Fragmented (5 page)

Once inside my apartment, Jenn headed directly for the bathroom to commence her dental hygiene ritual, while I unpacked the contents of my school bag onto the kitchen counter.

“Are you hungry?” I called out.

“I can always eat,” she replied through the closed bathroom door.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter with an incoming text message:
I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be in class tomorrow after all. I had to reschedule physical therapy.

My forehead furrowed at the message. I didn’t recognize the number or the out-of-state area code.
Who is this?
I typed out.

The girl in the wheelchair.

I shook my head and chuckled out loud without meaning to.
You could have said it was Raleigh
, I replied.

Another message blipped back:
I didn’t want you to mistake me for someone else. Who knows how many Raleighs are in your life?

I can honestly say you’re the only one.
I chewed on my lower lip as my fingers flew over the text messaging board.
How did you get my number?

I e-mailed your friend Kelley to get it. I didn’t want you to freak out about getting my notebook back to me tomorrow.

Heavy steps echoed on the wooden floorboards and Jenn re-appeared out of the bathroom.

“Who’s that?” she asked around her floss.

I shoved my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. “My friend Kelley. She wanted to know if I had an extra copy of a book she needs for World Literature.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to lie when the truth was harmless.

“Kelley, huh? Think I’ll ever get to meet her?”

“Maybe I like keeping you all to myself,” I countered with a cheeky grin. “Hey, speaking of meeting my friends, did you get my text today about finding a girl for my friend Maia?”

Jenn nodded. “Yeah. Is she a dog?”

“No,” I bristled. “She’s really cute.”

“How cute?”

“I don’t know. She’s cute,” I shrugged. Maia was lovely, but I’d never looked at her as anything but a friend. “She’s Latina, has a cute Texas accent. Likes computers and video games.”

Jenn tapped her fingers to her lips, looking thoughtful. “Sounds hot. Maybe I should upgrade from a Harper to a Maia.”

“Be my guest,” I snorted.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Jenn complained. “It’s like living in a tomb.” She grabbed the cord for the vinyl window shades and tugged. “Are you a vampire or something?”

I quickly crossed the apartment to reach the window and pulled the shades closed again. “I don’t want people peeping in here. Haven’t you ever seen
Rear Window
?”

“Never heard of it.”

“I want them closed. I don’t need people across the street getting a show.”

Jenn licked her lips. “What kind of show might they be getting?”

I rolled my eyes. My girlfriend’s libido was insatiable. Most of the time I found it endearing, but sometimes her one-track mind grated on me. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“I’ll finish you off, babe,” she assured me with a cheeky smile. “When have I not?”

“I just mean we should to go to dinner.”

Her hands fell to my hips. “Let’s skip it,” she said, lowering her voice. “We can find something to eat in your fridge later.”

“No, we have to go out,” I insisted. “I haven’t been grocery shopping in weeks. There’s nothing but ketchup and olives in there.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Fun ruiner.”

Her words pulled out my frown. “I’m fun,” I protested.

Jenn grabbed her bag from the foyer and started for the front door. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

Our walk to dinner was quiet and thick with tension. I didn’t know why she was giving me the cold shoulder simply because I was hungry. She was being unreasonable and overreacting.

“Did you have a bad day at school or something?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“No.”

“Then why are you being a brat?”

“I’m not a brat,” she stubbornly insisted. “You just annoy me sometimes.”

I stopped on the sidewalk. “I annoy
you
?”

I probably wouldn’t have noticed the car if it hadn’t been so loud. The paint was a glossy candy-apple red, and the engine rumbled noisily. My street, like most residential streets in the city, had massive speed bumps every few hundred feet and it forced cars to slow down unless they wanted to lose a few car parts along the way. Jenn and I weren’t with much urgency to get to our dinner spot, but it was as if the red vehicle refused to pass us.

Jenn noticed the car lagging behind, too. “We should give them a show,” she whispered into my ear.

I pushed her away, but not hard. “When did you turn into an exhibitionist?”

She stood with her hands on her narrow hips. “Take a picture, buddy!” she hollered at the car’s driver. “It’ll last longer.”

I grabbed onto her arm and dragged her down the sidewalk with me. “Are you kidding me?” I censured lowly. “You don’t yell at people in cars.”

“Why not?” she blustered. “If they’re gonna be rude, I’m gonna be rude right back.”

“They could have a gun or something.”

“Not in this neighborhood,” she snorted.

Technically Jenn was only a few months younger than me, but in many ways she seemed significantly younger. Or maybe I simply felt older than that. The issue was, she’d never really experienced any hardships. Like the majority of students I met in Chicago, she’d grown up in a lily-white suburb with two parents in an upper-middle class home. We had little in common in regards to background. I wondered what other students wrote about in their college entrance exams about their most life-defining experience.

The car’s engine roared and the wheels shrieked as rubber spun against wet pavement.

Jenn crowed when the vehicle zipped past us and turned a corner out of sight. Her arm wrapped tightly around my waist and she pulled me to her until our hips bumped together. “See, babe? I’ll protect you.”

The tea lights housed in red vases flickered and made strange shadows on the checkerboard tablecloth. Jenn regarded me seriously from across the table for two. “Will you come home with me this weekend?”

I arched an eyebrow and took a bite of my pizza. The restaurant we ended up at, only a few blocks from my apartment, specialized in Chicago-style pizza. I preferred thin crust to the deep-dish style, but as a native Chicagoan, Jenn swore by the stuff. The restaurant was kind of a dive, but it was off the beaten path and overlooked by most tourists, which suited me just fine.

“It’s my grandma’s ninetieth birthday on Friday, and there’s going to be a party at my parents’ house on Saturday night,” Jenn explained. “It would be the perfect time to introduce you to everyone.”

“If you want your grandma to have a ninety-first birthday, I should probably stay home.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” she insisted.

“I don’t know; it sounds a little overwhelming meeting all of those people at once. Why don’t we start off small and have me meet your parents first?” I suggested. “Then if that goes well, you can drag me to a family reunion.”

Jenn frowned in disappointment. “But they all know about you. I talk about you all the time.”

“Even to your grandma?”

“Well, no.”

“I don’t want to take away from her special day.”

“What if you come and I introduce you as a friend from school?” she proposed. “It might be kind of hot, sneaking off without them knowing.”

“I can think of nothing less sexy than fooling around at your grandma’s birthday party.”

“Okay, fine,” she relented. “But promise me you’ll meet them soon. It’s important to me.”

“I’ll meet all of your people,” I reassured her. “But let’s not force it, okay? It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen.”

Jenn’s hand crossed the table to cover mine. At the familiar touch, my eyes darted to the dark corners of the restaurant. When my eyes returned to her mouth, her smile was gone.

“Really?” she said, disapproval dripping from the single word. “Even
that’s
too much?”

I slipped my hand out from beneath hers and laid it on my lap. “I don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. You know I don’t like people looking at me,” I explained. “Even if you were a guy, I’d have a hard time holding hands in public.”

I wasn’t closeted. The people with whom I was closest knew I was gay. But I didn’t like people looking at me. What was wrong with wanting to actually keep my private life private? 

“Well, it makes me feel like shit, Harper—like you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.” I could feel eyes on us as Jenn’s voice rose in frustration, the one thing I’d wanted to avoid.

I dropped my tone to compensate for Jenn’s elevated volume. “That’s not it at all.” I reached under the table, hidden from view, and squeezed her knee. “Can we talk about this later?”

Her nostrils flared. “Fine. But we
will
talk about this. I’m suffocating in this closet with you.”

We never did talk about it. I knew we wouldn’t as long as I kept her mouth busy doing things other than talking. It was manipulative to be sure, but this wasn’t something that could be remedied with words. Jenn could try to convince me to be more comfortable with PDAs, but I didn’t ever see that happening. I wasn’t built that way. My relationships were my own business, not anybody else’s.

Lying in bed, I could hear the sounds of the city: police sirens, the screeching wheels of the L train as it turned corners, and cars honking at pedestrians who dared to disobey the streetlight signage.

Careful not to wake Jenn up, I grabbed my phone off the end table and left the bed to sit in the window seat that overlooked the one-way street in front of my apartment complex. With my own apartment cloaked in darkness, I could stare out the window without anyone seeing me.

I pulled up my recent contacts list and sent a text message:
Are you awake?

I looked up from my phone and back outside. Nearly all of the windows in the apartments across the street were dark or shuttered.

No. I’m sleeping.

Her response brought a smile to my face.
Do you have plans for the weekend?

That depends. Is doing homework considered a plan?

Not a very good one,
I typed back,
but I won't tell Lauren you're boring like the rest of us.

I appreciate that
, Raleigh returned
. I wouldn't want to disappoint her.

I hesitated only briefly before sending the invitation.
If you want a break from your exciting life, I'm meeting up with the lunch crew downtown for the Great Chicago Fire Festival.

What’s that?
she asked.

Everyone gets drunk and cheers while city employees set things on fire.

Sounds like party. I'll text you if I decide to come out.

Across the street, a light clicked on in one of the buildings, and I saw a figure standing in an open window. Because of the distance I couldn’t make out any discernable features, only a broad silhouette.

The person wasn’t doing anything; just standing. After a few moments the light turned off and the other apartment was blanketed in darkness. I stared for a while longer at the darkened window. The only light on in my apartment came from the glow of my cell phone screen. I didn’t think they could see me sitting in my window seat, but I pulled the blinds closed just in case and returned to bed.

Jenn rolled over in bed, but she didn’t wake up. Her arm slinked around my waist and she tugged me closer. I shut my eyes and tried to fall asleep, tried to clear my head, and tried to not feel suffocated by the arm draped over my body.

CHAPTER FOUR

Chicago lore recalls that on the night of October 7, 1871, Mrs. Catharine O’Leary’s cow kicked over a kerosene lantern, sparking the hay underfoot, and giving rise to the Great Chicago Fire. Nineteenth-century Chicago had been a timber box, just waiting for a spark. The pine forests of neighboring Wisconsin and Michigan had supplied the wood that not only made up the buildings, but also paved the streets and sidewalks. The resulting fire raged on for more than a full day, destroying four and a half square miles of the city. People were incinerated and limestone foundations turned to ash. Hundreds of people lost their lives in the fire and some 100,000 were left homeless. Naturally, a century and a half later, the city would find a way to create a festival celebrating one of the greatest fire disasters in American history.