Straight No Chaser

Blackbeard

i've developed a sixth sense. i feel him coming around corners, standing in hidden doorways, approaching from behind, and i think marcus is coming, and he appears. it's a little weird, because it used to be that he'd surprise me, and it sucked, because i don't like being surprised. it's better now, because i get this warm feeling when he's close by, like hugging him or putting my head on his shoulder, and then there he is, and it comes to fruition. it fruitates. generally pleasant, with rare exceptions (like this morning, when he showed up with his friends in front of the chapel, where i was handing sophomores their failed writing portfolios, looking a complete mess, hair undone, jeans that do nothing for my butt; but even that's okay, because the clothes don't matter so much anymore, because he knows what's beneath them, and what's beneath that, and there's inherent approval there). he says he's been able to sense me for months, and that he likes it, and that it's about time, for me. so that's nice.

nicer still is that it was okay, this time. because back in december, when he was warning me about the coming semester, about how we'd have to find a way around it but that it wasn't going to be easy. and then it wasn't. it sucked. i started this journal then, and made a beastly first impression, according to the vast majority of my readers. and then seven weeks had gone by, and we'd survived it, and it occurred to me that i was never going to panic over separation again. the summer, then, was fantastic; our best phone stint yet, with a couple of minor lapses. and then this, this two weeks, which wanted to have ugly overarching implications, we beat it, too. i'm rather proud of myself. so, new resolution. no more needless worry, to whatever extent i can manage that.

meanwhile, i'm still going to kill treesje. shakespeare today was brutal, except when i got to recite from "a midsummer night's dream." the passage about the lodestars and liquid pearls. and treesje picked and picked the entire time, question after question, just like at dinner on sunday; mostly questions she already knows the answers to, questions she knows i don't feel like answering, questions that are supposed to segue into conversations where she gets to sound stupid but feel powerful and smug. i imagine her thoughts as a running stream of italicized bitchery: i have everything you want and i know it, i toss my flipped hair in your face, i see your intelligence and i raise you one fabulous pair of giant breasts. but one mustn't dwell, because that would be pointlessly petty. instead i get to be a different kind of petty, the kind that justifies her many manifestations of perfection with a parallel list of her serious failures. thereby exhibiting greater bitchiness than she ever could.

but i digress. let's stick with happy. happy that i've just found something that went wayward for a few days. happy that i've got a guitar serenade waiting for me on the other side of campus. et cetera.

this entry has been lackluster and untidy. which sucks, because i was just thinking how much i like this journal, how certain entries feel like little accidental masterpieces. i like masterpieces. i don't like sloppy. i don't like typos.

**********

"Marooned," he repeats, smoothing out his Midwestern inflection to mimic her flat Eastern accent.

She smiles faintly, pushing her bare toes beneath an ivory wall of sand. "That's one of those words," she says. "You know those words, maybe you keep a list in your mind, very particular words that you can only really use on one thing?"

He is silent.

"There's only one way to be marooned," she says, crossing her legs at the knees. "You can't be marooned on a college campus. You can be raped anywhere, but this is the only way to be marooned."

He is silent. She hasn't described her ordeal yet; when he came upon her squinting off into the distance, shielding her forehead with one dainty hand, he knew to keep the questions to a minimum. Three hours later, they are still glad to have each other's company, still keeping the conversation light, still bickering over the pronunciation and usefulness of melodramatic words normally uttered only by pirates.

He is consumed, suddenly, with an inexplicable compulsion. "Arrrrrrr," he growls, propping himself up on one sandy elbow. His best Blackbeard imitation.

Her head snaps around and their eyes meet. The first time, he realizes. Hers are a deep, musical brown, and they twinkle at his outburst. "Arr," she murmurs, experimenting. She turns away.

*

Her side of the island is prettier, more picturesque. Cleaner sand, clearer water, crisper breezes whistling through the palm fronds that shade them when the sun blazes overhead. He thinks these words, thinks in cliches, quickly learns that she won't sneer when he speaks them out loud. That she'll play along, even. "Hey, look," she says in the evening, pointing. "Let's watch the fiery orange ball as it dips beneath the horizon."

"And listen as the waves lap against this mount of spilled sugar," he adds. They laugh together; in this vacuum, everything is funny.

*

She greets him in the same way each morning, giggling as she hand-spoons the pulp from fallen coconuts. "Ahoy," she says, handing over one of the giant fruits. "Ahoy," she calls, waving from the coast, where she stands rinsing her toes. "Ahoy," she whispers, stirring beside him with her eyes still closed.

She fascinates him, an advanced-level study in colors. The island itself is only green and beige. She is twice that: a tan girl, brown-eyed, marooned and in blue.