She told me about how Eric had gotten very into some reality TV show about people who want to be professional wrestlers or something and had started going to the YMCA religiously to lift weights every day.
I talked a little about my classes and satisfied her yen for celebrity sightings by telling her about the time I’d seen Michael Fassbender in Washington Square Park and how I’d served coffee to Michelle Rodriguez. She’d never heard of either one of them but after I’d listed some of their IMDb credits she was excited. She was disappointed to hear that I hadn’t been to a Broadway show yet, though, so I told her about going to Into the Woods, only I fudged the truth a little and said it was off Broadway. My mom was the only living human who couldn’t tell when I was lying, so she just oohed and ahhed over the mention of a play she’d heard of.
That night I really did take everyone to dinner at the Olive Garden in Times Square. It was mobbed with tourists, and we’d had to fight our way through the crowds. One does not simply walk into Times Square. But I relished the chaos for once. The bright lights and neon signs and huge television screens and billboards snapping my attention from scene to scene like a music video. People bumping into me and each other in confusion or enthusiasm or distraction, like meteorites colliding in space, or atoms crashing together, trying to get closer or to transform each other.
Inside, Milton, Charles, Thomas, Gretchen, and I laughed at how kitschy the Olive Garden seemed in contrast to the rest of the city. But I think they took as much unexpected comfort in its familiarity as I did, the menu and the décor and the smells the same here in this glittering wonderland as they were anywhere else.
We shared plates of fettuccine Alfredo and gooey cheese ravioli, towering piles of spaghetti with meatballs, and salad and breadsticks that really did seem endless. We drank raspberry lemonades spiked with vodka, courtesy of Milton, and finished with tiramisu, cheesecake, and something called a chocolate caramel lasagna, the flavors somehow so simple and pure that we kept eating them long after we were full, straining, maybe, to keep things recognizable.
I even ate some of the tiramisu, despite its newly negative associations, determined not to let my feelings for Will cast a pall over the evening.
After, we sat in the square for a while, people watching. Milton waltzed with one of the Disney characters, and Gretchen and I planked on the steps outside the TKTS booth. Thomas drew comics with me as the birthday hero, a cape with my initials on it floating out behind me as I rescued a tourist stranded on a billboard. Charles didn’t say much—for him the meal had been breakfast—but he took pictures of all the clocks with his phone, muttering notes for his project under his breath until we headed for home.
When we got back to the dorms, giggly and full, Milton invited us all to his room for some birthday Felicity, and I went to change into pajamas first.
Outside my door was a gift with my name on it, wrapped in fancy matte paper, gold and purple lines interlocking in a sprawling geometric design. The perfect balance of beauty and organization. My heart stuttered as I scooped it up and went inside, closing the door after me as if the box might contain something clandestine or volatile.
Leo, the card read. You don’t need to change. Not for anyone. But maybe the slightest upgrade won’t be unwelcome? Happy birthday.
Will hadn’t signed it. He didn’t have to.
Inside the box was a pair of brand-new Vans, identical to the old ones that Will had so scorned.
Chapter 12
March
SOMEHOW THIS semester I had midterms in every class, and they were eating me alive. I barely had time to shower and shove one of the bagels I’d begun stockpiling from the dining hall in the morning into my face while working. I’d even had to switch from Everything to Plain because I couldn’t stop typing long enough to eat and the seeds kept getting stuck in my keyboard.
I was a total mess.
Charles’ mania had increased as the semester continued. He’d begun setting his alarm to wake him up every ninety minutes because he’d read that based on neurological research, the human brain entered a heightened state of something or other ninety minutes into the sleep cycle and he wanted to harness these periods and maximize his brain activity.
He’d also begun playing these gamma and theta brain wave inducing audio clips on his computer to maximize his creative problem-solving abilities. Of course his alarm startled me awake, too, if I actually managed to get any sleep, and I’d sit straight up in bed in a panic, convinced that I’d missed a deadline or a test. It was no use trying to get him to alter his methods, as I’d learned last semester. Once he’d decided something was advantageous, he stuck to it a hundred percent.