Still not into you - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,58
here next year.”
“What? Are you crazy?” Juliet says as her eyes grow wide.
“I’m just thinking of transferring to USC,” I say.
“USC?” She repeats the word as if she doesn’t know what it means.
“University of Southern California?” I clarify.
“I know what USC is,” she says, spreading her arms out wide. Juliet has a tendency to gesture with her hands and speak with her whole body whenever she’s drunk or angry.
“It’s just something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I think I need a change. It’s close to home, and, honestly, this weather is killing me. It’s making me so freakin’ depressed.”
“Oh, you’re not leaving because of the weather,” Juliet says. “Don’t lie. You’re leaving because of Hudson and Dylan and your stupid marriage.”
I sigh. She’s right, but not entirely. I do hate the weather. The fall wasn’t too bad, but this winter is unbearable. The slush and the darkness and the cold. Everyone on the outside seems angry and disturbed by it, too. It’s harder to get a cab. It’s impossible to see one smiling face in the subway. It’s the very opposite of everything that I love and miss about Southern California.
“It’s not just them. It’s just something I want to do,” I say with a shrug. Another thing I want is for this conversation to be over. Unfortunately, given how much Juliet is pacing around the room, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible anytime soon.
“Listen, Alice, you’ll get through this. You and Dylan are going to get a divorce soon and everything will go back to normal. Next year, we can live in a completely different dorm, just the two of us, and we never have to see Hudson again or Dylan for that matter, if you don’t want to.”
“You’re right. I know, but I really don’t want to be here anymore.”
She shakes her head. She tries again. She reminds me of all the fun things we did in the fall and that we can do them again. She says she’ll hang out with me more and won’t go out almost every night. She’s trying her best to convince me to stay. I admire her for that. I listen patiently and say that I’ll think about it, but that’s a lie. I’m done thinking. I’m pretty set about this.
“Alice is doing what?” I hear Dylan say outside our room. Juliet went into the kitchen and she held this thing to herself for all of two seconds.
“Alice!” Dylan knocks on the door, but doesn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he just barges in.
“What is this I hear about you wanting to transfer? Are you crazy?”
“No.”
Great. Another person to explain this to. I had less explaining to do to my parents.
“But why?” he asks. I go into all the reasons all over again. I feel myself being less exuberant about it all, though. I’m losing patience with all of these people questioning my decision. Then Dylan calls me on it.
“We’re your friends, you know, right?” Dylan says. “That’s why we don’t want you to leave. We love you.”
That breaks my heart. Dylan’s not one for expressing his feelings well. If at all. He’s from Connecticut, after all.
“I’m sorry I’ve been dragging my feet on this divorce thing. The truth is that the fact that we’re still married makes my dad really angry and I sort of love it. Nothing really fazes him much, and this is really getting under his skin, but I’m going to talk to the family attorney in a few days. I’ll take care of it.”
Finally, an explanation for all the delays. I’m thankful for it, but I also feel like it’s too little too late.
No matter what I say convinces either of them that this is really something I want to do and I’m not just running away from my problems here. I won’t admit it out loud, but they’re basically right. So, we eventually call it a night after agreeing to disagree.
32
When I meet Tea for lunch the following day, she has a completely different reaction to the news. I’m ready to go into a big explanation about all this yet again, but she just nods and says that she understands. She really catches me off guard. So much so that I don’t even know what we’re going to talk about for the rest of lunch since I thought we’d talk about this the whole time.
“So, I finished my book,” Tea announces after we order.
“What?”
“Remember, the romance one about the girl pretending