Again by Lisa Burstein

said, discounting Dawn. She was the only one who’d even questioned me,
but then again why would anyone expect me to be doing what I was doing?
    That
only happened in movies, right?
    “What’s
it like being back in college?” Veronica asked with what I would describe as a
wistful voice.
    She
had good memories from her times on campus. She had finished college. Graduated
magna cum laude and all sorts of other Greek letters strung together from every
school she attended. The pieces of paper proving her intelligence hung on every
wall of her office, but she was an accountant for the Franklin Law Group, and
she hated it.
    I
guess those pieces of paper didn’t make any difference if the place they led
you was hell.
    The
same hell I’d been in.
    “Good,”
I said. Truthfully, it was weird. It was hard to remember to consider my life
the way the laughing girls did. I might have rewound my situation, but I couldn’t
forget any of the things I knew. “My roommate looks like she sucks the blood
from baby bunnies for strength but otherwise…”
    “What
does that mean?” she interrupted.
    “She
wears black like she needs it to breathe,” I explained. “It’s cool, I can
handle her.”
    “Only
you would go back to school and get a roommate with mental issues.”
    Maybe,
but water did seek its own level. Maybe even more so now that I was only
drinking water. I took a long sip from the plastic bottle in my bag, wondering
how long I would need to be sober for water to finally have the effect of that
first sip of wine.
    Wondering
how many years it took before I wouldn’t wish for numbness anymore.
    “How’s
work?” I asked, a little wistful too.
    “How
do you think?”
    I
didn’t bother responding. I knew what it was like to be trapped, stuck, to know
the walls around you were a coffin, or eventually would be. Maybe Dawn was rubbing
off on me. Or maybe that’s what happens to everyone as they are about to turn
thirty—the threshold where their life isn’t theirs anymore. It belongs instead
to the people they sleep with, the people who pay them, and the people they
have to pay.
    “So
are you studying hard?” she asked. Veronica knew about my real freshman year.
How instead of studying books I studied a bottle and any guy around once the
bottle was gone. Being back, finally being sober, I realized my first freshman
year had never ended.
    That’s
what I’d been doing with David, with every sip I took to forget how much I
hated where I’d ended up.
    “As
hard as I can study day three,” I replied.
    “Studying
anything that’s hard ?” she asked, I could hear her smirk through the
phone.
    “Um,
no,” I said, shaking away the Carter, Professor Parker GIF loop still playing
in the darkest part of my brain.
    “So
you’re seriously doing this as a nun?”
    “I’m
closer to sainthood than ever,” I said. Luckily I wasn’t religious and didn’t
need to be punished for thoughts and desires.
    “I
totally get why,” she said, her breathing slow, pensive, “but if I had the
chance to go back I would treat it like a candy store, like a toy store.”
    “That
was my problem the first time around. Besides, you’re an accountant. I was an
office bitch.”
    The
other thing Veronica and I did together was drink. A lot. If I felt like I
needed to get sober, she had to wonder what that meant for her.
    “We’re
all a bitch to someone. Even the guys, even David,” she said, her voice
quieter. She knew what I knew. Your life wasn’t your own anymore after you’d
made all your decisions, after you were out on your own.
    “He’s
a bitch, period,” I said, pushing the bile in my voice down.
    “He
got a new assistant,” she said with a click of her tongue.
    “Man
or woman?”
    “Seriously?”
she laughed.
    “Hot
or dumpy?”
    “I’m
not even going to answer.” I could hear her head shake.
    “Well
good for him, I’m glad he’s moving on.”
    “I’m
sure his wife is, too,” she said. I heard her chair