“My alarm’s set for four thirty.”
“Brutal.”
“Yeah, it sucks.” Her posture eased. “In high school I lettered in basketball. Volleyball, too.”
“Triple threat. Lemme see. You’re what. Five-nine?”
“And a half.”
“Two guard.”
“Yup,” she said. “Point?”
“You know it.”
She smiled again, more fully.
I said, “Like I said, I really appreciate this, Maddie. I know you had a rough experience with Nick and I’m sure it’s not fun to talk about. Naomi told me some, but I’d like to hear it from you. Take as much time as you need.”
She spat out her cuff and shoved it up her forearm, irked by her own bad habit. “We had a party and she invited him. She must’ve forgotten, or she was ignoring him, because I went to my room to get something. He was in there.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing. Standing there, with his hands in his pockets. I was like, ‘Uh, excuse me?’ He apologized. He said he came in to get some space ’cause he felt out of place. He didn’t know anyone except Naomi.”
“What was your first impression?”
“Part of me was creeped out, but at the same time it was kind of sweet and awkward. How he admitted it right away, most guys would be like, ‘Oh no, I’m good.’ We started talking, and you know. One thing led to another.”
“Naomi said it wasn’t serious between you.”
“Not for me.”
“For him?”
“I mean. It’s my fault.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I should’ve been clearer. I’d just broken up with Alex, I was feeling shitty about myself. Nick... He was cute. And — I did like him. Just not the way he liked me.”
“How long did it last?”
“About seven months. But that makes it sound like more than what it was. We didn’t do, like, couple things. We never went anywhere together. I didn’t want to run into Alex, and Nick wasn’t allowed to have guests, so he’d come over and we’d sit and watch TV and talk.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
“Normal stuff. Life. He wasn’t my usual type. I had a typical suburban childhood. My dad sells insurance, my mom’s a nurse. Very Orange County mid. Naomi was like, ‘It’s so adorable, you’re going through your dirty hippie boy phase.’ ”
“Opposites attract?”
“Yeah, maybe. For a little while.”
“And then?”
“It felt out of balance,” she said. “Almost from the beginning.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Well, like... He gave me this necklace?”
“The rooster.”
Her eyes widened. “You saw it?”
I showed her the still from the TikTok video.
“Yeah,” she said. “I gave it back when we broke up. I never wanted it in the first place.”
“That’s what you mean by out of balance.”
“Exactly. I get that he meant to be sweet. But I’d known him like three weeks. You should not be buying me gifts. He goes, ‘I didn’t buy it, I made it.’ If you think about it, that’s even weirder. When did you start working on it? The day after we hooked up?”
The cuff had found its way into her mouth again.
“He’s a talented guy,” she said. “It was good. But it’s a chicken. I don’t want to wear that. When I tried it on, he looked so happy. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I’d wear it when he was around and take it off when he left.”
She pulled the cuff from between her teeth. “I’m not the best at setting boundaries.”
“Was the necklace supposed to represent something?”
“He said it was good luck for sailors. He told me that on ships they keep the pigs and chickens in crates. If it sinks, they float to shore and don’t drown.”
“At least he didn’t give you a pig.”
She laughed. “Oh my God. I can’t even.”
“The sailor fixation — what was that about?”
“We were comparing tattoos once. Mine,” she said, touching her wrist, “is for my grammy Lily. He showed me the anchor and was all like, ‘Life is a storm.’ ”
“What’s that mean?”
“I just thought he was being extra. Part of his moody-guy thing.”
“Tell me more about that, Maddie.”
“He took everything so seriously. The world’s black and white, everything has to mean something. He was very self-conscious that he’d dropped out. I think he felt he wasn’t good enough or smart enough so he had to prove himself constantly.”
“To you.”
“Actually, no. It wasn’t about me, it was about him. I’m an English major, right? So he’d always try to talk to me about books. Catcher in the Rye? High school stuff. He must’ve realized what I thought, because he started asking for recommendations. Anything I gave him, he’d read in a couple days and ask for more. It bothered me. You’re not seeing me, the person; you’re using me to fill in the holes in your life.”
She paused. “Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense. Is that why you decided to end it?”
“Kind of. I let it drag out. But then it got really weird, really quickly, and I knew I had to just cut it off.”
“Weird how?”
“I was showing him the reading list from this seminar I took on Chicano literature. Sandra Cisneros, Richard Vasquez, people like that. I asked Nick if he’d ever read Octavio Prado.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is.”
“He wrote this book, Lake of the Moon, about growing up in Fresno. That’s why I thought of it. I was like, ‘Oh, this guy, he’s from Fresno, too.’ I wasn’t implying anything about Nick personally. I just thought he might like it ’cause of the connection.”
“Is that how he took it? Personally?”
“That’s the weird part. I let him borrow it. The next morning he came back. He’d read it overnight and he was freaking out.”
“About?”
She exhaled. “So you know he never met his dad?”
“He discussed that with you.”
“No discussion, he just told me. It felt too heavy for what we were. I wasn’t thinking about it when I gave him the book. There’s a part where Prado writes about getting a girl pregnant. Nick... He was convinced the girl was his mom and Prado’s his real father.”
“That’s what he said?”
Maddie nodded.
“What gave him that idea?” I asked.
“No clue. I mean, I thought he was joking. Obviously. Then he starts showing me his notebook. He’s copied out all these passages from the book. Names and dates. And charts he’d created. Pages and pages, he must’ve been working on it all night. I’m looking at it and he’s pacing around my room, talking a mile a minute. ‘Don’t you get it? Everything lines up. This is why I came here, this is why we met, it’s destiny.’ It was insane.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Yeah. Then it started to get scary. He’s asking questions about Prado and getting angry when I can’t answer. I told him, ‘I don’t know anything else, that’s the only thing we read in class.’ Eventually he got fed up and left.”
“Had you ever seen him act like that before?”
“No. Never.”
“You described him as moody.”
“Okay, but this... It was a whole ’nother level.”
“What’s the character’s name? The woman he thought was his mom.”
“...Sandra, I think.”
“Do you have the book?”
“He never returned it.”
“When did you lend it to him? Approximately?”
“I took the seminar winter quarter, so right after that.”