Secrets

After four days of hiding out in her new apartment, Jenna finally ventured outside and bought a telephone, an electric teakettle, and a newspaper. The four days in this strange city had been torture, waking up alone in her sleeping bag, smothered under a couple layers of blankets. She lay there as long as possible each morning, concentrating on the blankets’ weight, wondering if she’d ever be able to manage to throw them off and brace herself for the cold dampness of the room.

Four days living off of granola bars and reading her text books from last term. No TV, no phone. She hadn't taken a shower; she let her short, dyed-blonde hair stick out however it pleased. The effect was not that different from her normal style. No one knew where she was. Not Jeff (thank God) and not her parents. If she’d had a phone, it never would have rung. She could die in there, and if someone ever found her, they wouldn’t even know the first thing about her.

She plugged the phone in the jack and picked up the receiver. Nothing. She was somehow surprised at this; she’d almost expected the receiver to act as an instant gateway back to her old life. She put it back in its cradle. She didn’t want to call anybody after all. Anyone she might call was the whole reason she'd left in the first place. However, she made a note to get ahold of the phone company.

She filled up her teakettle and plugged it in, then rummaged through her suitcases to find the packages of tea her mother had sent her in a care package at school. The water boiled, and she poured it into a mug that Jeff had stolen from Denny’s.

She tried not to think about Jeff. These last four days, she hadn’t. She’d seen him five days ago back in Ashland, but it seemed like years. So much had happened in just the last week. He’d told her he never wanted to see her again, she told him he was lucky she’d never said anything, that she could have ruined his whole life if she’d wanted to but she hadn’t, and what kind of gratitude had he shown her for that? Then he got so angry that his face turned purple and he’d thrown a shoe against the wall.

She found the apartment on the Internet, paid first and last month’s rent with her credit card. Now, here she was, one week later. Her parents were going to kill her. She had $4000 in her bank account, but it was supposed to be for next term.

Jenna opened the paper and fished for the classifieds. Starting over, she was beginning to realize, meant more than getting a phone installed. It meant more than getting an apartment, though the fact that she’d managed it on her own still amazed her somehow. My apartment, she thought. The radiator moaned (yes, this apartment had an actual radiator), and it made a clunking sound as it attempted to warm up. She leaned against it, skimming the employment classifieds. She had finished her tea, but the mug was still warm. She pressed it against her cheek.

Finding an apartment and moving to a new city was so much to take on in a week. She didn’t need to stress out about a job right now, too. She’d already dropped out of college—what options did she have? Everyone knew what fate college dropouts had to endure. Not like she had any sort of big career in mind. She was majoring in general studies. Dropping out of college seemed like the least of her worries at this point.

She flipped through the pages of the newspaper, moved on to the personals. Jenna brightened slightly at the thought of finding a whole new set of friends by carefully reading the ads and calling the promising ones. By next week she could be dating like a totally normal, carefree girl. Everything she might need was written down somewhere in this paper: a job, a boyfriend, friends.

An hour later, she fell back into her dull misery of the morning and the last few days. The personal ads were enough to make you kill yourself. It was so depressing the way people would lay themselves out bare, all their secrets and hopes and crazy ideals. Still, there was something about personal ads that fascinated Jenna. There was no doubt that she needed new friends. It was comforting that you could just order them from the personal ads the way you could an apartment off the Internet. You might come up with something old and cold and laced with mildew, but the fact that it existed at all gave it worth.

Jenna found herself intrigued by the various methods available for writing personal ads. She found an old notebook from a class she took last term: Intro. to Media. What a stupid class. She ripped out all the pages of useless notes she’d written down during that class, mostly doodles. J+J, she’d written across the top of one page. She tore it out and ripped it in half, then threw everything into the box the phone had come in.

With the notebook, now blank, Jenna began making a list of the techniques people used for their ads. Say everything about yourself you find impressive. This was tricky. Guys bragging about their high-powered jobs or Ivy-league educations or stunning good looks seemed oddly insecure, like they were trying to convince themselves that they were a good catch.

Attractive, fit SM, 27, ISO intelligent SF, 22-29. I’ve got the job and can afford all the toys, but don’t have anyone to share them with. No time for the bar scene.

Yeah, right. Jenna felt nothing but scorn for these show-offs trying to act like they were too good to write a personal ad.

Say everything you’re looking for in the other person. A little presumptuous, when you think about it. Why should you be thin or intelligent or fun or interesting for this personal ad writer, anyway? Say everything you’re not looking for. No smokers, no needles, no pot-heads. That was bad, but not as bad as this: Reveal all the worst things about yourself. Missing limbs, disease, sexual dysfunction, shortness, fatness, ugliness. These ads were the worst, for sure.

Jenna closed the paper and went to fill her teakettle again. It was obvious why someone would want to load a personal ad with nothing but negative qualities. These people didn’t want anything being held against them later. You know the worst from the very beginning, you pick up that phone and call some short man without his left leg, you know what you’re getting into.

She couldn’t believe it, that these people had come to that. If she had to tell everyone she met, in twenty-five words or less, all of the worst things about herself…she couldn’t do it. She hadn’t resigned herself to these things, these bad qualities, like you might after a while, after you got used to them. They hadn’t become a part of her, not yet. Not ever, she hoped.

With a new cup of tea (decaffeinated Earl Grey—why her mother would think she would want decaffeinated tea was beyond her), Jenna started a new list. Her worst qualities list. No, qualities was the wrong word. Events. Actions. Things.

1. deceitful. That was easy enough to admit. She kind of entertained the idea of deceit the first time she met Jeff, when Amanda brought him to their apartment and introduced them. Amanda was her friend, her roommate. Not a great friend, if that makes it any better. Anyway, she hadn’t gotten involved with Jeff to be mean to Amanda.

Jeff had initiated it. He’d come over one evening when Amanda was in a three-hour night class. (And he’d known Amanda would be gone, surely.) Nothing much happened—he said he’d wait for Amanda, so they just sat and watched TV a bit, talked about school. Jeff told her a story about his little brother stealing his parents’ car and driving into that menu-intercom thing you talk into before you get to the drive-thru window at McDonald’s. Jenna had laughed. They sat on opposite sides of the couch and let their feet touch. He’d leaned over and reached for her hair. She’d just cut it and dyed it blonde. “Cute,” he’d said.

The next week they ran into each other on campus and Jeff asked her if she wanted to come over to see something. Jenna couldn’t remember what that something was, now that she thought about it. She probably never saw it, whatever it was. He had kissed her in his apartment, pressed against her and said, “God Jenna, you’re so hot.”

In her new apartment, Jenna remembered this, and blushed. Not at the memory of the comment as much as the fact that she had actually been flattered by it, at the time.

She didn’t want to finish her list. She stared down at the pad of paper. She couldn’t write down the very worst things. If she couldn’t do that, how was she supposed to write a personal ad? 1. deceitful. That had been easy enough. 2. She hesitated, let the pen hover over the paper. Ab., she wrote. 3. Cl. She used the language of personal ads, but in a code meaningful only to her. Those were the worst things on her list. They were the things that would turn people away from her. If they knew.

Number 2, Ab., happened after she’d slept with Jeff about five times. They’d already agreed they’d stop, “for Amanda’s sake.” Then her period just hadn’t shown up. She waited a week, two weeks, before admitting that it was just gone, absent. She went to the health center and they told her what she already knew.

Jeff was understanding when she told him. He took in his arms and said, “It’s OK. I’m sorry this had to happen.” But she knew he was relieved when she told him what she planned to do. She saw it in his face, tense with worry and (fake?) concern. When she told him, everything that had been crumpled on his face—his forehead, his eyebrows, his mouth—collapsed. He gave her more than half of the money before she even had to ask.

About a month after that was all over, she went back to the health center for a check-up and that’s when she found out about number 3, Cl. It was just too much. She’d endured the first thing surprisingly well, considering. She hadn’t cried, she’d impressed herself with her fortitude. The nurse told her that the burning and itching she’d been feeling was completely unrelated to the first thing that had happened. She would have to take some pills to get rid of it. It was very common, the nurse at the clinic told her. It happened to many young people, especially college kids. She should practice safe sex in the future. Yeah, well, she’d figured that out after the first thing.

When she told Jeff, he was not so understanding. He said that it hadn’t been him, not this time. Typical of a guy, thought Jenna. What had really gotten him was when she’d gone over to his place and told him he should get tested, too, and so should Amanda. That set him off. That’s when he’d told her that she was a slut and that he never wanted to see her again. Jenna started crying. One minute she’d just been this normal, happy college student. How had she turned into this deceitful slut without realizing it? How had she become something she’d always said she’d never be?

“Stop crying!” he yelled. When she didn’t, he picked up a shoe from the floor and threw it against the wall. It had hit a spot just over her head and bounced away. Had that been just last week?

No, Jenna couldn’t see the point in writing all of that down in a personal ad. She’d rather just write down the good things. They could reject her later on, the natural way. Judging from the ads in the paper, there were so many problems that Jenna could feel glad she didn’t have: she wasn’t into drugs, she didn’t feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body. She wasn’t grotesquely short or out of proportion. There were some diseases she’d never had, and Jenna allowed herself to feel a tiny surge of superiority over this fact. But in the end, she figured that all the things you weren’t, all the things you didn’t do or didn’t have, weren’t enough to make you good.

She decided to straighten up the apartment before writing her first personal ad. She would write one; it seemed preferable to answering one at this point. At least she’d have a little more control. She threw her clothes back into her suitcase, flattened out her sleeping bag and fluffed the pillow. She gathered the granola bar wrappers and the papers that came wrapped around the tea bags and threw them away. Then she went back to her notepad, and with a flourish, wrote her ad:

SWF, 20, curvy, cute, sexy.

She needed to cheer herself up. She was young. She was cute and sexy. She crossed out curvy, though. Someone might take it as a euphemism for fat. She replaced it with slender.

SWF, 20, slender, cute, sexy. Deceitful, Ab., Cl.

She took a look at the words, the worst things written down, albeit in code. Maybe someone would crack it, decide to give her a chance regardless.

SWF, 20, slender, cute, sexy. Deceitful, Ab., Cl.. Take me out of my life!

She scribbled the last line down and stared at the notepad. Then she turned her head towards the phone and willed it to ring. She wanted it to ring, she wanted to pick it up find someone at the other end, the person who had read this very ad and wanted to meet her. She would press the receiver to her ear and hear a low, steady voice. “Jenna!” it would say, urgently. “I know you. I’ve discovered your secrets, and I want you all the same!”

Rebecca Kelley lives in Portland, Oregon.