(You) Set Me on Fire (19 page)

I was there the day he moved in, kind of helping him move and kind of bumming even more notes off him (a habit that would continue through the rest of the semester).

+ number cck“Adjusting his papers on his new desk, Jonathon explained that it was a fallacy that engineering students were the hardest working on campus. “There have been studies of music students, actually, because of their immensely high stress levels. It’s what you might refer to as an ironically grim reality that these people who are learning music, as it were, uplifting melodies, are also the most driven and the most often driven insane.”

“Hopefully none of these people will pee on your door,” I noted.

“Yes, I thought of that as well, although I must say that if any of these students were to attempt to, as it were, ‘relieve’ themselves on my door,” Jonathon remarked, “I could certainly take them down, so to speak.”

Okay. Yeah. Suffice to say. After a long and bumpy road of awkward interactions, Jonathon was kind of growing on me.

“Well,” I said, catching a glance at a sloth-like boy dragging what looked like a trombone case down the hall, “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

The first thing Jonathon did when he moved in was cover all his mirrors with maps, hand-drawn maps of fake place rooms.

NINETEEN

Sing out one last time

If Carly was happy when Shar and I stopped being friends, she never said anything about it to me. Which is pretty cool when you think about it; I mean, if anyone had the right to an “I told you so” it was Carly. But she never even asked why Shar and I stopped speaking or hanging out. I’m sure she had a pretty good idea as to the why, though, based on what Jewel said and the rumours about the (two) fires that were still circulating.

A couple days after the Trident fire, when I went to pick her up to go to Cultural Studies, I asked if I could come to the next film club meeting. Carly had a bunch of blue dye in her hair and it had crusted over like a plate of leftover blue spaghetti.

She paused and I had this moment where I thought maybe she was still just a little bit pissed at me because of what happened when we’d gone for
coffee. I mean, she’d have every right to be. I’d been super mean to her.

“Or if it’s a problem,” I blurted, “forget it.”

Carly sighed. “No, no! I mean, OF COURSE you can come. I’m sorry. I’m kind of fried today. I’m just, you know, in the middle of some drama … Uh. Never mind. Yeah. TOTALLY. Come tomorrow, we’ll be working out stuff for our next shoot.”

“It won’t be weird that I haven’t been to anything before?”

Carly shook her hair-fused head. All around her room, tacked onto the movie posters I’d seen earlier, were photos of zombies in bright green Technicolor.

“Are those photos from the party?” I asked, pointing.

“Yeah. They’re great, right?”

“I need to redecorate,” I sighed. It was something I’d meant to say in my head.

“You should. You should totally redecorate,” Carly mused. “I mean, seriously, this is college, Allison. It’s a time to pick new favourites, to try everything on. You know? Practise a little self-liberation. Some RADICAL EXPERIMENTATION.”

This from the girl who showed up at my door the first day looking like a high school cheerleader. I
tried to imagine what it must feel like to change the way Carly seemed to have changed. Like, REALLY change.

“Fuck,” she trilled, “I gotta get my notes together. Hold on a sec.”

One of the pictures was of Carly and a tall girl with long gre+90 screamen hair like ivy falling down one side of her face and shoulder. They were standing in front of a huge papier mâché zombie, a roaring creature with a huge head and spindly arms jutting forward. All around them people were frozen in expansive dance moves. The tall girl was wearing white painter pants and a bright pink sweater. In the picture Carly looked happy, resting her head on the girl’s shoulder, her arm wrapped around her waist.

“Is that your girlfriend or something?” I asked.

Carly stood and looked at the picture. Then she let out a long sigh. “Sort of. I mean, yeah. That’s Lila. But. It’s complicated.”

I recognized the pants, the same ones Carly was wearing that day in the coffee shop.

“She’s got a girlfriend. I mean, and I’ve got a boyfriend, sort of, too. It’s whatever. It’s hard. I mean, it kind of always is with me and like, LOVE. I suck at love.”

“Maybe everyone sucks at love,” I mumbled.

“Maybe.”

Leaning in closer to the photo, I spotted a familiar face amongst the other dancing figures, a mop top of curly orange hair, intricate blood-red eye makeup.

“Hey. That’s Jewel, right?” I pointed.

“Yeah. That’s Jewel,” Carly said. “So you do know her?”

“Yeah. I mean, yeah. I think I did meet her. Talking with the Patties. A while ago.”

It seemed like ages ago.

“Who are the Patties?” Carly chuckled.

“Never mind.”

Staring at the photo, it occurred to me that the day I met Jewel was the day Shar and I had our big fight. Wait. Was that true? Yes. Was it possible that Shar had been so pissed that day because she’d seen me talking to Jewel and the Patties?

Carly put her hand on my back. “We should get going if we’re going to make it to class.”

Overall I would say that Carly was a pretty awesome friend, like, especially those first few weeks after I stopped talking to Shar. Carly would kind of loosely
shadow me around campus, checking in to make sure I wasn’t all curled up in a ball or anything.

It was strange to be doing stuff without Shar, to feel the physical absence of Shar. Not that she was completely GONE. Like, even though she wasn’t actually around me anymore, it still sort of felt like she was … there. Somehow. I’d feel her. In the library in the French history section, in the hallway late at night. Lots of places.

I’d heard she was still seeing that guy Jer, although I never saw them together. Jonathon said he’d heard that Shar told Jer we’d had “lesbian sex.” I guess straight guys find that kind of thing really hot.

The last time I spoke to Shar was about a month after the Trident fire. It was a Thursday night, and I was heading back to dorm after a film club meeting, where I’d just been made the official boom operator for the
To Zombie, with Love
sequel,
P.S. Zombie Loves You
.

I remember it was one of those damp post-winter nights where all the street lamps form pools of reflected light on the pave+O">OHment. It was cold and wet and I was walking fast when I spotted Shar ahead of me, her thin shape a shadow in the near distance, eight or nine legs ahead.

I probably could have swerved to avoid her. Taken a longer or a parallel route. Instead I caught up to her at the intersection, touched her shoulder.

She weaved, bounced from my touch, back and then forward, before looking over at me with lidded eyes. She looked different. Not like a new person or anything, obviously, because it hadn’t been that long. Just different. Like a photocopy of the person I used to know. Her makeup was smudged down under her bottom lashes and her hair was a tangle, shaken by a clumsy hand.

Maybe it was just the light.

“You,” she said. “Ha! Fire starter.”

“No,” I said unconvincingly.

“Not that I care, Allison.”

“How’s your new boyfriend?” My voice evaporated as soon as it left my lips.

“OH. He’s fah-bulous, thanks. He was homeless for a while, thanks to you, but he’s fabulous now. Doesn’t he seem fabulous?”

“I guess. If you like that type.”

The light changed. Instead of crossing, Shar teetered over to the building on the corner and leaned back against the wall.

“Sooo how are you?” she hiccupped as she rooted through her pockets. “You know what? Fuck it. Don’t answer. I don’t care. I hate you.”

“I’m sorry, YOU hate ME? What does that mean?”

I watched as Shar slowly, laboriously, pulled a smoke from a crumpled pack. The tips of her fingers were chewed up, wrinkly like old carrots.

“You know,” she finally slurred, jamming the pack back in her pocket, “I remember that first time I saw you, all covered in puke. On that hill by the frat house. You looked SOOOOO PATHETIC. And you said you didn’t have ANY friends. Remember? And I looked at you and thought, THIS person will be my friend. You know? I just looked at you. And I thought, yes. This person will be there for ME.”

“Because I was covered in puke and lonely?”

“No.” Shar shook her head violently. “NO, it wasn’t even true that you didn’t have friends, was it? Y’ad SUPERSTAR. You’re lucky I got you anyway. You’re lucky and I’m not. Because you’re all the same. You all fuck off eventually. So. Fuck you all.”

“That’s not true.” I watched the flame from her lighter dodge around her cigarette, endlessly missing its target. “I didn’t do anything! You fucking hooked up with the jock, you told me you don’t like girls. I lo— I cared about you and you just LEFT!”

“Oh I see! So you didn’t do ANYTHING? HA! Blah blah blah, Allison. Like you never do ANYTHING.”
Everything I said she twisted, tore in two, threw back at me. “That’s not what I’m saying, Shar!”

“HEY! DON’T act all innocent with me.” She looked up, eyes black. “You were getting ready to BETRAY ME. YOU were looking for dirt on me. Hanging out with that bitch+s not cck“ JEWEL! Hooking up with that midget cheerleader. Fucking Rattles told me you were all hanging out with her.”

“What?” My face got hot. I stepped toward Shar. Her head was back against the wall, her eyes closed. My heart pounded, expanded. Ridiculous. “Shar, that’s not what happened. I didn’t betray you! I wasn’t going to leave. I wasn’t going anywhere! That doesn’t even make sense!”

I was standing about a foot away, my hand reaching out, almost touching the skin of her wool coat, when her eyes opened.

“Shar, why did you lie?”

“Lie?”

“About …”

About everything, I wanted to say, not even sure what that meant.

Shar took a long drag, smiled a soft smile.

“You wanna know something? You know what I said
to Rick that night I smashed his fucking ugly Jeep in the parking lot of Hal’s Amazing Donuts? I said, ‘If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have cared.

So there was no baby. So what?’ And he was like, ‘Well. If I did care, I don’t care anymore.’” The smile evaporated. “Fucker.”

“Shar.”

“He broke my heart. He deserved what he got. I gave him what he deserved. And you.” Pointing her smouldering cig at me, Shar narrowed her eyes. “You broke my heart too.”

“This is what you get to do when your heart is broken?”

“You all deserved what you got. Enjoy your new wounds, Allison. Consider them a fucking parting gift.”

And she walked off, up the sidewalk.

“HEY!” I shouted.

She spun around and gave me the finger, and walked away.

It’s possible to still be heartbroken and yet happy to see someone go.

I watched her disappear into the haze. Until she was gone.

It occurred to me, standing in the dark, that it was maybe hypocritical for me to ask Shar about why she lied while not admitting that I had lied too.

I had this brief idea that maybe the reason Shar lied, about everything, was maybe not all that different from why I’d lied about Anne, about Anne and me. Because I wanted to be someone else, if only to one person.

It’s just a theory.

The only person I ever talked to about Shar was Jonathon. In addition to being kind of funny, when he wasn’t nervous and therefore acting weird, Jonathon turned out to be a really good listener.

A couple days after my final shouting match with Shar, Jonathon and I were eating wings in his dorm’s (disgusting) rec room and I kind of laid out the whole story. I skipped the part about how I’d set fire to Jer’s room, because Jonathon is a bit of a do-gooder at heart, I think, and maybe he’s also the sort of person who would turn a (fairly new) friend in to the authorities if he believed she was an arsonist.

“Your friend Shar sounds extremely insecure,” Jonathon noted.

“Maybe,” I said.+O">OH

“I’d say she seems sad. And dangerous,” he added.

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask? Are you over her, do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s complicated. I don’t want to be her friend. Anymore. But I still feel this urge to talk to her sometimes. Mostly because I’m mad that it’s all so messed up. I’m mad that after all that, most of what I know is still just bits of the truth and lies.”="body-text_4"

EPILOGUE

Joan of Arc

Thanks to Jonathon, and the fact that, once Shar was gone from my life, I had nothing to do BUT school work, I managed to get most of my shit together for the second half of second term. I mean, technically I was pretty much fucked because I’d missed most of my first classes, first papers, and first tests. But for the last two months I worked my butt off and got EVERYTHING done. Like, every paper. Not that they were genius or anything. I don’t think anyone expects a freshman to be genius. I think mostly all they want is for us to show up and … not set ourselves on fire.

I did write what I thought was one intensely kick-ass paper for my Women’s Studies class. It was on Joan of Arc, about how different people have interpreted her life: her heroic accomplishments and her death,
which may have also been heroic depending on your perspective on these things.

Basically, Joan of Arc was this regular-type French girl who started hearing voices when she was thirteen years old. She figured the voices were God talking to her. She decided to be a virgin, or stay a virgin. Then she decided to save France, or at least help this one guy who she thought was supposed to be the king of France. Then she got screwed over by the system and these people sold her to some English people. Then she was accused of being a witch, and they had a trial, which she lost (of course), and then, finally, they burned her at the stake.

Afterward, as in, after she was burned and dead, she got a retrial and they decided that she wasn’t a witch after all. And they made her a martyr instead.

Not that Joan got to rise from the ashes and enjoy her new-found freedom or anything, because she was DEAD.