Run
by Leslie Johnson
Lucky kneads Bridget’s chest with his front paws as she lies on her dorm room bed, her head cradled by the Squishmallow panda she brought from home, laptop on the mattress beside her with only one paragraph of her Intro to Art History paper written so far. It’s due tonight. Please folks, the professor begged at the end of class, no AI. I can always tell. But the frazzled professor with her pleading smile can’t tell, as far as Bridget knows, because at least half the class used it to write their first essay, and everyone passed.
Lucky’s green eyes stare directly into hers, his claws pricking through her t-shirt. She complies, scratching the thick gray fur between his ears and down his back, digging in with her fingernails, massaging the loose flesh at the scruff of his neck, and Lucky purrs with a raspy gurgle, his eyes closing half-way, and then the drooling begins, saliva dripping down from his open jaws onto her shirt. She stops scratching; Lucky hisses, and Bridget pushes him away. He leaps down, paces in the small rectangle of floor space, flicking his tail, pauses at his water dish which sits beneath the high dormitory window that doesn’t open for safety. He doesn’t drink. Afternoon sun presses weakly on the opaque glass.
Lucky, she says. Lucky.
But he won’t look at her now. He despises her. Why has she has done this to him, taken him away from their home in New Jersey to this cell of a room? She’s guilty, guilty. What does he do all day when she’s at her classes or out and about on campus? Back home in Basking Ridge he was an indoor-outdoor cat, free to disappear and reappear as he pleased. Now he slinks into the plastic hamper, which lies on its side with the lid open. It belongs to him now, as do her favorite sweatpants and soft fleece shirt and a few pairs of socks inside where he burrows. She keeps her dirty clothes now in a garbage bag. It’s the least she can do.
A single knock on the door, then knock knock knock and a voice calling, Bridgie? You in there?
It’s Keesha the RA, who checks on her every three days, who shouts in her friendly way through the door before opening it with her master key.
I need I need I need. Bridget tenses, sits up cross-legged on her nest of blankets and reaches for her laptop. Keesha wrinkles her nose, closing the door behind her. She’s wearing plaid pj pants and a pink hoodie and those big slippers of hers with Daisy and Donald duck heads on their toes. Her eyes dart around the room.
Where’s he at?
Bridget gestures at the hamper.
Smells bad in here, girl, says Keesha.
Bridget tells her it’s been a busy week, she’ll take care of it, but Keesha steps to the bathroom door, and Bridget knows what she’ll find. The litter box full of turds, reeking of ammonia, cans of Tuna Feast piled up in the trash basket, the crusty dish on the bathmat. She leaves the bowl full at the foot of her bed before going to classes in the morning. When she gets back, it’s usually empty, and she puts it in the bathroom for the night. She means to wash out the bowl, and sometimes she does but sometimes she doesn’t. With the bathroom door closed, Bridget doesn’t even smell it. But maybe she’s just used to it.
Bridget is supposed to clean the litter box every other day and feed Lucky only pellets of dry food and borrow the vacuum from the dorm utility closet every Saturday. It’s all written down on the contract prepared by Student Services. Bridget signed it. The Dean of Students gave a copy to the Residential Life director, who gave a copy to Keesha.
Don’t make me write you up, babe, she says.
I won’t, Bridget answers. I need I want Listen okay it’s okay.
You wanna eat at Commons with me and DJ and Marna? Keesha asks, smiling at her.
Keesha is so nice. It makes Bridget want to cry sometimes or say something mean up close to her face in the quiet, scary voice that Bridget knows how to do.
Come on, Keesha says. We want you to.
Bridget tells her she has to go to the library where she can concentrate. She has a paper to finish. She’ll grab a burrito at Moe’s later. Thanks anyway.
Keesha narrows her eyes. Okay, she says, I’ll walk you out. She leans on the wall and waits for Bridget to stand up and put on her shoes and jacket and her laptop in her backpack. Lucky emerges from the hamper, circling the floor; his tail twitches and he leaps to the chair then desktop, planting his paws on top of Bridget’s time management journal she has to write in for Academic Strategies. His back arches, fur spiking as he suddenly yowls.
Shit! Keesha jumps. Psycho cat!
Bridget slings her backpack over one shoulder as Keesha apologizes. She didn’t mean to say that about the cat, okay? He just surprised her with that weird-ass sound. Like a kid screaming or a baby fox being eaten by a coyote or something. Right?
Bridget says it’s okay. Russian Blues are known to be vocal cats. A wide range of expressive noises. Keesha pulls in her chin, making a face. Guess so, she says. They watch as Lucky jumps from the desk and pads lightly to the bed where he stretches out in the middle. Keesha follows Bridget to the elevator.
Good luck with that paper, Keesha calls as the door closes between them.
Sometimes when she’s walking around campus, Bridget feels euphoric. She feels free, as if the rest of the world has nothing to do with her. She’s a freshman, and the month is November, the air cool but not yet cold, a warm November because of climate change, which they’ve talked about in Intro to Environmental Studies. Some people were crying in class last week after the election. The professor kept repeating I’m not telling anyone how to feel. Every has the right to feel however they feel. He has to be careful. That’s what he’s indicated. All the professors received some kind of memo about not alienating any members of the classroom community. But he nodded a lot at the ones who were crying, his old forehead wrinkling up to commiserate.
One of the girls in the class, one of the art majors, stood up from her desk and started giving hugs to the ones that were crying. Her name was Shay. She had piercings in her ears and nose, clompy purple hiking boots, and a poncho made from strips of mismatched fabric sewn together with thick yarns. Most days her curly brown hair was sprayed with color, usually purple but not always. Bridget held very still as Shay approached her desk, and once she’d passed her by to reach the next weepy student, Bridget exhaled slowly through the tiny spaces between her clenched teeth.
Bridget likes art, too. She likes to draw, but hasn’t shown anyone yet. She’s been drawing portraits of Lucky with abstract backgrounds that she colors in with fine-tip markers. She purchased the art supplies in the bookstore with the debit card her mother gave her. As for now, Bridget’s major is general studies, but art can be one of her concentrations if she wants it to be. Art students are expected to be unique and eccentric like Shay, and Bridget to the contrary wears very plain clothing. Jeans and cotton t-shirts, zip-up sweatshirts. Plain hair, too, straight and brown and cut evenly at her shoulders. No makeup, no nail design. But she thinks that maybe it could be unique and eccentric to not be unique and eccentric. To work against type. Bridget has thought about bringing her sketchpad to Environmental Studies, having it out on her desk when class starts where Shay could notice it.
Bridget finds it very hard to cry or laugh or speak in front of people she doesn’t know well or to be touched by them, even accidentally, like someone bumping up against her in the pizza line at Commons. But she’s gotten better than she used to be when she was a child and wouldn’t hold hands at circle time in kindergarten or during the prayer at the end of Sunday School or even be hugged at home when her grandparents visited. Her dad said that people who made themselves different on purpose were doing it to get attention, but then her mother took her to a child psychologist who gave her a kind of anxiety diagnosis called haphephobia, so no one could blame her or make her touch anything that made her skin feel prickly or her stomach nauseous. She was given a pet hamster to practice cupping in her palms while he wriggled around. She named him Cubby, but he died in two months from wet tail.
During Covid quarantine, she floated through months of online school and Instagram clips and computer games, behaving sweetly with her parents now that they weren’t pushing her to join clubs or attend school dances in one of the outfits her mother would buy with fabric too itchy or slippery or clingy on Bridget’s body. She lived in pandemic sweatpants and oversized T’s, and everyone let her be. That was a long time ago now, but sometimes she still wears one of those blue surgical masks when she needs an excuse to keep people at a distance. It works. They just assume she’s sick. Regular sick.
But she’s a lot better now. She has new meds and therapy sessions in person at Student Services and on Zoom with Ms. Clara, her New Jersey life coach. And of course there’s Lucky, who’s been in her dorm room for almost six weeks now.
In mid-September she called her parents and told them they had to pick her up and take her home. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t live at college in Connecticut. It was too much, it made her feel sick, she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t get the work done, she couldn’t talk to her roommate or anyone. Her mother passed the phone off to her father, who breathed hard as if trying to run up a hill. Please, Daddy, Bridget said to him, and they came and got her. Her mother called the Dean of Students, who sent an email to all her professors that requested they do everything possible to work with Bridget online while she dealt with medical concerns at home. There were doctor visits, medication adjustments, two days when they watched old reruns of Gossip Girl on Netflix together without speaking much, and then two days of family counseling, where they were given “talking points” for home discussion.
This all counts as vacation time for me, you know, her father stated at the kitchen table. Vacation time, personal days, doesn’t matter. It comes from the same pot, and the pot’s getting low.
We both have to work, said her mother. People work you know, Bridge, and we’re people.
People have to do things they don’t always want to do, said Dad. Part of life.
Grit, that’s what they call it. You have to have grit, said Mom.
They used to call it just living your life, Dad said, snorting a little. Nobody expected a medal for being normal.
Bridget’s hands were folded on the table, and she let her forehead rest on top of them. Her mother sighed, and Bridget sighed in return to show that she was still listening. Still participating in her own way.
When we tell you we’re disappointed, her mother said, it isn’t because we want you to feel guilty, but because we’re human beings, too, with our own emotions and problems and shortcomings, and I always said I didn’t want to be like my own mother and pretend that everything was always fine when it wasn’t fine, and believe me, I get confused and sad and tired, too, we both do, but that’s because we’re human beings, and doesn’t that make you feel better, in a way, to know that life is hard for everyone, that you’re not alone in it, you’re really really not, and doesn’t that make you feel like you’re part of something bigger, sort of, like, the human endeavor?
Bridget squeezed her shoulder blades, released them.
If you need to stay home, you can stay home, said Dad, but then we have to have a plan.
You’re everything to us. Mom’s voice was trembly. Bridget didn’t look up, but probably Mom’s eyes were getting red. She always had to cry.
You could get a job. Dad’s voice was getting louder.
If anything happened to you, it would kill us, Mom said. You know that, right?
Her father breathed.
Bridget lifted her chin.
Why not give college another try, he said. See what happens. We already paid for the semester. We can’t get that back now anyway.
What would make it better? Mom was pleading. What would make it easier? Maybe if we changed your classes to pass-fail. I think there’s a way we can do that. I can talk to the Dean.
But then would the credits count? We already paid for the damn credits, said Dad.
Well, think of it as an investment. A trial run.
Forget it, Dad grunted, rolling his eyes. Go ahead, give up. Quit. Stay home. Get a job at Burger King. Whatever.
Sweetie, mom said. She was weeping now. What would help? What can we try?
I need I want I want. Bridget was thinking that maybe she really was pretending everything. I feel, I think, if I could maybe. Maybe she’d actually been pretending everything all her life, the chills on her arm when she was supposed to curl her fingers around someone else’s hand, her throat closing up when she should’ve laughed at someone’s joke, her compulsion to sit alone in an empty room immersed in silence like perfect, invisible bath water. Maybe her father was right. Maybe she’d always been pretending to be special and fragile and sensitive. But if she confessed to pretending, how would she act if she wasn’t pretending? Would she only be pretending that she used to be pretending? She didn’t know didn’t know didn’t know.
Suddenly Lucky appeared in the bay window of the kitchen nook, strutting on the sill like a balance beam before settling in the center, eyeing them haughtily as if affronted by their ridiculous conversation. Bridget straightened in her chair.
I miss Lucky, she said.
That wasn’t true. That was definitely pretend. Lucky mostly belonged to her mother, the only one he ever deigned to cuddle with occasionally on the sofa. Bridget wanted to see if she could tell the difference between pretending on purpose and pretending the way that maybe she’d just gotten used to pretending.
Maahhh. It was Lucky, calling her bullshit.
Really? Her mother squinted.
I do, Bridget said. Her mom nodded.
Well, let’s look into that. Let’s make some calls to the college.
Within two days, her mother had gotten Bridget reassigned to a single room with Lucky, who was now Bridget’s therapy cat. With documentation from Bridget’s primary care doctor and therapist, approval from Residential Life came quickly, along with the code of conduct that Bridget had to sign. Lucky was not allowed to roam the halls of the dormitory or student union, nor was he permitted in her classrooms. But he would be her companion in the privacy of her room for emotional support and stress reduction. Keesha Carty, a junior and her Residential Life Assistant, would be checking for compliance. Privately, Bridget’s mom agreed to Venmo $50 to Keesha every week for keeping an eye on Bridget’s moods. That deal was worked out between the two of them when Bridget’s mom drove her back to Connecticut with Lucky in a travel cage and Target bags filled with supplies to help them both get settled in the new room.
Now Bridget is floating toward the library in the dusk, her lungs small balloons lifting her slightly off the ground just barely levitating so no one can tell. Sometimes she gets this wonderful feeling that everything is fine and nothing matters and she can do anything. It’s not even 5:00 but almost dark because Daylight Savings ended last week. Someone’s started a bonfire already. She sees the flames waving in the University’s stone firepit ringed with bright red Adirondack chairs. On the school’s website there’s a photo prominently featured of smiling students in sweaters and beanies gathered around it toasting marshmallows on long sticks, one boy grinning in exaggerated ecstasy as he readies to take a bite of his S’more.
A spiral of smoke rises in slow motion against the graying sky, signaling her, and she drifts closer. One of the chairs is empty, and Bridget’s pulse speeds up, propelling her. There are no marshmallows but someone has a guitar, not playing it yet, but holding it on their knee like they’re about to begin any moment, and now Bridget can see that one of people in the circle of red chairs is Shay. Go go do it I want. Shay’s wearing a rainbow vest over a long black sweater, her hair in a blue side ponytail. She’s got one leg slung over the arm of the chair, and she’s talking back and forth to the people beside her, laughing.
Bridget steps forward, shrugs off her backpack and sits in the empty chair. Shay’s seat is on the other side of the circle, the firepit between them.
Hi Shay! Bridget shouts it by mistake, too loud too loud, and she cringes, her breath catching in her throat.
Shay smiles at her through quivers of flame.
How’s it going, Shay says in a normal voice and Bridget can hear her just fine even though she seems far away.
Just vibing, Bridget says and her voice is okay this time. She curls her legs up on the chair and wishes the guy with the guitar would start to play but he doesn’t, and the girls on both sides of Shay start talking about a mouse they think they heard in their dorm at night, a sort of scratchy sound, something moving like scitcchh-scitcchh in the middle of the night.
Scampering, Shay says. Something scampering?
Scampering, yeah, something scampering around, they both say.
I should bring my cat over, Bridget says.
Did they hear her? Bridget can’t tell.
I should bring my cat over, she repeats, more loudly. To hunt down your mouse.
Shay looks at her again. What cat?
My cat in my dorm. He’s my therapy cat, Bridget says.
That’s cool, says Shay.
It is cool, Bridget thinks. It’s unique. It makes Bridget interesting, doesn’t it? Her therapy cat.
Then many people are suddenly talking at once about different things, mostly about what they’re doing tomorrow night because tomorrow’s Thursday, a party night, and someone wants to dance. That free, floating feeling Bridget had just a little while ago has gone away. Why does it do that, why? We never dance anymore, someone is saying, we should tell everyone that if they’re coming they have to dance, but someone else is driving to Sommerville to see Prior Panic, and some people like that band and some people don’t and Shay says, no, they’re solid, she’s seen them in Providence.
I like them too, Bridget says, but nobody looks at her. Her words are smoke feathering into nothingness. She sinks in the chair. Her legs uncurl, and her feet meet the ground, iron weights. She hears Shay saying she’s only having salad bar, and then Shay stands up and girls beside her stand up and they walk away together. Other people are leaving and new people are coming and sitting, refilling the red chairs, and someone’s foot hits Bridget’s backpack on the ground. Bridget grabs it and jumps up, starts walking, then jogging almost running in the direction of Shay and her friends who are heading toward GSU. It feels hard to Bridget to move her heavy feet so quickly, very hard, and she hears the voice of her life coach in her ears saying you can do hard things, Bridget. She’s always hated that stupid refrain. If she could do them, then she would, wouldn’t she? But maybe Ms. Clara was right, because here she is running and she opens her mouth and yells, Hey! Shay! Wait up!
Shay turns around, and Bridget almost trips on her own feet. Stop running now stop. Shay waits for her, and Bridget walks toward her, hoping her stride looks like a normal speed now, a natural one. Her heart’s pumping into all the spaces under her skin where no one can see.
Hey, did you call me? Shay says and takes a few steps in her direction, leisurely, like they’re already friends, like nothing weird is happening.
Maybe it isn’t. Maybe this is just regular. A wisp of that free feeling floats up inside of Bridget again.
Hey, yeah, um. Say it go ahead do it. I just thought, you know, says Bridget, you might want to meet him?
Meet him?
Lucky. My therapy cat.
He’s pretty cool, says Bridget, I mean, he pretends to be so mysterious, you know, but he feels all the same things we feel so he’s not as complicated as he wants you to think, you know?
Shay’s head tilts to one side, blue ponytail brushing her shoulder. She says, I was just gonna grab a salad at the Union.
Right. Me too. I mean, I have to write a paper.
Bridget’s eyes are blinking now, starting to water, but it’s dark so probably nobody can, Shay can’t, tell.
But hey, says Shay. What’s your dorm?
Towers East.
What room, ding dong? She laughs a little, like they’re buddies, joking around.
232. It’s a single. For me and Lucky, I mean.
Sweet. Maybe I’ll come by sometime later. To meet Lucky.
That would be good for him. Stop stop saying things. Like, whenever.
Shay turns around, so Bridget does too. It’s dark now. Bridget decides against the library, heading back to the dorm on the walkway illuminated with lampposts and blue light emergency phones. What would happen if she picked up one of the phones to be automatically connected with 911? Would they somehow know it was her, only pretending?
She stops on the wooden bridge that connects the academic side of campus to the residential. Underneath is a shallow river. Bridget listens, but can’t hear the water making any sound. It doesn’t seem to be flowing anywhere, but maybe it is, so slowly that you can’t hear it. The river disappears into the forest that borders the campus. Bridget stares into the dark coagulated shadow of woods. Slowly outlines of interlacing branches emerge to her eye and the spaces just barely visible between the trunks on the ground. What would happen if she ran into one of those spaces and kept running through the maze of trees? Would she come out the other side, onto a street in West Hartford with gas stations and Wendy’s and a CVS? Or would something terrible happen to her in that small territory of wilderness, an attack from a coyote or a stranger lurking there on the periphery of the campus, waiting for prey? Or maybe she would stop running in the very middle, resting on moss, and nothing would happen at all.
Don’t you understand there are plenty of people in the world with real problems? That’s what her father said to her when she was home. One of the things. For some reason she’s thinking of it now, standing on the bridge, hearing his voice deep in her eardrums saying it. At the time it made Bridget hate herself but she couldn’t answer him, and he grunted, completely exasperated.
In her dorm Lucky is sitting in the middle of the room. His haunches rest on the floor, and his front legs are straight, his head erect, as if watching guard. He’s staring toward the open door where she stands, but he doesn’t acknowledge her, as if he doesn’t even see her, as if he’s only staring into the dungeon of his own thoughts and won’t allow her to intrude.
Lucky, she says.
Nothing. He doesn’t flinch or move or lift his eyes toward hers.
Fine, she says. Be that way.
She drops her backpack on her bed and picks up his mostly empty food bowl. There’s one clump of crusty Tuna Feast stuck to the bottom. In the bathroom she washes it out, scrubbing with a wad of toilet paper that disintegrates under the tap. She fills his other bowl with new water and puts it in its place under the high window. She sprays some Lysol from her mother’s Target bag into the air with wide sweeps of her arm. She doesn’t like the smell of Lysol herself, too astringently bitter in her nostrils, but to others it might smell normal.
Sometime later. That’s what Shay said. Not necessarily tonight. She probably won’t come tonight, no, probably not, definitely not, but maybe. Bridget gives another spray.
She takes out her laptop and logs in to her Art History class page, stares again at the abstract painting they’re supposed to be writing about. Just tell me what you see in it, the professor told them, that’s all I ask. Bridget knows it’s an easy class. The professor makes it easy so enrollment fills and the university doesn’t eliminate it. That’s what Bridget has heard. She stares into her laptop screen. Improvisation: The Deluge by Wassily Kandinsky. I see a jellyfish, Bridget writes, I see an upside-down rollerblade, I see a dinosaur. This can’t be right, she thinks. It’s ridiculous, like the words of a second-grader. Other students in the class must be seeing significance in the jumble of colorful shapes. Something about creation theory or revolt against morality shackles or psychologically sublimated desire. She should pick something like that and try to make something up about it.
There’s a rap-rap on the door, and Bridget jumps from the bed. Lucky arches, his tail lifting.
It’s okay, Bridget says to him. But she pats her own head, smoothing her hair, and hurries to open the door.
It’s her. Shay. The ponytail is gone, blue-streaked curls haloing her smiling face. A silver hoop fits snugly on her right nostril, a black pearl stud on her left.
Hey, Bridget says. Behind her Lucky starts bleating.
Is that da man?
Yeah, he’s excited to see you.
Bridget opens the door wide and Shay comes right in and crouches down next to Lucky as he wails at her. Rrreeeer, re-re-re-reeeerrrr.
Whatcha sayin, mister, huh, watcha sayin to me?
Shay sits on the floor in her black jeans and puffy vest as Lucky circles her in brooding strides then skulks away into his hamper.
I guess he’s being shy, says Bridget. Usually he’s real sweet and cuddly.
He’s allowed, Shay says. He just met me.
Shay’s shoulders shrug. Inside the hamper Lucky starts scratching his prickly carpet square and making noises, miii-miii-miiiieee.
I’ve been drawing him sometimes, Bridget says, for practice, you know?
She pretends to rummage for a minute in her desk drawer, trying to slow down all the tiny invisible feet running inside her ribcage don’t be like I need okay. She runs her finger on the hard spiral spine of the sketchpad, up and down. Then she hands it to Shay saying, they’re not good or anything.
Shay sits on the edge of the bed with the pad on her lap, so Bridget sits there too. Beside her. Shay opens the sketchbook and flips the pages. She smiles again. A small smile. Cute, she says, and Bridget understands immediately how stupid her drawings are. Her cheeks heat up.
They’re just for fun, you know, they’re nothing, just doodles, so dumb. And she tries to laugh, a kind of honk coming out, and Lucky, still hiding, screeches in reply.
I’m actually into abstract, Bridget adds, hurrying to say something else. You know, like Kandinsky? All the emotions behind it, right? All the true meaning behind what you see which means so much more because it’s not so obvious, right? It’s not like, here’s the ocean, here’s a city, here’s a bowl of fruit, here’s a lady walking in a garden stop now stop saying all the things. Here’s whatever-t-is, right? It means a lot more when it’s abstract. Hidden.
Oh, sure, says Shay, I feel you. She puts down the sketchpad and slips her arms out of the rainbow vest. Leans back on her elbows.
But you have to start with realism, Shay continues. Well maybe you don’t absolutely have to, but most artists do. Kandinsky did. Picasso did. Landscapes and cityscapes. The human figure. Perspective and representational lines, it’s part of learning. It’s hard, too, and I’ll admit straight up I’m struggling big time, especially in Foundations. My professor says one stroke should capture whether an arm is relaxed or energized, whether it’s in the process of sinking to rest or rising to point at something interesting in the distance. It’s super challenging, but hey, that’s what we’re here for. Us art students, I mean. You have to leave your ego at the studio door. That’s what the prof said on day one, and he’s right. In my opinion.
Shay’s looking up at her, right into her eyes, and she’s saying more to her than maybe anyone else has since she’s been here on campus, except maybe Keesha but that’s only because her mother is paying her. Bridget can see a purple tattoo on Shay’s neck under the collar of her sweater, but she can’t tell what it is, just the tip of a curling purple line on Shay’s tan skin.
From the corner of her eye Bridget sees Lucky reemerge, slinking toward the bed, purring, his green eyes glowing like they do in the dorm’s fluorescent lighting.
I’m just soaking it all in, Shay’s saying, that’s what I recommend. Never apologize for trying, you know? And don’t worry much about how good you are. It’s all about taking chances.
Bridget leans closer and says, yeah, you’re right, you are. I need I just I. Leaning closer, she lets herself collapse onto Shay, her face burrowing into Shay’s neck, pressing herself there, feeling the rough weave of Shay’s sweater against her cheek, the skin of Shay’s jaw touching her forehead, and for a minute Shay’s body flattens on the mattress, and Bridget rolls on top of it, her fingers clutching onto the loose folds of Shay’s sweater, but then Shay’s hands push her hard, then harder, and Bridget slips from the polyester bedspread onto the floor. Lucky yowls.
What the hell! Shay yells. She pulls at her sleeves, straightening them on her shoulders, then jumps up and grabs her vest.
Who do think you are? I should report you. File a complaint. That’s a fucking violation of my personal space. My body. Don’t you get that?
I didn’t mean –
You need help.
You’re right, Bridget cries from the floor. I do, I do need help.
But Shay rolls her eyes, stepping wide around Lucky as she heads to the door, scowling at Bridget over her shoulder.
Stay away from me. And don’t talk to me in class tomorrow.
The door bangs shut.
Bridget crawls back up onto the bed and buries herself beneath the bedspread. The dorm’s ceiling light shines through the white spaces in between the dark pink flowers, but she can’t get up to turn it off. She doesn’t want to move. She squeezes her eyelids and curls onto one side. She breathes against the bedspread, tasting the sour moistness of her exhalations.
Lucky jumps on the mattress. She feels him settle into the space between her knees and chest, the staticky bedspread between them. She frees the hand of her top arm from the covers and reaches for Lucky, for the plush fur of his back, and begins stroking, matching the movement of her fingertips to rhythmic err-err-err of his purring.
In the morning she stays hidden beneath the blankets for an unknowable length of time. Her phone is somewhere on her desk, out of reach. She stays there till her bladder and Lucky’s whining insist on attention, forcing her up to pee and fill Lucky’s food bowl. She doesn’t brush her teeth or hair or change out of the same jeans and zip-up sweatshirt and crew socks from yesterday. She sits on the toilet, thinking about Shay’s glaring eyes, her blue-streaked mane shaking itself at Bridget in disgust. Don’t talk to me. That’s what she’d said. Don’t talk to me. Stay away from me.
When she carries Lucky’s bowl out of the bathroom, he’s sitting in the slanted rectangle of morning sunlight that shines from the high window. She sees him in profile, his chin slightly lifted to the source of light and a shimmery glean that’s turned his gray fur to silver. I can’t I want I. His eyelids are half-closed, his mouth in a half-smile full of longing and anguish. If only she could draw it, Bridget thinks. If she were good enough. If she could capture that look on Lucky’s face with her pencils and markers.
She watches him eat, trying to figure out what to do. She actually likes going to class but she can’t now. She can’t. She can’t see Shay in science or in the halls or in the cafeteria or anywhere. She’s got to get out of this, out of here, but what can she say? What can she say when she calls her parents this time?
After a while she puts on her shoes. Lucky watches her. He sits like a statue, a neutral and disinterested observer.
Let’s go out, she says. Let’s get some fresh air.
She puts a windbreaker on over her sweatshirt just in case. Through the small window the sky looks clear, but it’s hard to tell. She picks up her phone but doesn’t unlock the screen to check, just puts it in one pocket. Then she scoops Lucky in her arms. He squirms with alarm, but she holds on firmly, pressing with one arm while she reaches for the doorknob. When she steps out with him into the hallway, he freezes against her torso. His big triangle ears stand up and his claws flex, trying to get a grip on the slick surface of her windbreaker. She takes the exit staircase, an escapee rushing but with care, mindful of the living cargo in her arms, like a child she’s rescuing from danger.
Outside the brisk breeze hits her face making her gasp and smile, momentarily cleansing last night’s memory. Lucky is trembling in her arms. From excitement or fear? She can’t tell. She walks toward the bridge and passes no one. It must be the middle of a class period, maybe sometime before noon but probably later. She’s not sure. The sky’s covered now with an even layer of pale blue-gray clouds.
She heads toward the bridge but doesn’t cross it. Instead she follows along the riverside toward the wall of trees. As she gets closer, they seem to separate from each other, like guilty cliques, oaks with golden leaves and groups of shaggy pines and some sort of shrubbery in between that’s already turned to bare pricker branches. Farther away from the river, a couple of students sit together on a rock, sharing a cigarette or joint, but they’re not close enough to matter.
Slowly, with Lucky cradled tightly in both arms, Bridget sits down, too, cross-legged on a patch of grass that looks dry and brownly brittle, but once she’s settled, a chilly dampness seeps into the seat of her jeans. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. She’s wondering if Lucky feels her heartbeat pounding against his body. He lets out one meow, high and thin in the wind. Bridget looks up and sees a sudden swirl of almost invisible snowflakes.
Lucky, she says.
His paws push into her thighs, his legs straightening. His shoulders and head crane forward toward the trees, and his ears quiver, as if he’s hearing something – maybe another animal – calling to him from the forest. Bridget’s arms loosen and release.
Run. She thinks it or maybe says it out loud, she isn’t sure, and he jumps from her lap. His head turns, his green eyes meeting hers. He looks away. His tail flicks. Then he’s gone.
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