You Can't Get What You Want ('til You Know What You Want)
by
Michael Walker
Suggested Listening:
"There She Goes" by the La's
"Bad Reputation" by Freedy Johnston
"There She Goes" by Sixpence None the Richer
"Hold On" by Madison Cunningham
Willow Rosenberg sighed and used her toe to nudge the chunky black leather boot out of the way. If a hurricane could observe an invisible line of demarcation, it would resemble Willow's room. Her half was immaculate, the desk practically an advertisement for Pottery Barn. The other half was a disordered shambles of discarded clothing, books dog-eared or open face-down, a damp towel draped across the dresser. The mound of clothing piled on the bed achieved sentience and rose up with a great shaking, sweaters and hoodies and sweatpants falling away to reveal a very small girl kneeling in the center of the blast radius. Willow did not think of herself as 'big', but she felt like an elephant next to Quan Bai.
"What the fuck, Willow? Watch the fucking boots!" Quan could also swear at a rate that left Willow gasping. The redhead thought Faith might have blushed at the small girl's torrent of vulgarity. Her roommate fairly flipped out of bed and scooped up the shoe that Willow had so discreetly moved. "Do I fuck with your shit?"
"Um, none of my things are on your side of the room." Willow pointed out an undeniable, easily-verified fact.
"Don't try to shame me with your shitty Western value system." Quan dropped the boot at the foot of her bed and collapsed into a bungee-cord chair, the impact softened by a coat and several pairs of pants.
"Western value system? You're from Virginia."
"Yeah, I grew up as a fish-out-of-water in the suburbs, but my parents are straight from the old country, fucking Fu Manchu."
"Whatever." Willow shook her head and sat down at her desk. Quan's parents had emigrated from Hong Kong and were big deals at a technology company in Fairfax County. One of her brothers was in med school at Harvard; the other was Crimson pre-law. Quan had apparently refused to have anything to do with the school, but had tossed her parents the bone of matriculation at MIT. She stayed up too late, partied too much, teased boys and dropped them, and apparently believed that cleaning her room would result in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding down Massachusetts Avenue. She was also perhaps the smartest person Willow had ever seen; Willow had taken to MIT pretty much like a duck to water, but Quan seemed to be able to scamper out of bed after an all-night party, skim her assignments, and dash off work that almost invariably received a B or A-. Willow wanted to be infuriated but it was next to impossible to dislike Quan. She was completely and always 100% herself, a quality Willow envied.
"What are you working on?" Quan appeared over Willow's shoulder, looking intently at the screen of her laptop.
"It's an assignment for Materials," Willow muttered as she tapped on the keys of her PowerBook G3.
"That boring-ass class? Sheee-it." Quan flopped back on her bed.
"How do you know it's boring? You're not in there."
"Damn right I'm not. If I thought I had to take a class like that, I'd… I'd drop out and transfer to fucking BU."
Willow looked at the figures on the screen. "Well, at least you'd stay in Boston." She changed a value and hit 'Enter'. "That's better."
"Ladies."
Willow looked up and grinned. "Hey, Lucian. How's it going?"
Lucian Dobbs had a broad forehead, dark eyes, and curly hair that grew from a pronounced widow's peak. He leaned into the room, his forearms resting on either door jamb. Given his slender build, it looked as though Willow and Quan had hung a scarecrow in the doorway.
"Ah," he said, "so many questions. What is 'it'? Does 'going' refer to speed, or distance, or perhaps time? How does any one of those parameters affect the others? Can we ever determine how anything is 'going'?"
Willow turned back to her computer. "Pretentious much, you big dope?"
"Scoff away, but when I present the first provable unified field theory, you'll be laughing out of the other side of your mouth. Literally." Lucian swept the bungee-cord chair clean and slouched down into it.
"Hey, how come he didn't get yelled at?" Willow asked, looking over her shoulder.
"Gimme a second." Quan Bai scowled. "Hey, Loose-one, do I come into your motherfucking room and throw your shit around?"
"Ah, Quan, we know that matter can be neither created or destroyed, so all I've actually done is rearrange the pattern of some molecules, nothing in the sense of the universe, really."
"You take that dime store Confucius shit and cram it up your ass, motherfucker." Quan wrinkled her nose in a quasi-threatening manner. Willow snickered. Listening to Quan swear was like hearing a small child try out their first dirty word: it was somehow both jarring and adorable.
"Anything on your mind?" Willow asked.
"Well, before I was verbally assaulted by one-third of the Heroic Trio, I was going to say that Sophia and I are going over to the Common tonight, and I wanted to see if you guys wanted to go."
"Why are you going to the Common?" Quan asked, drawing herself up into a cross-legged position.
"Apparently, tonight there is a real possibility of seeing the ghosts." Lucian arched his eyebrows and waggled his head. "You know, full moon and all that? Halloween just around the corner? There's going to be hot cocoa and glow sticks and hordes of people willing to be scared."
"I don't know." Willow turned back to her screen. "I don't think I'm interested."
"Come on, Willow," Lucian chided. "Have you been to the Common yet? Have you been anywhere off campus yet?"
"Yes." Willow was indignant. "I went to the Common, like, the second week I was here."
"Bullshit," Quan chided. "You went to that dumbass Make Way for Ducklings statue."
"Hey, I really wanted to see that statue," Willow protested. "That was one of my favorite books in grade school." She nodded toward Lucian. "What's with your nails?"
"Oh." Lucian held out his hands, palms down. "Purple Rain."
"High points for accuracy, low marks for originality." Lucian painted his nails about every third day. His habit had confused Willow slightly: Lucian was not a goth nor was he gay. He just dug, in his own words, "the fact that my nails look better with polish than Sophia's do."
"Oh, come on, it'll be fun." Lucian made an exaggerated face. "Are you afraid of ghosts?"
Willow tried not to flinch, and bit her tongue lest she reply "Yeah, I kinda am. I've had bad experiences with ghosts… I had a bad experience as a ghost." That was behind her; since arriving in Massachusetts she had stayed away from the NeverNever and assiduously avoided anything even remotely magical. The irony of being just south of Salem was not lost on her. "I think I'll just stay in and get ahead on my reading assignments."
"Oh my god." Quan collapsed back on her bed. "The only thing nerdier than going to that stupid-ass ghost tour is skipping it to read." She raised her head. "I may seriously have to think about getting another roommate. You are cramping my style."
"Come on, Willow." Lucian leaned toward and made a pouty face. "There will be hot chocolate. You'll be able to see your breath."
"Mmmmaaghhhh." Willow grimaced. "I do like to see my breath. We couldn't do that in Sunnydale, you know. Well, except maybe once or twice a year… and then for about an hour."
"So, you're coming?" Lucian wiggled his eyebrows. "Sophia would love it if you did."
"My god, you people are lame." Quan popped back up to a seated position.
"Well, you're invited, too," Lucian said.
"Sure I am." Quan shook her head. "Somebody has to make sure you fuckheads don't drown in the Frog Pond."
"Come on," Lucian said. "It's only, like, three feet deep."
"Like I said, you fuckheads could do it."
Willow tugged at her gloves and checked the buttons on her pea coat. A long knitted scarf and matching hat completed her outfit. Dressing up for cold weather felt slightly thrilling and romantic, even though she had been assured that real New England cold had not arrived. Still, compared to what passed for 'cold' in Sunnydale, an autumn night in Massachusetts was positively frigid. She checked her reflection in the mirror: Willow Rosenberg, girl explorer.
"Jesus, let's go." Quan wore a floppy beanie and a puffy down jacket over a black hoodie. "Those dipshits will be waiting for us."
"Lucian and Sophia won't be mad." Willow tossed the end of her scarf over her shoulder.
"No, but if they wait for more than two minutes they start making out. It's fucking gross."
Willow scoffed and shook her head as she followed Quan out of the room. After a quick ride down on the elevator, they went outside. Willow immediately felt her cheeks flush in the chilly air. Lucian and Sophia Gravel ("Gra-velle, not like small rocks.") perched on the stone wall, arms around each other. They had met at a science camp the summer before their senior year. They had hit it off and when Lucian returned to Missouri and Sophia to Michigan, they corresponded with pathological frequency. They had turned their digital connection into an analogue relationship when they arrived at MIT. Sophia had dark eyes (the left one turned in ever so slightly), straight dark hair, and a pointed chin and looked more like an elf (or what Willow thought an elf should look like) than anyone the teenage witch had ever seen. She wore a varsity jacket with a navy blue body and gold sleeves over a black cable-knit sweater. A fleece headband covered her ears. Lucian wore a padded canvas jacket over a Harvard sweatshirt. They cuddled together, a fixed point in the steady stream of students making their way through the frosty night air.
"Oh, Willow, you are so cute!" Sophia enthused. "Quan, you look precious."
"If you make me vomit, I'm doing it on your shoes." Quan made a pugnacious face that failed to inspire fear; it actually provoked giggles from Willow and Sophia.
"Train or walkies?" Lucian asked. "Train's twenty minutes, walking's thirty."
"Oh," Willow said, "let's take the T."
"Willow, look at you, calling it the T like an old Bostonian." Sophia play-punched the redhead's shoulder.
"I swear to god, you people are gonna make me fucking barf," Quan groused.
"Hey, guys, what up?" The new arrival had blue eyes, thick hair that straddled the line between blond and brown, and the wispy chin-beard that only a college student could (or would) attempt.
"Derek." Lucian extended a hand.
"Derek." Sophia nodded.
"Good to see y'all." He shook Lucian's hand. "Willow. Quan."
"Hey, Derek," Willow said. Quan mumbled something unintelligible
"You guys headed to the Common?"
"Yeah," Lucian said. "You?"
Derek shrugged. "Maybe for a little bit. Buffalo Tom's supposed to play at the Middle East."
Sophia looked pleased. "That sounds cool."
"Very. Hey, see you guys around." He waved and walked away as Lucian, Sophia, and Willow offered some variation of "Goodbye, Derek." As he disappeared into the night and the crowd, Lucian turned.
"You know, Quan, some day he's going to notice that you don't swear like The Big Lebowski when he's around and then he'll know you like him."
"Shut the fuck up," Quan murmured.
"Come on," Willow said, grabbing her roomie's arm. "Let's go see the Common."
"So, Willow, why do you always want to take the T?" Sophia asked as they ambled down the sidewalk.
Willow shrugged inside her thick wool coat. "It's just… It's the kinda thing I imagined doing in a place like Boston, you know, riding the train in a city."
"Come on, you live like, what, two hours from LA?" Quan shook her head. "LA's a city."
"It's different." Willow squinted slightly. "LA's all spread out and horizontal and post-World War 2. Boston's what I always imagined a city to be like, you know, old, with crowded sidewalks and people packed together-"
"You'd fucking love Shanghai." Quan tossed her head.
"Quan, have you ever been out of the United States?" Lucian asked.
"Not the point, dipshit."
"I guess I kinda came to Boston for a different experience and… that's why I like the 'T'." Willow spoke into the black night air, her words rising on the clouds of her breath.
"I know what you mean." Lucian wrapped his arm around Sophia's shoulders. "There's a big difference in Kansas City and St. Louis."
"Ohmigod," Quan moaned. "It's like I'm on a field trip with the Country Bears."
They reached the Kendall station and piled into the train, Lucian and Sophia snuggled against each other and Quan huddled inside her jacket and tried to look fierce and disgusted, while Willow looked out the window at the lanes of traffic racing by and the dark waters of the Charles River reflecting the lights of Kendall Square and Beacon Hill. It was mysterious, foreign, and unfathomable, a separate cosmos from the rumble and babble inside the car. The train pulled into the Park Street stop, shaking her from her reverie. The air was chilly, but not frigid. Willow stood and stared a moment, drinking in the old statues and the glittering Boston skyline looming above her. The full moon looked down on the Back Bay, hanging above the Prudential Center and Hancock Tower as if bemused by the strivings of humanity.
"Hey, Willow, you just gonna stand there with your fucking mouth open like you're catching flies?" Quan shouted. "Let's go!"
"Go where?" Willow asked. Every part of the Common seemed occupied.
"How about hot cocoa first, then the Great Elm?" Lucian shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. "I think there's supposed to be a tour or something there in, like, twenty minutes."
"Okay." Willow nodded. "Hot chocolate it is." The quartet moved through the odd never-night of a million light bulbs toward a green panel truck. A fairly good-sized knot of people representing various ages were gathered around it. The four MIT students joined the queue. When she reached the window, Willow ordered a dark chocolate cocoa with whipped cream and sprinkles, then moved down the counter and received her drink. She took a sip as she joined her friends.
"Everybody ready?" Lucian bounced on his toes. "I don't want to miss the beginning."
"Jeez, take a chill pill, Bugs Bunny." Quan shook her head. "Why are you so excited to see some fucking third-rate actor make up shit about ghosts?"
"C'mon, Quan." Lucian head-feinted toward her. "Aren't you a little curious? I mean, ghosts are kind of outside the world of science, aren't they?"
"Not really." Willow paused, hot chocolate halfway to her mouth, conscious of her friends' stares. "I mean, if ghosts exist, maybe they obey physical laws that we don't understand, or maybe don't even know yet… I'm guessing."
"Yeah, that's possible." Sophia made a slight adjustment to her headband. "Like the cosmic glitch, or light being a particle and a wave, right?"
"Yeah," Willow said, grabbing onto the offered life preserver.
"You two are weird," Quan grumbled. "No, change that… all three of you are fucking wack jobs."
"And yet, here you are, hanging with us," Lucian said, taking a hit from his own cocoa. "And after we invited you, so who's really socially deficient?"
"Suck my dick." Quan flipped him the bird; even if her mitten hid the details, her intent was clear.
"Hey, hey." Sophia pointed. "Show's starting." A woman in colonial era-ish garb stepped up on a small box and raised her hands.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your presence," she said in a very musical-sounding alto. "Where you stand would have been beneath the shade of the Great Elm, the landmark of the Common. You can, of course, see the marker set here by the New England Methodist Historical Society and read its inscription honoring the Sons of Liberty, but the Great Elm has a much darker and bloodier story to tell, for it was the Great Hanging Tree where hundreds, thousands of souls perished, including the Nipmuc shaman Tantamous and Goody Glover, accused of witchcraft in 1688-"
"Fuckers hanged because she couldn't speak English," Quan muttered.
"-and the last woman hanged in Massachusetts, the pirate Rachel Wall." The presenter gestured toward the south. "Come with me tonight and you will learn the sordid history of the Hanging Elm and the Central Burying Ground, all for a meager fifteen dollars."
"And there's the pitch." Lucian rolled his eyes. "Still, pretty freaky, right? Right, Willow?"
Willow did not reply. She didn't really hear him; it was all she could do to keep from dropping her cup. The tour guide was not the only one in Puritan garb; there were dozens of them, pale, washed-out figures who moved among the Bostonians enjoying a crisp fall evening on the Common, figures who moved unseen, whose black clothing had faded and whose features blurred, who did not seem to pass between the people gathered in the park, but through them.
"Willow," Sophia said, "you look like you've actually seen a ghost."
It was all Willow could do to keep from replying "Because I am. I'm seeing them now."