3. Fourteen Years Ago
PENNY
While making my way to the library, I decided to stroll through the psychology building to kill time. I hated the library; everything was too quiet and static, though it was easier to study there than at home. As I passed through the entryway to Clark Hall, I ran into Ling, a psych major I knew, pinning fliers to a bulletin board. I caught the words BLIND KISS printed in big block letters.
“Hey, Penny!” she called out. “We’re offering a twenty-dollar Java Hut gift card for this one.” She knew I was down to participate in most psych studies if I could get free coffee or a lunch out of it.
I looked at the flier and back at her. She didn’t smile at all; she was all business. “I don’t know. ‘Blind Kiss?’ Sounds suspicious.”
I felt someone come up behind me. I turned to see another girl reading the flier intently. “You have to kiss someone you’ve never seen or met with a blindfold on? That’s crazy. I would never do that. What if you get a total dog?” She rolled her eyes and walked away.
I didn’t think I wanted to kiss anyone blindfolded, even if I was getting free coffee out of it.
“Come on, Penny, it’s for our senior project. We already have five volunteers. We just need five more . . . girls.” She said the last word under her breath.
I laughed. “So you got five guys to agree but haven’t been able to get one girl to do it? Shocker.”
She leaned in close. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but I would make out with any of the dudes who signed up. They’re all hot. I swear.” Somehow I found that hard to believe. “Take a walk with me,” she said. “I have to put up the rest of these fliers.”
Ling wasn’t the friendliest but I admired her fortitude. She was basically the only girl I knew who wasn’t in dance. I also liked her style; on that particular day, she wore combat boots with a floral-print dress.
“Say I do agree. What’s going to happen?”
Her eyes lit up. “You’re gonna do it? I’m so —”
“Hold on—” I put my hand up. “Just tell me about it.”
We were walking through Clark, trying to dodge people as classes let out. Ling was small, but she had a formidable presence. “Out of my way!” she snapped as she zipped through the crowd. “Penny, listen. All you have to do is kiss a guy. No big deal.”
It wasn’t a big deal, though it had been a while since I’d been kissed. “What exactly are you studying?”
“We’re gonna blindfold you, put you in a room together, and ask you how you feel about kissing a person you’ve never seen or met. Then we’ll pair you up and you’ll talk for a little while . . . and then you’ll kiss. Afterward, you’ll talk about how it felt and then we’ll take the blindfold off.”
“What’s the point?”
She stopped walking and faced me. “You don’t get it?”
“Not really.”
“We want to know if people can feel attracted to another person without ever seeing them. It’s about separating looks from physical attraction. Also, we’re trying to measure the power in a kiss. What you transmit, what you feel.” She giggled. “It’s very romantic.”
“Sounds terrifying. Even if everyone is good-looking.”
“Then don’t do it, Penny. Why are you following me around?”
“What about actual blind people?”
“That’s different. Our culture, our generation, is obsessed with looks. It’s a good sensory experiment. Our hypothesis is that imagination is what drives sexuality; projection fuels intimacy between people. That’s what this experiment is all about. But it’s complicated. Just forget it.”
She was pinning another poster to a bulletin board when a little crowd formed. “We have plenty of guys,” she said to the crowd. “We just need girls. We’ll compensate with forty-dollar gift cards to Java Hut.”
“You told me twenty,” I whispered near her ear.
“Shhh,” she said. “I have to up the ante. This thing is supposed to happen tomorrow. We have a videographer booked and everything. I’ll give you a forty-dollar card too, okay? Just be quiet.” She directed her attention back to the crowd. “This girl is doing it. We just need four more.”
“You are?” a few girls murmured with looks of disgust on their faces.
“For the sake of science,” I said. I also didn’t want to disappoint Ling. “Come on, when you’re all seniors, you’re gonna need volunteers for your projects.”
We got four other girls to agree after a lot of pleading. After the crowd scattered, Ling turned to me with a huge grin on her face. “Thanks for helping me out today, Penny. Once this whole thing is over, I promise I’ll come and watch you dance, okay?”
I smiled. Ling and I were going to be friends.
By that point, the library sounded even less appealing. I needed to dance. I would have to skip ballet the following day to do Ling’s experiment, so even though I’d told my dad and Professor Douglas I’d take it easy, I decided to go to the ballet studio anyway to get in some toe time.
Walking through the CSU parking lot toward my ’94 Honda Accord, the chill in the air was strong. I was moving fast on my numb, bruised feet.
The Honda was my dad’s old car he’d sworn would run for three hundred thousand miles. I pumped the gas as I turned the key over and over but there was nothing. “Dammit.” I hit the steering wheel and looked at the odometer. It only had a hundred and ten thousand miles.
Slouching in my seat, wondering what to do, I was startled by a rap on my window. I looked up to see Lance, a microbiology major who knew my dad.
“You flooded the engine,” he yelled.
I got out of the car. “My dad said I’d get three hundred thousand miles out of this piece of junk.”
“I can give you a ride home,” he offered.
“Um. Can you give me a ride to my dance studio? It’s about two miles away. My dad can pick me up after he gets off work.”
“Yeah, no problem. I totally dig your dad, by the way. His last lecture was amazing.” My dad was a frequent guest lecturer so all the microbio kids knew him.
“Yeah, he’s great.”
I locked up my car and got into Lance’s Toyota Corolla. The inside was pristine and smelled like coconuts. “Penny, have you ever swabbed your steering wheel?”
“Huh? No.” The stench from my dance bag was starting to overpower the coconut scent.
“When I knocked on your window, it looked like you had your mouth on the steering wheel.”
“What’s your point?” I’d only been resting my face on it, but he seemed grossed out. I wasn’t in the mood for his judgment.
“You should swab it and bring it into the lab. You’d be amazed by how much bacteria is on a steering wheel. It’s dirtier than a toilet seat.” I seriously doubted his claim, but whatever, he was the scientist.
“Interesting.” I pointed to the next stoplight. “Make a left up there.”
“So, what are your plans after graduation?” He was driving exactly the speed limit, which either meant he was trying to make the ride last as long as possible or he was an old man.
“I was thinking about opening a studio and teaching dance. How ’bout you? Do you have an internship lined up?”
“Definitely something in pharmaceuticals, but I was actually thinking about going into sales instead of research and development. More money, you know?” He turned toward me and wiggled his eyebrows. Lance was a dead ringer for Tobey Maguire. A lot of girls liked him. He was sweet and charming, confident but not arrogant. He would have been perfect boyfriend material—if I were looking.
“Well, you didn’t need all this schooling for pharma sales.”
He laughed. “It was in the contract. I had to go to college in order to collect a trust fund my grandmother had left me. I’ll be able to buy a house as soon as I graduate. But I’ll still need to work. And as much as your dad inspires me, and as much as I love the lab, I don’t want to do that every day, you know?”
“Yeah, I do know, actually. Oh, you just passed the driveway.”
“Whoops.” He did a very cautious U-turn and pulled into the parking lot.
Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I jumped out and turned to look at Lance through the open door. “Thanks a lot. This was really nice of you.”
He smiled and seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing. “I know this might seem out of the blue, but do you want to go out sometime?”
“With you?” Oh man, why did I say that?
He huffed. “Yeah, with me.”
“Oh sorry. You just caught me off guard. Yeah, maybe. I just have to get through exams. Maybe during Thanksgiving break or something?”
“Okay, cool. Let’s keep in touch.”
“Sure. Do you want to exchange numbers?”
“Yeah, let me see your cell phone. I’ll put my number in it.”
Embarrassed, I said, “Oh, I don’t have one. You’ll have to call my house number. Here, give me yours and I’ll put it in.”
“You don’t have a cell phone?” He was shocked as he handed over his.
“I’m probably gonna get one for Christmas.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll call your house then.”
“Cool, thanks again for the ride.”
The studio where I had practiced since I was a kid was starting to look run-down. It was in a small strip mall and the landlords hadn’t painted the exterior or trim in twenty years. It was brown and dingy, and several roof tiles were missing. Whenever it rained or snowed, which was a lot in the winter, there would be leaks, which damaged the hardwood dance floor. I wished Nancy, the owner, could get some help but she seemed so overwhelmed all the time.
I reached for the glass studio door but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked, though I could see Nancy inside at the front desk, talking to a man and a woman. She saw me, stood up, and came to let me in. “Sorry, Penny, just having a little meeting. Come in, come in.” I nodded at the man and woman as I headed for the locker room.
That day I practiced my grand jeté in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a beautiful but difficult move in which the dancer leaps forward, legs turned out, hips squared, with the front leg pointed forward and the back leg turned upward. Everything has to come together; your shoulders have to be pulled back, your neck has to be long, and your arms, extended in clean, graceful lines. I leapt twice to get power and force off the ground. While I was in the air, Nancy walked the floor and yelled, “Extension, Penny!”
I hit the ground hard with a thud. Not very graceful.
“Again,” she said. “Again! Again!”
Each time it was getting better. I was feeling lighter and stronger and landing softer. My legs and feet were aching, but I wanted it to be perfect.
At the end of my practice, Nancy came up to me. “Great work today, Penny.”
“Thanks, Nance. See you next week.”
She smiled but said nothing.