Burning The Map

Now she sits on her bed, biting a thumbnail, and I can almost imagine her as a little kid with her thumb in her pretty mouth.

“Well, for one thing,” Sin says, “you have a boyfriend.”

“I’m well aware of that,” I say in a haughty tone. How dare she remind me?

“And for another thing, Kat always comes home when she says she will. She’s around when you need her. She’s a friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just that…” Lindsey stops, pursing her lips as if trying to gather the right words in her mouth. This makes her look like my mother right before she’s about to lay some doozy of a revelation on me, like how she’s started masturbating again after a twenty-year hiatus.

“It’s just that what you did last night,” Sin says, “blowing us off—it’s basically what you’ve been doing for the last two years.”

Her words hit me like a slap. I sense some shred of reality there, but it seems like an overstatement, a gross generalization.

“I’ve never said I’d be somewhere and didn’t show up.”

“No, maybe not like that, but you’ve been avoiding us since you started dating John. You never call. You never have time to go out with us anymore. And when we finally do get together, once in a great while, it’s like you’re not really there. You’re just different. You’re not like you used to be.”

I can’t believe she’s saying this. Maybe I’ve been a little detached lately, but I’ve been studying for a goddamned living. My life hasn’t exactly been a Martha Stewart picnic.

I turn to Kat. “Is that what you think, too?”

“Oh, honey.” She rises to come to me, putting her arm around my shoulders. “It’s just that we wish you were around more. We wish it was like the old days.”

“That’s not fair,” I say, jabbing a finger at Lindsey. “You haven’t been around all that much either, you know.” Lindsey’s been putting in ten-to twelve-hour days and lots of weekends at her ad agency. She wants to make vice president within the next year and be the youngest VP ever.

“That’s true,” she says, “but I’m going to change that. I have to.”

“Well, things will never be exactly like they were in college, and you can’t expect them to be.”

“Maybe it’s not fair, sweetie,” Kat says, “but what Sin’s talking about is true. You’re not the same person we used to know. I mean, I know you’re in there somewhere.” She squeezes my shoulders. “I just haven’t seen you in so long, and when I do get to actually go out with you, it doesn’t seem like you’re having much fun.”

“I had fun last night.” I shake her arms off me.

“It’s okay,” Kat says. “We just miss you.”

I know what she means. I miss me, too, sometimes. I drop my head in my hands.

But as I sit there, some realization dawns. I raise my face. “Wait a minute. You’ve felt like this for two years, and you’ve never said a word?” I’d been a tad mopey for a while, particularly this summer, but they’re talking about two years. The whole time I’ve been dating John.

I leave Kat’s side and walk across the room to the window. Across the way, I see a couple on their terrace reading papers, eating grapefruit.

I turn back to Kat and Sin, sitting side by side. It’s me against them right now, and I hate it.

Kat looks down, then back up at me. Sin shrugs. “We knew you were in love with him.”

“You’re supposed to be my best friends. How can you be pissed off at me for years and not say a word?”

Kat blinks a few times like a stumped contestant on Jeopardy.

“We were just hoping it would go away,” Sin says.

Her words feel like a betrayal. All this time, I keep thinking. All this time they’ve been holding it back. We used to be the kind of friends who said anything and everything to each other, the minute the thought occurred to us.

“Hideous,” Kat would say when I came down the stairs of the sorority house in one of my slutty outfits. “At least take off the fuck-me pumps.”

And Sin didn’t know the meaning of holding back, which was something I’d come to love about her. It was Sin who helped me decide on what law school to attend. I’d narrowed it down to Northwestern or Harvard. I was enamored by the thought of Harvard Law School. I liked simply saying those words, and I imagined the tingle I’d get every time I told someone, “Yes, I attend Harvard. Harvard Law School.” I’d only gotten in because my father’s boss was an alum who happened to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but that didn’t bother me. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to move to Boston.

I was debating the subject one night about a month before our college graduation. Sin listened to my list of pros and cons for about ten seconds before she held up her hand and said, “You’re not the Harvard Law type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sat back and crossed my arms.

“C’mon,” she said. “Harvard Law is Birkenstocks and environmental activism and people whose ancestors went there before them. You’re not about that. You’re…” She threw her hands up. “You’re Steve Maddens and aerosol hair spray, and you’re the first person in your family to go to law school.”

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