Lakewood(27)

11


When Lena returned to the office a folder was waiting on her desk. Inside were her Day sheets. Day 3: You helped Ian (Inventory and Dispatch) begin inventorying the warehouse. You saw a bat roosting in the corner and called animal control. Day 4: A large shipment of cereal was delivered. You began taking an online course to build your spreadsheet knowledge. You and Bethany (receptionist) had lunch together. Day 5: Charlie (manager) organized a pizza party on Friday for the group. You continued inventorying the warehouse. Day 6: You hurt your wrist over the weekend. Mariah (HR) organized a card for everyone to sign. You thought that was very nice. You continued taking your online course about spreadsheets.

There were six different observers in the office today, all wearing gray polo shirts and slacks. Lena tried to guess which one wrote their days for them—maybe the tall, thin man with clear plastic glasses. Or the brunette woman, the one who parted her hair directly down the middle.

No one asked Lena how she got the cast. The expected Feel Better! card was handed over to her by a smiling Mariah, who was called quickly away for another experiment. The painkillers smoothed away the edges of any emotions, so the day felt blurred. Bethany talked earnestly about how she was going to convert this office to using only eco-friendly cleaning products. She made Lena look at the new poster she had put next to her desk. It was a white poster that was mostly an illustration of a pineapple upside-down cake. Underneath it was the slogan STRESSED IS JUST DESSERTS SPELLED BACKWARD!

Spreadsheets. An experiment where she watched another stand-up comedy video: A sofa talked about rolling up to the club but having too much junk in the trunk for ladies to want to get down with him. Staring at her phone. She read long text conversations with her mother performed by someone pretending to be her. Ignored texts from Tanya, Kelly, and Stacy. Sitting in the break room and eating a bag of chips, she felt someone was watching her. It was Dr. Lisa, standing next to the coffeemaker, arms crossed. “Hi,” she mouthed, smiling as if she was pleased to see Lena.

“Hi,” Lena mouthed back, pretending to be happy to see her too.

Around lunchtime, Tanya texted Lena again to see when she could come visit, and what was her address so she could send letters. Lena ignored the address request, knowing in an impulsive mood, Tanya would just show up at her apartment despite the long drive. She took a selfie of herself with her cast, stopped herself from sending it to Tanya. That would mean a visit, fussing, concern, questions about how it had happened.

When Lena’s grandma died, Tanya had put together an elaborate care package. A bottle of nice bourbon, different beauty supplies, Lena’s favorite cookies. The gesture had been nice, but Lena didn’t want to touch anything in the package except the three-dollar cookies. Everything else felt too special-occasion. Why couldn’t Tanya have just bought the cookies and said Let’s watch a dumb movie? It was always too much: trying to pay for the Saturday-night dinners when their dorm’s cafeteria was closed, movie tickets, supplying top-shelf liquor in their dorm room that she claimed had been given to her as gifts. As if people approached Tanya on the streets and said, “A woman who looks like you deserves high-quality liquor,” and pressed the unopened bottle into her hands, then vanished.

Lena tried not to care too much; she never complained, tried as much as possible to act like it was normal. The few times they had talked about it, Tanya was supremely relaxed. She was frank about her admiration for Lena having a work-study job, going home to help her mom and grandma almost every week, and still holding her GPA high enough to keep her scholarship. “You deserve to be the one taken care of, sometimes.” Lena couldn’t imagine how far Tanya would go over a wrist injury, plus living in a place with no friends.

Instead, Lena texted the selfie to Stacy. He immediately texted back: Ouch. Then: You look very pretty today. It was the first time in weeks he had used words, not a picture. She smiled, happy no one was looking at her face and noticing how dumb she probably looked. He probably didn’t mean anything by it. Lena knew if she texted back right away it might be opening another door. More flirting, conversations. She put her phone down.

“You okay?” Charlie asked.

She started. This was the first she had seen him all day. Lena shook her head. His eyes went to her wrist. She looked away from the kindness in them. Then to the observer who was heating up what smelled like chicken curry in the microwave. “I’m in outer space.”

“What?”

“Painkillers. I’m high. Sorry, I feel like I’m being really weird right now.”

Near the end of the workday, Lena received another text from Tanya: Are you mad at me? Why don’t you want me to visit?

Lena started typing. My life is already completely different, she began. Lena described the cabin, the scrutiny, her wrist, Dr. Lisa mentioning Deziree. How much depended on keeping secrets. And she had already gotten hurt. Already she was pushing away the thought that she had made a huge mistake. But what else could she do? And if Tanya came to Lakewood, it would be too hard. I have to make space between my old life, Lena typed. She saw the echo of Dr. Lisa’s orientation speech. She looked at the long text and deleted it.

“Sorry,” Tanya texted the next morning.

The key to surviving Lakewood, Lena decided, was making some real friends she could talk to. She started eating lunch with Mariah and Charlie and made plans to go see a movie with them. She accepted an invitation to have dinner at Tom’s house with Ian and Bethany after work on Day 11. The most awkward part of that night was when Tom’s teenage son approached Lena in the kitchen. “You’re not that much older than me,” he said. “I’m a senior. We can be friends.” She tilted her head, reached past him, and opened the refrigerator. Lena took a can of pop, closed the refrigerator, and went out to dinner. She was not lonely enough to start hanging out with high-schoolers. Tom gave them each a bag of zucchinis, large and curved, that he had grown in his basement garden.