Emergency Contact(67)

“It’s not as if he beat me up or anything,” said Penny.

“It was so embarrassing,” she continued. “And the thing that’s so confusing is that I didn’t get mad. It felt inevitable in some ways. An obvious conclusion. I saw him two more times after that and was polite.”

She gazed at Sam. He had a serious expression on his face.

“I’m practically fluent in French now,” she said. “My mom thinks it’s because of him when it’s not. He was proficient at best.”

Penny was dying to know what Sam was thinking. She’d never told the story to anyone else.

“Do you think I’m broken?”





SAM.


Sam couldn’t believe a brain as animated and complex as Penny’s had to conk up against that question. It hurt his heart.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think you’re broken.” Sam pulled her body against his and she let him. He felt her stiffen and then fall slack like one of those rag-doll cats that go limp when you pick them up.

She yawned into his chest. They leaned up against each other for a while.

“I gotta go,” she said, pulling away from him. Sam wanted to stop her but knew that he shouldn’t. “I’m tired.” She stood up.

Penny swung sleepily side-to-side while walking out. He followed her down the hall.

“Should I come with you?” he called out.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, swatting the air. “I live ten blocks away. And if you lived here you’d be home already.” Sam wondered where he’d heard that before and remembered it was the huge yellow sign on the apartment complex across the street.

Penny zipped up her hoodie and pulled the hood down low.

“I’ll be fine.” He wanted to hug her. In fact, he wanted to hug her and then build an electrified fence around her. A fence that was encircled by a moat filled with rabid, starving alligators. It was ridiculous, yet Sam hadn’t thought how nerds could be rapists. He thought of rapists as meat-head jocks or else vile faceless monsters who were abused as kids. Part of him was glad she was going to go back inside his phone. It was safe there and Sam had so much he wanted to tell her and ask her that was too overwhelming to do in person.

“I know,” he said, throwing on a black jacket. “But I’ll make you a deal. Next time I show up at your house unannounced, you can walk me home.”

Penny smiled sleepily.

“My sandwiches aren’t as good though.”

“That’s because I am king of the sandwiches.”

“I think he was an earl,” she muttered.

He groaned.

Sam smiled at the back of her head as they trudged down the stairs. He killed the lights and locked up. The night was cool. Just the tiniest suggestion that there was such a thing as autumn in Texas.

They walked companionably in silence. Both with their hands shoved in their pockets. The streets were quiet but not deserted. A smattering of couples reluctant to end their nights lingered by parked cars.

Sam listened to their footfalls, hers alongside his.

“This is me,” she said after a while, stopping at the ghastly facade of her dorm.

He gazed up. “You know,” he said, “I see this building all the time and it doesn’t occur to me that people have to live here.”

The striped blue and salmon edifice with round windows reminded him of a monster version of those plastic Connect Four grids.

Penny laughed. “Ah, but when you’re inside,” she said, “you can’t see it.”

“What a parable,” he said.

“What is a parable?” she asked, tilting her head. “I always forget to look it up, but then again, I’m talking to someone who doesn’t even know what irony is, so . . .”

He laughed. “Nobody knows. That’s a fact. Just like nobody knows the difference between a parable and an allegory. Do you?”

She smiled. “No idea.”

“See?”

They grinned stupidly at each other.

“I think an allegory has to do with characters,” she said. “Something-something Animal Farm?”

“Citation needed,” he responded quickly.

God, they were hopeless.

“Thanks for the food, and the talk, and for being great, and for walking me home,” she said.

They stood regarding each other in front of the elevators, wondering who was going to make the next move and what exactly it would be.

Sam quit while he was ahead. He left his hands in his pockets instead of reaching for her as he desperately wanted to.

“Sweet dreams, Penny,” he said.

“You too, Sammy,” she said.

Hearing her say “Sammy” liquefied his guts.

She smiled.

“You ever think about how your last name in German is “baker” and that you bake, and Jude’s is Lange, which means ‘tall’?”

He blinked at her and shook his head. He wanted to crush her with the fierceness of his hug. Either that or he wanted to bite her on the face. Why so cute?

“I do,” she said. “All the time.”

Sam watched her go.

“Yo, text me when you get home,” she said just as the doors began to slide shut.