Four Chambers: Power of the Matchmaker Read online

  “You said that you never felt broken like other girls seemed to feel at break ups. You only ever felt relieved. You said that you figured you weren’t really missing anything if you couldn’t even muster the ability to care, which meant you didn’t really need those guys.”

  I remembered telling him that. I remembered the way our shoulders had been touching as we leaned back on the stairs. We were wrapped up in layers of jackets and scarves to ward off the cold humidity biting through our clothes and into our skin from the early October air. The icy chill seeped up through the cement into my jeans. I remembered really liking talking to Everett.

  But Greg had found us there and laughed about Everett trying to thieve his date. Greg had taken my hand and led me back into the house.

  And I hadn’t looked back.

  “I don’t get how this is profound,” I confessed. “Because I feel a little broken this time.”

  “Do you really? Or do you feel frustrated with school and studying and juggling the act of being the dutiful girlfriend for once in your life alongside being the serious student, just to have it backfire on you?”

  I was too tired to decipher his riddles. “I don’t know.” The cop-out answer would have to be sufficient.

  Everett put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “What I’m trying to say is that you don’t need this guy either, Andra.”

  “I just don’t want to be that girl, you know?”

  “What girl?”

  I grunted while searching my beaten-down mind to find an explanation. “The one who works so hard to prove she’s successful at being a career-minded woman, who can handle herself in a man-dominated world, that she loses all human connections, and ends up being a frosty tyrant that other people avoid at all costs.”

  Everett laughed hard enough that I felt like I was encircled by a mini-earthquake. “You are definitely not going to be that girl,” he affirmed.

  I moved enough that Everett had to drop his arm from my shoulder. “My dad is that guy.”

  “Which is why you don’t need to worry. You know what it’s like to deal with those kinds of people, so you won’t become a person like that.”

  I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, growled into my hands in frustration and finally scrambled to my feet. I eyed our artwork marking Greg’s passenger door. “Do you think it’ll wash off?”

  “No.”

  Well, at least he was honest—brutal, but honest. “Do you know what sucks about being an adult and doing stupid things?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” He looked up at me.

  “You have to clean your own messes.”

  Everett laughed and got to his feet as well. We reached into the bucket for rags at the same time, our fingers touching in the sudsy water. The spark of that touch felt like someone had dropped an electronic device in with us.

  I grabbed my rag and yanked my hand back out while frowning down at it. What was wrong with me?

  Trying to cover up the flush I felt crawling up my neck, I turned to the truck and began to scrub at the T. I let out a little gasp of surprise. “Hey, it’s coming off! I mean . . . it might take a while, but it’s coming off!”

  I scrubbed harder while still being careful to not scrub so hard, I actually drilled down into the real paint. Everett began working on the L so we weren’t bumping elbows into each other. After many long minutes, the two O’s looked like eyes with little shadow ear lines next to them. I almost wanted to paint matching pupils into those eyes.

  Everett dropped his rag with a wet squelch and pulled his phone from his pocket. “There has got to be a YouTube video for how to get spray paint off a car.” He stared at his screen, his finger swiping over it now and again until he broke into a grin. “Aha! Fingernail polish remover.”

  He tossed a wink to me and shook his head. “Seriously, what did people do before YouTube tutorials?”

  “My father says the internet fails to separate the wheat from the chaff because no one has to figure stuff out for themselves anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, your father’s wrong. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about knowing where to look when you need answers.”

  I appreciated that he said my father was wrong. Not many people dared. “Well, it’s no surprise. My father is wrong about everything.”

  “Not everything. He brought you into existence.”

  I shot Everett what I hoped was a withering look. “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but that was over the top.”

  Everett shrugged. “Maybe a little. I’ll just go get the nail polish remover.”

  I wiped my hair from my eyes, accidentally dripping sudsy water over the bridge of my nose and having to wipe that away too. “Why do you have nail polish remover?”

  Everett halted, clearly not anticipating being asked such a question. “It’s my prerogative to not disclose that information. I’ll be back in a minute.” He started up the stone steps of the house he and Greg shared.

  “Hey Everest?”

  He turned and tilted his head to the side in his familiar gesture of questioning.

  “Thanks . . . you know . . . for being my friend through all of this.”

  He paused for what seemed a long time before coming to some decision. “You know all those many months ago when we were sitting on the stairs to that party on your first date with Greg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was planning on asking you out.”

  I blinked, confused by this news, unsure what to do with it. But before I could reply, he’d already turned and disappeared behind the door.

  I leaned down and picked up the spray paint can from off the curb and stared down at what I held. In one hand was the can of red spray paint, still cold inside from expelling its energy. In the other was the sudsy rag that had gone a little pink with the scrubbing.

  In my hands was both the mess and the solution.

  I had become Greg’s girlfriend.

  Everett had planned to ask me out.

  Some part of me had known that at the party. Some part of me had been glad to make a Solo cup toast with Wheat Thins and peanut M&M’s.

  I was still blinking in confusion when the police car turned the corner of Greg’s street with its siren on and lights flashing, jolting to a halt right in front of Greg’s truck.

  I tightened my grip on the paint can and the wash rag, squared my shoulders, and faced what was coming.

  Chapter Two

  The neighbors had called the cops on us, and I was intensely glad I’d sent Janette home.

  When Everett came out with the bottle of nail polish remover to find me being apprehended by the lady cop, he halted so hard, he spilled the already uncapped bottle down the front of him. The wet swath darkened his jeans, and I worried it would discolor the dark blue denim. I wanted to tell him to go inside and change into something else so he could hurry and rinse his pants, but I didn’t want to draw attention to him, didn’t want anyone to see that the only person I felt any degree of friendliness toward in my current circumstances was Everett.

  If the police thought Everett was my friend, they would think he’d been an accomplice—which he was, but no one else needed to know that information.

  Unfortunately, the lady cop with the severe bun that likely gave her a headache noticed him and called him down the stairs to join us.

  “What do you have to do with this?” she asked before his foot made it to the bottom step.

  His glance slid toward and away from me as he opened his mouth to say something that was surely incriminating.

  “He caught me while I was painting!” I yelled it as if by shouting my confession, I would be able to get it out faster than he could get out his.

  “Yes,” I said and nodded as if agreeing with myself. “Yes, he caught me and then got me a bucket and water so I could clean it up. That’s also why he has nail polish remover. He was pretty unhappy with me for ruining his friend’s truck, and he talked some sense into me and convinced me tha
t I needed to take responsibility for my actions. And then he decided to help me clean it up because he’s a genuinely nice person.” I nodded some more and forced myself to look penitent.

  With the nail polish remover in his hands and the fact that I did indeed have a wash bucket with water and soap and had been scrubbing at the truck, the lady cop had no reason to suspect my story and she moved back to where the guy cop stood.

  “What are you doing?” Everett whispered.

  “There’s no reason for both of us to be in trouble.”

  “I can take the heat for my own actions.”

  “Yes, but now if you tell the truth, you’ll make me look like a liar, and I’ll get into even more trouble. So keep your do-gooder attitude out of this, okay?”

  He closed his mouth with a click of his teeth. The muscles in his jaw tightened with his irritation at me for yanking him out of the equation. Idiot Everest. It was like he wanted to get kicked out of school.

  A frothing, sleep-addled Greg hurled himself out his front door. His eyes were wild. “My truck!” He brayed the words, his mouth hanging open, his wild eyes wide in disbelief. “Andra? What’s going on?”

  I silently watched him without answering. Watched the way he flailed his arms and demanded answers. Watched the way he crooned and cried over a piece of metal used for transportation. And watched how he had immediately assumed I did the horrible defacing deed.

  I mean, I had done it. But if he’d had any loyalty toward me at all, shouldn’t he have assumed I’d come upon the crime scene and caught a delinquent perpetrator. Didn’t the fact that, without hesitation, he painted me as the delinquent perpetrator mean something?

  Only two reasons existed for him to think I was guilty of acting the part of a jilted lover. One, he was guilty of doing the jilting. And two, he didn’t really care about me to begin with.

  “My truck! Andra! How could you? Why does it say OO? What does that even mean? You know what this truck means to me! You know how much I love this truck!” He wailed these words like a paid mourner.

  He didn’t even stop when Everett said, “Dude, it’s a truck. Kind of not important in the long term, you know. Don’t you think you and Andra should have a different kind of conversation? You know . . . the kind where you explain to her what happened with Allyson last night?”

  “Allyson?” He blinked in confusion as to why Everett would bring up the other woman in my presence. “I don’t know what that . . .”

  Everett spoke slowly, as if talking to a child. I would’ve laughed except the lady cop took me by the arm and sat me down on the curb as if I was going to flee the crime scene and sitting me down would make such an action impossible, or at least more difficult.

  I turned to face Everett and Greg so I could observe the conversation.

  “Allyson, you know, from last night?” Everett continued. “You have to understand that Andra had a reason to act as she did. You have to know she would not have damaged your property without sufficient evidence to make her angry. Aren’t you going to ask her why she felt angry? Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why she’s angry?”

  The guy cop showed up. “This is your vehicle?” he said to Greg which set Greg back to wailing over the piteous condition of his ride.

  There were questions, paperwork filled out, more questions.

  Sitting on a curb with the policewoman and policeman moving around me and doing their jobs while neighbors and onlookers came to gawk at the free ticket to a real-life drama wasn’t really as bad as I’d imagined it might be.

  A little embarrassing, sure.

  A little flustering, absolutely.

  But Everett had been right.

  I wasn’t broken.

  As Greg grabbed handfuls of his golden, wavy hair—the same hair the little tramp had been running her fingers through last night—and asked me over and over again why I would do such a hateful thing, I considered all the emotions inside me.

  And found myself not really feeling much of anything.

  Did that make me a sociopath?

  Did that make me incapable of real human connection?

  Was I already a frosty tyrant?

  I peeked a glance at Everett as he hovered around the edges of the circus I’d created and gnawed on his already-gnawed fingernails—another of his nervous study habits. He’d already been wrung out entirely, shaken down by both the police and by Greg, who wanted to know what his involvement in the vandalism had been. I maintained loudly, and in a tone that commanded authority, that Everett had come upon me while I was in the act and then rushed in to get something to clean it up so it wouldn’t dry and become permanent.

  The cops believed me.

  Everett scowled at me.

  Greg ranted at me.

  At the end of the day, I was cited for a misdemeanor of vandalism, but I wasn’t arrested, and they didn’t slap the felony charge that they could have on me. The fact that I had the washcloth in my hands was evidence to my intent to make retribution. The fact that Everett had the nail polish remover, which worked like the sorcery of a candy house on little German children, gave evidence to the fact that he was innocent in everything. The fact that we were able to clean up the mess meant a lesser charge against me.

  A citation.

  I didn’t think a citation sounded so bad. Not anything worse than a traffic violation. Surely that would not jeopardize my standing in school.

  When the circus had played out all of its various acts, the police issued a no trespass on me. This meant I was not allowed to enter the vicinity of Greg’s personal property ever again, or at least not until further notice.

  Then they sent me home.

  And for the first time since knowing Everett, I looked back as I was leaving him.

  Looked back and wondered.

  I should’ve never gone into the house with Greg all those months ago, I thought. I should’ve stayed and seen what might have happened with someone different.

  But that time to choose was gone.

  Sorry, Everett, I thought. And, as if he heard my thoughts, his mouth turned down into something so sad, it almost made me want to cry.

  So. I wasn’t totally frosty.

  Not yet.

  Chapter Three

  Four days after Bad-Judgment Day, I absently answered a call from an unknown number. My stomach sank into my toes as the voice on the other end invited me to visit the office of the dean over the school of medicine at Boston University. By invite, the dean’s secretary meant that if I failed to show up, I might as well never show up to another class again.

  Of course I went and went early to prove myself to be a responsible person who could keep things like appointments.

  Dean Jasmine Connery, known by the students as Jazzy Dean, stared me down from over her laptop when I entered her office. She closed the lid with a click and folded her hands neatly on top. The volumes lining the shelves behind her sagged on the shelves as if they’d been there since the Revolutionary War.

  “Well,” she began.

  Well indeed.

  She used words like disappointed, baffled, and saddened by my destructive behavior toward another student. How could I, a model exemplary student with so much potential, be capable of such reprehensible criminal mischief?

  I embarrassed the school.

  I threatened my scholarship.

  I made her look bad through my outrageous and inexcusable behavior.

  She had seen so much potential in me since I graduated high school with an associate’s degree that boasted top grades and since I had maintained that high academic standard while completing my bachelor’s.

  I had utterly let her, and the school, down.

  Egregious. Contemptible. Shameful. Shocking. Despicable.

  I left her office scarred with a knowledge that all those adjectives were deserved. I tucked my hands into the sleeves of my sweater, feeling cold in spite of the warm day and bent my head to walk to my apartment, crawl into my bed, and die a little
.

  “I came as soon as I found out.”

  The words startled me out of my self-loathing. “Everett?” He leaned against a tree, as if he’d been waiting for me. “What are you doing here?”

  He shoved off the tree and hurried to join me on the sidewalk. “Greg was talking to one of his friends about how he made sure Jazzy Dean found out about the incident with his truck. She never would have known if he hadn’t called since the incident happened off-campus and you were only slapped on the wrist. I can’t begin to express how much I hate that guy right now. So what happened? Is everything okay? Do you need me to go and confess to my part in it? Because I will. Whatever you need, I’ll do.”

  It warmed me a little to know that someone cared, someone had my back in this crazy mess. Even Greg’s extra dig at me failed to hurt as much as it might have if Everett hadn’t been there. “Don’t worry about it. She just wanted to yell at me. I’m not kicked out or anything.”

  “What about your scholarship? Is that okay?”

  That was the kicker. “I don’t know,” I said. We began walking under the newly budding trees that smelled like honey and New England springtime.

  “What does that mean?”

  “My scholarship isn’t only academic, it’s also a community-based scholarship, which means my actions in the community affect my eligibility to keep the scholarship.” I pulled a few pink buds off a low hanging limb and shredded them between my fingers.

  “And what does that mean?” He said the words slowly, deliberately, as if he feared the answer.

  “It means she will be talking to her review board, and they will be making a decision based on all the information.”

  Review boards seldom chose mercy when justice made such a better example to everyone else.

  “I’m so sorry, Andra.”

  Our walking became aimless, the meandering of my lost spirit taking form in the actual path we trod.

  “It’s my own fault. I bought the paint and didn’t stop to think about the long term consequences.”

  We were turned toward the BU beach and walked until I felt too tired under the strain of what might happen with the review board. I sat on the grass and stared out over Storrow Drive toward the river.