Lies Left Unsaid

Madison

Three weeks before the start of school was when we always received our roommate assignments and I was anxiously awaiting my letter in the mail. The summer with my dad had been long and painful. At 21, his latest girlfriend was the youngest yet. It made me want to throw up that he was dating a girl only a few years older than me. The only thing that made me sicker was having to spend an entire summer watching the two of them paw at one another and listening to her talk down to me about how easy high school was and lecturing me about what "adult" life was really like, as if she were so much older and wiser. "Bitch, we're both Generation Z. YOU GRADUATED A COUPLE YEARS AGO!!!" is what I wanted to scream at her, but instead I opted for a snarky smile and a lot of head nodding. It was easier to keep the peace. 

The only thing that kept me sane was knowing that I would be able to head back to school soon and get away from my father's mid-life crisis shenanigans. Don't get me wrong, I loved my father, fiercely. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to spend the summer with him catching up, playing scrabble and fishing on the lake behind our house like we used to do. But that seemed to be the furthest thing from his brain, considering his brain was now in his dick. For a long time, I'd felt like the third wheel in my own home, so I was grateful for the day that my roommate assignment arrived so I could head back to my "real" family at Thomas Jefferson. There's the family that you're born into, and the family that you make, and the longer summer went on, the more I felt less and less a part of my biological family. Fall semester couldn't come soon enough.

To my surprise, I was not going to be rooming with my best friend Lizzie despite our aggressive letter writing campaign to the dean, the previous spring, in which we outlined all the reasons why we should room together. Instead, I was going to be living with the new girl to our school. That was the last thing I needed. I had a lot to focus on my junior year, including applying to many ivy league universities so that I wouldn't have to return to my father's home, which by then, might be covered in floor to ceiling leopard print if Miss Big Tits had her way. But instead of focusing on my grades and college applications, I would have to spend my junior year babysitting the new girl and be forced to have her tag along with me to classes and study groups. Or at least that's what I thought. Little did I know, it would wind up being me who would want to tag along with her.

I remember the first day I met Caitlyn. I was sitting on my small twin bed hurriedly finishing my essay on the summer's required reading, when there was a light knock at the door. When it swung open, in walked Caitlyn, her auburn hair bouncing as she entered. A light breeze blew in through the bedroom window and it whipped her hair around like Beyoncé in a music video. Queen C had arrived. She reached her hand out and introduced herself. She was polite and kind and when she flashed her million-watt smile, there was a genuine twinkle in her hazel eyes. There was something about her that made me immediately interested, or fascinated; I was never quite sure which it was.

I watched her closely that night as she decorated her side of the room, trying to figure out who she was and why she was here. You could tell a lot about a person by how they decorated their space. Unlike most girls, Caitlyn didn't cover her walls with selfies or dance photos or pics of she and her friends raging at a party. This meant that she either was a total loser at her previous school or that she was so cool, so confident, that she didn't feel the need to plaster her wall with a tapestry of self obsession. She also didn't set out any photos of her family, which was unusual. Unlike most newcomers, who were homesick and lonely, Caitlyn didn't long for home. It was clear that home was somewhere she didn't miss in the slightest.

One evening, after a particularly long study session at the Starbucks near campus, I came back to our room to find Caitlyn crying on her bed. That night she spilled her guts to me about her less-than-perfect home life and I surprised myself by opening up and telling her about mine as well. I think that's when our friendship really began. We bonded over our mutually fucked up families. We also bonded over our mutual love of John Hughes classics like, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, a fact I discovered when Simple Minds, "Don't You Forget About Me" was playing on her iPhone when we were getting ready for the school's "Welcome Back" luncheon. She told me she felt like she was born in the wrong era, that she was an 80's chick at heart. It was hard not to like someone who understood my love for 80's heartthrob Michael Schoeffling of Sixteen Candles fame, only one of the greatest films ever, as agreed upon by Caitlyn.

After that, we became closer and closer. There wasn't anything I didn't share with Caitlyn, but looking back, it appears there was a great deal she was keeping from me. I was really hurt when she left out of nowhere and didn't say goodbye. I thought we were better friends than that. I also thought we would see each other again, despite her puzzling departure. But it seems that now I would never see her again and that her mysterious departure from Thomas Jefferson High was the least mysterious thing about her.