Gayle Forman - Just One Day

I expect her to be stern—disapproving, for deceiving her, for being such a not-good girl—but instead she is sympathetic.

“Oh, Allyson,” she says.

“I just don’t know what could’ve happened to him. I waited and waited for a few hours at least, and I got so scared. I panicked. I don’t know, maybe I should’ve waited longer.”

“You could’ve waited until next Christmas, and I scarcely imagine it would have done a spot of good,” Ms. Foley says.

I look at her. I can feel my eyes beseeching.

“He was an actor, Allyson. An actor. They are the worst of the lot.”

“You think the whole thing was an act? Was fake?” I shake my head. “Yesterday wasn’t fake.” My voice is emphatic, though I’m no longer sure who I’m trying to convince.

“I daresay it was real in the moment,” she says, measuring her words. “But men are different from women. Their emotions are capricious. And actors turn it on and turn it right back off.”

“It wasn’t an act,” I repeat, but my argument is losing steam.

“Did you sleep with him?”

For a second, I can still feel him on me. I push the thought away, look at Ms. Foley, nod.

“Then he got what he came for.” Her words are matter-of-fact, but not unkind. “I imagine he never planned on it being more than a one-day fling. That was exactly what he proposed, after all.”

It was. Until it wasn’t. Last night, we declared our feelings for each other. I am about to tell Ms. Foley this. But then I stop cold: Did we declare anything? Or did I just lick some spit on myself?

I think about Willem. Really think about him. What do I actually know about him? Only a handful of facts—how old he is, how tall he is, what he weighs, his nationality, except I don’t even know that because he said his mother wasn’t Dutch. He’s a traveler. A drifter, really. Accidents are the defining force in his life.

I don’t know his birthday. Or his favorite color, or favorite book, or favorite type of music. Or if he had a pet growing up. I don’t know if he ever broke a bone. Or how he got the scar on his foot or why he hasn’t been home in so long. I don’t even know his last name! And that’s still more than he has on me. He doesn’t even know my first name!

In this ugly little café, without the romantic gleam of Paris turning everything rose-colored pretty, I begin to see things as they truly are: Willem invited me to Paris for one day. He never promised me anything more. Last night, he’d even tried to send me home. He knew Lulu wasn’t my real name, and he made absolutely no attempt to ever find out who I really was. When I’d mentioned texting or emailing him the picture of the two of us, he’d cleverly refused to give out his contact details.

And it wasn’t like he’d lied. He said he’d fallen in love many times, but had never been in love. He’d offered it up about himself. I think of the girls on the train, Céline, the models, the girl at the café. And that was just in a single day together. How many of us were out there? And rather than accept my lot and enjoy my one day and move on, I’d dug in my heels. I’d told him I was in love with him. That I wanted to take care of him. I’d begged for another day, assumed he wanted it too. But he never answered me. He never actually said yes.

Oh, my God! It all makes sense now. How could I have been so naïve? Fall in love? In a day? Everything from yesterday, it was all fake. All an illusion. As reality crystallizes into place, the shame and humiliation make me so sick, I feel dizzy. I cradle my head in my hands.

Ms. Foley reaches out to pat my head. “There, there, dear. Let it out. Predictable, yes, but still brutal. He could have at least seen you off at the train station, waved you away and then never called again. A bit more civilized.” She squeezes my hand. “This too shall pass.” She pauses, leans in closer. “What happened to your neck, dear?”

My hand flies up to my neck. The bandage has come off, and the scabby cut is starting to itch. “Nothing,” I say. “It was an . . . ” I’m about to say accident, but I stop myself. “A tree.”

“And where’s your lovely watch?” she asks.

I look down at my wrist. I see my birthmark, ugly, naked, blaring. I yank down my sweater sleeve to cover it. “He has it.”

She clucks her tongue. “They’ll do that, sometimes. Take things as a sort of trophy. Like serial killers.” She takes a final slurp of her tea. “Now, shall we take you to Melanie?”

I hand Ms. Foley the scrap of paper with Veronica’s address, and she pulls out a London A–Z book to chart our way. I fall asleep on the Tube, my tears wrung out, the blankness of exhaustion the only comfort I have now. Ms. Foley shakes me awake at Veronica’s stop and leads me to the redbricked Victorian house where her flat is.

Melanie comes bounding to the door, already dressed up for tonight’s trip to the theater. Her face is lit up with anticipation, waiting to hear a really good story. But then she sees Ms. Foley, and her expression skids. Without knowing anything, she knows everything: She bid Lulu farewell at the train station yesterday, and it’s Allyson being returned to her like damaged goods. She gives the slightest of nods, as if none of this surprises her. Then she kicks off her heels and opens her arms to me, and when I step into them, the humiliation and heartbreak bring me to my knees. Melanie sinks to the ground alongside me, her arms hugging me tight. Behind me, I hear Ms. Foley’s retreating footsteps. I let her leave without saying a word. I don’t thank her. And I already know that I never will, and that is wrong considering the great kindness she’s done me. But if I am to survive, I can never, ever visit this day again.

SEPTEMBER

College

Allyson. Allyson. Are you there?”

I pull the pillow over my head and scrunch my eyes shut, faking sleep.

The key turns in the lock as my roommate Kali pushes open the door. “I wish you wouldn’t lock the door when you are here. And I know you’re not asleep. You’re just playing dead. Like Buster.”

Buster is Kali’s dog. A Lhasa apso. She has pictures of him among the dozens tacked up on the wall. She told me all about Buster last July when we had our initial howdy-roommate phone call. Back then, I thought Buster sounded cute, and I found it quirky that Kali was named for her home state, and the way she talked—as if she were punching her words somehow—seemed sweet.

“Okaay, Allyson. Fine. Don’t answer, but look, can you call your parents back? Your mother called my cell looking for you.”

From under the pillows, I open my eyes. I’d wondered how long I could leave my phone uncharged before something would happen. Already there’s been a mysterious UPS delivery. I was half expecting a carrier pigeon to arrive. But calling my roommates?

I hide under the pillow as Kali changes into going-out clothes, applying makeup and spritzing herself with that vanilla-scented perfume that gets into everything. After she leaves, I take the pillow off my head and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I push aside my chemistry textbook, the highlighter sitting in the crease, uncapped, ever hopeful it’ll get used before it dries up from neglect. I locate my dead phone in my sock drawer and kick through the dirty laundry piled in my closet for the charger. When it charges back to life, the voice mail box tells me I have twenty-two new messages. I scroll through the missed calls. Eighteen are from my parents. Two from my grandmother. One from Melanie, and one from the registrar.

“Hi, Allyson, it’s your mother. Just calling to check in to see how everything is going. Give me a call.”

“Hi, Allyson. It’s Mom. I got the new Boden catalog, and there are some cute skirts. And some warm corduroy jeans. I’ll just order some and bring them up for Parents’ Weekend. Call me back!”

Then there’s one from my dad. “Your mother wants to know where we should make reservations for Parents’ Weekend: Italian or French or maybe Japanese. I told her you’d be grateful for anything. I can’t imagine dorm food has improved that much in twenty-five years.”

Then we’re back to Mom: “Allyson, is your phone broken? Please tell me you did not lose that too. Can you please touch base? I’m trying to schedule Parents’ Weekend. I thought I might to come to classes with you. . . .”

“Hi, Ally, it’s Grandma. I’m on Facebook now. I’m not sure how it works, so make me your friend. Or you could call me. But I want to do it how you kids do it.”

“Allyson, it’s Dad. Call your mother. Also, we are trying to get reservations at Prezzo. . . .”

“Allyson, are you ill? Because I can really think of no other explanation for the radio silence. . . .”

The messages go downhill from there, Mom acting like three months, not three days, have gone by since our last phone call. I wind up deleting the last batch without even listening, stopping only for Melanie’s rambling account about school and hot New York City guys and the superiority of the pizza there.

I look at the time on my phone. It’s six o’clock. If I call home, maybe Mom will be out and I’ll get the machine. I’m not quite sure what she does with her days now. When I was seven, she wound up leaving her job, even though she didn’t take that maternity leave after all. The plan had been to go back to work once I went to college, but it hasn’t quite got off the ground yet.

She picks up on the second ring. “Allyson, where have you been?” Mom’s voice is officious, a little impatient.

“I ran off to join a cult.” There’s a brief pause, as if she’s actually considering the possibility of this. “I’m at college, Mom. I’m busy. Trying to adjust to the workload.”

“If you think this is bad, wait until medical school. Wait until your residency! I hardly saw your father.”

“Then you should be used to it.”

Mom pauses. This snarkiness of mine is new. Dad says ever since I came back from Europe, I have come down with a case of delayed teenageritis. I never acted like this before, but now I apparently have a bad attitude and a bad haircut and an irresponsibility streak, as evidenced by the fact that I lost not just my suitcase and all its contents, but my graduation watch too, even though, according to the story Melanie and I told them, the suitcase and the watch inside it were stolen off the train. Which theoretically should make me blameless. But it doesn’t. Perhaps because I’m not.

Mom changes the subject. “Did you get the package? It’s one thing if you ignore me, but your grandmother would appreciate a note.”

I kick through the rumpled sour clothes for the UPS box. Wrapped in bubble wrap is an antique Betty Boop alarm clock and a box of black-and-white cookies from Shriner’s, a bakery in our town. The sticky note on the cookies says These are from Grandma.

“I thought the clock would go perfect in your collection.”

“Uh-huh.” I look at the still-packed boxes in my closet, where my alarm clock collection, and all my nonessential stuff from home, still remains.

“And I ordered you a bunch of new clothes. Shall I send them or just bring them up?”

“Just bring them, I guess.”

“Speaking of Parents’ Weekend, we’re firming up plans. Saturday night we are trying to get dinner reservations at Prezzo. Sunday is the brunch, and after that, before we fly home, your father has an alumni thing, so I thought I’d splurge on spa treatments for us. Oh, and Saturday morning, before the luncheon, I’m having coffee with Kali’s mother, Lynn. We’ve been emailing.”

“Why are you emailing my roommate’s mother?”

“Why not?” Mom’s voice is snippy, as if there is no reason for me to be asking about this, as if there is no reason for her not to be present in every single part of my life.

“Well, can you not call Kali’s cell? It’s a little weird.”

“It’s a little weird to have your daughter go incommunicado for a week.”

“Three days, Mom.”

“So you were counting too.” She pauses, scoring herself the point. “And if you would let me install a house phone, we wouldn’t have this issue.”

“No one has landlines anymore. We all have cells. Our own numbers. Please don’t call me on hers.”

“Then return my calls, Allyson.”