New Girl - By Paige Harbison Page 0,84
very suddenly, “Will you turn off that light, I can’t sleep!”
She’d been in a bad mood for weeks. It seemed that she thought Becca owed her more than just one quick visit.
I was unable to summon a civilized response, so I put on my flip-flops and a sweatshirt and went out of the room with my book. I left the light on just to be a jerk.
I headed to the dining hall for some hot chocolate. It was empty, except for one person.
“Johnny,” I said, walking over to him.
The enormous hall felt even bigger and more echoing without all the usual voices and bodies filling it.
“What are you doing up?” He looked at me, and then at my pajamas and shoes.
“I’ve been kicked out of my room because I had the light on.”
“Really?”
“She’s been really upset lately.”
He nodded, and looked concerned. “Like, how upset?”
“I dunno. Just moody as far as I can tell.” I sat down next to him. “What are you doing down here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I’ve been having trouble lately. I don’t know why.”
I could see it all over his face. His eyes were dark and sunken, and his hair was tousled in a very Axe commercial type way.
“I’ve been having trouble this semester, too. Though in part that could be due to Dana screaming at me for reading and singing to herself in the middle of the night like someone out of a Hitchcock movie.”
“Singing?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. It was weird.”
“What was she singing?”
“What’s that song…oh, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”
He stared at me for a second, his smile fading. “That’s weird. That’s really weird.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“No, I mean…that was a joke she and Becca had. Dana used to say something about how…” He screwed up his face, trying to remember. “How Becca was like sunshine because of her hair. I don’t really remember.”
At that bit of creepiness, I couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “I’m going to get some hot chocolate.”
I was grateful that he changed the subject when I came back.
“So where are you going to college?”
“Oh,” I said, “FSU. Florida State University.”
He nodded. “That’s cool, why there?”
“All of my friends are going there.” I thought, with a pang, of Leah. “Sort of been a plan forever.”
He nodded again. “Did you apply anywhere else?”
“Yeah, I got accepted to Boston University.”
“Really?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “It’s stupid. I did it on a whim.”
“That’s not stupid, that’s an awesome school.”
“Yeah, I applied in junior year for an early bird kind of thing.”
“I don’t understand then, why are you going somewhere right by your house or with all of your friends? Don’t you want to branch out?”
“I did branch out. I came here. Look how fantastically this went.” I laughed.
“I think you’ve held up extraordinarily well. Don’t you sorta feel like if you can handle all this, you can handle anything?”
I hesitated. “That’s true but…I can’t go to Boston…that’s crazy, I don’t even know why I applied. I could never go somewhere completely alone.”
“Why’s it crazy? Money?”
“No,” I admitted, my voice small. “I got a scholarship.”
He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “You should do it. I mean it. Go somewhere new. Don’t stay so close to home. You’ll go back, and find that they’ve changed—or maybe they haven’t and they should have—or it’ll feel like home isn’t how you remember it. They’ll be different, and you’ll wish you’d met new people.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’ll think about it.”
He just leaned back and rested his head on his clasped hands.
Well, since we were getting honest…
“Johnny, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I hesitated, and then went for it. “Were you…in love with her?”
“Who, Dana? I liked her a lot. Once upon a time. I don’t know. I had a thing for her the whole time I knew her, but Becca got here and then told me Dana didn’t like me at all. Not even like a friend. So, I guess I gave up.”
I stared at him. “I—I meant Becca.”
He raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. “Oh. Oh. No. I wasn’t in love with her.”
I was still reeling at the idea of anyone having feelings for Dana. It was so impossible to imagine her as anything other than mostly crazy.
“Max told me you and Becca were hooking up. And it just didn’t seem like you to do that to your best friend.”
He looked at me, and seemed to make a decision before answering. “I don’t know what we were. She was hard to read. I couldn’t