All Played Out (Rusk University 3)

What if someone I barely knew looked into my eyes and said the very thing that I’d thought in my most unguarded moments, the thing that scares me most? What if someone could tell that the reason I concentrate so much on details and data is that they’re the only things that keep me from feeling inferior? I disregard emotions because they don’t come easily to me, because when other people talk about love or happiness, I feel only a cloying sense of confusion and fear that I’m not capable of those things. Not that I don’t experience happiness or love my family, but those are nurtured emotions that have grown slowly and steadily over time, and they exist at comfortable levels. But deeper than that? The kind of happiness that fills a person up? Or love that can overwhelm a person and rearrange the very essence of who they are? I don’t believe I have that kind of thing in me. It’s just not in my nature.

Which is why focusing on my career has always made the most sense. That’s something I understand. Something I’m good at.

But now even that feels off-kilter.

I turn then, intending to apologize, to admit that I’d judged him too harshly, but Torres is no longer behind me. I whip around and see that he’s slipped around the other side of the picnic table and is heading back to the field, where what’s left of his friends are gathered together talking.

Dylan is there too, Silas’s arm draped over her shoulder and holding her tight to his side. They all wear looks of concern as they talk, and I swallow, feeling as if the distance between us is much greater than the length of a table and a dozen yards of playing field.

I’m on the outside here. And what hurts more than the fact that no one seems to notice me as I turn and head for Dylan’s car is the fact that I’m comfortable on the outside. It’s what I know. It’s who I am.

Is that something that can be changed through will alone?

DYLAN DROPS ME off at home, but doesn’t come inside. She offers to, sure. She’s been looking at me funny ever since she found me waiting at her car alone, but I just told her I’d walked off to think. Which is the truth. Besides, she had plans to go over to Silas’s house, and I didn’t want to ruin that. I flip on the lamp beside the couch, leaving the overhead light off, and take a seat in my dim living room.

My roommate has been seeing Silas only since the start of the semester, and I can already acutely feel her absence. When she stays at his house, and I’m left alone in our two-bedroom apartment, I should be happy. The place is by no means big, and I should relish the extra space, the alone time.

Instead, the loneliness creeps into the shadowed corners, and I find myself turning on every light in the place just so that I don’t feel so alone.

This could be my future.

It’s not as if I can keep a roommate forever. When I’m thirty-five, I’ll be hard-pressed to find a friend to live with me just so I don’t have to come home to an empty house. But I suppose I’ll spend most of my time in a lab then anyway. I’m not afraid to be married to my job, or at least I didn’t used to be.

But this feeling is just a phase. It has to be. I will love the challenge of working in biomedical engineering. I’ll be on the cutting edge of medicine and technology. My time and focus could change innumerable lives. That will make up for any loneliness I might feel in the few short hours a day I’ll spend in my empty apartment. Better than getting myself into a relationship that will only be half real. No, I don’t want or need to have another person mucking up my life. There is too much I want to do, too much I want to accomplish. And though my relationship experience is limited to a few simple high school dates, I know enough to see that relationships take work. You can’t just consider your own needs anymore, and that weighs people down.

No. I’m happy as I am. Especially when it’s the only way I can be.

Despite those determined thoughts, I find myself pulling out the spiral where I’d jotted down my list a few days ago. I’d added a handful of things that had seemed obvious at the time.

NORMAL COLLEGE THINGS

1. Hook up with a jock.

2. Make New friends.

3. Go to a party (and actually stay more than half an hour).

4. Do something Wild.

5. Lose my virginity.

They’re things I associate with college, even though they’re out of my own personal wheelhouse. And they’re all far enough out of my comfort zone to function as the kind of catalyst I’m seeking in my little experiment.

I reconsider the list for a moment, feeling simultaneously stupid, naive, terrified, and thrilled. It might be silly, but I love this kind of thing. I can’t magically make myself a different person. I can’t force myself to be better with emotions or at talking to people. I can’t snap my fingers and become normal, but I can observe normal people and follow their behaviors. I can check items off a list. Figures that the only way social life would become interesting to me is by making it an experiment.

And even though I’m not expecting any major life changes like Dylan experienced, who knows, maybe with a little practice, things will start to come more easily to me. It wouldn’t hurt for me to be a little more comfortable outside of a classroom. It’s kind of like the age-old debate between nature and nurture. Just because I’m not predisposed to be like everyone else doesn’t mean I can’t become that way as a result of my environment.

And then in the future, when my family or my friends or anyone tries to urge me to be different, to focus less on my career, to be normal—I’ll know with certainty what that kind of life feels like, and I’ll know it’s not for me. And I can be done questioning myself once and for all.

With that thought in mind, I jot down a few more tasks for my list. Then I pull over my laptop from where it sits on the coffee table and open it up. With my pulse beating at a frenzied staccato, I type into Google:

College Bucket List.

Then I dive into my research, pen at the ready to add to my list.

Chapter 5

Nell’s To-Do List

• Normal College Thing #3: Go to a party (and actually stay more than half an hour).

Just shy of a week later, I tug at my horrendously short skirt for the seventeenth time (maybe eighteenth . . . I can’t be trusted to count when I’m this nervous).

“I don’t see why I can’t wear jeans and a regular shirt,” I grumble. Clothes have never really been my forte. Give me jeans and a plain V-neck tee any day.