Laura Kasischke - The Raising

“Hi,” he’d said.

“Yeah,” Josie had said. Craig had tried hard not to look her in the eyes, but they just bored straight into his own, and then he couldn’t look away. It was a bright morning, too, and his eyes started to water in the glare. He hadn’t left the dorm since Friday. He’d been pretty much either stoned or sleeping since he’d last seen her. “So, ‘hi’ is all you have to say to me?” she asked.

About a hundred bad jokes flashed through Craig’s brain, like having Eddie Murphy or Lenny Bruce shuffling a deck inside his skull, but he managed to keep his mouth firmly shut. The morning sun was making Josie’s hair look so black and shiny and smooth it scared the hell out of him. He couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to.

“You’re a great guy, Craig,” she’d said. “Really exceptional. I hope you rot in hell.”

And then she was gone so fast he didn’t know in which direction she’d left.

Shit , he thought. She definitely remembered.

He didn’t see her again for at least a week, but that was mostly because he’d been staying away from anywhere she might be—avoiding the stairwells near her hall, slipping out the side entrance to Godwin instead of going through the courtyard—and when he did see her again, luckily she didn’t see him. She and Nicole were together in the cafeteria, dressed up for some sort of Greek tea or soiree or salon or something equally feminine and mysterious and inane. (Rush Week started as soon as midterms were over, and half the girls in Godwin Honors Hall were joining sororities, appearing suddenly around the dorm every evening in pearls and skirts, while the guys who were rushing stumbled around looking disoriented and hung over.) As soon as he recognized Josie’s black hair, he’d scrambled to the back of the cafeteria as fast as he could.

The next week, he didn’t go looking for the study group on the night he knew they’d be down in the Alice Meyers Memorial Student Study Room , although he missed the group. He missed Nicole, and it pained him to think he’d never be in that room with her again, listening to her breathe through her nose as she read her textbook. By then, he assumed she hated him and that Josie had given her some ugly Cliffs Notes version of the events:

The way, in his bed, Josie had asked, “Are you wearing a condom?”

It was the first whole sentence she’d uttered since she’d stripped off her clothes and, standing shiningly naked in front of him, had whispered, “I want you to fuck me. I’ve wanted you to fuck me for a long time.”

“Condom? No,” he’d said, sounding more annoyed than he’d meant to. But when would he have put on a condom? Did she think he’d come out of the shower wearing one?

Her dark eyes, bleary as they were, shot open then, and Josie put her hands on his chest, shoving, and said, “Get off!”

“What?” Craig asked.

“I said get off of me !”

Craig rolled off of her, although every nerve ending and instinct he had—his brain having been turned into a kind of strobe light—was telling him to stay on top of her and to keep going.

“I’ll get pregnant,” she said. “Or a disease !”

“Huh?” Craig said. “Aren’t you on the pill or something?”

“ No, ” Josie said. “Why would I be? I’m not even sexually active right now.”

At this, Craig had snorted, and said, “I’d say right now you’re pretty sexually active.” He hadn’t intended to sound so sarcastic, but the whole thing was just so fucking stupid. He’d been minding his own business when she’d come into his room and taken off her clothes and pulled him down onto her in his bed.

But at that point, she was already out of his bed, pulling her little silky panties up over her wildly lush and dark-haired pussy, and then she was looking around for her top, and Craig sighed, too loudly, and flopped down on his back and said, “I’ll go see if somebody on the floor will give me a condom,” before he realized she was crying.

“I can’t believe this,” Josie said, pulling her lacy tank top down over her breasts.

Craig sat up at the edge of the bed then. Luckily, he’d completely deflated, but he pulled his towel up off the floor and put it over his dick anyway. “Can’t believe what ?” he asked, but by then she was dressed, and she’d unlocked his door, slipped out of it, and slammed it behind her. For just a second, in the space she opened as she left, Craig could hear the party going on in the hallway—all the hardworking students celebrating the harvest. Somehow he pictured them in plaid shirts and gingham dresses—ruddy with good health, living their productive lives, while he searched the dresser for clean boxers, put them on, got back in his messed-up bed, and shoved the buds of his iPod as deeply into his ears as he could.

But now, as he rounded the corner, jacketless, to Godwin Honors Hall—which looked stately and decrepit at the same time under a low, bright moon—he was really hoping that maybe Josie wasn’t so mad at him anymore, or at least had never told Nicole what had happened. Truly, he never really thought he stood a chance with Nicole anyway (because, for one thing, he knew he’d never have enough courage or imagination to figure out how to get together with a girl like that: every girl he’d ever hooked up with had made the moves on him first, and it seemed unlikely that Nicole would be that kind of girl), but it had surprised him how sad he was, after the shit with Josie, to think he’d blown that chance with Nicole without ever even actually having it.

When he came up the walk to the dorm, Lucas was smoking a cigarette under an elm tree in the courtyard.

“So!” Lucas called out. “Did you strike out again, young man?”

Craig held out his hand for a cigarette, but Lucas patted his pocket and said, “I’m out,” and then, “She’s not for you anyway, Craig. She’s one of those girls who’s waiting for marriage, and then she wants two kids and an SUV, and wants to stay home and bake cookies all day while you slave away at some shitty job. On the other hand, you’ve got ‘fuck-’em-and-dump-’em’ written all over you.”

“What?” Craig asked, sincerely astonished by this assessment. “Go to hell, Lucas. I do not have ‘fuck-’em-and-dump-’em’ written all over me.”

“Yeah, you do, Craig. You look at girls like you hate ’em.”

“What? I do not .”

Lucas shrugged, and tossed his cigarette over the wrought-iron fence and onto the sidewalk.

“Okay,” he said. “Sorry. Whatever. But I just don’t see you taking Little Miss Sunshine there on a walk through the park before you propose to her.”

To this, Craig said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. He watched the shadows of other students pass on the other side of the tiny glittering windows of Godwin Honors Hall. They knew what the hell they were doing there. For one thing, they hadn’t gotten into the Honors College just because their father was buddies with the dean.

“Besides,” Lucas asked, “wouldn’t you rather have a really great blow job than a really nice date? I mean, I just don’t picture that little virgin on her knees with her sweet red lips wrapped around your massive man tool.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Craig said.

But there was no animation in it.

No energy.

Lucas was probably right, he knew.

Lucas was often right.

Craig had never, he realized, been on an actual date . And the idea of one—asking for one, going on one—seemed like another one of those ten million things that all the normal guys, wearing khaki pants and carrying bouquets of daisies, would know exactly how to do, but which would be about as easy for Craig as building a spaceship and then going for a zip around the earth in it.