or make up a simple element made of atoms of the one kind...
Huh. Awesome. Note to self: keep this from getting too depressing.
Also, I want more fluff.
We'll see if I manage either one of those goals.
*crosses fingers*
30728 / 50000
(61.46%)
Chapter Six: One of those places where I’m officially past the half-way mark, and know where the story’s end goal is, but not necessarily where it’s going in the next 5000 words. So be it. Let’s try to catch up on wordcount again.
Meg walked into Esmerelda’s and was surprised to find it insanely busy of people who just seemed to be hanging out. Em grabbed her as soon as she came in, tossed her an apron, with a notepad and pen that fell out as Meg tried to catch it.
“Awesome. You’re officially hired. Put your hair up. You’re going to wait tables. Pretty much, make sure that you say hi to everyone, stop by every table every five-ten minutes or so, write down what they want, and bring it to me. I’ll train you on the cash register and actually making stuff tomorrow if you get a chance to come in, we’ll talk pay and stuff later, if that’s ok?”
Meg was a little confused, but nodded like she felt competent, and went out to mingle with the people.
Em followed her out of the kitchen, adding “oh, and we’ve got a musician coming in tonight, so I’ve pretty much told everyone that if they want something after 8 or so that they should just come back to me. You’re welcome to keep wandering at that point, but people should know to come track me down instead of bothering you. Either way, I can teach you to make drinks at that point.”
“Em?”
“Yup?”
“We’re talking drinks, like coffee, rather than drinks, like alcohol, right? I’m not old enough to - “
“Hon, I’ll teach you to make coffee-drink drinks, but if you’re interested, yes, I can teach you to make drink drinks too. There’s a couple that are particularly yummy that you might enjoy at some point.”
“Underage, remember?”
“So you’ve never had a drink? K. Well, at some point, that’s going to change, if you’re okay with blatantly breaking the stupidest law in existence, but we’ll save that for another time, ok? Have fun with the tables, now!”
Em disappeared back into the kitchen, and Meg looked around Esmerelda’s. the apron around her waist felt like a costume - and one that felt quite odd matched with her clay-spattered jeans. At least she had managed to keep most of the clay off of her shirt today, so it was just the pants that were completely covered in brown dust. Alright. Just another random new scenario. She could do this.
And somehow, looking from the kitchen, she could see the layout of the room better than before. Not every corner was able to be seen, but she could at least tell where there were tables and where there were people. She decided to work her way around in a vague circlish kind of thing, moving clockwise around the room.
It seemed to work, too. The first couple of tables were super-awkward. People expected to see Em, and were a little confused to see someone else, but everyone was friendly enough, and Meg started to relax a little bit by the time she got all the way around the room. Granted, not everyone had ordered something, but she felt like she had been able to chat with pretty much everyone there, and they had accepted her presence and just assumed that she knew what she was doing. With others pretending that as well, it was substantially easier to believe it herself.
Serving a table of her friends was a little crazy feeling, but they giggled at her for a bit, and then ordered stuff that would make Em’s life a little more difficult, though not hers (granted, they didn’t know that), and it was easier to figure out what strange concoction was for who when she could put names and faces to the crazy concoctions.
There were only about 20 tables, she figured out, and all of the little nooks and crannies actually had people who didn’t want anything or didn’t want to be distracted. So it was just the real tables that she was expected to serve. Must have been why Em hadn’t stopped by their table for lunch… good to know, though she wished that it had been posted at some point.
At ten-to-nine, she did one last walk-through, letting everyone know that the kitchen would be closing except for drinks, and that if they wanted any more food they needed to tell her now. Everyone thanked her, one or two ordered a sandwich, and she was off shift.
Em had done the logistical stuff - adding up checks, coming by to get people’s money, making the food. Meg had no idea how Em could manage to do everything by herself. But somehow she had made it work.
Em ran out and hugged someone who had just walked in the door. He was carrying a dripping umbrella in one hand and a guitar in another, and he had to stumble back a couple of steps when Em launched herself at him. Dropping the umbrella and giving her a hug in return, he asked if he was late.
Em assured him that he wasn’t, and brought him over to a locked closet, which she opened to show all the musical accoutrements he oculd possible want. He grabbed a mike and she fussed around him, helping him get set up, until everyone in Esmerelda’s was infected with her enthusiasm. Meg hoped that he was good at what he did, because otherwise the buildup was going to reflect poorly.
Her fears were unfounded, though. He sat on his little stool, made sure his guitar was in tune, and started in on a breathtakingly simple song, his voice deep and strong. Meg vaguely placed the song as a ballad of some kind - but such a ballad she had never been under the spell of. His voice seeped into her bones, the song resonated in that artsy bit of herself that she assumed was what people called a soul, and she sat at the kitchen counter, completely spell-struck.
Meg knew that this was what she was going to remember from her first day of work: not that she hadn’t messed anyone’s order up, not that she was dressed weirdly for a waitress, not that she had figured out the structure of Esmerelda’s - but a man’s voice, and his hands on his guitar, coaxing quiet chords out to provide such a lovely counterpoint.
He played one song, or four, and then took a break. The walls stopped reverberating with his voice a few moments later - the acoustics were actually spectacular, for all the strange shape of the building - and Meg felt herself breathe again. Em came back behind the counter to grab a drink for her guest, and Meg grabbed her arm. “Em… who is that?”
“He’s someone I met after I graduated from college. Plays here most Friday nights. Plays a couple of other places in the city, but you know. This is probably the most convenient for you, no?”
“In the city, Em? We’re in prime suburbia.”
“Well, kind of.”
“Are you going to explain that?”
“Um, not right now. Maybe later.”
Meg’s muttered, “gee, thanks, that was so enlightening” was lost on Em, as she went off to give her friend a cup of tea - that might have been spiked with something, but might not have been. Meg hadn’t noticed Em add anything, but she also thought that someone with that voice probably wasn’t just going to be drinking tea. It was refined, and elegant, and he was gritty, and had an almost dangerous atmosphere around him. He did not seem like a guy who would drink tea.
But drink the tea he did, as he launched into songs that rolled just a little bit more. Meg sat on her stool in the back of the kitchen and watched as Em grabbed somebody random from the crowd and started to dance. The guy she grabbed looked a bit confused, and Em laughed at something he said as he tried to pull away. But she managed to convince him to stay and dance, and she was able to somehow direct the dance from the guy looking awkward into something where she helped him to relax, and both he and Em seemed to be having a lot of fun. There was a lot of stomping, a bit of spinning, and it just looked like a blast. Somehow it fit in with the music, as well, and Em and the guitar player grinned at each other. He kicked the music up a notch, started to trade off guitar playing and doing percussion bits on the sides of his guitar. The tempo sped up again, and Em started whirling like some sort of dervish.
He ended the song with a percussive twack on the back of his guitar, and Em stopped her dance at the same time, taking a curtsey and the sweeping her arm towards the musician. Esmerelda’s customers broke into applause, and he played a couple more slow songs before packing up his guitar and heading off into the night.
Kerry woke up in the dark. The light in the other room was dark, so she couldn’t tell if Meg was home or not. Meg kept her light on all the time when she was home and awake, she said that it let the art kids see if she was around or not, because her window was pretty distinctive and they always seemed to stop by her room when the light was on.
She was awake, though, and ready to do something. So she checked her clock: 3 am. That meant that absolutely everywhere was closed, so she had the option of working on homework or wandering the hall to see if anyone else was awake. Homework would probably be the better option, but she found herself sitting on her computer messing around on the internet rather than doing any actual work. She flipped through facebook, looking at new pictures that people had put up. There were some swim team shots, but surprise surprise, she wasn’t in any of them! The team seemed to function as a really good unit - without her. What did she have to offer, anyway, that they would want her to be a part of the team? Kerry didn’t really like those thoughts - Coach Mac hadn’t said that she was off the team permanently, but he had implied that he was worried about how she was doing. And Kerry knew that she didn’t have spectacular times, and that they probably weren’t going to get more spectacular, and that this whole vomiting thing was probably terrible for her body, but she just felt numb. Not really a part of the team, not really excluded from it; not really worried about her health, knowing that there probably was something wrong; not sure if her roommate was home, but too hyped up to even go and check; not sure if she was crazy for trying to get ahead on homework that wasn’t due for another two weeks, but wanting something to do with her hands and her mind while she sat in the semidark of her room and mentally flailed.
She figured that calculus would just about cut it, but even deriving how to get to the product law from the basic tenets of calculus wasn’t holding her focus or interest, or proving challenging enough.
Kerry started pacing, and winced every time her feet hit the squeaky floor board. If Meg was home - and she probably was, she only went out late sometimes with the art crowd, and generally that was something pretty tame, so she’d wake up if she heard any noise - Kerry didn’t want to wake her up. Meg had issues falling asleep after she had been woken up.
Kerry grabbed headphones and her mp3 player, threw on some sweatpants and a t-shirt, and grabbed her sneakers. A run might help. Enough to get rid of some of this nervous energy, anyway. It wasn’t as if she didn’t mentally feel tired, feel stressed, and feel slightly crazy from swimming. Everything hurt, but she just needed to do something, and running seemed as good as the next idea.
She threw her headphones on, put on some of her loudest, angriest music (not that it was particularly loud or angry, but it had the nice rhythm of running music but also the happier lyrics that she liked), and went out into the night.
Most of campus had streetlights around the main paths. Kerry thought that she would just do a circuit of campus, from the dining hall down to the pool and back up and around to her dorm. But one lap turned into two, and then she started finding the route to be boring, so started zigzagging across the other paths on campus.
She ended up near one of the all-boy’s dorms, and she finally slowed down to a jog. Well, she had managed to hit that stage of mental exhaustion where she could probably go to sleep again. Of course, she was on the opposite side of campus, and still felt like she was going to be sick, and had a lovely pounding headache. But she wasn’t thinking anymore.
The lights were on in the dorm, and she peeked through one of the windows as she tried to catch her breath. The boys appeared to be having a party. And by the terrible dancing and the red solo cups, she was going to guess that it was a party with booze.
Which, just in case they were wondering, was illegal not only because they were underage but also because their dorm was one of the strictest on campus about the no-alcohol rule. But they seemed to be having a lot of fun, and there were some girls that Kerry felt like she recognized from various swim team functions that she had gone to for little periods of time, who also seemed to be enjoying themselves. Kerry was tempted to go in and join. But she wasn’t wearing appropriate party clothes, she was kind of gross and sweaty, and she wasn’t feeling all that well. So no party for her.
Kerry decided that she’d make one more circle around the building and then head back to her own dorm. She was out way past curfew, but no one ever really checked.
As she rounded the last corner of the building, she heard the voice of one of the workers at the college - this woman was the sort who would yell at anyone who let their ice cream drip on the counter it was served from, who would hunt down students who had drunk a little too much and turn them over to the cops, who would tell people to walk their dogs somewhere else whenever she was in the vicinity, just because she didn’t like dogs. This woman was chewing out the boys, calling them out for drinking in a historic building and for messing up the furniture, for drinking as underage citizens and for bringing shame upon the school. And with a voice like iron, she ordered them all to sit tight and wait for the police to come and assess their debauched states.
Kerry had waited to listen to the lecture - she always found Mary’s lectures to be just a little bit entertaining, because Mary tended to add big words towards the end just to make sure that everybody knew that she was just as educated as any of the students, even though she did work as a jack-(jill?)-of-all-trades. “Debauched” was one of those good ones. Kerry was tempted to start a journal of all the good words she learned and where she got them from. She was pretty sure that if she did so, Mary’s name would be in the journal a lot.
Kerry stood to move off, and her head protested and she got really dizzy. Switching plans, she sat down on a bench outside of the dorm. Maybe the run had been a terrible idea.
She closed her eyes, letting the cold metal of the bench soak through her sweatpants and start to chill her thighs. Her t-shirt clung to her back, and that started to get unpleasantly clammy as well. Moving seemed to be an imperative as to not catch cold on top of this general unpleasant feeling, but when she stood, the world spun again. Kerry sat.
She heard the police rolling up around the back, and listened to Mary’s lecture of the boys - since she had called the police on them, she clearly needed to have some sort of redemptive lesson that they needed to learn right away from this experience - and the police started to go through and check the boys for drunkenness past the legal limit.
One of the police officers made a scan around the outside of the building and ran into Kerry. He asked if she was okay, to which she replied with a cheery “of course!”
Sadly, her optimism didn’t last past her trying to walk off towards her dorm. She stood up, and felt the dizziness come back once again. Still, she didn’t want the police officer to think that she was drunk, so she started walking. She made it two steps before she collapsed to the ground and the world went black.
Meg woke up to Kerry’s alarm on Saturday morning. It was the alarm of doom one, the one that Kerry only set when she knew that she was going to have to get up for morning practice. This alarm could be heard all the way down the hall to the bathroom, and every single person on the hall had politely requested that she never set it again. This didn’t stop Kerry from setting it, but it did help with her getting up and turning it off, so that it only woke the dead once, and then they could all go back to sleeping.
It had been a long time since Meg remembered waking up to it - it was the kind of thing that bolted you up out of a dream, but that you could go back to sleep - or at least Meg could - pretty quickly and it just let you back into your dream, now with a weird ringing in the background that your brain had to fit into the dream.
Meg got up, grumbling, and stumbled into Kerry’s room to find the alarm shrilling and no Kerry getting up to turn it off. It got even shriller in Kerry’s room; it was a pretty horrific noise. Meg smacked the thing, and it shut up, and then she looked over at Kerry’s bed.
It wasn’t completely unheard of for Kerry to spend the night elsewhere, but she usually at least texted to let Meg know that she was going somewhere. Meg went back to her room and pulled out her phone - which was dead again, for reasons unknown - plugged it in and went back to sleep.
Meg’s cell phone rang at 8. She clawed her eyes open, feeling vaguely irritated. She had gotten home from Esmerelda’s at about 2; Em had shown her stuff once most everyone left, and Meg felt that she could probably at least take over the accounting stuff if Em let her. Making all the stuff, and knowing where it was in Em’s crazy cabinets, was going to take another long while, but she was pretty sure that she could do it. The working thing was actually a lot of fun - she could settle into a routine, but the people kept changing, so she never really got terribly bored.
Meg picked up her phone, and got a really blearly Kerry on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hi Meggy. Sorry I didn’t let you know that I wasn’t home last night.”
“That’s alright. Got any good gossip for me?”
“Um, no. About that.”
“What, honey? You just got all serious on me. What’s going on?”
“So the reason that I didn’t make it home was because I went to a party in Currier. And it got busted.”
“Wait, what?”
“Let me back up. I couldn’t sleep, I went for a run, I felt sick, so I sat down outside of Currier. Mary called the cops, the cops came, the cops busted the party, one of them came around the outside of the building to check for other delinquents, ran into me, and ended up taking me in with the rest of them.”
“why? It wasn’t as if you were drunk”
“I… may have passed out at his feet.”
“Kerry?!”
“What? I got dizzy. 3 am can do that to me. But they took me to the hospital because they thought that I was drunk, and they’ve been taking care of me to the point where I’m going to explode, and I really want to get out of here, but they won’t let me out. They said that if someone came in and got me, I could go home provided that person was willing to look out for me. They also want somebody with a car.”
“Ker, you know I don’t have a car.”
“Yeah, but you also don’t have a swim meet today, so you were my best option. The swimmers wouldn’t have their phones on them at all today.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Kerry, do they know what’s up?”
“they said that it was probably dehydration, or something like that.”
“does that even make sense, with the amount of time you’re in the pool?”
“Yeah. We’re not drinking the pool water. It tastes nasty and some people pee in it.”
“Well, if you say so. I’ll see what I can do about getting down there for you sooner rather than later - but I know of one morning person who might have a car that we could borrow, but otherwise, you’re going to be stuck in the hospital for most of the day. You ok with that?”
“It should help to know that something, at least, is happening, rather than just sitting here and staring into space, or trashy tv, which are currently my two viable options, and both pretty frustrating.”
“do you need me to call your swim coach for you?”
Kerry kind of hated to take advantage of Meg’s offer, but she also really didn’t want to talk to Coach Mac at the moment. “Would you? That would be spectacular.”
“Sure. Phones R Us. I’ll see what I can do. Hang in there, ok?”
“Of course. And stop worrying.”
“I’m not worrying”
“Yes you are. I can hear it through the telephones. I’m psychic like that.”
“Well, Miss Psychic, I’ll see you in a bit. Hugs!”
“See you soon, Meg.”
Meg ticked off the possible people who might have cars on campus. She went through her friends first: Tahlia had her license, and had offered to drive them somewhere a while back. Kerry’s sometime friend Sarah, her swim coach, Emerald, though she wasn’t on campus.
Tahlia was a morning person, too. So if she was lucky, she’d already be up and have her phone on. Meg called her, no such luck, and left a message.
Meg didn’t have Sarah’s number, but she figured that if she walked down to the pool, she could chat with both Kerry’s swim coach and with various random swim team members who might have a car.
First, though, a shower, a cup of tea, and real clothes. Meg left her building feeling substantially more awake, and went down to the pool. Half naked swimmers. Yummy.
It wasn’t that she was particularly shallow, it was just that when they got models for life drawing classes, they were never people that you actually wanted to look at in the nude. Either they were stick-thin anorexic girls who were so convinced that they had hit the ideal of beauty that they were willing to show off their sunken ribs and unhealthy stick limbs, or they were old men and women. And honestly? Yay for the realism of having to draw wrinkles and all that, but there was something really disturbing about drawing old men in the nude.
Swimmer boys, however. They let you work with all of that lovely back muscle, and were wearing the equivalent of briefs, so it wasn’t horridly awkward to stare at them, and the practice regimen at Manticore was such that they were all built. It was very conducive to turning swimming into a spectator sport, and one that Meg happily participated in.
Still, the meet itself hadn’t started yet, and there were people scattered on deck and in the stands, warming up, stretching, giving and receiving massages, and Coach Mac was running around seeing to last-minute details.
Meg felt bad interrupting what she was sure was important swim team business, but she wanted to be able to catch him before the meet, when things would get even more hectic. So she tracked him down and tapped him on the shoulder.
Coach Mac had gotten used to Meg coming to his meets, cheering Kerry on, and doodling when others were swimming. He wsn’t sure he approved of this use of time, but he had never seen her art either, so he really had no idea whether she was just killing time or if she was actually any good.
He didn’t, however, know her name. So when she tapped him on the shoulder, he was at a loss for a moment. “Hi, Coach Mac? I’m Kerry’s roommate, Meg.”
Her introduction seemed to help him out, and he offered to let them sit down somewhere, expecting a substantially different conversation that he was going to get. “Kerry’s in the hospital” was not what he was expecting to hear, and neither was “do you know anyone who has a car that I could go get her in?”
He volunteered to drive her himself, but he couldn’t go until after the meet. Meg explained how Kery felt like she was going crazy, and had only been there for a few hours, and he offered to let one of the swimmer boys who wasn’t swimming until late in the meet to borrow his car and drive her up, and then Kerry and her back to campus before the meet. Coach Mac grabbed his keys and tossed them to John, who caught them but had no idea why his coach was giving him keys. Coach Mac explained, and John told Meg that he was going to grab some pants and he’d meet her outside.
He was out within two minutes, and they walked fast to Coach Mac’s car. It was a blue businessman car, one of those that there were about a million of on the road, but it was clean inside, which was exciting. Meg started a couple topics of conversation, but John’s mind was pretty firmly just about the coming meet. It was supposed to be one of the harder ones of the season, and evidently the girls were going to have to fight for it more than the boys, and the boys were going to have to fight pretty hard if they wanted it to turn out.
Evidently John had warmed up earlier in the day, and he was ready to go with only a little more warmup. He wanted to be there for the team - he was a senior, and though not captain, seemed to be enjoying himself with the swimmers this year. Meg wished that Kerry could have his sort of attitude - she might cease complaining every single time that she had practice or a meet or anything else.
But for now she just sat in Coach Mac’s car, watched John fiddle with the radio until he found a classic rock station, and enjoyed the weird sensation of actually going somewhere without walking. She hadn’t been in a car since her Mom dropped her off at the beginning of the year.
John kept up a conversation with her, one that neither of them had to try very hard with, as it was just random inconsequentials, but it was nice, and comfortable, and kept her mind off the fact that they were off to the hospital.
It was only about a fifteen minute drive, and John parked and said he would come up with her. They went to the main desk and were directed up onto the 3rd floor to visit Kerry.
They took the elevator up, continuing their casual conversation, and found Kerry’s room. The shades were down and the room was dark; the bed was rumpled but empty.
Meg shook her head. “Well, either they gave us the wrong room or she’s disappeared again. This is weird.” She pulled out her phone and called Kerry, as she had her phone when she had gotten in touch.
“Hey, Kerry?”
It was definitely not Kerry on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry. The person you are trying to reach is currently in an MRI. Are you the person she said might be coming to get her?”
“Yes, I’m Meg Davidson. I came over to take her back to school.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that. If you’d like to come see her, you’re going to want to come down to room 032. Basement level, on the left side of the building.”
“Thank you. I’ll be right down.”
Meg filled John in on where Kerry was, and though both of them were a trifle confused as to why they were giving her an MRI, they took the elevator down to the basement.
John peeked at his watch and told Meg that they were going to have to go within the next ten minutes if he was going to get back in time for the speeches and rundown at the beginning of the meet, of what they had to do in order to win it. Coach Mac was really particular about these things.
Meg nodded, thought a bit, and told John “if you need to go, I totally understand. I’ll probably hang out here with Kerry if they don’t let her go - and it’s a hospital, so they’ll probably have all sorts of paperwork and fuss - by the time you need to go. Seriously, just go. And good luck at the meet!”
John was torn - Kerry was part of his team, and Meg definitely cared, and he didn’t want to leave either of them stranded at a hospital, of all places. But he was more focused on the meet than on either of them. Kerry would be fine, especially if she had just been dehydrated, and Meg would be good company for her. Meg was solid, calm, and it was good that Kerry had someone like that to bounce emotions off of and chill out around.
“You sure that you’ll be ok?”
“Yeah, definitely. If you could ask Coach Mac if he, or you, or somebody could maybe come get us when y’all win the meet, that would be great. Call Kerry, I suppose, or me, if you like. Do you have my number?”
He shook his head, and she dictated it to him.
“And seriously, swim fast, okay? Kerry’s been talking about this meet for a while. Kick some butt for her?”
John promised, and drove off to get back to his swim meet.
Also, I want more fluff.
We'll see if I manage either one of those goals.
*crosses fingers*
30728 / 50000
(61.46%)
Chapter Six: One of those places where I’m officially past the half-way mark, and know where the story’s end goal is, but not necessarily where it’s going in the next 5000 words. So be it. Let’s try to catch up on wordcount again.
Meg walked into Esmerelda’s and was surprised to find it insanely busy of people who just seemed to be hanging out. Em grabbed her as soon as she came in, tossed her an apron, with a notepad and pen that fell out as Meg tried to catch it.
“Awesome. You’re officially hired. Put your hair up. You’re going to wait tables. Pretty much, make sure that you say hi to everyone, stop by every table every five-ten minutes or so, write down what they want, and bring it to me. I’ll train you on the cash register and actually making stuff tomorrow if you get a chance to come in, we’ll talk pay and stuff later, if that’s ok?”
Meg was a little confused, but nodded like she felt competent, and went out to mingle with the people.
Em followed her out of the kitchen, adding “oh, and we’ve got a musician coming in tonight, so I’ve pretty much told everyone that if they want something after 8 or so that they should just come back to me. You’re welcome to keep wandering at that point, but people should know to come track me down instead of bothering you. Either way, I can teach you to make drinks at that point.”
“Em?”
“Yup?”
“We’re talking drinks, like coffee, rather than drinks, like alcohol, right? I’m not old enough to - “
“Hon, I’ll teach you to make coffee-drink drinks, but if you’re interested, yes, I can teach you to make drink drinks too. There’s a couple that are particularly yummy that you might enjoy at some point.”
“Underage, remember?”
“So you’ve never had a drink? K. Well, at some point, that’s going to change, if you’re okay with blatantly breaking the stupidest law in existence, but we’ll save that for another time, ok? Have fun with the tables, now!”
Em disappeared back into the kitchen, and Meg looked around Esmerelda’s. the apron around her waist felt like a costume - and one that felt quite odd matched with her clay-spattered jeans. At least she had managed to keep most of the clay off of her shirt today, so it was just the pants that were completely covered in brown dust. Alright. Just another random new scenario. She could do this.
And somehow, looking from the kitchen, she could see the layout of the room better than before. Not every corner was able to be seen, but she could at least tell where there were tables and where there were people. She decided to work her way around in a vague circlish kind of thing, moving clockwise around the room.
It seemed to work, too. The first couple of tables were super-awkward. People expected to see Em, and were a little confused to see someone else, but everyone was friendly enough, and Meg started to relax a little bit by the time she got all the way around the room. Granted, not everyone had ordered something, but she felt like she had been able to chat with pretty much everyone there, and they had accepted her presence and just assumed that she knew what she was doing. With others pretending that as well, it was substantially easier to believe it herself.
Serving a table of her friends was a little crazy feeling, but they giggled at her for a bit, and then ordered stuff that would make Em’s life a little more difficult, though not hers (granted, they didn’t know that), and it was easier to figure out what strange concoction was for who when she could put names and faces to the crazy concoctions.
There were only about 20 tables, she figured out, and all of the little nooks and crannies actually had people who didn’t want anything or didn’t want to be distracted. So it was just the real tables that she was expected to serve. Must have been why Em hadn’t stopped by their table for lunch… good to know, though she wished that it had been posted at some point.
At ten-to-nine, she did one last walk-through, letting everyone know that the kitchen would be closing except for drinks, and that if they wanted any more food they needed to tell her now. Everyone thanked her, one or two ordered a sandwich, and she was off shift.
Em had done the logistical stuff - adding up checks, coming by to get people’s money, making the food. Meg had no idea how Em could manage to do everything by herself. But somehow she had made it work.
Em ran out and hugged someone who had just walked in the door. He was carrying a dripping umbrella in one hand and a guitar in another, and he had to stumble back a couple of steps when Em launched herself at him. Dropping the umbrella and giving her a hug in return, he asked if he was late.
Em assured him that he wasn’t, and brought him over to a locked closet, which she opened to show all the musical accoutrements he oculd possible want. He grabbed a mike and she fussed around him, helping him get set up, until everyone in Esmerelda’s was infected with her enthusiasm. Meg hoped that he was good at what he did, because otherwise the buildup was going to reflect poorly.
Her fears were unfounded, though. He sat on his little stool, made sure his guitar was in tune, and started in on a breathtakingly simple song, his voice deep and strong. Meg vaguely placed the song as a ballad of some kind - but such a ballad she had never been under the spell of. His voice seeped into her bones, the song resonated in that artsy bit of herself that she assumed was what people called a soul, and she sat at the kitchen counter, completely spell-struck.
Meg knew that this was what she was going to remember from her first day of work: not that she hadn’t messed anyone’s order up, not that she was dressed weirdly for a waitress, not that she had figured out the structure of Esmerelda’s - but a man’s voice, and his hands on his guitar, coaxing quiet chords out to provide such a lovely counterpoint.
He played one song, or four, and then took a break. The walls stopped reverberating with his voice a few moments later - the acoustics were actually spectacular, for all the strange shape of the building - and Meg felt herself breathe again. Em came back behind the counter to grab a drink for her guest, and Meg grabbed her arm. “Em… who is that?”
“He’s someone I met after I graduated from college. Plays here most Friday nights. Plays a couple of other places in the city, but you know. This is probably the most convenient for you, no?”
“In the city, Em? We’re in prime suburbia.”
“Well, kind of.”
“Are you going to explain that?”
“Um, not right now. Maybe later.”
Meg’s muttered, “gee, thanks, that was so enlightening” was lost on Em, as she went off to give her friend a cup of tea - that might have been spiked with something, but might not have been. Meg hadn’t noticed Em add anything, but she also thought that someone with that voice probably wasn’t just going to be drinking tea. It was refined, and elegant, and he was gritty, and had an almost dangerous atmosphere around him. He did not seem like a guy who would drink tea.
But drink the tea he did, as he launched into songs that rolled just a little bit more. Meg sat on her stool in the back of the kitchen and watched as Em grabbed somebody random from the crowd and started to dance. The guy she grabbed looked a bit confused, and Em laughed at something he said as he tried to pull away. But she managed to convince him to stay and dance, and she was able to somehow direct the dance from the guy looking awkward into something where she helped him to relax, and both he and Em seemed to be having a lot of fun. There was a lot of stomping, a bit of spinning, and it just looked like a blast. Somehow it fit in with the music, as well, and Em and the guitar player grinned at each other. He kicked the music up a notch, started to trade off guitar playing and doing percussion bits on the sides of his guitar. The tempo sped up again, and Em started whirling like some sort of dervish.
He ended the song with a percussive twack on the back of his guitar, and Em stopped her dance at the same time, taking a curtsey and the sweeping her arm towards the musician. Esmerelda’s customers broke into applause, and he played a couple more slow songs before packing up his guitar and heading off into the night.
Kerry woke up in the dark. The light in the other room was dark, so she couldn’t tell if Meg was home or not. Meg kept her light on all the time when she was home and awake, she said that it let the art kids see if she was around or not, because her window was pretty distinctive and they always seemed to stop by her room when the light was on.
She was awake, though, and ready to do something. So she checked her clock: 3 am. That meant that absolutely everywhere was closed, so she had the option of working on homework or wandering the hall to see if anyone else was awake. Homework would probably be the better option, but she found herself sitting on her computer messing around on the internet rather than doing any actual work. She flipped through facebook, looking at new pictures that people had put up. There were some swim team shots, but surprise surprise, she wasn’t in any of them! The team seemed to function as a really good unit - without her. What did she have to offer, anyway, that they would want her to be a part of the team? Kerry didn’t really like those thoughts - Coach Mac hadn’t said that she was off the team permanently, but he had implied that he was worried about how she was doing. And Kerry knew that she didn’t have spectacular times, and that they probably weren’t going to get more spectacular, and that this whole vomiting thing was probably terrible for her body, but she just felt numb. Not really a part of the team, not really excluded from it; not really worried about her health, knowing that there probably was something wrong; not sure if her roommate was home, but too hyped up to even go and check; not sure if she was crazy for trying to get ahead on homework that wasn’t due for another two weeks, but wanting something to do with her hands and her mind while she sat in the semidark of her room and mentally flailed.
She figured that calculus would just about cut it, but even deriving how to get to the product law from the basic tenets of calculus wasn’t holding her focus or interest, or proving challenging enough.
Kerry started pacing, and winced every time her feet hit the squeaky floor board. If Meg was home - and she probably was, she only went out late sometimes with the art crowd, and generally that was something pretty tame, so she’d wake up if she heard any noise - Kerry didn’t want to wake her up. Meg had issues falling asleep after she had been woken up.
Kerry grabbed headphones and her mp3 player, threw on some sweatpants and a t-shirt, and grabbed her sneakers. A run might help. Enough to get rid of some of this nervous energy, anyway. It wasn’t as if she didn’t mentally feel tired, feel stressed, and feel slightly crazy from swimming. Everything hurt, but she just needed to do something, and running seemed as good as the next idea.
She threw her headphones on, put on some of her loudest, angriest music (not that it was particularly loud or angry, but it had the nice rhythm of running music but also the happier lyrics that she liked), and went out into the night.
Most of campus had streetlights around the main paths. Kerry thought that she would just do a circuit of campus, from the dining hall down to the pool and back up and around to her dorm. But one lap turned into two, and then she started finding the route to be boring, so started zigzagging across the other paths on campus.
She ended up near one of the all-boy’s dorms, and she finally slowed down to a jog. Well, she had managed to hit that stage of mental exhaustion where she could probably go to sleep again. Of course, she was on the opposite side of campus, and still felt like she was going to be sick, and had a lovely pounding headache. But she wasn’t thinking anymore.
The lights were on in the dorm, and she peeked through one of the windows as she tried to catch her breath. The boys appeared to be having a party. And by the terrible dancing and the red solo cups, she was going to guess that it was a party with booze.
Which, just in case they were wondering, was illegal not only because they were underage but also because their dorm was one of the strictest on campus about the no-alcohol rule. But they seemed to be having a lot of fun, and there were some girls that Kerry felt like she recognized from various swim team functions that she had gone to for little periods of time, who also seemed to be enjoying themselves. Kerry was tempted to go in and join. But she wasn’t wearing appropriate party clothes, she was kind of gross and sweaty, and she wasn’t feeling all that well. So no party for her.
Kerry decided that she’d make one more circle around the building and then head back to her own dorm. She was out way past curfew, but no one ever really checked.
As she rounded the last corner of the building, she heard the voice of one of the workers at the college - this woman was the sort who would yell at anyone who let their ice cream drip on the counter it was served from, who would hunt down students who had drunk a little too much and turn them over to the cops, who would tell people to walk their dogs somewhere else whenever she was in the vicinity, just because she didn’t like dogs. This woman was chewing out the boys, calling them out for drinking in a historic building and for messing up the furniture, for drinking as underage citizens and for bringing shame upon the school. And with a voice like iron, she ordered them all to sit tight and wait for the police to come and assess their debauched states.
Kerry had waited to listen to the lecture - she always found Mary’s lectures to be just a little bit entertaining, because Mary tended to add big words towards the end just to make sure that everybody knew that she was just as educated as any of the students, even though she did work as a jack-(jill?)-of-all-trades. “Debauched” was one of those good ones. Kerry was tempted to start a journal of all the good words she learned and where she got them from. She was pretty sure that if she did so, Mary’s name would be in the journal a lot.
Kerry stood to move off, and her head protested and she got really dizzy. Switching plans, she sat down on a bench outside of the dorm. Maybe the run had been a terrible idea.
She closed her eyes, letting the cold metal of the bench soak through her sweatpants and start to chill her thighs. Her t-shirt clung to her back, and that started to get unpleasantly clammy as well. Moving seemed to be an imperative as to not catch cold on top of this general unpleasant feeling, but when she stood, the world spun again. Kerry sat.
She heard the police rolling up around the back, and listened to Mary’s lecture of the boys - since she had called the police on them, she clearly needed to have some sort of redemptive lesson that they needed to learn right away from this experience - and the police started to go through and check the boys for drunkenness past the legal limit.
One of the police officers made a scan around the outside of the building and ran into Kerry. He asked if she was okay, to which she replied with a cheery “of course!”
Sadly, her optimism didn’t last past her trying to walk off towards her dorm. She stood up, and felt the dizziness come back once again. Still, she didn’t want the police officer to think that she was drunk, so she started walking. She made it two steps before she collapsed to the ground and the world went black.
Meg woke up to Kerry’s alarm on Saturday morning. It was the alarm of doom one, the one that Kerry only set when she knew that she was going to have to get up for morning practice. This alarm could be heard all the way down the hall to the bathroom, and every single person on the hall had politely requested that she never set it again. This didn’t stop Kerry from setting it, but it did help with her getting up and turning it off, so that it only woke the dead once, and then they could all go back to sleeping.
It had been a long time since Meg remembered waking up to it - it was the kind of thing that bolted you up out of a dream, but that you could go back to sleep - or at least Meg could - pretty quickly and it just let you back into your dream, now with a weird ringing in the background that your brain had to fit into the dream.
Meg got up, grumbling, and stumbled into Kerry’s room to find the alarm shrilling and no Kerry getting up to turn it off. It got even shriller in Kerry’s room; it was a pretty horrific noise. Meg smacked the thing, and it shut up, and then she looked over at Kerry’s bed.
It wasn’t completely unheard of for Kerry to spend the night elsewhere, but she usually at least texted to let Meg know that she was going somewhere. Meg went back to her room and pulled out her phone - which was dead again, for reasons unknown - plugged it in and went back to sleep.
Meg’s cell phone rang at 8. She clawed her eyes open, feeling vaguely irritated. She had gotten home from Esmerelda’s at about 2; Em had shown her stuff once most everyone left, and Meg felt that she could probably at least take over the accounting stuff if Em let her. Making all the stuff, and knowing where it was in Em’s crazy cabinets, was going to take another long while, but she was pretty sure that she could do it. The working thing was actually a lot of fun - she could settle into a routine, but the people kept changing, so she never really got terribly bored.
Meg picked up her phone, and got a really blearly Kerry on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hi Meggy. Sorry I didn’t let you know that I wasn’t home last night.”
“That’s alright. Got any good gossip for me?”
“Um, no. About that.”
“What, honey? You just got all serious on me. What’s going on?”
“So the reason that I didn’t make it home was because I went to a party in Currier. And it got busted.”
“Wait, what?”
“Let me back up. I couldn’t sleep, I went for a run, I felt sick, so I sat down outside of Currier. Mary called the cops, the cops came, the cops busted the party, one of them came around the outside of the building to check for other delinquents, ran into me, and ended up taking me in with the rest of them.”
“why? It wasn’t as if you were drunk”
“I… may have passed out at his feet.”
“Kerry?!”
“What? I got dizzy. 3 am can do that to me. But they took me to the hospital because they thought that I was drunk, and they’ve been taking care of me to the point where I’m going to explode, and I really want to get out of here, but they won’t let me out. They said that if someone came in and got me, I could go home provided that person was willing to look out for me. They also want somebody with a car.”
“Ker, you know I don’t have a car.”
“Yeah, but you also don’t have a swim meet today, so you were my best option. The swimmers wouldn’t have their phones on them at all today.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Kerry, do they know what’s up?”
“they said that it was probably dehydration, or something like that.”
“does that even make sense, with the amount of time you’re in the pool?”
“Yeah. We’re not drinking the pool water. It tastes nasty and some people pee in it.”
“Well, if you say so. I’ll see what I can do about getting down there for you sooner rather than later - but I know of one morning person who might have a car that we could borrow, but otherwise, you’re going to be stuck in the hospital for most of the day. You ok with that?”
“It should help to know that something, at least, is happening, rather than just sitting here and staring into space, or trashy tv, which are currently my two viable options, and both pretty frustrating.”
“do you need me to call your swim coach for you?”
Kerry kind of hated to take advantage of Meg’s offer, but she also really didn’t want to talk to Coach Mac at the moment. “Would you? That would be spectacular.”
“Sure. Phones R Us. I’ll see what I can do. Hang in there, ok?”
“Of course. And stop worrying.”
“I’m not worrying”
“Yes you are. I can hear it through the telephones. I’m psychic like that.”
“Well, Miss Psychic, I’ll see you in a bit. Hugs!”
“See you soon, Meg.”
Meg ticked off the possible people who might have cars on campus. She went through her friends first: Tahlia had her license, and had offered to drive them somewhere a while back. Kerry’s sometime friend Sarah, her swim coach, Emerald, though she wasn’t on campus.
Tahlia was a morning person, too. So if she was lucky, she’d already be up and have her phone on. Meg called her, no such luck, and left a message.
Meg didn’t have Sarah’s number, but she figured that if she walked down to the pool, she could chat with both Kerry’s swim coach and with various random swim team members who might have a car.
First, though, a shower, a cup of tea, and real clothes. Meg left her building feeling substantially more awake, and went down to the pool. Half naked swimmers. Yummy.
It wasn’t that she was particularly shallow, it was just that when they got models for life drawing classes, they were never people that you actually wanted to look at in the nude. Either they were stick-thin anorexic girls who were so convinced that they had hit the ideal of beauty that they were willing to show off their sunken ribs and unhealthy stick limbs, or they were old men and women. And honestly? Yay for the realism of having to draw wrinkles and all that, but there was something really disturbing about drawing old men in the nude.
Swimmer boys, however. They let you work with all of that lovely back muscle, and were wearing the equivalent of briefs, so it wasn’t horridly awkward to stare at them, and the practice regimen at Manticore was such that they were all built. It was very conducive to turning swimming into a spectator sport, and one that Meg happily participated in.
Still, the meet itself hadn’t started yet, and there were people scattered on deck and in the stands, warming up, stretching, giving and receiving massages, and Coach Mac was running around seeing to last-minute details.
Meg felt bad interrupting what she was sure was important swim team business, but she wanted to be able to catch him before the meet, when things would get even more hectic. So she tracked him down and tapped him on the shoulder.
Coach Mac had gotten used to Meg coming to his meets, cheering Kerry on, and doodling when others were swimming. He wsn’t sure he approved of this use of time, but he had never seen her art either, so he really had no idea whether she was just killing time or if she was actually any good.
He didn’t, however, know her name. So when she tapped him on the shoulder, he was at a loss for a moment. “Hi, Coach Mac? I’m Kerry’s roommate, Meg.”
Her introduction seemed to help him out, and he offered to let them sit down somewhere, expecting a substantially different conversation that he was going to get. “Kerry’s in the hospital” was not what he was expecting to hear, and neither was “do you know anyone who has a car that I could go get her in?”
He volunteered to drive her himself, but he couldn’t go until after the meet. Meg explained how Kery felt like she was going crazy, and had only been there for a few hours, and he offered to let one of the swimmer boys who wasn’t swimming until late in the meet to borrow his car and drive her up, and then Kerry and her back to campus before the meet. Coach Mac grabbed his keys and tossed them to John, who caught them but had no idea why his coach was giving him keys. Coach Mac explained, and John told Meg that he was going to grab some pants and he’d meet her outside.
He was out within two minutes, and they walked fast to Coach Mac’s car. It was a blue businessman car, one of those that there were about a million of on the road, but it was clean inside, which was exciting. Meg started a couple topics of conversation, but John’s mind was pretty firmly just about the coming meet. It was supposed to be one of the harder ones of the season, and evidently the girls were going to have to fight for it more than the boys, and the boys were going to have to fight pretty hard if they wanted it to turn out.
Evidently John had warmed up earlier in the day, and he was ready to go with only a little more warmup. He wanted to be there for the team - he was a senior, and though not captain, seemed to be enjoying himself with the swimmers this year. Meg wished that Kerry could have his sort of attitude - she might cease complaining every single time that she had practice or a meet or anything else.
But for now she just sat in Coach Mac’s car, watched John fiddle with the radio until he found a classic rock station, and enjoyed the weird sensation of actually going somewhere without walking. She hadn’t been in a car since her Mom dropped her off at the beginning of the year.
John kept up a conversation with her, one that neither of them had to try very hard with, as it was just random inconsequentials, but it was nice, and comfortable, and kept her mind off the fact that they were off to the hospital.
It was only about a fifteen minute drive, and John parked and said he would come up with her. They went to the main desk and were directed up onto the 3rd floor to visit Kerry.
They took the elevator up, continuing their casual conversation, and found Kerry’s room. The shades were down and the room was dark; the bed was rumpled but empty.
Meg shook her head. “Well, either they gave us the wrong room or she’s disappeared again. This is weird.” She pulled out her phone and called Kerry, as she had her phone when she had gotten in touch.
“Hey, Kerry?”
It was definitely not Kerry on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry. The person you are trying to reach is currently in an MRI. Are you the person she said might be coming to get her?”
“Yes, I’m Meg Davidson. I came over to take her back to school.”
“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that. If you’d like to come see her, you’re going to want to come down to room 032. Basement level, on the left side of the building.”
“Thank you. I’ll be right down.”
Meg filled John in on where Kerry was, and though both of them were a trifle confused as to why they were giving her an MRI, they took the elevator down to the basement.
John peeked at his watch and told Meg that they were going to have to go within the next ten minutes if he was going to get back in time for the speeches and rundown at the beginning of the meet, of what they had to do in order to win it. Coach Mac was really particular about these things.
Meg nodded, thought a bit, and told John “if you need to go, I totally understand. I’ll probably hang out here with Kerry if they don’t let her go - and it’s a hospital, so they’ll probably have all sorts of paperwork and fuss - by the time you need to go. Seriously, just go. And good luck at the meet!”
John was torn - Kerry was part of his team, and Meg definitely cared, and he didn’t want to leave either of them stranded at a hospital, of all places. But he was more focused on the meet than on either of them. Kerry would be fine, especially if she had just been dehydrated, and Meg would be good company for her. Meg was solid, calm, and it was good that Kerry had someone like that to bounce emotions off of and chill out around.
“You sure that you’ll be ok?”
“Yeah, definitely. If you could ask Coach Mac if he, or you, or somebody could maybe come get us when y’all win the meet, that would be great. Call Kerry, I suppose, or me, if you like. Do you have my number?”
He shook his head, and she dictated it to him.
“And seriously, swim fast, okay? Kerry’s been talking about this meet for a while. Kick some butt for her?”
John promised, and drove off to get back to his swim meet.