Chapter Five
Three days later I made my way into the dining hall, not even bothering to drop my text books back at the room after my class. I was starving — I had overslept and had only had time to grab a banana on my way to class that morning.
When Jess had found me the morning after the football game, she looked me up and down sharply. “You’ve had sex,” she said, crossing her arms and staring me up and down again.
“You can’t know that.” I sat down on the couch, trying not to feel embarrassed.
Jess laughed. “Well, now I do for sure. But no, you’re totally walking like a girl who’s just gotten laid for the first time in a long time.”
I told her I didn’t want to talk about it — I was still feeling a little weird about the whole thing — but she managed to get me to admit that it was Zack I’d screwed.
“Hey, not a bad choice, the winning QB. Certainly more prestige in that than mine for last night.”
I finally turned the topic by getting her to talk about the guy she left the stadium with. Jess thought he might be worth a date or two, though she didn’t want to commit herself to anyone just yet.
Jess worried me a little bit — she seemed to be getting wilder and wilder as the semester wore on, and I could only imagine how she would be by the time finals came around. But I told myself she was an adult, and that she seemed to at least mostly have a good self-preserving streak in her. She never left her drink alone, she tried to make sure she had at least one friend with her when she went to a party, and she almost always ended the night in her own dorm room — or in the room of one of her friends, if she got too drunk. True to her word, the next day she and I worked on my stats class together; it always amazed me that she seemed to instinctively get concepts that I had to have explained over and over again before I could finally understand them — at least when it came to math. I knew she dreaded having to take English in the spring, and I’d promised that I would help her when that time came.
I waited in line; my class wasn’t the only one that had gotten out, and there were plenty of people in the dining hall still in their pajamas whose classes didn’t start until the afternoon. I’d never been a big morning person, but the classes I needed to take were offered at set times, and it wasn’t worth the extra few hours of sleep to me to wait to take them when they might be at a different hour. Since my social life was mostly limited to Jess, I wasn’t up late most nights anyway. Eventually, the kinds of classes I wanted to take and needed to have to finish my degree would be afternoon classes, and I’d get to lounge around all morning, too.
I scanned my card and ducked into the serving area; the food wasn’t great, but it was all-you-can-eat, a privilege that seemed mostly geared toward the football team. The soup was dependably decent, and I helped myself to a bowl of that, grabbing a sandwich off a tray and moving over to the salad bar. I was not going to put on the freshman 15, I told myself over and over again. It was too easy between the junk food in the dorms and the unlimited desserts and ice cream that the dining hall offered. I had seen a few girls who had already put on five pounds and the first semester was only about halfway over; I had no desire to be like them — crying over the scale, panicked that my clothes didn’t fit anymore, and struggling to diet with temptation all around me.
I got my food and sat down at a table by the windows; Jess would be in soon enough, and she’d probably make a beeline to me. In spite of the fact that Jess had a plenty-active social life, she’d gotten attached to me in our first week and we tried to catch meals together as much as we possibly could. Her classes were spread out over different hours on different days — she only had the two required classes on Fridays, the freshman introductory classes that we all had to take: Introduction to Academic Life and Freshman Seminar, which took place in the biggest auditorium on campus and featured a different guest speaker every week. Some of them were interesting and some of them were so boring I had to wonder if it was some sort of hazing procedure that wasn’t outlawed simply because they could argue it was academic.
I started in on my salad first, eating it as fast as I could to stop the gnawing hunger in my stomach. I wasn’t model-thin, but I was fit, and when I had asked my doctor how to keep from gaining weight, she had offered me the practical advice that if I ate a fairly lean salad before I started in on my entrée, I’d fill my stomach up faster and take in fewer calories. It had worked so far, and at least I liked salads. While I ate, I thought about the class I just left, and the one I had later in the day. Grant signed me up for all of the access I needed as a new member of the campus newspaper, and I started pouring through the message board threads. I needed something to throw myself into after the debacle with Zack, while I was trying to figure out just how I felt about it. Researching and getting to understand the way the newspaper worked was a good distraction from the troubling feelings I was trying to avoid thinking about.
I was still doing well in all of my classes, and I managed to keep my head on straight for the American history essay test that I had just taken, in spite of the fact that my stomach had started to rumble about halfway through. I had stats later in the day, and despite Jess’s tutoring, I wasn’t sure I’d entirely be able to keep up with the material. But I would have to do my best. We were starting to get into deeper topics in statistics, and I felt like I was swimming out of my depth until Jess explained things to me in terms so simple anyone could understand them. I knew that after midterms we would get into the part of things that I was actually good at: interpreting information, instead of compiling it. Drawing conclusions from data was something I was halfway capable of, even if I didn’t entirely know how to explain how I’d come to the conclusion. If I could ace the midterm, I would be set.
I finished my salad and set the plate aside, moving to start in on the minestrone soup I’d gotten next. I realized that I had forgotten to grab a spoon and groaned at my stupidity. Well, I’d had a lot on my mind, I thought, trying not to be angry at myself. Since I had sex with Zack, I’d been a jumble of different emotions, and every little thing I did wrong seemed to be huge instead of tiny. I had gotten frustrated at myself for marking something in my journalism text book with a green instead of a pink highlighter — it didn’t even entirely matter, once I reviewed the material later I would know that it was a quote instead of a citation — but in the moment, it seemed so incredibly stupid and amateur.
I knew the reason I’d been so hard on myself was that I hadn’t done anything about the situation with Zack. After I’d run away from the frat house that night, I’d gone back to my dorm and tried to bury myself in an episode of Bones. I’d been thinking about him the whole time; I couldn’t even remember the story to save my life. At least, I thought ruefully, that would make it more fun to re-watch later. But I wondered about the fact that he sought me out, the fact that we’d gone from zero to 100 miles an hour in a matter of maybe 30 minutes; he offered me a ride home, and then I was at the frat house, and then we were kissing, and then we were having sex, right there where anyone could have walked in on us. I didn’t like the idea that Zack’s mere presence could take me so far away from my usual habits. It made me uncomfortable.
Zack and I broke up when my mom started getting sicker. She passed away from the cancer she had been fighting throughout our relationship a couple of months before I started college, only a few weeks after watching me graduate. I’d thrown myself into work, taking extra shifts and saving up my money as much as possible. With her death, it was even harder for dad to afford my college — there were all the bills, and even though they’d had a life insurance policy starting from before she’d been diagnosed with cancer, everything had been so expensive that there just wasn’t anything much to spare for my education.
I couldn’t blame Zack for breaking up with me when he had; he had his own life to lead, and I told myself more than once that I would rather deal with the heartache of a breakup than to find out that he’d given into temptation at college and cheated on me. One of my other friends in high school had gone through that, and that would have hurt much more than just him breaking up with me. But it would have been nice to have even a few more months of emotional support to deal with the fact that we all knew my mom only had a little while longer — that in spite of the fact she was fighting tooth and nail to outlive her cancer, there was only so much medicine could do for her.
I stood up, leaving my books and tray behind at the table I had taken. When I went back to the entrance of the dining hall to get into the serving area, where the silverware was, I looked around to see if Jess had come in yet. I flashed my ID card — I didn’t have to scan it, not when I’d already done that. The person at the entry had seen me go through before and waved me into the line. It annoyed me, a little, that I had to get back in line even though I didn’t want to get more food; but it was fair, I supposed. I considered grabbing a small dessert — maybe a brownie or a cookie — while I was up anyway. Even if the soup and sandwich filled me up, it would be a good snack later while I was studying. They didn’t restrict what you could take out of the dining hall very much — we weren’t supposed to take any plates, cups, or silverware, but I knew several people in the dorms had quite the collection of dining hall crockery they slipped back into circulation rather than washing themselves, putting it on their trays and pushing it into the dish chute on the other end of the hall.
As I looked around, hoping I would see Jess, I instead spotted Zack. My heart pounded in my chest. I hadn’t been avoiding him precisely, but the school was big enough that I didn’t really have to try not to run into him. The next moment my stomach gave a lurch; he had his arm around a girl. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t need to. It had only been three days — was he already moving on? My stomach twisted itself in knots and I felt a hot rush of anger. I hadn’t spoken to him, but it wasn’t like I’d told him I never wanted to see him again. It also wasn’t as though he had no idea how to get in touch with me if he wanted to. I pressed my lips together, feeling my face burn, feeling the fire working its way through my bones. I grabbed a spoon and took deep breaths, trying to decide how to deal with the situation. I didn’t want to cut in line; I didn’t want to cause a huge scene. I moved along with the line, keeping an eye on Zack a few people ahead of me, talking to and laughing with the girl his arm was wrapped around. They certainly looked chummy.
The girl grabbed the food she wanted and broke away from Zack, and I spotted my chance. He was getting out of line, too, moving to grab a drink before he went into the dining area proper. His tray was loaded down and he had to set it on the ledge to fill his cup. No one could accuse me of cutting the line with nothing but a spoon in my hands. I walked over to Zack and called out his name, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible. Zack looked up and his eyes widened in recognition — but no sign of guilt or shame.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked him. I couldn’t keep my anger out of my voice and I knew it; I was feeling it too strongly.
“What do you mean, what’s up?” Zack filled his cup and put it on his tray. I took a deep breath as quietly as possible.
“I mean, who’s that? And why was your arm all around her like that?”
Zack shrugged, looking at me as if I was crazy. “It’s just a friend of mine,” he said, starting to look around. I knew we were on the edge of creating a scene, but I didn’t care in the moment.
“Just a friend? Come on, Zack, I’m not an idiot.” I crossed my arms over my chest, gripping the spoon tightly. I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat, glancing around quickly. The people closest to us were watching avidly. I heard someone say to a friend that it was another blow up with Zack, and my face burned.
“She’s just a friend, Evie — come on! We have a philosophy class together.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t see why you’re acting like some kind of jealous bitch.”
I inhaled sharply. “Jealous bitch?”
“Jealous girlfriend, do you like that better?”
I clenched my teeth. “What do you mean, you can’t see why I’m acting jealous?”
Zack looked around and a haughty look came over his face.
“I mean, it’s not like there’s anything between us. It was just sex, Evie — no big deal.” The words hit me like ice water. In my mind, I heard Zack’s drunken frat brother saying he’d found his piece of ass. I hadn’t exactly sought him out to talk to him about what had happened, but Zack and I had history; it wasn’t like we were strangers who had hooked up. I dated him for two years before he had gone off to college — I had lost my virginity to him.
“Just sex? Just sex?” I shook my head. My anger was mounting, I felt it getting hotter and hotter inside of me. In spite of how hungry I had been when I first came into the dining hall, my stomach was roiling now — the smell of food all around me made me feel a little nauseated. Zack shrugged. I looked around; we were the subject of intense interest in the serving area, and I caught a few people laughing, some others smiling at the spectacle. My face burned hotter. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed the cup off of Zack’s tray. I threw the contents into his face and let the cup drop back onto the tray before I snatched up a piece of cake he grabbed from the dessert station, dripping with icing. I threw that in his face too, wanting to scream. Instead, I turned on my heel and charged through the entryway into the dining area as everyone in the serving area started to laugh at Zack. I grabbed my books and didn’t even bother with my tray; I normally tried to be considerate of the people who worked in the dining hall, but I was so angry — so humiliated — that I didn’t care. I got out of the dining hall as quickly as I could and didn’t even look back as I walked as fast as my legs would move back to the dorms.