I Was Here Read Free Page A

other places I’d never get to.
    We were meant to go see a band play that night, some people Meg knew, but I begged
     off, claiming I was tired. We went back to her house in Tacoma. I was supposed to
     stay most of the next day, but I told her I had a sore throat, and caught an early
     bus home.
    Meg invited me to come again, but I always had reasons why I couldn’t: my schedule
     was busy, bus fare wasn’t cheap. Both of which were true, even if they weren’t the
     truth.
    x x x
    It takes two buses to get from downtown to Cascades’ tiny, leafy waterfront campus.
     Joe had instructed me to go to the administration building to get some papers and
     a key. Even though Meg had lived off campus, the university runs all student housing.
     When I explain who I am, they immediately know why I’m here, because I get that look.
     I hate that look, and I’ve come to know it well: practiced empathy.
    “We’re so sorry for your loss,” the lady says. She is fat and wearing the drapey kind
     of clothes that only make her bigger. “We’ve been holding weekly support groups for
     those impacted by Megan’s death. If you’d care to join us for one, there’s another
     gathering coming up.”
    Megan? Nobody but her grandparents called her that.
    She hands me some literature, a color copy with a big smiling picture of Meg that
     I don’t recognize. On top it says
Lifeline
with hearts dotting the
i
’s. “It’s Monday afternoon.”
    “’Fraid I’ll be gone by then.”
    “Oh, shame.” She pauses. “They’ve been very cathartic for the campus community. People
     are quite shocked.”
    Shocked
is not the word for it. Shocked is when I finally got Tricia to tell me who my father
     was, only to find out that up until I was nine, he’d been living not twenty miles
     away from us. What happened with Meg is something altogether different; it’s like
     waking up one morning and finding out you live on Mars now.
    “I’m only here for a night,” I tell her.
    “Oh, shame,” she says again.
    “Yes, shame.”
    She hands me a set of keys and gives me directions to the house and tells me to call
     if I need anything and I’m out the door before she hands me a card. Or worse, gives
     me a hug.
    At Meg’s old house, no one answers when I knock, so I let myself in. Inside it smells
     of beer and pizza and bongwater, and something else, the ammonia scent of a dirty
     cat box. There’s the sound of jam bands, Phish or Widespread Panic, the kind of bad
     hippie music, I muse, that would make Meg want to shoot herself. Then I catch myself
     and remember that she did, in effect, shoot herself.
    “Who are you?” A tall and ridiculously pretty girl stands before me. She’s wearing
     a tie-dyed peace sign T-shirt, and she is sneering.
    “I’m Cody. Reynolds. I’m here for Meg. For her stuff.”
    She stiffens. As if Meg, the mention of her, the existence of her, has completely
     harshed her mellow. I already hate this girl. And when she introduces herself as Tree,
     I wish Meg were around so we could give each other that imperceptible look we’d developed
     over the years to register our mutual disdain.
Tree?
    “Are you one of her roommates?” I ask. When she first arrived, Meg sent me long emails
     about her classes, her professors, her work-study job, and, in some cases, these hilarious
     character portraits of each roommate, actual charcoal drawings she scanned for me.
     It was the kind of thing that normally I’d have adored, reveling in her haughtiness,
     because that’s how it had always been: Meg and Me Versus the World. Back home, they
     referred to us as the Pod. But reading the emails, I had the sense that she was purposefully
     playing up her roommates’ faults to make me feel better, which only made me feel worse.
     In any case, I didn’t recall a Tree.
    “I’m friends with Rich,” bitchy hippie Tree replies to me. Ahh, Stoner Richard, as
     Meg called him. I met him last time I was here.
    “I’ll get on