All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(87)

I went to complain to the RA, who said, “What kid?”

It turned out Wavy Quinn was eighteen. She wasn’t a child; she was just really small.

And quiet. Oh my god was she quiet.

I talk a lot, so I admit it was several days before I realized Wavy hadn’t spoken to me. Not one word. I only noticed because by the end of the first week she still hadn’t asked me about Jill Carmody.

It’s pathetic, but that was why I’d been looking forward to getting a new roommate. I was waiting for the moment she would ask about the memorial picture of Jill on my bulletin board.

“So, are you mad at me or something?” I said. “Did I do something to piss you off?”

Wavy was sitting at her desk studying. Four days into the semester and she was studying. She shook her head, without even looking up.

“I’m just missing my best friend. Next week is the anniversary of her death.” For a second, I thought even that had failed, but Wavy closed her book, and looked over at my shrine to Jill.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I did my spiel. Jill was my best friend. Smart, pretty, All-State volleyball champion. Killed by a drunk driver our senior year. I cried. I’m ashamed when I look back at how I played that game, because I barely knew Jill. I once had a history class with her. When I went to college I made up this story about my best friend dying, because it made me more interesting.

My freshman roommate and I stayed up all night hashing it out, me crying, her comforting me. All Wavy did was give me a sympathetic look and say, “That’s sad.”

It made me feel like a poseur. I mean, I was a poseur, but I’d never felt like one before.

After Parents Weekend, I felt like even more of a fake. By then I was used to what I thought of as Wavy’s weirdness. I never saw her eat, and in two months I’d heard her speak about a hundred words, mostly things like yes, no, laundry, library, and shut up, I’m sleeping. The Friday of Parents Weekend, I came back to our room after class and the door was open. I heard someone mutter, “You son of a bitch.”

Wow. Another five words out of Wavy, one of them an expletive. Except it wasn’t her. It was a middle-aged woman with short brown hair, shoving something back into Wavy’s desk drawer.

“Hi. Are you Mrs. Quinn?” I said.

All the color drained out of her face as she closed the desk drawer.

“You must be Renee. I’m Brenda Newling. I’m Wavy’s aunt.”

“Oh, she’s told me all about you … That’s a joke. You know, because she doesn’t talk much?”

Mrs. Newling didn’t crack a smile.

“How is she? Really?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “I wish I could stick to a diet the way she does. Was there anything in particular you were looking for in her desk?”

“No. I just worry about her.”

I put down my backpack, wondering what Wavy’s aunt was looking for. Condoms? Drugs? Alcohol? Like we wouldn’t have the sense to ditch that stuff before our parents visited. With my mom and dad coming on Saturday, there wasn’t even aspirin in my desk drawer. I’d even tacked up the campus chapel schedule on my bulletin board.

“Wavy studies a lot,” I said.

“She always has. Is she making friends?”

“Friends?” It came out sounding bitchy, but was this woman for real? Mrs. Newling sat on the edge of Wavy’s bed with a pleading look on her face. Oh no. I was not doing the mother-roommate confidant routine, so I said, “She’s friends with me. Does that count?”

Before Mrs. Newling could answer, Wavy came back to the room with her cousin Amy in tow. After the three of them left, I got down to some overdue snooping of my own. In the back of Wavy’s desk drawer was a brass picture frame. I may be self-centered, but I’m not oblivious. I’d asked about the photo Wavy kept on her bulletin board: her little brother, grinning with his two front teeth out. I would have asked about this picture, too, but I’d never seen it.

The photo was of a big guy sitting on a motorcycle in front of an open garage door. He had pitch-black hair that was too long, and his shirt was off, showing tattoos on his arms and chest. He was mostly muscle, but he was carrying some extra weight around the middle. That’s my problem, too. It was a sunny day and he was laughing, having fun with the person behind the camera. Who was he?

Right then, I realized I’d been going about things the wrong way. You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.

*

When Wavy came back from giving her aunt a tour of campus, she sat down to study. On a Friday night. There was no other way, so I said, “When I got home, your aunt was snooping in your desk. Is there anything in there you wouldn’t want her to find?”

Nailed it in one. Wavy jerked open the drawer and grabbed the picture. With a crazy pissed off look on her face, she polished the glass with the hem of her skirt.

I stepped closer, pretending I was seeing it for the first time.

“That’s a cool motorcycle. Who is that?”

Considering how eager I was to blurt out my fake tragedy, I couldn’t believe Wavy didn’t want to tell me, but she looked me over, evaluating whether I could be trusted.

“I just wondered, because your aunt seemed pretty upset about finding it. So who is he?”