“Hey, what happened to you the other night?”
“Sorry, I was um… I dunno, I got bored,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you were going out with D.C,” I said, resting my head on the side of the bathtub.
“Where are you? Your voice sounds all echo-y.”
“The bathroom. I fell asleep in here… it’s a long story,” I wanted to avoid the topic. It was a four-day-long story. A story about a girl who woke up in the middle of the night and (for four consecutive nights) threw up in the bathroom until she fell asleep on the floor. This time I hadn’t even bothered going to bed… I’d set up camp on the floor so that when it came time to vomit, I wouldn’t have to stumble in the dark. I repeated, “I didn’t know you and D.C. were going out.”
“We’re not, what gave you that idea?”
“Only the fact that I saw you… getting it on… in your car.”
“Since when does me screwing a girl entail a relationship?” he laughed.
“You’re such a manwhore…”
“I try… Anyway, so do you wanna hang out tonight? Another day, another party...”
“I dunno,” my voice was still all scratchy. My mother had said that if it happened one more night, she was forcing me to go to the doctor. She didn’t want me to get all messed up again like the last time I puked all the time.
“Awww, come on…”
“Dave,” I said, pausing to collect my thoughts, “I’m moving.”
“Huh?”
“Back to New Jersey. I’m moving.”
“What? Why?”
“My mother is getting transferred back.”
“But you can’t leave! What about Heidi?”
“She’s either going to dorm at school or come back with us,” I said, pressing my face harder into the cool porcelain of the tub. I’d talked with Heidi not long after my conversation with the Hansons. She said she wouldn’t hold it against me. She understood (especially when I almost burst out crying). When my father and her mother got married, she would probably go back to live with them, anyway.
“Why?” he repeated.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You brought it up,” he reminded me.
I sighed into the phone.
“When are you leaving?”
“A week and a half.”
“Tayler, this sucks!”
“I want to go, Dave.”
“Why?!”
“Because,” I didn’t want to tell him that it was ninety percent Taylor, and so I just stopped talking.
“Because why? We were going to have a rockin’ cool time going to college together. Don’t leave!” he whined.
“Dave… I gotta go. Call me in like two hours,” I hung up. I felt really badly that I was hurting his feelings, but I felt like crap where I was. Going back to New Jersey and New York was going to be like a new start. I would probably live in my dad’s apartment and go to a good city school, and then come home to my mom’s house on the weekends and hang out with her. Maybe I’d even be in a play again… Dammit! I promised D.C. I’d be in her play! I felt even more like crap. She’d understand that if I was moving, I couldn’t be in the show, right?
“I think that they’re putting us in Bloomfield,” my mother said as she stirred the pasta. Bloomfield is like one town over from where we used to live.
“Really?”
“Yea, they have places they set up for people like us… us teacher folk,” she laughed, “I think they’re kinda crappy, but that’s okay.”
“Yea.”
“You’ll probably be spending most of the time with your dad anyway.”
“Yup.”
When I applied for colleges, I applied to some New York ones just for kicks. Maybe I’m psychic, because once we arrived there, I was making a little visit to the admissions office to ask if I was still invited to attend.
My mother was kind of surprised when I told her that I wanted to go back with her. As of yet, Heidi was undecided. I guess my mother thought that I would wait to make my decision until Heidi decided. She was like, my best friend, after all.
My house was weird after my mom’s big announcement. I like, didn’t know whether or not to start packing. It was scary to think of leaving. So many fun and interesting things had happened… I like, fainted out there in the backyard, and we’d all gone rollerblading in front of my house… and in the back by the trees was where I met Zac for the first time. But then again, that’s the same backyard where I had the fight with Taylor about kissing Zac and the front door where I fell to the floor after breaking up with him.
Still, as I ascended the stairs to my room to begin the unbuilding of my room, I was unsure. How could I be unsure? There was nothing for me in Oklahoma. Tay and Ike and Zac weren’t going to be home like, ever, and my mother wasn’t going to be there… Then again, Dave wasn’t going out with D.C., and Heidi did want to stay. Confusion sucks. I wished there was someone who would just tell me what to do.
“Hey there,” someone was standing in the doorframe. It was D.C.
“Do you always appear out of nowhere?” I laughed.
“I try.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m going out with Heidi if that’s fine with you,” she came over and sat on my bed, taking some things out of a box I’d begun packing. “Where are you going?”
“I dunno,” I sighed.
“Heidi told me about the whole moving thing… I don’t see what the big deal is. Why move? If you stay here, you can live parent-free… You can stay out whenever you want however late you want.”
“I can already do that.”
“You can have people come over and never come home if you want. You can do whatever you want! Go to class, don’t go to class, sleep, don’t sleep… It’s ultimate freedom! Who cares if your little boyfriend isn’t here…”
“I do,” I interrupted. Her bluntness was aggravating.
“You’ll have other boyfriends. You’re young… you don’t party enough… If you stay, you can be in my production and I can introduce you to some people who will show you a really fun time.”
I stayed quiet. She did kind of have a point. I mean, not like I did anything bad, but it would be cool to have a dorm-like college experience, only my roommate would be Heidi and my dorm would be my house…
“Seriously, girl,” D.C. got up, “You’re crazy if you go back.”
