3.
It helps, but the effects are temporary. She finds that she comes back to it more than she'd like.
Of course, Elsa's not stupid. She can draw plenty of comparisons to her late father's dependence on methamphetamine. There's a hidden box of paraphernalia in her closet, and she wears long pants to cover the marks. And then there's the general furtiveness, the pervasive unease that keeps her nerves wound like a steel trap, ready to spring with bone-crushing force at the lightest tap of curiosity. She has always had secrets, but she has never kept one so close to her chest, clutched tight with jealousy and shame and the acute fear of discovery. As a habit, it is justifiable only because she can draw a stark line in the sand between herself and a drug addict. For one thing, she isn't going to bankrupt herself or anybody else doing it, and the tiny euphoria she might feel as natural opiates rush to numb the sting is only just enough to relax her. There's no hangover or comedown to speak of, besides, maybe, a little drowsiness. It's safe, and most importantly, it doesn't harm anyone. For the first time in months, Elsa feels like she has a little control.
With that control comes a flow of tepid warmth, the trickle of a spring thaw, a spark of interest in the things she once cared for. The fog of anhedonia begins to recede so effortlessly that she wonders how she could never manage to shake its iron grip before, and suddenly she is distinctly bothered by the state of the house.
She cleans for an entire weekend.
"Thank you, honey." Her weary mother kisses her on the temple as she returns from an overtime shift, slouched against the doorframe in a fisherman's turtleneck that once belonged to Elsa's grandfather. "The kitchen looks amazing. I don't think I've ever seen the sink sparkle."
Elsa smiles. It's a little nervous, and more than a little twitchy, but she means it. It's not forced.
"You should see the bathroom," she teases lightly, and that earns her a delighted grin.
"I can't wait." Her mom ruffles her hair affectionately and takes a deep breath, looking for all the world like she has never felt so relieved. "I am going to take such a long bath."
They order pizza and drink earl grey tea in front of the TV wearing bathrobes and slippers.
Elsa's paraphernalia stays tucked away for a few days.
It's not all roses, though.
On Monday of the following week, Elsa's locker door is slammed right under her nose, and suddenly Jenny is in her face, glaring at her. She squeaks, and backs up instinctively only to be pulled back in by the collar of her jacket.
"Where the hell have you been?" Jenny barks. "I haven't seen you in ages."
"I had a lot of homework to catch up on," Elsa says, weakly, extracting her jacket from Jenny's fingers.
"You couldn't answer your phone?"
"I'm- I'm sorry!"
"Seriously? God, fuck!"
Jenny slams her fist against the locker and growls, and that's when Elsa notices the black eye, a rash of mottled purple beneath a layer of heavy concealer. Jenny's pink-streaked hair, normally tousled and wild, is limp. Her nose ring is missing, and the area is red, as though it's been ripped out. Elsa feels the blood drain from her face.
"Oh my god, Jen-"
"Don't Jen me, Elce! Where the fuck have you been?"
"What happened?"
Jenny's pretty face contorts into an ugly sneer, lips curled to reveal sharp teeth, eyes narrowed into slits. Elsa takes an involuntary step back.
" Gary happened."
Elsa cringes. Gary is Jenny's stepfather, a factory floor manager who believes in Jesus Christ, Bass Pro Shop, and Yuengling Lager. Also strict, heavy-handed discipline. He's been known, on occasion, to let his fists do the talking when he's especially displeased.
Elsa leans in to examine the bruise, and Jenny tries to lean away, but she's trapped by the locker behind her. She relents, wincing as she allows Elsa's fingers to probe the area.
"Did the Steelers lose?" Elsa asks, pausing over a nasty reddish mark that may have originated from the impact of a ring. "I didn't see the game. I was cleaning."
Jenny hisses through her teeth. "No, they won." She brushes Elsa's fussing fingers away. "He was just mad 'cause Penn State sent me a rejection letter."
Elsa frowns. "I thought you didn't want to go there."
"I don't. That's not the point."
"So, what is the point?"
Jenny hunches her shoulders. They are broad, unlike Elsa's, and sharp through her tight, black, hoodie. She taps the heels of her boots together and squirms for a minute as she searches for the right words. It's not like her to be inarticulate, or at the very least, sharp-tongued. When she looks up again, her flecked brown eyes are pained.
"The point is I'm too stupid to get into the state college. At least, that's what fucking Gary says."
"You're not stupid," Elsa replies, automatically.
"My grades are bad."
"Maybe your grades are bad, but you're not stupid." Elsa crosses her arms defiantly. "You singlehandedly got me through math last year."
Jenny's answering smile is thin. "It's my only good subject."
"Go to community college for a year." Elsa smoothes the front of her jacket. "Get your grades up and then go where you want. Who cares what Gary says."
Jenny shrugs and kicks the linoleum, glancing up down the hall at a pair of band kids hauling their trombones into the music room. "Yeah, okay."
"You're not stupid," Elsa insists, one last time, with steel. "Don't let him get in your head. He wears camo overalls, for godsakes."
Jenny laughs and lightly punches her shoulder. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Look at you with all the good life ideas." She snorts and looks away. "What about you? Where are you going to college?"
Elsa blinks, suddenly derailed. "Um."
"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."
"I…" Elsa fidgets with her braid. "I haven't thought about it. I mean, I can't really afford it."
"So, go to community college." Jenny smirks. "Get government aid or something, but don't stay here, Elce. You're not stupid."
Suddenly, the parting words of the detective at the police station come roaring back to her and Elsa shivers, wrapping her arms tight around herself. The double doors at the far end of the hallway swing open as the marching band files toward the buses, and a harsh chill rushes over her. People are laughing and talking, but she is miles away listening to sirens and paramedics, the murmured conjecturing of curious neighbors and the buzz of police radios.
"Hey," Jenny waves a hand under her nose, "is everything okay?"
"Yeah," Elsa mumbles. She reaches down to pick up her bag. "Just a bit of déjà vu."
/-/-/-/-/
Olaf is the first teacher who really sees her.
She transfers into his class second semester due to a scheduling conflict, and he calls her first paper on The Scarlet Letter genius. People have called her a lot of things in her life, but never 'genius', so she's more than a little gobsmacked when he commends her commentary on Hawthorne's ubiquitous use of moral allegory, and gives her an A++ for the section, if such a grade is even possible.
"Anything is possible," he tells her warmly, smiling behind his desk after class. "After all, grading scales are relative measurements, aren't they? I'll just have to adjust my curve. You've set a higher bar, my dear."
Her pale cheeks burn bright red. She fights the urge to run away and hide in the back of the library.
"I really liked the book," she murmurs, by way of explanation.
"I can see why you would," he says easily. "Hester Prynne is a very sympathetic character for people who have experienced ostracization from a group."
He says this like he knows something, like he's fired an arrow and already knows exactly where it will land. Elsa meets his eyes warily, but he just grins at her. It's so bright that she has to turn away from him, blinking furiously, as though she hasn't seen the sun months.
/-/-/-/-/
They become friends.
He's a teacher, and he wears too many garish sweater vests, but English is her favorite subject, and they spend so much time discussing the material outside class that her classmates think they're fucking (gag). Even Jenny makes a few caustic comments at her expense. Olaf is young and tall and wiry, and he wears horn rimmed glasses unironically with his brown corduroy pants and grey turtlenecks. She isn't sure how he manages to buy new clothes that look old, but it's a talent that he has a corner market on. His curly brown hair is perpetually in need of a trim, and his chin is just a little too sharp to be handsome. Still, there is a boyish charm about him, a twinkle in his eye. When he talks about literature he practically glows. He paces back and forth across the classroom waving his dry-erase marker in the air like a sword, and challenges students at random to answer one of his notoriously ambitious, open-ended questions. For most of her classmates, who are used to multiple choice tests with a selection of finite, right and wrong answers, this is daunting, for Elsa, it's invigorating. She takes to his Socratic teaching style like a fish takes to water, and he begins to call on her more and more as her answers grow sharper and more astute. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire where the school's rumor mill is concerned, but she doesn't care. When Olaf begins jokingly referring to her as 'Elsie', she tolerates it. Only her grandmother has ever called her that, but she makes an exception for him. American Lit has become a bright spot at the end of her day.
Meanwhile, despite her renewed interest in her classes, college remains a looming unknown on the horizon. At home, in her room, she pins a 'Scenic Pennsylvania!' calendar on the wall behind her bed and marks it with red x's, counting down the days until graduation, when she'll have to figure out what to do next. She doesn't have any plans yet, although, anything seems better than what she's got going now, and she's perusing community college catalogues in the library after school one day when Olaf finds her, or rather, nearly runs her over with a cart of books.
"Elsie!" he exclaims brightly, his usual turtleneck accented today with a bright red scarf. "I didn't see you there!"
"Hi, Mr. Roseman," she says blithely, rubbing her ankle.
"Just Olaf, please. School's already out."
He winks at her, and it's with mild exasperation that Elsa thinks it's no wonder there are rumors flying around.
"Do you have a second?" he asks, readjusting his crooked glasses. "I want to show you something."
'Something' turns out to be a stack of college applications piled on top of the desk in his office. Elsa takes one look at it and balks. She waves her hands in front of her face as she backs away slowly.
"I don't know, Olaf. That looks-"
"Fabulous?" he asks, grinning dizzily. "I know it's a little intimidating, but don't worry! I'm going to help you fill them out!"
"But-"
"No buts!" he declares, with apparently unsinkable enthusiasm. "I said I'm going to help you, and I will!"
And he does. He talks her through every packet.
At the end of the month she's already sent out applications to a couple schools and completed her FAFSA. Olaf proves to be a savvy college advisor. He's familiar enough with the financial aid regulations to get her application fees waived, and assures her that, so long as she receives the right grants, she'll be able to afford tuition for any school she wants.
Elsa's feelings on the subject, however, are varied and ambivalent. She doesn't feel she deserves to go to a real school. For everything she's done, it feels an awful lot like cheating karma.
Olaf, as usual, is relentless.
They're sitting in his office one afternoon while the library undergoes repairs. The sky outside is clear and blue, and the sunlight is shining through the slats in the crooked, metal blinds, making yellow stripes on his narrow face. Elsa drums her fingers against the desk, trying to concentrate on a brochure he's snagged for her from the student resources center, but her backpack is open at her feet with the uniform for her part time job spilling out, and she's mentally adding up the costs for her cap and gown, growing more distressed by the second. They're going to have to cut their grocery costs for the month, or make a credit card payment late. Her mother has taken all the overtime she can handle, and she'll be sick if she does any more. There's a chance that Elsa's manager at the grocery store will give her an extra shift, but it's not likely.
She heaves a frustrated sigh and pushes the packet away suddenly. "I don't know if I can do this."
Olaf looks up from a paper he's grading. "Do what?"
"This!" She gestures at the glossy, beautifully edited photo of Columbia University's New York City campus. "How can I possible afford something like this? This…" she trails off, frustrated, searching for the words. "This isn't me, Olaf. I'm not the kind of person who gets to have these things."
"You're saying you don't deserve it?" He leans back in his chair, looking pensive behind his thick frames. "What kind of person does deserve it, then?"
"I dunno," she shrugs, petulantly. "Rich kids."
"You think everyone who goes to Columbia is rich?"
"Either rich or stupid." She pushes her fingers through her hair, finding her braid already mussed and messy. "Who can afford to live in New York except rich people? Even if I get scholarships, like you say, I won't be able to survive there."
"What you deserve, and what you can afford are two entirely different things, Elsie." Olaf drops his pen and leans over the desk. "I know your secret," he says, growing suddenly very serious. "You're wicked smart, and your grades are very good. You make it sound like you don't try, but I know that you do, in fact, try very hard."
She blushes and mumbles something, eyes darting away. Her mother looks at her grades sometimes, but nobody else knows. Her classmates think she's on drugs. Her father...
"You do deserve to go to Columbia," he says, "if you want to. Nevermind what you can afford."
Unable to think of a suitable answer, Elsa stares steadily at her knees, willing herself not to cry.
"What do you want to study?" he asks gently. "Do you want to study literature? You can do that, you know. I picked out several schools with top English programs. With your grades and your socioeconomic standing, you'll have no trouble getting into any of them."
Elsa bites her lip. "I do like English."
Olaf hands her a different packet. "Look at this one, then."
/-/-/-/-/
He is, as it turns out, correct. She receives a torrent of acceptance letters early that spring, when the snow hasn't even begun melt, and suddenly the fog on the horizon lifts. She is confused, but she is hopeful for the first time in her entire life that she can choose where she goes next. It feels like a balloon is expanding in her chest. She feels positively buoyant. She lets the cuts on her thighs scab over and heal, and instead spends weeks pouring over the acceptance offers in her room, crunching numbers, researching campus life on her mom's computer. She's too poor to make site visits, but she does the best she can.
By early April she has made her decision.
"I hate you," Jenny bites out, shuffling along beside her on the slushy sidewalk toward the McDonald's across from school.
Elsa gives her an embarrassed, helpless look, and Jenny's expression softens.
"I'm also fucking proud of you."
Elsa kicks a slushball into the road and watches it fall apart. "I'm not outta here yet."
"You might as well be," Jenny says wistfully. "Once you leave, you aren't coming back."
Elsa sighs and shoves her hands into her coat pockets.
"Um, that's a good thing, Elce."
"You deserve it more than me."
Jenny rolls her eyes, the motion made even more dramatic by her thick eyeliner, and hooks her arm through Elsa's. She pulls the listless blonde close, closer than either of them are usually comfortable being, and keeps her there.
"Listen to me," Jenny licks her lips as she considers her next words, "stop trying to figure out what you do or don't deserve. Life isn't about what you deserve, I mean, hell, if you think what Jesus says in the Bible is true, then none of us deserve any of this. We're all basically shitheads."
"Jen-"
"No, shut up, Larsen, I'm not fucking finished. What I'm saying is that everybody is shitty, and everybody does shitty things. Maybe you've done some stuff? Well, so have I. Which one of us had a pregnancy scare last year, huh?"
Elsa shakes her head, mortified, but Jenny just laughs and tugs her along more forcefully than before.
"Stop thinking about what you're owed." Jenny glances at her sidelong. "The world doesn't owe you anything. It doesn't matter what you do. So, just take your opportunities and make the most of them, okay? Just do it for me at least, god."
"Okay, okay," Elsa replies, weakly. "I will. I'm sorry."
Jenny rolls her eyes and releases her. "Don't apologize. Just-" she waves a ring-laden hand, "go out there and live it up for me, 'kay? Because I'm gonna be stuck in this shithole another year."
"Alright, fine, okay?" Elsa smirks. "Since you're so insistent."
"I fucking am. And anyway, I wouldn't worry about your little guilt complex." Jenny gives her a dark look. "Karma is a bitch. You'll pay for your crimes one way or another."
/-/-/-/-/
Arendelle University, in upstate New York, is prestigious, mid-sized, and private. The campus is old and beautiful. The reviews are good. Even the alumni association seems strong. True to Olaf's word, the English program is indeed very rigorous. They've offered her a generous aid package, and together with her federal grants she'll owe just a couple grand every year, which she can easily cover with loans. Additionally, she'll have the opportunity to study abroad in Rome her sophomore year if she wants to, and she'll be close enough to her mother to take the bus home for holidays.
Elsa stares restlessly at the Arendelle poster on her bedroom wall. It's a shot of the campus from the air, a pallet of autumn colors and crimson brick, gorgeous enough to be a painting. It's worlds apart from her burned out industrial town. She wants to leap off her bed headfirst into the picture.
"God, I wish it was fall," she says to herself.
School's out for the summer, and Jenny's mother has dragged her out to Indiana with her brothers to visit family for a couple months. She has been blowing up Elsa's phone with exasperated text messages about her redneck cousins and the sheer ugliness of the city of Gary, where her grandparents apparently live. Honestly, Elsa isn't fairing much better. The long, lonely summer has left her feeling completely stifled. The air is hot and humid, even at night, and the mosquitos swarm as soon as the sun goes down. It feels like she's spent every night since May awake, tossing and turning in her twin-sized bed. To fill the time, she's been bagging groceries 32 hours a week at the Giant Eagle Supermarket, and Elsa thinks bitterly that she could have found something fun to do with the extra pocket money if only she'd had a boyfriend or a non-captive Jenny to get into trouble with. As it is, she is alone with library books, Netflix, and cable access TV to keep her entertained. Even her mother is working extra hours.
More and more often, the box of paraphernalia sits opened and strewn about on her bed as she watches through the seemingly endless seasons of Law and Order .
She finds that it's the only show she can stand, for some reason.
On the last Saturday of August she goes to meet Olaf at a cafe in town. School is going to start soon and he's back early from his fishing cabin on Lake Eerie to get his classroom straightened up. He's wearing a sweater vest with his shorts, despite the heat, and a Steelers ball cap that looks old enough to be a family heirloom. He gives her a hug before she sits down, and Elsa has to bite the inside of her cheek.
"This was a good year, wasn't it?" he asks cheerfully, as they wait for their sandwiches to arrive.
She nods slowly and Olaf gives her a knowing look.
"Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it started off rocky, and got better as it went along."
Her agreement to this statement is more genuinely heartfelt.
"I've never had a more promising student," he confesses, smiling gently, "but, Elsie, it's not just about your promise. It's about you. Make sure that you find your happiness, okay?"
She nods tearfully into her soda because she can't promise out loud.
Her throat is tight for hours after they part ways, as she's filling up her suitcase, and taping up her boxes. There isn't much to pack. Afterwards she sits on her bed and stares at the little pile by her door, lost in thought.
/-/-/-/-/
By some miracle her mom gets the day off work so she can drive Elsa the three hours northeast and help her move into her dorm room. A hurricane has skirted north past the Atlantic coast and it's raining buckets. The roads are clogged and the creeks are overflowing. What should take three hours on a clear day takes them five. Elsa doesn't really mind. She hasn't spent this much time with her mother uninterrupted for almost a year, and that probably should make her sad, but it doesn't. Rain drops splash on the windshield, and the rhythmic swish of the wipers back and forth lulls her into a relaxed, contemplative state of mind. They pass the time with little conversation.
Her mother has a beautiful voice that Elsa hasn't heard in awhile. She sings along to her favorite Steely Dan CD, the one Elsa's father always claimed to hate. She switches over to Paul Simon when that's through. Elsa only knows some of the words. She chimes in when she can, but she doesn't have her mother's voice.
"Daniel couldn't sing either," her mom's nose wrinkles, "your father."
As if Elsa could confuse him for someone else. He was always quick to hold that title over them. She doesn't let the flush of anger take her this time, though, because her mother has said something about him aloud without falling apart, and that's progress. It's baby steps, but it's progress. They'll deal with the rest of the wreckage as it comes.
So she says, "I wish I could sing like you," instead, and that makes her mom smile.
What she really means is 'I wish I was more like you', and they both know it.
"You got my nose," her mom replies, eyes flickering sadly. "And my smarts."
Elsa nods, and they go back to singing along to Graceland.
Sometimes she dwells on her mother's life, what could have been, what almost was. If only she hadn't married Daniel, she might've finished nursing school. She might've married a good man, one who treated her right, and didn't turn her best years into a living nightmare. Her mom always tells her that Elsa is her treasure, but Elsa just feels like a bad reminder of all the damage that can't be undone. Maybe it's because she is so much like her father that her mother can't quite hold her gaze anymore.
"Oh, I love this one!" her mom says, reaching for the dial.
Elsa just hums her agreement, and passes the rest of the car ride in silence.
/-/-/-/-/
Arendelle College is beautiful, even in the rain. All of the central campus buildings and most of the old dorms are brick. The architecture is classically Greek and timeless, a gorgeous composite of antiquity and 19th century contemporary. A soaring clock tower stands watch over the fountain in the main square, its peaked, copper roof a gloomy green under the rain clouds. The whole property is lush with elegant oaks, and firs, and bespeckled with landmarks that speak to the university's storied past, bronze monuments of nobel laureates, rich alumni donors, honored professors, and academic greats. Placards fitted into buildings, sidewalks, and benches honor names that Elsa has never heard, but she regards them with due reverence all the same.
Together, she and her mother make their way across campus. They follow wet, pink signs with bleeding ink to the student resources center and stand in line with the other new arrivals, nervous parents fretting over excited teens, eyes wide and anxious as they take in the new scenery around them. The fluttering in Elsa's stomach grows worse as she approaches the front of the line, and finally she's standing in front of a check-in table, stating her name for strangers with clipboards and boxes of envelopes. They take her picture and hand her a plastic ID card. A boy with acne scars and curly brown hair fumbles with his clipboard as she approaches and nervously hands her a packet with a mail key and directions to her room in Bramberg Hall.
"C-c-come to the student resources center if you need h-help with anything," he stammers, hopefully.
Elsa smiles as she thanks him.
She's still smiling faintly when they depart and step back out into the rain. She suddenly feels a bit giddy, a slight skip in her step as she helps her mother unload the car. She isn't particularly bothered that her hair is wet and her sweatshirt soaked through. When she ascends to the fifth floor for the first time and finds her room it feels like walking into a mansion. It's like a breath of fresh air after a thousand years locked in a musty basement. She will finally have something all her own, something that she has earned for herself. She has never had so much freedom at her fingertips, and it's almost overwhelming.
She sits on the bare, plastic mattress with her mom and stares around at the industrial carpet, the double sliding closet doors, the matching wooden desks, the vanity with the scratched up mirror in the far corner by the window, the adjacent door to the narrow bathroom and cramped shower. Most of all, she stares at the empty bed on the other side of the room. Her roommate isn't here yet. Elsa hasn't even looked at her name. She doesn't care. She's too high on her own freedom so worry about someone else's.
"This reminds me of my own college days." Her mother sighs softly. "This really takes me back."
"Will you go back to nursing school?" Elsa asks innocently, but it's not innocent at all, it's a loaded question.
It's the sum of everything between them right now.
"I don't think so," her mom replies after a beat. "It's a little too late for that, don't you think?"
"No," Elsa mumbles, "I don't."
The silence from her mother is deafening. It says more than a thousand words could about where they are, about where her father is.
"Let's get the rest of the car unpacked," her mom says at length, standing from the bed. "I've got a long drive ahead of me."
"You don't have to go back tonight," Elsa reminds her. "You don't work tomorrow, right?" She extends her hand toward the empty bed on the other side of the room. "You could sleep here."
She watches her mother's face and tries to read an answer in her flickering lashes, her muscle tics, the tightening of her jaw. She thinks she knows exactly what her mom is going to say, but she has no idea why she's going to say it. Elsa feels a pang of regret in her chest.
"I can't, sweetie," she says, and has the decency to look genuinely guilty about it. "I need to get back."
"But why?" Elsa asks.
Her blue eyes are bright and searching. She's pushing like a needy child and she never does that. Somehow, it doesn't catch her mother by surprise. Nothing she does catches her mother by surprise.
She studies her mom's hazel eyes for a sign, for an explanation, for...
"It makes me too sad," her mom draws a shuddering breath, surprising them both with her honesty, "being here. I-I just...I can't-"
"Okay," Elsa assures her quickly. "It's okay."
"No, it's-"
"Let's finish unloading the car." Elsa gives her a firm look. "I don't want you driving after dark."
"It'll be dark no matter what." Her mom glances helplessly around the room. "Should we at least get dinner before I go?" she asks, like Elsa is supposed to know the answer.
Elsa doesn't know the answer.
"Sure," she says, tentatively. "Where do you want to eat?"
"I don't know. What do you feel like?"
Truthfully, Elsa hasn't been hungry for anything all summer, but she searches through her memory anyway for something she used to enjoy, and tells her mother with confidence that pizza sounds good. They finish unloading the car and go out to dinner, but it feels forced.
Elsa wishes that she had just let her mother go.
/-/-/-/-/
