[b]★£PIDODE 3★
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The first time I saw Lauren Cleaver, she was playing the ukulele and singing in a basement lit by strings of plastic red peppers. I remember making two observations during the twenty minutes my friends and I hung around the concert and sipped beers: one, that I wanted her outfit (floral overalls shorts and a canvass jacket) and two, that she was skinnier than me, a quality which made her instantly less likable.
She was pretty apart from a very large nose, and I’d seen her around campus, riding her bike along Pear Street or smoking cigarettes outside the library. She had the rare combination of being quiet and popular; a code that made her intimidating to younger, fashionable girls and mysterious to older, confident boys. We moved in different circles and I hardly thought about her again until the morning after I first kissed Brian, whom she had dated intensely and inseparably for two years and nine months.
I’d never had an ex-girlfriend before and I didn’t like it. Adam and I were each other’s firsts, and I’d only had monthlong things since the two of us broke up. One thing I am is self-aware (to a neurotic fault), and I recognize that a massive percentage of my self-esteem depends on the attention of a series of smug boys at the University of Vermont. The problem is that I’m good at attracting them: verbally witty and successful at sending texts. I’m also well dressed, or try to be, and make fun of boys in the way that reads as I like you. Perhaps it’s not a problem so much as a crutch, but I have this pathetic fantasy that I’d be more productive if I was less attractive. Finally finish some paintings or apply for funding of some kind. The point is that Lauren Cleaver and I were not friends because Lauren Cleaver and I had all this in common. This, and Brian.
* * *
His parents arrived the morning after the accident—and his roommates e-mailed a few people they thought might want to stop by. I wanted to go, and felt like I had to go, so I put on a pair of black jeans, a black sweater, and asked Charlotte to borrow black boots.
“They don’t fit you,” she said. “And besides, you don’t need to have black shoes.”
I wasn’t sure. And I felt guilty for pondering my red ballet flats as I walked the seven-minute walk to his house. I figured I wasn’t supposed to be capable of that kind of thinking, and I felt like an alien. I feel that a lot, actually, in a lot of circumstances. Like I ought to be feeling something I don’t. My father used to tease me at the table by implying that “cold Claire” had brought in the draft. I had three older sisters, all beautiful, and I was always less affected than them, slow to smile. I remember finding it extremely hard to open presents as a child because the requisite theatricality was too exhausting. My sisters forever humiliated me over a moment in fifth grade when I’d opened a present from my grandmother and declared, straight-faced, “I already have this.”
It was cold for March, so I walked quickly. Brown snow still hugged the sides of our streets and the pines leaned in like gray walls, still limp with yellow Christmas lights. Whenever I slept at Brian’s, I called him as soon as I passed this certain stop sign—timing his arrival at the door so I wouldn’t have to wait. “I’m here,” I’d say, a block away, and he’d meander downstairs to let me in. This time, I knocked.
William let me in. Roommate and rich boy from Los Angeles. We were never friends, really, just occasional cohabiters, but we awkwardly hugged and he asked me how I was.
“Fine,” I said, instinctively. But he understood that I wasn’t.
We walked upstairs and I felt immediately like I shouldn’t be there. It was smaller than I’d imagined: Brian’s parents, two adults I didn’t recognize, and five or six of his closest friends. They huddled together in the corner next to a plate of bagels and an untouched platter of fruit. His mother was actually sobbing into the side of one of the women and I felt suddenly and extremely claustrophobic. The whole world was stark and bleak and I realized I couldn’t think of a single thing I was looking forward to. Brian had begun to be that for me—the thing at the end of the day I could think about when everything else was boring. I looked through the open door to his room and saw that his bed was still unmade.
“This is Claire,” William said. Tactful enough to stop before attempting to label my relation. I held up a palm to the room and I wondered if anyone else had needed to be introduced.
“Claire,” his father said. “It’s good to see you.” He sounded genuine.
We’d gotten along at that brunch, though the whole thing was kind of an accident. Brian and I had slept late and when his parents arrived at his house at eleven, I was still in his bed, naked. I got dressed quickly—embarrassed to put on my heels from the night before—and was invited by default to eat eggs at Mirabelles. We laughed about it later.
“Good thing you weren’t some one-night stand.” He bit at my ear.
“Good thing,” I said, and punched him.[/b]