My Life as a Girl

The day Buddy crashed the campus, Bryn Mawr was in hibernation, suspended in an eerie calm called reading period before a week of winter exams. Without the structure of classes, students were stunned; we slept in for the first time all semester, slid into the day sipping coffee and reading the paper, sat mesmerized at our computers answering e-mail. That this brain freeze went on amid white-blanketed fields and trees with crystal sleeves seems incredible, too perfect, even, for a letter to my mom, but that's the way it was. We waited, in those first dark days of December, for the blue books to be offered, for the chance to sharpen our pencils and prove ourselves. There was an optimistic chill in the air, an echo of industry in the tense flapping of the college flag atop the old library, a gray stone castle called Thomas Hall. It made a very pretty picture, but all was not exactly well.

Elaine Simon lounged in the living room as she had all semester, avoiding writing an English paper that had been extended into eternity by her indulgent dean. That morning, I'd asked to borrow her Hi-Liter,and had been panic-stricken by the state of her room. Dirty clothes tumbled off the bed and out of baskets, while her closet stood empty. There were books and candy wrappers everywhere, a dead fern fossilized on the dresser top. This was my idea of hell, a landing place for failure. How could a person live this way? Why would Elaine— smarter than smart, rumored to be summa cum laude—sabotage herself?

It's in the top desk drawer, Elaine called out from the living room as I hesitated in her doorway. Left side, next to the box of paper clips. I stepped over the title page of her English thesis, marked with a 4.0 and a boot-shaped sample of mud, and pulled open the drawer. There, her school supplies were alphabetized and labeled, stored in bright-colored compartments. I shuddered; her secret neatness alarmed me more than her public disarray. Quickly, I grabbed the Hi-Liter and closed the drawer.

That Elaine was a senior made the discovery all the more troubling. The seniors were harbingers of our own futures, and so we first-years watched them the way we watched our mothers, with a keen eye and all-too-easy criticism that increased in intensity as exams approached. There they were in the computer center, begging the student supervisor to keep the printers on for just five more minutes so they could print out another near-perfect draft. There they were floating down the hall in a yeasty-brew cloud after an evening at Creepers, where they'd tried to talk art history with some guy from Villanova who would have preferred to converse with his hands. There they were in suits and heels in the dining halls, on their way to or from job interviews. Nothing like a crisply pressed suit among the jeans and sweatshirts to turn table conversation from the life of the mind to the dreaded life that was after.

There hadn't been a decent campus party since Thanksgiving, and we naturally blamed the seniors for this sorry lack of social life. We were primed for any kind of excitement, any cure for the communicable disease of no play, all work. And so it was a weird relief, almost a celebration, when Buddy arrived at Merion Hall on that exquisite winter morning, hellbent on bringing me home.

I saw the Mustang through the living room window as I curled up on the window seat next to my roommate Amanda, reading Virginia Woolfs A Room of One's Own. I was writing a paper on the concept of psychological space, and though I'd discussed the book with conviction in English class, I had never actually finished it. Idly, with my index finger inserted between pages as a bookmark, I watched the car slow down and park crookedly on the road alongside the dorm. I noted that it was a Mustang, but its blood-colored paint job (Buddy's was white) muffled what might have otherwise been a rousing alarm.

In Taylor Tower, the bell began to ring eleven, a reminder that time hadn't stilled after all. It was a senior privilege to ring the bell when you'd finished your spring finals, and I was already looking forward to my chance to pull the rope. Who would I be then? I listened to the chime peal and fade repeatedly. Listening, I became aware of myself looking out the window, then aware of my awareness, until I was watching myself from outside my body, at a six-foot remove.

From that perspective, my life appeared simple and mechanical—a stack of boxes within boxes—and my sole purpose that of opening them, revealing myself to myself. I thought I understood Woolf perfectly as I came back into my body by slow degrees: college was a four-year residency in a room of one's own. For me, Bryn Mawr was a place where my past couldn't reach me, a place where I could reinvent myself.

That is, until my past pushed open the door of the wrongly red Mustang and staggered out onto the icy road.

He was wild-haired and wide-eyed, looking as though he'd driven the 3,000 miles from Phoenix straight through, in under eight hours. Oh, God, I said, dropping my book to the floor.

Amanda looked up. What, is He here? It's Buddy, I said, yanking the curtains closed.

Amanda nudged me aside and yanked the curtains open again. Buddy? she said.

Buddy. He leaned against his car door, rubbing his palms on his jeans as he looked around. He was hat-less, maybe as camouflage, but his boots and bare hands screamed Arizona louder than his license plates did. My friend Rosa had seen him during Thanksgiving break, and he'd said then that he would find me. But the threat had seemed ridiculous, B-movie dialogue, much like Buddy's exaggerated claim to eternal love. And yet here he was. At my college. Taking in the gray, Gothic architecture with what, I couldn't help feeling, was an inadequate amount of awe.

He's shorter than I pictured, said Amanda.

Wow, said Elaine, peering over our shoulders. What the hell is that?

It's Jaime's boyfriend.

Here for the weekend?

He's not my boyfriend! I said.

Summer romance, Amanda clarified.

I whispered, "How did he know I was here?"

I thought he had a white car, said Amanda.

"He does—he did." Looking more closely at the Mustang, I saw—or imagined—cool streaks of white paint showing through the red.

The three of us sucked in our breath as Buddy began to unbutton his jeans. I winced, and glanced up to the second floor of Taylor, sure I'd find my dean framed there in one of the windows, her proud posture invoking Bryn Mawr's history of women's achievement as she observed this rude, blue-jeaned boy getting ready to piss in the street. Instead, Buddy retucked his rodeo shirt and rebuttoned, then licked his palm and ran it over his hair. He stooped to check himself out in the side mirror, and with that last hopeful gesture, he almost had me again. I gripped the edge of the window seat as he turned and began to walk toward Merion.

Apparently, the boy did his homework, said Elaine. He seems to know exactly where he's going.

I headed for the staircase, saying, That would be a first.

I planned to take the stairs three at a time to the attic, where I could hide behind the old lamps and steamer trunks for the rest of my life. I got as far as the first step, then stood there motionless, clutching the carved wood owl that decorated the banister.

Do you think he just wants to talk? Amanda asked me as Buddy began first to knock and then, seconds later, to pound.

I don't know what he wants, I said, though I guessed the possibilities included reunion or revenge. Should I call Security? asked Elaine, her eyes shining. How typical for Elaine to view Buddy as an excuse to procrastinate.

Oh, Elaine, don't overreact! I said, rolling my eyes at Amanda. I'd explained away my thing with Buddy as curiosity, an adventure, even as an act of charity. But the truth was, my continuing desire for him, despite everything, bewildered and depressed me.

He's not going to hurt you, Jaime, is he? asked Amanda.

Of course not, I said.

Well, Elaine said smugly, someone should definitely call the fashion police. She patted my cheek as a mother would, as if to remind me that better taste in boyfriends came with seniority.

He's obviously upset, said Amanda. Are you going to let him in?

I don't know, I said. So far, my life here/my life there had run nicely parallel on tracks separated by 3,000 miles. Now my secret life was about to force its way into my dormitory and spill its mess all over the floor.

As Buddy pounded harder, room doors began opening up and down the hall.

Someone get that, will you? yelled Lila-from-Louisiana, much admired for her shopping-mall glamour. She leaned against her door in an emerald satin robe.

It's Jaime's boyfriend, said Melissa, a sophomore from the Midwest, who was obsessed with enforcing the honor code.

He's not my boyfriend, I said.

Maybe not, said Melissa, her expression one of cemented pleasance. But he's your responsibility.

What's the problem? asked Lila, arranging herself on the piano bench, her arms folded across her chest. Let the guy in. This isn't the fifties, you know, with that old one-foot-on-the-floor rule.

Melissa's smile was still pasted in place. May I remind you, Lila, she said, that privacy is one of the rights one can reasonably expect when one chooses a single-sex dorm?

Jaime! Buddy bellowed. I hopped back a half step and fell on my butt on the stair. Open up! It's Buddy! Security's coming! yelled Elaine from her doorway.

Elaine, you didn't need to do that, Amanda snapped. Did she, Jaime? No, I said, less certain now. A group of onlookers had gathered in the living room, where once upon a time, proper young ladies would arrange to meet their dates. They formed a Red Rover line across the entry, all eyes trained on the door.

Time stopped—as it sometimes did in writing conferences with my English professor, who was always on me to support my ideas with evidence from the text. Those meetings were excruciating; I would agree to rewrite the whole paper just to get out of her office, to spare myself from looking too closely at my mistakes.

Now, as Buddy demanded to be let in, I felt the same cold fear I did at the end of one of those conferences, when what I'd thought was a well-built argument had completely fallen apart. The only way out of that feeling was to crumple up the paper and start over. Or, in this case, to tell the truth about Buddy—and about who Jaime Cody really was.

That was the beginning, as blind and misguided as most beginnings are. I glanced back once more at my hallmates, then walked to the front door and unlatched the lock.

It's freezing out there, Buddy said, pushing past me as I took a quick inventory of his pants, his hands, his pockets, hoping not to discover the glint or poke of a gun. You like living here, Jaime? At the North Pole? Dirty slush fell from his snakeskin boots as he stood in place and stomped the Persian rug.

I opened my mouth to speak of the virtues of pure wool versus polyester, the strategy of layering, the heat conservation provided by a hat. I'd learned to dress for the weather; Amanda had even loaned me her Pendleton scarf. But Buddy wasn't waiting for an answer. He was scanning the room, grinning at my hallmates as though he'd said something smart.

How's it going, Buddy said, his gaze lingering a beat too long on Lila, who sat up straight and clutched her robe closed. His eyes looked more cunning than I remembered, darting and rolling in their bloodshot rims. His hair, tangled and surf-blond in the summer, was now flat and streaked with channel-surfer brown. His nose, fringed by a junior mustache, looked somewhat rubbery against the yellow tone of his faded tan.

And yet he strutted around the foyer in his black suede buffalo jacket as if he'd invented sexy. In a way, for me, he had.

I'm Buddy, he said.

Yes, said Melissa, with perfect disdain. We heard.

Sorry about all the noise, he said. I just needed to talk to my girlfriend, is all.

Amanda raised her eyebrows. I shook my head at her: Don't ask.

A few of the women smiled back at Buddy. I knew they were mentally making him over: dressing him in plaid flannel, placing a guitar or a book of poems in his hand. We all watched as Buddy shrugged out of his coat and tossed it onto the back of a chair. I felt a twinge of possessiveness when he leaned, rebel-like, against the antique iron radiator.

Damn! Buddy said, leaping forward as the steam heat branded his butt. I looked away, disowning