Instead, I wave at Jake. “Anna doesn’t like crowds,” Margot tells him, seeing my face. Jake does not care how I feel about crowds. He starts caressing Margot’s arm up and down, a giant smile taking over his face. This is when I finally realize they didn’t only meet at this party. They’re dating. No wonder I haven’t seen her around. Even though she is a self-proclaimed radical feminist, has a Chicks Before Dicks shirt in heavy rotation, when Margot has a new boyfriend, Margot drops off planet earth.
Margot tries to tell me something else, but I can’t hear her over the noise, which I’m no longer sure can be called music. It’s almost as if someone was making an effort to have every song be worse than the last, then decided on a mishmash of fire alarms instead. But I am the only one to think this, clearly; a group of girls scream with delight at this noise and start dancing against each other drunkenly. One of them falls onto the floor, taking an Obama poster down with her as she goes. Margot doesn’t seem to be bothered by any of it, as if she’s been here before a hundred times and this is perfectly normal. Which, I suppose might be correct. Despite having art in common, we don’t often hang with the same crowds. Margot likes to skateboard and hike in the woods; she enjoys normal things like going out for nice dinners or seeing movies with boys she meets in class, not going to basement shows or drinking endless amounts of coffee in cold cafés.
“Anna!” Margot cries, seeing me getting my sweatshirt and coat back on. She extends a hand towards me, shifting halfway up the armchair. But she doesn’t get up, either. I bumpily extract myself from the sweaty, perfumed bodies around us and escape onto the porch.
ANNA
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I stop when I get to the stairs of the porch and take out a cigarette. Outside, thick, white flakes of snow are crashing into the ground in sheets. The lighter I thought I had in my pocket is gone, so I turn to the other person on the porch, a lanky punk rocker-type with bright blue eyes and blue hair. Before I can even ask, he is handing me an ornate BIC with a set of initials on them. TS. His eyes lock on mine, in a way that brings a shiver down my spine. I take another close look at him and notice he is older, likely approaching his thirties, with freckles pooling around his nose and stiff, muscular shoulders. He definitely doesn’t fit in with this crowd, but it’s college, so who knows how he ended up here. “You can keep it if you want. I have a few.”
“Oh no, that’s okay,” I reply.
“I’m trying to quit,” he says. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
I light my cigarette then pocket the lighter. It’s not worth it to keep arguing. “I should probably quit too, I guess,” I say. “But it’s not really the best time for me to be making any major life decisions.”
The cute guy’s eyes are still locked onto mine, deep and penetrating. Instead of turning away in boredom like most would, he asks, “Why not?” While I’m thinking of a non-TMI answer, the door opens and closes behind me, and I turn to see Margot, her thick hair looking more messy than usual, half falling out of her hat.
“Anna, hold on a sec,” she says, grabbing hold of my arm and pulling me down the steps, away from the cute guy and into the snow. She takes my cigarette and has a drag before continuing. “I have to talk to you about something.”
“Yeah, me too,” I add reluctantly. I’m expecting some sort of apology or an explanation about Jake, but what I get has nothing to do with any of that. “You go first.”
“Um,” she starts. “It’s about the house.”
“You mean August?”
“Not exactly,” she says. “I talked to Bukowski today about replacing August, and turns out he didn’t even know there were four of us living there and he’s kicking us out. He said it’s illegal.” Bukowski is our landlord. His name isn’t really Bukowski, but that’s what we call him because he is an exact ringer for the once famous poet.
“What!”
“He also said he’s been getting noise complaints from the neighbors, and that he doesn’t want to rent to college kids anymore,” Margot says. “It sounds like bullshit to me. Who else would rent that dump if not students? But anyway we have to move out.”
“I thought Abby said it was okay. She talked to him when August moved in.”
“Well,” Margot says, her eyes turning hard. “I told you we couldn’t exactly trust her. She’s a train wreck, Anna. You have to be blind not to see that.” She takes another drag of my cigarette. “I think it was that fire Abby started. It was the final straw.”
“What happened between you two?” I ask, finally unable to keep it inside any longer. “One second you’re in love and the next you hate each other.”
Margot laughs. “In love. Please. We made out a few times, that’s it.” She steals my cigarette and takes an angry pull. “She could fall in love with a tree branch if it called her beautiful.”
I frown. “That’s not very nice. What did she do that was so bad?”
Margot shakes her head again. “Forget it. Anna, some people are just not meant to cohabitate.”
“What about us?” I ask, visibly hurt.
“I didn’t mean us.”
“Where are we supposed to move in four days? And what about August’s stuff? He’s supposedly in Georgia. Or headed there, or something, I don’t know…”
“That’s the other thing.” Margot looks away, biting down on her lip. “Don’t be mad…”
My stomach drops. Her face shows pity, which is not a good sign. “What.”
“Well, with August gone, and the fact that we have to move out, and you know I can’t stand Abby anyway…” she says. “Anyway, Jake said I could stay with him during winter break, and then I might move in here, with Alex and Julie until the semester is over. One of her roommates is transferring to Eau Claire.”
This hits me harder than anything else I’ve heard so far. Maybe I really should have stayed home tonight. I could cry, if that was something I could ever possibly stomach. I may be many things, but I’m definitely not crying-in-public girl. That is Margot’s friend Julie. She is probably crying in there right now somewhere. “What the fuck, Margot.”
Margot still doesn’t look at me. “Sorry.”
“Don’t we have a lease?” I ask her. “How can he do that?”
“He can break a lease if there’s a violation,” Margot explains. “At least, that’s what he said. It’s not worth it to me to argue about it.”
“But we love our house!”
“Sure, I like the house… but I don’t like all the Riverwest people coming over as much as you do. Everyone there is so… angry. They’re like kids throwing a tantrum or something. Except they’re old, so it’s not cute.”
“I won’t let them over anymore,” I argue. “And we can ask Abby to move. Done.”
“It’ll just be for the rest of the semester,” Margot explains. “I swear. Next fall, we can get another place anywhere you want.”
“Next fall? What am I supposed to do till next fall?”
She thinks about it for a moment. “Live with your parents?”
“There is no way in hell I’m going to do that.” The fact that Margot suggested it only shows how distant we have become. It’s bad enough I’m already wasting most of my time studying a subject they chose for me, I’m not about to spend the rest of my free time sitting in their horrible house in the suburbs while they ask me where I am going and when I will be back. Plus, I don’t have a car. “You just fucking met this guy,” I say, waving towards the house. “Now you’re going to live with him?”