Free Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

chords of a song by Wunderkind, the British indie band that Reeve loved?
    “Come here, Little Scarlet Strawberry,” he says, and I cry in gasps against his shoulder, my tears falling on his brown sweater.
    “I’m sorry, you’re going to smell like a damp dog,” I say when I can speak.
    “I think damp dog smell is underrated,” he answers. “I just hope people don’t start, you know, following me around to sniff my arse.”
    “
Arse!
” I say. “You’re the same.”
    But we both know he isn’t, not totally. And when he said we didn’t have a whole lot of time, he was warning me not to get too comfortable. Are you
ever
allowed to get comfortable with love? My mom and dad always seem really comfortable, sitting on the old brown couch in the den after dinner. Rubbing each other’s feet after a long day at the office where they’re both accountants. Not dwelling on the fact that one day one of them will die and the other one will be heartbroken.
    Reeve and I don’t have a lot of time even now; maybe no one ever does. We lie on the ground together, and though it’s a little too cold, we kiss, and he tells me stories he’s already told me, like about how he always wanted to grow up and be in a Monty Pythonish comedy troupe. I’m happy to hear everything all over again.
    I want to ask him, Have you been thinking about me all this time, the way I’ve been thinking about you? But I don’t. If we lie together like this, so light and tender, maybe somehow we’ll never have to get up, and it’ll never have to end.
    But it does end, suddenly. The sky gets sharply dimmer, and Reeve says in a strained voice, “You should get back.” He stands up, and I look him over, seeing the skinny-boy body, the unmanageable brown hair, the face that’s smooth and kind and too exposed.
    He kisses my hands and then my mouth, and I don’t have the chance to ask how I can see him again. I don’t even know how I got here in the first place. All I know is that I’ve left my unbearable inner life for a little while, and I’m starting to panic at the idea of being without him again.
    I close my eyes for the barest second, a blink’s length, and when I open them I’m sitting in bed again in my pitch-dark dorm room at The Wooden Barn. The old red journal is open in my lap. But although I remember writing only one line, page after page has now been filled up with my handwriting, telling the story of Reeve and me and how we first met. And also the story of us now, when we’ve found each other again.
    At various places the ink is smeared and running, as if someone has been leaning over the page, crying and crying.

CHAPTER
6
    “D
J
,” I HISS INTO THE DARK ROOM. THERE’S NO answer. “
DJ,
” I try again, urgently.
    After a few seconds I hear her turn over in bed, and then she says, “What’s the matter, Jam?”
    I’m about to tell her what just happened to me, but I stop short. Somehow, I know I shouldn’t say anything.
    “Nothing,” I finally say. “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “You couldn’t
sleep
? You actually woke me up to tell me you couldn’t sleep?”
    “Yeah” is all I can say.
    “Why don’t you try counting little images of me jumping over a fence to slap you,” she says. Then she mutters something I can’t hear and rearranges herself in her bed. Within seconds her breathing has changed and she’s asleep again.
    I sit unmoving in bed in the dark room. Probably I ought to go confess everything to Jane Ann, the houseparent, and she can call the nurse, and I’ll have to sit shivering in a bright room in the middle of the night and explain everything to those kind, concerned women.
    “I saw my boyfriend,” I’d say while the nurse looked into my eyes with a little light.
    “Mm-hmm,” she’d say, humoring me.
    “No, I was
with
him again, don’t you get it? We were together. It really happened. I’m not making it up.”
    Because the school doesn’t believe in medication, no one would try to sedate