This One Time With Julia by David Lampson Read Free Book Online

along with another can of food. I was so nervous that I couldn’t think of anything to say, but luckily for me there was a television, so we lay on the bed for an hour and watched a movie about some people trying to get down from a mountain that’s crawling with ghosts. Julia got really into the movie, and once or twice it stressed her out so much that she jumped up and turned off the TV. But she couldn’t stand not watching either, so she’d always turn it right back on. When the movie was over, we unfolded the couch into this very lumpy bed, and I lay down to see how it felt. The mattress was really thin, and I could feel sharp pieces of metal underneath it, digging right into my back. I think I probably would have slept better on the couch, without unfolding it, but I didn’t really care. I still couldn’t believe that I’d be staying in this room all night with Julia, and nothing else made too much difference to me.
    While I was trying out the mattress, Julia took her suitcase into the bathroom to get dressed for bed. She came out a few minutes later in this huge blue T-shirt and these incredible white shorts, and then just stood there for a while in the doorway watching me try to get comfortable. I think I was under the covers by then, but I was still wearing all my clothes because I was too nervous to even take my socks off.
    “Can we leave the bathroom light on?” she said. “I can’t sleep when it’s completely dark.”
    “Go ahead.”
    Julia stayed there in the doorway for a second longer.
    “I watched you eat today,” she said. “You loved it. It made me so happy to watch you enjoy that cheeseburger so much.” She patted the dog one more time and said, “Goodnight, Max,” and climbed into her bed and pulled the blankets up under her chin. But I guess she really wasn’t ready to sleep yet, because she didn’t even close her eyes. After about a minute she asked me, “Did you ever play poker with Alvin?”
    “It’s the only card game that I know.”
    “He taught me how to play.”
    “Me too.”
    She turned on the light, and I went over to sit on the edge of her bed. We played poker for about an hour, using these M&Ms Julia had as chips. She won every game, and I could tell she’d learned to play from Alvin, because it felt the same as losing to him. I’d always liked playing with Alvin, because even though he always won, it always felt like we were both winning together, and that’s how it was with Julia too. After she won all the M&Ms, we split them up and ate them all. Then I went back to my horrible foldout sofa bed and she turned off the light, but I guess she still wasn’t tired.
    “I remember standing in the parking lot of the hotel, watching Alvin drive away,” she said in the dark. “And I had a feeling I’d never see him again.”
    “He’ll come back eventually. That’s what happened the last time he left.”
    “When it comes to old boyfriends, they say it can go one of two ways. You either stay close to them forever or you never talk to them again.”
    I can still remember how quiet it was in that room. The air conditioner had shut off, and there weren’t any airplanes overhead, or people jabbering outside, or anything. Julia’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but it filled up the whole room.
    “When Alvin left Tennessee, it was like I split off into two different lives,” she said. “In one of those lives, I went with him, and I’m sailing around the tip of Florida right now. In the other life, I didn’t go with him, but will always wonder if I should have, and that’s the life I’m living in right now. I thought about it, Joe. I really did. But an eighteen-year-old girl can’t just drop everything and run away.”
    “I would have gone with him,” I said. “If he had let me.”
    “Last year I spent half a semester in Sweden,” said Julia. “For the first month it was the most exciting place I’d ever been. And the second month I felt like I’d been