For the rest of the evening, Ellie spent most of her time with other girls and some other young men, and Ethan spent most of his time talking to me. He even asked me to take a walk with him outside. I looked toward Ellie, but she seemed quite distracted, so I agreed, and we went out.
Ethan had a soft, gentle manner about him that helped me relax. I wondered how much of what Ellie had told me about him was true. He didn’t seem to be the sort of boy who, in Ellie’s words, practically stalked her. I was beginning to get the feeling it was Ellie who had been stalking him.
“Ellie’s okay,” he said when our conversation drifted to how she and he had met, “but she has a way of making me feel like I’m more of an escort than a date, if you know what I mean. I always feel she’s looking at everyone else to be sure no one’s ahead of her. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I can see you’re not comfortable talking about her behind her back. It’s not important,” he said. “I doubt that I’ll see her much after tonight.”
I was pleased to hear it, but I didn’t say so. He talked about himself, his interest in getting into business, the excitement of developing a company. He envied the young men who had been so successful with dot-com companies, but he said he liked more traditional business enterprises because he liked contact with people, all sorts of people. He assured me he wasn’t going to put himself into any office where he was shut away from the world. I envied him for his interest in people, in being social. From my answers to some of his questions, he quickly gathered that I was more like a hermit. He thought it was just my shyness.
“There are ways to overcome shyness,” he said. “It’s like anything else. You have to get your feet wet, push a little, maybe, but in the end, you’ll see how easy it is. You have nothing to be shy about, anyway, Semantha. You’re a very attractive young woman, and I’m sure you’re as bright as, if not brighter than, most people.”
Before I could thank him, Ellie appeared. It was clear she was really
angry now. She had what Cassie would call “the gunslinger eyes.”
“Who’s your date tonight, Ethan, or did you forget?”
“You seemed pretty occupied,” he said in a quick defense. “And Kelly’s practically deserted Semantha. I feel bad about bringing him along.”
“I feel bad about being here, period,” Ellie said. She wobbled a bit, and we could both see she had drunk too much of the vodka I had seen being passed around. “Let’s get out of here, Semantha,” she told me.
I looked at my watch. “We’ve got to get back anyway,” I told Ethan.
He nodded. “I’ll go look for Kelly,” he said, and hurried off.
“Well, you’re doing all right for someone who had to be talked into going out with college boys,” Ellie told me. “Ethan looks quite smitten with you, which was just the way he looked at me the first time. College boys,” she said disdainfully. “They’re not very dependable.”
“He’s just being nice, Ellie.”
“Right,” she said. “Looks like I dressed you up too well,” she added bitterly, and went back inside.
I followed, and we met Ethan, who said Kelly was too drunk to put in his car.
“I don’t want him along, if you don’t mind, Semantha.”
“Why should she mind?” Ellie said sharply. “She’s been well occupied.”
We left the party, and Ethan drove us back to the campus. I saw that he didn’t even kiss Ellie good night on the cheek. She was sullen and sulked the whole trip back and hurried out when we stopped, not even waiting to walk in with me.
“Sorry about the night,” he told me, looking after her. “I’ll make it up to you.” He smiled and got back into his car.
Reluctantly, I followed Ellie to our room. I wished I had somewhere else to sleep tonight. I wasn’t in the mood to hear her ranting. Whenever she drank, she had a runaway tongue. To my surprise, this time, she was simply sulking.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked her after a while.
She sat on her bed staring at the floor. “Nothing.”
“Why did you spend so much time away from Ethan? I thought you were dying to be with him?”
“He turned out to be boring,” she said. “I really didn’t know him that well, Semantha. I think you got to know him better than I know him, in fact.”
She went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear that she had definitely drunk too much alcohol.
“What did I tell you?” Cassie whispered. “Gunslinger. All girls resent each other, except for us. We’re sisters, real sisters.”
Ellie went right to sleep without saying much else. In the days that followed, she spent more time away from the room than she did in it. On Thursday night, Ethan called, and I happened to be alone in the room. I thought he was calling for Ellie, maybe to apologize, and immediately told him she wasn’t there.