“Look, Morgan—that’s your name, right?”
To which I just nodded my head silently, trying to avoid her spazzing out on me due to the cocaine high I assumed she was under.
“I do those things because everyone—the social workers, the teachers, the police, the parents, the foster parents, the judges—they all think that we turn into animals the longer we’re in the system. And I don’t know about you. . .”
Just then, Annie turned her head to the side while a maniacal grin spread across her face. I tried to back away further, but ended up stumbling across my feet as I missed the slanting floor’s angle where it descended towards my bed. By now I was certain she was on something hard-core and twitch-inducing.
“But I’m no animal,” she shouted, and then promptly began jumping up and down, making monkey noises and scratching her armpits like you’d see a little kid do—until she broke. When Annie started giggling, it was so intense I thought the floorboards would shake loose.
That’s when I finally got the joke—Annie wasn’t high; she was just crazy. In the best possible way.
Her whole weirdo routine cracked me up out of my “new group home” funk, and the two of us stayed like that for a good long while, big bellyfuls of laughter ricocheting around the room.
When we calmed down, Annie reached out her palm to help pull me up from the bed I’d landed on after I tripped over my own feet. Her hand was soft and warm and she was wearing a butterfly ring on her right hand index finger.
Annie paused to consider me for a moment, her face soft and quizzical. We kind of had a moment.
Until she snorted like a pig. A big, noisy intake of breath that scratched at the back of her throat and filled the room. I responded by barking like a dog, with ruffs and growls.
And then we were both laughing again so hard that we had to hold each other by the shoulders to keep the other from falling over with belly aches.
That’s how Annie and I became friends. That’s how I made the best friend I’ve ever had.
Neither Annie nor I say anything for a moment. The fact that she’s used the same word to describe Justin that he did earlier today, after he just showed up at my classroom, bothers me.
Stalker.
People throw that label around way too carelessly.
Into the silence I hear her snap the top of another can of Coke. The fizz travels over the phone so clearly that I almost feel the bubbles under my nose as she takes a big, gurgling sip.
“That stuff isn’t good for you,” I say. It’s an old argument between Annie and me.
I make artisan flat bread and quinoa salads. Annie eats Snowballs from the Unimart on the corner of her street and drinks twelve packs of Coke. I keep telling her it’s going to catch up on her—not in a jiggly flab sort of way. Neither of us really care about that. For the last several months she’s been looking pale and her eyes are red-rimmed and strained when I see her. I actually ordered a package of vitamins for her online, to which she quickly responded upon receipt by calling me and saying, “Why is my pee yellow, Morgan?” And that was the end of that. Now, whenever I visit her at her big city apartment in the Heights—which isn’t as often as we’d like, but it’s hard to get away with work and all, but still—I notice the vitamin bottles with another layer of dust added to them on the top of her fridge.
“Yeah, well Justin isn’t good for you.”
But there’s no playfulness to Annie’s voice. We both sit there, listening to the wind echo across the line, until Annie breaks in.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” I know she’s talking about the “stalker” part more than the “not good for you” comment.
“I hate that word,” I tell her.
And even as I say it, I think to myself that it’s my turn to apologize now, but I don’t. Instead, Annie rushes back in, her explanation at the ready and, at least compared to the silence, familiar to us over these last few weeks.
“He’s not normal. The two of you together isn’t normal.”
This is what she keeps telling me. “What’s not normal, Annie? Huh? I don’t understand how having a boyfriend who wants to spend time with me and who makes me feel good isn’t normal.”
“That’s just it,” she says, and I know we are heading towards an all-out fight. I consider avoiding it altogether—launching instead into the scene from my classroom earlier today, telling her about the blip in my mental armor. She’d listen; she’d make me feel better, stronger, but apparently my subconscious has an itch that needs to be scratched, and so I lean into this fight that’s been brewing between us for weeks.
“What is?” I say, with sarcasm dripping.
“He’s not real,” Annie replies. “No boyfriend is like this in real life. No relationship is as perfect as you are making yours and Justin’s out to be.”
“Maybe you should date better people.”
Annie stays calm, and I feel childish trying to get a rise out of her. She’s had a string of lame relationships—boyfriends or girlfriends who always seem more interested in their work/video games/phones than her.
“I’m not talking about my dating life. I am talking about yours and about how you are around him. Eventually he’s going to slip up and do something that isn’t perfect, and how are you going to deal with that when you have him on such a pedestal? I mean, come on, Morgan—doesn’t this seem familiar?”
“You haven’t even met him yet,” I argue. And it’s true. Annie and Justin have never met, although I’ve tried to make it happen a few times over this last month. Justin doesn’t like to drive long distances—he says the highway makes him nervous, as driver and as passenger. And Annie has been getting her exhibition together and just can’t seem to get away. So I have to keep asking myself where all this is coming from for her.
“You’ve never even seen us together,” I add. “How do you know how I am when Justin is with me?”
Annie blows her breath out. She takes another sip of her drink. Her voice gets quiet; her tone much more serious than it’s been for this entire conversation so far. “Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh towards Justin. But come on, can you really blame me for being defensive for you? I don’t want it to happen again. You’ve been through this already. . .”
I don’t let her finish.
“That was different, and you know it. I’ve worked really hard to get better.” I don’t try to keep the snark out of my voice. I know Annie isn’t saying these things to be cruel to me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel attacked. “Can’t you see how happy he makes me?”
“No, I can’t,” Annie says. “I know when you’re happy, and this is different. You’re desperate. Weak. I don’t know—those words aren’t quite right.” The line goes silent for a second. The wind whips up again and hurls itself across my face. “You know what it is,” Annie finally continues. “Even when things were at their worst with Richard, you were still yourself. Messed up, sure, but yourself. Being with Justin is doing something different to you. Since you’ve been with him you seem like a version of yourself that’s been copied a couple of hundred times, and the ink is wearing off.”