Chapter Text
July 22, 1995
Hi Jennifer!
I’m Judy Hale — your future roommate! I still can’t believe it’s happening so soon! COLLEGE in NEW YORK CITY! I know it’s probably not as exciting for you since you’re a real New Yorker already. I saw your address and felt like I won the lottery! What’s Brooklyn like? Is it full of tough guys? Does it snow as much as the movies make it seem? I’m so excited for snow. I’ve never even touched it! I think it’s so cool that you chose to live in a dorm and still do the normal college thing even though you’re close to home. I wish the information packet told me more about you. I have so many questions! I’m sure you do, too, so here’s a little about me:
I’m from Long Beach mainly. My mom and I hopped around a lot (no siblings), but we were never too far from the beach. I’ve never even been outside of California. I’m majoring in Studio Art. I paint, but I’m open to other mediums. Pottery seems very soothing, don’t you think? I’m a Pisces. When’s your birthday? I’m vegetarian (I cheat sometimes). I’m not allergic to anything, so bring any food you want into the dorm. The packet says we should coordinate who can bring what for our room. I’m really sorry that I can’t bring a mini fridge or beanbag chair or anything since I’m flying in, but I promise to chip in on anything we buy. I don’t have much stuff, but feel free to borrow anything. What’s mine is ours!
I guess I’ll end this letter here, so there’s still some fun stuff to learn when we meet. I seriously can’t wait. I know you’re going to be the best roommate ever. I can sense it.
See you soon! — Judy
P.S. I hope you like the anklet! I used my own ankle to measure it, so if it doesn’t fit, I can totally make a new one.
+
Of course Jen gets stuck with a fucking art major.
Over the summer, she had finally come to a grudging, clenched teeth acceptance of the fact that she’d be going to UNY — her second choice, but trailing at a significant distance.
There aren’t any art students at Juilliard.
It’s not like there wouldn’t have been less than ideal roommates there, too. Nine out of ten theater majors are basically guaranteed headaches. Most music students are probably okay, if a little on the dull side, but Jen probably couldn’t scrounge up the requisite respect if they were, like, a bassoon major or something — imagine, four years of college dedicated solely to a bassoon .
Still. Better than an art major...from California . Of fuckin’ course.
Her Juilliard audition was back in March, and still the memory stings every time Jen touches it. Her dance instructor’s reaction was almost worse than the actual rejection (which is saying a lot — Jen broke a knuckle on a parking meter after the audition). Ms. Bryant has been warning Jen to be “realistic” about Juilliard for the last two years. Both UNY and Juillard’s dance programs require equal study in ballet and contemporary, but Juilliard is less forgiving of students who aren’t equally skilled at both.
It’s a bullshit system. Jen’s good at ballet — actually, no, she’s fucking great at ballet. She just isn’t the best. Which should be fine, because she isn’t trying to be.
Anyway. Ms. Bryant’s been teaching Jen for almost six years; ever since she got moved up to advanced classes when she was only a seventh grader. She was the youngest dancer at that level by three years; Ms. Bryant was the one who fought for it, and now Jen’s probably going to hate her forever. All because, when she heard Jen got cut during the Juilliard audition, she didn’t even bother feigning surprise, just gave Jen this smug fucking pat on the shoulder that might as well have been an I told you so.
You’ll do well at UNY, Jennifer. I think their program is better suited to your talents.
In other words: that inferior program is better suited to your inferior talents. Which, you know. Fuck that.
So even though it’s not actually Judy Hale’s fault, her letter is an unwelcome reminder that Jen is going to an inferior art school, where the performance studies are lumped in with wannabe filmmakers and poets and goddamn vegetarian painters from California.
Obviously, Jen doesn’t write back.
She also doesn’t wear the fucking anklet, which looks like a (well made, admittedly) glorified friendship bracelet of multicolored pastel threads intricately braided with no discernible pattern.
She does get a mini fridge and a phone and a microwave for their dorm room, and if Judy Hale wants to pay her for half, Jen isn’t going to stop her — though chip in makes her sound kind of fucking cheap.
Classes start Monday, the second week in August, and the dormitories open the Friday before, but Jen’s dad doesn’t drive her over until late Sunday afternoon. She’s hoping the late arrival means she’s missed some kind of Welcome/Get To Know You/Kumbaya freshmen gathering.
Jen’s room is on the seventh floor of Franklin Hall; there are whiteboards hanging on every door in the hallway, two girls names written on each one in the same handwriting, probably the RA’s. When Jen gets to room 709, with “Jennifer & Judy” scrawled on the board, she shifts the bags in her hand to smear nifer off with her fingers.
That done, she gets the key in the door and shoulders it open, relieved to see the room is currently empty even though Judy Hale has clearly moved in already, her stuff occupying the right half of the room.
With her dad’s help, it only takes two trips to get everything up to the room — not bad, considering she has a whole rolling suitcase just for shoes (pointe, jazz, tap, character, high top Chuck Taylors with a Sharpie scribble on the inside of the tongue covering up the initials of her ninth grade boyfriend). Three minutes later, her dad is heading back to Brooklyn with mercifully little fanfare. Jen’s moving barely forty minutes from her childhood home, but still her mom would have made a bigger deal if she’d felt up to coming.
Left alone, Jen gives the other side of the room a cursory survey before she starts unpacking her stuff. She’d been bracing herself for a room papered in shitty teenage art, but the only thing on the walls so far is a deep red and gold tapestry, hanging over the other bed. Art probably doesn’t travel well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not coming. And though Jen fervently hopes that Judy Hale has a passionate side interest in geology that could explain the crystals lining the perimeter of her desk, they’re probably what Californians use to commune with fucking stardust or whatever.
It takes Jen all of fifteen minutes to get sheets on the bed and transfer her clothes from suitcases to the closet and standard issue dresser on her side of the room. She sets her stereo on her desk and puts the minifridge under the window, phone on top of it; that’s the extent of Jen’s contribution to room decor.
That done, Jen swaps her cut offs for a pair of athletic shorts, grabs her Walkman, clamps her headphones on, and heads out of the dorm. She took the train here a few times over the summer just to wander around — part of the whole making her peace with UNY thing — so she’s got the campus pretty much figured out. She doesn't get her access code for the dance studio rehearsal spaces until class tomorrow, but she spent the morning at home doing basically all of her packing, skipping her usual conditioning routine, so she heads to the undergrad gym for some cardio. There are less than a dozen students spending their last free evening working out, so Jen has a mirrored aerobics room to herself to stretch before spending forty-five minutes on a stationary bike.
The sun’s setting when Jen heads back to the dorm. She suspected earlier, but her third trip to the seventh floor confirms it: Franklin Hall is the proud site of the world’s slowest elevator. So that’s fantastic.
Jen gets her key in the door to room 709 and finds it’s already unlocked. She rolls her eyes and braces herself before stepping into the room and inhaling something thick and floral.
“Oh my god, hi! You’re here!”
Jen reluctantly pulls her headphones down, leaving them looped around her neck. “Hey.”
Judy Hale is grinning at her, kind of blindingly, and it takes Jen a second to register that Judy’s standing in front of her desk, on her side of the room, apparently looking through the carton of cassette tapes Jen left there.
Judy seems unperturbed that she’s been caught snooping. “It’s so great to finally meet you.”
She comes at Jen, arms half extended like she’s going to hug her. Alarmed, Jen steps back, colliding with the door and muttering, “Yeah, no, I’m all sweaty.”
“Oh.” In compromise, Judy holds out her hand to shake, which strikes Jen as oddly formal, but whatever.
She grasps it for a second, hoping her smile doesn’t tilt too far toward mocking. “Nice to meet you.”
“You, too. Jen.” She says Jen’s name like she’s proud of knowing it, her smile actually, somehow, broadening as she explains, “I saw you fixed the whiteboard.”
“Oh. Right.” Because Judy seems content to stand face to face in the doorway, Jen finally sidles past her. “What am I smelling?”
“Quiet Flowers, isn’t it soothing?”
“What?”
“The incense.” Judy gestures to her desk, where thin wisps of smoke are rising off an incense stick.
Of course. Fucking California.
Jen makes a face. “Did you say Quiet Flowers? What other fucking kind of flowers are there?”
“You don’t like it? I’ve got a bunch of scents….”
Judy passes her a box with a list of equally ridiculous names: Scarlet Waltz, Autumnal Twilight, Drops of Whisper, and --
“Mother’s Chest?” Jen reads. She gives Judy an incredulous look. “Whose mom’s tits does this smell like?”
“Unclear, but she’s a real amber citrus kinda lady.”
The response surprises a half laugh out of Jen. Her music is still playing, soft and tinny, from her headphones, and Judy suddenly lowers her head and leans close like she’s trying to hear Jen’s heartbeat. “Ooh, The Cranberries. Love this song.”
Well, yeah. It’s a great fucking song.
“Workout mix.” Jen presses Stop and tosses the Walkman on her bed.
“Wow. You’re hardcore.”
“Dance major.”
“Really? That’s amazing!”
Jen throws a slanted look at Judy, checks if she’s mocking her. Jen probably deserves some mocking — she at least knows she sounds snobby, all crisp and businesslike. But Judy appears to be completely earnest, like she really does think dance is amazing.
“I’m doing studio art. Focus on painting, hopefully. Wait, sorry, you know that. Or...do you? Did you get my letter?”
“Yeah, I did.” Then, a beat too late and probably halfhearted, Jen adds, “Sorry. Not big on writing letters.”
“Oh, it’s totally fine. Really, don’t worry about it, I just don’t want to talk too much about stuff you already know. Or, um...talk too much in general.” Judy’s smile falters slightly, for the first time since Jen walked in.
“Hey, uh, you had dinner yet?” Jen asks without really thinking about it. “I was just gonna go to the dining hall.”
“Sure!” Judy smiles, full wattage again. “Let’s do it.”
They clearly have to have the get to know you talk regardless; might as well multi-task, do it over dinner instead of just sitting in the room, staring at each other.
Franklin Hall has its own dining hall, down on the second floor. A lot of the doors on their floor are propped open, students milling around like a meet and greet. Judy says hello to half a dozen people, by name, before they even get to the elevator. It’s like she’s lived here for two years instead of two days. She throws around more chipper hey’ s when they get to the dining hall, these to apparent strangers. Anyone who glances at her, hopefully seeking eye contact, receives a greeting and a smile.
It makes Jen suddenly conscious of how she must look — work out clothes, hair stiff and greasy from dried sweat. A fucking mess, basically.
Judy Hale is kind of beautiful, if Jen’s being honest, but in an annoying, California flower child way. Her dark hair nearly reaches her waist, and she’s wearing a long, floral print skirt with a white tank top. And the jewelry — too many colorful bracelets, too many dainty rings.
They split and head to different food stations before reconvening at one of the small tables that line the dining hall’s perimeter. Judy immediately starts peppering Jen with questions about New York. Turns out she spent most of the day on Ellis Island, and is talking through every step of her Statue of Liberty tour, with little commentary from Jen, before cutting herself off mid sentence.
“Sorry, obviously you know all this stuff...you’ve probably gone there a bunch.”
“Never on purpose,” Jen says flatly.
Judy purses her lips in confusion, apparently trying to work out how one might accidentally stumble upon the Statue of Liberty.
Jen rolls her eyes but explains, “Couple of elementary school field trips.”
“Oh! That makes sense. That must’ve been cool, though, as a kid. We almost never did field trips, and if we did it was to an aquarium or city hall or something.”
Jen nods an obligatory acknowledgement.
“I’ve got a whole list of places to see...I did Central Park yesterday. It’s gorgeous there. I was thinking about trying to fit in Times Square last night, but I’m kinda nervous about that one.”
“You fucking should be,” Jen informs her grimly. “It’s the worst place on earth.”
Judy’s eyebrows arch. “Is that an officially recognized distinction?”
“Yep. There’s a plaque there and everything. Times Square: the armpit of Manhattan. ”
That makes Judy laugh. “So I take it you never go there on purpose?”
“God, no. Well. Only for the discount ticket booth.”
“What’s that?”
So Jen explains the TKTS ticket booths, selling discount tickets to Broadway shows that haven’t sold out by the day of the shows. Judy gets that shiny eyed out of towner look at the word Broadway, then asks Jen what shows she’s seen. It’s a topic Jen actually gives a shit about, and the rest of dinner passes with Jen listing the shows she’s seen and her staunch opinions on each one.
It’s kind of nice, actually. Because she made it a point not to befriend hardcore drama club kids, most of Jen’s high school friends are years past any interest in Broadway, dismissing it as something that should only appeal to tourists and children. But the shine never went off for Jen, and Judy doesn’t know enough for her to be embarrassed about that.
“Is that what you want to do?” Judy asks when the topic finally starts winding down; they’re on the elevator, heading back up to the seventh floor. “Dance in a Broadway show?”
“Maybe. I mean, yeah.” The elevator doors slide open. “But not all musicals are big dance shows, so you never know what the demand’s gonna be. It’s not like it’s that or nothing, I’d be fine getting into a dance company, or—“
Jen stops talking abruptly, because they’ve reached their room and Judy’s got her keys out to unlock the door and — fucking hell — they are dangling from a shiny Statue of Liberty keychain.
The door swings open, and Judy glances back at Jen as she walks inside. “Or?”
“Nothing.” The train of thought has fully derailed; Jen’s too preoccupied with the keychain. She reaches over and plucks it easily from Judy’s hand. “You get this today?”
“Yeah, there was a gift shop. Isn’t it cute?”
With saintly restraint, Jen manages not to roll her eyes. “Uh-huh. You should know, though, it makes you look like a tourist.”
Judy sits down on her bed without trying to take the keys back. She looks up at Jen, her head tilted and her smile slightly confused. “Well, I am a tourist, right?”
“Uh, no. Not really.” Jen puts the keys down on Judy’s desk. There’s an Ellis Island postcard there she hadn’t noticed before. “Don’t you pretty much live here now?”
Judy seems to take a moment to think about that, and this time when she smiles, it’s slow and smaller than usual. “Yeah.... yeah. You’re right. I live here now.”
She gets up and walks to her desk, pulls the keychain free with a bizarre conviction before grinning at Jen proudly. It's like she expects applause, but Jen can only muster a returning smile.
“Maybe I’ll send it to my mom,” Judy muses. “She’s never been to New York, either. She kept telling me how jealous she is, how great it’s gonna be...she’s gonna visit next semester. Hopefully. If she can.”
“Great.” Jen’s voice is flat, skating along the edge of sarcasm. Who wants their parents to visit? “I’m gonna go shower.”
The communal bathroom, shared by all the girls on their floor, makes Jen feel like she’s in prison. She showers fast, standing there in flip flops behind the gross plastic curtain, at least two other showers going at the same time and an inane conversation about sororities echoing from somewhere near the sinks.
When Jen gets back to the room, hair wet and dripping on the old recital shirt she sleeps in, Judy smiles at her and says, “Hi!” like she hasn’t been gone all of ten minutes. Judy’s sitting on her bed writing in a notebook that Jen can only assume is a journal — Judy seems like she journals.
She shuts the notebook with the pen inside. “Have you seen the basement lounge yet? It’s pretty great, there’s a big TV, couches, all these games...do you play ping pong? A kind of tournament thing broke out last night. I'm totally awful, but it was still fun.”
Jen’s sitting on the edge of her bed brushing her hair out, so she has to lift her eyebrows in lieu of a nod.
When that’s her only reply, Judy continues, “Wanna go check it out, maybe? There’s also a full kitchen down there, which could be kinda nice to have — “
“Not tonight,” Jen cuts her off. “Need to make sure I’m focused for tomorrow.”
“Oh. Sure, okay.” Judy smiles at her, but Jen catches her glancing at the alarm clock sitting on her dresser. Barely after nine.
“Here’s the thing. I don’t know if you know much about the dance program here— “
“No, nothing,” Judy says, with the tone of someone who can’t wait to change that. She actually leans forward, giving Jen her undivided attention.
“...okay, well, it’s fucking intense . We start at seven a.m. every day, and that’s just mat-work. Then ballet and contemporary. Back to back. Hour and a half each. That’s every fucking day, none of this Monday Wednesday Friday block schedule shit.”
“Wow.” Judy appears to be genuinely impressed, and Jen feels herself warming to her own speech.
“Yeah. Academic classes all have to be squeezed in, like, a couple hours in the middle of the day. Then in the afternoons we have either Music Theory or Kinesthetics with the department, and sometimes other workshops...and eventually there will be rehearsals a lot of weeknights on top of everything else.”
“That is intense,” Judy agrees solemnly. “I mean...my earliest class doesn’t even start until ten.”
Jen gives a little I figured as much nod, content in her established superiority, but then Judy smiles warmly and says, “You must really love it, huh?”
Jen blinks at her, thrown off. In the heartbeat before Judy finished her sentence, Jen was already filling in the blanks, assuming she was about to remark on her presumed skill. You must really be talented, huh? Something along those lines.
Obviously Jen loves it. But that isn’t the point — it kind of hasn’t been the point in a long time. Jen loves it, and that’s why she wants to do it for as long as she possibly can, wants it to be her career. But auditions aren’t decided on who loves dancing the most — not at the modest youth dance studio in Brooklyn, and not at Radio City Music Hall or The Majestic Theater or fucking Juilliard.
“Of course I love it,” Jen finally answers, her tone unnecessarily prickly. “That’s the whole reason I’m here.” She exhales sharp and attempts to steer the conversation back on track. “Anyway, that’s kind of my point. I take this program really fucking seriously. I’m planning to be a featured soloist by next year’s recitals.” Freshmen never get principal roles or soloist spots outside of the dinky little showcases. Sophomores do, but only on rare occasions. “And I’m not gonna make that happen by staying up half the night getting wasted or hooking up with some idiot frat guy or, like, braiding each other’s hair or whatever. You do whatever you want, but if it’s after ten pm, you need to do it somewhere that isn’t this room.”
“I completely get that,” Judy says with a serious, focused nod. “You don’t have to worry.”
Jen frowns. She had anticipated some push back, or at least visible resentment, so the easy acquiescence throws her off. Jen tends to assume conversations will turn into arguments; she often has the fight in her head first, getting herself defensive and angry about shit that hasn’t even happened yet. In this case, she’d gotten prematurely pissed off at Judy Hale’s imaginary insistences on well lit, two am painting sessions or weeknight dorm room keggers.
She was probably a little harsh. Ten o'clock is overdoing it, Jen knew that when she said it; even back home, when she had to wake up before six am in order to get an hour of barre exercises in before showering and going to school, Jen was never actually in bed by ten.
“Obviously, weekends are different,” she adds a bit grudgingly. “I still rehearse, but it doesn’t have to be such an early start, so, you know. Go crazy.”
“Got it.” Judy smiles at her, perfectly cheerful. “So there are recitals every year? Can anyone go? I want to see you dance!”
Jen’s never given much credence to the stereotype that New Yorkers are ruder and less considerate people than the general population, but fuck, maybe there’s something to it.
Whatever. A randomly assigned art major roommate was bound to have at least one strange personality quirk; it could have been a lot worse than inhuman — possibly sociopathic — niceness.
+
The University of New York’s dance program is not designed to gently ease its students into college life, and Jen is all for it.
Throughout high school, she had classes or rehearsals with Ms. Bryant for two hours, every day after school, but other than that, Jen had to rely on her own self discipline to make productive use of her time. Besides the hour in the morning, she’d put in at least two before bed; her father had installed a barre and a wall mirror in their unfinished basement, the only thing she’d wanted for her twelfth birthday. When Jen was younger, she’d skip lunch sometimes to sneak into the school gym, but during her junior and senior year she managed to turn study hall periods into sanctioned rehearsal time.
Her mom has always been really fucking annoying about it, constantly chiding Jen for working “too hard” and making sarcastic “jokes” about how rarely she emerged from the basement. But here she is, at an elite program, each day rigorous and heavily scheduled, proof that her work paid off, that she'd had the right idea all along. Jen prepared herself well. Only thirty-two dancers were accepted this year; they all must be talented, but by the second week of classes, she can already pick out the ones who seem overwhelmed. Those are the students that will never get a principal role or a featured solo, and Jen is confident she isn’t among them.
It only takes a few weeks of classes for the daily routines to feel lived in and instinctual. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are the worst; she only has a forty-five minute break in the middle of the day, right after contemporary dance, and Jen spends it having lunch at the dining hall closest to the studio, sitting with a group of her fellow freshman dancers. Then she has to rush two blocks to a Humanities building— the liberal arts, gen ed requirements are minimal for dance majors, but they do exist. Jen plans to take one each semester through junior year, and this year it’s English Lit, a numbingly boring hour sandwiched between lunch and Music Theory.
The city is still sticky and sweltering as August gives way to September, sunlight drenched in humidity, and Jen gets in the habit of changing out of tights after dance, leaving the studio in only her skirted leotard and flimsy sandals. The other girls she sits with at lunch follow her lead (Jen’s kind of smug about that), and their table attracts its fair share of appreciative glances. There are even some walk by flirtations, offered alongside casual invites to various parties. Once Jen’s actually in class, she usually shrugs on an unbuttoned flannel, but she likes to sit sideways in her chair, bare legs stretched out into the aisle.
No fucking dress code in college.
She passes Judy on campus once, on her way to Music Theory; Judy’s sitting on the lip of the fountain in Washington Square Park, the closest thing the school has to a quad. She’s with a tattooed and pierced crowd — the kind of artsy clique that would probably make you fail a drug test just by walking past them — but Judy calls Jen’s name and comes trotting over to say hi.
“I thought today was your Lit class day?”
Gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Humanities building, Jen says, “Just came from there.”
Judy’s eyes flare. “You go to class like that?” She grins, making a show of checking Jen out. “Trying to distract everyone and screw up the exam curve?”
Jen rolls her eyes, but she’s smug and smirking. “I gotta go, running late for Music Theory.”
“Okay, see ya tonight. Have fun!”
“Oh, sure, it’ll be a fucking blast.”
Jen glances back over her shoulder before she gets fully out of earshot, watching Judy rejoin the weed fog of art majors. It’s possible she’s stereotyping and they aren’t art majors at all; Judy only has one actual studio class this semester, plus an Art History lecture. It is (as Jen expected) a less intense program that requires a lot more gen eds.
Which maybe explains why Judy seems to have made, conservatively, fiftysomething new friends in the first two weeks of school. Jen doesn’t see her on campus often — her own classes being largely contained to one building — but when she does, Judy is always with a different group. She never seems to say the same name twice, when she’s telling Jen about meeting up with people for dining hall lunches or lame events on campus or random parties. Judy usually adds a cursory offer for Jen to join in on these adventures, but she’d rather dance a pas de deux with Hulk Hogan than attend a Darwinism themed poetry slam in the student union or drink cheap beer in a shitty loft that’s probably home to no less than fifteen art students and one hundred rats.
She and Judy do get dinner together a few times a week, on the nights they’re both back at the dorm and hungry at the same time. Judy appears to know everyone who lives in their dorm (like, all thirteen fucking floors of it), but to Jen’s immense relief, she never invites any of her treasured neighbors/friends/admirers to join their table. Jen doesn’t want to have to start saying hi how are you to a dozen people every time she walks to the hall bathroom.
She actually, shockingly, likes talking to Judy, though. It’s kind of nice to have an outside audience for her snark and/or derision toward fellow students and teachers in the dance program. When Jen isn’t making fun of Madame Lowry’s fake Russian affectation or the way Kaitlin Davis actually decorated her dressing room locker so everyone would just happen to see the photo of her dancing as Giselle, they mostly talk about New York. Judy is still working through her list of Manhattan tourist traps, and she likes to consult Jen anytime she ventures to a new part of the city.
Not that it helps. The second full weekend of the semester, Judy comes back from a Sunday afternoon trip to The Met gushing about the “inspiring” old woman who apparently blessed Judy with her entire life story in the twenty minute train ride….meaning Jen is treated to the cliffnotes version.
“...then she said she learned palm reading from a Romani woman she met in the late sixties, traveling through Croatia. And then, when she was living in Vienna, which I think she said was in 1972...1975? No, it was ‘72, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, so in Vienna, that was the main way she earned money, reading palms by the river. She gave me a reading. I didn’t even have to ask, Jen, she just took my hand and told me to close my eyes. I swear, I could feel this ancient, calming vibe coming off of her, right away. She said the place where my love line and fate line intersect is actually really interesting— "
“Hold on,” Jen, who has so far limited her response to noncommittal humming, cuts her off. “Back up. She told you to close your eyes?”
“Yes.”
“How does that affect what the skin on your hands looks like?”
“Hmm. I guess it doesn’t,” Judy says thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was trying to pick up on my energy to enhance the reading. She was very in tune with that kind of thing...sometimes you can just tell with people, you know?”
“Uh-huh. And have you checked your pockets?”
“This dress doesn’t have pockets.” Judy turns sideways as if to prove it.
Exhaling an exasperated sigh, Jen finally commits to closing her Kinesthetics of Anatomy textbook and giving Judy her full attention. “Your purse, then, Judy. Have you checked your purse since you and your new friend parted ways?”
“No…” Judy reaches for her bag, which she’d draped over the desk chair when she walked in. It’s this oversized canvas thing that looks like her wall tapestry in a different color scheme (Judy, it seems, is allergic to solid colors), and it takes her a few moments to rummage through it and say, in apparent surprise, “Hey, I think my wallet’s gone.”
Jen nods sagely. “Thought so.”
“Shit.” Judy hangs her purse back on the chair and for a moment she just stands there, looking forlorn.
Jen sighs again; she didn’t steal Judy’s wallet, but she still feels bad about breaking the news. She suspects Judy is less upset about the loss of her wallet than the fact that her inspiring conversation with a stranger was just a pretense for theft. Turns out it’s not fun to witness the precise moment someone’s faith in humanity crumbles. Especially someone like Judy.
“C’mon.” Tossing her textbook aside, Jen gets up from her bed and drapes a consoling arm around Judy’s shoulder. It’s not a typical gesture for Jen, but Judy is casual with physical affection, and in only two weeks Jen’s found herself mirroring the habits. “Let’s go get food. I can swipe you in at the dining hall until you get a replacement card.”
Judy’s eyes perk up the slightest bit at the offer. “Okay. Thanks, Jen.”
Over dinner, Jen proceeds to give Judy a blunt version of the ‘safety in the city’ talk her mom and dad gave her when she was eleven years old. Her parents hadn’t felt the need to warn her against closing her eyes at a stranger’s request, but Jen makes sure to hammer home that particular rule.
When she’s done all she can to be reasonably certain Judy can go on a daytime outing without being mugged, Jen asks her how the museum was. Charitably, she lets Judy describe paintings and sculptures for the next half hour, even feigning interest to the point of asking questions about them. Judy’s lucky she’s sad.
+
It’s a Thursday night, and Jen’s taking up the dorm’s pathetically limited floor space by stretching out on her yoga mat, a tennis ball wedged between her extended left leg and the floor, rolling some of the soreness out of her calf muscles.
Jen doesn’t miss much about being home in Brooklyn, but she really fucking misses her bathtub. She used to have a whole hot/cold muscle routine; icing right after dance class, a preventative measure to hold off inflammation, and a warm bath every night. Now, both routines have been interrupted; there’s no time to ice after class if she wants to actually eat lunch, and the prison dorm hall bathrooms obviously don’t have a tub (not that Jen would use it if they did; there’s a reason everyone wears flip flops in the shower — a communal bath would require a full fucking scuba suit).
She makes do, still icing after evening workouts and using heat packs at night, but she’s also dancing at least two more hours a day than she ever was in high school, sometimes more. As the third week of classes comes to a close, her body is definitely feeling the effects.
Judy’s sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up and a sketch pad resting against her thighs. When she first pulled it out, Jen had this flash of paranoia that Judy might be drawing her — she's already overly aware of how weird the tennis ball routine looks, especially crammed in a three foot space between their twin beds. But apparently Judy's working on something for class. Jen’s got her headphones on, music a habitual necessity for any solo workouts or cool downs, and so it takes a few moments for her to notice Judy leaning sideways into her eye line, waving a hand to get Jen’s attention.
Jen tugs the headphones off so they hook around her neck. “What?”
“Hi.” Jen rolls her eyes at the greeting; she’s had her headphones on for five minutes, it’s not like she just returned from a quest. Judy doesn’t seem to notice, just continues, “I was just going to say, if you want to play your music on the stereo, you totally can. It doesn’t bother me.”
“That’s okay,” Jen says dismissively. “The cord’s not in my way or anything.”
She’s already setting the headphones back in place, but then she catches the way Judy’s face falls like she’s disappointed.
“Well, actually, if you’re sure you don’t mind…” Jen pops the tape out of her Walkman and stands up, walking over to her desk — providing a surface for her stereo and music collection is still its only function so far.
A few seconds later, Ani DiFranco is crooning through the stereo speakers. Judy smiles in instant recognition, and Jen turns the volume up a few notches and resumes her position on the mat.
Judy’s singing along with the song by the time Jen switches legs — “still there’s many who’ve turned out their porch lights... ” — but she’s being quiet about it, not overwhelming the actual cassette, and it’s not like her voice is bad. Jen doesn’t really mind.
When Jen finishes up her muscle rolling routine and is about to go shower, she starts to turn off the stereo but changes her mind, deciding to let the tape finish.
“Hey, Judy?”
She looks up from her sketchbook and gives Jen an expectant smile.
“Just so you know, it’s cool if you use the stereo whenever you want. Like, when I’m not here.”
It’s possible she already has been, but Jen wants to make sure; it hadn’t come up alongside those early, feel free to use the fridge and I brought the phone so maybe you can buy an answering machine conversations.
“Aw, thanks. That’s really nice of you.”
“And the tapes, too. If there’s any you want to borrow...it’s not like they can never leave this room.”
Judy looks confused for a second, then says, “Oh, that’s okay, I don’t have a Walkman.”
“Really?” Jen makes a face, appalled at the prospect.
She can’t contemplate a city life without music. Even in junior high, when her parents first started letting her ride the subway and walk further than their neighborhood by herself, the best part was the music. She wasn’t supposed to have headphones on, that first year — her mom thought it would make her less aware of her surroundings — but she snuck her Walkman out anyway. Her carefully crafted, preteen mixtapes became the soundtrack of her freedom, of the illicit thrill of breaking a rule.
Now, Jen can’t stand to take a subway ride without headphones on. She pulls them out even for her shortest walks on campus. In the mornings, especially, the music is a crucial part of her routine, waking her up and carrying her to the studio.
Judy, though, just shrugs, still smiling. “Nope. Thanks, though.”
Must be different in California, where they just fucking drive everywhere. And as far as Jen can tell, Judy’s never walking alone on campus anyway; she does take the train alone sometimes, but given recent events, it’s probably best not to split Judy’s focus.
Still. When Jen’s in the shower, she remembers the ancient Walkman that’s spent the last several years residing in the bottom drawer of her dresser back home, on top of three or four spare, tangled sets of headphones.
Jen’s already got a mental list of Things She Should Have Packed. Nothing she urgently needs, but enough to justify the short trip home, even if the Walkman hadn’t been added to the list. Jen could go this Saturday...she could stay for lunch, catch her parents up on her first few weeks, go into more detail than the five minute phone calls.
Or she can wait and go on Monday. If she skips English Lit and leaves right after Contemporary, she could get to the house while her father’s at work and her mother’s at the hospital for chemo. She could grab her stuff and be out of the house without anyone knowing she was there, back on campus by Music Theory.
Jen waits until Monday.
+
She’s casual about offering the Walkman to Judy — “Oh, hey, do you want this? I went to my hou— my parent’s house to get some stuff I left and I found it in my closet. It weighs a metric fuck ton and I think my dad bought in like 1986 but it works.” — but Judy still hugs her when she says thank you. She really is just like that.
A care package from Jen’s parents arrives at the dorm later that week. Or at least, that’s when Judy notices the box sitting in the mail room has her name on it and brings it upstairs to their room. Jen wouldn’t have thought to check the packages. She barely bothers to check the mail.
It puts a guilty knot in Jen’s chest, tightening and tightening as she picks through the contents of the box, finding nail polish and protein bars and multiple packages of bobby pins.
Judy’s sitting on her bed, watching her. She’s being weirdly quiet. Jen looks up a few times, catches her eye, and even Judy’s automatic smile is tense.
“Everything okay?” Jen finally asks.
“Yeah. Well. I do need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay…?”
“I got a job.”
Jen waits, expecting further explanation on how this concerns her. When Judy doesn’t say anything else, she says, “Uh. Congratulations?”
“Thanks! Yeah, um, I was doing work study hours in the library, but that’s barely anything so I’ve been looking...do you know Portofino? Italian place over on Seventh?”
“I think I’ve passed it, yeah...you waitressing?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool...maybe you can steal us some wine.”
Judy smiles, but it fades quickly. “The thing is, I pretty much had to take whatever shifts they offered. And at least for now, on Mondays and Wednesdays, I’m going to be working kinda late......like, until after midnight.”
Judy says all this information in the halting, dread pinched tone of someone delivering very bad news. Jen’s clearly missing something. “Uhhh...okay?”
“I just. I know it’ll mean getting back here way after ten on weeknights— ”
Oh.
“—but I was thinking about it, and maybe it would help if you got some earplugs to sleep with, that way I won’t wake you up when I get home.”
“Judy— “
“I know, if you have in earplugs how are you going to hear your alarm? Well, I can set an alarm for whenever you normally would, and then I can wake you up. That way you get a full night’s sleep and you’re still up in time. Do you...do you think that could work?”
Judy looks at her, big eyed and anxious. That knot in Jen’s chest is tightening again.
“Jesus, Judy, I didn’t mean...I never said you have to be in the room and in bed by ten.”
“But if I’m coming in and changing clothes and everything that late— “
“Look, if I wake up, I’ll go right back to sleep. It’s not the end of the world.” Judy still looks doubtful. “I’m serious. I was trying to head off, like...dorm room beer pong tournaments or loud, late night hookups. Not you quietly closing a door and changing clothes.” Jen holds Judy’s eyes, her tone softening, “I didn’t mean to give you a fucking curfew, okay?”
“Okay. Good.” Judy exhales heavily, her whole body visibly loosening in relief.
God. Jen must have come across like a fucking tyrant with her speech that first day. She kind of feels like apologizing.
Instead, she pulls a box of Entenmann’s cookies out of her package and holds it out across the gap between their beds. “You want a cookie?”
Judy smiles, her eyes brightening again. “Thanks.” She leans forward to take one. “I love these.”
“Me, too.”
+
Apparently, living by Jen’s inadvertent ten p.m. curfew has really been holding Judy back.
She works on Mondays and Wednesdays (plus a daytime shift on Saturdays), but it’s not unusual for her to have plans on other nights, too. Jen gets used to having dinner with Judy and then not seeing her again until the next morning, dead asleep for at least three more hours when Jen leaves for her morning classes.
With her nights opening up, Judy’s social circle grows even wider. There are always messages for her on the whiteboard that hangs on their dorm room. Jen only erases a few of them, like when Nate, this rat faced film student who lives on the floor below theirs and always tries to talk to Judy in the dining hall, wrote out an elaborate invitation for a party in his dorm room, cramming in “Activities: I sit on your face” in the bottom corner. She also starts screening calls when she’s in the room, not bothering to pick up the phone unless she hears her mom’s voice on the answering machine.
There’s a Thursday when Jen wakes up and Judy isn’t in her bed. Her eyes jump automatically to Judy’s desk chair, where her purse usually hangs. It isn’t there. Jen barely saw her yesterday; there isn’t time for them to eat dinner on the nights Judy works. Jen didn’t wake up last night, either, but that’s normal — Judy’s good at coming home and getting ready for bed without any lights or noise.
Jen’s a fucking disaster in classes. She’s got a full hour on the Pilates mat to realize she should have maybe worried sooner about Judy walking back to campus after midnight, by herself. The restaurant where she works isn’t far, maybe six blocks from their dorm but (and Jen’s dimly aware that she sounds like her grandmother here) that’s six blocks where something dangerous could happen.
By the time ballet starts, Jen tries to put it out of her mind and focus as Madame Lowry demonstrates a warm up combination. It’s simple and short, barely 32 counts, but the steps refuse to settle into her memory. Jen’s head is too full to hold them, and when it’s the students turn, she gets barely four counts in before she’s stumbling out of a glissade with no idea what comes next, immediately falling one, no, two steps behind while her vision tilts with panic and Lowry admonishes her by name, the instructor's voice ringing out sharp and disapproving above the melody.
It’s a humiliation Jen’s managed to avoid so far in this studio, and she feels the burn of it like a torn muscle. It’s enough for Jen to pull herself together, mostly, for the rest of class. She doesn’t get called out again, but twice Lowry catches her eye and does this annoying fucking shrug of her shoulders, indicating that Jen needs to relax her own.
There are barely ten minutes between ballet and contemporary, just long enough to change shoes, rework a bun, and walk thirty feet to a different practice room. Jen positions herself in the back row, far corner; it basically goes against her most deeply held principles of dance class — she is a front row dancer, always — but she’s apparently going to be useless all fucking morning. She gets through the class without any glaring fuck ups, but she’s still dedicating more energy to trying to remember Judy’s Tuesday/Thursday schedule than nailing a performance.
She doesn’t stick around for cool downs, just tears out of the studio and heads for the dorm. Judy’s got a copy of her class schedule in her desk somewhere, since Jen apparently has to track her down and find out if Judy where she’s supposed to be or if she’s been missing for... fuck, for like twelve fucking hours now.
She hears music a few seconds before she gets to the room, but Jen’s running on too much momentum for it to register — so it hits like a shock when the door opens and Jen finds herself staring at Judy, putting on makeup and singing along with The Sundays.
Jen just stands there, stupidly staring, for a line of the song’s chorus before Judy glances over and notices.
“Oh, hey!” Judy smiles like this is just a pleasant surprise.
“What the fuck, Judy?”
Her smile drops. “What, what’s wrong?”
“Where the fuck have you been?” Jen’s too loud, competing with the music, so she stomps over to the stereo and jabs a finger at the eject button. “You weren’t here this morning, so where the fuck were you?”
“Some of the waitstaff went for drinks after work, and I...that guy Andrew, the one I was telling you about? He was there and I kiiiinda ended up going back to his place.” Judy’s wide eyed and concerned, but she can’t prevent a tiny, flicker of a smile.
It pisses Jen off.
“Jesus Christ,” Jen says through gritted teeth. “What am I supposed to think, if you’re out all night after work— “
“Oh, God…”
“—and you’ve already basically been mugged once already.” Jen’s half shouting again, even without the music as an excuse.
“Jen, I am so sorry. I swear, I didn’t even think about that.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Jen scoffs. She looks away, dropping her dance bag and kicking it almost violently under her bed.
“I really am sorry.”
Jen’s face is warm, embarrassment for her overreaction starting to creep in. It turns her sulky and defensive. “If you’d have been at a party or something, I wouldn’t have given a shit, but. Didn’t expect a dinner shift to turn into a fucking hook up.”
Embarrassment makes her mean — really, everything makes her mean.
“Sorry,” Judy repeats, her voice quieter than before.
“Whatever,” Jen mutters. She turns away, extends her leg and props a heel on top of the minifridge, bending into a stretch so she doesn’t have to look at Judy anymore. “It’s fine.”
They’re both quiet while Jen runs through a belated cool down; the familiar, instinctive routine of tension and release calms her down, and finally Jen exhales, deliberately loud, and straightens up. “I need a fuckin' cigarette.”
She’s at the door before she looks back at Judy. “You coming or what?”
Judy’s giving her an odd look, eyes soft and serious. It takes a moment before she nods. “Yeah...coming.”
Judy falls into step with Jen in the hallway, and they walk to their floor’s tiny student lounge, the only place in Franklin Hall where smoking is permitted.
They’ve been taking smoke breaks together the last few weeks. The first time, Judy had told her, “I didn’t think you’d smoke.”
“Why’s that?’
Judy had grinned, tossing Jen a lighter. “I was told you take the dance program very fucking seriously .” She’d said the last part weird, voice low and possibly attempting a terrible Brooklyn accent.
“Fuck you, I don’t smoke the month before performances,” Jen had said haughtily, hiding a smirk around the mouth of the cigarette. There’s always something sweetly amusing about Judy’s attempts to make fun of her: like a baby shouting its first curse word.
Now, though. They pass a lighter between them but don’t really talk. Jen tucks herself into the corner of the couch, and Judy perches on the sill of the window that opens onto the building’s fire escape. She’s still staring at Jen like she’s trying to figure something out.
There’s a guy heating up a plate of Bagel Bites in the microwave, and no matter what anyone makes in there it always makes the room smell like burnt popcorn. Jen kind of hopes he hunkers down and eats in here, but after the beeping goes off, the guy takes his plate and leaves the two of them alone.
Surprisingly, Judy still waits a few minutes before she speaks. “Hey, um….thank you.”
Jen narrows her eyes at Judy. “What for?”
“For worrying, I guess? I’m sorry I didn’t think about that, but...it’s nice of you.”
Jen doesn’t answer. She lets her head tip back on the couch cushion, aiming smoke at the ceiling in a slow exhale.
“What time do you have to be in Spanish?” She asks eventually.
Judy looks up at the wall clock. “Oh. Like four minutes ago.”
Jen has a protein bar for lunch, and leaves twenty minutes before she needs to to walk to Kinesthetics. She’s feeling properly stupid about the whole thing now, not to mention irritated that she was shit in class this morning for no fucking reason.
But there’s a modern dance workshop in the afternoon, and Jen almost does well enough to erase the memory of this morning. Later on, she and Judy get dinner at the Franklin dining hall, and it’s pretty much normal between them. Jen even asks the obligatory questions about this Andrew guy, trying to keep all traces of leftover resentment out of her tone.
“How old is this dude anyway?”
“I’m not sure, he’s not in school...he’s an actor.”
“I’m sure he is,” Jen says dryly. Judy’s eyes are gleaming, like Jen couldn’t throw her water glass and soak like ten different people in this dining hall who call themselves actors.
“I know he’s at least twenty-one, since he got into the bar.”
“You got into the fuckin’ bar.”
“Oh, yeah, Jason got me another fake.” Her first fake ID, procured by Jason from Art History had been lost with her wallet, now the property of an elderly con artist. Judy goes rummaging in her purse and holds out the license for Jen’s perusal.
It’s the actual license of someone named Zoe Watterson, who besides having brown hair and brown eyes looks nothing like Judy, but Jen isn’t surprised bouncers let her in anyway.
She hands it back, rolling her eyes as she does. “That says you’re 5’fucking 9.”
“I know, I was worried about that, too, but it hasn’t been a problem so far. It also says I’m a Virgo, which...” Judy shakes her head in apparent incredulity. “Clearly not.”
“Clearly.”
+
Given that the semester is just shy of two months old, Jen decides it’s probably time to get herself a social life.
There’s a junior ballerina, Olivia Fry, Jen knows from her dance studio back in Brooklyn. Olivia tells her about a party in one of the on campus apartment suites, and Jen passes the invite along to the other freshmen dancers she has lunch with.
One of them, Audrey Bauer, invites everyone to meet in her dorm room so they can all show up at the party together, but this turns out to be a pretense for getting a head start on drinking. Based on the stockpile of booze under Audrey’s bed, she might be worth befriending.
By the time they show up, the party is spilling between multiple suites, the doors in a whole corner of the hallway propped open, competing songs playing from each one, people spilling out and moving between them. It’s a dancer crowd, you can tell from the available alcohol — not a beer in sight, mostly liquor with diet soda for mixers. Jen pours a generous amount of vodka into a cup of Diet Sprite and goes to find Olivia. Audrey, who’s clued into the fact that Jen knows upperclassmen, gloms onto her for the party and the two of them end up playing Kings Cup on the floor of somebody’s bedroom.
They’ve gone through the full deck of cards twice and Jen is well on her way to drunk; Olivia’s telling them about some bar in SoHo they like to go to on Saturdays, when there’s no cover for girls.
“It’s more divey than clubby, but I kinda like that...there’s a whole room that’s just a dance floor. You guys should come...you have IDs?”
“Of course,” Audrey says emphatically. Jen thinks about Judy’s crappy license — a Virgo , of all things! — and kind of laughs, softly, just to herself. Olivia gives her a weird look.
Forcing a straight face, Jen nods. “I’ve got one.”
She has a good one, with an actual photo of herself; one of her friends in high school had a cousin who made them. She’s never really liked going clubbing with other dancers — they can’t help treating a dance floor like a stage, so even a night out drinking has an undercurrent of competition — but it’d be nice to actually leave the two block radius of campus for the first time in nearly two months.
It’s nearly two am, and the crowd has barely thinned out, but it’s the latest Jen’s been awake since school started, and the alcohol is coaxing her faster toward exhaustion. It turns out Audrey’s ready to leave, too, but she insists on stopping by the suite’s kitchen first. The counter space is crowded with bottles, and Audrey picks through several before lifting a bottle of blue raspberry vodka in apparent triumph. “Ah-ha! This flavor’s kinda nasty but, more importantly, it’s almost full.” She looks at Jen and gestures at the crowded counters. “Anything you want?”
“Are you stealing that?”
Audrey grins and, after twisting the lid on the bottle to make sure it’s tightly sealed, sticks the vodka in a purse even more comically oversized than Judy’s canvas bag. “Why do you think I brought this fucking picnic basket to a party?”
Yeah, okay, Audrey is definitely worth befriending.
Jen finds an apparently unopened bottle of wine and wedges it into Audrey’s bag. On the walk back to their dorms — Audrey lives in Campbell, which is basically across the street from Franklin — Audrey gives Jen a run down so far on which liquor stores in the Village have accepted her fake ID so far. She has one like Judy’s, though, a discarded license of someone who shares her vague features, and thinks Jen would probably have better luck with hers.
When they split up at a street corner, Audrey hands Jen the wine she stole. It won’t fit in her bag, and she doesn’t want to risk running into her RA. Feeling idiotic, Jen shoves the bottle into the side of her grungy, frayed edged overalls and sticks a hand in her pocket, holding the bottom of the bottle through the denim fabric. She keeps it there for the elevator ride and an awkward walk down the hall to her room. She doesn’t really feel her own drunkenness until she sticks her key in the door, accidentally locks it, and turns it in the wrong direction before finally managing to get the door open.
Judy’s sitting on her bed with a box of Entenmann’s open on her lap — the cookies are now a staple of their shopping lists — already staring expectantly at the door thanks to Jen’s audible key issues.
“Hey,” Judy smiles, and in the next second her eyes light up. “Hey. Your hair’s down!”
“You’ve seen my hair down.”
“Pretty much only when it’s wet. You look gorgeous.”
Jen makes a face, fidgeting under the compliment and its casual delivery.
She’s inexperienced with the brand of female friendship Judy is apparently offering. Dance commitments have always kept her so busy that her closest friends, by default, were the ones she knew from the studio. But there was a barbed intimacy to those relationships, recitals and performance arriving every four months like clockwork to remind them that they were competitors first, friends a distant second. Jen isn’t used to compliments without envy singeing the edges.
She suddenly realizes she’s still got the wine bottle clutched against her hip. She pulls it out.
Judy grins. “That’s a useful magic trick.”
“Stole it from the party,” Jen says, a little smug, as if it was all her idea.
Judy extends the package of cookies in Jen’s direction and shakes it enticingly. “Want some?”
Jen nods, bringing the wine with her as she sits down beside Judy on her bed, both of them leaning back against the wall. Judy was at a party tonight, too, and she’s still dressed from it, her knees drawn up beneath a long polka dotted skirt; up close, she smells like different kinds of smoke.
Jen shoves half a cookie in her mouth and opens the wine bottle — it’s a twist top and, now that Jen can see it in decent lighting, a suspiciously bright shade of pink. Jen takes a sip and grimaces; it’s too fucking sweet, practically carbonated. She offers it to Judy, who takes a sip before selecting another cookie. Instead of eating it, though, Judy holds it at eye level and gazes at it admiringly
“Aren’t these the best thing in the world?” Judy marvels. “And it’s made with so few ingredients? Yet somehow it’s this delicious? It’s like….what even is flour? And how is it so crucial to everything delicious?”
Jen cuts her eyes sideways, studying her roommate. She’s more dreamy eyed than usual. “Are you stoned?”
“Pffft. Only, like, barely.”
Jen smirks and nudges Judy’s arm with her own. “Uh-huh. And I’m only like barely drunk.”
They repeat the routine the next night, when Jen returns to the dorm, sweaty and buzzed, from the bar with Olivia and her friends, and Judy gets back around the same time from post-work drinks.
Judy’s kind of quiet at first, and with a few questions Jen is able to glean that there was no semblance of an afterglow with Andrew the actor slash waiter. But she seems to cheer up pretty quickly; they finish off the cookie package and trade sips of lukewarm wine while Jen makes Judy laugh with descriptions of dance students trying to show off their ballet honed skills to “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
+
“Uh, Judy? Why is the entire fridge full of to-go boxes?”
“Shit, sorry…I can move some stuff to the lounge fridge.”
“It’s fine, it’s just, you know…” Jen manages to extract her water bottle from the styrofoam packed minifridge before looking up at her roommate. “What the fuck?”
“Dining halls are closed starting Thursday...just figured I should stock up for the break.”
“Uh huh.” Ever since Judy started her waitress job, she’s gotten into the habit of bringing to go boxes, obviously pilfered from the restaurant, to carry out extra food from the dining hall. But her current stockpile seems excessive; fall break’s basically a four day weekend. “I think it’s back open on Sunday afternoon, right?”
“Yeah....” Judy crouches down beside her, peering critically into the fridge. “I maybe went overboard.”
Jen rolls her eyes at the understatement, closing the fridge and standing up. Judy cranes her neck to look up at her, and Jen offers her a hand without thinking about it.
Judy flashes a grateful smile, letting Jen haul her to her feet. “So when are you heading home?”
“I’m not.”
“Really? You’ll be here all weekend?”
Jen has her excuse ready, trots it out like she’s rehearsing a play. “Showcase auditions are coming up. I wanna take advantage of the studio time.”
She’s done that thing again, anticipating an argument, so she’s got her defenses locked and loaded — yes, her house in Brooklyn is only half hour by train, and no that doesn’t mean she has to seize every fucking opportunity to go there — but Judy just beams at her, any surprise quickly giving way to delight.
“It’s so nice that you’re staying! I figured it was gonna be kind of a lonely weekend.”
“Yeah, well, get excited, cause I’m providing the best kind of company.” Jen waits for Judy’s questioning look to explain, “Audrey told me which places close by have taken her fake...I’m gonna swing by after class and grab some libations.”
“Ah, interesting.” Judy smirks a little. “So I’m not the only one stocking up.”
“Hey, it’s still our vacation, right? Even if we’re not going anywhere.”
“That is solid logic.”
“Any requests?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Vodka, maybe? Or whiskey. Unless you were thinking tequila, it does mix well with a lot of different stuff, so that might be smart. Y’know what, that wine last week was actually fine, too.”
“So....you don’t care.”
“I really don’t.”
+
Jen isn’t really expecting such a noticeable mass exodus from campus. There must be plenty of students like Judy, who live too far away to go home for such a short break, or like Jen, who could but would rather fucking not.
But Jen gets back to the dorm around seven thirty on Wednesday night after snagging some time in one of the studio rooms, and already there are far more empty tables than occupied ones in the Franklin dining hall. Jen keeps her headphones on and has a quick salad bar dinner before heading back to her room. Even the hall bathroom is pretty much deserted, making it the first shower Jen’s had all semester that is undisturbed by echoey conversations from the sinks, constant flushing, or a shower radio that’s either a weirdly common possession on this floor or the property of someone with Jen’s precise shower schedule.
Judy’s at work for her regular Wednesday night shift, leaving Jen alone in their room with fuck all to do. Well, she’s got reading to catch up on from her pointless English Lit class, but there are four full days ahead for that, and homework seems like a lame way to spend what is, technically, the first night of a break. So does going to sleep close to her usual time.
Jen unlatches the room's only window, between their beds and above the minifridge. It looks out over Tenth Street, and Judy hung these gauzy, patterned curtains sometime around their second week here. Jen pulls the window halfway open, then wanders over to her desk for a cigarette. Supposedly, Franklin Hall used to be a full smoking dorm until, like, five years ago, so it’s not like it’ll hurt anything. Jen can light one of Judy’s incense sticks to cover the smell (Autumnal Twilight is actually kind of a nice), but she’s pretty sure Shannon, their slightly geeky RA who has dedicated her life to the English Horn, has absconded for the week anyway.
Jen perches on top of her desk with her feet in the chair and turns on the stereo; it’s in the middle of one of her mixes that Judy seems to like a lot. She must be figuring out the track listings, since Jen’s started to notice certain tapes on heavy rotation.
Judy does really like The Cranberries.
Leaning back against the wall and exhaling smoke in the vague direction of the window, Jen lets her gaze rove idly along Judy’s side of the room. She still hasn’t put up any of her own art, probably because assignments in her intro level drawing class are fairly rudimentary; there is a watercolor astrological chart Judy apparently painted herself, but Jen refuses to categorize that as art .
Still, the walls have gotten fairly crowded over the last two months; there are several poster prints of allegedly famous paintings, gift shop finds from when Judy was playing tourist at all major Manhattan art museums. Her closet door is dominated by a print showing the phases of the moon; when she first hung it, Jen had asked why they couldn’t just check the fucking sky.
Oh, and Judy has an oversized dreamcatcher hanging above the head of her bed. Because of course she fucking does.
Jen’s walls really do look prison cell, asylum patient blank in comparison. She had firmly decided before coming to college that she wasn’t going to be one of those obnoxious photo collage people with a bulletin board crowded with snapshots from graduation and prom and summer dance intensives. Fortunately, Judy isn’t one of those people, either, limiting herself to a single framed photo on her desk — it’s Judy as a little kid, gap toothed and pigtailed and still wearing dresses with too many colliding colors, with her mom on a beach somewhere.
Anyway. The point is, Jen is still committed to her no photo collage vow, but she could probably stand to put up something. She’s got a collection of Playbills in her room back home, kept safe between hard plastic folders in her nightstand, the corners pristine and spines uncreased, but maybe they’re worth displaying. They could line her walls like a declaration, a reminder of what she wants and why she’s here.
No rush to get them, though, obviously. She’ll be home at Thanksgiving.
+
Judy gets back a little after midnight, in her work clothes that always throw Jen off a little (white button up, black jeans). The scent of garlic bread wafts into the dorm room with her, and immediately it’s got Jen craving carbs.
“Oh, hey!” Judy smiles at her, this specific recurring smile that always gives the impression that Jen’s entirely expected presence is a delightful surprise. “Forgot you might still be up.”
“Fall break, whoo hoo,” Jen intones flatly. She’s migrated to her bed by now, half a pack of cigarettes gone and The Sound and the Fury briefly attempted and then abandoned on the floor. She sits up for the first time in an hour, raking a hand through her hair, tangled and knotty from drying on its own.
Judy’s standing in the center of the room with her head slightly tilted, breathing in deeply. “Is that Autumnal Twilight?”
“Maybe .” Jen smirks, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and lifting her comforter. “Look.” She knocks her heel against the bag holding her recent purchase: a handle of Everclear and two bottles of wine.
“Fall break, whoo hoo,” Judy repeats with a grin. She’s in front of her dresser now, swapping the black jeans for pajama pants (possibly the only other pair of pants she owns, though these are loose and silky and could easily be mistaken for one of her many patterned skirts) and the button down for a tank top. Jen is way too used to crowded dressing rooms and hurried backstage costume changes to have any semblance of roommate modesty, and she’s glad Judy’s not weird about that stuff either.
“Shall we do a toast to the break?” Judy asks when she’s finished changing.
“A toast to Shannon’s absence, maybe.” Jen pulls out the Everclear. “Though it could get kinda sad if we’re just drinking in the room for the next four days.”
“We could go watch TV in the common room,” Judy suggests. Jen is about to make fun of her for thinking TV in the common room remotely counts as shaking things up, but then Judy’s face lights up and she says, “Ooh, actually, the TV in the basement might actually be free for once.”
Honestly, she’s so sincere sometimes it’s not even worth the teasing.
“Is there even anything good on TV this late on a weeknight?”
Judy gives Jen a look like that was a ridiculous question.
+
“I truly had no idea Facts of Life was still on every fucking night.”
“Oh, yeah. There’ll be another episode on after this...then at two we can switch to Nick at Nite and watch Bewitched.”
Jen shakes her head in disbelief, taking a sip of her drink and pulling a face at the harsh bite of vodka. They’ve got Sprites from the vending machines, half of the soda sacrificed down the sink and replaced with Everclear, sitting close on the basement couch to avoid the cushion stained with (hopefully) beer. Jen flipped it so the stain was hidden, but still. They know it’s there.
Jen nudges the weight of her shoulder against Judy’s. “Why do you know that?”
Judy’s answering smile is smaller than usual. “It’s gonna sound kinda cheesy.”
Jen nearly snickers at that. Judy is easily the most earnest teenager she’s ever met; Jen can’t imagine what her bar might be for cheesy . But the show’s rolled into a commercial, and Jen gives Judy her full attention. “Okay, I am bracing for cheesy.”
Judy’s face scrunches in a frankly kind of adorable expression. “I don’t know, I’ve just always liked older shows like this. Especially comedies, when they’re so many episodes and they’re all pretty similar? It’s kind of comforting, don’t you think? Like especially when you’re in a new place or something...you can always find Jo and Blair and Tootie and Mrs. Garret and they’re always familiar.”
Jen’s quiet for a moment. She remembers the letter Judy sent over the summer, how it said something about she and her mom bouncing around a lot, even though they stayed in California. For a second, she considers asking about that, if it was her mom’s job or something else that meant they were always moving, but Jen would rather not introduce the topic of parents.
Instead she nudges Judy’s arm again. “Wow .” Her voice turns warm and teasing. “That’s a real diss on Natalie.”
Judy starts laughing. “Oh, no! I’d never diss Natalie.”
Jen shakes her head, mockingly sorrowful. “And yet you have…”
“Poor Natalie.”
“Poor, poor Natalie.”
“To Natalie!” Judy lifts her Sprite bottle aloft; Jen solemnly echoes the toast and taps her drink against Judy’s. The vodka assists in making this sentiment inexplicably funny, and they miss half of the episode’s tag trying to stop giggling.
+
They stay in the basement lounge until three a.m., when the block of Bewitched is followed by The Munsters and loses their interest. The Sprite bottles have been solely vodka for the last episode they watched, so Jen falls asleep fast and hard and, apparently, soundly enough to turn off her alarm at nine the next morning and sleep for almost three more hours.
When she wakes up, Judy’s not in the room, which is a first (well, a second, but Jen’s just decided to pretend that never happened). Jen groans and pulls her comforter over head until she hears the door open and shut very quietly.
Jen throws the covers off and sees Judy, dressed for work and holding a blowdryer and her shower caddy. She grimaces apologetically. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”
“No...is it really almost noon?”
“Apparently, yeah. I gotta get to work.” Jen’s confused for a second before remembering Judy picked up an extra daytime shift today, taking advantage of the cancelled classes.
One of Judy’s to go boxes is open on her desk, apparently a hurried lunch before work. She picks up what’s left of a sandwich and takes a bite, using one hand to put on her shoes. If she’s experiencing a fraction of the headache Jen is, it’s an impressive display.
“You heading to the studio soon?” Judy asks when she’s finished, stuffing the container in their tiny trash can.
“Ummm...I don’t know if I can? My body might be ruined.”
Judy laughs at her. “Here. This should help.” She drops a bottle of aspirin on Jen’s comforter and then pulls a bottle of water from the fridge and hands it to her.
“Gross, you’re like a fucking mom. At college,” Jen gripes, ducking back under the covers. She can hear Judy laughing. “How are you not hungover?”
“Oh, I am. But I’m smiling through it, because I have to go wait tables for seven hours.”
“Godspeed.”
“I’ll see ya later.”
“Bye. Oh, hey, can you, like, steal some garlic bread and bring it back here? Your clothes always smell like they have good garlic bread.”
“I can. And they do. Bye, Jen.”
Jen mumbles something incoherent in reply just before the door closes. She forces herself to fumble for the aspirin bottle and down a few. It takes a half hour of lying in bed getting used to the daylight before Jen drags herself up and attempts some uncomfortable, stiff limbed stretches, then another hour or so after that before she gets dressed, eats a protein bar, and ventures out of the dorm.
It’s the first time she has to use her access code to get into the studio itself, not just one of the rehearsal rooms. In theory, the building is available to all enrolled dance students twenty-four hours a day, year round. There are several older students rehearsing in one of the larger rehearsal rooms where classe are held — senior year in the program functions like a real dance company, so Jen doubts they get much time off during breaks — but she has her pick of the smaller practice rooms.
After a few hours, Jen’s hangover is a distant memory. She’d planned to rehearse twice today, in the morning and then again before dinner, but the late start threw her off. She decides to settle for an extra long session, staying almost three hours in the studio, and then call it for the day, rather than sit around sweaty all night just waiting to go back.
She’ll make up for it tomorrow, Jen decides later while she’s drying her hair in her dorm room, stereo turned loud enough so she can hear Garbage wailing over the blow dryer.
Hair done, she puts on the Levis with the biggest holes in the knees and this red tank top that exactly matches her favorite lipstick. Jen spends so much of her time here in leotards and workout clothes, always too few hours away from rehearsals to bother with her hair or makeup, the recent weekend nights out and the actual getting ready they require have been a nice change. Even tonight, when she’s probably just hanging out with Judy, stepping back to check her appearance provokes a warm thrill of satisfaction. Putting in effort may be rare lately, but it still fucking pays off.
Except Judy’s not off work for another two hours. They hadn’t even talked about specific plans for tonight, but being in the room makes Jen feel more bored and impatient, like a kid waiting to be picked up for a sleepover. She takes her cigarettes and William Faulkner novel into the common room, smoking slowly through like forty-two pages before she gives up.
She ends up grabbing her Walkman and her leather jacket and walking to Judy’s restaurant, taking a longer than necessary route so she gets there five minutes before Judy’s shift is supposed to end. Jen’s planning to just wait out on the sidewalk, but the restaurant lobby seems crowded with people waiting for a table, and when she catches a glimpse of a guy working the host stand, curiosity gets her inside.
“Hi, welcome to Portofino, how many for dinner?” The guy recites lazily as soon as Jen steps inside.
“That’s okay.” Jen says dismissively, sidling toward the far end of the waiting area so she can find Judy in the dining room.
“Are you looking for your party?”
Jen fakes smiles in his direction. “I’m good, I’m just waiting for someone.”
“It’s a forty-five minute wait right now, so you probably want to put a name in?”
Jen glances at the guy again. He’s good looking in that generic, aspiring actor way, and he looks maybe twenty-one, twenty-two. This restaurant is apparently too classy for staff name tags, but Jen kind of hopes he’s Andrew, because she seems to be annoying him.
She decides to ignore him, turning her attention back to the dining area. She sees Judy now, smiling sweetly at the occupants of a table. It takes a minute for her to spot Jen; she double takes and then gives Jen a confused, but of course still pleasantly surprised, smile. Jen waves, immediately aiming a smug smirk toward the host to make sure he sees.
Judy disappears into the kitchen for a few minutes before she heads over to Jen. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
“Got bored in the dorms,” Jen says honestly. “You wanna get pizza or something? Not here.”
“Sure! Give me two minutes, I just have to wrap up with one table and clock out.”
“Hey…” Jen catches her sleeve to stop her from leaving. She turns so her back is to the host stand, lowers her voice to ask, “Which one is Andrew?”
“Oh.” Judy nods in the direction of the dining room. “Behind the bar, with the red tie.”
Jen immediately follows her gaze, eying the bartender. She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “Jesus, Judy, that guy’s like thirty.”
“No, he isn’t! You think?”
“Well. He’s at least twenty five.”
“Don’t stare.” Judy’s hand is on Jen’s back, and she pivots her gently in the opposite direction. “I don’t want him to think I’m talking about him.”
Jen rolls her eyes. “He should be worried we’re talking about him. Maybe we’re deciding whether to call the fucking cops.”
“Jen.” Judy looks appalled. “I’m eighteen, it’s not a crime.”
“He buy you a drink? Crime.” Jen arches an eyebrow. “Say the word, we’ll have him arrested.”
Judy shakes her head, but she’s smiling like she’s trying not to. “I’ll be right back. Maybe you just...stay here.”
“Oh, you don’t want me to go to the bar? Say hello?” Jen calls, mock innocent, as Judy walks away.
+
“He didn’t really do anything wrong,” Judy explains later, when they’re walking to a pizzeria Jen knows. “I think I talked too much or seemed too into it or something.”
Jen cuts her eyes at Judy, skeptical. She waits until she swallows a bite of garlic bread, which Judy still smuggled out for her despite their immediate dinner plans. “So is he actually talking to you again?”
“Not really.” Jen huffs out a low, scoffing sound but doesn’t reply. After a moment, Judy asks, “Do you really think he was thirty ?”
“Eh, I can’t be sure. Maybe it was the low lighting.” Jen pauses, then adds, “We can only hope his acting career takes off soon...he’s gotta be getting too old to play a fucking frat boy in a beer commercial, and I’m pretty sure that’s his only shot.”
Judy laughs. “He does kinda have that look, doesn’t he?”
“Yep, and that look is fucking limiting. That’s the place.” Jen gestures at the pizzeria across the street.
They’re waiting at the crosswalk when Judy looks at Jen and says, apropos of nothing, “Is your birthday coming up?”
“Uh, yeah, next week, actually.” Jen narrows her eyes. “How’d you know that?”
Judy grins proudly. “Because you’re such a Scorpio.”
Jen makes an exaggerated gagging sound, but Judy just smirks and talks over her. “I was right, so. You gotta admit there’s something to it.”
“I absolutely fucking don’t and won’t,” Jen insists as they cross the street.
Judy laughs at her, still looking obnoxiously pleased with herself. “So, wait, are you old for our year or young?”
It takes Jen a second to figure out what she’s asking, that it has nothing to do with fucking astrology. “Oh. Young...just now turning eighteen.”
“Ooh, big one. Excited to buy your first legal cigarettes?”
“Nah, that’s old news...I’m gonna go out and vote.” Judy giggles, so Jen keeps the bit going. “Maybe there’s not an election, but I will show up at a fucking elementary school and forcibly cast a ballot.”
They head into the restaurant then, and when they’re deciding on what pizza to order Jen passionately insists on pepperoni, making Judy pick them off as a punishment for her astrology arrogance. Later, on the walk back to the dorm, Jen grabs Judy’s arm and tugs her into a Blockbuster Video — “No offense to Mrs. Garrett and the girls, but we gotta do better than sitcom reruns tonight.”
Judy’s annoyingly agreeable to any movie Jen suggests until she finally insists they both have to choose one. Back at the dorm, the Everclear stays under Jen’s bed, but they do pour wine into emptied out Gatorade bottles — not enough to repeat this morning’s hangover, but just to class up the batshit double feature of Death Becomes Her and Judy’s (predictable) pick, When Harry Met Sally.
+
Jen actually gets out of bed and to the studio at a decent hour the next morning; Judy’s still in bed when she gets back to the dorms. They have leftover pizza for lunch and then Judy kind of apologetically says she has to do some studying for upcoming midterms. They can both work with music on, so Jen puts on one of her quieter mixes before stretching out on her bed and reluctantly returning to Faulkner. Judy’s actually sitting at her desk, making flash cards for her Spanish class. Jen glances over every once in a while and notices Judy sometimes opts to sketch a quick illustration rather than write out the English translation. This must add a fair amount of non-studying time to the process, but Jen refrains from commenting.
Late afternoon, Jen goes back to the studio for a while, returning to a note from Judy on the whiteboard; apparently, she’s in the library’s computer lab working on a paper for Art History, and Jen should help herself to any of Judy’s dining hall takeout meals.
Jen showers and dries her hair, and Judy still isn’t back. She’s only been in school for two months, but Jen has apparently forgotten how to deal with down time. Twenty minutes on her own in the dorm room and she’s chafing under the boredom.
She eventually pulls her mat out and starts stretching just to have something to fucking do. Jen’s wearing leggings and an old recital shirt with the neck cut out, and when Judy finally gets back Jen’s on the floor between their beds in a full side split.
“Well, hey,” Judy’s eyes flare, mock suggestive. “It’s not even my birthday.”
Jen makes a face at her. “Okay, weirdo.”
Judy giggles. “What are you doing?”
“Working through extreme fucking boredom.”
“Okay...so what are we doing?” She sits on her bed while Jen pulls her legs together. “We could, like...go to a movie or something?”
“I called earlier, there’s nothing good playing.”
“Hmmm, okay.” Judy sits back, leaning against the wall, expression set in concentration like it's her sole responsibility to come up with a plan. Jen decides to keep quiet, wait patiently, and see what she comes up with.
“Oh.” Judy says finally, a slow, satisfied smile taking over her face. “I know what we’re doing.”
“I’m hearing a lot of confidence…” Jen says, resting her chin on her knees and watching Judy get up and walk to her dresser.
Judy pulls out a box of tampons.
Jen snorts. “Uh, if your plan is to menstruate, I’ve got a few days.”
Judy laughs. She seems to be sorting through the box, looking for a particular tampon, maybe. “Hold on…”
“Fiiiiine, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Here!” Judy drops the box back in the drawer and pulls two tightly rolled joint out of a plastic Tampax wrapper, holding them up triumphantly like a feminist stoner magician.
“I don’t know…” Jen gives her a doubtful look. “I’m not really a drugs person.”
“It’s not drugs. It’s a plant.” Judy grins. “You’ve really never tried it?”
“I, like, took a few hits at a party once, when I was a sophomore. Didn’t do much for me.”
“A lot of people don’t feel anything their first time. I think cause they don’t hold it in long enough.” Judy sits down on her bed again, lightly nudging Jen’s knee with the toe of her shoe. “Come on, I thought you were sooo fucking bored.”
“You’re a literal fucking peer pressure skit right now, do you realize that?”
Judy laughs, dropping the pitch of her voice and shooting Jen an enticing smile. “C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it.”
Jen exhales a dramatic sigh and rolls her eyes in defeat. “Fine, crack the fucking window.”
+
“Music…” Jen begins, confident and declarative. “...is just poetry.”
She pauses, considering the wisdom of the statement, then screws up her face in confusion. “Does everyone know that?”
“I don’t think they do.” Judy sounds appropriately awed by the realization. They’re both on Jen’s bed, barefoot and baked. “But also? It’s crazy someone wrote a song this good.”
Alanis Morissette is playing on the stereo, the inspiration for Jen’s earlier epiphany, so she obviously nods in vehement agreement, then eats another chocolate chip cookie.
“I really believe her, y’know?” Judy muses. “I hear this song, and it’s just like...everything is gonna be fine, fine, fine.”
“She knows,” Jen agrees solemnly. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, leaning against the wall, letting the music and the Autumnal Twilight Judy lit to cover the weed smell wash over her.
“Hey, Jen?” Judy breaks a couple minutes of silence. She’s whispering for some reason.
“Mmmmm?”
“You’re feeling it, right?”
Jen starts laughing and doesn’t stop. It’s just so fucking funny that she has to ask .
“Yeah, Judy, I fuckin’ feel it.”
Judy grins. “Could you still do a split though?”
“Pssh.” Jen slides off the bed onto the floor, placing herself in another side split.
Judy props her chin on her palm, eyes wide and impressed. “It’s crazy your body just does that.”
Jen can’t resist showing off a little, bending her torso and reaching over her head toward her toes. She’s pretty sure attempting this stretch drunk would make her dizzy and nauseous, but stoned is clearly a whole different sensation, like Jen is extra in tune with her own body and its capabilities. She bends in the opposite direction, marveling at herself.
“You’re like Gumby,” Judy observes, and it makes Jen laugh, picturing her limbs long and rubbery and green.
She bends forward again, getting her face inches from the floor, still giggling to herself at the Gumby image when Judy sighs, loud and dreamy. “I still can’t wait to see you dance.”
Jen pops up from the floor, giving Judy an indignant look, like she’s issued a challenge. “I could dance right now.”
Judy laughs. “What, to this?”
It’s Alanis, still, a few tracks further into the album.
“No.” Jen stands up and starts looking around for her jacket. “We’ll go to the studio. I can get in anytime.”
Judy blinks at her. “Are you serious?”
Jen is entirely serious. Going to the studio right now feels like a fantastic fucking idea; in fact, she suspects she might never again dance as well as she could dance right now, in this moment, and she wants Judy to see.
She doesn’t even answer Judy’s question, just puts on her jacket and gives her an impatient look. “Are you coming?”
Judy’s face splits into a smile; she looks like a kid who just got a surprise trip to Disneyland. “Yes, this is amazing, let’s go.”
Judy turns off the stereo on their way out of the room, and Jen can hear her singing the last few lines — “...I couldn’t help iiit, it’s all your fault.” — under her breath while they wait for the elevator.
+
Judy’s shivering by the time they cross the park in the center of campus and make it to the dance studio. She’d never changed out of the dress she’d worn all day — floral print with thin straps, layered over a short sleeve white t-shirt — but it’s mid-October and they are hours past an actual autumnal twilight, heh heh. Jen should maybe be concerned that Judy’s Californian wardrobe is not prepared for the coming winter; she punches her code into the door as quickly as she can, and makes a mental note to revisit that potential issue when they’re no longer high.
She leads Judy to one of the largest rehearsal rooms and flips on the lights. “There is where my contemporary class is every day.”
“Nice.” Judy surveys the room appreciatively. “Where should I sit? I want optimal viewing.”
Jen doesn’t answer. She’s making eye contact with her own reflection, the bright light and the familiar room unexpectedly disorienting. It’s hard to ignore, all of a sudden, that this is very much not how she usually feels in this room.
“Hey.” Judy touches her wrist. “You okay?”
“Ummmm. Possibly. I was completely fucking sure I could dance and be high at the same time but, um. Now that we’re here I am...less fucking sure.”
“Jen. Jen. Look at me.” Judy clasps her shoulders with both hands, making stern, unshakable eye contact. “You can dance.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you know what else? You can jive.”
“Oh my God.”
“Having, just...the time of your life.” Judy’s lips twitch and her eyes are sparkling and Jen shoves her face away.
“I hate you.”
“See that girl...watch that scene…”
“Okay, fine. Christ. Any excuse for a new song.”
“Excellent.” Judy beams, annoyingly pleased with herself. “Do you have music?”
“Yeah, I’ll find something,” she mutters, keeping hold of her purse as she heads for the sound system in the corner of the room. There are stacks of tapes and CDs there, but Jen doesn’t need to go through them, rummaging instead through her bag for a cassette that’s been there all semester. It’s a mixtape, the label sharpie scrawled with “Solo Songs.”
It’s probably stupid, carrying the thing around in case of some spontaneous, impossible audition, like any college instructor is suddenly going to demand to see her best routine, give her two minutes notice to prove herself worthy of being here. But in the unlikely event that such a situation ever arises, Jen will be prepared.
The first track is really all she needs; Jen first used it for a lyrical solo at a summer intensive before her junior year of high school, then reworked it slightly last year, making it the climactic piece for her final recital with Ms. Bryant’s studio. It’s the kind of song they used to joke about, feigning cynicism at the crowd pleasers, the hits that seemed tailor made to wring tears from the moms and grandmothers...but Jen knows how fucking good she is to this song, how bone deep she knows and nails this performance.
Of course it’s the one she wants to show Judy.
Jen sticks the tape into the stereo, then kicks out of her Converse and pulls off her socks, flexing her toes and bouncing on the balls of her feet to feel out the smooth wooden floor. She glances back at Judy, sitting down now with her back against a mirror wall, and has to stifle a fresh stream of giggling over the absurdity of this...sole dancer and audience member both high as fucking kites for a private, midnight performance.
Jen surveys the room for a moment. “Judy, c’mere….sit so you can press play when I tell you.”
Obediently, Judy gets to her feet and walks over, resuming her position on the floor within reach of the stereo. Jen backs away from her, closer to the center of the room. She glances sideways, sees them both in the mirror.
“Okay.” Jen sets her feet, straightens her spine. “Go.”
Judy presses play, sliding away from the stereo just as the first chord begins. Their eyes catch, and Judy smiles big, anticipation shimmering off her, practically giving off light.
Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for awhile
Heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies…
+
The song fills the room and also Judy’s entire chest, with Jen glowing right at the center of it, so bright and beautiful it hurts her eyes.
Judy loves art, and she’d thought she understood it, could even call herself an artist with easy confidence, but she’s never seen anything like this: the way Jen’s body is both the medium and the creation, the artist and the art itself.
It’s a kind of magic, and Judy never wants to look away.
She is stoned, yes. But weed alone cannot account for the way the atmosphere has shifted in the room, laws of physics temporarily suspended. Judy hasn’t had to breathe since the song started, and fifteen feet away Jen is moving like someone gravity can’t quite touch.
Judy sighs, soft and happy. This is the best night. The best week really.
She loves everything about college, loves everything about New York City, even, but having Jen as a roommate is where Judy feels the most lucky. She’s been so ridiculously nice: sharing tips on how to get around the city, letting Judy use her stuff...even giving her a Walkman, to keep, for no reason.
But after these past few days, Judy finally feels certain that Jen actually likes hanging out with her, that she isn’t just being nice about it.
Judy knows she can be too much sometimes, that she makes it hard on people. She’ll always remember overhearing Miss Brenda, her first foster mom, saying to her case worker: Judy’s a sweet girl, but so needy for her age.
She was almost thirteen years old then. Now, at eighteen, Judy tries to be careful. Coming here, she promised herself she would be. It’s why she says yes to all plans that are offered, meets people and makes friends in every class and every pocket of the campus she’s found. It keeps her from being clingy, needing any one person too much.
Most of the people Judy’s met so far have been great. She has a different lunch table full of friends for each day of the week, and she genuinely likes all of them. But she hasn’t laughed nearly as much at any of those tables as she has these last two days with only Jen for company.
The song ends, and Jen just stands up straight, rolling out her shoulders and walking over to Judy as if she’s an ordinary human again. She grins, somewhere between smug and sheepish. “Thought it’d feel different doing that high. Power of muscle memory.”
Judy breaks into belated, awkwardly direct applause. “That was incredible.” She grabs Jen’s hand and tugs her down so they’re sitting beside each other. “You’re incredible.” Jen rolls her eyes like she’s going to brush off the praise, but Judy wants her to get how much she means it. “Like…amazing, phenomenal, fantastic. Gorgeous. All the good adjectives, okay?”
“Thanks. You’re clearly still high.” But Jen’s biting her lip on top of a pleased smile, so Judy decides the compliments were accepted.
Jen pulls her hair free of a ponytail holder, shaking it out so it falls bright and wild around her face, still flushed with exertion. Judy’s probably staring; she drops her gaze to the wood panel of the dance floor, and says casually, “You know, I’ve got a code to get into the art building, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” She can hear Jen’s smirk without seeing it. “Is it your turn now? Wanna go over there and speed paint a portrait or something?”
“No way, I’m not following that.” Judy looks up again, smiling at her. “But we could still go, though. Just to check it out….there are vending machines on the third floor.”
Jen grins. “Let’s go, then, I’m fucking starving.”
+
There’s a manic sort of giddiness that settles over Jen and Judy in Hudson Hall, nine floors of dark rooms and studios and the ever present smell of turpentine and oil paint. As promised, Judy leads Jen to the third floor vending machines; they buy sodas and candy bars and then keep climbing the stairs, stopping to explore every floor. It feels like they’re breaking a rule just being there; little kids with no bedtime, their laughter echoing through an empty, silent building.
There are rooms Judy hasn’t even seen yet, and she feels a little guilty, wandering studios with half finished paintings, like she’s peeking behind a curtain. But Jen starts talking in this horrible French accent, playing like an art snob - “Dear me, Reginald, zis part-ee-cular canvas eez, how you say...fucking dogshit.” - and Judy adopts a British voice in return - “Indeed and cheerio, Juliette, the use of color is a right laugh!” It’s all nonsense, but Judy’s sides hurt from laughing by the time they leave.
Walking back to the dorm, Judy doesn’t even notice she’s started singing out loud until Jen joins in, possibly mocking her but it barely makes a difference. It’s still both of them bursting into the dorm lobby belting out, “‘Cause I’ve got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is giving a PEACE SIGN!”
They’re still singing in the elevator, crawling toward the seventh floor, when suddenly it dings unexpectedly on the third. Judy clamps her mouth shut just as the doors slide open; Jen’s gone quiet, too, and a girl in boxer shorts and a rumpled T-shirt steps on between them.
It isn’t remotely accurate, but the girl feels like the first person besides Jen that Judy has seen in days, maybe even weeks. Judy fixes her stare on the wall of buttons, seven and six now lit up, certain if she so much as glances in Jen’s direction they’ll both crack up.
The elevator dings on the sixth floor. The doors open, the girl steps out, and the doors close again. Beside her, Jen half chokes on a rising laugh, but Judy is right back in it — “I’m brave but I’m chickenshit, I’m sick but I’m pretty, BA-BY,” — like the campus and the elevator and the song are still all theirs.