Sweet Sorrow Chapter 17

It was all about the phone call. Isabelle was the one who made it, after three long days of deliberation. Telling someone, anyone, would make the whole issue undeniably real, and, worst of all, it would force her to take some sort of action. She wouldn’t be able to go along pretending there was nothing to worry about anymore. Classes at Yale had resumed almost two months ago, and Isabelle had been in denial for almost as long. Now, she lay on her bed in her single room branching of the common area that was shared by four other girls. It was nearly eight o’ clock on a Tuesday night, and she really should have been studying for her Arabic test the next morning. But lately, Isabelle had been able to do little more than sit on her bed and stare and the ceiling and curse everything she could think of. Maybe this was her punishment for not believing in some kind of God.

“Isabelle?” Leah’s soft British accent and a crack of golden light entered the room. Isabelle closed her eyes and decided quickly that her favorite roommate knew her too well for her to pretend to be asleep.

“Isabelle, are you awake or what?” It wasn’t Leah this time. Isabelle could hear the unnecessarily loud tone of Delia, another one of her roommates and not one of her favorite people at Yale. Delia had a big chest and a huge IQ, and she was far closer to being a slut than she cared to admit. Isabelle made a face in her fake-sleep and grudgingly sat up.

“Yes, I’m awake,” she snapped, “was there something in particular you needed?” She wouldn’t have been this cold if it was just Leah, and thankfully the tiny, pixie-like brunette seemed to understand. Leah crossed the room cautiously and came to sit on the edge of the bed. Without a hint of hesitation, Delia did the same, and flopped into Isabelle’s hard plastic desk chair.

“Not really,” Leah said dreamily. She was watching Isabelle with her big, concerned blue eyes. Isabelle had always been so jealous of her friend, for ending up with that fantastic combination of dark hair and blue eyes. “We were just thinking of going over to ESM for dinner with Amber, and we were wondering if you wanted to come.” Isabelle hadn’t eaten any lunch, deciding instead to use the break to catch a nap, and she was absolutely starving. But dinner with her roommates didn’t sound as appealing as it once might have.

“You’ve been all morose and woe-is-me since you got back from your little vacation,” Delia said loudly. She was rolling a tootsie pop in between her lips as she spoke, and the sound was making Isabelle crazy. “You barely ever come to dinner with us anymore. I would personally be over the moon if I’d had sex with a Jonas Brother.”

“Leah!” Isabelle gasped indignantly. She had told her friend the details of what had transpired with Nick on the beach in utter confidence.

“I didn’t tell her!” Leah hurried to assure her. “I swear, Isabelle. Delia, don’t be such a little cow,” she demanded. Her cute accent and use of British slang could usually get her out of trouble, but not with her roommates.

“Re-lax,” Delia groaned. She pulled her knees up to her chest and took an aggravatingly loud suck on her lollipop. “These walls aren’t soundproof or anything. I just heard, okay? And relax, it’s not like I spread it around campus. I mean, I didn’t even tell Andrew, for fuck’s sake!” Andrew was Delia’s boyfriend, a hockey player at Yale who Isabelle, surprisingly enough, liked a lot.

“God,” Isabelle said angrily. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” She glared at Leah, irrationally. But being easier at her friend was easier than being angry with herself.

“I didn’t do anything!” Leah protested. “You can’t blame me for Delia being a nosy little shit stirrer. Come on, Is, we all know that’s not the real issue here. Del is right, you’ve been down. What your hang-up?” For a moment, Isabelle thought it might have been okay to tell them. It would be easier, and maybe it would lighten the weight she was currently feeling on her chest. Maybe they could share her burden. But still, something felt wrong. She wasn’t ready to admit it to herself yet, let alone to Leah and Delia, and least of all Amber, their fourth roommate, who almost never spoke and spent most of her time on the computer.

“I know, Leah, I’m not blaming you. I’m just being silly. And thanks for the invite, but I’ve got a huge Arabic test tomorrow. I really should study.” She smiled earnestly at Leah and hoped this would be enough.

“Okay,” Leah replied uncertainly, but not suspiciously. “I’ll bring you a salad and some chocolate chip cookies, okay?”

“Thanks,” Isabelle replied gratefully. “I’m fine, really, I’m just a bit tired. And about the whole…Jonas Brothers thing, it really wasn’t that big a deal. We’ve been e-mailing and stuff, so maybe we can talk tonight, and I’ll perk myself up a little.” That last part was a lie. When she’d first gotten back to Yale, Nick hadn’t answered the single e-mail she’d sent him, and now he was the one person she really couldn’t bare to talk to.

“Alright, love,” Leah said, and Delia nodded her approval. “Study hard, and then we can go out this weekend, okay?”

“Definitely,” Isabelle lied again. She smiled at her roommates as they backed out the door from whence they’d come. As soon as the door was shut again, she rolled over and slammed her face into her pillow. After a moment of thinking absolutely nothing in the surrounding of pure blackness, she rolled back onto her back and tried to think of something to do with herself. Arabic didn’t really seem like an option, even though she was all but failing the semester. Her computer glowed passively from the desk and Isabelle crept over to her chair. She was wearing her favorite thermal leggings and a long, thick plaid shirt that reminded her vaguely of Nick, but she was still pervasively cold. With a quick jiggle of the mouse, the computer screen flushed to life, with her Gmail account already open. It was the pictures, in the end that made her decision for her. Or one picture in particular. The picture was what drove her fingers to the buttons to actually dial out the call. There was a new e-mail from Zack, or zbl@gmail.com. Of the four of them, he was the only one with a normal e-mail address. Natalie, Isabelle and Samantha had all agreed to let each other make their g-mail accounts in junior year. Isabelle herself was BelleoftheBall, Samantha was SamIAm and Natalie got the fairly appropriate Natattack. Of course, they had more formal accounts that they used for school and their parents and work, but everything that really mattered to them went to their G-mails. Zack’s e-mail bore the subject line “new pictures” in his typical excited capitals. Isabelle clicked on it and scanned the text quickly”

To everybody,

You’ll never what happened to me! The guy who teaches my Calculus Applications class is also in charge of the amateur photography club at Harvard, and he happened to see some of the pictures I took of you guys during our trip to visit Sam. He thought they were really cool and interesting, and I get to show them at this little gallery deal next Friday! It’s not that big of a thing, it’s really amateur and everything, but I would absolutely love if you guys had the time to come down and see it. We always go and visit Nat and Sam, and you all never come down to Harvard. Back me up, Isabelle! Anyway, you guys are in it, and I know how much you love to see your own faces, so that should be incentive enough. Let me know,

Zack

Isabelle blinked twice, and then swallowed. She vaguely recalled Zack’s camera flashing at unexpected, candid times, but it was far more likely to be aimed towards Samantha and Natalie than her. With another quick click, she opened the attachment and was bombarded with Zack’s trademark candid, glowing photos. The first and largest reminded Isabelle of those Converse Running ads, where the three joyous girls were sneaking out of a pool in some sort of artificial illumination. The edges of the picture had the complete blackness of night, but the camera’s flash had illuminated the four figures at its center and given the water that rose up to their knees a ghostly, transparent sheen. On the far right of the image, Natalie was actually flying through the air. Her skinny arms and legs were outstretched and her yellow underwear had taken on sort of neon glow. Her face, in profile, was wild and joyous, and she was almost close enough to touch Joe, in his damp boxers, whose mouth was shaped into a silent, unsuspecting shout. There was a large gap and then Samantha, in her colorful underwear, with an ear-to-ear grin on her face as she slapped water into the air. It was a fantastic effect, the way the translucent water flew up into the air around her body. Samantha was smiling straight ahead, but it was clear that she wasn’t looking at the camera, but instead at something behind it, beyond. The light on her face came from something that no one but her could see. Of course Jason, at her side, had his face lit up with the same sort of luminosity. He was standing and watching her, in his soaked jeans with his arms crossed over a muscular chest. The look in his eyes was one of pure adoration. Isabelle stared at the picture for a moment and tried to imagine what she and Nick had been doing at the moment it had been taken. She’d like to think they’d still just been sitting innocently by the fire, but she strongly suspected that this was a ways away from the truth. With a nostalgic sort of half-smile on her face, she clicked to the next picture. This one was of Samantha and Jason, and Isabelle knew her best friend well enough to know that Sam would never have allowed this picture to be taken, let alone published, if she had her way. The photo personified Isabelle’s jealousy of her friend’s tan skin. Samantha and Jason were clasped tightly together in the very center of the image, up to their waists in water. Both of their torsos were mostly naked, and glowing a gorgeous bronze. Their stomachs were pressed together, and Sam’s hands were linked together at Jason’s lower back with her head cocked up to look at him. His head was similarly angled down to look at her, and his arms gripped her shoulders as though he would drown without her. Neither was smiling. For a moment, Isabelle thought of how a person could smile or frown or grimace or grin or make any other number of expressions, but the word love was never associated with the way the face composed itself. To her, that was exactly what Samantha and Jason were doing. They were loving, with their eyes and their lips and their teeth and every other part of their bodies. Isabelle clicked quickly to the next photograph. This was the one that made her decision for her. She had definitely not noticed it being taken, and she suspected that it was one of the only ones she would be in. Isabelle vaguely remembered that Zack and Natalie’s plane had come before hers, and all three of them, plus Jason, had been waiting for her when she walked out towards the baggage claim. And then here it was, all captured in Zack’s oddly colorful photograph. She was standing with her coat discarded by her feet and a scream of pure joy frozen on her face. Samantha was bounding across the industrial looking airport floor, in her little white shorts, with her pretty hair streaming out behind her head. Her face was composed in the exact same way as Isabelle’s. Was it not for the difference in skin tones, they could have been twins. Isabelle immediately backed away from the computer and scrambled over to her bed to get her phone from where it rested by her pillow. She felt a little foolish for having doubted that she could tell her best friend exactly what was going on. They had so much shared, they were in so many ways the same. Sam would understand in an instant. More than anything, Isabelle was struck by the way she had been standing still in the photo, while Samantha moved towards her. Her friend could be exactly what she needed right now: the one who would move, act, repair, while Isabelle could stand still.