“Look at how much Chris likes you,” Josie said as she forced me to watch, her pupils made small by the glow of her phone. “It’s so obvious. Remember what you promised me, Emma?”
I had no idea Josie was filming all of us that night, and it made me sick to watch that video. All our desires out on display.
Focus on Noah, Emma, please.
Noah’s fingers trace patterns over my shoulders, my collarbone, my chest. He’s the one I really want to be with, and I should be able to pay attention to him, but I can’t control my thoughts lately—they go wherever they want, meandering along a dark path until I either get drunk or fall asleep. I feel the scrape of his stubble against my skin, and I think about how rough and warm he is compared to Josie. Whenever she and I get in bed to talk or watch movies, she’s always freezing, always shoving her cold toes beneath the sheets and pretending she doesn’t realize they’re pressed up on me. It’s weird how much more intimate hanging out and talking with Josie feels compared to hooking up with anyone, even Noah. He doesn’t really know what to say to me, or how to listen to the things I try to tell him. Mostly he’s just interested in the stuff he’s telling me about himself or his family, like how his sister just had to drop out of Dartmouth because she couldn’t cut it there. Noah said she embarrassed their family, which made Josie laugh and say, Sounds like you and your family have no idea what the word embarrassing means.
Noah pulls me closer, and I try to shake Josie from my mind, my closest friend, but she’s in this room like a ghost, a figment of my imagination. Even when Noah starts whispering in my ear, I still can’t pay attention, and it’s the same way in my classes. Nothing I do lately seems enough; even my art sucks. Every time I go to paint something, it comes out wrong.
Noah. His hazel eyes are on me now, first locking onto my gaze, and then having their way all over my skin.
Did he start this? Or did I?
The thing about Noah is that he’s just so good on paper. You take one look at him and you know he’s the captain of some sports team (Lacrosse? Crew? Does it matter?); that he drinks protein shakes after lifting weights; that he’s summered in Nantucket since his mother was pregnant; and that he thinks everything is all about him, but in an innocuous way that he’ll hopefully grow out of just in time.
Josie sees it, too. “God, Emma, he grew up eating lobster at family picnics in Martha’s Vineyard. He’s nothing like us,” she once said.
Right. Martha’s Vineyard: not Nantucket, apparently. I have no idea what the difference is, and if I ever do, maybe it will mean that something has gone irrevocably awry.
But Noah’s upbringing doesn’t bother me, not even if mine is middle-class and boring in comparison. I like that he’s so all-American without really knowing it. I think he actually considers himself something of a rebel, which used to make Josie and me laugh.
We don’t laugh as much now. Noah, Josie, and I used to pal around together last year at Yarrow, but then this year I started hooking up with him, and Josie’s been so annoyed at me every time I hang out with him, saying that he’s stealing me away from her. And now there are these secrets piling up between us. I guess I used to think college would be a continuation of my formally safe teenage life, but it’s not. I don’t know if that’s because of things I’m doing, or if this is just what college is like for everyone. I guess guys hook up with more than one person all the time, but my Catholic upbringing isn’t dying easily. I’m nearly paralyzed with anxiety and shame, and I’m lying to everyone I care about—including my sister, whom I’ve never lied to before.
Noah pushes my camisole higher. “You want this, don’t you, Emma?” he asks. I don’t think he means to be cliché. I can sense the currents running beneath his skin, even if he can’t express them in anything other than words that don’t suit him.
His hands push down my pajama pants, and I can see him taking in the sight of my new lace underwear. Josie was the one who said I was too skinny for boy shorts, and on Sunday when we were bumming around the mall eating Annie’s pretzels, she steered me into Victoria’s Secret, and we found a pale pink thong on sale.
My fingertips trail a line across Noah’s broad shoulders, but my eyes wander to the collage of my high school friends hanging above my desk, which actually really freaks me out, because none of my old friends would believe what I’ve been doing lately.
Josie’s desk is lonely in comparison to mine. There’s only one photo: Josie and her stepbrother, Chris, standing outside a stone church next to a nun who looks pissed off. Behind our desks, our shades are drawn to avoid imaginary creepers with telescopes in the dorm across the quad, and, maybe even more so, to stave off the four o’clock nightfall. We complain that the weather is mind-numbing and sleepy in conversations with our classmates, even if that isn’t really the whole truth. Because here at college I’m always on the edge, and so is Josie: we’re buzzing with something fear-inspiring and razor-sharp, and not even the frigid winter can take it away. We’re too wired to sleep, really, except sometimes in the late afternoons when we’re supposed to be studying. Josie tries to pass me Tylenol PMs and her prescription stuff, but I won’t even smoke cigarettes or pot because that’s how nervous I am about getting hooked on something, which drives Josie nuts. “Try being in college,” she says every time she nearly convinces me to take something. But I’m terrified and only thinking about myself, about the threat of vast shame in it all: Emma McCullough, art scholarship student, gets nabbed for possession; loses scholarship.
Shudder.
When Noah and I finish hooking up, he checks his phone and says something about lacrosse practice. We climb down the ladder from my bunk, and Noah’s yanking his warm-up pants over his boxers when the door swings open. “Hey,” he says, seeing Josie before I do.
Josie stops in the doorway, her hand on the knob. Half of her light hair is tied back, and the rest falls in curls over her jacket. The cold has made her cheeks flush, and black mascara makes her blue eyes look even paler. Her face betrays nothing at first, but then her features crack into a smile. I can tell she wants to laugh at my half-dressed state.
“Hey,” I say. College is so degrading.
“My class got out early,” she says, and it comes out like an apology I don’t really think she means.
Noah averts his eyes from her, which I’m pretty sure is because he knows how annoyed she gets now that he’s over so much. The room suddenly feels far too small for the three of us, especially when Josie shuts the door behind her. She sets her satchel carefully on her prim white quilt. We bought that quilt together at Target when it went on clearance. Josie has the tightest budget of anyone I know at Yarrow, and she makes it work by buying only things that are perfect. Less is more, she always says, making me believe it.
I adjust the waist of my pajama pants as Noah makes small talk. Josie tosses her jacket onto the floor, which is the first sign that she’s about to do something strange, because she never puts her clothes on the floor. She takes off her sweater next, and I can hear the break in Noah’s stream of chatter. She’s wearing a sheer lace bra, nothing else. She turns to us. “What were you saying?” she asks as if everything is normal, like she’s just changing the way she would in front of one of the other girls from our dorm.