IMMENSE IMMENSE IMMENSE LONELINESS BY KATE MONICA
for you on a morning when you wake up and think 'that was a bad move'
CHAPTER 1
Riley is standing at the edge of a bottomless ditch and everyone she’s ever known is falling into the hole screaming and she is feeling nothing. She is standing in front of the ditch and she didn’t push them in but she knows she should feel terrible. She feels weird. She keep pretending she’s in love but she’s not. It’s like when she’d pretend Santa Claus existed. Why did she do that. Why did her mother let her do that. Believing in things that do not exist so could never love you back is not a solution to anything. She is standing on a bus actually not at the edge of a hole. She thinks ‘I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know’. She wants to write a book that’s just ‘I don’t know’ for 300 pages. She thinks that would make people feel better. She doesn’t even know what she’s upset about. Maybe she’s not upset. Actually she’s not upset. The next stop is her stop. She pulls the red rope. She gets out and the sun is harsh and white and cuts pointedly into her eyes like she has overstayed her welcome and the world is trying to convince her to go back inside. She walks two
blocks to her dorm. She goes upstairs and into her room and lies on her bed. She stares at the ceiling for twenty-five minutes. She closes her eyes for a little. She imagines she lives on a farm and she’s lying on top of an aluminum gas tank brown and sand-papery with rust. She knows the grass is feathery and long even though she can’t feel it or see it. Her closed eyelids are red with the heat of the sun. She picks up a book of poetry under her bed. She has nine books of poetry under her bed. She doesn’t ever tell anyone when they come over that these nine books are there. They all make her feel quiet in her brain. This is her favorite sensation except for feeling connected to you by her hand and your hand touching fingertips timid and apologetic but resolute they will not unstick they will not let distance slide silently between them like time piling up and up until it is so high you can’t see what the other side looked like anymore. She picks up one of the books and reads 4 of the poems. When she reads the poems she feels like she is peering over the ledge of a black-lake quarry wondering how deep the water goes. She puts the book down on the green and purple polkadotted covers of her bed and smooths over the covers with her fingers and looks at the book on the covers and likes how it looks. She wonders if she is hungry. She can’t decide so she decides not to eat anything. She hasn’t eaten since a mug of green tea and toast this morning at 9 am though and now it is 5 pm. She thinks it is unhealthy that she is so unwilling to get out of bed she would rather starve. Her cell phone rings which is exciting and terrifying which is how she feels anytime the phone rings. It is across the room on her desk. She stares at it for fifteen seconds wondering if she could maybe pretend she is busy or dead. She decides instead to pick up the phone because she is so bored she would be ok with talking to a telemarketer for a little. ‘hi,’ Riley says. ‘food.’ It’s Alison. Riley is happy it’s her and not a telemarketer. She is in the kind of mood that if it was a telemarketer she would probably accidentally give them fifty dollars. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Sushi, maybe?’ ‘I’m not hungry I don’t think.’ ‘you don’t think?’ ‘no.’ ‘Ok.’ ‘But I’m bored. I could watch you eat sushi.’
‘Ok be there in like five seconds.’ Alison hangs up. Riley stares at her phone for a second. Every time after someone hangs up the phone she always stares at the phone in her hand for a little. She thinks she does it as a reminder that she was not talking to a real person, more to a tiny robot that happens to sound a lot like her friend. It’s weird and she thinks it’s funny that she thought that and smiles a little. She sits on her bed and holds her breath. She feels like it will make her a better person if she holds her breath right now. Self-deprivation makes her feel superior to no one in particular. One time she didn’t watch TV for three months. After she felt like a spiritually superior being but didn’t tell anyone because spiritually superior beings don’t need to brag. She spent a lot of time meditating but never came to any conclusions except that meditating is helpful. She slides off her bed to find her shoes. One is on the carpet in the middle of the room. One is under her bed near the dresser which is also under her bed. Her bed is sort of lofted but not very high. Just high enough so she has to do a little hop before she gets on it. One time a boy she brought back to her room said her little hop to get onto her bed was cute. He did not have to hop to get onto her bed. She puts on her shoes and stands in front of the mirror and looks at her body. When she looks at her body she doesn’t feel anything in particular. Alison is knocking on her door. She really did mean like five seconds. Riley opens the door and Alison is grinning widely which makes Riley grin widely. Alison looks like she has exciting news. ‘ready?’ Alison says. Riley walks out of the room and shuts off the light reaching her arm awkwardly back into the room after realizing she forgot to shut off the light. She closes the door gingerly. She looks at Alison. ‘you ok?’ ‘yeah.’ Riley says. She is ok. Riley follows Alison down the hall lagging a bit behind. Alison talks about her anthropology assignment as they walk and Riley feels quietly relieved she took anthropology first semester as opposed to second because it was a shit-ton of work and lately Riley feels unmotivated and like the only thing in the world that is important is sitting outside by the lake looking quietly at the water with her knees tucked up by her chin. In the elevator two boys Riley remembers from freshman orientation because they both said really weird obnoxious things when asked to say two truths and a lie about themselves are sitting on the floor. She is feeling uncharacteristically unabashed and apathetic today so she says ‘why are you sitting on the floor.’ Alison shoots Riley a look. Alison is incredibly polite which Riley thinks is very
sweet. Riley smiles at Alison and then turns back to the boys. Riley feels like she has just taken off a scarf in a stuffy room that she has been wearing all day. The boys look at each other and mutter something and laugh. They look up at Riley. They have been drinking. Their mouths are blue and they are holding monsters. They are drinking shitty vodka and energy drink mixes inside a monster can which makes Riley want to kick them in the shins for thirty-five minutes or until they promise to stop being shitheads. Riley is worried about them. She can’t stop thinking about them dying from drinking too much caffeine and alcohol and their bodies too late realizing how dilapidated their blood and thought processes are and then dying. ‘nothing else to do.’ says one boy who has shoulder length hair stringy and greasy as the bottom frays of a vagabonds jacket. ‘oh.’ Riley knows she could ask them to explain further but she is entirely disinterested. She wants to never talk to them again. She can tell by the look on their faces they very badly want her to ask more questions about their erratic behavior but that would be satisfying to them. Today Riley doesn’t feel like giving anybody anything they want for the rest of her life kind of. The elevator stops at the main floor and Alison and Riley get off. The boys are still sitting grinning on the floor. The bottoms of their shoes are chalky and white. When the elevator door closes on them Riley imagines them sinking like ghosts into an alternate universe where inconsequential acquaintances she’s interacted with throughout her life whither and fade. Thinking about them turning white and translucent in a mirror-like reality sounds like something she will write a poem about later. Alison and Riley walk outside and Alison has something important to tell her. ‘why are you weird kind of,’ Riley says. ‘Adam asked me to be his girlfriend’ Alison says. Riley say ‘that’s great!’ Riley likes Adam and Alison really likes Adam and this is great news. Alison looks pleased and grabs Riley’s hands and weaves her fingers between Riley’s fingers while she tells her about how Adam asked her to be his girlfriend. ‘it was the other night after we went out. We came back to my dorm and we were like—I don’t know, we were in my bed, just lying there, and he said, ‘I don’t really wanna see anyone else, or something, I don’t remember—whatever—basically, he said he knows he wants to be exclusive, so. Like that’s a big step for him. Like you know how he is. So. It’s a pretty big deal for us. Like being exclusive— that’s saying something for Adam.’ ‘that is a big deal.’ Riley says. She doesn’t really know what else to say. They turn the corner and now they are at the sushi place. Riley likes going to school in a moderately rural and affluent area because there are no homeless
people to make her hate herself. She doesn’t hate homeless people. She loves them she thinks. She feels like when she looks at them she can’t stop swallowing their sadness and all the thick syrupy distrust under their skin but it makes her feel like she still has a chance and even though a lot of the time she feels like a fuck-up when she sees them even though it’s terrible she feels like less of a fuck-up. But also she feels like an asshole for thinking that and also she feels like an asshole for ever complaining about any of her problems. Actually then she doesn’t know how she feels about homeless people. Today she doesn’t really know how she feels about anything sort of. In the sushi shop there’s a man sitting at a table screaming at the top of his lungs. No there isn’t. Riley just sort of wishes there was. She feels like seeing something incredible happen. ‘Hang on,’ says Alison. Alison goes to the counter to pick out what she wants. Riley picks a booth and slides in. She thinks about calling Spencer. Spencer is a boy who likes to write poems and talk to Riley about interesting things. Sometimes stuff he says doesn’t sound real. Every time Riley talks to Spencer he tells her she doesn’t make sense as an entity. Every time Riley talks to Spencer she tells him he needs to stop psychoanalyzing her in search of a root cause of her behavior because sometimes things don’t have root causes. Riley likes Spencer but he doesn’t make her nervous. Sometimes if she hangs out with him for too long she gets tired and lonely because she can tell he is not lonely when he is around her. She thinks now that loneliness is still feeling empty when you know the person you are with feels entirely full. Alison comes back with food. ‘I had a really eventful dream last night,’ Riley says. ‘What,’ Alison says. ‘Last night I had a dream me and Angelina Jolie were sitting talking on this creepy maroon-velvet couch at a dark smoky bar.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘We just talked,’ ‘That’s not really eventful,’ says Alison. ‘If you were at a bar with Angelina Jolie you would freak the fuck out.’ Riley says. Alison nods. ‘That’s true. I would,’ she says. After two hours of eating and talking Riley and Alison leave the sushi place. They walk back to their dorm and Alison says ‘bye’ on her floor and walks into her room and sits on her bed and opens her Macbook and goes on Facebook. She looks at pictures of her ex-boyfriend. Every time she sees a picture of him with a girl also in the picture her face feels hot like someone is asking her to take off all
her clothes in front of a panel of old wrinkly judges. She feels embarrassed and vulnerable and silly looking at pictures of him with other girls. She likes Adam though. Now she has to like Adam because her ex-boyfriend does not like her back and she is not going to be the one left behind. She decided that a couple days ago so that’s the end of that.
CHAPTER 2 Riley is in her room panicking silently. It is 7 pm and Riley has no idea what to do with the rest of her night. Tomorrow her first class is at noon. This means tonight she will be up extremely late. She wants to run back into Alison’s room and beg her to walk around the lake 50 times until they reach some grand conclusion but Alison has an 8 am class and lots of work to do. Alison will do homework for 4 hours and then shower around 11 and then watch an episode of something on Netflix and then fall asleep around 1 am. Riley feels incredibly alone and helpless. She puts her Macbook and a notebook and 3 books of poetry and The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner and her charger and two pens into her backpack. She puts on a jean jacket and her backpack and changes out of her Converse and instead puts on a pair of brown knee-high leather boots and gets her ipod off her desk. She feels vastly more in control of her life now that she is equipped with a variety of things that make her feel calm. She walks down the sidewalk towards nowhere in particular listening to music. She thinks probably she will run away. She thinks what she would do if she were to do it right now is that she would walk comfortably down the sidewalk at an average pace, then abruptly turn towards the woods by the main road and take off sprinting. She would sprint across the road narrowly dodging frantically honking cars where inside the drivers sighed relieved that someone else in their general vicinity is less sane than they are, and then once she was tucked neatly enough into the forest, a few trees deep, she would stop sprinting and walk comfortably again. She would walk for 36 hours straight until she was confident she is so tired the potentially massive beasts and poisonous insects inhabiting the woods would not keep her awake or bothered. She would sleep heavily on the damp-leafed forest floor for 14 hours. Then she would wake up unsure of where she was and question her decision to leave, but she would be so far from campus that she would have no choice to live in the woods forever. Riley decides at the last second not to run away. Instead she takes a left and walks toward the library. She walks up the stairs 4 floors and then sits in a cubicle. She puts her backpack on the floor and unzips her backpack and takes out her Macbook and opens it on the desk of the cubicle. As her Macbook turns on, she wonders why cubicles make her feel so happy and secure. She thinks that is fucked up because she never wants to work a cubicle job, yet when she’s at the library all she wants to do is sit in a cubicle with nothing but the three beige wooden walls to watch her write and think.
‘That is fucked up,’ she says to herself. A boy sitting two cubicles down the row leans his head out and looks at her and then goes back to work. Riley is silently offended he didn’t smile at her or anything. She thinks how if he had smiled at her she would’ve been slightly offended and thought he was a creep. She thinks how that is fucked up. Riley writes poems for two hours while listening to music. She can tell what song she was listening to on her playlist during which poem by the meter of each poem. Each one has a cadence similar to the way the song went. She hates it when she does that. She intentionally messes with the line breaks to make it less noticeable that she did that, but whenever she reads it back in her head she can’t stop saying the words in the way the song goes. She emails the word document with eleven poems, which she titles ‘My Friend Has Work So I Wrote These’, to her poetry professor. He will probably say ‘the titles are good but you need to cut some unnecessary syllables’ like he always does. She doesn’t like cutting syllables. It seems pretentious as hell to take out whole words to accommodate syllabics. She walks back to her dorm and sits on her bed feeling really extremely okay with the world. Riley goes on Facebook Chat. She hopes one of her writer friends will be on. She likes her writer friends better than anyone in the world. Two of them are on but neither of them are talking to her. It bothers her to see their little green dot but that neither of them want to talk. It feels like hearing a mosquito but not being able to see where it is exactly. She thinks how, conversely, she is not talking to them, so maybe they are also bothered. She is too tired to think about that so signs off. Riley goes outside and calls Spencer. He picks up on the first ring. ‘Wanna meet by the lake,’ she says. ‘Sure,’ he says. Riley is not surprised and feels immensely powerful that he will do anything she says. She takes off her jean jacket and puts on a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt has a giant grainy black-and-white picture of Mickey Mouse on it. When Riley wears it she feels like she is betraying her childhood whenever she does something sort of adult while wearing it. Like the time she got drunk as hell while wearing it. And the time she let a boy she did not know beyond that his name was Pierce which was a cool name take it off. All those times she wanted to molt her skin like a snake and find someplace dark and cool to live for a while. Riley walks downstairs and goes outside and the sky is purple and mute and shy and feels kind on her face. She likes the world better when it is this color. She likes people better when they are out and alive at this time of day. There is a girl playing guitar on a sodden wooden bench across the street from her dorm. Riley silently reminds herself she doesn’t have time to watch the girl play guitar for six hours because she has to meet Spencer right now. Riley ignores herself. She runs across the street and sits cross-legged on the sidewalk
at the girls feet. The guitarist does not look down or stop playing when Riley sits cross-legged at her feet. Riley loves the girl for ignoring her. She likes to pretend the guitarist and her music are the only things that exist in the world. Riley listens to the guitarist play for 2 ½ hours. After the girl looks at Riley. She has beautiful full blue eyes and long brown hair. The guitarist says, ‘Why are you looking at me like that.’ Riley blushes and says ‘I don’t know. What do you mean.’ The guitarist says ‘Stop looking at me like that.’ Riley says ‘Sorry.’ Riley looks at the ground and picks up a very small white twig and rolls it between her fingers like a cigarette. She looks at the guitarist who is absently plucking strings and looking aloofly at the sky which is still vacant and purple. ‘I’m in love with you I think,’ Riley says by accident. She looks at the ground and blushes hard. This happens to her every time she watches someone who has a beautiful talent display their talent for too long. The guitarist looks quizzically at Riley. ‘Oh.’ she says. ‘I’m Ellie,’ The guitarist says. ‘I’m Riley,’ Riley says. ‘Do you want to go for a walk in the woods for a few hours. Like until morning,’ Riley asks. Ellie shrugs and says sure and puts her guitar into a guitar-shaped bag. She slings her guitar-shaped bag over her shoulder and looks expectantly at Riley. Riley says, ‘Oh, yeah, ok, follow me, I guess,’ and smiles and Ellie follows Riley down the sidewalk toward the woods. While they’re walking Riley thinks how this is very similar to what she was thinking she would do when she ran away earlier that day except approximately 300x better. Before she would’ve been alone and the only productive thing she would have accomplished would be to scare everyone stiff right smack in the middle of their ordinary lives. Now she is with someone who has a guitar and who is willing to follow a near stranger into the woods for a few hours. Riley feels deeply warm and deeply happy and thinks Ellie could make her feel better for an extended period of time. Riley is getting tired of feeling incredible for a few hours a day and then periodically feeling tired and bored and then feeling incredible again and then feeling a dull loneliness at night. She wants to just feel incredible all the time. Right now she feels a steady, luminous kind of incredible that feels as if it will last a considerably long time as long as nothing changes at all. Riley says, ‘Sometimes I feel like a passive observer of my own life.’
Ellie keeps walking and doesn’t look at Riley and says, ‘This isn’t very passiveobserver-y of you though.’ Riley looks at Ellie and feels like laughing but nothing is funny so she bites her lip and narrowly avoids laughing. Riley says ‘Yeah I know but this is unusual behavior for me.’ Ellie says ‘Oh. Me too.’ Riley says ‘Yeah but you were sitting on a park bench playing guitar for hours by yourself.’ Ellie says ‘That’s not a big deal for me anymore. I do it all the time.’ Riley says ‘I know exactly what you mean. I write stuff all the time. Now it seems like less of an interesting hobby and more of a sad addiction.’ Ellie says ‘It’s not sad. You could be watching TV or napping instead.’ Riley says ‘That’s true.’ Ellie says ‘Do you think playing guitar all the time is sad.’ Riley says ‘No. Actually I think it’s the greatest thing ever.’ Ellie smiles. This is the first time Riley has seen Ellie smile and it’s awesome. They walk and talk about the universe and the probability that there is a cosmic entity observing their every move and making sure they fulfill their destinies for 4 hours. Ellie is wearing a watch and looks at her watch and says that it is 3 am. Riley says ‘Sometimes this is my favorite time of day and sometimes it’s my least favorite.’ Ellie says ‘I know what you mean.’ Riley doesn’t explain anymore because she agrees that Ellie knows what she means. She wants to be hanging out with Ellie whenever 3 am happens forever now she thinks. Riley’s phone rings. It’s Spencer. Riley feels a deep swallowing guilt that fills her veins with black dripping tar hardening before it has a chance to settle. She answers the phone. Her throat is full of tears but she keeps her voice steady. To Spencer she sounds not so much overwhelmed with guilt and more indifferent because she is keeping her voice steady. ‘Hey,’ says Spencer. ‘Where the hell are you.’ ‘Sorry,’ says Riley, ‘I forgot. I’m really really really really sorry, Spenc. Ahh fuck, I’m sorry. Shit shit shit. Wow. That is my bad. That is like massively my bad.’ ‘I’ve been here for 6 fucking hours,’ Spencer says. ‘Why didn’t you call me way earlier?’ Riley says. ‘Most people would call after
like fifteen minutes. Why did you wait six hours.’ The other line is silent. ‘I don’t know.’ Says Spencer. ‘That’s ok. Um—fuck, if you never want to talk to me again I get it. Wow. I suck. I’m sorry.’ ‘I can’t tell if I never want to talk to you again or not. I need more time to think. I’ll tell you tomorrow if I ever want to talk to you again. Right now I feel like I don’t but I don’t want to make an irrational decision.’ ‘Okay, yeah, no, definitely take all the time you need. I’m really really sorry. I’ll stop apologizing it won’t fix anything. I’m really sorry Spencer. Okay, that was the last time I’ll say it. Talk to you tomorrow if you ever want to again.’ Spencer hangs up. Riley stares at the phone in her hand and then looks at Ellie. ‘Do you hate me because I did that to someone,’ Riley says. Ellie shrugs. ‘I don’t care. It wasn’t me. Do you hate me because I don’t care that you did that to someone.’ Riley cocks her head to the side and thinks. ‘I don’t know. I think I’m not allowed to because you don’t care that I did a shitty thing so what right do I have to care that you don’t care if people do shitty things. Does that make sense?’ Ellie says ‘Ahh….sort of. I think. Wait so do you or don’t you.’ Riley says ‘I guess I don’t for now.’ Ellie says ‘Cool. That was weird.’ Riley says ‘If we keep walking in this direction where do you think we’ll be.’ Ellie says ‘I don’t know let’s keep going. They walk to the edge of the woods. When they emerge the sky is ashy and pale. It looks like dead snow in late march which is Riley’s least favorite color of anything. It makes her feel like she fell asleep in summer and woke up in winter. ‘Where are we,’ Riley says. Ellie shrugs. ‘I’m gonna go,’ Ellie says. ‘What?’ Riley says. Riley’s face feels hot and she feels like she has just come off one of those rides at a carnival where you spin around extremely fast in a wheelshaped iron contraption. ‘I’m gonna go. I think I know where we are and I have a friend that lives near here. It was cool meeting you.’ Ellie says and she starts walking down the street towards an empty parking lot where, behind it, Riley can see a row of uniformly
shaped residential homes. ‘Wait—‘ Riley says. She is panicking alone in her brain. ‘What.’ Ellie says. She doesn’t turn around but she does stop. ‘I thought—I thought we were gonna be friends for—well, not forever, but like, a realistic measure of time. Like a good two years or something. I thought we would be extremely good friends for like two or three months, then kind of cycle out and pay more attention to the friends we had before we met, then become periodically closer whenever one of us felt compelled to reach out, then less so as our lives got busier, then lose most of our initial connection but still shoot each other messages on Facebook every so often obligatorily checking up on things.’ Ellie turns and looks blankly at Riley. After either 300 years or 15 seconds, Riley can’t really tell for sure which, she shrugs. ‘No. I don’t know. I’m just—I’m done, I think.’ Ellie says. Riley feels like a great black underwater beast has fastened its claws to her ankles and is tugging her deeper deeper deeper underwater and she is swiping for the surface but there is nothing to cling onto underwater and so keeps sinking deeper faster the great black claws. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Ok. Fuck. Well. Ok. That’s fine.’ Ellie leaves. Riley turns and walks back home through the woods. This time it only takes her an hour and a half because she is sprinting the whole way. By the time she is out of the woods and back on her college campus she feels better. Running all the way through the woods expended any kind of dull pain of missing from her body. Now she thinks if she Ellie she would not bother sitting down to listen to her play which she cannot decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
CHAPTER 3 She calls Spencer. He doesn’t pick up. Riley says ‘I am fucked.’ She leaves a message on Spencer’s phone. The message consists of her saying ‘Sorry I stood you up last night. I was heading to go see you and I saw a girl playing guitar on a park bench and she was really good so I listened until she was done and then asked if she wanted to go for a walk in the woods and we went for a walk in the woods and then on the other side I guess we were in her hometown and she left to go to a friends house and then I ran back. It was kind of scary running back. I don’t like being alone in the woods at all. I’m not gonna talk about running away anymore I don’t think. I wouldn’t last a day in the woods by myself.’ The message beeps and that’s all Riley can fit in within the time constraints. She sits on the park bench where Ellie sat playing guitar the night before and doesn’t feel anything which is good. Riley wants to kiss Spencer. She doesn’t find him particularly handsome and there are other boys she likes better but she knows he wants her to kiss him and she feels like giving everyone everything they want for the rest of her life kind of. Riley walks back to her dorm. She goes into her room and her roommate is midfuck, which is what Riley calls it when she walks into her room while her roommate is presently sweating and naked underneath a hulking hockey/baseball/football player who for some reason usually has hair on his ass. Riley says ‘hey.’ Her roommate says ‘hey.’ Her roommate doesn’t slow down or stop fucking. Riley sits on her bed and looks at her alarm clock on the bedside table. It is 9 am. She has 4 hours until class. She tries to think of what she should do for the next four hours while listening to her roommate go ‘ughhh—ughhhhh—ugh!’ and the big hockey/baseball/football player occasionally grunting grotesquely. Riley feels like she is going to be sick if she sits there anymore so takes off her clothes and puts on a robe and heads down the hall to shower. She wonders if the boy her roommate is with saw her naked and decides quickly it doesn’t matter and she should not care about it. Instead she can’t stop thinking about it. While she showers she thinks about it. She thinks of what he will tell his teammates later that day at practice. He has had one hell of a day. His day has consisted of fucking a pretty girl in her room while her roommate got naked 10 feet away. That’s a pretty incredible day for a hockey/baseball/football player. Riley feels happy for the boy because he will probably look back on this morning whenever he feels like a failure and feel much better about himself. After she showers and dresses Riley heads downstairs and buys a banana and a smoothie and goes to class eating the banana but saving the smoothie for
during class to make class go by marginally faster. Riley gets to the building where class is and calls Spencer. She decides if Spencer picks up it is a sign she should not go to class and instead she should sit by the lake staring not feeding just staring at the ducks. Spencer does not pick up so Riley begrudgingly enters the building and thinks about how much she hates Spencer for not answering. Now she is mad at him too so it makes her feel less bad about yesterday. Riley stares at the professor as he talks and drinks her smoothie for 50 minutes. Then the professor continues talking as kids zip up their bags and make loud swishy noises as they put on their windbreakers and jackets. Riley feels terrible for the professor. She waits until he has finished talking before putting on her jacket and zipping up her backpack. It doesn’t make any difference at all that she waited to do this because so many other people were doing it while he was talking. Riley feels bad that he will never know that one person let him finish. She feels bad that the only reason that she let him finish was because she felt bad and not because she was even remotely interested in anything he was saying. Riley walks outside and walks for 3 hours around campus while listening to Joy Division. It is Friday night. She wonders what she is going to do tonight. She thinks about calling Spencer while drunk. She thinks if she calls Spencer while drunk she’ll say something like ‘I will never be in love with you’ so on second thought this is not a good idea. She thinks the only reason Spencer hangs out with her is to convince her to be in love with him. She isn’t mad about that because that is why she hangs out with most people.
CHAPTER 4 Riley calls Alison. Alison picks up on the fourth ring. When she answers the phone she is panting. ‘Why are you out of breath,’ Riley says. ‘Uh—‘ ‘Is Adam over,’ Riley says. ‘Yeah.’ Riley laughs for 7 seconds and then asks what they are all doing tonight. ‘I don’t know, come over,’ Alison says. Riley goes back to her dorm and changes into a short blue dress. She lets her hair down and puts on more mascara and a thick coat of lip gloss and walks three doors down the hall to Alison’s room.
When Riley walks in Adam has one hand in the front pocket of Alison’s jeans and the other hand wrapped around the bottle-neck of a handle of Captain Morgan’s. ‘Hi,’ Riley says. ‘Hey,’ Adam says. ‘Hi,’ Alison says. All of Riley’s other friends are also in the room. She says ‘hi’ to all of them and they all whoop and holler and kiss her cheek and after Riley feels like she just shouldered her way through the perfume department and is slightly demoralized and slightly exhilarated and it feels slippery and warm on her skin. Krista and Jenny and Leila and Maddie and Russell and Jack and Cam have already been taking shots. Riley is excited she gets to catch up. Jack grabs her a shot glass and fills it and hands it back to her. Riley grabs Maddie’s hand and squeezes as she knocks it back. Maddie is giggling and peels a strand of straight black hair off her face which is sticking to her face because she is sweating because she is drunk. Riley winces and grins defeatedly at Maddie and then also giggles. She wants to get incredibly fucked up tonight. She tells Maddie ‘I want to get incredibly fucked up tonight.’ Maddie laughs. Maddie says ‘Be careful’ Riley likes Maddie because she gets nervous for her. Riley says ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’ Maddie laughs. Maddie will never take Riley seriously. All of them get out of a sober drivers car and stand in front of a frat house that is swarming with warm pulsing bodies. They can hear the music coming from inside. It sounds like kitchen appliances having sex which Riley thinks is extremely appropriate. Riley feels young and sexy as hell. She wants to ruin someone’s night. She wants to kiss a boy and control his entire body by the tongue and then walk away without telling him her name. Then she wants to kiss another boy while he watches. Cruelty makes her feel powerful. Feeling powerful makes her feel less lonely. They walk into the party and it is smoky and thick with sweat and liquor-breath and the room is dark but with an odd greenish tint. Riley feels extremely fuckable. It makes her feel like she is properly fulfilling her role in the world. She thinks to herself ‘That is fucked.’ Riley grabs Maddie’s hand and pulls her downstairs. Once downstairs Riley asks a tall boy with sloppy, glazed eyes for a cup of jungle juice. The boy disappears and reappears 45 seconds later with a cup of jungle juice. Riley drinks it in 3 minutes while absently dancing with Maddie.
A tall blonde boy grabs Riley from behind and starts grinding with her. In the blurry shapeless night with all her limbs unfocused Riley is okay with this. They dance and after 3 songs Riley backs the boy up against a cement wall and kisses him hard and elusively, tugging him towards her by his lower lip, then letting go and backing away to make him chase her. She does this for 2 songs, then gets bored. She moves away from him and weaves deftly through the crowd. She is heading for the stairs to find Alison and Adam. Riley gets held up by the drink table. A mass of bodies is standing thickly before the base of the stairs reaching uselessly forward in the hopes of snagging a red cup from two of the sweaty boys manning the keg. She looks at their hot red wet faces. She wonders if she looks like the incarnate version of her parent’s disappointment like they do. Probably she does. Actually she definitely does look like her parents worst nightmare physically manifested. A girl is forcing her way staunchly through the throng. Riley peers agitatedly at the girl bucking her way into the crowd. A pair of wearily familiar blue eyes lock with hers. Riley says ‘Ellie?’ Ellie says ‘Riley? Hahahaha what the fuck.’ Riley says ‘Hey what the hell was that the other day.’ Under normal circumstances Riley would not want to talk to Ellie this way but everything in the room is fantastic and padded like a solitary confinement cell and nothing bad can happen here. Ellie says ‘I don’t know. Sorry.’ Swirling lights swirling spinning lights spitting everything back out like kalaidescope glass drawling blood thinly from everyone’s skin now illuminated neon deadly deadly neon. Riley leans in and breathes in front of Ellie’s face. Riley wants to feel Ellie weaken. It doesn’t work. It has the opposite effect. Riley did not expect this. Riley is scared and fears she is in too deep. She fears she has resigned control to a body bolder than hers, eyes more ruthless, a tongue quicker and crueler and tasting of blood oranges open-faced and glistening on a kitchen counter and coffee the morning after and skinning your knee on a hot summer driveway when you’re parents aren’t home with a band-aid and a cold water faucet. Ellie looks at Riley, daring her. Riley kisses Ellie, a vengeful, jealous kiss, want me want me want me. Ellie takes hold of Riley’s hair and backs her against the cement wall. They are two tongues fighting, warring over who needs who more, after moments Riley is panting from desire and exhaustion and what the fuck is wrong with me, Ellie is smug with victory, knows it is her battle already won, wants to pin the expression on Riley’s face above her mantel to look at anytime she feels she has lost her touch. Riley pulls away and Ellie smirks.
Riley says ‘Fuck.’ Ellie says ‘You started it.’ Riley says ‘Am I ever gonna see you again.’ Ellie says ‘I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe tomorrow night. What would be worse.’ Riley says ‘I don’t know. I think everything is worse from now on.’ Ellie says ‘You are fucked.’ Riley says ‘I know. What should I do.’ Ellie says ‘You can’t do anything. That’s why you’re fucked. That’s what that means.’ Riley says ‘Oh. Right.’ Riley walks away and grabs a bearded boy by the back of the head and kisses him and heads for the stairs fuming. She goes outside and sits on the lawn alone in her head surrounded by a bunch of drunk waning children that look exactly like her. She sits on the lawn for 2 hours and no one sits next to her. She is extremely relieved and extremely offended. At 2:30 am her friends wander onto the lawn. Maddie stands in front of Riley laughing. ‘What’re you doing out here,’ Maddie says. ‘I’m fucked,’ Riley says. ‘What?’ Maddie says. ‘Nothing.’ Riley says. Maddie bends over and grabs Riley’s hands and tries to pull her up. Riley doesn’t feel like moving probably for 10 hours minimum. Maddie falls on top of Riley, unable to bring her to her feet. Maddie is laughing while lying on top of Riley and not bothering to move. Riley can’t breath because Maddie’s neck is pressed against her mouth and nose. Riley pushes Maddie off. Riley says ‘Maddie stop being a shithead I’m in a bad mood.’ Maddie says ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry ok I’m sorry.’ Cam walks up and grabs Riley’s hand and pulls her immediately to her feet. Cam is extremely strong and also very attractive. Riley thinks ‘That was hot as hell’ once Cam lets go of her hands. Cam is trying to pick Maddie up. His hands are around her waist and he is half-carrying her towards the sober ride which all of their other friends are already in, waiting. Riley feels like her entire body is buzzing with jealousy. She wants to be the shithead in Cam’s arms. She thinks
silently to herself that she will never be the shithead in Cam’s arms and it makes her feel like she is yelling down an echoey stone-walled well hoping someone is at the bottom because that’ll mean someone else feels a little worse than she does at the moment but no one is yelling back. In the car Riley sits on Russell’s lap and can’t stop looking at Maddie splayed face down across Cam’s lap. Riley thinks about how Maddie’s mouth is sort of near Cam’s dick right now and it makes her angry even though she doesn’t necessarily want her own mouth to be near Cam’s dick. She just doesn’t want anyone else’s mouth to be near it either. When Riley gets home she wanders blindly back to her dorm. Her roommate is not home. Her roommate is probably at wherever the boy who was fucking her earlier lives. Riley lies on her bed and insatiably wants someone anyone really anyone will do. She sticks her head into the hall. A boy from her philosophy lecture is leaning his head against some girl’s door with his eyes closed. He knocks on the door and opens his eyes with his head leaning forlornly against the door. His name is Jason Riley thinks. Jason says, ‘Emma. Come on. Emmaaaaaa.’ Emma does not answer the door. Jason turns around and rests his back against the door, sighing. He slides down the door with resignation until his knees are up by his chin. Riley stands in the hall and looks at Jason. He has slightly reddish hair and is sort of short but has a handsome face and doesn’t seem too drunk. Riley says, ‘Jason.’ Jason looks up. Riley says, ‘Your name is Jason.’ Jason nods. ‘Your name is Riley.’ Riley nods. Riley says, ‘I’m bored.’ Jason shrugs. ‘Sorry.’ Riley says ‘Wanna come over.’ Jason turns bright red. Riley thinks it is the cutest thing she has ever seen. Riley wants Jason to come into her room more than she has ever wanted anything in her entire life. Jason smiles and blinks four times. He kind of looks like he is about to cry. He gets up. The back of his head is cowlicked from sliding down the door. Once they are in her room Riley pushes Jason onto her bed. Jason is laughing
nervously. Riley notices he is actually extremely not drunk. He actually might be sober. Actually he is sober. Riley feels extra drunk because Jason is sober and is now second-guessing her decision to bring him into her room. Riley climbs on top of Jason and kisses him gently. She kisses him again. She can feel Jason grinning when she kisses him which is nice but odd. Riley is still kissing Jason but Jason is not kissing her back. Riley sits up and waits. It feels funny to straddle him silently awaiting a response. The room sounds extremely quiet and Riley feels much more drunk than she thought she was. Jason says, ‘I can’t.’ Riley stares at him blankly. She is extremely tired. She wants to be asleep. She fantasizes about falling asleep and waking up at 5 pm and lying motionless in bed until 8 pm. Jason says, ‘Sorry. I’m kind of with Emma. We got in a fight tonight but like. We’re together still. I think.’ Riley hops off Jason. She yawns. Jason tentatively steps down from Riley’s bed. ‘Sorry,’ he says. Riley doesn’t say anything. She climbs back up onto her bed as soon as Jason gets off. Jason stares at Riley lying on her bed. ‘You awake?’ he says. Riley is awake but knows she will not be much longer so sees no point in responding. Jason walks out of the room slowly and shuts off the light. He gently closes the door. Riley thinks Jason is the nicest boy she has ever met. She wants to kiss him sober someday when he is not still with Emma. Riley lies on her bed feeling empty of everything. She wants to feel close to God. She thinks about God and if He/She/Whatever is realistic as a concept. She thinks not. She doesn’t care. She believes in God because she feels like it. She says out loud ‘Heaven exists because I feel like it.’ She thinks to herself ‘saying ‘Heaven exists because I feel like it’ to an empty room is the loneliest thing I have ever done.’ She stares at the ceiling and makes shapes with her eyes out of the swirling undulating white lines darting across her field of vision like silverfish. She thinks ‘I don’t know what my life is about I don’t want to deal with it I want my stream-of-consciousness to be a constantly repeating marquee that says ‘Whatever Whatever Whatever Whatever Whatever Whatever.’ She wonders if this is normal. She thinks ‘if I ever meet someone who wishes their stream-of-consciousness is a constantly repeating marquee that says ‘Whatever’ over and over again I will definitely marry them. That would make it better.’ She rolls onto her side and it feels like her veins are full of crushed powdered sedatives. Like the opposite of pixie-stick sugar but just as powerful relatively. Approximately 142 things go through her mind before she falls asleep. Here is a
list of ten of the things: 1. Sometimes I have dreams my little brother’s eyes roll of his face what does that mean 2. Maddie said she can’t take me seriously and everything I say makes her laugh does that mean she thinks I am a joke 3. My grandparents have been in love for 60 years that is incredible I love them so much 4. I want to buy someone I love a glass of lemonade when they are extremely thirsty and when they thank me I want to say ‘no don’t worry about it please don’t mention it whatever you want whatever you want whatever you want.’ 5. Do I have anything big due on Monday 6. I can’t remember if I have anything big due on Monday 7. I haven’t watched the news in over three weeks 8. I heard there was a volcano somewhere like 140,000 years overdue to erupt why doesn’t that bother everyone on a constant basis that sounds like a pretty pressing issue 9. I want to be sitting at the foot of my parents bed I want to talk to them about how when I think about death it makes me want to throw up several times I want them to make it alright make it alright make it alright they always make it alright they are going to die before me what kind of fucked up system is that who is in charge here where can I file a complaint I love my parents so much I hope they are incredibly happy all the time if they are not incredibly happy all the time I will staple my head to my desk using 5000 staples so they will know they are at least not as miserable as I am 10. I don’t love anyone right now but I feel like I miss someone I have never met and what does that mean and does it ever go away
She falls asleep and dreams that she got on a bus and Ellie was staring out the window the way Riley imagines she would stare out a window like she is searching for meaning as it blurs by like landscapes she will never photograph correctly and Riley saw her but Ellie did not look up so Riley did not say anything and instead slouched into the first seat as distant as possible and got off at the next stop.
CHAPTER 5 Riley wakes at 4 pm wondering what the dream meant. She decides it doesn’t matter. She lies in bed until 6 pm. She gets out of bed and puts a shirt on. She
walks down the hall and knocks on Alison’s door. Alison does not answer. She calls Spencer. Spencer does not answer. She walks downstairs and goes into the dining hall and makes herself toast. She eats half the toast as she walks outside and sits on the grass by the lake eating the rest of the toast by herself. She feels weird. She wonders why she feels weird. She wonders what would make her feel less weird. She decides going for an extremely long run will fix every single problem she can’t place right now. She goes inside and changes into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and tight-laced running shoes. She looks in the mirror and feels in control of her life. She goes outside and starts off running unnervingly fast but decides not to care. After approximately 1 mile her pace slows considerably but she considers it an accomplishment that she is still running at all. She runs for three hours. She does the math and having run one 6-minute mile and the rest 9-minute miles that is a little over 20 miles. She walks back inside feeling stiff and sweat clean of all the thick black sludge caked under her skin like spidery mascara brushes. It is now 9 pm. Riley thinks to herself ‘I can’t live like this.’ She does not know what ‘like this’ means, but she believes it very much. She decides from now on she will only spend time with people who make her skin ache to get closer. She walks stiffly outside still in her running gear and sits on the lawn by the lake. The lake glitters shyly under the moon like thousands of tiny light bulbs shattering over the small lilting ripples in the water. Riley stares at the water for 10 minutes without moving or thinking about anything. Then she begins to think about who she loves so much her skin aches. She cannot think of anyone. This realization makes her feel like she had been ballroom dancing and her partner was spinning her around and around holding her hand and spinning her and then he suddenly let go of her hand and stepped away and now she is spinning spinning spinning wildly out of control headed straight for the full orchestra and will soon she does not know when but very soon crash into all the instruments and everyone will hear the musical womp-womp-womp as she collides with all the once beautiful sounds and they will feign disappointment but really they will be cynically pleased that she has fucked up before any of them have had a chance to. Riley thinks ‘that is what confidence is. Watching someone else fuck up before you’ve had a chance to.’ Riley thinks ‘I am great at instilling confidence. I am great at fucking up first.’ Riley tries to think. She hugs her knees and tries to think of how to make things different. She thinks ‘I should do something drastic.’ Then she remembers today she ran 20 miles which was drastic but she still feels the same. She thinks ‘I should convince Ellie to run away with me and whenever I run out of energy she will play me beautiful music.’ She thinks ‘I should write a novel and never have to work again and spend the rest of my life figuring out how to fix it.’ She thinks ‘I don’t have the patience to write a novel and also I don’t have anything to say that would take hundreds of pages to explain.’ She lies down spread-eagle on the damp dewy grass. Night is settling comfortably like a blue jay snug in its nest. Riley stares up at the stars wide-eyed
not thinking for 17 minutes. Then a face is peering down at her. Riley says ‘Hi Spencer.’ Spencer doesn’t say anything back. He stares at Riley’s face and waits to see her react. She does not react. He does not know why he is surprised that she is not reacting. Riley says ‘I’m sorry I’m an asshole.’ Spencer says ‘Stop fucking with me please.’ Riley says ‘I won’t anymore. I’m sorry.’ Spencer says ‘You were doing it on purpose.’ Riley says ‘I didn’t realize it at the time but yeah I think I was. I don’t know why. It made me feel powerful.’ Spencer says ‘That’s fucked.’ Riley says ‘Mhm. Sorry again.’ Spencer says ‘It’s okay. Just stop.’ Riley says ‘I can be nice now.’ Spencer lies down on the ground next to Riley. He puts his arms and legs out like a snow angel how she has hers. His arms and legs are considerably longer than hers and are much more imposing when spread out. Riley feels comfortable and unpowerful next to Spencer and is temporarily okay with the world. ‘What are you doing,’ he says. ‘I think I’ve lost control of my life,’ Riley says. ‘Why do you think that,’ Spencer says. ‘What’s out of control about your life.’ ‘I don’t know,’ Riley says. ‘I guess nothing. I think I’m overreacting on a grand scale.’ ‘Is that a nervous breakdown,’ Spencer says. ‘I have no idea what constitutes a nervous breakdown,’ Riley says. ‘Maybe.’ Spencer says ‘That’s kind of funny if you’re having a nervous break down right now.’ Riley laughs. ‘Why is that funny,’ she says. ‘Because it’s the most subtle nervous breakdown in the history of the world,’ Spencer says. Riley laughs again. ‘You’re right it is. Wow. Nervous breakdowns really aren’t so
bad.’ ‘But you’re not having a nervous breakdown,’ Spencer says. ‘What am I having then,’ Riley says. ‘I think maybe this is an existential crisis,’ Spencer says. ‘Yeah actually that makes sense.’ ‘Yeah you’re having an existential crisis,’ Spencer says. ‘This sucks,’ Riley says. ‘Existential crises are so high school,’ Spencer says. ‘Suck my dick,’ Riley says. Spencer laughs. ‘Look up what an existential crisis is on Wikipedia,’ Riley says. ‘You already know what an existential crisis is.’ ‘I know but I want to read the description to see how spot-on I am.’ Spencer takes out his Smartphone and looks up ‘existential crisis’ on Google. He goes on Wikipedia and reads the description. ‘‘An existential crisis is a moment at which an individual questions the very foundation of his or her life,’’ He says. ‘Nailed it,’ Riley says. ‘There’s more. It gets more specific.’ ‘Yeah read the rest,’ Riley says. ‘Okay. Do you have ‘the sense of being alone and isolated in the world?’’ ‘Yeah. Definitely.’ Spencer laughs. Riley laughs also and looks at Spencer and smiles at him and he turns red. Do you have ‘a new-found grasp or appreciation for your mortality’?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘How about the belief your life has no purpose or external meaning?’ ‘Yes. So much yes. Lots and lots of yes.’ ‘How about awareness of one’s freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom?’
‘Totally. Like twice a day.’ ‘Well that checks all the boxes, then,’ Spencer says. ‘I knew it. I am fucked,’ Riley says. Spencer laughs and Riley laughs also. Riley suddenly thinks Spencer is hilarious. Riley wonders why she never noticed how funny Spencer is. ‘What should I do,’ Riley says. ‘You need to feel connected to things. You need to redeem your sense of purpose. What’s your purpose,’ Spencer says. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Why are you glad you were born.’ ‘That’s a biggie.’ ‘Answer it,’ Spencer says, grinning, but Riley can’t see him grinning because she is looking up at the infinite miles of black hungry space running endlessly away from her and she is feeling insignificant. ‘I’m glad I was born because I got to meet my family and fall in love a couple times.’ ‘Why are you speaking in the past tense,’ Spencer says. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Come on,’ Spencer says. ‘Where?’ Riley says. ‘No, I mean, help me out here. Why are you speaking in the past tense.’ ‘I haven’t seen my family in a long time. College is weird.’ ‘Why aren’t you in love anymore.’ ‘I am. I just don’t know who I’m in love with right now.’ ‘That’s fair,’ Spencer says. Neither of them say anything for three minutes. Spencer feels uncomfortable but Riley does not. Spencer sits up. ‘Do you feel better at all,’ Spencer says, ‘Like, did that help at all.’ ‘Yeah. That helped a lot. I liked—nevermind.’ ‘No what.’ Spencer says. Riley was going to say she liked hanging out with Spencer but that would make it weird. ‘No, nevermind, hey, what time is it,’ Riley says.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Spencer says. ‘You’re right,’ Riley says.
CHAPTER 6 The next morning Riley wakes up at 1:30 pm. She runs down the hall and knocks on Alison’s door. ‘Wake the FUUUUCK UUUUP!’ she yells. Alison rubs her eyes. Alison’s roommate puts the pillow over her head and says ‘Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Room.’ ‘Sorry. Alison, come out,’ Riley says. Alison says, ‘Riley what the hell.’ Riley says ‘I had a dream I was 70 years old and I was talking to Toni Morrison and Toni Morrison was leaning on a window ledge and she said ‘as you get older everything becomes less’ and I thought ‘that makes perfect since you’re a goddamn genius Toni Morrison’ and then I woke up and I thought I was 70 still
and then as consciousness returned I realized actually I am only 19 and I feel incredible. Like I can run 20 miles right now if I want to because I’m 19. Actually I did that yesterday.’ Alison stares blankly at Riley. ‘What?’ Alison says. ‘I ran 20 miles yesterday.’ ‘Holy shit,’ Alison says, ‘But that’s not what I was saying ‘what’ about. Like ‘what’ to all of that. Like what was all that.’ ‘I don’t know. I just had a cool dream. Isn’t that cool.’ ‘Yes.’ Alison says. ‘I feel incredible.’ Riley says. ‘Spencer said I am having an existential crisis but I think it’s over now.’ ‘Great.’ Alison says. ‘Sorry for waking you up. Tell your roommate I’m sorry for waking her up.’ ‘Fuck off,’ Alison’s roommate says. Riley laughs as silently as she can and so does Alison.
CHAPTER 7 Riley walks back into her room feeling energized and extremely guilty about waking up Alison’s roommate. She sits on her bed and opens her Macbook. She wonders briefly where her roommate has been all weekend but then decides not to worry about it. Riley goes on facebook and sees that she has one new friend request. The friend request is from someone named Eleanor Welker. Riley thinks with horror ‘I am fucked. Eleanor Welker.’ Riley silently curses Ellie for friending her on facebook. Riley thinks how Ellie is definitely keenly aware that this means Riley will spend the rest of her day stalking Ellie’s profile and searching for weaknesses that will never appear. Riley wonders if Ellie will stalk her profile for weaknesses too. If Ellie searches Riley’s profile for weaknesses she will find an abundance of them. ‘Or’, Riley thinks with horror, ‘maybe she won’t look at my profile once, because she is above stalking me because that’s how little my existence effects her existence. That would be worse I think. That is entirely possible.’ Riley notices that Ellie is online. Riley says, ‘Fuck,’ to the empty room. Riley pretends to be busy and looks up things on Google that have been bothering
her, like has Bob Saget ever done any movies, and how many other galaxies are we currently aware of besides the Milky Way, and what’s up with Canada’s healthcare plan. Every five or six minutes Riley checks on Facebook to see if Ellie is still online. She is. Riley clicks around on the internet for two and a half hours while checking to see if Ellie is still online every five or six minutes until she can’t take it anymore. Riley says ‘I have no dignity,’ to the empty room. She clicks Ellie’s name on the dropdown search bar. She types ‘what do you want from me.’ She waits. After 30 seconds, she can see the checkmark indicating Ellie has seen the message at 4:00 pm. Ellie does not respond for 2 minutes. Then she responds ‘you need to relax.’ Riley waits 4 minutes to spite Ellie. Then she types back ‘you’re the one constantly fucking with me.’ Ellie responds within 5 seconds. ‘what are you talking about.’ From here on out both Ellie and Riley begin responding with impressive immediacy. Riley: ‘you keep doing stuff.’ Ellie: ‘that’s vague. yeah. I do. Everybody does. It’s part of being a functioning human in society. ‘stuff’.’ Riley: ‘no you know what I mean. What’s your deal. Ellie: ‘I’m not doing anything. You’re doing stuff.’ Riley: ‘how.’ Ellie: ‘you watched me play guitar.’ Riley: ‘so. You were playing guitar.’ Ellie: ‘then asked me to go for a walk in the woods for like 4 hours.’ Riley: ‘you’re right yeah that was weird.’ Ellie: ‘then kissed me at that party.’ Riley: ‘you made me do it.’ Ellie: ‘how’
Riley: ‘you were looking at me weird.’ Ellie: ‘I didn’t make you do anything.’ Riley: ‘ok fine you’re right I’ll stop.’ Ellie: ‘you can’t stop.’ Riley: ‘yeah I know.’ Ellie: ‘hah you suck’ Riley: ‘actually you suck because you’re making me be fucked.’ Ellie: ‘you know what I don’t get.’ Riley: ‘what’ Ellie: ‘you search for interesting people and then when you find them you lose your shit and can’t act normal. you can’t even have a conversation with them without trying to practically marry them.’ Riley: ‘I don’t see how that doesn’t make perfect sense. I just get excited. I don’t know how else to handle it.’ Ellie: ‘just be normal.’ Riley: ‘idk how though.’ Ellie: ‘you’re so fucking weird.’ Riley: ‘yeah I don’t know why.’ Ellie: ‘how long did you stare at my icon before you talked to me.’ Riley: ‘I knew it! You are doing stuff. You know you are. Why. What’re your intentions.’ Ellie: ‘how long.’ Riley: ‘I’m not telling.’ Ellie: ‘Riley Cunningham.’ Riley: ‘yeah that’s another thing how did you find out my last name.’ Ellie: ‘im not telling.’ Riley: ‘are you trying to assassinate me.’ Ellie: ‘to be assassinated you have to be an important person’ Riley: ‘can you play me a song real quick. Do you wanna come to my dorm and play me a song.’
Ellie: ‘are you sure that’s a good idea.’ Riley: ‘yes. It’s a great idea.’ Ellie: ‘I don’t feel like it.’ Riley: ‘ahhhhhhhhh fine.’ Ellie: ‘I gotta go.’ Riley: ‘yeah me too I have important things to do.’ Ellie: ‘I have to go play guitar outside.’ Riley: ‘WHEREWHEREWHEREWHEREWHERE’ Ellie: ‘not telling bye’ Riley: ‘you suck’ Eleanor Welker is offline Riley says ‘Fuck’ to the computer screen. Riley sits on her bed empty-headed. ‘Eleanor Welker is trying to kill me,’she thinks. She wonders what she can do with her day that will make her an important person for today. Like if her entire life had to be distilled into one day and a panel of judges had to decide if she made any kind of noticeable mark on the immeasurable tapestry of the universe what would she do. It is Sunday but there are no classes tomorrow because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day so she doesn’t have any pressing obligations except for a few online homework assignments. She decides she should first write poems.
CHAPTER 8 Riley sits in the same library cubicle she where she sat Friday and almost everyday before that. She stares at a blank word document. She goes on Facebook. Eleanor Welker is not online. Riley is frustrated and she does not know why she is frustrated. She thinks ‘I am frustrated when Ellie is online and I am frustrated when she is not online. I am fucked.’ She writes 7 poems about being fucked. One is about a housewife who accidentally does meth. One is about a chef who accidentally cut off three of his fingers cutting a steak. Riley reads the poems and they all lack depth and eccentricity except for 2 of them. Riley attaches the word document to an email which she sends to her poetry professor with the heading “Two Poems About Being Fucked.” Riley goes into the bathroom and calls Spencer. He picks up on the first ring.
‘I am Brittany Spears,’ Riley says. Her voice echoes and spreads out like jam too thin against the wide tile walls. ‘What?’ Spencer says. ‘I am Brittany Spears. Me and Brittany Spears are the same person.’ ‘Why,’ Spencer says. ‘My loneliness is killing me,’ Riley says. ‘That’s funny.’ Spencer says. ‘Thanks,’ Riley says, ‘I thought of it and I wanted to tell someone.’ ‘So you told me,’ Spencer says. ‘Yeah. I guess so,’ Riley says. Riley thinks how Spencer is making this a whole thing now and it is going to end in an argument in approximately three days in which Spencer tells Riley she likes him and Riley tells Spencer to stop. Riley goes back to her cubicle and writes 4 more poems. She titles them ‘What Would Brittany Do.’ The first one details steps on how to fend off loneliness using a red leather jumpsuit and a boa constrictor. It is weird as hell but she likes it incredibly much. Riley sends only the first poem to her poetry professor in an email with the subject line ‘I Don’t Really Know But The Syllabics Are Okay I Think So There’s That.’ She thinks how she needs to make an appointment to see him tomorrow between classes.
CHAPTER 9 Alison is sitting alone in her room crying. She does not know what she is upset about. Actually she is not upset. She looks in the mirror at the bleeding black rivers below her eyes and says ‘Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it.’ Riley is in her dorm curling her hair. She is officially ready for the night. She looks in the mirror and says out loud ‘I would fuck me.’ Her roommate walks in as she is saying ‘I would fuck me’ out loud to herself. This is the most embarrassed and uncomfortable Riley has ever been in her entire life. She stares at her roommate and her roommate stares back. Riley scans her brain for ways to explain or make it seem like she was not just talking to herself about how she wants to fuck herself. Her eyes frantically dart around the room. She is looking for her cell phone. She sees her cell phone and it is on her bed which is not helpful because she is by her desk in front of the mirror over 9 feet away from her phone. Her only hope would have been to pretend she was on speakerphone with a friend. Her only hope is gone. Riley wonders if she should apologize. She quickly shoots down this possibility upon realizing how ridiculous the event would sound summarized in apology-form. Now they have both been staring at each other for so long there is no way to evade crushing
suffocating oppressive awkwardness. Riley lets it wash over her like a wave. She contemplates impaling herself with a pair of teal scissors sitting on her desk to ensure the last thing her roommate remembers is not her talking to herself but instead her impaling herself with a pair of scissors. At the last second she decides not to touch the scissors. Riley walks out of the room and gingerly shuts the door. Once in the hall she opens her eyes extremely wide and sighs and thinks ‘somebody kill me. Please. Please.’ She walks down the hall to Alison’s room. Alison is putting on a blue mini pencil skirt. ‘Hey where are we going tonight,’ Riley says. ‘I don’t know yet, Adam says he knows somewhere where boys don’t have to pay so probably there,’ Alison says. 1 hour and 15 minutes later they are all drunk and standing on the lawn at a frat house which is a different frat house than the night before but might as well be the same frat house. Riley hopes Ellie is not there and that Ellie not being there does not ruin her whole night. Riley takes Cam’s hand and walks into the party. In the basement Cam and Riley start dancing. Riley is incredibly excited to be dancing with Cam but is trying to act like it’s no big deal. Riley begins to worry she likes Cam. This is a problem because Riley is incapable of forming proper sentences around people she likes and Cam is part of her friend group, meaning from now on whenever she is hanging out with her own friends she is going to babble meaninglessly and everyone will find her uninteresting and trivial. She is trying not to think of that now. Cam runs his hand down Riley’s thigh and Riley can’t take it anymore. She turns around and begins kissing Cam. She did not realize how desperately she needed this to happen until it happened. After 1 song Cam backs away. Riley feels as though she is a kitten floating aimlessly in the middle of the ocean trying very hard to remain calm. She looks at Cam and he says ‘I’m too drunk hold on,’ and staggers upstairs. Riley stands in the middle of a mass of faceless bodies not moving. She runs up the stairs to try to find Cam. When she gets upstairs she sees Adam and Alison talking in hushed voices by the beer pong table. ‘Where’s Cam,’ Riley says. ‘He just texted me,’ Adam says, ‘He just threw up outside and is gonna walk home.’ ‘Awww no,’ Riley says. ‘No no no. That’s the worst. Thanks.’ Adam and Alison nod and smile weakly and continue talking in hushed voices. Riley is curious as to what they’re talking about but it seems like a fight so she doesn’t ask. Riley wanders into the kitchen. There is a keg manned by four frat boys. Riley asks for a drink and receives one relatively quickly. She drinks it in
approximately 50 seconds. She is frustrated and sad that Cam is not around anymore. She is trying to pretend it isn’t impossible to have a good time without him but it’s kind of impossible to have a good time without him.
CHAPTER 10 The next day at 2:30 pm Riley is sitting on the swings by the lake with Spencer. Spencer is staring at the water. ‘What are you thinking about,’ says Spencer. ‘Nothing,’ says Riley. ‘What are you thinking about.’ ‘I’m thinking about what if I kissed you right now,’ says Spencer. Riley looks at Spencer. She is disappointed in him which is evident by the tiredly drawn-down curve of her mouth. ‘Stop,’ says Riley. ‘I like you but you have to stop.’ ‘Sorry,’ says Spencer. ‘Fuck. I gotta go. Why do I always—I’ll talk to you later I guess.’ Riley watches Spencer stalk off towards his dorm which is on the other side of campus in relation to Riley’s dorm. Spencer looks like he’s muttering to himself. Riley feels bad but she tells him not to say things like that but then he says them anyway. Riley doesn’t get up from the swings. She wonders what she should do for the rest of the day now that she can’t talk to Spencer. She had intended to hang out with him all day. She thinks maybe she will try to write a novel. She thinks maybe it will be about someone who can’t stop disappointing everyone. She thinks it will be about only wanting people who will never want you back.
CHAPTER 11 Alison is alone in her room looking out the window at the pavement and how black it is in the sun. She is wondering if it would be warm on her skin. Riley walks to a McDonalds and sits in a booth and doesn’t buy anything. She has her phone but leaves it in the front pocket of her jeans. She looks at all the people at the McDonalds. She wonders how many of them are truly truly truly unhappy right this moment. She wonders how many of them are eating
McDonalds as a direct result of this unhappiness. She takes a pen out of her backpack and takes a notebook out of her backpack and writes a poem about how everyone in this McDonalds must be feeling right now. A woman in blue jeans and a red turtleneck is sitting in a booth with her ten year old son. Her ten year old son is wearing a Dragonball-Z shirt. The woman in the turtleneck picks up a beige plastic chair and starts hitting her son over the head with it. Her son keeps eating his chicken nuggets and doesn’t look up. He is bleeding from his forehead, a small trickling tributary of blood dripping onto his nose and snaking down his chin. He puts down his chicken nugget to take a sip of chocolate milk. The woman in the turtleneck and her son are not crying. They mostly look bored. Actually the woman is not hitting her son with a chair. Actually her son is just eating chicken nuggets and she is just checking her email on her phone. But neither of them are crying and it makes Riley uneasy. She leaves the McDonald’s and walks back to her dorm. She goes up to her room and her roommate is not home. The window is open and the wind outside is making the entire room bright and fresh-feeling. Riley goes on facebook and sends Ellie a message that says ‘okay fine we can be friends. I don’t really like hanging out with people but I think I would like hanging out with you.’ She presses ‘enter’ and the message sends. She reads it over and decides actually on second thought she doesn’t want to tell Ellie that anymore. It’s too late though and Ellie is in a state of unrest for the next 4 hours waiting for Ellie to respond. To distract herself Riley does sit-ups on the floor of her dorm and contemplates buying a guitar. She wonders why she’s never tried to learn to play herself. She thinks if she knew how to play guitar she would never have to leave her room for anything which would be unhealthy and extremely fulfilling. Riley thinks about calling Spencer. She feels like talking to someone who is hopelessly in love with her. She thinks it will make her feel less fucked. Riley decides instead not to call Spencer because she told him that time that she would try being less of an asshole. She sits on her bed and plugs her ipod into an ipod dock and puts on Billie Holiday. She thinks to herself ‘this song.’ She listens to the song and doesn’t think about anything else except what is happening in the song. She opens her Macbook and writes a poem about something the song reminded her of. She tries not to make it be about Cam but it ends up sort of being about Cam. She wonders why it is so difficult to keep things from becoming love poems. She thinks how the word ‘love’ poem is too strong. It’s more of a ‘like-a-lot’ poem. Halfway through the ‘like-a-lot’ poem about Cam Riley notices it’s now a ‘like-alot’ poem about Spencer. Riley thinks to herself ‘that’s some sort of Freudian something or other.’ Riley reads the poem back to herself and likes it but also can tell it’s one of those poems she will hate after 30 minutes if she goes back and reads it again. Riley sits in the middle of the floor and calls Spencer. She consciously thinks
about how she should not mention anything about the ‘like-a-lot’ poem as he answers. Riley says, ‘I just had an idea.’ Spencer says, ‘What.’ Spencer sounds a little annoyed still from earlier. Riley decides to ignore his blatant agitation. Riley says, ‘Have you read Hikikomori by Ellen Kennedy and Tao Lin.’ Spencer says, ‘Yeah.’ Riley says, ‘What are you doing for the next 6 months.’ Spencer says, ‘Nothing that important I guess.’ Riley says, ‘Let’s do all the things they write about.’ Spencer says, ‘I’ll be Ellen though.’ Riley says, ‘Why.’ Spencer says, ‘Because if I’m Tao I have to roll around in broken glass and broken tortilla chips screaming ‘Iceland!’’ Riley says, ‘Yeah but if you’re Ellen you have to close your right breast in a medicine cabinet door 220 times. You don’t have boobs.’ Spencer says, ‘You do.’ Riley feels uncomfortable. Riley says, ‘I guess so. Anyway I’m Ellen.’ Spencer says, ‘Fine okay.’ Riley says, ‘I’m gonna go buy a package of soybeans to get started.’ Spencer says, ‘Wait I have a better idea.’ Riley says, ‘What.’ Spencer says, ‘Instead what are you doing tomorrow.’ Riley says, ‘I have class.’ Spencer says, ‘If you want to not go we should go to New York City. To a museum or something.’ Riley says, ‘Oh! Yes yes yes definitely yes.’ Spencer says, ‘Sweet. Okay. Bye.’ Riley hangs up and sits on her bed grinning. She text messages Spencer asking what time because they forgot to establish a time. He says to be ready by 7:45.
He says they will leave around 8:00 am. Riley says that’s fine even though it is definitely not fine. Riley thinks how she will have to go to bed soon because it is 10:30 pm and she has not gotten up before 10:00 am in an extremely long time. She thinks she will have to get up at 6:30 am to have enough time to get ready for the day.
CHAPTER 12 Riley walks down the hall and brushes her teeth. She walks back into her room and takes her clothes off. She gets under the covers of her bed. She looks at the ceiling. She thinks about how when she worked at Dunkin Donuts for 3 weeks over the summer her favorite part of the job was going into the giant walk-in freezer to get different flavored milks and how sometimes she would sit on the floor of the freezer and breath and feel like no one in the world knew she existed. She sits up and grabs her laptop from under her bed and writes a poem about the giant walk-in freezer. Then she goes on Facebook to see if Ellie is online but she does not admit to herself that that is why she is going on Facebook. Ellie is online. Riley contemplates her next move. She thinks how she chatted Ellie first last time so this time she should definitely not chat Ellie first. Also she sent Ellie that message about wanting to be friends which evidently Ellie never responded to. Then she thinks that Ellie would never in a million years chat her first because Ellie is in control and initiating is a sign of weakness. Riley pretends to do important things like work on her English essay which is due in 1 week instead of stare at Ellie’s little green dot. After 30 minutes Riley begins to worry Ellie will sign off soon thinking Riley is not online. She says, ‘Who am I kidding,’ and clicks on Ellie’s name in the sidebar. Riley: ‘Hi.’ Ellie does not look at the message until 2 full minutes later. Riley waits in agony for Ellie to respond. She sits up and says ‘Ughhhh’ at the computer screen.
The door opens and Riley’s roommate walks in. Riley feels uncomfortable because she is in her underwear and it is only 11:00 pm. There is an unwritten rule in their room that they are not supposed to take their clothes off to sleep until at earliest 1:00 am, otherwise it is sort of weird. Riley smiles sheepishly and bunches the covers up to her shoulders and then lies sideways on the bed, still staring at Ellie’s chat box. Three minutes later Ellie responds. Ellie: how long this time. Riley: 30 minutes. Ellie: hahaha Riley considers not responding. ‘Hahaha’ does not invite much room for further conversation. Saying something else after ‘hahaha’ would require a conscious effort to think of other things to talk about. It would require extraneous consideration on Riley’s part and zero effort on Ellie’s part. Riley thinks that is much too indicative of the one-sided nature of their friendship. Riley wonders if it is even enough of a relationship to be considered a friendship. Ellie: guess what I’m doing. Riley is elated that Ellie initiated further conversation. This is a sign Riley is beginning to wear through her defenses. Riley considers what she just said and thinks, ‘What the fuck is wrong with me. We’re friends. Friends have conversations. Jesus.’ Riley wonders why she treats their every interaction like a militaristic stand-off. Riley: what? Ellie: playing guitar. Riley: ooooh what song! Ellie: Oh! Darling by the Beatles. Riley: holy shit. Ellie: what. Riley: that’s a really good song. I bet that sounds amazing Ellie: have you ever heard an acoustic version of it Riley: no Ellie: wanna hear. Riley:YESYESYESYESYSEYESYSEYEYSEYALSDJLSKDFHASLKDJAKLSDJA Ellie: hahahaha chill. You can see if you relax. Riley: I’m relaxed.
Ellie: hahaha you sure? Riley: yes. Positive. Relaxed. Zen, even. Ellie: ok then come over. Riley: where do you live? Ellie: the fine arts dorms. Riley: I should have guessed Ellie: Room 419. Riley: be there in literally five minutes ahh yes Riley signs off and jumps out of bed smiling extremely wide. Her roommate stops typing and looks at her standing in the middle of the room grinning in her underwear. Riley says, ‘Sorry.’ Her roommate goes back to typing and ignoring her. Riley immediately realizes saying ‘sorry’ made it much more uncomfortable for everyone. She puts on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops and runs out the door and runs down the stairs and runs across the street to the fine arts dorm. She waits outside the dorm until someone lets her in. Then she walks up four flights of stairs and wanders the fourth floor briefly before finding Room 419. On Ellie’s door there is a picture of a cat sitting in a coffee cup cut out of a magazine under which the name ‘Steph’ is written and a picture of two giraffes fighting under which ‘Ellie’ is written. Riley waits until she is no longer panting from having run from her room to Ellie’s door and then brushes a strand of hair from her face and then knocks.
CHAPTER 13 30 seconds later Ellie opens the door. She is wearing a t-shirt that says ‘Today Is Not Your Day. Tomorrow Isn’t Looking Too Good Either’ and a pair of plaid pajama shorts. Riley cannot tell if Ellie is wearing make-up or not which irritates her because when Riley is not wearing make-up it is extremely easy to tell. Ellie says, ‘That was fast.’ Riley had not realized just how fast that was and is now realizing it and is now extremely embarrassed. She turns bright red. Ellie says, ‘Why are you red.’
Riley says, ‘I just wanna hear the song sans verbal demoralization. If at all possible.’ Ellie laughs and says, ‘Ok fine. My roommate’s not coming home tonight I don’t think. She’s in the woods taking shrooms with some friends.’ Ellie sits on her bed and picks up her guitar which is also on her bed. Riley notices a poster of Bob Dylan sitting on a piano bench wearing a suit on the wall behind Ellie’s bed. Riley has the same one in her room. Riley says, ‘I have that poster.’ Ellie looks up from her guitar and looks at the poster and smiles and nods. Riley sits on the floor cross-legged. Ellie says, ‘Don’t do that. That’s weird.’ Riley says, ‘Why.’ Ellie says, ‘Because. I feel like you’re a kindergartener at circle time or something. Just—come up here, sit up here.’ Riley hops up onto Ellie’s bed which is lofted at approximately the same height as her own bed. Riley says, ‘I hate the height we have to have these at.’ Ellie says, ‘Me too it’s like just a tad too high to get on without jumping.’ Riley says, ‘Yeah, literally a centimeter too high.’ Ellie says, ‘Hang on let me tune real quick.’ Riley says, ‘Hanging on.’ Ellie plucks strings at random and then says ‘Okay.’ She starts playing and Riley is quiet. Riley is quiet everywhere like in her brain and her eyes and her hands she is quiet. She listens with her whole body. Ellie’s voice is like every heartbreak Riley has ever remembered months after she was supposed to be over it. Ellie’s voice is like being ten years old wondering what death will feel like. Ellie’s voice is like sitting on the floor of a giant walk-in freezer at Dunkin Donuts pretending no one knows you exist. Riley wants to sit on the floor of Ellie’s voice for an extremely long time and pretend she doesn’t exist. When she’s done Ellie says ‘stop looking at me like that.’ Riley says, ‘Sorry.’ Ellie says ‘What’d you think.’ Riley nods and says, ‘Really good. Really really good.’ Elllie says, ‘Thanks.’
Riley says, “What time is it.” Ellie says, ‘Eleven thirty.’ Riley says, ‘I gotta go. I’m supposed to go to New York City tomorrow at 8 am.’ Riley climbs down from Ellie’s bed. Ellie keeps playing guitar as Riley leaves. Riley wants very badly to stay and listen all night and Ellie knows Riley wants very badly to stay and listen all night. Riley turns and says, ‘I kind of want to not go yet.’ Ellie says, ‘Then don’t.’ Riley says, ‘But I don’t know.’ Ellie says, ‘I think you take everything to seriously. I’ll see you at some point tomorrow I’m sure.’ Riley says, ‘No you won’t. I’ll be in New York Ellie says, ‘Well. Okay. But then the next day maybe. I don’t know. Just relax.’ Riley says, ‘Okay. Thanks for letting me come over.’ Ellie nods and goes back to playing. Riley sprints across the street energized by the chill that comes every night a bit after 11:30. She runs upstairs into her room and tells her roommate she has to sleep so she has to shut off the light and her roommate says that’s ok because she’s staying over a boy’s room tonight. Her roommate leaves. Riley takes off her clothes and gets in bed. She looks at the ceiling and thinks about being in Ellie’s room listening to Beatle’s covers all day instead of going to New York City. That night she dreams of intentionally sleeping through her alarm.
CHAPTER 14 Riley’s phone starts ringing at 6 am. It interrupts a dream that was intangible but fantastic, and Riley begrudgingly answers, trying uselessly to remember at least a shred of the dream. Riley says, ‘Hello.’ Spencer says, ‘Just wanted to make sure you were gonna get up. I didn’t believe you when you said you were gonna come.’ Riley says, ‘I’m gonna come.’
Spencer says, ‘Meet me outside at like 7:45.’ Riley gets dressed and braids her hair and grabs a leather over-the-shoulder bag to bring incase she buys anything. She puts a moleskin notebook in the bag and two pens incase she decides to write something. Not having something to write in if she is going to be gone for more than a few hours makes her nervous. Outside the campus is silent except for the occasional bird. Riley realizes she loves the sounds of birds in the morning better than any other possible sound. She thinks the sound of birds chirping in the morning sounds like waking up on Easter morning after it’s just rained, and you go outside to stand on the brick stoop and soak in the petrichor, and then go inside and eat a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and watch an episode of Hey Arnold and do not have to actively wonder if your life is going well or not because you know intrinsically that it is going well. Spencer is standing by the crosswalk looking at his phone. Riley walks down the hill and begins grinning the closer she gets to him. His blonde hair is disheveled and cowlicked from sleep and he is fidgeting anxiously in his navy blue fallweather jacket. Riley silently notes that he looks very cute today but also silently notes that she will not tell him this incase he gets the wrong impression of how the day is going to go. Riley says, ‘Hi.’ Spencer turns and brightens when he sees her. Riley silently thinks how people brightening when they see her is her favorite reaction of all possible reactions. She thinks how people brightening when they see her and people smiling when they see her are two entirely different things. Smiling is passive and polite, and rarely honest, but brightening is smiling with your whole being—your eyes light up, your eyebrows raise, your body turns toward the person, your face flushes slightly. ‘This is gonna be a long day,’ Riley says. She wonders if that’s a rude thing to say, so adds, ‘I’m excited but New York tires me out sometimes.’ Spencer says, ‘We’re not gonna be in Times Square or anything, don’t worry. Times Square sucks.’ Riley says, ‘I’ve never been anywhere besides Times Square I don’t think.’ Spencer says, ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Who did you go with last time you went to New York.’ Riley says, ‘My family.’ Spencer says, ‘That explains it.’ The bus ride to New York is 3 hours long. Riley has never met any of the other students on the bus. A high percentage of them are Asian, and some of them appear to be from some European country. Everyone is dressed very trendy. Riley pretends to sleep for a majority of the ride so she can listen to music. She
listens to ‘Oh! Darling,’ a few times and thinks how Ellie’s acoustic version was much better. She listens to The Black Lips and Dinosaur Jr. when they get closer to the city to pump herself up for a long day of walking and maneuvering through crowds. The bus dumps all the students out in Times Square by a parking garage. Across the street is an extremely expensive Italian restaurant. Riley brought forty dollars. She thinks how if she went to that Italian Restaurant she would probably have to spend all the money she brought for the whole day in one sitting. Spencer grabs Riley’s hand and weaves through the thick throngs of emptyheaded drones headed to work and bored-looking New Yorkers and excited, salivating packs of tourists wearing t-shirts from the M&M store, mostly. Riley feels uneasy about Spencer grabbing her hand. She almost says something immense and evil like ‘I don’t love you,’ but decides it’s best not to do something so drastic at the beginning of the day. Spencer says, ‘let’s go to Central Park.’ Riley says, ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ Riley and Spencer walk several blocks to Central Park. Riley has never been here before. Riley says, ‘I’ve never been here before.’ Spencer says, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ They pass a street performer. He is playing the saxophone and looks to be around 65 years old. Riley thinks about how at 65 years old he is still stuck playing for donations at the park, and how he probably imagined his life would be much different at this age when he was younger, and how he is actually extremely talented, and it makes her feel like she is watching someone fight with their parents while she is in the room. She gives him fifteen dollars and makes Spencer watch until he finishes the rest of the song with her. Spencer says, ‘You’d never last a day in New York. You won’t last today.’ Riley says, ‘What do you mean.’ Spencer says, ‘You can’t give that much money to everyone that makes you feel bad. You can’t give any money at all to most people. You’re going to have to get over it.’ Riley says, ‘I don’t think I can.’ Spencer says, ‘You will, you’ll see. The first homeless person you see will make you extremely sad. The third or fourth homeless person you see will not make you feel anything. The fifth or sixth homeless person you see will agitate you. The seventh or eighth homeless person you see—you won’t see them at all.’ Riley says, ‘I want to never get over it. I want to always feel sad about seeing a
homeless person.’ Spencer says, ‘I know but you won’t. You’ll see.’ Riley hopes Spencer isn’t right mostly because she is bored of him being right about those sort of things and her being wrong.
CHAPTER 15 Riley and Spencer spend a few hours in Central Park sitting on a huge rock talking about what kind of friends they’ve made at college. Riley says she thinks sometimes her friends don’t love her, so she’ll disappear for a few days to see if they miss her. Spencer says he knows, she does it to him often. He says it’s stupid and it will just make everyone annoyed with her, and eventually they will stop caring. He says it makes it seem like she does not love them. Riley says she knows. She says it’s only half because she worries her friends don’t really love her, and half because she’d sometimes rather spend time alone than with other people, unless she loves a person more than she loves spending time alone, which is rare. She says the only people she loves being with more than she loves being alone are her friends from home. Spencer looks sad at this and Riley feels bad. She forgot to avoid hurting his feelings. She thinks how if he said that to her it would hurt her feelings a lot too. Riley thinks how easy and accidental it is to hurt someone. Riley and Spencer head towards the Museum of Modern art which is a few blocks away. On the way there, they pass the Frick. Spencer stops and Riley stops because Spencer stops. Spencer points at the Frick and looks at Riley and says, ‘I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time.’
Riley laughs. ‘You must feel incredible. How perfect.’ Spencer says, ‘I had to do it. The opportunity was there.’ Riley says, ‘That was extremely romantic. Frank O’Hara would be flattered. I’m sure he wrote it with moments like this in mind.’ Spencer says, ‘I can recite the whole thing if you want.’ Riley says, ‘I very much want.’ Spencer recites ‘Having A Coke With You’ by Frank O’Hara. Riley applauds at the end. Across the street from the Museum of Modern Art there are two newly weds posing for wedding photos. Riley grabs Spencer’s arm and says, ‘Oh! That’s so cute!’ Spencer and Riley watch the bride and groom kiss as they pose for photos. Spencer says, ‘You can tell by his face they aren’t gonna last.’ Riley says, ‘Don’t ever let me marry someone if I kiss them like that.’ As the couple are leaning in for another kiss for the camera, Spencer looks squarely at Riley. Riley looks skeptically at Spencer. Spencer suddenly begins moving his face towards Riley’s face, his eyes focused intently on her eyes. Riley feels inescapable panic. She moves her face away and says, ‘Whoa.’ Spencer kisses Riley. Riley kisses him back because she doesn’t know what else to do. After Spencer is smiling. Riley thinks she is smiling too but she is doing it to be polite so it doesn’t mean anything. Spencer says, ‘You pulled away.’ Riley says, ‘That was unexpected.’ Spencer says, ‘I really like you.’ Riley panics internally. It’s too early in the day for such drastic proclamations. She says, ‘I like you too.’ She knows she will suffer the consequences of this statement for weeks to come, maybe months, maybe years, maybe the rest of her life if she's not careful. In the museum Spencer and Riley spend their time trying to prove who knows more about art. They stand in front of each painting and say things like 'the yellow light in the background is a symbol of hope within the dreary context of the trailer park landscape' and 'the hyper-realism of this self-portrait highlights the unflinching introspection of the sensitive artist' and Riley feels like a phony all day. At 2 pm Riley says she has to go to the bathroom. She wanders down a narrow
hallway and finds a dimly lit 'woman's room' the size of a broom closet. She sticks her head in the sink. She turns the water on. She holds her breath underwater until she feels desperate for something again. Her mascara is waterproof so she resurfaces intact. She looks at herself in the mirror with relative indifference. She walks back out into the hall and the world is the same and what if it is always and she doesn't even know what she is upset about.
THE END. (go sit by a lake. stare at the black water. you're ok.)
