Finding Dell (18 page)

The drive home from the restaurant was slow and careful. The twinkling lights from the city blurred gently in the rear-view mirror as we edged away from skyscrapers into suburban sprawl.

When Cam forced the Saturn up the incline of my driveway, I twisted to look at him. He eased the car to a stop. The drive had taken longer than usual; I wondered if he drove slowly because the roads were slick or because he wanted to spend more time with me. He had taken me to a steakhouse with wood-fire ovens and intimate booths in River North. When he pulled a few crisp twenties from his wall to pay the bill, I couldn’t help but imagine his grandma carefully tucking the same bills into a Christmas card just days before.

I placed a gloved hand on his arm. “Tonight means so much to me.”

In the dark car, I couldn’t make out his features well. I felt sure he’d turn to kiss me, but he stared at me searchingly from across the armrest and didn’t make a move. He kept a hand on the gearshift.

Reluctantly, I gripped the door handle and stepped into the cold night. I stood at the door for a long moment while I watched him back down the driveway and turn the corner.

When I opened the front door, my mom stood in the dark hallway in her bathrobe and bare feet.

“Did you kiss him?” she demanded.

“Jesus! How long have you been standing here?”

“Long enough to know you didn’t kiss.”

My mom walked to the door and stood on her toes to peer out the window. I hung my coat in the closet and laughed.

“You should give him a call right now and ask him to come
back. He’s probably still in the neighborhood.”

“Since when do you want me to kiss more guys?”

“Not more guys. This guy. He’s cute and he likes you. You should have kissed him.”

My mom disappeared into the living room of our split-level ranch, leaving me alone in the dark hallway with my thoughts.

I wondered why she didn’t ask if
he
kissed
me
. Then I realized that after all that had happened between us, I would have to be the one to make the next move.

Around midnight, I called Cam.

“Are you home?”

He sighed. “Yeah. It took forever, though. It started to snow on my way back and I had to be really careful because I know my car needs a brake job.”

“Oh.” I was silent for a moment. “I had a really good time tonight.” I paused again. “When you left, my mom said I should have kissed you goodnight. And I realized she was right. I should have kissed you. Cam, I . . . I want to be with you.” I hesitated. “I think we should be together.”

The silence on the other end of the phone was unbearable. I looked out the window at the swirling snow. The sky always seemed to glow orange when it snowed. Maybe it was the hazy glow around the streetlights.

“I think we should be together, too.”

I smiled, and I could tell Cam was beaming on the other end of the phone while he also sat in his childhood bedroom. Maybe he was looking out the window at the same orange sky, heavy with snow, too.

CHAPTER 20

“MY ANIMAL NUTRITION
class is in Bailey Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I won’t be able to meet up for lunch. But my stable management class ends just before noon on Mondays and Fridays, so we can meet at Georgian Grande on those days,” Natalie said, running her finger along a sheet of paper that outlined her spring schedule.

It was late Sunday afternoon and the sun was already starting to set, casting our room in a dim glow. Natalie had flown back from San Diego in the morning, and now we were sprawled on our beds discussing our schedule for the second half of our sophomore year.

“That should work,” I said, reviewing my schedule. “If I leave at quarter to one on those days, I can just make it to my art history lecture in time. What’s your latest class on Fridays?”

Natalie sighed. “I have wildlife administration and policy lecture that ends at four on Fridays. You?”

“That’s not so bad. There will still be time to take a nap before dinner when you get home,” I said. “I have an excellent Friday schedule. My only class is typography, and it’s in the
morning. I’ll probably spend those afternoons in the library so I can finish my homework before the weekend.”

“You’re so lucky,” Natalie said, rolling over on her back. She let her schedule flutter to the ground. “Why do we have to go to class? Why can’t we just live here and go to parties all the time?”

I laughed. “I think we go to enough parties as it is, Nat.”

“No such thing as too many parties,” Natalie said. She rolled back onto her stomach and propped her chin in her hands and faced me. “When does Cam get back?”

“This afternoon, I think,” I responded distractedly. I flipped through my day planner to find a campus map, consulting it to locate Carroll Hall. My cognitive psychology lecture would be held there twice a week.

“What do you mean,
you think
?” Natalie asked. “You two are dating now, so you should know where he is. Are you planning to see him tonight? This is your first night as a couple in the same town.”

I traced my finger from Paso Fino to Carroll Hall on the map and tried to calculate the shortest walking route. If I cut through the woods and took the bridge, I could make it there in under fifteen minutes.

“Probably not. But I’m sure we’ll see each other sometime this week, or at least, on the weekend.”

“The weekend?” Natalie screeched.

I looked up at her in surprise. She pulled a pillow from her bed and tossed it at me.

“Next weekend is a week away. Dell, you finally gave up and gave in and now Cam is your boyfriend. You’re going to actually have to see him if you want to call him that. Unlike when you were still trying to call Will your boyfriend the first week back at school when he wouldn’t return your calls or texts.”

I pushed her floral pillow from my open sheaf of papers and
looked down, willing myself not to cry at the reminder of Will.

“What do you mean,
‘gave up’
?” I asked quietly.

“You just never really had any romantic interest in him while he was chasing you last semester. Then when things didn’t go well at the lights parade with Will, you basically decided to date Cam by default.”

Natalie pushed herself up from her bed and moved across the room to look in her closet.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, flipping through shirts and blouses, “I think it’s normal to want a boyfriend. But you can’t really deny that you gave into his dating pressure finally because you realized that Will isn’t interested anymore. Do you think this shirt would look good for dinner at Georgian Grande tonight?”

I scribbled on the edge of my schedule and blinked away tears. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling for a moment before speaking. “Yeah, that shirt is fine,” I said, but my voice choked.

Natalie glanced over her shoulder at me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh,” she said. Her face was strained, as if she was actively trying to be nicer to me this semester. Maybe she’d made a New Year’s resolution.

“It’s just that, sometimes, with your personality, you remain in relationships too long because you feel a sense of obligation or something,” she continued. “I just want to make sure you’re not confusing, like, loyalty, with a sense of duty. Because you’re not required to date Cam just because he’s been chasing you for so long.”

When she mentioned loyalty, I realized I felt my own loyalty to her slipping away with every sentence she said. She was smug as she reviewed herself in the mirror, brushing her long shiny hair repetitively.

“I’m dating Cam because I like him and I want to.”

Natalie met my eyes as she stared in the mirror. “That’s all I wanted to hear you say.”

A gentle knock at the door interrupted us and I was grateful for the distraction. It was Helen. Her blond hair was unusually blunt, like she’d just gotten a haircut before returning to school, and I could tell she was wearing a new sweater she’d gotten from her parents for Christmas.

“Hey, y’all. You ready for some Southern cookin’, good lookin’?” she said with a wink and a laugh. “Let’s get over to Georgian Grande while we’ve still got first choice of all the food.”

The line at Georgian Grande was long and slow-moving; the lethargy of winter break hadn’t yet lifted.

“If I’m lucky,” said Helen, “I’ll get to have a single room now, like Ruby. I’d hate if I got a new roommate that I didn’t like. I guess I’d just have to put my big girl panties on and deal with it, but still.”

“Is Bernie participating in a study abroad program?” Natalie asked.

“No, she just decided to take a semester off to travel after her grandpa died.”

Natalie scrunched her nose. “That’s just like Bernie, to act without thought of consequence and abandon her responsibilities. Any normal person would have applied to a study abroad or transfer program rather than dropping out of school.”

“I think there’s a romance about it, the way she’s following her dreams,” I said, eager to defend Bernie.

“You sound just like her.” Natalie rolled her eyes. “I feel like you’re one step away from telling me I’d be a more integrated human being if I lived my truth or some Bernie bullshit like that.
After all that time you spent together last semester, she must have rubbed off on you.”

Natalie’s turned to examine the photos of horses on the wall instead of meeting my eye and I realized she was jealous of Bernie.

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” I challenged.

Natalie ignored me and lifted a finger to one of the photos near her, tracing the shapes of the equestrian with her finger. She trailed her finger off the photo and slowly walked down the hallway, enveloping herself in the line, leaving Helen and me behind.

Helen touched my arm gently. “I’m going to miss her, too, Dell,” she said. “Bernie considered you a good friend.”

“Then why did she leave without telling me?” I asked. I thought there would be a touch of anger in my voice, that it would be crisp around the edges, but instead it wavered with vulnerability.

“She didn’t want to hurt you more than she had to. She cried when she wrote you that letter. And you know Bernie, she’s a tough cookie. She rarely cried,” Helen said. “She was going to wait for you to come home. But she knew you were at Will’s, and . . . oh, it’s not relevant now.”

“What, Helen?”

“She knew you were at Will’s and she said she didn’t want to see you when you came home. She said something—it was so Bernie-like—she said she didn’t want to see the struggle in the cocoon, she just wanted to see the butterfly later. Or something like that.”

“Did Bernie say that it wouldn’t work out with Will?”

“Dell, you know Bernie,” Helen drawled. “I don’t know what she means half the time. She babbled on about auras the whole time she packed. Take it with a grain of salt.”

Helen placed her hand on my back and urged me forward to meet the advancing line. We walked slowly to the entryway.

“We can dissect Bernie-isms when we walk to our psychology lecture,” Helen said. “I’ll meet you by your room tomorrow to walk to Carroll Hall together?”

I nodded mutely. I wondered what color my aura was now, but somehow I knew that if it had returned to normal Bernie would have told me. For all that she talked about trusting in the universe and waiting for fate to reveal its plans, it seemed she was always one step ahead of me in knowing my destiny.

Carroll Hall was one of the most recognizable buildings on Seneca’s campus, with an iconic domed roof of red Spanish tiles and copper trim. Bronze statues of collegiate founders lined the symmetrical walk to the arched doorways.

If it were Will standing beside me instead of Helen, looking comically petite in her oversize coat, I wondered if he’d tell me about the architecture of the building.
Neoclassical, with a touch of Roman influence
, I could hear him say in my mind.

“Can you help?” Helen called, interrupting my thoughts.

She was struggling to open the heavy glass door, tugging on it with a single arm while her boots slid on the slick ice.

Our cognitive psychology lecture was held in Carroll Hall’s auditorium. Inside, cold sunlight seeped through the windows and set the draped red curtains on fire.

“Dell, down here,” a familiar voice called.

I scanned the auditorium to see Tennessee waving from the third row. Helen and I trotted down the shallow steps to reach him, sliding into the plush seats with relief.

“Happy holidays,” Tennessee said.

“Christmas was weeks ago. You’re a little belated.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not celebrating the King’s birthday,”
Tennessee said. “It’s a holiday in Memphis. Today’s Elvis’s birthday celebration at Graceland. They serve cake, but I’m honoring him in my absence.” Tennessee held up a soggy sandwich, flattened by the books in his backpack.

“Peanut butter and banana,” Helen said, her Southern accent strong to match Tennessee’s drawl. “Elvis’s favorite.”

On the stage below, Professor Leach began to speak, his voice commanding attention from the students scattered around the auditorium.

“In this course, we’ll discuss the study of memory, thinking, attention and perception. As you read through the coursework, you may find yourself in a chicken-and-the-egg conundrum. As in, what came first, the thought or the study of the thought? And that, my friends, is the dizzying beauty of cognitive psychology.”

Professor Leach wore an elegant gray suit coat stretched across his broad shoulders. He was tall and his gray hair was carefully combed into a swoop on his forehead. The hair at his temples was a sharp snow white, offsetting his rimless eyeglasses.

He walked down the low stairs leading from the stage gracefully and handed out warm copies of a freshly-printed syllabus.

I scanned the syllabus with dismay. The last thing I needed to do during my fresh-start semester was dive back into my memories.

I drew to a term near the bottom of the page: metacognition, the thoughts that a person has about their own thoughts. I tapped the paper contemplatively. If Professor Leach could teach me how to regulate my thoughts and steer them to a more future-focused outlook, then it was worth the credit hours.