Page 4 of Drawn Together
Me: Also, it is almost eight o’clock there. Where are you going?
Sloane: I like all opinions, not just people who actually know how to dress.
Sloane: And, it’s Jeremy’s eighteenth birthday!
I have no clue who Jeremy is any more than you do, but it’s not due to a lack of trying. I have done my best to keep up with Sloane’s friends, but it’s futile. It would take a blank evidence board with tiny red strings to follow who is who in her stories—there’s no sense in even trying. My eighteen-year-old sister has had more friends—and let’s be honest, boyfriends—in the last year than I have in my entire twenty-six years on this green Earth.
I am in the middle of typing back a response about my wild night of dry bowls of Cap N’ Crunch—I forgot to get milk—and finishing up this commission, when Lennon bursts out of her room.
Under a large brown jacket, her thin frame is more obvious as she stands at the hallway entrance with both hands at her sides—like someone glued them there and she’s about to ask me for help to unstick them. Her usually straight blonde hair is curled and thrown into a long, high ponytail. She’s wearing sunglasses inside, so I can’t see her eyes to know if she is looking at me, but her face is pointing directly my way, so I say, “Hi.”
“Stephan and I have a trivia team.”
I take a solid minute to piece together who Stephan could be. She’s never said his name before, nor have I seen him, but context clues point to it being her boyfriend. I’ve never seen the man, and have only once heard his voice in the throes of passion one wall away from my bed frame. But, I like to imagine he has blonde hair and an enormous nose. And broad shoulders. He also seems very generous.
“That’s nice.”
“There are usually six of us, but one can’t come.”
“Oh.”
She nods. I nod back. We both stand in silence. A bird chirps outside, and a bicyclist rings their bell. The refrigerator hums and clings as the ice maker…makes ice.
“Well, I hope you still win.”
I think in order for me to do this whole ‘making real friends’ thing, I’m going to have to do a lot less talking and a lot more listening, so I wait for her to expand. She doesn’t. She turns to the baby blue hooks where our keys sit, grabs her set, and marches to the door in silence.
Lennon stops before her fingers reach the handle, then does a full one-eighty to face me.
“Will you come?”
“Come where?”
“To trivia.”
I am completely still, like the longer we sit here, the better answer I can force out. I shouldn’t be in shock—we just talked about her team missing a member—and I am a warm, mostly willing, and partially knowledgeable person.
“So, will you?”
My fingers itch to throw off this blanket and shout at my roommate, who is drastically more notable, that I spent twenty minutes talking to a cartoon hedgehog today and would love nothing more than real human interactions.
Logic seeps its way into my bones, and I, instead, settle for a casual, “That sounds nice.”
“Cool. We’ll leave in ten.”
Before I can respond, she turns on a heel and goes back into her room, shutting the door behind her.
Three
Wordoftheday:Garrulous
Definition:excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters
What does one wear to a trivia night with a group of strangers held in a hole-in-the-wall bar that happens to serve chili dogs?
I started to ask my roommate before I realized I can’t, because then I’ll sound like someone who never gets invited to trivia night. For the record, I am totally not someone who gets invited to trivia nights. So, I consulted my closet and came up with this: a pastel yellow sweater—that makes me look like a banana Laffy Taffy—and straight jeans with tennis shoes.
It’s mid-September, and the heat of the summer is packed away neatly, but the cool breeze of autumn is still in the distance. Nights are colder, but not enough where I feel the need to unpack the thick winter coats resting in their marked cardboard box on my closet floor. I grab my lightest jacket, so I’ll be slightly hot walking to wherever this place is, but I won’t freeze on the way back.
