The Symptoms of My Insanity (13 page)

“So, did Marcus tell you about last night?” Jenna asks me, shaking her head.

Marcus and I quickly turn to her, and then to each other.

“About Cathy’s latest plan? She wants to fix me up with the son of some woman from her book club.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t tell her.” Marcus sifts through his flashcards.

“Fixing you up?” I assess my map template, almost ready to cut it out now.

“Yeah. Cathy wants to fix me up with this guy named Jenson. Jenson,” she repeats the name at half speed. “Sorry, Cathy, but Jenna and Jenson? I mean what was she thinking?”

“So we
did
say the art room!” Meredith rushes inside, her strawberry blond ponytail swinging, a laptop bag over her shoulder. “I was in yearbook. I couldn’t remember if we said art room or yearbook.”

“Oh, sorry!” Marcus jumps off his stool. “No, we did say yearbook, but I totally forgot that I—”

“No worries, we can work here, it’s fine.” Meredith plops her bag down on a table, waves at me, and gives Jenna a small smile.

“Work here on what?” I ask, heading to the back shelves to grab some plywood.

“My photos, remember?” Meredith then turns to Marcus. “Miss S. was saying I should make some sort of mosaic, but we’re gonna mess with them a little, right, Marcus? You’re going have to show me how to—”

“So Jenna and Jenson,” Jenna repeats to Marcus and me as if Meredith never arrived. “What was my mom thinking?”

“What?” Meredith blinks her long lashes at Jenna. Marcus fills her in.

“Our mom,” he tells her, “she was trying to set Jenna up with a guy named Jenson.”

“Oooh. That’s so funny.” Meredith grins and opens up her laptop.

“Ugh, Jenson.” Jenna shakes her head and crumples a piece of newspaper in her hands as if she’s trying to disintegrate it. “He’s probably one of those annoyingly annoying people who says things like ‘That’s so funny’ instead of actually laughing.”

Meredith snaps her head to Jenna, who turns to Marcus and me as if we should back her up on that observation. Marcus just rummages around in his bag for something, and I turn to Meredith, who remains straight-faced, pretending she didn’t get the jab.

“Are those yours?” I ask her. “Those are really good.” And they are. My eyes catch the slide show of photos loading on her computer.

“Thanks,” Meredith says, her smile returning. “That means a lot coming from you.”

“Oh, well, I’m not a photographer. Wow, you must have taken pictures of almost everyone in our class.”

“Yup, more or less. Oh look, there you are.” Meredith points as the slide show pauses on a picture of me sketching in one of the study alcoves. “That was last year, and the light … I just had to snap it. You looked so pretty.”

Pretty? My hair is in a wonky bun and I have charcoal all over my nose. My mom is right—I do go to school looking like I just rolled out of a cardboard box.

“You’re so photogenic, Izzy,” she adds.

I whoop out a laugh, and then clear my throat. “No. I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. It’s not fair.”

I respond by getting up and heading to the storage closet.

“And you have the best body,” Meredith calls out.

“What?!” I almost drop the mini hand saw I’m carrying back.

“Shut up, don’t act like you don’t know. I’d kill for your boobs. You’d look hot in this top.” She gestures down to the purple scoop-neck she’s wearing.

“I would look … obscene in that top.”

“No way. You would look gooood in this top. You always wear such big stuff. It’s such a complete waste, right? Jenna, don’t you agree?”

“Nope, I like Izzy’s clothes.”

“No, I’m not saying I don’t like her clothes.” Meredith turns back to me. “I’m just saying you have such a hot body, you should show it off more. Right? Marcus, doesn’t Izzy have like the best body?”

Marcus’s head pops up from behind the newspaper stack and he clears what sounds like a Leroy-strength hairball from his throat before saying, “Um … yeah it’s … the best.”

I turn around to clip my template onto the plywood, feeling like the skin on my cheeks could melt marshmallows.

“So, we should probably work on some of your photos before the hour’s up,” Marcus tells Meredith, clearing his throat again and gathering his binder and flashcards. “We should go to yearbook, though—we need their computer.”

“Okay.” Meredith nods, closing up her laptop.

“Sorry Izzy, I forgot that I arranged to—”

“Oh no, go ahead. Bio can wait,” I say in a way that I
guess is funny because it makes Marcus laugh. I watch them walk out, the studio door closing behind them with its usual dull crash.

Why is Meredith still being so friendly? I already agreed to our fake sleepover on Saturday, so why is she complimenting me on my boobs, and telling me I’m photogenic? I turn to Jenna, shaking my head, half laughing. “That was weird, right? Meredith being … so nice?”

Jenna just looks up at me, raises one eyebrow, and answers, “Please don’t start wearing tacky scoop-neck shirts.”

I laugh, and then see that she’s taken a break from her newspaper ripping and is now doodling in Robert Stern’s sketchpad.

“Don’t forget to rip that out,” I tell her, and then not being able to keep it in a second longer, I burst out with, “So, don’t you want to hear my news?”

“Oh. Yes, please. Your text this morning was very cryptic. ‘Blake update! Ahhh!’” she reads back to me, laughing, but cutting her eyes back to Robert’s sketchpad.

“Yeah … well …” I can’t suppress my grin as I start carefully sawing through my plywood.

“Ooooh. Wow, wait, I can tell just by looking at your face. You had sex.”

“What? No! What are you— Are you serious?”

“No, I was kidding. Relax, calm down your scrunch face.”

“We kissed, though.”

Jenna snaps her head up to me, and then goes back to her doodling with a “Wow.”

“Yeah. Last night. We kissed in my driveway.” I hear my voice rising in pitch but I can’t help it. “Well, he kissed me. But I kissed him back. We kissed!”

“Wow …” Jenna repeats, ripping out her doodled page. “Is that all?”

I’m not sure what kind of reaction I expected from her, but this wasn’t it. “Um … well yeah. I guess that’s all.”

“I thought it was gonna be something indecent like … you had sex in the attic.”

“Yeah, like I’d have sex with Blake, who’s not even my boyfriend, in my house with my mom a floor away.” I grab some balled-up papers from the pile and start to tape them onto the wood.

“Oooh, I’m Izzy, I’m so perfect I don’t have sex with boys unless they’re my boyfriend-slash-soon to be husband.” She giggles and I throw a ball of newspaper at her. “So are you coming over Saturday night or not? I have to let Cathy know which brownies to make.”

“I can’t, remember? Meredith’s coming over to go to that party.”

“Oh, right,” Jenna says, now making her own scrunch face.

“But I was thinking maybe … of maybe going too, actually.” I add some more paper dimension to my map, trying to match the shape on my laptop screen.

“No way. Really?” Jenna’s features wrinkle further.

“Yeah. And you’re coming with us! You’re always wanting me to go out to parties, so now we can—”

“Yeah no, no thanks.”

“Come on. Why? I know Meredith can be a little—”

“No thanks. Not really into those parties anymore.” Jenna shrugs as if that’s something I should know already.

“What does that mean?” I pull my computer closer, about to zoom in again on my map when something blinks in the corner of the screen. My mom’s left one of her support group chat rooms open again.

“I’m just not interested in hanging out at U of M … after what happened with Amy.”

“Who?” I open up Mom’s support group window and start scrolling through the conversations, scanning for any new vocabulary, or topics that I haven’t seen covered. I’m just a lurker, like Mom. That’s what they call web people who are members of groups who don’t ever chat or post things. Which is why I almost fall off my stool when I see a recent post from
LindaSky46.

“Amy, my cousin?” Jenna moves her hands across the tabletop gathering the balls of newspaper into a neat pile. “I’ve definitely mentioned her before. She’s a sophomore.”

“At U of M?”

“Yeah, she transferred in from Wisconsin this year. She was up here last summer getting settled and stuff and I stayed with her a few times. Remember?”

“No, but … I guess I didn’t realize you were hanging out with your cousin. I thought you were going up there with your creative writing class.”

“I was, but I stayed with Amy.”

“Oh. Okay. So …”

And then Jenna starts telling me something about how Amy was set up with this guy by one of her friends, and that she ended up going to this orientation party with him in September and they ended up having sex in a basement. “But she liked him, and she wanted to do it, you know?” Jenna adds.

“Uh-huh,” I say, but I’m not really listening because I’m reading my mom’s post and right now I can hardly speak, let alone translate the sounds coming from Jenna’s mouth into English.

The past couple of months. Difficulty in digesting my food.
I keep scroll-ponging back and forth between those two lines. I need to get up, to pace, but instead I just sit here calmly, hoping it still looks like I’m studying map images.

“… so I was up on campus the weekend she was with the guy, ’cause our writing class had our showcase that night at Motts Café. Remember? I was reading that prose poem I
wrote about if Samuel Beckett made Maya Angelou dinner?”

I struggle to get some words out to Jenna. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go to that reading.”

“No, whatever, you had your mom and stuff. Anyway, I stayed with Amy that night, and the next morning she was … crying and stuff …”

What the heck is gastroparesis? Trouble digesting her food? What does that even mean? She’s not supposed to have trouble yet; the whole point of the surgery last summer was to stop the trouble, so she could get stronger.

“… because it was all a big joke … Izzy?”

“Yes. What?”

“It was all a big joke,” Jenna repeats.

“What was a joke?”

“The guy. Liking her. Sleeping with her. Everything, basically. Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, yeah, your cousin Amy, sex, in the basement, joke.” I nod at Jenna, trying to focus.

“Um … yeah, okay. So, it turns out he just had some bet going, some game he was playing with his friends, like sleeping with girls, getting them to do stuff—like this list—checking girls off lists like they’re things that you need to pick up at the store.”

“Oh. Wow.” And I’m looking right at her, but all I see is that post from my mom.

“Yeah, so, I’m still just really disgusted with the whole thing, you know? And I haven’t really wanted to go to any stupid parties up there anymore.”

“Well … yeah, that makes sense … okay.” I nod.

“Okay? That’s your whole response, ‘okay’?”

“What? No, I’m sorry. I—”

“God, Izzy, it’s like you’re not even listening at all.”

“No, I am! I’m sorry I’m … I’m just a little distracted. There’s just … there’s a lot going on right now and I just saw this—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re always distracted. There’s always something going on.”

“I’m sorry. And I am really sorry about what happened to Amy. That’s so terrible and I—”

“Forget it, it’s fine. It’s not even a big deal really.” She picks up her box of invites and heads for the door.

“Jenna, I’m sorry,” I call after her. She turns around and gives me a small smile. “No worries, flaky girl. Get your work done. I’ll see you at rehearsal.” The studio door closes with a clang-thud. I sit there, very still, staring at the door for I don’t know how long. Then I pick up my half-finished map. Then I set it back down on the table. Then I walk to the table next to me. I lean forward slightly, studying my fractured reflection in the mirror. Then I turn back to my computer screen, clicking back and forth between the map image and my mom’s support group screen.

The rest of the hour passes, but kind of without me. I don’t finish the foundation for my map, or figure out what to do with that mirror. I just sit there on my stool. I just sit there, and read Mom’s post over and over and over again.

I’m trapped in a lighting booth trying to go over cues with Derrick Hunter, who’s working the spotlight. Except he’s in the middle of a love spat with Emily Belfry that’s making my lunch come up. Or maybe reading about how one’s lunch comes up via gastroparesis on Syptomaniac earlier is the real cause of my queasiness.

“Babycakes, I have to kiss Curly in the show, but I’m only acting,” Emily says again for the trillionth time.

“I know, Sugarmuffin. But I have to sit here, night after night, watching you suck face with that moron and it makes this Babycakes very jealous.”

“Aw Pumpkinnugget, you’re so cute when you’re jealous.”

Nope, it’s them. I’m pretty sure they’re solely responsible for my nausea.

“Sorry to interrupt.” I finally step between them.

“We’re kind of in the middle of a talk,” Emily informs me, her upturned, girlfriend-smile souring into its I’m-tasting-bitter-air shape.

“So Derrick,” I continue, turning away from Emily and
handing him a binder. “I have these new lighting cues for you. Jenna wrote them all down again because I guess you’ve been missing a bunch. She wanted me to go over them with you, so—”

“Oh, sweet.” He runs one hand through his greasy black hair and takes the binder from me with the other. “Yeah, there are too many cues in this show,” he informs me, as if that’s an excuse to just not light someone while they’re singing a solo on a darkened stage. Then he starts talking about how the lighting system in the theater needs an upgrade and something about flimsy gel frames and how it’s not his fault the equipment isn’t working. I nod at him, my head feeling especially heavy, full from reading about gastroparesis and all the concerned, informative, but mostly alarming support group responses from my mom’s post.