Georgie, All Along (10)

By making a mess of my own.

I set the notebook on the coffee table and drop my duffel in the center of the living room floor, crouching to unzip it. Before I left Bel’s, I shoved my phone inside here, fearing its siren song of phantom chimes, and I dig it out and put it facedown—points to me for not checking it—beside the notebook. The overalls I’m wearing are heavy now, damp with a day’s worth of driving sweat, and while I probably should shower first, my more settled stomach is now nudging at me with hunger. I’ve got a real hankering for comfort food before I try washing the day off, and I know what I want to be wearing while I do it.

I rummage through the duffel, pulling out hastily rolled clothes and a couple of toiletry bags, all of which I leave on the rug while I search. Near the bottom I find a candle wrapped in a pair of running shorts and also three loose teabags, which is truly ridiculous, a sign of the chaotic, rushed state I was in when I finally—after putting it off as long as possible—packed up my few personal belongings. Finally, though, I find it: a thin, brightly colored, flower-patterned robe Nadia gave me during a closet cleanout a few years ago. It’s got bell-shaped sleeves and goes all the way to the floor with a short train in the back, and it makes me feel like I’m on a soap opera. This is the kind of robe you put on when you’ve lost your job and your former teacher thinks you’re pathetic, and also your best friend might think you are, too. This is the kind of robe you put on when you’re about to eat snacks and read a diary of your adolescent fantasies. This robe is for glamor.

I unhook the overalls and let them fall to the ground, stepping out of them clumsily even as I perform the task of exhausted women everywhere—taking my bra off without removing my top. Once I’ve pulled it through the armhole of my tank, I fling it onto the old, slouchy couch, sending it the disgusted glare that all bras deserve after a long, hot day. Then, it’s soap opera robe time. It’s hideously wrinkled from its tightly rolled position in the duffel, but by some miracle it’s still cool and smooth on my skin, which is excellent since my parents don’t believe in air conditioning. I don’t bother tying it at my waist; I just open a few windows and swan my way back into the kitchen, letting the lapels flap open and the train swoop—glamorously? pathetically?—behind me.

I prepare for slim or spoiled pickings in the fridge, but I’m surprised to find a fresh carton of eggs and a gallon of milk. I’ll have to verify with a smell check later, but that’s not what I’m looking for anyway. I know what I can count on in this house—there is absolutely going to be a jar of natural peanut butter in the fridge door (there!), and in the freezer I’ll find (yep) a loaf of my mom’s favorite gluten-free bread. In the pantry, I reach for the jar of honey and the box of raisins, and within five minutes I’ve made toast that is slathered in a truly inappropriate amount of peanut butter and honey mixture, topped with a sprinkle of raisins and sea salt. I’ve left crumbs on the counter, the peanut-buttered knife, too, but I can’t make myself care. It’s all part of the plan tonight, and the plan is me in my robe, eating this toast, and finding out whether it’s wishful thinking for this fic to have an answer for me.

And at first, I’ll admit—it does seem like wishful thinking. After all, young me struggled with the difference between their, there, and they’re, so maybe answers will be more difficult to parse. Plus, there’s the surplus of Evan Fanning (every a a heart; why, Georgie, WHY?), who I have placed in an embarrassing number of scenarios, including one where I blow him a kiss from the stands before his football game for luck (a whole two pages on this!).

And there’s also the fact that I was this committed to the fic at all. Seventy percent of this notebook is filled with my writing, which is probably evidence of every lousy thing Mrs. Michaels was surely thinking about me today. If I would’ve made even half the effort on my classes as I made on this fic, at the very least I probably would not be twenty-eight years of age, sitting on my parents’ couch in my underwear, a stained tank top, and a hand-me-down soap opera robe.

Except eventually . . . well, eventually, I get used to the clumsy grammar, the relentless crush, the sheer devotion I showed to this. I start reading, really reading, with the same set of eyes and the same stirring, curious hopefulness I’d felt back at Bel’s when I’d first seen it. Sure, the fic is fantastical, but it’s also full of what would have looked, to eighth-grade me, like perfectly reasonable plans for the years Bel and I had in front of us. Back then, I wasn’t only a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type. I was the type to have intentions. I intended that my first-ever summer job would be at the Fanning’s inn in Iverley. I intended that Bel and I would jump off Buzzard’s Neck dock the weekend before the first day of school, wishes for the year written, per local tradition, in Sharpie marker on our arms. I intended to shop for clothes at the trendy tourist boutiques in Sott’s Mill, and I intended to get drunk for the first time with Bel: bottles of hard cider and watching the sorts of horror movies my parents and her mom never let us see. I was going to go to prom. I was going to spend a Friday night dancing at The Bend. I was going to spray-paint my initials on the big rock outside of the high school’s football stadium.

Nothing blank about it.

What happened to this girl? I think, tracing my fingers over the lines.

I could blame it all on Nadia, I suppose—the pace she kept and the way she worked ensured that the only real plans I could ever make, the only futures I could ever imagine, involved how to make her life work better. Every assistant I knew in LA worked hard, some of them to the point of total burnout or worse—dangerous habits that would keep them wired all day and into the night. But I also know that a lot of them absorbed the routines of whomever they worked for—up at the same time, familiar with favorite mealtimes and favorite meal spots, drop-offs and pickups with the same set of service providers each week, preferred modes of travel, whatever. Nadia, though, was a hurricane—her creativity huge and borderless, seeping into every decision she made. Sometimes she wanted me to book flights for early in the morning, sometimes for the middle of the day. She liked trying new places to eat, went through early-morning yoga and Vitamix phases and phases where she’d sleep until eleven and refuse food until after four in the afternoon. With Nadia, I never bothered to think much about what the next day or even the next hour would bring. What future I saw for myself was my phone in my hand for my waking hours, ready to execute whatever she asked of me.