The Last Housewife (23)
JAMIE: (laughing) You dressed up in a three-piece?
SHAY: I couldn’t stop staring at myself. I tucked my hair and I swear, I looked like a man. I remember getting goose bumps, imagining walking outside, no one watching me or making comments. I could be invisible. I could even walk around at night. Imagine not being scared all the time. You could travel the world in a three-piece suit.
JAMIE: Are you really scared all the time?
SHAY: I’ll say this: when I’m outside, there’s always a hum in the back of my mind. A little thread of anticipation. I think most girls are the same.
(Throat clearing.)
You know, I can’t believe I’m telling you all of this.
(Rustling.)
Anyway. Laurel tried on men’s clothes, too. A sweater with elbow patches and slacks. And then she started crying. When we asked what was wrong, she said she looked like her dad. We tried to comfort her, told her to take off the clothes, but she said no. She wanted to remember him, even if it meant feeling sad. That was just the way she was. She really missed him.
JAMIE: Was it hard being friends with someone that sad? Seems like a lot for a college student to handle.
SHAY: Sometimes, yes. But most of the time, we were happy and carefree. We stuck to each other. Became roommates, ate every meal together, studied together. If we went to a party, we hung out together, left together. At the time, it didn’t seem weird. Looking back, it was probably a little codependent. But it was important to Clem and me to make Laurel happy. I think ever since the day we met her, we were trying to shield her. Take care of her, make something up to her. It was this shared mission.
(Laughter.)
I used to tuck her into bed, sometimes. I’d lie on the floor and tell her stories until she fell asleep.
JAMIE: That’s very maternal of you.
SHAY: Yeah… Who knows where I learned it. It’s funny, what you have hidden inside.
(Silence.)
Sophomore year, we had to choose which dorm we wanted to live in the following year. Laurel wanted Rothschild because it was closest to the Performing Arts Center, and she could stay late at rehearsals without being scared to walk home. Of course Clem and I said yes to that. The problem was, Rothschild only offered four-person suites. Our other friends all had plans. So we needed to find a fourth person to live with, someone who wasn’t already attached. It was surprisingly hard.
JAMIE: You found Rachel Rockwell.
SHAY: Yes. She was in one of Laurel’s classes, I forget which. Laurel told us Rachel was shy and didn’t talk much. Didn’t seem to have many friends. Laurel felt bad for her. Plus, she figured it would be nice to have a quiet roommate. So Clem and I agreed to meet her.
JAMIE: What was she like?
SHAY: The first thing we noticed was the most obvious: she was Laurel’s doppelg?nger. It was creepy how much they looked alike. I used to wonder if that’s why Laurel had this weird sympathy for her, because it was like rooting for herself. As for Rachel’s personality… She wasn’t shy. Clem and I knew that off the bat, that Laurel had misread it. Rachel was… Look, there’s no delicate way to say this. She was so cold and flat she didn’t seem human. She was withdrawn, yes, and she didn’t talk much, but that wasn’t because she was timid. It was because she was fundamentally uninterested in other people, except for…you know, occasionally.
JAMIE: What do you mean?
SHAY: It’s hard to describe. Have you ever met a person who seems completely out of reach, like you can’t connect to them, and you feel like they’re looking back at you…I don’t know, like the way a shark watches a seal on the surface of the water. Calculating. Removed. Rachel unnerved me.
But she was our only option. Clem and I figured maybe there was something wrong with her, but it wasn’t like we had to spend much time with her. She was just a ticket into Rothschild, to make Laurel happy. So we agreed. Junior year, we all moved in together.
At first, things were okay. Rachel kept to herself. I’ve never met anyone who spent so much time alone, but that was the way she liked it. She never wanted to do anything we invited her to. The only time she would engage was when one of us was sad. Or hurt. Then she was interested. Whenever Laurel cried, you couldn’t get Rachel to leave her alone. She asked a million questions, and most of them were strange. Pointed, like she was trying to figure out the best way to poke your wound. It wasn’t just emotional—physical, too. This one time, Clem cut her finger in the kitchen, and I swear to god, Rachel could smell it. She came out of her room and hovered. Didn’t want to help get a Band-Aid or anything, just wanted to look.
JAMIE: Do you know if she was ever…I don’t know, diagnosed with something?
SHAY: No idea. Clem and I wanted nothing to do with her after a month, but Laurel still felt sorry for her. She kept trying to get her to open up. But Rachel was super evasive. It was kind of a running joke between Clem and me, how dodgy she was.
Then one day, out of the blue, Rachel came home from class and announced her dad was in town and wanted to meet us. We were in the middle of watching a movie, and she just walked in front of the TV and started talking. Par for the course, really. She never cared what other people were doing if there was something she wanted.
JAMIE: Didn’t you think it was weird she wanted you to meet her dad?
SHAY: We thought it was super weird. But Laurel convinced us to go. She kept saying…