Chapter 3
With his own homecoming less than a week a way, Thomas was passing all of what would have been his free time stuffing colored pieces of tissue paper through chicken wire. As a pledge in the fraternity he had the privilege of spending at least twenty hours working on the homecoming display. The one bright spot in all the monotony was the fact that his fraternity had partnered with the Kappa Deltas.
Thomas was discovering that if misery loves company, it especially loves it when the company is as attractive as Jessica Anderson. They had hit it off a week ago while working on the display and had scheduled to work the same shifts all week. He made a point to remember her name. She was a sophomore and had changed majors over the summer from finance to psychology. This seemed to sum up her life, and was all he felt that he needed to know, apart from the fact that she was gorgeous and seemed to like spending time with him. He felt quite content, having reduced the two decades of joys, hurts, loves, and hates that she had lived through into something he could understand: sophomore, psychology, Kappa Delta.
They had Dr. Bowman’s intro to philosophy class together, and Thomas had made a point to sit next to her once he’d made the connection. As a first semester freshman he didn’t know if he really had a chance with her, but, with the help of Mark and John, he came to the realization that it couldn’t hurt to try.
“So what did you think of Dr. Bowman’s lecture today?” Thomas asked after searching for several minutes for something to say.
“I didn’t pay much attention to be honest,” Jessica said, not looking up from her work. Then turning to face him continued, “Why? What did you think?”
Thomas realized that his eyes had started off admiring her silky brown hair and had since worked their way down. He tried to act natural.
“I kind of liked it,” he finally managed to say.
“You don’t have to play it off you know,” Jessica said with a coy smile.
“Play what off?” Thomas asked. His head was spinning so fast that the confusion in his voice was almost legitimate. Jessica sighed and said, “nothing,” and went back to work pushing the colored tissue paper through the chicken wire. A few minutes passed and Thomas had time to realize what she had implied, and cursed himself for missing such an obvious opportunity. He racked his brain trying to think of a clever way to ask her out. Before he could think of anything, Jessica asked, “So do you want to go get something to eat when we finish?”
She hadn’t looked up from her work.
“Yes,” Thomas said with a little too much enthusiasm. In an attempt to compensate for his eagerness he added nonchalantly, “I’m starving.”
He wasn’t used to girls being so forward, at least not toward him. As he wondered what had changed in that short space of time between high school and college he stepped back from the huge display and took a brief moment to admire how colored tissue stuffed through chicken wire could make such an intricate design. He started thinking about how each piece of tissue monotonously stuck through a small hole contributed to the scene as a whole, but was interrupted by Jessica telling him she was ready to clock out. It was midnight, and Jessica drove down to the all night diner with Thomas sitting next to her.
They sat down in a booth across from each other and placed their orders. While they waited on their food Thomas talked about the football season, and Jessica did an excellent job of pretending to be interested, occasionally interjecting pertinent questions.
When the food arrived the topic shifted to politics within the Greek system and Jessica carried the conversation while Thomas ate and tried his best to listen. His thoughts wandered, but he maintained eye contact. Around one o’clock in the morning, Jessica drove him back to the dorms where Thomas collapsed onto his mattress. The bed wasn’t made, neither was the floor, or anything else in the room for that matter. He was too tired to care about messes as he made an effort to pull the twisted sheets up around him before dozing off.
* * *
When the weekend arrived the Manchell’s house was full of excitement. Lewis had invited Tommy Johnson over to stay the night and was turning the living room into a war zone with his action figures. Peter busily plowed through the mound of work he’d brought home from the office, and at the same time tried to get everything packed for his upcoming conference. He would spend a few minutes working in the study and then go to his bedroom on the far end of the house to pack a few items, and then back to the study again so that he spent as much time pacing as he did accomplishing anything.
Meanwhile, Julia was in the bathroom fussing about her hair as Hannah stood behind her trying to remedy the problem with bobby pins.
“It needs to be just right, Mom,” Julia said. “Scott’s not like Jason. He’ll notice if it’s not done up right.”
“So this Scott is the kind of boy who pays attention to detail?” Hannah asked. She still didn’t understand why Julia wasn’t going to the homecoming dance with the boy she’d been spending almost all her time with, and hadn’t wanted to ask. She reasoned that if Julia didn’t want to tell her then it wasn’t her business. Meanwhile, Julia pretended not to take offense at her mother referring to Scott as a boy.
“He’s very sophisticated and he’ll definitely notice whether or not everything is perfect, and it’s the little things that make all the difference.” Julia intentionally borrowed this last phrase from her mother’s redundant reminders.
“So tell me more about him. I hadn’t even heard you mention him until last week. Is he new to the school?”
“No. He’s not new; I just never thought he would be interested in me, at least not until he asked me to homecoming out of the blue. I still don’t know why he ever noticed me.”
“I’m sure that it was because you’re smart, pretty, and a perfect angel. Who couldn’t be interested in you?” Hannah said reassuringly. “He was probably waiting all that time for you and Jason to break up so he could ask you.”
Julia didn’t correct her mother. She didn’t need to know that she and Jason had never been officially dating or that nothing had changed between them when Scott had asked her to homecoming. It was only a minor detail.
“You’re all set,” Hannah said and stepped back to admire her work. Julia looked in the mirror turning every which way. When she was satisfied, they both went into the living room to wait. By the time they sat down, action figures lined the television stand, the coffee table and practically every other surface that Lewis could reach.
Julia couldn’t stand the thought of Scott seeing her living room in such a state and resolved to answer the door and be gone before her father could invite him inside the house. She sat on the couch with her mother and tapped her manicured fingernails on the end table. She watched the clock that rested on the mantle above the fireplace and waited.
“Why can’t you be more grown up, Lewis?” she said unexpectedly and then went back to tapping her fingernails. Her daughter’s outburst caught Hannah off guard but she didn’t say anything more than “He’ll be here any minute now.” Lewis didn’t know what to say, not understanding why anyone would want to be more grown up if that meant having less fun. So he ignored the outburst altogether and went back to his work.
Finally the doorbell rang and Julia sprang from the couch and ran toward the front door slowing down to compose herself as she reached the entryway. When she opened the door she was greeted by Tommy Johnson who asked if Lewis was home.
“Lewis, you’re little friend is here,” Julia called out. Mrs. Johnson was coming up the walkway behind her son, and when she got to the door asked Julia why she was so dressed up. By this time Hannah had caught up with her daughter and explained that Julia was going to homecoming. Tommy raced into the living room while the two mothers talked in the entryway. Julia stood in the open doorway looking for some sign of Scott. When she saw headlights pulling into the driveway she raced outside saying goodbye over her shoulder. Scott was stepping out of his father’s Porsche when he saw Julia coming to
ward him.
“Hop on in,” he said getting back in himself. Hannah walked outside just in time to see her daughter open the passenger door and disappear inside the car.
* * *
Lewis and Tommy played with the action figures for an hour or so, migrated to Legos, and then spent the rest of the night glued to the Nintendo. Hannah let them stay up until eleven. When the television was turned off, the lights were out, and both boys lay on the living room floor snug in their sleeping bags, they began to talk. They talked about school and then sports, but the conversation soon turned to girls, specifically Summer Wallburn and why Lewis hadn’t asked her out.
Neither of them knew exactly what the next step would be if she said yes, but they both felt that Lewis had to ask her, and that once he did she had to say yes. This was the imperative first step and they would figure the rest out as it came. Thinking about her drove Lewis crazy and he felt like he would explode if he didn’t do something immediately. He got out of his sleeping bag, turned on the light, found a piece of notebook paper and a pen, and sat down at the dining room table. Tommy was looking eagerly over his shoulder as Lewis wrote:
“Will you go out with me?”
At the bottom of the page he drew two boxes and labeled one “Yes” and the other “No.”
“You can’t do it like that!” exclaimed Tommy. Lewis gave him a puzzled look, not knowing what he could possibly have done wrong.
“You have to make the ‘no’ box itty bitty,” Tommy explained. Lewis crumpled up the piece of paper and rewrote the letter. This time it read:
“Will you please go out with me?”
He drew the boxes to Tommy’s specifications. He felt that she would be more likely to say yes if he asked her politely and explained the revision to Tommy, who also felt that this was a good idea. The two had begun talking excitedly about when Lewis would give the note to Summer, when Hannah appeared in the entryway and told them to go back to bed and stay quiet because Lewis’s father had a big day coming up and needed his sleep. The boys got back into their sleeping bags and Tommy fell asleep shortly afterwards but Lewis was too restless. Writing the note had provided a moment’s catharsis, but now that the note was written the need to give it to her weighted that much more heavily on him.
* * *
“The boys aren’t keeping me up you know,” Peter said when Hannah reentered the bedroom.
“Then what is it?” she asked.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“Like what?”
“Like the possibility of getting promoted and impressing Sam at this conference. I’ve been studying up on fiber optics and, well it’s all that stuff that’s never really interested you,” Peter said.
“Is that all?” Hannah asked.
“Not really worth losing sleep over, I know, but sometimes the unimportant stuff just consumes me. That’s how it is. I’m really going to try to get some sleep now,” Peter said.
Hannah leaned over, turned off the light on the nightstand, and an hour later found herself listening to her husband’s soft snoring. She stayed awake worrying and hoping that her daughter was safe, wherever she was.
* * *
Julia and Scott arrived at the dance fashionably late, just as they would in the future whenever they went to a movie or when Scott would make dinner reservations. As Julia walked in she took a moment to appreciate the magnitude of the ballroom. The lights were dimmed and there were tables set up with white tablecloths and candles on each one. A chandelier hung from the center of the room, adding to the feeling of elegance. The atmosphere was intoxicating, and she squeezed Scott’s arm in excitement but didn’t say anything. She didn’t notice or mind that the music was less than elegant. A throng of students crowded the dance floor, but Julia was eager to make up for lost time.
“Come on, let’s dance,” she said pulling his arm.
“I don’t really dance that well, at least not to this kind of music,” Scott said.
“Of course,” thought Julia as she looked at the mass of bodies pressed up against each other on the dance floor, “how could someone like him lower himself to that standard?” They sat at a table and Scott complemented her hair, her fingernails, and virtually everything else about her that Jason never noticed. Julia sat silently soaking it all in. “This is so much better than if I’d come with Jason,” she thought, while Scott went on about how much he loved looking into her eyes. He had just started talking about being a surgeon like his father when some of his friends came up behind the two of them.
“You’ve got to see this,” one of them said and then seeing Julia added, “hey Julia.” Scott said that he would be back in a minute and got up from the table. Julia waited patiently for more than a minute. The time dragged on as she sat at the table, and she began to survey the room. There were, of course, other people by themselves, but she hardly noticed them. Instead, she fixed on all the couples out on the dance floor. Joe was with Teresa and Jeremy had brought Megan, but her heart didn’t really sink until she saw Sara with Jason.
Jason was a decent swing dancer and was teaching Sara a few basic moves, the same ones he had taught her. She looked away and found Scott laughing with his friends by the refreshments. She didn’t even know all of their names. She went over to him, picked up a cookie with one hand and slipped the other one into Scott’s. She ate the cookie and tried to pay attention to what was being said. They were talking about how poorly the football team had done last week. Julia didn’t know much about football, but, in order to take part in the conversation, pointed out that they had won.
“Well of course we won,” one of them said emphatically, “but we should have killed them. If we play like that next week there’s no way we’ll make the playoffs.”
Julia didn’t understand the problem and suggested that they were being too critical.
“Do you want to dance?” Scott asked and herded her away from the group and onto the dance floor.” It was a slow dance, the kind where Scott could get by with putting his hands around Julia’s waist and shuffling his feet. Not long after the dance Scott disappeared again, and Julia mingled through the crowd looking for friends she could talk with. She avoided Jason, and he made no effort to speak with her. At one point, when Julia was alone, Sara approached her to say that she had only come with Jason because they had been friends for so long, and she’d felt bad for him having already made plans and then not having a date. She tried her best to make it clear that she had no intention of making anyone jealous. Julia said that she was with Scott and couldn’t care less. Then she turned around in search of her missing date, who just so happened to be ready to leave. Julia had no objections.
“So, did you have a good time?” he asked when they were alone in his father’s car.
“I just wish that I didn’t have to go home, isn’t there a place where we could go and talk? You know spend some quality time together, alone without all the distractions. We haven’t had time for just the two of us to really get to know each other.”
“My dad’s at the hospital all night and my mom’s out of town. So we could go back to my house,” Scott suggested. Julia pictured herself curled up next to Scott on a nice big expensive sofa watching a movie and eating popcorn and said that that sounded like a great idea. Scott started the car and by 10:30 they were walking through his front door.
Julia arrived back at her house a little after 2 a.m. She went straight to her room and slept until noon.
* * *
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Thomas’s roommate said with all the excitement of a lonely extravert as he burst into the room. Thomas and Jessica looked up in startled surprise.
“We’re talking, Rick” Thomas said. The loathing oozed out of his voice.
“What’re you guys talking about?” Rick asked. He seemed as innocent as he was energetic.
“It’s kind of private if you don’t mind.” Thomas was more than firm.
“Oh,” Rick said with a
hurt expression. “I’ll just go down the hall and play ping pong in the lounge.”
“Roommates,” Thomas sighed when the door was shut behind the intruder.
“It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to him,” Jessica insisted. “Especially if he doesn’t have many friends.”
“He’s a psychopath.”
“Have you tried talking to him about what he does that bothers you? Maybe then you wouldn’t blow up at him.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Thomas suggested. “I thought we came back here to get away from everything.” He pointed out the window toward the mob of people who had congregated to see the homecoming displays.
“It’s so pointless,” Thomas said as he stood by the window overlooking the huge displays with their elaborate designs.
“What do you mean?” Jessica asked, joining him at the window.
“It’s like sandcastles, only with more time and effort put into them, a lot more time and effort. And next week they’re all going to get destroyed and they’ll be completely forgotten by next year.”
“That’s what makes them so special. They’re magnificent and beautiful—except the one that the Betas did—and you have to appreciate them while you can. It’s like that sand painting the Buddhist monks did in the atrium last month.”
“It all seems stupid to me.”
“Well I like building sandcastles,” Jessica protested as the phone rang.
Thomas answered it against his better judgment.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said loudly. “Okay where are you? Alright I’ll be over there in a little while.” He hung up the phone in disgust.
“Mark needs someone to pick him up across town, and he can’t get a hold of John,” Thomas explained apologetically.
“That’s okay. It’s getting late anyway and I’m about ready for bed,” Jessica said. He escorted her down the hall and out of the building before finding his car in the sea of concrete that surrounded the dormitory.
* * *
When Julia woke up on Saturday the memory of the previous night was a blur. She wandered into the kitchen and made a sandwich. Her mother had left the croissants and lunchmeats out on the table so everyone could eat at their leisure. Lewis and Tommy were already up playing Nintendo in the living room, which was still littered with toys. Not wanting to deal with either of them, she retreated to her bedroom where she stayed all afternoon, only coming out to say goodbye to her father before he left for the airport.