Page 23

23

SEVEN YEARS BEFORE

“He’s over there.” Bev Nudged Lilah’s arm and pointed across the student union to where Darren Pine sat, next to a group but not part of it. Other people had been talking to him, a whole crowd after his performance, but they had all melted away and Darren was alone. The flashing lights lit up his face and hair in colored patches.

“Talk to him,” said Gabby.

“I wouldn’t know what to say.” Lilah hung back, clutching her bottle of cider, but Bev pushed her forward.

“What are you going to do, stare at him from afar for three years? Go on, be brave.”

So Lilah crossed the room, walking in front of the stage where students were clearing up after the open mic night, in preparation for the DJ set that would follow. It felt like miles, but it was only a few feet, and then she was standing right in front of Darren Pine: poet, singer, tragic hero, and the most beautiful man in her class. She’d never been so close to him before.

He shook his fringe out of his soulful eyes and looked up at her. Lilah’s heart hammered and the bottle of cider was slippery in her hand. She glanced back at Gabby and Bev, who gave her a thumbs up.

“Hi,” she said. “I loved your song.”

“Thanks.”

“We’re in the same Introduction to Creative Writing class.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, but he was still looking at her, so she stammered, “I loved the lyrics. Were they about...I heard that your girlfriend...”

...Is dead. I heard that your girlfriend died before you came to university . She couldn’t say that, could she? Even though he’d already announced it in their writing seminar?

“They were about Aurora, yeah. Everything I write is about Aurora. So I remember her forever, because if I remember her, she will never die.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“I...” Her throat was dry. “I actually can relate. My mom died when I was three. She got pneumonia. I don’t really remember her, but my dad and I talk a lot about her so that we both remember.”

Darren kept looking at her and she couldn’t tell if it was with sympathy, or if it was contempt that she had offered up the death of a parent as an equivalent to the rawness and beauty of his pain. It had been sixteen years ago, after all, and she had only been a child; whereas he had lost the love of his life only months before.

He didn’t speak and she swallowed hard and opened her mouth to say anyway, goodbye , when he beat her to it by asking, “Do you want to get out of here?”

As they walked across the campus in the dark, the thumping noise of the union fading behind them, Darren lit a cigarette and told her about the meaning of his lyrics and Lilah listened hard. Everyone knew that Darren Pine was going to be famous. He had that glow about him, that center of stillness when he entered a room. Lilah wasn’t surprised that he’d never noticed her before; she could barely believe that he had noticed her now. He was a tall shadow holding a brilliant point of light.

They got to his dorm, and then to his room, and she sat on his bed as he talked and rolled another cigarette, and then he was pushing her down onto the mattress.

“Oh,” she said. “No, not this.”

“You said you could relate,” he said, and he rolled on top of her and did not stop. He put his hand around her neck and he whispered, “You said you understood pain.”

And then he put his other hand over her mouth.

He was a poet who wrote about love and how sacred it was, how it should never be forgotten, and Lilah lay underneath him, holding her breath, and she could only think about how she wanted this to be finished so that she could forget.

Afterwards, he stood up, buckled his belt, and went to the window to smoke his cigarette. He didn’t look at her.

The walk back to the student union was freezing and seemed to take twice as long. Inside the music thumped and the colored lights swam. Lilah saw her abandoned cider bottle on the table where Darren had been sitting. She saw Gabby and Bev dancing near the stage; they’d been joined by her other roommate, Elena. They spotted her at once.

“What happened?” Bev, all grin, squealed over the music. So Lilah told them, and they stopped dancing.

She had met Bev and Gabby and Elena on the first day of freshman week and they had eaten together, studied together, watched television together, read, and confided secrets. She thought she knew them well.

Then Bev’s face twisted.

And Elena said, “You’re lying to make yourself sound more interesting.”

And Gabby said, “Why would Darren Pine need to do something like that?”