant, like this is such a load off my plate.

x x x

It takes about three hours to pack the rest of her stuff. I pull out holey T-shirts and underwear because why do they need that? I throw away her stacks of music magazines, piled in a corner. I’m not sure what to do about her bed sheets because they still smell like her, and I have no idea if her scent will do to Sue what it’s doing to me, which is making me remember Meg in such a real visceral way—sleepovers and dance parties and those talks we would have until three in the morning that would make us feel lousy the next day because we’d slept like hell but also feel good because the talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life.

I am tempted to inhale those sheets. If I do, maybe it will be enough to erase everything. But you can only hold your breath for so long. Eventually, I’ll have to exhale her, and then it’ll be like those mornings, when I wake up, forgetting before remembering.

x x x

The UPS place is downtown and I’ll have to get a taxi, cart the stuff over, ship it, come back for the duffels, and be ready to catch the last bus at seven. Downstairs, Alice and Stoner Richard are where I left them. It’s unclear to me if these students at this supposedly well-regarded college ever actually study.

“I’m pretty much done,” I tell them. “Just have to close the boxes and I’ll be out of here.”