Pristine and White

I have a huge bedroom. Honestly, it’s just so big. I look around at it sometimes, and it causes me to become incurably depressed. Because I have a queen-sized bed in the middle of the room, a vanity set up in one corner and a chest of drawers next to my bay windows. I also have this poster of the Harvard campus up on one side of my big, oak door.

And really, that’s it. My meager living arrangement doesn’t exactly scream individuality, unless you count the fact that I had insisted on the navy blue curtains shrouding my windows when my mother had deeply stressed those of the “periwinkle” assortment. There aren’t any sentimental pictures sticking out from the sides of my mirror. No memories from carnivals or Saturday afternoon barbeques with my friends, or late night ice cream binges, or “girl talk” sleepovers. And there aren’t any posters on my wall, save that lone Harvard advertisement on my door. It stood as a tall, stoic reminder of my one and only goal, my focus, my life and my inevitable payoff.

But I don’t have any posters up in my room. No declarations of love for some asinine boy band member, no promotional posters from movies I’ve enjoyed, no Gap model actors smiling plastically over my bedposts.

My room is pristine and white and impersonal. Yesterday morning, in a fit of teenage rebellion, I ripped the bottom drawer out of my chest and dumped its contents onto the “mauve” carpeting. There were expensive shirts and designer jeans that probably should have been hanging in my closet in the first place now strewn all over my floor. It felt liberating, like I could bring someone into the room and there would be proof, solid proof that a teenage girl lived and breathed and existed and dwelled and cried and suffered and LIVED in there.

That was before school. When I got home, everything was cleaned up and white again. I looked in the bottom drawer and it was empty. I didn’t have to guess where the clothes were: neatly hung up in my walk-in closet. I was seriously considering getting one of those ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs for around my doorknob to keep the maid out.

But I walk in here, and I feel so small, and I feel like the enormity of the room just surrounds me and suffocates me in some kind of ironic, Edgar Allan Poe sort of way.

Pretty soon, Monday turns to Saturday, and I’m forced to endure another of my mother’s attempts to re-assimilate herself into polite society after she besmirched the Gellar name by divorcing my father. It’s a sad display, but I’m dragged along to be on her arm and play the role of the ‘well-adjusted daughter’ in her never-ending production of Millennium Woman. She can’t have the trophy husband, so she has to settle for the trophy daughter.

I’m the kind of daughter that other parents coo over for my intellectual aggressiveness, but don’t want associating with their own child. I’m not amiable, and they would be able to at least forgive that if I was at all beautiful, but I’m not that either. My hair isn’t downy soft, and my lips can’t do that glossy, lascivious upturn thing that Louise’s have perfected.

Today, my mother and I are attending the ‘I Hart Hartford’ city fair. I like to pretend I don’t know my mother thought up that name.

The go-carts and miscellaneous other rides and games are really just an elaborate daycare where the parents can stick their children without remorse to mix and mingle with one another. I hate the city fair. I just really hate it. There is so much of nothing to do; it’s like being stuck in a Jean Paul Sartre novel for four hours of my life. I don’t particularly trust the vendors there, so while all the other teenagers are buying cotton candy and smoothies, I clutch my bottled water to my chest for dear life.

And there are never any rides I can go on alone without losing my dignity. Everything needs a partner, or some times two or three people. I always allow myself to be dragged along with Louise and Madeline for the first half hour or so, but by the time they set their sights on the inevitable hook up, I gracefully bow out. I hate being the fifth wheel.

It’s May, and I almost get out of coming today by reminding my mother that I have homework to do and finals to study for. I think I am off the hook, until at the eleventh hour Mom changes her mind when she runs into Roger Fulreide’s mother who informs her that Roger is going to be at the fair.

Yeah, and Roger Fulreide’s also getting a C in English.

My mother can’t see the correlation between his almost failing English and going to the fair. I try to explain that it isn’t JUST the city fair, but also the fishing contest, the art exhibit and the pancake breakfast. This is probably not the best approach to argument, as it reminds my mother that I have missed both the fishing contest and the pancake breakfast.

So I’m walking on my own. Louise and Madeline have long since left me for this set of twins I remember vaguely from school. No better way to find the odd man out than to bring twins into it.

I’m walking past the Ferris wheel, my fingers with a white knuckled grip on my water, when the guy manning the ride calls out to me.

“We need more people, how ‘bout you hop on?”

I pretend I don’t hear him and keep walking, this time moving slightly quicker.

“Hey you, walking right there, we need to fill one more seat on this thing, why don’t you grab a friend and come up here?”

I glare up at the rather frightening man calling down to me. He has long, greasy black hair, but at the same time an almost astounding receding hairline. He’s small and wiry and has tattoos all over what I can see of his body. He’s one of those people that, if I had seen coming toward me while I was walking down the street, I would have crossed to the other side.

“No thanks.”

I make a valiant effort to ignore the snickers of the other people on the ride, most of whom attend Chilton.

“Honey…”

“Listen, you dirty, under-educated miscreant…”

“We’ll go on.”

I swing around to see a guy standing next to me with black hair and green eyes. He’s taller then me, thin and good-looking. It takes me a minute to respond.

“What!?”

“I said we’d go on. It’s only a ride. Unless you’re afraid of heights,” he says.

“I’m not afraid of…who are you?” I demand.

He doesn’t answer me, instead taking hold of my hand and pulling me to the Ferris wheel. I follow kicking and screaming, trying to yank my arm free.

“What is wrong with you? This has to be abuse of some kind. Let me go, you raving psychopath!”

This is the one and only time I’ll ever admit this, but part of me allowed him to manhandle me up those stairs and onto the ride.

We are sitting in the seat and the bar is closed over us before I have a chance to jump out. I do my best to push out of it, even try sliding under, but in the end, I keep what is left of my self-respect and cross my arms over my chest, my water bumping into his shoulder.

The Ferris wheel starts a second later and I mumble under my breath, “Is it legal for him to start this ride when it is obvious that someone is on it against her will?”

“Those traveling carnival guys have a very loose code of conduct,” the guy next to me answers.

I shoot him my patented death glare and resume facing straight ahead. “You should talk. You dragged me onto this thing. Or do you work for the carnival too?”

He laughs at this, and while it makes me mad, I can’t help but feel my cheeks grow red.

“No, I don’t work for the carnival.”

I am exceptionally relieved to hear this. I can’t imagine being so sad that they felt the need to pawn off one of their employees on me. Suddenly, an even more horrifying thought enters my head.

“My mom didn’t make you do this, did she?” I ask.

He chuckles again and shakes his head, looking at me with amusement dancing in his green eyes.

“You’re really paranoid, aren’t you?”

“Is that a no?”

“Yes, it’s a no. What’s your name?”

I get very defensive at this line of questioning. “Hey, you mauled me. I think I should get to ask the questions.”

“Okay.”

His instant agreement shocks me. I am more equipped to argue and debate. Someone acquiescing throws everything off for me.

“Okay,” I say back.

“Well?” He asks.

“Well what?” I say, stalling as best I can.

“Well, what question did you want to ask me?”

“Uh, what’s your name?” I mumble out, feeling exceedingly stupid for not being able to think of something to ask him that he hasn’t already asked me.

He seems to find this about as funny as I hope he wouldn’t, and his mouth twitches a little. “Clyde.”

I stare at him and he gives me a confused look right back. “What?”

“Your first name doesn’t tell me anything. What’s your last name? Who’s your family?” I think that this is very obvious a question, and I’m mildly frustrated that he doesn’t understand that.

“Clyde Goodwin.”

I ponder this for a second before announcing, “I don’t know of any Goodwin’s in Hartford.”

“We’re new. We actually just moved here from Wisconsin,” he tells me, and that explains why he had the audacity to pull me on this ride.

“I’m Paris Gellar. Are you going to Chilton?”

“I’ll visit the campus sometime next week, but since it’s May, it’s pointless to start until the fall. I’ll be taking some summer classes though.”

I’m not still feeling peevish about what he did, but something tells me I should be.

“Well, as a matter of etiquette, we in Hartford don’t drag people we don’t know places they don’t want to be,” ‘especially not Paris Gellar’ I almost added, “I don’t know how they do it in Dairy Country.”

He looks at me kind of hurt, and I finally get the impression that he thinks we are joking around this whole time. I feel stupid.

“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone, and then an opportunity presented itself to bring a pretty girl on a Ferris wheel.”

Well. That silences me quickly. It seems like he knows what his words did to me, but I can’t be mad at him, because it doesn’t seem calculated.

When the ride ends and we get off, I don’t say good-bye, simply walk as swiftly as I can away from Clyde. I don’t want him to feel like he has to keep me company now.

To my surprise, he catches up with me and jumps in my way, forcing me to stop.

“You walk fast.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I was wondering if you wanted to get some cotton candy or something. My treat.”

I open my mouth to explain my suspicion of the vendors, when something inside me decides to just relax.

“Sure, I guess.” Ask long as he’s paying. It’s not like I’ll be giving any of my own money to those heathens.

We get cotton candy and he pays, and we are walking and talking comfortably. I am rather enjoying the way people we pass are stopping and staring at this incredible looking stranger voluntarily spending time with Paris Gellar. I hope they don’t chalk it up to him being my cousin.

We have been enjoying ourselves for almost twenty minutes when I see Louise coming toward us. I want to detour Clyde to the other direction, but decide not to prolong the inevitable.

“Hi Paris,” Louise greets in that low, sultry voice of hers, her eyes not on me, but on Clyde standing next to me, “Who’s your friend?”

I glance at Clyde who is looking at Louise. “Clyde, this is my friend Louise. Louise, this is Clyde Goodwin, he just moved here from Wisconsin.”

Louise steps forward, and there it is, that lascivious upturned lip thing I was talking about. She holds out a hand for him to take, and he does. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

“You too, I’m new here and I don’t really know anyone.”

I sigh and make the most graceful exit I can. I slip quietly away from him and backtrack a few paces before separating myself completely from them and walking away.

I get to the popcorn/soda stand when I hear him yelling for me. Of course, I’m confused, because he was just talking to Louise. No one leaves Louise to talk to me. No one. And I have had enough experience with this to know it’s true.

“Paris, PARIS. Your name is Paris, right?”

This makes me stop just because of the sheer absurdity of it. “Yes, my name is Paris.”

“Then why didn’t you answer when I called you? You keep running away,” he complains. And that seems sweet. Like he cares.

“I thought you were talking to Louise,” I answer.

“Well yeah, you introduced her to me. I was being nice.”

“A lot of people are nice to Louise.” If he can’t figure out what that means, there’s no hope for him.

He gets it.

“I’ve known you for what, half an hour? Have I done anything to make you think that I would just want to ditch you?” He asks, and I say no and I can understand his anger. But that doesn’t stop me from being defensive.

Or maybe it’s the reason why I am.

“I’m just taking this from personal experience. You’re right, I don’t know you, so why do you think I can just trust you automatically?” I feel I make a valid point.

“Will you come sit over there with me if I promise not to molest you?” He asks gingerly.

I follow where he points his finger. “Over there? In the grass?” Oh God, disgusting.

“Yeah, in the grass. Why, what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s muddy and dirty and these are really expensive,” I explain slowly.

“They’re jeans,” he points out, and I almost laugh, partly from the naiveté of his comment, and partly because he’s right. I mean, they are just jeans.

“Okay, let’s sit down.”

We walk over, and my shoulder is brushing against him, and I really like him. He isn’t moving away when we touch.

He doesn’t offer to put his coat down on the grass for me to sit on, and I’m happy because that seems so cliqued and we’re sitting behind the Tilt-A-Whirl in the grass and that’s different. Right now Louise and Madeline are probably playing that game with the darts and the balloons. Or, more accurately, watching some guys play the game with the darts and the balloons trying to win them big, cheap stuffed animals.

And I’m sitting behind the Tilt-A-Whirl getting my jeans dirty with this guy that has absolutely beautiful green eyes. He wants to be here with me, he offered to be here with me. He tracked me down, and asked to be here with me. It’s not cliqued, and if he had offered to put his coat on the ground, I probably would have rolled my eyes and ruined the whole thing.

“Why didn’t you want to talk to Louise?” I think I might have just ruined it anyway.

He reaches over to put his hand on my knee and I jump a little because he is the first person besides me to ever touch me there.

“When I was in Wisconsin, I went to this really rich private school. It was pretty sad. There were all these people walking around that looked the same, and all they cared about was how much money their friends had. I was one of those people. Not because I wanted to be, but because I had money, so everyone wanted to be friends with me. And I needed friends, you know? And they were there, so why not just settle? When we left, I decided that I wouldn’t be like that anymore. That I just wanted to separate myself from that kind of scene.

“I came here, and I walked around, and all I could see was more of those people. But then I saw you standing alone, not wanting to go on the Ferris wheel alone.”

I blanch. “So you’re saying you wanted to slum it with the friendless loser?”

“No, no, I’m saying that I could see that you didn’t like these people either, and you didn’t have the haughty look on your face. You were different. And…you know…you were cute.”

Okay, now I’m definitely blushing, and it looks like he appreciates it, because he smirks a little and touches my cheek.

“Well then.”

We talk a little more about life in Wisconsin, not all cornfields as it turns out, and I let him in on what he has to look forward to at Chilton next year. We talk for almost an hour, though it feels like five minutes.

Finally, he sighs and says, “I’m bored, let’s do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, let’s get up and find out.” He stands and holds out both of his hands to help me. I put my small hands into his bigger ones and let him.

We’re walking back into the carnival when he looks down at my face and grins. Before I can even stop him, Clyde is pulling me into one of those photo booths. It’s a pretty old type, not like the ones I see at the mall with the different backgrounds like “best friends” and “fugitives.” It is just a plain photo booth with a red background made from the red velvet sheet hanging behind us.

There are six pictures and he poses us differently every time. Once he put the sides of our heads together and we grin. Another time, he wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me to him. For another pose, he sticks out his tongue and pokes my stomach to make me giggle. Once we both stare seriously at the camera, but we are trying hard not laugh. For the fifth one, he lays his head on my shoulder and pouts his mouth while I watch dumbfounded. And for the last one, he kisses the side of my head and all the heat rushes to my cheeks and I grin broadly.

He pulls me out of the booth and we have to wait five minutes for the pictures. When they’re finally developed, he rips the strip down the middle, gives me the last three and sticks the first three in his breast pocket.

Before I leave, he asks for my phone number and writes it on the back of his strip of pictures.

********

I’m home, it’s almost eleven at night, and I walk into my enormous bedroom. I smile wistfully as I stick the pictures of Clyde and I into the side of my mirror.

My room gets a little bit smaller at that moment.

On Sunday, Clyde uses my number and calls me. I tell him all about my room and the pictures and dumping my clothes on the mauve floor. I only tell him because somehow I think he understands.

On Monday after school, I see him again and he gives me a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign to hang on my doorknob.