Rosella was to give us three days off for Thanksgiving. To me this didn’t seem like very long, but others considered it an adequate length of time to fly to Oakland, Houston, Chicago or Orlando, eat some of Mom’s pumpkin pie and fly back again in time for classes on Monday. As the holiday drew near, I realised I was going to be stuck on campus all by myself and, unless I wanted to learn how to knit with the other international students, I needed to make plans.
‘Why don’t you go to the city?’ Greg asked. ‘You’ve been here for almost three months and you haven’t visited New York. You’re crazy, Lucas. You could stay at my place if you liked, feed my cats while we’re in the country.’
‘Really?’ I gaped at him, wondering a) if he was serious and b) if there was something ‘weird’ (as defined by this new world of appropriate nineteen-year-old behaviour I was trying to adapt to) about this offer.
‘Sure. I mean, you should find someone to go with you, might be a bit strange on your own and I wouldn’t want our nice little Brit getting lost in the big ol’ city, but you’d be doing us a favour.’
My heart sank. Who would go with me? Everyone at Rosella was returning home.
After an hour or two of moping in my dorm room and wondering why my exciting year abroad was proving so unexciting, I wandered down to the room shared by three freshers I sometimes hung out with. They were each sprawled on their beds with their laptops open, various Target comforters, ‘husband’ pillows and posters defining their three separate areas of the room.
‘Hey, what’s up?’ the girl with a chic blown-up black-and-white photograph of a Parisian street above her head asked.
‘Not much,’ I replied. ‘I’m still wondering what to do for Thanksgiving.’
‘Oh, poor you,’ cooed the brunette surrounded by images of Justin Timberlake. ‘I wish I could invite you to mine, but we’ve already got fourteen for dinner and my mom would freak.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,’ I blurted, embarrassed. ‘Someone’s offered me their apartment in New York and I really want to see the city, but I don’t have anyone to go with.’
‘Oh wow, you should definitely do that,’ piped up the skinny blonde with kittens on her comforter. ‘I love New York.’
‘Hey,’ JT-girl bounced into an excited sitting position. ‘You could put a thing on Rosella Social.’
‘Is that the weird internet thing you were telling me about before?’ I replied, dubious.
‘It’s not weird,’ cut in kitten-girl. ‘It’s really cool. It’s this new thing where you can talk to people on campus and arrange events and things. Like MySpace, but just for us.’
‘I never really got into MySpace,’ I mumbled.
‘Whatever,’ dismissed JT-girl. ‘Anyway, you can use these event organiser things. Like, you can set up a whole party and invite everyone. Or you can just post messages or questions to all your friends. We could totally set up a note or something to see if any of your friends want to go to the city.’
I took a little more persuading, but eventually I was lured onto the French-photo-girl’s bed and quizzed about my favourite films, books and hobbies so they could set me up a profile. I didn’t correct them when they automatically listed ‘Men’ under the category of ‘Interested in’ and, unsure how it might connect but nevertheless worried about Matthew and his emails, I insisted they set my security settings to the highest available level and that I’d add a photo myself some other time. Twenty minutes later, I had a rather generic sounding profile next to a picture of a cat, my supposed representation of myself. Reminded of Harriet Moore’s Gaydar quest, I swallowed a heavy lump in my throat.
‘Add me as a friend.’ Kitten-girl grabbed the laptop and punched something in until her own, much more detailed profile came up.
‘Yeah, and me,’ said Frenchy. ‘Then we’ll search for all your theatre friends and anyone else you know from classes and stuff.’
It felt weird to list the names of someone I’d only said a few hellos to in Dr Broderick’s Lit 307 class, the girl in the room directly beneath me who’d lent me her hair-straighteners and the lighting designer for ’Twas the Night Before … , whose name I only remembered because she had the same surname as a girl I’d known at primary school. But with each search, a photo and list of interests appeared and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. After finding Rachael Rose, Martha Haas and Jackie Handsford’s profiles, it was easy to flick through their friends and add the rest of my classmates, dorm neighbours and those involved with ’Twas. Within an hour, I had thirty-six friends pending.
‘Now for the note,’ said JT, dragging the mouse over to a sidebar. ‘Here you go, write something about wanting to go to New York, and all your friends will be able to see it.’
‘Uh, okay.’ My fingers hovered over the keys for a while until I eventually typed a clumsy:
Hey,
So this little international student has no turkey to eat and the use of an apartment in Manhattan – anyone want to ditch the Brit bashing and head to the city with me?
‘That’s really cool,’ giggled Frenchy. ‘Now we just click send, and hopefully you’ll get some replies.’
I left the girls to their homework and took a shower before dinner.
It was two days before I remembered about Rosella Social again and, thinking I had nothing to lose, I keyed in my password and logged on.
All thirty-six of my friends had been confirmed and, to my surprise, I had three more requests. Nobody had replied to my message, however, and I logged off feeling excruciatingly lonely.The next day, though, I had an email from Dylan, the co-ed student Greg had described as ‘eminently fuckable’ even as he danced around the stage in an elf costume.
Hey little Brit
I was hanging out with Jackie and she showed me your message on the social thing. I’m not sure about ditching the Brit bashing completely, but my family only lives in Kingston, so, if you like, you could come to mine for Thanksgiving, then we could drive down to New York on the Friday. Where’s this apartment you have available? Is it central?
Let me know. It’d be rad to hang out with you.
Dylan
x
Dylan. I hadn’t imagined going to Manhattan with a boy. After all, I’d only met three since landing in this country. But Dylan seemed nice. We’d danced at the after-show party and I remembered him asking what part of England I was from while we both topped up our drinks. Rumour had it he’d gone home with Katy that night, but there was also some gossip that he wouldn’t kiss a girl he wasn’t in love with. Of course, I wasn’t looking for anything, but Dylan was undeniably sexy and it might be fun to get to know him better. Yes, Dylan could be a suitable companion. And if he was offering to drive, that was even better. As the girls down the hall might say: awesome. I had plans.
Dylan’s mom made a fuss of me and his brothers shot cheeky smiles that made me wonder what he had told them about us spending the holiday together. After an evening of ‘Oooh, I love your accent’ and ‘Have you really never tasted pumpkin pie before?’ Dylan drove us back to his dad’s place and I snuggled into the warm wooden-framed bed, imagining what it would be like to have three brothers, a dog and a grandma who cooked secret-recipe stuffing and poured you warm apple cider as you walked in the door.
I woke on Thanksgiving morning to find six inches of snow. The first proper falling since I’d arrived. Tiptoeing excitedly to Dylan’s door, I listened to see if he was awake and knocked as soon as I heard a stir. With scarves and coats over our pyjamas, I dragged him through the kitchen and out into the white blanket. The sun had sprinkled gold dust onto the cotton-wool ground and I kicked my boots through the powder as I made my way out into the surrounding fields. Dylan followed and scooped up a handful of snow, deliberately missing me but laughing as I squealed and spun around. We chased each other clumsily, our shoes squidging into the soft ground, compacting the snow and leaving asymmetric patterns in the neat blanket.
‘You’ve done it now,’ I growled as one of Dylan’s snowballs hit my cheek.
‘You’ll never get me!’ Dylan took off to an untouched corner of the field and I tried to follow, slipping and thrusting out my arms to break my fall.
‘Eat it,’ he giggled, gently pushing my face into the ground after having doubled back on himself.
‘Enough!’ I rolled over and gasped for breath between giggles. Dylan sat down in the snow beside me and we both lay back to make snow angels.
‘I can’t believe it snowed for you on Thanksgiving,’ Dylan spoke after a while.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty amazing,’ I said, still out of breath.
‘New York’s going to be so pretty like this. I have to take you to Central Park.’
‘Definitely.’ My feet were sweating in their boots and in comparison I was enjoying icy trickles against the back of my neck and the gaps of wrist between my gloves and coat. ‘Hey, do you mind if I check my email when we get inside? I think Greg was going to send me some instructions about the cats.’
‘Sure. Whatever you like. My dad’s cooking dinner for about three.’ Dylan rolled over to face me and added with a wink, ‘So we can do what we like until then.’
‘As if!’ I punched him lightly and began to scramble to my feet.
Back in the house, Dylan showed me to an ancient PC in the den and I waited while it booted up and Dylan keyed in the password for the dial-up internet.
‘I won’t be long,’ I promised as I directed the browser to the Sweetmail page.
‘Take your time, I’ll make some coffee.’
‘Thanks.’ I typed my username as Dylan shut the door behind him.
My inbox loaded with an accusatory ‘26’ at the top of the page. I had braced myself for this. I was looking for an email from Greg and I was just going to ignore Matthew until I got back to campus. This was my holiday and I wasn’t going to let him ruin it.
But as I scanned the list of senders, my eyes accidentally brushed the subject column and saw in neat repetition that every message but one was labelled: ‘PLEASE READ: Our friend Rose.’
It was probably a trick. Just another way to shout abuse at me. He was probably telling me how awful I was and how disappointed Rose was in me. Again. But twenty-five times? I shouldn’t click, I knew that. I should open Greg’s email (impotently sandwiched halfway down the column of Matthew’s), then go and drink coffee with Dylan and enjoy my Thanksgiving. But I clicked on one.
From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>
To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>
Sent: 24 November 2003, 06:37:29
Subject: PLEASE READ: Our friend Rose
Natalie
Rose died last night. In her sleep. She suffered no pain.
I thought you should know.
Despite my ever more desperate quest for queer love, I found myself enjoying Dylan’s company that weekend. With his kind smiles and gentlemanly gestures, he reminded me of Tim and, for a fleeting moment, I wondered what I was missing in Durham this year. For three days we ate nothing but bagels. From Greg’s third floor apartment, we wandered all around Greenwich Village, checking out market stalls and lingering in bookshops. We took the subway up to an Egon Schiele exhibition Greg had recommended, giggled in the bustle at Times Square, took pictures of each other beneath signs for Actors’ Square, hopped over to Long Island to visit PS1 and watched two Pinter plays off off Broadway. Though I occasionally imagined I saw a figure cloaked in red in the shadows beneath fire escapes and in the windows of passing cabs, and I wondered absurdly as I fell asleep in Greg’s daughter’s bed whether the dead could hear my thoughts, I enjoyed the weekend. By the time we left on Sunday, I’d decided to be in love with New York.