You Can’t Just Go Around Googling Everyone
A five-minute walk separated me and my bed. In just five short minutes I would be in sweatpants and a hoodie, clothes reserved strictly for self-loathing because I’d just hurt Cody again and I felt like crap. In five minutes I would be in my bed, wallowing in pity and lying on my French textbook, hoping to absorb it by osmosis. In five … four minutes I would be watching reruns of Project Runway and probably eating Teddy Grahams. In four minutes I would—
“Hey, it’s you.”
I looked toward the voice. It was Hudson, walking my way.
“Uh, hey,” I said as he and two guys I didn’t know approached me.
“Edie, right?” Hudson’s thumbs were hooked on the straps of his backpack as he pointed at me with both index fingers.
“Yup,” I said with a pop, looking from Hudson to his friends and then back. What was going on right now? He knew my name. Why was he acting like we didn’t just have class together an hour ago? And that he wasn’t trying to be my French tutor.
“Sorry, you’re—” I asked, because two could play at this game.
“Hudson.” He nodded as his friends shot each other glances. “This is Tom and that’s Sal.”
His friends nodded at me in acknowledgment.
“Uh, so I was just…” I pointed past them toward my building.
“Yeah, okay,” Hudson said as he looked at the ground and then back up at me. Tom, the tall guy with curly brown hair, stepped to the side to let me pass.
“Um, nice seeing you,” I said over my shoulder as I began to walk away.
“Hey, uh, wait a sec,” he called. I turned to see him wave off his friends and jog toward me.
“Can I walk with you?” he asked.
I kicked at the grass that edged along the sidewalk. “Yeah, I guess.” I would have to thank my mother for raising me to be so damn polite.
“So, Clément. He’s something else, right?” he started as soon as we began to walk.
Small talk? No. I don’t think so.
“Why did you just act like you didn’t know me?” I blurted.
There was a brief pause. A painful moment of silence that felt like an eternity.
“I don’t know. It just came out,” he said with a careless shrug.
“But you know who I am, I mean…” I didn’t know what else to say. I pulled my hands into the sleeves of my jacket and crossed my arms. “The tutoring center? The texts from yesterday? Literally an hour ago from class … Any of this ringing a bell?” I asked.
“Don’t look into it too much.” He waved me off with a smile.
If I had to bet, I would say that his smile got him out of a lot of situations growing up.
I narrowed my eyes. What was this game he was playing? One minute he’s blabbing my business all over the tutoring center and the next he’s swooping in to help me with Clément and just now he acted like he didn’t know me.
“What?” he asked with a laugh, pulling his shoulders into an exaggerated shrug.
“You,” I said. There wasn’t much else I could say. It was just him. That was it.
“I’m weird, okay?” He laughed as the corners of his eyes wrinkled. He held his hands up, palms facing me in surrender. “It helps if you don’t put too much stock into the things I say sometimes.”
“Fine, I won’t put any stock into anything you say,” I acquiesced with an eye roll, shoving him lightly with my shoulder as we walked. “So, Clément, he’s something else, huh?” I asked, repeating his question.
“Hey, do you like bowling?” he asked.
“I do not,” I said, rolling with his change in conversation.
“What? Why?” He turned toward me as we walked.
“I just don’t,” I said defensively. “It’s not something I’m good at, and the shoes are awful. I refuse to wear the shoes.”
Hudson’s arms shot into the air. “The shoes are literally the best part!”
I stopped. “Please tell me you’re messing with me.”
He crossed his heart with his finger. “I swear to you that I am telling you the truth when I say that I think the shoes are the best part of bowling.”
I raised my eyebrows as a bubbling laugh erupted. “I can’t even with you right now.” I put my hand up to him and started walking again. We were close to my building. Close to my plan of wallowing in pity and learning through osmosis.
“Well, maybe I can’t even with you right now,” he said in the same tone.
We looked at each other for a moment. It wasn’t awkward, it was familiar. Too familiar.
“Well, this is me,” I said, stepping onto the first stair leading up to the front doors of my dorm as Hudson remained on the sidewalk.
“I googled your disability,” he said, as if he’d been meaning to say it all along.
“You did what?” I asked, pulling back in shock.
He hooked his thumbs onto his bag straps, his eyes on the ground.
“Yeah, I mean, you never actually told me what your disability was, so I researched it.”
My mind spun. “That is so intrusive, Hudson.” I took another step. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, feeling exposed as the information settled around us. Feeling a lot like history was repeating itself.
He shrugged and squinted up at my dorm again. “I don’t know. I wanted to help you. I just thought…” He trailed off with a shrug.
“You just thought it would help if you knew what you were up against with me?” I asked, trying not to sound like an asshole, even if he did deserve it.
“Yeah. I mean, no,” he said, kicking at the ground. “Listen, I could see how talking about this with Clément could have been hard for you. I know that asking for help isn’t easy … for anyone,” he added quickly. “And I wanted to be able to help you.”
“I really don’t know how to react to this,” I said, unsure of what else to say. “Why did you tell the secretary that I had a hearing problem?”
“I didn’t do that,” he said, his face contorting as he looked at me.
“Yeah. You told Makenna in the tutoring center that I had a hearing problem.” I pulled my arms in tighter across my chest, grasping my elbows.
“Wait, what?” He shook his head as if he were the one with the processing delay.
“You.” I pointed to him. “Told Makenna, the secretary.” I pointed toward the library. “That I.” I pointed to myself. “Had a hearing problem.” I circled my ear. “Except now I know that this whole time you knew I didn’t actually have a hearing problem.”
Hudson unhooked his right thumb from the backpack strap and put it to his mouth. “I mean,” he said around his thumb as he bit at the skin, “I only said that because I thought it would be helpful for you to have a quiet space and that’s probably the quietest place on campus. Also, you have to reserve it. And I didn’t actually know what you had until I looked it up, after the whole transmitter thing.”
“Okay, that’s fine, except why did she need to know the reason I needed the quietest place on campus? Why did you feel the need to tell her my business … inaccurate business, at that?”
“Because she needed to know that you weren’t, like, the average student, or whatever.”
“Well, just so you know, I want people to see me as an average student.” I tapped my foot impatiently.
“You want people to see you as average?” He pursed his lips as if I’d made a joke and he was the only one who got it, which wasn’t entirely untrue. “Edie, I’ve known you for, like, a month, and I can already tell that you are not the type of girl who wants to be average. There isn’t an average bone in your body.” His cheeks pinkened as he spoke the last words.
“You’re infuriating, you know that?” His small smile made me want to punch him in the gut and walk away, but it also made me want to grab him by the face and kiss him.
“Listen, I’m sorry I googled your disability. I’m sorry I said that to Makenna in the tutoring center.” He pressed his hand to his forehead, his eyes on the ground. “I—”
I closed my eyes. My mom and Serena had both said that I wasn’t giving him a chance. That his motives probably weren’t malicious in any way, but this didn’t feel right.
“Can we just forget we had this conversation and move forward?” Hudson asked, breaking the silence.
“No way,” I said, trying to think of a good reason why I couldn’t just let it go.
“No way to which, the forgetting or the moving forward?” he asked, taking a step toward me.
“Definitely the forgetting,” I said as I pointed at him. My finger almost touching the tip of his nose. “We can move forward, but I’m not forgetting the fact that you googled me.”