Preface & Part 1

“I’ll pick you up at 7:30,” he had said.

That was the end of the conversation, but I knew it was just the beginning of another rollercoaster.

I knew it meant we were “on again”….

Just as I had predicted, X and I somehow managed to get back together and break up again in the three weeks before Thanksgiving break. We broke up the day before break, actually, and I went back to Cedar Rapids an “off again” girl. But I had the internet in Cedar Rapids, so I chatted with Joey in all my free time. He was everything I wished I had, and everything I knew I couldn’t. Somehow he could always make me laugh, no matter what we were talking about. And he had the most random, quirky hobbies: unicycling, speed-solving Rubik’s cubes, juggling…you name it.

I learned that he had four younger brothers, two dogs and lived in a small town twenty miles outside of Des Moines. He worked in the same hospital as his mom, in the same unit, actually. I discovered that he played tenor saxophone and was in the marching band in high school. I managed to squeeze the names of his first two cars out of him and no one – no one – had managed to do that. (What, like I’m gonna tell you? He swore me to secrecy.) He shared with me that he became a Christian in Awana when he was in third grade.

I was fascinated.

The day after Thanksgiving, my sister (whom I call Sister…she does have a given name, but we never use it) asked if I wanted to go to Coral Ridge Mall with her and Grandma.

Are you kidding me? Of course I wanted to go. Grandma handed me the keys and we piled into the Jeep. We hadn’t gone shopping yet this holiday, and it was a Laird girl tradition…one we weren’t about to break this year.

“I think I want to double-pierce my ears,” I announced boldly as we were driving.

“Oh! OK, I’ll come with you!” Sister exclaimed. She had recently done hers and I thought it was so cute.

X had articulated very firm and set opinions about double-piercing ears when I told him that Sister had done hers last month, but now that we were “off again”, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to do whatever I wanted.

Grandma wasn’t thrilled with the prospect, she couldn’t stand the thought of ear piercing because it seemed so painful, but not only was she a good sport and came along for the adventure, she somehow wound up paying for it too. Grandma drew the line at watching, though, because she said the thought gave her the heebie-jeebies. I sat in the ear-piercing chair and noticed her pacing around outside the store trying desperately to think about something other than earrings going through my ear lobes.

Grandma has lived her entire life without pierced ears, but she had oodles of clip-on earrings, so you’d never know it to look at her that she thinks piercing ears is gross.

“In just a minute we’ll be twins!” Sister crowed. She was keeping my mind off the fact that the ear-piercing lady was drawing dots on my ears, wiping me down with some strange-smelling alcohol pads, and lining up a huge white gun on my earlobe.

Suddenly, “OW!” I yelped. I squeezed the bear that Sister had given me to hold very tightly.

The second ear hurt worse than the first.

I walked out of Claire’s Boutique feeling somehow lighter, freer than I had when I walked in with only one earring in each earlobe. (I had failed to check, though, to see if double piercing was allowed in the Student Handbook at my college…had I done that I would have discovered that it is not. A violable offense, to be sure.) My ears hurt so badly, but I wasn’t about to complain. It was one chink in the armor…one sign that maybe, just maybe, I could say goodbye to X (and his firm and set opinions) for good.

Later that evening I was laying on my bed in the basement-basement at my parents’ house sticking my feet up in the air, trying to line them up perfectly, one eye closed, with the rafters in the ceiling. (In Iowa, sometimes you have to get creative to have fun. It was too cold to chase cows, so this was the best I could come up with on short notice.) My new piercings hurt like Charles Dickens and I was beginning to wonder if the unnatural heat radiating from my new holes was the judgment of God for flagrantly defying my ex boyfriend’s wishes, particularly when I was pretty sure we’d be “on again” within three weeks.

Once my legs got tired of my little game, I shuffled over to the computer.

Ooh! Joey’s on! My stomach did an illegal flip-flop and I looked at the clock. Five minutes; if he hasn’t talked to me within five minutes I can start a conversation with him.

A girl shouldn’t come across as desperate, so that’s why I had The Five Minute Rule.

At four minutes and forty-five seconds, I received the IM I had been waiting for.

How’s your day? He asked me.

Oh, fine. I got my ears double-pierced and it hurts like heck.

We chatted for thirty minutes about snow, the lack thereof, the Lord of the Rings movie coming out over Christmas break that we were both anticipating (but not allowed to see – school rule, we could totally get kicked out if we broke it) and sundry other topics, until…

Maybe we could go see that movie over break? He asked.

And suddenly, I knew I had not been careful enough. I wasn’t sure if he was interested in me or not, but the reality of the concept scared me. I wasn’t even sure why I was scared, because I had clearly developed a crush on him…I reasoned that I was probably scarred from the multiple breakups with X and was unable to have a normal relationship with anyone at this point.

I doubt it, I hedged, I’ll be in Cedar Rapids.

I came up with some lame excuse and signed off line. I couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t let him like me, not with this X mess I was all tied up in, not quite sure where the end would be.

It was so quiet down in the basement-basement. Everyone else was asleep, it seemed, and as I glanced at the clock, I realized that I should be too. Midnight. I ambled across what used to be the playroom when we were kids and into my bedroom. I did a quick Wolf spider sweep of the room (those things are big, brown, hairy and disgusting; I refuse to be in the same space as they are) and flopped into bed.

My dang cell phone rang.

X.

“Hello?” I asked, trying to sound sleepy. Make him think he’d woken me up.

“What’s up,” he asked, nonchalant as usual.

I related the events of my day (except the part about chatting online with Joey – that was my sweet little secret) and, finally got up the courage to say, “Oh, and I got my ears double pierced.”

Silence.

“You did?” He asked.

“I did.” I said, firmly. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy but I was sick and tired of being told to look like this and that. What I really wanted to do was cut all my horrible hair off that he preferred I grow…but I wasn’t quite to that stage of rebellion/freedom yet, so the hair stayed for now.

I managed to extricate myself from the conversation without becoming “on again”, which I considered a great accomplishment. We had, though, made plans to have dinner the night we got back to school. I couldn’t say no, even though I wished I could.

So I fell asleep and dreamed about Joey.

To Be Continued…