Just One Day (14 page)

Eighteen

S
omehow, using the same we’re-adults-you-have-to-treat-us-that-way argument from the
Beer Dinner, plus promising to hire a hotel-approved taxi for the entire night, Melanie
and I manage to procure parental permission to go to that New Year’s Eve party. It’s
being held on a narrow crescent of sand, all lit up with tiki torches, and at ten
o’clock, it’s already slamming. There is a low stage on which the touted Mexican reggae
band will play, though right now a d.j. is playing techno.

There are several giant piles of discarded shoes. Melanie tosses off her bright-orange
flip-flops. I hesitate before taking off my less conspicuous black leather sandals,
hoping I’ll find them again, because if I lose anything else, I swear I will never
hear the end of it.

“Quite the bacchanal,” Melanie says approvingly, nodding to the guys in swim trunks
holding bottles of tequila by the neck, the girls in sarongs with their hair freshly
cornrowed. There are even actual Mexicans here, the guys smartly dressed in sheer
white shirts, hair slicked back, and the girls in fancy party dresses, cut up to there,
legs long and brown.

“Dance first or drink first?”

I don’t want to dance. So I say drink. We line up at the packed bar. Behind us is
a group of French-speaking people, which makes me do a double take. There’s hardly
anyone but Americans at our hotel, but of course people from everywhere come to Mexico.

“Here.” Melanie shoves a drink into my hand. It’s in a hollowed-out piece of pineapple.
I take a sniff. It smells like suntan lotion. It is sweet and warm and burns slightly
going down. “Good girl.”

I think of Ms. Foley. “Don’t call me that.”

“Bad girl.”

“I’m not that either.”

She looks peeved. “Nothing girl.”

We drink our drinks in silence, taking in the growing party. “Let’s dance,” Melanie
says, yanking me toward the ring of sand that has been allocated as the dance floor.

I shake my head. “Maybe later.”

And there’s that sigh again. “Are you going to be like this all night?”

“Like what?” I think of what she called me on the tour—
adventure averse
—and what she said at the pool. “So like
me
? I thought that’s what you
loved
about me.”

“What is your problem? You’ve had a stick up your ass this whole trip! It’s not my
fault your mom is Study-Hall Nazi.”

“No, but it is your fault for making me feel like crap because I don’t want to dance.
I hate techno. I have
always
hated techno, so you should know that, what with me being so reliably me.”

“Fine. Why don’t you be reliably you and sit on the sidelines while I dance.”

“Fine.”

She leaves me on the perimeter of the circle and goes off and just starts dancing
with random people. First she dances with some guy with dreadlocks and then turns
and dances with a girl with super-short hair. She seems to be having a fine time out
there, swirling, twirling, and it strikes me that if I didn’t already know her, she
would no longer be someone I would know.

I watch her for at least twenty minutes. In between the monotonous techno songs, she
talks to other people, laughs. After a half hour, I’m getting a headache. I try to
catch her eye, but I eventually give up and slip away.

The party stretches all the way down the curve of the water—and into it—where a bunch
of people are skinny-dipping in the moonlit sea. A little way’s farther down, it gets
more mellow, with a bonfire and people around it playing guitar. I plant myself a
few feet away from the bonfire, close enough to feel its heat and hear the crackle
of wood. I dig my feet into the sand; the top layer is cool, but underneath it’s still
warm from the day’s sunshine.

Down the beach, the techno stops, and the reggae band takes the stage. The more mellow
bump-bump-thump
is nice. In the water, a girl starts dancing on a guy’s shoulder, pulls off her bikini
top, and stands there, half naked like a moonshine mermaid, before diving in with
a quiet splash. Behind me, the guys on guitars start up with “Stairway to Heaven.”
It mingles strangely well with the reggae.

I lie down in the sand and look up at the sky. From this vantage point, it’s like
I have the beach all to myself. The band finishes a song, and the singer announces
that it’s a half hour until the New Year. “New Year.
Año nuevo.
It’s a tabula rasa. Time to
hacer borrón y cuenta nueva
,” he chants. “One chance to wipe the board clean.”

Can you really do that? Wipe the board clean? Would I even want to? Would I wipe all
of last year away if I could?

“Tabula rasa,” the singer repeats. “A new chance to start over. Start fresh, baby.
Make amends. Make ch-ch-changes. To be who you want to be. Come the stroke of midnight,
before you kiss your
amor,
save
un beso para tí
. Close your eyes, think of the year ahead. This is your chance. This can be the day
it all changes.”

Really? It’s a nice idea, but why January first? You might as well say April nineteenth
is the day that everything changes. A day is a day is a day. It means nothing.

“At the stroke of midnight, make your wish.
Qué es tu deseo?
For yourself. For the world.”

It’s New Year’s. Not a birthday cake. And I’m not eight anymore. I don’t believe in
wishes coming true. But if I did, what would I wish for? To undo that day? To see
him again?

Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don’t even let
myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do. I picture him right here, walking
down the beach, hair reflecting in the flames, eyes dark and light and full of teasing,
and of so many other things. And for a second, I almost see him.

As I open myself to the fantasy, I wait for the accompanying clench of pain. But it
doesn’t come. Instead my breath slows and something warms inside me. I abandon caution
and all good sense and wrap myself in thoughts of him. My own hands circle around
my chest, as if he were holding me. For one brief moment, everything feels right.

“I thought I’d never find you!”

I look up. Melanie is striding toward me. “I’ve been right here.”

“I’ve been looking for you for the last half hour! Up and down the beach. I had no
idea where you were.”

“I was right here.”

“I looked everywhere for you. The party’s getting totally out of control, like roofies-in-the-punch
wild. Some girl just puked six inches from my feet, and guys are hitting on me with
the worst pickup lines in the world. I’ve had my ass pinched more times than I can
count, and one charming guy just asked me if I wanted a bite of his sandwich—and he
wasn’t talking about food!” She shakes her head as if trying to dislodge the memory.
“We’re supposed to have each other’s backs!”

“I’m sorry. You were having fun, and I guess I just lost track of time.”

“You lost track of time?”

“I guess so. I’m really sorry you were worried. But I’m fine. Do you want to go back
to the party?”

“No! I’m over it. Let’s leave.”

“We don’t have to.” I look toward the bonfire. The flames are dancing, making it hard
to pull my gaze away. “I don’t mind staying.” For the first time in a long while,
I am having an okay time, I’m okay being where I am.

“Well, I do. I’ve spent the last half hour panicking, and now I’m sober, and I’m beyond
over this place. It’s like a Telemundo frat party.”

“Oh, okay. Let’s go then.”

I follow her back to the shoe piles, where it takes ages for her to find her flip-flops,
and then we get into our waiting taxi. By the time I think to look at the dashboard
clock, it’s twenty past twelve. I don’t really believe what the singer said about
midnight wishes, but now that I’ve missed mine, I feel like I should’ve tried before
the window of opportunity closed.

We ride home in silence, save for the cab driver softly singing to his radio. When
we pull into the gates of the resort, Melanie hands him some bills, and for a minute,
I get an idea.

“Melanie. What if we hire this guy in a day or two and go off somewhere, away from
the tourists?”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“I don’t know. To see what would happen if we tried something different. Excuse me,
señor, how much would it be for us to hire you for a whole day?”

“
Lo siento. No hablo inglés.
”

Melanie rolls her eyes at me. “I guess you have to be satisfied with your one big
adventure.”

At first I think she means this party, but then I realize she means the ruins. Because
I did actually manage to get our families to visit a different ruin. We went to Coba
instead of Tulum. And just as I’d hoped, we stopped at a small village along the way,
and for a moment there, I’d gotten excited, thinking this was it, I had actually escaped
into the real Mexico. Okay, my whole family was in tow, but it was a Mayan village.
Except then Susan and my mom went crazy buying beaded jewelry, and the villagers came
out and played drums for us, and we all were invited to dance in a circle and then
there was even a traditional spiritual cleansing. But everyone was videoing everything,
and after his cleansing, my dad “donated” ten dollars to a hat that was conspicuously
put in front of us, and I realized that this was no different from being on the tour.

The condo is quiet. The parents are all in bed, though as soon as the door closes
Mom pops out of her bedroom. “You’re early,” she says.

“I was tired,” Melanie lies. “Good night. Happy New Year.” She pads off toward our
room, and Mom gives me a New Year’s kiss and goes back to hers.

I’m nowhere near tired, so I sit out on the balcony and listen to the dwindling sounds
of the hotel’s party. On the horizon, a lightning storm is brewing. I reach into my
purse for my phone and, for the first time in months, open the photo album.

His face is so beautiful, it makes my stomach twist. But he seems unreal, not someone
I would ever know. But then I look at me, the me in the photo, and I hardly recognize
her, either, and not just because the hair is different, but because she seems different.
That’s not me. That’s Lulu. And she’s just as gone as he is.

Tabula rasa
. That’s what the reggae singer said. Maybe I can’t get my wish, but I can try to
wipe the slate clean, try to get over this.

I allow myself look at the picture of Willem and Lulu in Paris for a long minute.

“Happy New Year,” I tell them.

And then I erase them.

Nineteen

JANUARY

College

T
wo feet of snow fall in Boston while I’m in Mexico, and the temperature never rises
above freezing, so when I get back two weeks later, campus looks like a depressing
gray tundra. I arrive a few days before classes start, with excuses of getting prepped
for the new semester, but really because I could not handle being at home, under the
watchful eye of the warden, one day longer. It had been bad enough in Cancún, but
home, without Melanie to distract me—she took off for New York City the day after
we got back, before we got a chance to ever resolve the weirdness that had settled
between us—it was unbearable.

The Terrific Trio comes back from break full of stories and inside jokes. They spent
New Year’s together at Kendra’s family’s Virginia Beach condo and went swimming in
the snow, and now they are ordering themselves Polar Bear T-shirts. They’re nice enough,
asking about my trip, but I find it hard to breathe with all that bonhomie, so I pile
on my sweaters and parkas and trudge over to the U bookstore to pick up a new Mandarin
workbook.

I’m in the foreign languages section when my cell phone rings. I don’t even need to
look at the caller ID. Mom has been calling at least twice a day since I got back.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Allyson Healey.” The voice on the other end is high and winsome, the opposite of
Mom.

“Yes, this is Allyson.”

“Oh, hello, Allyson. This is Gretchen Price from the guidance office.”

I pause, breathing through the sickening feeling in my stomach. “Yes?”

“I’m wondering if you might like to stop by my office. Say hello.”

Now I feel like I’m going to throw up right on the stacks of
Buon Giorno Italiano
. “Did my mother call you?”

“Your mother? I don’t think so.” I hear the sound of something knocking over. “Damn.
Hang on.” There’s more shuffling and then she’s back on the line. “Look, I apologize
for the last-minute notice, but that seems to be my MO these days. I’d love for you
to come in before the term starts.”

“Umm, the terms starts the day after tomorrow.”

“So it does. How about today, then?”

They are going to kick me out. I’ve blown it in one term. They know I’m not a Happy
College Student. I don’t belong in the catalog. Or here. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

That tinkling laugh again. “Not with me. Why don’t you come by—hang on.” There’s more
shuffling of paper. “How about four?”

“You’re sure my mother didn’t call?”

“Yes, Allyson, I’m quite sure. So four?”

“What’s it about?”

“Oh, just getting-to-know-you stuff. I’ll see you at four.”

Gretchen Price’s office is in a crowded corner of the ivy-covered administration buildings.
Stacks of books and papers and magazines are scattered everywhere, on the round table
and chairs by the window, on the love seat, on her messy desk.

She is on the phone when I’m ushered in, so I just stand there in the doorway. She
gestures for me to come inside. “You must be Allyson. Just move a pile off the chair
and take a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”

I move a dirty Raggedy Ann doll with one of the braids chopped off and a stack of
folders from one of the chairs. Some of the folders have sticky notes on them:
Yes
.
No
.
Maybe
. Paperwork slips out of one. It’s a printout of a college application, like the one
I sent in a year ago. I shove it back into the folder and put it on the next chair.

Gretchen hangs up the phone. “So, Allyson, how’s it going?”

“It’s going fine.” I glance at all the applications, all the comers who want a spot
like mine. “
Great
in fact.”

“Really?” She picks up a file, and I have the distinct impression my goose is cooked.

“Yep,” I say with all the chipperness I can muster.

“See, the thing is, I’ve been looking at your first-term grades.”

I feel tears spring to my eyes. She lured me here under false pretenses. She said
I wasn’t in trouble, it was just a getting-to-know-you session. And I didn’t fail.
I just got Cs!

She looks at my stricken face and motions for me to calm down with her hands. “Relax,
Allyson,” she says in a soothing voice. “I’m not here to bust you. I just want to
see if you need some help, and to offer it if that’s the case.”

“It’s my first term. I was adjusting.” I’ve used this excuse so much I’ve almost come
to believe it.

She leans back in her chair. “You know, people tend think that college admissions
is inherently unfair. That you can’t judge people from paper. But the thing is, paper
can actually tell you an awful lot.” She takes a gulp from one of those coffee cups
that kids paint. Hers is covered in smudgy pastel thumbprints. “Having never met you
before, but judging just from what I’m seeing on paper, I suspect that you’re struggling
a bit.”

She’s not asking me
if
I’m struggling. She’s not asking
why
I’m struggling. She just knows. The tears come, and I let them. Relief is more powerful
than shame.

“Let me be clear,” Gretchen continues, sliding over a box of tissues. “I’m not concerned
about your GPA. First-term slides are as common as the freshman fifteen. Oh, man,
you should’ve seen my first-semester GPA.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Generally,
struggling students here fall into two categories: Those getting used to the freedom,
maybe spending a little too much time at the keg parties, not enough time in the library.
They generally straighten out after a term or two.” She looks at me. “Are you pounding
too many shots of Jägermeister, Allyson?”

I shake my head, even though by the tone of her question, it seems like she already
knows the answer.

She nods. “So the other pattern is a bit more insidious. But it’s actually a predictor
for dropouts. And that’s why I wanted to see you.”

“You think I’m going to drop out?”

She stares hard at me. “No. But looking at your records from high school and your
first term, you fit a pattern.” She waves around a file, which obviously contains
my whole academic history. “Students like you, young women, in particular, do extraordinarily
well in high school. Look at your grades. Across the board, they’re excellent. AP,
science classes, humanities classes, all As. Extremely high SAT scores. Then you get
into college, which is supposedly why you’ve been working so hard, right?”

I nod.

“Well you get here, and you crumple. You’d be surprised how many of my straight-A,
straight-and-narrow students wind up dropping out.” She shakes her head in dismay.
“I hate it when that happens. I help choose who goes here. It reflects badly on me
if they crash and burn.”

“Like a doctor losing a patient.”

“Great analogy. See how smart you are?”

I offer a rueful smile.

“The thing is, Allyson, college is supposed to be . . .” 

“The best years of my life?”

“I was going to say nourishing. An adventure. An exploration. I’m looking at you,
and you don’t seem nourished. And I’m looking at your schedule. . . .” She peers at
her computer screen. “Biology, chemistry. Physics. Mandarin. Labs. It’s very ambitious
for your first year.”

“I’m pre-med,” I say. “I have to take those classes.”

She doesn’t say anything. She takes another gulp of coffee. Then she says. “Are those
the classes you
want
to take?”

I pause. Nobody has ever asked me that. When we got the course catalog in the mail,
it was just assumed I’d tackle all the pre-med requirements. Mom knew just what I
should take when. I’d looked at some electives, had mentioned that I thought pottery
sounded cool, but I may as well have said I was planning on majoring in underwater
basket weaving.

“I don’t know what I want to take.”

“Why don’t you take a look and see about switching things up a bit. Registration is
still in flux, and I might be able to pull some strings.” She stops and pushes the
catalog clear across the desk. “Even if you do wind up pre-med, you have four years
to take these classes, and you have a lot of humanities requisites to get in too.
You don’t need to jam everything together all at once. This isn’t medical school.”

“What about my parents?”

“What
about
your parents?”

“I can’t let them down.”

“Even if it means letting yourself down? Which I doubt they’d want for you.”

The tears come again. She hands me another tissue.

“I understand about wanting to please your parents, to make them proud. It’s a noble
impulse, and I commend you for it. But at the end of the day, it’s your education,
Allyson. You have to own it. And you should enjoy it.” She pauses, slurps some more
coffee. “And somehow I imagine that your parents will be happier if they see your
GPA come up.”

She’s right about that. I nod. She turns to her computer screen. “So, let’s just pretend
we’re going to jiggle some classes around. Any idea of what you might like to take?”

I shake my head.

She grabs the course catalog and flips through it. “Come on. It’s an intellectual
buffet. Archaeology. Salsa dancing. Child development. Painting. Intro to finance.
Journalism. Anthropology. Ceramics.”

“Is that like pottery?” I interrupt.

“It is.” She widens her eyes and taps on her computer. “Beginning Ceramics, Tuesdays
at eleven. It’s open. Oh, but it conflicts with your physics lab. Shall we postpone
the lab, and maybe physics, for another term?”

“Cut them.” Saying it feels wonderful, like letting go of a bunch of helium balloons
and watching them disappear into the sky.

“See? You’re already getting the hang of it,” Gretchen says. “How about some humanities,
to balance you out? You’re going to need those to graduate anyway as part of your
core curriculum. Are you more interested in ancient history or modern history? There’s
a wonderful European survey. And a great seminar on the Russian Revolution. Or a fascinating
American Pre-Revolution class that makes excellent use of our being so close to Boston.
Or you could get started on some of your literature classes. Let’s see. Your AP exams
tested you out of the basic writing requirement. You know, we could be devilish and
slip you into one of the more interesting seminar classes.” She scrolls down her computer.
“Beat Poetry. Holocaust Literature. Politics in Prose. Medieval Verse. Shakespeare
Out Loud.”

I feel something jolt up my spine. An old circuit-breaker long since forgotten being
tested out and sparking in the darkness.

Gretchen must see my expression, because she starts telling me about how this isn’t
just any Shakespeare class, how Professor Glenny has very strong opinions on how Shakespeare
should be taught, and how he has a cult following on campus.

I can’t help but think of
him
. And then I think of the tabula rasa. The resolution I made on New Year’s. The fact
that I am pre-med. “I don’t think I’m supposed to take this class.”

This makes her smile. “Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to
do is by doing the thing you’re
not
supposed to do.” She taps on her keyboard. “It’s full, as usual, so you’ll have to
fight your way in off the wait list. Why not give it a shot? Leave it up to the fates.”

The fates.
I think that’s another word for accidents.

Which I don’t believe in anymore.

But I let her register me for the class just the same.