Charmed Thirds (42 page)

“So!” he said, clapping his hands together. “What have you been up to? Writing-wise?”

I decided to confess.

“I didn’t major in English or take a single writing class besides L&R freshman year. I didn’t join the newspaper because it seemed too intense and competitive and I hated my summer internship at
True
magazine and I barely had the energy to write the occasional letter to my best friend, though more often I’d write to my boyfriend, which turned out to be a colossal waste of ink since he stopped being my boyfriend long ago . . .”

“What’s your major?” he interrupted.

“Psychology.”

“Psychology?!” he blurted in disbelief.
“You
want to help sort out other people’s mental health problems?”

I was not offended by this. “Honestly?” I asked, taking a furtive look around before I whispered the truth. “No! I don’t!”

“Then what do you want to do after graduation?”

I shifted uneasily in my seat. “I’m still . . . uh . . . kind of figuring that one out . . .”

He grabbed at his curls. “Then why did you major in Psychology?”

“I didn’t really consider a career when picking a major,” I said. “I wanted to learn about what makes people do the crazy things we do.”

He leaned back in his chair and said, “Tch.”

“You can say that again,” I replied. (He didn’t.)

I didn’t want to waste any more of this important man’s time. I was just about to get up to leave when he suddenly snapped to attention.

“What about your journal?”

“My journal?”

“Yes,” he said. “Do you still keep a journal?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” And I pulled this very tattered, black-and-white-speckled composition notebook out of my bag. Until he said it, I’d forgotten all about everything I’d documented in here, because I don’t really think of this as serious writing.

“May I take a look?”

Mac had read another journal of mine, the one I was keeping when I was seventeen years old and attending
SPECIAL
. It was my journal, not anything I’d written for class, that had convinced him I had promise. (A promise I have, heretofore, unfulfilled.) But I didn’t want him perusing my private thoughts this time around. These moments are my own. Fortunately, I had a substitute—I handed over a few loose pages that I’d stuffed in the back of the notebook and never bothered to remove.

“Read this instead.”

“Persuasions: A Cheesy Slice of New Jersey in the Heart of Manhattan,” he read. He cocked an eyebrow in bemusement. “I thought you said you hadn’t written anything this year.”

I shrugged sheepishly.

For the next eternity or so, he read. He gasped. He moaned. He winced. Every few seconds, he’d mutter a phrase that I’d hardly remembered living, let alone writing about.

“‘Homemade Bikini Contest.’”

“‘Telekinetic titty-flexing.’”

“‘No cushion for the pushin’.’”

And he laughed. And laughed. Oh, how he laughed at me.

While I slowly died.

He put the pages down. “‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking,’” he began. “‘What I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.’ Joan Didion.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I think,” he said, tapping his fingers on his desk, “that if you do it well, you give others the opportunity to do the same.”

“Uh . . . Sure.”

“You would benefit from a more disciplined approach to your craft. You should take my advanced creative nonfiction class.”

“But I don’t have a writing portfolio!” I protested.

He waved the essay in the air. “This is the only portfolio I need to read, Ms. Darling.”

“But I haven’t taken any of the prerequisites.”

“I can see to it that you get in, regardless of prerequisites.”

“But . . .”

“You have the eye of a reporter and the heart of a novelist,” he said. “But you have much to learn, Ms. Darling. I’ll make sure that you don’t throw away your gifts.”

For someone like Mac to believe so deeply in my potential, well, it nearly made me weep with gratitude. Even now, I don’t think he has a clue just how much his words have done for me. Mac instilled hope in me, and not only that I won’t end up a tragic waste of potential, but hope in general, which is something I’ve been sorely lacking for a long, long time. (In more ways than one.)

“What are your thoughts?”

“My thoughts?” I replied, before I even realized what I was saying. “My thoughts create my world.”

Mac sat up in his seat. He scrunched his curls with his hands, perplexed. “Who said that?”

I told him the truth.

“Oh, just someone I used to know,” I said, stroking the naked skin on my middle finger.

December 15th

Dear Hope,

No, I don’t think it’s strange that I was the first person you called when you lost your virginity to a person I didn’t even know you were dating because we haven’t talked or corresponded for almost a year and a half.

Do you think it’s strange that the day you called, I was thinking about writing you again? I was thinking about writing you again because I bumped into an old friend who once mistook me for her best friend. Her name was Jane and you never met her and I intentionally never told you about her because I felt like I was cheating on you with her.

Jane and I resembled each other, shared clothes, had similar likes and dislikes, blahblahblah. Our friendship seemed so obvious that I tried to overlook how she was always judging me and trying to make me feel bad about anything she didn’t approve of. The biggest one of these things was Marcus, and it was her exhilaration over our breakup that led to the demise of our friendship. This was an ironic turn of events, because I reserved my own opinion about her asshole boyfriend for fear that it would have a similar outcome.

When I saw her today in the elevator, my first reaction was, “Oh my god, this is awkward.” In three years we had somehow managed to avoid each other. But now, on one of my last days on campus, here we were together, trapped in an enclosed space for the interminable time it would take the creaky campus elevator to drop ten stories.

“Did you get back together with Marcus?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

She smiled. “See? I told you so.”

And I could have let it go. But I didn’t.

“Are you still with Jake?”

She frowned. “No,” she said as the door finally opened. “He ended up being a total asshole.”

“I didn’t tell you so,” I replied. “But I should have.”

And I quickened my pace before I could get stuck inside the inevitable excruciating pause.

I realize now that our friendship didn’t end because of Marcus or Jake. It ended because we weren’t very good friends to each other. Period.

After Jane, I got to know a girl named Dexy, who was nothing like Jane or me. She was an exuberant spirit who made everything fun. If anyone, she reminded me of you, only without most of your depth or artistry. I never thought that we would be anything more than hangout, superficial friends. That is, until she had a nervous breakdown and never came back to school. I miss her more than I ever would have expected. But my reunion with you—the one that’s happening between us right now with these very words—makes me hopeful that Dexy will return to my life when she’s ready.

And then there’s Bridget, who has been a part of my life since diapers, and whose positive presence I continually forget to appreciate until she’s gone. But she, too, always comes back, and always when I can best benefit from her blond wisdom.

You, Hope, have always been a good friend to me. The best. I’m afraid I can’t say the same, though I sincerely believed that removing myself from your life—not writing, not calling—was in your best interest. You’ve been so content these past three years and I’ve been . . . a mess. I didn’t want to be responsible for fucking with your bliss, especially when it’s so hard to come by in this world. Thank you for reminding me of a profound truth about all devoted relationships, be they romantic or platonic: We love each other because of our flaws, not in spite of them. They make us who we are.

I was terrified that I had ignored our friendship to the point of no return. I’m ecstatic to hear that such an end point doesn’t exist. I’m glad you’re back in my life, though, in truth, you were never really gone. I can’t wait to see you and begin our adventure. There’s no one else I’d rather sit next to in a car for days and days on end.

Synchronically yours,
 J.

the twentieth

December graduation is nothing if not anticlimactic. What a far cry from my high school graduation, with all its pomp and circumstance and my big salutatorian speech about not wanting to change any of my crappy high school experiences because they all contributed to the content creature standing before them, the one boldly proclaiming that I was happy being me, yes me. Ha. It’s easier to think you know it all when you don’t know
anything
at all.

Ah, the beauty of being eighteen.

I have the option to walk in June, but I’ll probably skip it. I can’t afford the cap and gown anyway. To make up for the lack of ceremony, my friends splurged on a champagne brunch send-off. It was quite touching, actually. A very mixed crowd was in attendance, one that reflected the randomness of my three and a half years at Columbia University. Dexy shocked the hell out of me by showing up in full Catholic schoolgirl regalia, perhaps as a nod to the end of my education (or more likely because it made her look really hot). Tanu, Kazuko, and even
ALF
were there, representing The Winter of Our Discontents. Pepe and Bridget were there, representing my Pineville roots. Paul and Hy were there, representing people I didn’t know cared. Bethany and Marin came, representing blood love. Even Mac came, representing what I hope is my promising future.

I egotistically insisted that no one could be depressed about my departure. We joked about how I’m unemployed a full six months ahead of my classmates. Maybe I’ll contact one of Mac’s editor friends and beg him for a lower-than-entry-level job that will make my turn at
True
seem like the literary high life. Maybe I’ll throw financial caution to the wind and apply to journalism school, or I’ll miraculously develop a sense of empathy for my fellow man and get a PhD in Psychology. Perhaps I’ll be more practical and enroll in a correspondence school for gun repair. Whatever I decide to do, Mac assures me that I made the right decision in devoting myself to the study of the mind, instead of the almighty dollar. After all, college life is so short—even shorter for me—and professional life is sooooo long.

“‘This is not the end, not even the beginning of the end,’” Mac said, raising his glass. “‘But perhaps it is the end of the beginning.’”

I leapt out of my chair. “Churchill!” I bellowed, blowing everyone’s hair back. “Winston Churchill! I did it! I got one! I rock!”

I high-fived everyone at the table and they all indulged me by cracking up.

It seemed fitting that this was the first time I’d actually known the original source of one of Mac’s quotations, because it was exactly what I needed to hear. Sure, my future is uncertain. But isn’t it always? So I figured, Why worry about it right now, when I’ve got champagne fizzing in my glass and friends at my side?

We spent the morning happily. Hy promised Bridget a private screening of
Bubblegum Bimbos
to prove that she had done a great service in not casting the ex-actress formerly known as Bridge Milhouse in the meta-role of Gidget Popovich because the movie really,
really
blew.
ALF
and Pepe shoulder-thumped over the latest barely-of-age starlet’s homemade sex video. Kazuko admired Dexy’s outfit—very Goth Loli—and Dexy reciprocated with her admiration of Kazuko’s cameo brooch—was it vintage or a convincing copy? Tanu asked Bethany if she would be willing to be interviewed for her thesis, titled, “The ‘Yummy’ Effect: How the ‘Hip’ Urban Parent Paradigm Defines the Character of a Community.” Paul leaned in, almost forehead to forehead with Mac, and grumbled about the Religious Right’s latest efforts to “out” SpongeBob SquarePants. And Marin counted from one to ten
en español
as taught to her by her part-time nanny—otherwise known as yours truly—for everyone and no one at once.

And I—Jessica Darling!—was the silent heart giving life to these connections.

My optimism didn’t fade until I got on the bus to Pineville. After so much social activity, I craved solitude, and on this bus I was never going to be alone. My duffel smacked the shoulders of row after row of aisle-sitters and I had trouble finding two side-by-side empty seats. I planned to sprawl across the first unoccupied spot and feign a narcoleptic sleep attack so no one would sit next to me. But it looked like I wasn’t going to find the solitude I sought, so I searched for a passenger so absorbed in a book that any chitchat would be a nuisance. I thought I’d found her in the form of an after-school-with-milk-and-cookies mom midway through a paperback copy of
The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

I ungracefully hurled my bags into the overhead and slumped into the orange vinyl seat. I reached into my pocket for my package of tissues, but only found cardboard covered in the plastic Kleenex wrapper. I resigned myself to sniffling for the trip back to New Jersey. I was sleeve-wiping tears and mucus from my face when my neighbor put
The Five People . . .
down on her lap.

“Are you a student?” she asked in a familiar New Yawk accent. I nodded and tried to remember which bag carried my iPod. She then asked me what school I attended. I inhaled as deeply as I could before answering.

“Oh!” she bubbled. “Great school.”

I was extremely disappointed in her. She wasn’t what I expected. Before I could plug myself into iPod isolation, she asked another question.

“So,” she sang. “What year are you?”

“Actually, I just graduated,” I said.

“You did? In December?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Her eyes widened with this revelation. “So that’s why you’re so teary-eyed.” She unconsciously ran her thumb along the pages she had yet to read. I hunched up my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug.