Between Us - Jordan Holman

When I met Daisy in the Delta Terminal at LAX, the first thing she did (after wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders) was complain about the cramped seats, the spotty in-flight WiFi, and the awful service from the attendants. In an effort to live the authentic college experience, she booked a seat in Economy. But once she got to California, she reverted and called us a Deluxe Uber. And she paid for my portion in full.
 
“Where’s Jade?” she asked.
 
“Oh, she’s back at the dorms. But she can’t wait to meet you!” I replied.
 
Daisy played with the lanyard around her neck, tugging at the bottom where the hook interlocked with her keys. She was enviously glamorous. Her eyes were as blue as the deep Pacific, but she covered them with ridiculously expensive sunglasses. Somehow her honey-colored curls were still perfectly wound, even after the five hour flight. They draped elegantly along the sides of her contoured cheeks. Metallic bracelets suffocated her wrists, the glow of her bronzed skin bouncing off the car window. It was as if she’d spent the entire summer laying on the beach in Malibu.
 
“This year is going to be fun,” she said with fabricated conviction. Her inflection revealed the hesitancy in her voice.
 
I didn’t think girls like her were capable of being nervous.
 
“When we get to campus, the three of us should grab dinner,” I said.
 
Daisy smiled, leaned over to my side of the car, pinched the skin behind my knee, and thanked me.
 
“You have no idea how happy I am to have you,” she replied.
 
“Picking roommates is like being a contestant on The Bachelor,” my friends in high school told me.
 
I didn’t believe them until I spent hours vetting potentials on Facebook.
 
“Trios never work,” they also said.
 
But attending an over-populated university doesn’t leave you with many options. And our active, lively group chat proved otherwise.
 
Sure, Daisy’s conservative upbringing may have stunted her growth a little, but it was nothing Jade’s political activism couldn’t fix. Besides, her affluence was intriguing. Entertaining. And she was funny, outspoken, ambitious. So we made promises of eternal devotion.
 
We were living the “sugar-coated–Three Musketeers–inseparable female friendship” archetypal dream, the one they promise you in the college brochures.
 
There we were, the university’s most prized possession: the perfectly curated, eternally devoted friends getting ready for their first college party.
 
I had walked in on Daisy earlier that evening rubbing my brand new blush into her cheeks.
 
“Is that mine?” I asked.
 
“Oh, sorry! I hope you don’t mind. It just looks really good on you so I thought maybe…” she said anxiously.
 
“It’s totally fine,” I replied, trailing off into a mumble at the end of my sentence.
 
This is what you’re supposed to do, right?
 
“To Los Angeles!” Jade cheered.
 
“To freshman year!” I exclaimed.
 
“To room 113!” Daisy concluded.
 
We banged our beat up shot glasses together, spilling cheap vodka into the pores of the freshly cleaned rug. My body recoiled as the alcohol swam into my bloodstream, sour liquid crawling up the inside of my throat.
 
“Your top… it’s so revealing,” Daisy said to Jade during her last minute outfit change. Admittedly not the best comment to make, but maybe the vodka was already blurring her judgment.
 
Nevertheless, we moved in a rhythmic motion toward the frat houses—hands intertwined. Trust is built quickly in college, and suddenly near-strangers become protectors. Dirty shoes thump on the basement floor, matching the pulse of the speakers. Neon strobe lights rebound off the sticky Sig Ep walls. On top of the rickety table, people are blurry. I’m caught in the dizzying carousel of bodies and music and luminous colors. Toeing the line between euphoria and trepidation, I catch a glimpse of Jade’s sly thumbs up: the universal sign that I should go for it. I guess smashing tongues with someone whose name I already forgot is kind of exhilarating after all.
 
The parties in college are different. More abrasive. It’s hard not to feel replacable, until his hand trickles up the inside of your thigh and for a moment you feel uniquely important. Desire: the universal equalizer.
 
This was our Friday night routine. Usually Jade would have more success than the rest of us. She’d break away from our dance circle and wander into the hallway with a blonde guy in a backwards cap, and we’d keep an eye on her from the living room.
 
“Between us, sometimes I feel like Jade is only here to sleep around. I’d be shocked if she has any intention of actually going to law school. Don’t you agree?” Daisy would ask.
 
 I didn’t, but I always got the feeling that if we didn’t see eye to eye there would be a problem. So I nodded my head in reluctant agreement.
 
The next morning we’d clean up the wreckage from the night before, stepping over crumpled up cans, notebooks with tequila-stained edges, birth control packets and empty Prozac bottles. When you have roommates, you’re no longer entitled to privacy.
 
“D.C. is much cleaner,” Daisy would complain. “More… sophisticated.”
 
She was from the suburbs… in Maryland… but I guess that was close enough.
 
Afterward, Jade and I would make our way to the greasy dining hall with the pancakes and hash browns. Daisy would stay behind.
 
“I’m not hungry,” she declared.
 
I noticed she rarely said she was, but despite our lack of privacy, some things feel too intrusive. Even when the problems are only a few feet away.
 
During breakfast, Jade whispered into my ear—her voice oozing like a pool of warm honey.
 
“Between us, Daisy seems a little… off. Last week I asked her to proofread my essay, since she’s an English major, and I swear she intentionally tried to set me up for failure. She changed my entire paper and promised she was making it better when it really just ended up reading like an entire mess. She told me to use all these big fancy words—come to find out she was just making them up! Who does that?”
 
“That seems like a bit of a reach, Jade. She was probably just trying to show off.”
 
“The week before, she straight up asked me how much money my parents make. She is so uncool,” she rebutted.
 
“That is annoying.”
 
“If nothing else, she’s at least several years behind on her views. And spoiled.”
 
“I know, I get it,” I replied.
 
In a room full of unpredictability, Jade was a constant. She was edgy. Cool. Admirable. Firm in her convictions and unapologetically herself. Like me, she loved going to the beach at sunset, shopping for thrifted clothes Daisy would disapprove of, and trying all the best restaurants in LA. She introduced me to the infamous caramel macchiato, and then I aced my exams on very little sleep.
 
Over pancakes and hash browns and conversation, our own friendship was born. So we went to the movies after breakfast—without her.
 
But Daisy didn’t tolerate happiness that was separate from hers. And so she’d find an excuse to take a phone call or vacuum the floor or draw the curtains at 5pm just to force our voices into a whisper. So we learned to tiptoe quietly around her neuroses.
 
 But Daisy would still wish me an enthusiastic ‘good morning’ each day, and she’d send a sly smirk over to Jade.
 
“Daisy can be such a freak,” Jade said.
 
I started to feel this heavy weight in my chest, so I encouraged her to just give Daisy one more chance.
 
We sat with our feet buried in the sand, drinking $5 wine and watching as the sun slipped behind the horizon line. We had invited Daisy to our spot.
 
“So what’s, like, the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” she asked, fiddling again with her lanyard.
 
“Daisy, what? You can’t just ask a question like that. Jesus Christ,” Jade replied.
 
I choked on my wine when she asked, too, and waited for someone else to answer first. “Sorry. I guess I just don’t always know how to be,” Daisy said. “And maybe that’s it—the worst thing. I was voted ‘Most Likely to win Miss America’ in my high school yearbook…”
 
Jade let out an audible groan.
 
…but I didn’t have many friends,” Daisy continued. “Maybe I was just too pretty…”
 
There was the groan again.
 
“Or maybe there was something else wrong with me… that made it so people didn’t want to be around me.”
 
I smiled at Daisy to let her know I was listening.
 
“My childhood was… a bit weird,” she confessed, saying nothing more.
 
We were silent for a long time, listening to the waves roll peacefully onto the shore.
 
“I know a thing or two about a fucked up childhood,” Jade finally said. “I was depressed for most of high school and it’s honestly a miracle I was able to make it here, to college. To live to see it all unfold.”
 
My mind raced back to the Prozac bottle on the bathroom counter and then my own heart skipped a beat and I braced myself as the dizziness set in.
 
“Oh, Jade,” I said gently.
 
I never got to share anything about myself.
 
We had that day at the beach, and we still had Friday nights, when we’d adorn the friendship bracelets Daisy made us during orientation, when our spirits were high, and when the alcohol cemented our devotion. Arms linked together, we belted our favorite songs in perfect harmony.
 
“You look really pretty,” Jade reassured me.
 
I smiled coyly, my eyes lingering on hers as she spoke.
 
Daisy would complain about our lack of punctuality, about the alcohol we bought and the music we played. She made fun of the way we parted our hair and posed for pictures and how we must be too poor to afford nice dresses.
 
But she’d always flip a switch right before we left.
 
“I love you guys!” she’d say as we locked the door behind us. We weren’t sure why, but we always said it back.
 
It didn’t matter how many times Daisy glanced at me, as if to share in a moment of disappointment over Jade’s decision making. And it didn’t matter that Jade broke her promise of staying with us just to bring a girl back to our room. It shouldn’t have mattered, because we were the Three Musketeers.
 
“See, she’s confused. She doesn’t even know what she wants,” Daisy whispered in between beats.
 
“What the hell?” I said, inadvertently spilling my entire drink on the Theta Chi floor.
 
“Oh, I don’t mean it like that. I’m not trying to be malicious or anything. I’m just looking out for you. I know you guys are close, but I doubt she really cares about your friendship. Otherwise she wouldn’t leave you just to have meaningless sex with random people. I doubt she thinks of you at all. God, you can be so pathetic.”
 
Clumpy mascara tumbled down my cheeks, collecting residue at the bottom of my red Solo cup. Suddenly the room was a carnival maze, and I searched for Jade as the tilt-a-whirl swung me off my axis. Friends locked hands as they traveled through the shaky room. Mine dangled at my side. Bare. Cold. Forgotten. Daisy’s ponytail whipped my face in a violent brush as she confidently walked away.
 
She had no problem leaving me in shambles.
 
A week later Daisy decided to rebel against our trio and go out by herself.
 
**
 
The air was frigid, the room completely black, and after the party I found Daisy’s limp body hanging off the bed like a gangly skeleton.
 
“Are you okay?!” I yelled, sprinting to her side. I held her frail limbs and bruised heart in my arms as she wept, pleading for an apology.
 
“I’m sorry. I was stupid.”
 
“It’s okay. Really.”
 
“I didn’t mean to come between you, and now you hate me.”
 
“I don’t hate you.”
 
“That’s because you’re too nice, Isabel.”
 
“It’s because I care. And besides, we’re the Three Musketeers. We stick together. But what happened tonight, Daisy?”
 
Her breath smelled like a chemically imbalanced mixture of cinnamon and alcohol. Through convulsing sobs, she managed to cry out, “I thought… I thought he liked me.”
 
I caressed the top of her head, running my fingers through the tangled knots, as she struggled to find the words.
 
“I thought when he put his hands up my skirt it meant I was special. But then he has the nerve to ignore me all night, to chase after other girls, pretending like what we had was nothing. But it was something to me.”
 
“I understand,” I said as I tried to soothe her rapid heartbeat. It was beating so fast I thought it might leap out of her chest.
 
“I just… want to be liked.”
 
The universal equalizer.
 
“You are,” I told her.
 
By then I could feel her hitched breath against my neck, the scent of her lavender perfume swirling around our corner of the room. We inhaled, and the fumes engulfed us both.
 
“I’m so happy to have you,” she said through slurred speech.
 
“Here’s to room 113, am I right?” I tried to add levity to our situation.
 
Suddenly her hand was tucking my hair neatly behind my ear, our eyelashes batting innocently against each other.
 
She leaned forward.
 
“Between us —”
 
“— come on in,” Jade’s voice boomed as she unlocked the door. There was a girl behind her whose face I couldn’t quite make out.
 
“Whoa, what’s going on here?”
 
She saw the tears in Daisy’s eyes.
 
“Are you good?”
 
“Yes… just heartbroken,” she lamented in classic melodramatic fashion, pressing her palm against her forehead and sinking into the floor.
 
Jade rolled her eyes.
 
“You shouldn’t have to deal with her theatrics,” she mouthed to me.
 
“We’ll go somewhere else,” she told the girl.
 
**
 
“I mean it,” she said. “You’re being used.”
 
“It’s complicated,” I tried to explain the next morning.
 
“Isabel, you’re too nice.”
 
The phrase was hauntingly familiar.
 
“Between us, I think Daisy is one of the most entitled people I know,” Jade replied. “And I’m telling you, there’s something off about her. We don’t need her; let’s just go.”
 
 She yanked me by the wrist and dragged me on an adventure to the Melrose Trading Post. I knew Daisy would feel betrayed. But Jade’s hand lingered on mine as she asked, so I went anyway.
 
We returned from our trip to the flea market, folded up our vintage t-shirts, tucked them into our drawers, and stepped out for the afternoon. But we came back to a soaking wet mess, the sleeves reeking of last night’s Fireball.
 
“Oh, so you’re crazy,” Jade announced, pupils darting out of her eye sockets. The lines on her forehead creased into her boiling hot skin.
 
“Daisy, did you…?”
 
“I didn’t ruin your stuff. It was an accident. The bottle tipped over and… I promise I would never hurt you,” she said, her hands clasped gingerly behind her back.
 
“Daisy, you can tell us the truth,” I said.
 
“Iz, come on. You know me,” she begged.
 
Suddenly this effortlessly glamorous woman looked incredibly tattered. Helpless. Her icy blue eyes filled with tears of desperation. She tapped her foot against the floor. Like a hummingbird flapping its wings.
 
So I looked at Jade.
 
And without warning, the tables turned.
 
The blood vessels in Daisy’s eyes broke open like tiny blots of ink. Her screams bounced off the walls, coiling around the hallway like venomous snakes. “You two can have each other!!!” she belted.
 
I’m pretty sure the whole school heard her.
 
So when we came back that night to the letter and the opened NyQuil pack and the pills strewn across the blankets, we knew the reason why.
 
“You two can have each other,” the note read. “If you decide you love me, you can come rescue me.”
 
So we ran. Because we cared. Because we made a promise. Because we were The Three Musketeers.
 
Female solidarity. Reminiscent of the stuff they put on pins and sell at protests.
 
Our heels squeaked along the sterile floor—fluorescent lights illuminating our anxiety. It was the first time I’d ever seen Jade’s hands tremble.
 
We fixated our eyes on the sign plastered on the door: “UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital.”
 
“I…I… This is really hard for me,” Jade stuttered.
 
“I know. But she’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure her as the sterile walls spun in circles around me. And then my heart skipped a beat.
 
“We’ll be okay,” and I swallowed the fear on behalf of all three of us.
 
She rested her head on my shoulder and a feeling of warmth traveled through me.
 
Then, like bats in a cave, we scoured the hospital. Nothing.
 
**
 
The story eventually became urban legend. It spread like a true California wildfire: the girl who faked an overdose.
 
Her artificially bronzed skin stained everything she touched. And so she fled to the opposite coast, and we fled back to the Melrose Trading Post.
 
“Wait, that Daisy was your roommate? Daisy Harrington?” people would ask, waiting for me to reveal the juicy details of her spontaneous disappearance.
 
“I guess she wasn’t brave enough to ever actually go through with it,” they’d joke, sending a shiver up my spine.
 
“Don’t,” I’d whisper back.
 
“I heard she tried to start a fire inside Lambda. Rumor has it she wanted to burn the whole place down,” they’d say.
 
I always laughed at that one, because I secretly hoped it was true.
 
“Oh, get ready. We can tell you all about it,” Jade would say, even after all those years.
 
“Let’s not,” I’d respond.
 
 “Why are you defending her? She was awful to you. To both of you,” they’d ask.
 
Because Daisy and I once shared a desk. A medicine cabinet. A closet.
 
And when you share a room with someone you also share your secrets, your dreams that are lumped together somewhere amid the pile of clothes. You watch each other skip meals, cover tears with flimsy wipes and insecurities with cheap concealer.
 
Because we were the Three Musketeers. Because on that first day we promised we always would be. Because even as I sat with my back against the sky, huddled up against a group full of new friends, I was still convinced she knew me better than all of them combined.
 
Because we didn’t have to speak it into existence to know. Perhaps there was an unsaid truth, just between us.