The Long Winter #19
International Incidents part two
“What a ride.”
Sandra snorted and shook her head but still pressed against Clark’s side as he reclined against the headboard of her bed. He did not hug her back but that was all right. She knew he had not faked his feelings for her a few short moments ago, and that was worth putting up with his occasional obtuseness.
“Why are you studying foreign languages if you’re majoring in drama?” Sandra asked after a comfortable silence.
“Hm. I have no idea. Just seemed like the thing to do.”
She looked up to frown at him. He still had his arms up and his hands together behind his head. There was a silly smirk on his face and she at once hated and loved it.
“There has to be a reason.”
“I guess I’m just interested in them.”
“Any language in particular?”
He squirmed a bit, shifting her a little away from him. She waited for him to settle back down and once again rested against him. His arm came down to her waist and she smiled to herself.
“Well, French, I guess.”
“Oh! Tu peus parler francais?
“Oui, un peu.”
“Leah, sa mere est francaise.”
Clark raised an eyebrow at her.
“You didn’t notice her accent?”
“I noticed her lisp. It’s cute.”
“And her accent. It’s cute, too.” Sandra leveled an accusatory stare at him.
“Sure is. She’s a cutie pie.”
Her frown deepened. His grip tightened, and then he pulled her on top of him. She kissed him despite herself, and then moved down to nuzzle his neck, his day-old stubble scratchy on her nose.
“So you do think Leah’s cute.”
Clark laughed. “Maybe not as cute as you find her.”
Sandra sighed.
“Look, I never thought of myself as the kind of guy who would mess around, so just saying I think someone else is cute shouldn’t be the sort of thing that you should get all bothered by.”
“I know.”
She settled her head against his chest and took a deep breath. He was unlike anyone she had known before. So unlike her high school boyfriend. So unlike her friends’ boyfriends, or even her own father. She tried to force that thought away but Clark’s next words kept it in her mind.
“My mom is big in France, believe it or not,” he said.
“France, hm?”
“France. I’m going there after graduation, probably.”
“To be with your mom?”
“Well, at least to cash in on her success. She probably owes it to me. To me and my brother.”
“That is why you’re here then.”
“She’s paying for it. She might as well do something for me since she left us all alone after we were born.”
Sandra thought about her father. He read the news every morning. Drank the same coffee every day. Black. Drove the same car since she was in elementary school. Sure, he ran his own businesses, but he ran them in such a way that there was never a crisis, never anything that happened he was not prepared for, never failed to turn a magnificent profit he never made the most of, at least in her eyes. She thought about their little house nestled in a little thicket somewhere north of Detroit and of her beloved nanny Elsa who took care of her while her mother was busy tanning and socializing. She thought a bitter thought of her evil, one-time best friend and of her married parents and that damned girl's boring, mundane existence, so very similar to Sandra's own. They might even have been interchangeable in every way. She wondered at that moment if Clark would even have noticed if she left him for the bathroom and her high school friend came back and laid back down on him.
“What are you going to do in France?”
“Probably just loaf around. Go to parties. I have no ambition.”
“That’s a weird thing to hear from a classmate here. This is one of the toughest schools in the country.”
“I guess.”
She could not help but laugh.
“What?”
“Just how hard, exactly, do you feel it is?”
“Not as hard as I was a few minutes ago.”
“That is gross—“ Sandra cut herself off and wiggled against him. “No, not so gross. It would have been a gross thing of you to say two weeks ago when I thought you were dating Penny.”
“Penny’s fucking gay.”
“So you do like her.”
“Nah. She’s not my type anyhow.”
“What is your type?”
Clark smiled down at her. Sandra smirked back.
“You wouldn’t even have known who I was had I not thrown myself at you.”
“That is definitely part of the appeal.”
She laughed despite herself and then glanced at the door. She wondered what Leah was doing out there. She had seen the funny looks the bespectacled girl had given the two of them when they first started dating. Her smile remained on her face at the thought. Good. Clark was desirable. Even to her cutie-pie roommate. Meanwhile, she, the all-American beauty, was the one sleeping with all-American Clark.
“Leah’s half French, I didn’t know that,” Clark said.
“Yep.”
“She and Penny would have made quite the couple. Both are halfsies.”
“I don’t want to think about Penny.”
“Oh please. You spent the entire night with her in Detroit.”
“So? Huston Chandler tried to beat her up. No one else was in any condition whatsoever to help her, and no one should trust her with Maddie alone, especially all drunk the way they were.”
“You didn’t think it was even the least bit hot?”
“No. It was disgusting.”
“Oh, whatever. You’re no conservative Christian goody-two-shoes. What have you got against them?”
“I have nothing against them. They are fine over there. In their own world. Just not in mine.”
Clark chuckled.
“Fuck you for bringing them up.”
“Wow, I didn’t know you cursed.”
Sandra lifted her head and glared at him.
“It’s kind of hot. You should curse more.”
“You want me to curse more at you?”
“Sure. It’ll add a little spice to my life.”
“Fuck yo—“
He kissed her again, obscuring her words and she let out a long sigh of pleasure through her nose. If he was going to keep this up she would not get much sleep that night. That was fine. Finally, some excitement in her life. She kissed him back, harder, and he rolled on top of her and she decided she would wear her groggy day-after like a badge of honor. Especially in front of cutie-pie Leah and that bitch dyke Penny.
***
Leah lifted her eyes from her tablet and watched Penny skip across the dining hall towards her. She wore a smile, of course (there was a brief time early in the semester when she thought the half-Asian girl might be simple-minded) and a sun dress that bounced around her knees with a woolen cardigan with only two of its several buttons buttoned into the wrong holes. Leah loved Penny’s nerdy look, especially when she sported her body-hugging sundresses and at first was disappointed at the thought of them disappearing for the winter, but the half-Asian girl continued to wear them, sometimes with that heavy cardigan, sometimes with a blazer borrowed from her much-more-fashionable roommate, or one of her several dorky hoodies or that weird jacket that never matched whatever she paired it with. She liked the cardigan look, though. Loved how the half-Asian girl wore it open, loved the amount of skin it left uncovered—
I need to stop thinking like that. It’s bad enough to see Sandra hanging all over Clark these days, but to fantasize about Penny? This is all her fault for having a girlfriend. She was supposed to like me—I mean, she’s supposed to BE like me! No dating. No girlfriend OR boyfriend (at least in my case, because I’m definitely NOT a lesbian… right?). She is so pretty. Prettier than Maddie. Prettier than Sandra. I hate Penny so much. But I sort of love her, too. I wish I could tease her like Maddie does. Wear sexier clothes. Get her to look at me. But she never will. And beside that girl she’s with now I’m, of course, invisible…
And Leah did not notice how Penny saw her just fine, plopping down across from her and greeting her with a friendly “Hello!”
“Hi, Penny,” Leah answered, trying her best to look bored.
“It’s so nice you like to eat with me.”
“Well, if you don’t have a date tonight…”
“No, I have studying to do. We can only really see each other like once or twice a week or so. She has to work in addition to her classes. That must be hard to work and study at the same time.”
“You’ve never had a job before?”
“No. Maybe it sounds spoiled, but my parents always gave me what I needed.”
“Mine did, too. I doubt mine would have let me get a job even if I wanted to.”
“I got perfect grades, so my parents were happy to pay me for my hard work. Not exactly like a job, but sort of close. My girlfriend had a job. Her parents run a sushi restaurant.”
Leah nodded. She was shaking her head in her imagination, however.
I don’t want to hear a single, solitary word about your ex-girlfriend…
“You’re down here kind of late. I was surprised to get your message.”
“Sandra is having Clark over.”
Penny laughed. “Oh, a little dessert!”
Leah scowled at Penny.
“Just kidding! You don’t think it’s cute? They’re a good-looking couple.”
“They’re fine. But I’d rather not be there with them when they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Penny’s smile turned dirty. “What are they doing?”
Leah’s scowl turned into a glare.
“Okay, fine. I’ll stop teasing.”
One of the staff brought them plates of that night’s dinner special.
“Thank you!” Penny smiled up at the server who paused for a moment before smiling back and leaving. She looked at Leah. “You know, no one else here says “thank you” to them. I think sometimes everyone here is such a snob.”
“They feel the staff is supposed to do their jobs invisibly.” Leah glanced at the kitchen. “I never gave them much thought, to be honest.”
“Not much thought? Well, why not? I mean, I’m grateful to them. I don’t really like cooking all that much, and they’re doing it for me!” She stopped to take a bite and she almost swooned. “Oh, and it’s so good!”
Leah nibbled the bit on her fork and sighed. She nodded, hoping Penny would change the subject, but the foreigner continued right along with her classist conversation.
“You know, I was thinking before that it would be fun to bring Delaney around to meet you, because, you know, you are all my friends, but some of the things she said to me really made me wonder if that was a good idea.”
“I don’t mind the idea of meeting her.”
“Sure, and I’m sure you think so, but she’s a waitress. Almost everyone I know here owns clothes more expensive than her car.”
“And you don’t?”
“I definitely don’t. I buy based on two things: Is it comfortable? Is it cheap?”
Leah opened her mouth to retort but Penny laughed, cutting her off.
“Oh, and sometimes recently three things! Sometimes I’ve been asking myself if it’s cute. I forget that sometimes because before I went out with Ayumi it was never very important to me, but I do think that now when I’m looking at new dresses.”
Leah studied Penny's dress in an effort not to remember the half-Asian girl's ex-girlfriend. It was pink, a subdued pink, with some sort of yellow pattern like a Victorian wallpaper all over it. She wondered where Penny could even have found such a thing. Certainly not in the same boutiques Leah’s mother demanded she shop at.
“Anything you wear is cute,” Leah said, trying to hide her shock at her own words with a bigger-than-normal bite of her food.
“What a nice thing to say!”
“I’m glad you were available for so late a dinner.” Leah glanced at the deck outside. It was well-lit with strings of LEDs that shined on the pine trees, but beyond that everything was dark. And cold. Not like it was inside the dining hall with Penny sitting right across from her.
“It's great timing today, neh? I mean, since you're here while Maddie has a phone date with her fiancé at the same time Clark and Sandra are having dessert in her room.”
“Is she still teasing you?” Leah smiled at the memory of Penny’s red cheeks and attempts not to look at classically beautiful Madison Carter. A much better thought to focus on instead of noisy, annoying, charming and easygoing Clark doing things with her suitemate.
“Teasing me, neh? I knew she was teasing me. I could tell.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“I enjoyed it more before I had a girlfriend. Now it feels sort of like cheating.”
“And you’re an honest girl.”
Leah noticed Penny hesitate before pasting a fake smile on her face and tittering her response.
“Of course! Honest and honorable.”
“So honest and honorable you stole a straight girl from her boyfriend and turned her gay.”
“That’s not fair! She was always a lesbian, just like me, she just didn’t realize it until we were together, also just like me but a little different.”
“I half expect you to tell me you’re in the process of stealing your Delaney from whatever poor boy she’s dating.”
“No, I have her all to myself.”
Leah allowed herself a small laugh at the haughty, offended expression on Penny’s face. She did not wear such an expression nearly as well as Sandra did. She was too adorable, too earnest and sincere. That sort of sincerity was going to get her hurt, if it had not already. She paused at the memory of Penny being set down on the deck by that shiny flying girl earlier that week. Despite how strong she wanted to believe their friendship had become Penny stayed remarkably silent on the whole affair, saying only that flying was amazing and that she was grateful (once again, that word!) for the experience insofar as it resulted in that. Everyone knew the flying girl was Cosmette, the cosmically-powered member of Port Matthew’s Best Defense, the team of super-powered beings safeguarding the island. An earlier roster of the team was responsible for freeing Hong Kong from CCP tyranny, as well as the utter destruction of Cuba’s hideous and oppressive communist government. That small girl was one of the most powerful people on the planet. She was not supposed to be in America unless she was invited, and it was likely she was there because of Penny’s encounter with Huston Chandler, The Infantryman (a subject of much gossip that week: did Penny even notice the eyeballs that followed her around the campus?), which made Leah think Penny was much more of a VIP than she let on, and that her excursion with their friends to Detroit the previous weekend may have resulted in an incident of some sort. She took another bite of her food and watched Penny wave at one of their classmates across the room. The boy nodded back and turned his attention back to his book.
“I have an appointment on Friday,” Penny said, setting her fork down on her empty plate.
“An appointment?”
“Yes. I won’t be able to exercise that morning, and I already talked to Professor Fairchild, she’s letting me work in the afternoon instead of the morning.”
“Oh, so you can work with Ash.” Leah wondered how bitter she sounded.
“No, Ash doesn’t work Friday afternoons. She does some sort of “gay” thing with some the University students.”
Leah nodded.
“But I’m free that evening.”
“No date with Delaney?”
“She’s working. Maddie seems to have some sort of plans. We could go with her. Or we could spend some time together in our room, you know, away from our studies.”
“I can work social obligations into my Friday schedule,” Leah said, pulling out her phone. “Plenty of time after dinner, so long as I move studying to Saturday morning.”
“Great!”
“Which I’ll do under one condition.”
“What?” Penny’s smile stayed joyful.
“You tell me what your morning meeting is about.”
Penny’s smile froze and her eyes widened slightly, giving her a sort of hunted, frightened look. Now there was an expression she wore well. Penny took a deep breath.
“I’ll tell you some of it. But I can’t tell you all of it.”
Leah crossed her arms and stared back.
“And… you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Ever.”
Leah’s arms fell to the table and she leaned forward with a frown on her face.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone else, but it’s so, so hard to keep this a secret.”
“You haven’t told Delaney?”
Penny bit her lower lip and shook her head.
“Professor Fairchild didn’t set something up for you?”
Penny’s gaze fell to the table and she shook her head again.
“And Maddie doesn’t know anything, either.”
Penny shook her head again and then looked back up at Leah.
“I feel like I can trust you.”
“More than your own girlfriend.” Leah looked back at her in disbelief. She missed the shadow that crossed Penny’s face, so great was her shock.
“I wouldn’t say it that way, but, I don’t know. You seem so trustworthy. If I can tell anyone besides my best friend back home, I can tell you.”
Leah reached across the table, surprised at how steady her hands were, and grasped Penny’s.
“You can trust me.”
“Thank you. We’ll talk Friday, then. Let’s go study now, Maddie should be finished with her boyf—her fiancé. I don’t know if you’re keeping your distance from your room, but…”
“I have one hour. Let’s go study.”
And they left the table. Leah did not feel the floor beneath her feet. Penny trusted her. Trusted her more than she trusted her own girlfriend, than her roommate. She trusted Leah. And Leah straightened her glasses, feeling substantially less frumpy than she had ever felt at any moment in her life to that point. If only it was already Friday night, but she could wait. Anticipation was, after all, the best part.
Follow The Long Winter into #20 International Incidents part three here.