We Are Not Like Them(54)
Snow falls in sheets as thick as paste, coating my windshield, hopeless against the wipers. After days of increasingly manic weather reports, the first storm of the season is here. Action News meteorologist Hurricane Schwartz started calling it “Snowmageddon” in his frenzied forecasts, advising the greater Philadelphia area to hunker down and stay off the roads. Everyone seems to have listened. Everyone but me.
My hands are slick on the steering wheel. I push my foot on the brake, and the car fishtails on the slippery road. I haven’t driven in weather this bad for more than a decade, not since that time I drove to Chicago to pick up Riley for winter break her sophomore year at Northwestern. I was dying to visit her at college, and driving was cheaper than a plane ticket. So I’d hopped in my ten-year-old Camry and hit the road, only to be waylaid when a record-making blizzard descended on the turnpike right outside Pittsburgh.
I had no choice but to wait it out at a cheap motel. I was sure the place had bedbugs. But I didn’t care that it was the drive from hell, not once I saw Riley standing there inside her dorm lobby waiting for me, looking like some model for a college brochure, fresh-faced, hair in a loose bun, wearing a bright yellow Medill School of Journalism sweatshirt. Meanwhile, my hair was a greasy blob and I was covered in orange crumbs from the bag of Doritos I’d plowed through during the final twenty miles. I threw my arms around her anyway, Dorito dust and all. Riley was the RA that year and lived in a single that also looked straight out of a brochure: framed poster of Starry Night, bright pink mini-fridge, a photo collage filled with people I didn’t know.
If Riley noticed my weird mood during her enthusiastic tour of the beautiful, snow-blanketed campus or lunch at a local sushi restaurant (Riley eats sushi now?), she didn’t let on. As I fumbled with my chopsticks, she asked where I wanted to go that night: a Kappa Alpha Psi frat party (“It’s a Black fraternity,” she explained), or karaoke with some of her friends from the college paper. We got ready in the dingy communal bathroom, pregaming with a box of wine, pretending we knew how to contour our cheekbones. It felt like the beginning of an epic night. Until Riley announced that Gabrielle would be joining us. Even though we’d never met, I was convinced that Gaby—the famous Gaby I never stopped hearing about, like she was some kind of celebrity or something—didn’t like me. It was silly, but sometimes I convinced myself that Riley had moved on, and Gaby was my replacement, and the two of them sat around talking smack about me all the time. Or worse, that they didn’t talk about me at all. If Gabrielle did hate me, she didn’t let it show. Still, I tried too hard that night, loudly reminding Riley of our shared history, trotting out our best memories and inside jokes so Gabrielle would see She’s mine.
In the small room of a Korean karaoke bar near campus with the strobe lights flashing, a giant disco ball floating over the stage, Riley and I belted out the lyrics to “Shoop,” “Since U Been Gone,” and our go-to classic: “Real Love.” It was strange to see how much Riley had come out of her shell—singing, laughing, even grinding her hips against some guy from her Intro to Psych class. She seemed so confident, sure of herself, now that she was out here in the world and basically the model student: editor of the college newspaper, dean’s list, treasurer of her class. It made me wonder how Riley saw me now. As a loser who hadn’t gone to college? Someone she was outgrowing? I hated all this self-doubt and threw myself into shot after shot of something called a Wild Willie, to chase it away, until my mood finally shifted from gloomy to sentimental. I watched as Riley sang “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” one hand in the air, the other around a bright pink vodka concoction, and I danced right up next to her, our sweaty bodies moving side by side.
“We’re always going to be friends, right?” I screamed into her ear.
She turned to look at me like I was a little crazy. “Of course, silly.”
I could barely make out the words over the music, but I know that’s what she said. Then she grabbed my arm so I’d look at her again, raised her finger to her left eyebrow, and pulled me close to her as the bass pulsed through us like a heartbeat.
I woke up with a throbbing headache the next day, pressed against Riley in her twin bed, staring at the calendar over her desk, the little squares filled with due dates and tests and plans, and thought, This could have been my life. This should be my life. I tried to blame the bitterness on hangover anxiety. I know it was something else though, something uglier: jealousy. Riley was having the time of her life, while I was waitressing at the Olive Garden, which left me smelling like garlic and was giving me love handles thanks to all the unlimited breadsticks.
It didn’t help that every single time Riley had introduced me to someone, they’d asked where I went to college, and all I could say was, “Oh, I’m not in school,” trying not to sound defensive about it. I wasn’t going to admit that I’d already dropped out of community college.
Their surprised and awkward reactions were humiliating, as if I’d confessed I didn’t own a pair of shoes. All those kids assumed college was a foregone conclusion, like breathing. It didn’t even occur to them that Riley would have a friend who didn’t go. I remember the day we both got into Drexel. I must have stared at the photos on the “Welcome” brochure for hours, imagining myself lying in the grass in the quad, laughing with my new friends, or tapping away on a shiny new laptop covered in cool stickers. Riley and I side by side for everything. And then there’d be Lou’s proud expression when she saw me in my cap and gown and toasted me as the first in our family to graduate from college. Instead, Lou narrowed her eyes when I handed her the acceptance letter and financial aid documents. “I don’t do banks, and we ain’t gonna qualify for free money, because I don’t want the government knowing how much I make. That’s exactly why I don’t file taxes. Don’t need to let those imbeciles waste my hard-earned money. Sorry, Charlie.”