Fragmented (2 page)

“I don’t know,” Jenn started with a playful grin of her own, “do friends
do this?” She leaned in and pressed her full lips against my still pouting mouth.

“
Best
friends might.”

Jenn surged forward and pressed her lips against mine. Her tongue darted into my mouth and ran across the front of my teeth. 

My girlfriend was tall, long limbed, and angular like a marionette puppet. Her hair was a shock of yellow and her ears featured numerous piercings. I wished she had more hair so I could wind my fingers around soft, loose tendrils at the base of her neck. Instead, I settled for scratching my nails down her neck. She’d recently gotten the sides of her head shaved, but the hair on top remained long. It was a little crazy-Miley Cyrus for me, but I couldn’t very well tell my girlfriend that I hated her haircut. I raked my fingers through the hair that remained and tugged on it. It was just hair, I told myself. It would grow back.

It had happened to me with a previous girlfriend, too. She’d gone back to her folks’ for Christmas break, and when I’d picked her up from the airport at the start of the new year, she’d shaved off her ponytail and only a short buzz cut remained. What was it about me that made girls want to chop off their hair?

Jenn pulled away from the kiss and her mouth curved into a frown. “You’re messing up my hair,” she whined. 

“Babe, you’ve got so much product in there, not even a hurricane could mess it up.”

“It’s Chicago,” she defended. “It might as well be hurricane winds.” Her hands went to the place I’d disturbed, and she expertly returned every hair to its original place.

“Did you know that the phrase ‘Windy City’ doesn’t actually refer to weather? It’s actually to imply that Chicagoans are braggarts—or at least that’s one theory,” I recited.

“Uh huh.”

I puffed out a deep breath. Jenn had never been a fan of my history lessons. “What do you want to do this weekend?”

We’d made no elaborate plans, and I was content to order in and spend our time together watching movies in bed. It was my last weekend of freedom before classes began for fall semester. Over the summer we’d seen each other most nights, but between course work and babysitting for the Henderson’s, I anticipated we soon wouldn’t have much free time together.

Jenn grinned broadly and forgot about her hair. “You.” Her hands fell to my hips and she pulled me close until our pelvic bones bumped together.

“I’m a
who,
not a
what.
”

“Stop being so smart all the time,” she said, making a face. “Give your brain a rest.”

My bed wasn’t too far from the front door. Nothing in my apartment was far from the door. I let Jenn waltz me to the mattress where she promptly climbed on top of me. When we’d first started dating she had been inexperienced, but enthusiastic and eager to please. In our handful of months together she’d taken note of my likes and dislikes in bed and had put that knowledge to good use. 

She straddled my body beneath her own, kissing me, and never breaking contact as she shrugged out of her form-fitting jean jacket. Her hands fell to the bottom hem of my v-neck shirt and she began to pull up. When the first of my abdomen became exposed, she pressed her mouth against my naked flesh.

“I love your body,” she murmured. “I wish I was as fit as you.”

Jenn wasn’t only preoccupied with her gums and teeth. The need to be physically perfect spilled into other areas, even our sex life. She was borderline stone butch and rarely let me have my way with her unless we’d both had a few beers and she didn’t let her body self-consciousness get in the way. It was mildly neurotic, but I certainly couldn’t judge her for that; my family tree was full of nuts.

“I had a girlfriend who was obsessed with my belly button,” I said while Jenn continued to pepper kisses across my stomach.

She hummed into my skin and tugged the T-shirt higher until the demi-cups of my bra appeared. Her mouth remained latched to my abs while her fingers ran over the tops of my breasts.

“She could never get my bra off either,” I mused. I slipped my hands beneath my head in place of a pillow. “It was like she’d never seen one before.”

Jenn’s attentions stilled, and she hovered above me, holding herself up on her forearms as if in a frozen pushup.

“Think you can not talk about ex-girlfriends right now?” she stated seriously, cocking her head to the side.

“I know. I’m sorry. Shutting up now,” I said with an apologetic smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”

Jenn rolled off of me.

“Where are you going?” I pouted again.

She sat on the edge of the mattress. “You talk a lot during sex, Harp. It’s kind of a turn off.”

I frowned. “I’ll keep the stories to myself from now on.” I tugged my shirt back into place and hopped out of bed.

“Where are you going now?” she complained.

“I’ll be right back,” I excused myself. “I need to wash my face. I feel like I brought half of the dirt from the playground home with me.”

I closed the bathroom door behind me and turned on both the hot and cold faucets. The sound of the bursting water rushing down the sink filled my ears. I stared at myself for a few moments in the mirror over the sink before opening the medicine cabinet located behind the glass pane.

My eyes were greeted with the familiar sight of toothbrush, contact solution, and toothpaste. I kept few items in the medicine cabinet; the majority of my morning rituals were in the linen closet to the right of the sink. Unhooking a hidden, secondary hinge, the false front to the medicine cabinet swung open to reveal small shelves lined with an assortment of medicine bottles.

Outside of the bathroom I heard Jenn cuing up music on my laptop, and I recognized the first song—Charlie Parker’s “Relaxin’ at Camarillo.” I had become a big fan of Bird’s music in high school partly because I could empathize with his turbulent and curtailed life. He’d written the song after a stint at Camarillo State Hospital in the summer of 1946 after he’d set fire to his Los Angeles hotel room and had run naked through the lobby. He’d spent the next six months at Camarillo detoxifying, playing in the hospital band, and tending to a lettuce patch. He had been twenty-six at the time, only a few years older than I currently was.

I reached for a bottle and opened it and removed two small, white pills. I’d become obsessed with everything dealing with my mother’s condition starting in high school. I’d stopped short of self-medicating, however, only because other prescription drugs were more readily available than antipsychotics. But even though I’d never taken them, I was far more familiar with their names and side effects than any healthy, hale, twenty-something should have been.

I stared at the circular medicine in the palm of my hand and, hesitating, put them back into the translucent orange pill bottle like I’d done each time before. I closed both doors to the medicine cabinet—the secondary door, as well as the main mirrored front. The tears that pricked the corners of my eyes were a surprise, and I struggled to suppress the sudden sense of sorrow and despair that had wallowed up my throat, choking me like a goiter.

CHAPTER TWO

I read the text message from my girlfriend and chewed on the knuckle of my pointer finger, something I hadn’t done since I was little. My mom had once scared me into believing I’d grow up with grotesquely shaped teeth if I continued the habit. I’d been too young at the time to decide if misshapen teeth was something I wanted, but my mom had painted it in such negative terms that I’d had no choice but to believe it to be true.

Jenn’s text message from the morning filled me with a variety of emotions, but mostly guilt:
Thanks for the great weekend. Hoping for more time with my “best friend” soon.

Our weekend hadn’t gone as planned. I’d wanted to be completely attentive, knowing that it was probably my last free weekend until winter break, but I’d continued to be preoccupied with thoughts of my mother. Senior year was going to be challenging enough without this added worry. How had she known to find me in Chicago? And what were the odds she would have called the police station where Mr. Henderson worked? It all seemed too unlikely—too coincidental. I was sure that Jenn had noticed my distraction, but she wasn’t one to rock the boat. She usually allowed me these small anxieties without incident.

“Is this seat taken?”

I looked up from the screen on my phone. My eyes met warm, inviting irises, the color of hazelnuts. I had arrived at my first class of the day much earlier than necessary. I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the science buildings, and being late to class, especially on the first day, wasn’t an option. Most of the other students in my class must have had the same idea because nearly all of the lab tables in Introduction to Human Anatomy were filled.

“Uh, no.”

I stood up from my lab stool so quickly that it nearly toppled over. The legs screeched against the old linoleum of the classroom floor. I could feel my classmates’ eyes on me, and my cheeks burned at the attention.

The girl who’d spoken to me was beautiful: sunny blonde hair that curled at the ends just before it touched the top of her shoulders, a perfect upturned nose, and high, elegant cheekbones. She wore a sundress and light cardigan that traveled three-quarters of the way down her arms. Her pale knees peeked out from the bottom hem of her dress. Even without the wheelchair she looked fragile like a dancer—long limbed, willowy, and vulnerable.

I felt an odd, unexpected urge like I needed to protect her.

“Should I move this chair someplace else?” I felt helpless, unsure of what to do. The lab table was slightly elevated and if the girl wheeled into the space where the lab chair was currently positioned, the rectangular table would be too high for her wheelchair. But it wasn’t like she could sit on the rotating stool, could she?

She gave me a rueful smile, almost as if she could read my thoughts. “I’m not going to be using it.”

I shoved the spare chair out of the way to make room for my new table partner. I moved my notebook and textbook more on my side of the long table even though it wasn’t really crowding the other girl’s side.

“Thanks.” She maneuvered her wheelchair so she was positioned parallel to me. As I’d suspected, the table was a few inches too tall, and it made me uncomfortable from my lofted chair.

“I’m Raleigh, by the way,” she greeted.

“Harper,” I replied.

“Harper Lee.
To Kill a Mockingbird
.” She regarded me and cocked her head to the side. “I love that book.”

I grimaced. That always seemed to be people’s first reaction when I told them my name. “I’ve never read it,” I admitted.

“Really?”

“Never got around to it.”

I flipped my notebook open and wrote the date on the first page. I’d never been good at small talk. When I didn’t know what else to do, I traced the tip of my pen back over the date and wrote it again.

“Are you a biology major?” she asked.

“No. Are you?” I didn’t look away from the lines of the college-ruled notebook. I kept writing over the date, again and again, making the letters and numbers bloated and nearly unreadable.

I could vividly remember the pride I’d felt when I’d purchased the multi-colored pack of spiral-bound notebooks with their narrower than usual printed lines. I’d done it. I’d gotten out of Memphis. I’d made it to college.

When I thought about my decision to move to Chicago after high school it still seemed like an unlikely decision. But if I’d wanted to truly divorce myself from my life back in Memphis, it had made sense. Plus, it wasn’t as if Chicago was some remote northern outpost.

“I’m an English major,” she said.

I finally looked away from my notebook after realizing it would be the polite thing to do. I set down my pen with purposefulness to keep from wearing a hole through the notebook page. “Do you want to teach?” I asked.

The girl shrugged delicately. “I don’t know. I like books. But I figure I’ve got time to figure it out.”

I nodded as if she had said something revealing or profound. I didn’t know how to continue the conversation, but thankfully our professor stepped into the room and started class so I didn’t have to.

+ + +

Lauren smelled like a mix of coconut and warm vanilla, and I resisted the desire to bury my face in her hair and take a long sniff. She wasn’t my closest friend at college, but I had to admit she gave the best hugs. She pulled back from the friendly embrace and held me at arm’s length. “There’s something different about you,” she said, her eyes roaming up and down my form.

“Not unless you think I got fat.”

She pinched my side. “No. That’s not it. Try again.” Her eyes still scrutinized me.

“No new haircut, no new hair color,” I shrugged. “I’ve got nothing.”

“There’s something,” she said with a shrewd look. “I'll figure it out. Hey, there’s Maia,” she observed, waving her arms to get our friend’s attention from across the university cafeteria. A computer had randomly chosen them to room together at the start of freshmen year. You’d be hard pressed to find two people more different, but for some reason it had worked.

I watched Maia maneuver her way around the growing crowds to reach us and the table we’d eaten at nearly every day since freshman year. We didn’t always snag the same spot, but we generally sat in the immediate vicinity so we could find each other.

“Hey guys,” Maia greeted, broadly smiling. “Is Kelley coming?” she asked as she sat down with her plastic tray.

“Yeah, she texted me she’d be a little late,” I said, taking a seat as well. “Her class right before lunch is on the other side of campus or something.”

The four of us had been inseparable since freshman year when we’d all lived on campus, but now that Kelley and I lived in off-campus apartments and with everyone busy with classes, jobs, and internships, we didn’t get to spend as much time together as we had our first year of school. Lunch was the one hour a day, however, when we got to catch up on what was going on in each other’s lives. Even on weekdays when I didn’t have class I made it a habit to come to campus to see them.

Lauren was still standing. “Does Harper look different to you?”

Maia’s attention returned to me and her dark eyebrows knit together. “I don't think so? Why? Should I be noticing something?”

“Lauren’s being weird. Don’t pay attention to her,” I dismissed. “How was your summer?” Lauren’s insistence that something was different about me was unsettling, and I was more than happy to change the subject.

“It was awesome. I ate my weight in Mexican.” Maia patted at her flat stomach. Her Texan drawl was out of place in the Midwest, but unlike what I assumed other people from her home state were like, there was nothing showy or boastful about her. She liked reading comic books more than having conversations with real people, and a more genuine, selfless friend you’d never find.

“I’m sure you did.” Lauren wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and finally sat down in an empty chair. “We all know what a big taco fan you are.”

Lauren reminded me of the Mean Girl who’d ruled my old high school, but college in the big city had effectively put her in her place. She was still a little abrasive and always said whatever was on her mind, but that was one of the reasons I liked her. You never had to worry about Lauren talking about you behind your back; she said everything to your face, filter free.

Maia gasped and slapped her roommate’s arm. “Not like
that
, you perv.” Maia was a lesbian, too, but in all the years I’d known her, she’d never dated anyone seriously. She seemed content to fan-girl over attractive female celebrities and write fanfiction. Tumblr was her girlfriend.

“Uh huh,” Lauren idly played with her food. “What about you, Harper? Did you get your fill of tacos over break?”

“Stop it. You know she’s with Jenn,” Maia censured.

“Well, I’ve never met this Jenn person,” Lauren pointed out. “She could be fake for all we know.”

Maia’s eyes trained on me. “Yeah, when
do
we get to meet this mystery woman?”

“Hey guys!” Kelley’s voice rose above our current conversation, and I was grateful for her timing. Out of the three it was Kelley with whom I was the most close. We’d been matched to cohabitate freshman year and it had worked out so well that we’d roomed together again the next year. We’d both decided to live off campus our junior and now our senior years, but sleepovers had still been frequent up until this summer when I’d started dating Jenn.

“Everyone, this is Raleigh.” Kelley jerked her head in the direction of the blonde girl in the wheelchair whom I’d met a few hours earlier. “We have World Literature together. She just transferred here, so I invited her to sit with us.”

“Lauren, move your tray,” Maia instructed.

We shuffled our belongings and our bodies to make room for the two newcomers. Lunch trays were collaborated and phones were put away.

Raleigh maneuvered to the end of the table where the built-in seating wouldn’t get in the way of her chair. “Hi, Harper,” she greeted.

My lips twitched. “Hey.”

“You guys know each other?” Kelley asked, looking between us.

“We had anatomy together this morning,” I supplied.

“So now we’re old friends,” Raleigh added with a smile.

“What year are you?” Lauren asked.

“I’m technically a senior,” Raleigh said. “But it’ll probably take me an extra semester to graduate.”

“You transferred your senior year?” Maia wondered aloud. “That’s rough.”

Raleigh pulled a packed lunch out of the backpack that hung on the handles of her wheelchair. “My parents convinced me to transfer because Chicago has better resources for my rehabilitation. I’m staying with my aunt out in the suburbs.”

“So what happened to you?” Lauren asked. “Why can’t you walk?”

“Lauren!” both Kelley and I exclaimed. Despite my similar curiosity, I was horrified and embarrassed by Lauren’s usual lack of subtlety.

“You don’t just
ask
that,” Maia hissed, dark eyes flashing.

“No, it’s fine,” Raleigh insisted. “Usually people just stare at me and whisper behind my back.” She seemed to appraise Lauren with a new look of appreciation. “It takes the really brave ones to actually ask me that question.”

“See?” Lauren said, tilting her nose in the air. “She doesn’t mind.”

“So what happened?” I leaned forward. I didn’t want to appear too eager, but my curiosity was winning the battle over propriety.

“I was in a car accident,” she said. “A truck blew through a red light and t-boned my car.”

“That’s horrible,” Maia sympathized.

Raleigh shrugged elegantly beneath the thin material of her cashmere cardigan. “I was texting. I probably would have still gotten hit, but if I hadn’t been so focused on my phone, maybe it would have turned out differently.” She barked out a humorless laugh. “I’m a walking PSA—well,
rolling
, is more like it.”

“Well, welcome to the University of Chicago,” Maia grinned.

“Where fun came to die,” Kelley added.

Lauren snorted and absently played with a French fry on her plate. “And where the only thing that goes down on you is your GPA.”

I cleared my throat and looked down at my barely-touched meal. My friends were fun, but they could also be a little inappropriate at times—especially Lauren.

Lunch continued in that format with Lauren asking Raleigh penetrating questions that I thought were inappropriate for a lunch conversation. But despite my initial discomfort, I found myself hanging onto every word that came from her painted pink mouth, wanting to know every detail about the girl who had sat beside me in anatomy. Raleigh patiently answered each question with good humor; I would have melted underneath all of that concentrated attention, and I found her resilience to be admirable.

Raleigh carefully returned her lunch bag to her backpack. “Thanks for the company,” she said, “but I’ve got to get going. I have a meeting with the registrar to make sure my credits transferred.”