Ten

“WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?”

Man, that came out of the blue. I left Fundamentals class and caught up with Melody to tell her the good news about my scholarship and racquetball, and before I could get a word out she explodes at me. She really doesn’t swear that much, so her language took me by surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I waited in the study lounge till midnight! We were going to work on our Fundies presentations together. You never showed up and then you waltz in here this morning and give a Broadway production while my stupid paper looks like a dog ate my homework and then threw it up. Where were you?”

“Shit! I completely forgot we were going to meet up. I’m sorry. I had so much going on yesterday I was a total wreck. Melody, please forgive me.”

“Where were you?” It finally dawned on me that there was only one question on her mind. I cringed a little.

“I was with Lissa. I spent the night over at her house.”

“You what? You blew me off to go sleep with her?”

“Melody, it’s not like that. At least not all like that. I was really messed up yesterday and Lissa helped me get through it. I had to talk it all out with someone.”

“And then have sex. Is she your girlfriend or me?” Did I have a girlfriend? I know I told Lissa that one of my favorite things at school was my girlfriend, but she quickly—and correctly—interpreted that as sex. I’d never really considered the implications of actually having a girlfriend. Yeah, I’d dated some, but I never thought about it in those terms before.

“Lissa is my ... our ... friend. She’s also my coach. If you’d just let me explain.” Melody held up her palm in front of my face. I cringed for a second thinking she was going to slap me. Then she pulled some gangsta rap thing on me out of the blue.

“Talk to the hand, asshole. I’m not listening.” Then she stormed off and I didn’t see her again the rest of the day.

Shit! Just when I thought I might have a handle on my life. I hate this fucking school. I should just kill myself. Why do I have all this drama? I’m an artist, not an actor, Jim.

I went back to my dorm room and cut Art Orientation. I stripped, crawled in bed, and pulled the covers over my head, determined not to come out until they closed the dorms for the summer.

Of course, I didn’t silence my cell phone and it started chiming once every ten minutes with messages until I finally gave in and got up to see who was texting me. I hoped it was Melody. I really didn’t mean to hurt her and it never even occurred to me that my being with Lissa would upset her. We were both with her all weekend. Is that what it was like to have a girlfriend—always wondering if you were going to upset her over something stupid? I scanned through the messages but her name didn’t pop up. There were messages from both Sandra and Amy, from John Gilbert at the gym, wanting to set up time with me this afternoon, and from Dean Peterson asking me to stop and see him after my painting class on Friday. I was about to open Sandra’s message when a new message came in from Lissa. I looked and it said simply, “Have you picked up a Daytimer yet?”

That really brought me up short. I’d blown off the athletic director and trainer at the club yesterday and that reflected badly on Lissa. She’d gone to bat for me to help with my depression and I owed it to her not to embarrass her again. It was 2:30. Technically I should still be in class, but I’d already missed two thirds of it, so I decided to head first to Staples and then to the gym. I texted John and asked if he could meet at 4:00. I was on my way downstairs with my bag slung over my shoulder when the message chimed again and his response was simply, “Yes. CU then.”

While I was walking I texted Lissa and told her I was on my way to Staples now. She sent back a smiley face. I finally popped Amy’s message open. “WTF?” was all it said. Jolly. Not only was I in shit with Melody, but with Amy and Sandra, too. The three musketeers. By then, I was at Staples, so I didn’t bother to open Sandra’s message.

I spent half an hour picking out a planner. I had no idea how many different kinds of these books they had. I didn’t know anybody still used paper calendars. Everybody I knew kept their schedules on their cell phones. But I loved what I was seeing. Let’s face it. I do think visually. I kept thinking of what Lissa said about me needing something that was big enough to see ahead and not just what was due now. There were daily and hourly journals, journals that had places for expenses, travel arrangements, and receipts, auto journals, weekly journals, monthly journals. They even had bigger planners that you could post on your wall and use erasable markers on. That was kind of cool, but I thought I needed something I could carry with me if I was going to make it work.

I finally settled on a teacher’s planner. It had a column for each of the five days of the school week and a sixth column split between Saturday and Sunday. The days weren’t divided with rigid times, but were just “Morning, Afternoon, Evening.” It was also nice because it was an anytime calendar. You wrote the dates in at the top of the page so I didn’t feel like I was paying for a year and only getting nine months. For good measure, I bought a really nice mechanical pencil that had a large enough and soft enough lead that in a pinch I could use it to sketch with if I couldn’t think of anything else to put in my planner.