Page 51 - WTP Vol. XI #2

“Yeah. I must’ve dropped my keys somewhere.” She shifted under her roommate’s stare.
“Here, take mine.” Poppy’s gaze returned to Fred. “Could you let me in if I knock?”
She could hear them through the door without trying very hard. Poppy hadn’t emailed or called Fred in a long time. Poppy had been busy over break. There was a Thomas, or a Travis, or something like that, and Poppy said, “This isn’t going to work, okay?” There was a meaningful silence.
She scrambled for the door when three heavy knocks sounded. Poppy flew in and threw herself into her chair, closing her eyes.
“Everything okay?” She had opened the Nilla bag at the wrong end. Crumbs waterfalled into the gouged initials left by her desk’s previous owners.
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
There was Nicholas Post, who’d pecked her on the lips at a middle school graduation party. She had blushed. He had blushed. His friends had bet him twenty dollars to do it.
“Just one.” The crumbs were working their way into the striations of her palms.
“Do you still love him?”
Nicholas Post was not inspiring enough for these follow-up questions. But her father had been her mother’s first boyfriend. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” Poppy echoed.
“It’s like—” she fumbled for the words. “He does some stuff, and it annoys me, I guess, but he’s fine.”
“That’s exactly how I feel.”
“With Fred?”
“No. When I went home I ran into my ex. And we talked. And Fred and I had just gotten into a huge fight—did I tell you that? And then I saw Tom getting his order at Starbucks—he always gets a hot drink
so he can pretend he’s a black coffee drinker so the other guys on his amateur soccer team don’t find out that he’s actually a mocha person—and all these old feelings came back.” Poppy hugged one knee to her chest. “Nothing happened; we hung out a few times. I’ve known Tom since I was five. Our parents grew up
with each other.”
“But you guys broke up?”
“Tom’s never going to college, you know. He loves our hometown. He’s working at his dad’s electrician business right now. He makes good money. I’m not like that. I want to travel, see the world, almost get abducted in a foreign country but not really. I don’t want to settle down, and he’s been settled since he was born. I can’t be with someone like that.”
“I don’t know, isn’t there something comforting about the stability? Like, you marry someone once and that’s it, over and done with?”
“I guess.” Poppy picked at a scab on her finger, sliding her nail underneath the thick crust of old blood, again and again, until it lifted and revealed rubbery new skin. “I’m going to bed. What about you?”
“I have homework.”
“Oh for god’s sake, let loose once in a while, okay? I know you’re trying to break the glass ceiling and all, but you’re eighteen. Drink Malibu. Do drugs. Find a second boyfriend.”
It was there at the top of the list when she opened her laptop: an email from folinbach@aol.com. I’ve emailed all thirty-two emails belonging to people with your combo of initials, he wrote. He hoped he’d finally gotten it right this time.
~
The blunt corner of a shopping cart pokes her hip
from behind. “Excuse me.”
(continued on next page)
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