You Will Make Friends in All Your Classes
By Darcy Fox
The most beautiful girl in your acting class will get drunk at your birthday party and lock herself in your bathroom. A crowd will gather. An upperclassman with male pattern baldness will attempt to unlock the door from the outside using a coat hanger. You will be the only one she unlocks for. She’ll cry in your arms and say why didn’t he love me? and you’ll say honey, I have no idea. You’ll fight the urge to kiss her. The impulse makes you wonder. She’ll get indie-famous but still remembers to call on your birthday. Your children will be impressed.
The redhead from your Stats class will pull your wrist so hard that it bruises, slamming you into a protruding window ledge and splitting open your eyebrow. You’ll be in Paris. She’ll be trying to get a drunken, belligerent you into a taxi as two bartenders who don’t speak English attempt to coerce you into going back to their apartment. When the blood starts pouring from your face, they’ll finally back off. Terrified, she’ll stay up all night stroking your hair and checking to make sure that you’re still breathing. When you wake up with blood on your hands she’ll say don’t worry: it’s yours. You still have the scar. She will be the Maid of Honor at your wedding.
The boy with the flat eyes in your poetry seminar will whisper that he thinks you two are soulmates and run his boney fingers through your hair. He’ll come over on Wednesday nights to watch movies and sleep in your bed without ever touching you sexually. You’ll get chocolate shakes at Jack in the Box and tell each other your worst dating stories. He’ll surprise you on your birthday, driving eight hours to get to your parents’ house the day after Easter. The second he gets a girlfriend he’ll dump you via email. You’ll show up at his apartment and knock and knock until he finally comes to the door. The harder you cry the duller those big eyes get. They get married in a hippie mountain ceremony that everyone is invited to except for you, and you wish ill on him still though you know that you shouldn’t.
The girl from your AIDS fundamentals class who keeps rolling her eyes during the weekly “Anonymous Question” section will ask you if you want to get coffee some time. Tears will roll down your face as she twirls her hair and raises her voice an octave, mimicking: If I have a cut in my eye, and my boyfriend ejaculates in my eye… can I get AIDS? You will both come dangerously close to failing the final because every time you get together to study you’ll end up watching old Grey’s Anatomy episodes and watching videos of cats flushing toilets on youtube. After class is over you won’t hang out so much, but eight years later she’ll come to town on business and you’ll make first-date conversation over cocktails. By dessert she’ll have you weeping again with laughter.
The boy from your Spanish class will invite you to a party at his house, and you’ll think it’s a date until his pretty girlfriend opens the door. You’ll be too drunk to drive home. The next morning, she’ll make you pancakes for breakfast and you’ll help her pull glass bottles from the trash and put them with the recycling. The three of you will become inseparable for one gorgeous autumn before it all falls apart. He kisses you for the first time on the patio while she’s inside talking to her sister on the phone. When she comes back, he gives her a strange look and she leans in to kiss you too. Driving home the next morning, you knock the side mirror off of your roommate’s car. You stop drinking so much after that, and devote more time to studying. You never speak to them again and you always regret it.