Nina LaCour - We Are Okay

I climb out of bed and pull a pair of sweats over my leggings, a bulky sweater over my turtleneck. I drag my desk chair to my door, and then down the hall to the elevator, where I push the button for the top floor. Once the elevator doors open, I carry the chair to the huge, arched window of the tower, where it’s always quiet, even when the dorm is full. There I sit with my palms on my knees, my feet flat on the carpet.

Outside is the moon, the contours of trees, the buildings of the campus, the lights that dot the path. All of this is my home now, and it will still be my home after Mabel leaves. I’m taking in the stillness of that, the sharp truth of it. My eyes are burning, my throat is tight. If only I had something to take the edge off the loneliness. If only lonely were a more accurate word. It should sound much less pretty. Better to face this now, though, so that it doesn’t take me by surprise later, so that I don’t find myself paralyzed and unable to feel my way back to myself.

I breathe in. I breathe out. I keep my eyes open to these new trees.

I know where I am, and what it means to be here. I know Mabel is coming tomorrow, whether I want her to or not. I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in.

The sky is the darkest blue, each star clear and bright. My palms are warm on my legs. There are many ways of being alone. That’s something I know to be true. I breathe in (stars and sky). I breathe out (snow and trees).

There are many ways of being alone, and the last time wasn’t like this.

Morning feels different.

I slept until almost ten, when I heard the groundskeeper’s truck on the drive below my room, clearing the snow. I’m showered and dressed now; my window lets in daylight. I choose a playlist and plug Hannah’s speakers into my computer. Soon an acoustic guitar strum fills the room, followed by a woman’s voice. Electric kettle in hand, I prop open my door on the way to the bathroom sink. The song follows me around the corner. I leave the bathroom door open, too. As long as I’m their only inhabitant, I should make these spaces feel more like mine.

Water fills the kettle. I look at my reflection while I wait. I try to smile in the way I should when Mabel arrives. A smile that conveys as much welcome as regret. A smile with meaning behind it, one that says all I need to say to her so I don’t have to form the right words. I shut off the faucet.

Back in my room, I plug in the kettle and pick up my yellow bowl from where it rests, tipped over to dry, from last night. I pour in granola and the rest of the milk from the tiny fridge wedged between Hannah’s desk and mine. I’ll be drinking my breakfast tea black this morning.

In seven and a half hours, Mabel will arrive. I cross to the doorway to see the room as she’ll see it. Thankfully, Hannah’s brought some color into it, but it only takes a moment to notice the contrast between her side and mine. Other than my plant and the bowls, even my desk is bare. I sold back all of last semester’s textbooks two days ago, and I don’t really want her to see the book on solitude. I slip it into my closet—there’s plenty of room—and when I turn back, I’m faced with the worst part of all: my bulletin board without a single thing on it. I may not be able to do much about my smile, but I can do something about this.

I’ve been in enough other dorm rooms to know what to do. I’ve spent plenty of time looking at Hannah’s wall. I need quotes from songs and books and celebrities. I need photographs and souvenirs, concert ticket stubs, evidences of inside jokes. Most of these are things I don’t have, but I can do my best with pens and paper and the printer Hannah and I share. There’s a song Hannah and I have been listening to in the mornings. I write the chorus from memory in purple pen, and then cut the paper in a square around the words.

I spend a long time online choosing a picture of the moon.

Keaton, who lives two doors down, has been teaching us all about crystals. She has a collection on her windowsill, always sparkling with light. I find the blog of a woman named Josephine who explains the healing properties of gemstones and how to use them. I find images of pyrite (for protection), hematite (for grounding), jade (for serenity). Our color printer clicks and whirrs.

I regret selling my textbooks back so soon. I had sticky notes and faint pencil scrawls on so many of the pages. In history we learned about the Arts and Crafts movement, and there were all these ideas I liked. I search for William Morris, read essay after essay, trying to find my favorite of his quotes. I copy a few of them down, using a different color pen for each. I print them out, too, in various fonts, in case they’ll look better typed. I search for a redwood tree that resembles my memories and end up watching a mini-documentary on redwood ecosystems, in which I learn that during the summertime California redwoods gather most of their water from the fog, and that they provide homes to clouded salamanders, who have no lungs and breathe through their skin. I press print on a picture of a clouded salamander on bright green moss, and once the printer stops, I think I have enough.

I borrow a handful of Hannah’s pushpins and arrange everything I’ve printed and written, and then step back and look. Everything is too crisp, too new. Each paper is the same white. It doesn’t matter that the quotes are interesting and pictures are pretty. It looks desperate.

And now it’s almost three already and I’ve wasted these hours and it’s becoming difficult to breathe because six thirty is no longer far in the future. Mabel knows me better than anyone else in the world, even though we haven’t spoken at all in these four months. Most of her texts to me went unanswered until eventually she stopped sending them. I don’t know how her Los Angeles life is. She doesn’t know Hannah’s name or what classes I’ve taken or if I’ve been sleeping. But she will only have to take one look at my face to know how I’m doing. I take everything off my bulletin board and carry the papers down the hall to the bathroom in the other wing, where I scatter them into the trash.

There will be no way to fool her.

The elevator doors open but I don’t step inside.

I don’t know why I’ve never worried about the elevators before. Now, in the daylight, so close to Mabel’s arrival, I realize that if they were to break, if I were to get stuck inside alone, and if my phone weren’t able to get service, and no one was on the other end of the call button, I would be trapped for a long time before the groundskeeper might think to check on me. Days, at least. Mabel would arrive and no one would let her in. She would pound at the door and not even I would hear her. Eventually, she would get back in her cab and wait at the airport until she found a flight to take her home.

She would think it was almost predictable. That I would disappoint her. That I would refuse to be seen.

So I watch as the doors close again and then I head to the stairs.

The cab I called waits outside, engine idling, and I make a crushed ice trail from the dorm lobby, thankful for Hannah’s spare pair of boots, which are only a tiny bit small and which she forced on me when the first snow fell. (“You have no idea ,” she told me.)

The cab driver steps out to open my door. I nod my thanks.

“Where to?” he asks, once we’re both inside with the heat going strong, breathing the stale cologne-and-coffee air.