When something terrible happens, like what happened to me, you can’t help but wonder who will be the stranger you eventually will confide in? Who will be able to win your trust? Can anyone ever? Would it be impossible to give that trust no matter what? Keep up the baby steps, I told myself. Maybe it’s slow going, but you’re going in the right direction, hoping nothing will happen to send you reeling back.
The following weekend, what I had humorously imagined happened.
Ben Kaplan asked Claudia out for pizza and a movie in town, and Rob asked Marcy. It was going to be a double date, because Rob and Ben were good friends. Claudia had told me first, but I hadn’t mentioned it to Marcy. She looked stunned when she approached me in the hallway just before our last class on Friday.
“Claudia is going on a date,” she said, pulling me aside. “With Rob’s friend Ben. He wants us to double-date with them. What will I talk about?”
“She’s really good at math.”
“Very funny, Kaylee. This is my first big date with Rob. She could make it a disaster.”
“No, she won’t.
Stop hyperventilating about it.”
“Hyper what?”
“She’ll be fine. Let Ben worry about her.”
“I can still find you a date in time,” she said. “Rob told me about four boys alone who’d like to ask you out. Why aren’t you showing interest in anyone?”
“When someone is interesting, I’ll be interested,” I said, practically singing. “Let’s go. I want to shower and change for dinner.”
“Dinner here on a Friday night when you could go to town? Look, if you’re gay, tell me, and I’ll find you a girlfriend.”
I simply smiled and started down the hallway.
She hurried to catch up. “Are you?”
“I’m not gay,” I said. “I’m simply . . . very choosy. I don’t want to make mistakes.”
“So that’s one of your secrets?”
“What?”
“Bad romances. How many?”
“Weren’t you ever taught to put your disappointments in a bag of rocks and let them sink to the bottom of the sea?”
“Not that way, but yes, and you know who told me. Maybe you are the reincarnation of my grandmother,” she said. “Oh, mercy. I hope Claudia doesn’t wear one of her Amish dresses. I’ll be such a contrast.”
I laughed. “They’re not Amish dresses. Maybe we’ll take her shopping on Saturday and find her something more appropriate for future dates.”
“You mean something more twenty-first century?”
“Whatever.”
As we started out, I saw Troy Matzner heading toward the boys’ dorm. Marcy saw which way I was looking.
“Forget him,” she said. “He’s not worth wasting your eyesight on. He’s never asked any girl out here, and I doubt he ever will. Or, more important, no girl would accept an invitation to go out with him.”
“What does he do on weekends?”
“Dress up for his mirrors. I don’t have the foggiest. I did hear that sometimes he goes home for the weekend. He’s got that red Jaguar convertible all the boys swoon over.”
“Really? I didn’t notice it.”
“You don’t go over to the boys’ dorm, or you would. Speaking of clothes, what will I wear? I want to be sexy but not obvious. And that’s not something my grandmother told me. I just know it.”