What A Girl Wants (20 page)

“I'm supposed to look at the bright side. I think the bright side is a sham. I think it's a complete fabrication. Something people say to get unhappy people to shut up. . . oh. Right.” Hayley shrank back in her chair.

Suz poked her head in. “Why don't you just think of it this way: You can cross ‘policeman' off your list of things you must do once before you die.”

“Um, Suz? ‘Policeman' really wasn't on my list of must-do-once-in-life. I was really going to be okay without checking off that accomplishment.”

Suz just shrugged.

“Here's the point. There was this epiphany, remember? I made a plan and I thought things were going to change, if I just gave it a shot. But I'm right back where I started.” No emotion was registering on anybody's face. Hayley tried to be more specific. “No guy and a new job that, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same as the one I managed to get out of, except my paycheck says I'm making less money. I mean, do you see how severe this is? I'm off
the charts. I don't know what I'm going to do. This
is
the
worst
time of my life.”

“The worst? The
worst
of the worst?” Suz looked around the table. “The worst moment in Hayley's life? It's not like anybody died.”

“Fred Leary died,” Hayley pointed out. “He died in the cube right next to me, remember? He was dead for days before—”

Audra interrupted. “Okay, it's not like being stood up on your wedding day.”

Hayley sat there, stunned. “There
is
no wedding day; don't you
get
it?” she wailed. “We had sex and he never called back! And then I had to go to this crappy new job and think about sex. For three days, sex, sex, sex. But now that it's finally worth thinking about, there's no one to have it with.”

Audra leaned forward. “Okay, I find this interesting. I really do. It's riveting. But for everyone else in this restaurant? For them it was quite possibly a major overshare. Can we all just keep it down?”

Suz waved a languid hand in front of Audra's face. “Who gives a damn who hears? It's probably the most interesting stuff they've heard in a long time.”

“Well,
I
give a damn,” Audra yelled, pushing Suz's hand away from her face. “Not that anybody cares what I think. You're all too busy yelling and insulting me. Let me tell you something. I. Give. A. Damn!” She looked around the table, her eyes narrowed, the most scathing expression she had in her repertoire embedded in her features.

She stood up, turned her back on the table to face the rest of the diner, straightened her spine, tossed her hair, and said to the attentive crowd, “I
heartily
apologize.” Then she jammed the strap of
her purse onto her shoulder and walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

“Peachy. Just peachy.” Suz sighed impatiently. “Now you've really done it, Hayley.”

“What did I—”

“We've tried everything. I swear to God. For now, I guess you're just going to have to pull your ass out of bed tomorrow morning and go to work like the rest of us. I just cannot deal with this anymore. I've got developing issues of my own. Not that anyone's interested.” Suz packed an entire pancake in her mouth and got up, chewing all the way out the door.

“I'm outta here,” Diane mumbled.

“Diane?” Hayley blurted out. “You're leaving me, too?”

Diane turned to Hayley, her face tinged an unhealthy green. “Jesus, look at me. I think I'm gonna puke. I'm not gonna make it through the rest of the day, much less make it to any of my classes tomorrow.”

Diane started to walk away from the table and Hayley just spontaneously snaked her arm out and grabbed her by the cuff of her sweatshirt, which was already looking substantially stretched out from the altercation with Suz.

Diane snatched her arm away. She shook her head, wiped her sweating face with her sleeve, and shuffled toward the door holding her stomach.

A few minutes later Hayley took her head out of her hands and looked up. Diane's handheld lay on the table. She jumped up and raced to the door with it, but Diane was nowhere in sight. Hayley sighed and returned to the table to wait for her friends to come back.

Fifteen minutes later the waiter apologetically reclaimed the
table for some waiting customers. Hayley walked out of the diner into the stifling Sunday midmorning. She took a long look up and down the block to make sure she wouldn't miss them if her friends turned around and came back, but she didn't see any of them.

In a bit of a daze, Hayley started off down the street toward her apartment. Waiting on the corner for the red light to change, she considered her situation. Was the abyss worse than the nadir? It was probably just the difference between having to climb out and having to climb up. Either way, she was in it and down it.

The light flipped to green, and Hayley started across the street. Without warning, her heel caught in the rough cement, and with a lurch the stiletto on her right shoe snapped off and sent Hayley sprawling. Her purse spilled and Diane's handheld went skidding across the pavement.

Hayley immediately started bawling. It was to the point where crying wasn't going to make things any more embarrassing than they already were. As she hiccuped and swiped at her eyes while scooping her belongings off the dirty street, the question came to her again; abyss or nadir? It was the kind of question Diane could answer. Except Diane apparently wasn't speaking to her right now. And neither was Audra. Or Suz, for that matter. None of them were.

What the hell just happened in there? It
wasn't
always all about her. Was it? Maybe they were right. Maybe she was expecting too much. Did anybody ever really get what they wanted? Like Suz'd said, she'd just have to pull her ass out of bed like everybody else and go to work.

As she knelt on her hands and knees in the middle of the street, the thought occurred to her that maybe she really
didn't
have to. Technically, she didn't
have
to do anything. A little chink in the
armor, the hazy suggestion of something that Hayley couldn't put her finger on, faded in and then back out again.

The light changed again and a couple cars started honking. With her head down so the people she passed couldn't see the tears streaming down her cheeks, Hayley picked herself off the ground, snagged her broken heel off the white crosswalk line, and limped toward her apartment.

Well, her friends had been right about one thing.
That
wasn't the worst of the worst.
This
was.

H
ayley sighed deeply, dramatically, as she shuffled over to the coffeemaker and flipped the switch. She watched the coffee drain in an endless, murky stream into her travel mug. Endless and murky. How appropriate. She sat down at the kitchen table, staring at Diane's Palm, which lay in Grant's theoretical breakfast spot between the phone and her right shoe with its superglued stiletto.

Suz would have been so proud. On this grim Monday morning at seven o'clock, Hayley had, indeed, managed to pull her ass out of bed. It was not pleasant. And frankly, Hayley wasn't sure she could stand the thought of repeating said ass pulling for the next, oh, forty years of her life. There had to be something worth getting out of bed for, but this just wasn't it.

Maybe she needed something different. If she wanted something different, and if she wanted to avoid this soul-sucking experience otherwise known as unsatisfying employment, maybe she should just go back to school, like Diane always did. That way she could check out of real life for a while and stop fixating on her
problems. Perhaps in time they would just go away. Or at least become irrelevant.

Hmm
. There might be something to that. Hayley reached across the table and snagged Diane's organizer. Poor Diane had looked like death warmed over yesterday, and nobody had been particularly sympathetic. She'd said she wasn't going to class today, so maybe Hayley could make nice by taking notes for her while she checked things out for herself. She turned the machine on and poked the stylus at the calendar icon.

Diane's ten o'clock Monday class was scheduled in Warren Hall. It didn't say which class, though. Hayley figured it didn't matter, since she just wanted to get a sense of whether going back to school was really a viable option.

She tapped the stylus thoughtfully against the table. She'd have to call in sick. Eileen might not take that too well, seeing as how today marked only her second week of employment. Maybe she could just say she needed thumb surgery and ask if she should call a lawyer. That would probably shut her up.

A couple hours later, Hayley entered the lecture hall and found a seat in something like row 103, skewed nicely toward the left side of the room. She felt pretty safe, but it was strange to be back in college.

School had seemed like such a pain at the time. Now it felt sort of comforting. Like a giant cocoon. A place where expectations were low, yet hopes were high. A nice, peanut-butter-and-jelly place to be.

She looked to her left and accidentally made eye contact with the guy occupying the seat next to hers.

“Hi,” he said, scoping her out.

Hayley scoped him out and then surveyed the other occupants
of the lecture hall. No wonder Diane wasn't interested in dating. It was like a bunch of twelve-year-olds masquerading as underclassmen.
Yuck.

“Hi,” Hayley said in her most uninterested voice, hoping that would be the end of it.

The kid looked confused. “It's, like, the end of the semester. You been here before?”

“Uh, no.” What was he, the lecture police?

“You an exchange student?”

Bit of a dim bulb, this one. “Yes, I am. I'm from Sweden,” she said sarcastically.

“Sweden?” He looked excited.

Hayley shuddered and looked away. Maybe things
could
get worse.

He tapped her shoulder. “Welcome to America. I'd be more than happy to, uh, ya know, help out. Culture shock can be, like, a real bitch. I'm Carson. Car. Son.”

He stuck out his hand and Hayley stared at it. “Uh, Inga, here.”

Was there no peace to be found? Hayley looked at her watch. Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes before she could sink into mindless oblivion, serenaded by the delicious droning sound of a tenured professor. Somehow she hadn't appreciated the anonymous quality of college when she'd actually been there. But she appreciated it now.

“Hey, Inga, do—”

“Do you mind if I read your newspaper?” Hayley asked quickly, pointing to the stack in the empty chair on Carson's opposite side.

He smiled nervously and handed it over. Probably figured he was getting somewhere. Hayley opened the front section full span, providing a shield between her and Carson. On the facing page was
a picture of a happy couple holding hands at the zoo. It was faintly nauseating.

Carson peered around the side. “I could take you there. It's, like, a real American thing.” Hayley looked at him in horror, and he quickly added, “Not like a date or anything. Like culture exchange.”

“We have zoos in Sweden.” She folded up the newspaper and handed it back to Carson, muttering, “Shiny, happy people. Must be models.”

Carson tossed the newspaper back on the seat next to him, then pulled a binder out of his backpack. He turned to a blank sheet of paper and scrawled,
Lecture 12—Professor Atkins—Human Sexuality.

Hayley stared at the title. Of course. It would be.

“Can I please have everyone's attention?” The professor down on the stage clapped his hands. He appeared to be what people generally described as an eccentric, looking more like a mad scientist than an expert on sexuality. His white hair stuck out on all sides of his head and his crowning glory appeared to be a tie in the shape of a trout.

“Today we're going to do things a little differently,” he said. “I need a couple of volunteers.”

The seconds ticked by. The lecture hall remained silent. At first the silence felt good. And then it started to seem really strange. Hayley looked around, but no one said a word. No one raised their hand. No one stood up.

And all of a sudden, the idea formed. Was this her chance?

She was all prepared just to go and sit there, absorbing the anonymous bliss of public-university academia, sheltered from the real world and all its annoying dilemmas. But in the three minutes that ticked on endlessly while the professor waited, waited for
someone, anyone, to step out of the crowd, Hayley watched her fellow students and wondered if she should change her mind.

They just sat there like students tend to do, staring anywhere at all, at their mechanical pencils, their handhelds, the ceiling, each other, anything to avoid notice. To avoid being called to participate. To avoid asserting themselves.

The world was full of people thinking too much about what other people thought of them. Afraid to make a decision for whatever reason.

“Just remain as still as possible,” Carson whispered. “Don't do anything and he'll pass right over you.”

“I wasn't planning to do anything. I was planning just to sit here and absorb. Just fade right . . . into . . . the crowd . . .” Hayley cocked her head and considered that. “Just be a passive observer,” she murmured.

Fade into the crowd. That would be less than zero. That would put her back to where she started, but worse.

At the start of this whole thing she'd complained about an inability to move forward, but at least she'd been standing on solid ground. Now she was just begging to disappear, check out, fall into the crowd as it moved in circles like mindless cows.

“Hey, you okay?” Carson peeled one of Hayley's hands off the armrest and looked at her palm.

She snatched her hand away.

“I think you're cramping up or something. Don't worry, he won't call on you if you scrunch down in your chair like this.”

“Look, Carson, I'm not a mindless cow.”

“Huh? I think that's, like, the wrong idiom or something.”

Hayley stood up. She looked down the rows of students all the way to the bottom, where the professor stood onstage, waiting. She
waved her arms in the air. “Over here! I'll do it. Hey, Professor. Pick me!”

“Inga, what are you doing? Nobody in America volunteers . . . nobody does that. Sit down!” Carson started to panic, pulling on Hayley's sleeve until the fabric ripped under the arm and he had to let go.

Hayley smiled at Carson. He looked desperate, powerless, as if he'd realized he was unable to pull a poor, hapless exchange student away from certain death. Hayley knew she was grinning like an idiot and she didn't care.

“Well, come on down, then,” the professor shouted up happily. “What's your name?”

Hayley continued walking down the mountain of stairs toward the front of the cavernous lecture hall. If this were a movie, she'd be moving in slow motion, the doors to the lecture hall would open of their own accord, and white light would be streaming into the room as Hayley moved toward the podium, her hair rippling slightly in a light breeze. “I'm Ing . . . no, I'm Hayley Jane Smith, that's who I am,” she called out.

She reached the bottom and turned around to face the lecture hall. She could see Carson with that horrified expression still frozen on his face.

Hayley waved and watched all the student heads swivel to look at Carson. It was kind of amusing, so she waved to some random person on the other side of the room and watched them swivel again. She turned to the professor. “They're so malleable, aren't they?”

He was looking at her oddly. In a good way. Like he'd found a kindred spirit or something. “Now we're going to need a male.”

“Here, I'll pick.” Hayley stepped to the edge of the lecture
stage and surveyed the faces. Her spontaneous volunteerism seemed to have caught their attention, because, instead of staring mindlessly at the foam-tile ceiling, they were staring at her.

Hayley honed in on a beefy fellow who quickly looked down and started flipping the pages of his notebook in some effort to look as inconspicuous as possible. She needed someone manly. Er, as manly as she could possibly get under the circumstances. “You. I want you,” Hayley said, pointing right at him.

From the corner of her eye she saw Carson put his head down in his hands. Hayley grinned. This felt terrific. “Don't worry, Carson,” she called up to the 103rd row. “Everything's under control.”

Carson answered by slouching down in his chair until Hayley could see only the very top of his head.

“Well, let's go, young man. Pick up the pace,” the professor said. The beefy fellow slowly stood up, looking around at the rest of his class. They stared back at him, whispering and giggling. He was obviously getting no support from them, so he gingerly made his way toward the stage.

He walked onstage and stood next to Hayley, smiling uneasily, trying to look cockier than he undoubtedly felt, given that he kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Hell, she'd picked him out of the crowd. He ought to feel pretty good about himself.

The professor came up between Hayley and her prey and put one hand on each of their shoulders. “We're going to do a role-play here called ‘He Said/She Said.' But first we need a subject matter over which men and women tend to disagree. May I have suggestions from the audience? Just call it right out.”

“A one-night stand,” Hayley said immediately, leaning over to
speak into the professor's lapel microphone. The audience laughed. Beefy Guy blushed and dropped his pen.

The professor shrugged. “A one-night stand it is. Fine. Hayley Jane and . . . I'm sorry, what's your name?”

“Steve.” It came out hoarse, and a snicker went through the crowd.

Hayley began to feel sorry for the poor guy. After all, whatever was about to happen, just because he was male she shouldn't make him pay for Grant's lack of good manners.

On the other hand, wasn't that how things worked? The next girl paid for the trespasses of past women who had undoubtedly done something bad enough to make Grant Hutchinson sleep with them and not call them back. It was simply payback time.

“Okay, Hayley Jane, you seem to have a real grip on this assignment, so I'll just let you launch right into it, and if the two of you get stuck, I'll ask a question to get you back on track. Go right ahead.” The professor set his stopwatch and waved his arm to start the show.

Hayley turned to Steve and smiled. “Hi, Steve. We had sex on Friday night and you never called.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Steve's Adam's apple bobbled convulsively. His eyes grew big and round. His legs started to spasm. No longer just redistributing his weight, he literally picked up one foot and put it down again, then picked up the other foot and set it down again. It was almost as if he were trying to run away but couldn't move.

Well, he wasn't going anywhere. Hayley wanted some answers. She put her hands on her hips. “We had a one-night stand and you didn't call me.”

“I—I'm sorry?” He swiped at his nose with his sleeve and looked helplessly at the professor.

The professor just waved his lecture notes in a “keep-going” motion.

“That's it? You're sorry?” Hayley asked.

“Wait a minute.” The guy stopped bobbling around. “Wait a minute.” He was thinking pretty hard. It seemed as though he wasn't used to it or something. But he was definitely thinking. Finally he said, “I'm
not
sorry.”