It seemed to Claire that her friend was trying too hard. Sienna gesticulated too much, forgot parts of her story and then came back to them, breaking the rhythm. She blinked a lot. Flakes of mascara littered the pouches of cheek beneath her eyes.
The attractive boys at their table were in Sienna’s western civ class. They listened to her politely and laughed loudly, but there was a strained quality to their smiles. One of them drew stripes in the condensation of his beer glass as Sienna repeated a line her econ professor had said at that point in the story. It was the punchline but the boys had blank looks on their faces.
Claire did Sienna a favor. She cried, “Oh, I get it!” and burst out laughing, drawing out the guffaws of the boys, who were only pretending. They didn’t understand the professor’s mix-up of château for chapeau. Claire did them a favor. She smoothly filled in, “Because château means house in French, right? And chapeau means hat? So this guy was about to wear a house on his head?”
“Right!” Sienna exclaimed, all teeth and bright eyes. “I mean this guy is just ridiculous. It’s like he doesn’t know how stupid he sounds. It’s like he just doesn’t get it and we’re just sitting there, like looking at each other but obviously we can’t say anything, it’s Hudgens and he basically decides our future.” She took a satisfied swallow of beer.
One of the boys asked her, “What do you mean?” and she explained to them how he was her adviser and when she wanted to graduate and with what. She feigned uncertainty about her future but knew she sounded smart. The boys nodded along, extra careful not to look down her shirt.
Claire listened, too. Her eyes remained on her friend but were unfocused. She wished she had an icepick or an iron wedge, anything to make her way into the conversation, though she knew that if she did she would have nothing to say. Sienna might blather, but in any conversation she had aces up her sleeve — stories she could tell all night long, words to fill the air around her shining hair and long lashes. Anything to keep the boys at her table, faces facing hers. Inevitably she would get up to dance, and the boys would not turn down her teasing commands. Claire would dance with one of them, but would sit down after three songs, too self-conscious and uninebriated to continue. She knew she was just a holding cell for the boy who would dance with Sienna next. Both girls pretended like it was a fun trading game, but the truth lurked beneath and moved them all.
Sienna began to talk about her photography project. Claire was about to jump in with a relevant question she knew her friend wanted her to ask, but Sienna had taken a breath and the boy next to her took his icepick to the conversation.
“And you,” he said, “are you also in Photo 102?”
Her lungs froze up as everyone turned toward her.
“Yeah,” she managed.
“What’s your project?”
Claire looked at Sienna, who was smiling encouragingly, confident she would be able to talk about herself after this brief interlude.
“I’m documenting the construction of Shalotte Arms downtown,” Claire answered, and elaborated, “Twice a day, I take a photo outside my window. At the end of the month I’ll stack all the prints into a flip book.”
“That’s really cool,” he said sincerely. She smiled shyly at him and berated herself for not remembering his name. Was it Tom?
He kept looking at her, his face deceivingly serious. Potential energy hovered over his mouth, like the moment before a smile.
Sienna opened her mouth to say something, but he asked another question, his eyes not leaving Claire’s.
They didn’t dance that night. Claire didn’t mind, but Sienna was disappointed. She laughed at the boys after they’d parted ways and made fun of their hair and almost matching shirts. But Claire didn’t mind this either. She was no longer listening.
__________
Be sure to read FFF at the websites of Gabe, Crow, and Caiti.
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