Liz Ross
Comfort Zone
Henry moved across campus like a politician through a crowd. Tall, almost Lincolnesque, crying Hello! and offering fist bumps to anyone who made eye contact.
“Who’s that?” I asked the roommate I’d only just met, a girl with a hoop through her lower lip whose name tag said STACY – MINNEAPOLIS – BIOLOGY.
We were loitering near the condiments at a mixer for first-year students, both of us balancing hot dogs on thin paper plates.
“That’s Henry,” Stacy said.
We watched as he chatted up a professor in the English department.
“I guess he’s a big deal or something,” Stacy continued. “Like scary smart.”
There was a paperback in the pocket of Henry’s Levis. His hair was a wild shock of curls, and his shoulders stooped slightly, like he carried a burden or expected to. The professor excused himself and Henry turned to look at us, like someone who could literally feel his name being said.
“Hello!” he cried as he made his way toward us.
“I need potato salad,” Stacy said and left me standing there alone
Up close, you could see Henry’s jugular pulsing beneath the collar of his shirt.
HENRY – PORTLAND – BUSINESS/ENGLISH, his name tag read. “You’re a double major.” I said.
When nervous, my specialty was articulating the obvious.
Over the top of my head, Henry spotted someone over by the reflecting pool.
“It was good meeting you,” he said.
“Likewise,” I called after him, even though his long legs had already carried him halfway across the lawn.
I didn’t see Henry again that afternoon. Not at the potato sack races, nor the ice cream social, but the next morning, when I opened the door to my dorm room, there was a book of poetry there on the floor with a note from Henry tucked inside.
READ THIS, the note said.
I didn’t like being told what to do but admired the assertiveness of Henry’s scrawl.
Henry disappeared for a few weeks. I thought I’d bump into him in the cafeteria or campus bookstore and lingered in these places. When I finally saw him, it was in a place impossible to anticipate, a small party on the river, in a houseboat down by the eastern side of the bridge. I’d tagged along with another roommate, a Hawaiian girl named Leilani who knew the seniors throwing the party. One of them was housesitting for a professor in the psychology department who was on sabbatical to study generational trauma in places where crimes against humanity had been committed. I stood in the professor’s living room, holding tight to the red plastic cup in my hand. My back was to the rest of the party as I surveyed the titles on the shelves, books about genocides and civil wars, atrocities committed by authoritarian regimes and political extremists.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see who was there.
“Having fun?” Henry asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Everyone was heading outside, to the small deck just beyond the sliding glass door. I heard bodies entering the water, cannonballs and splashing, the moment I’d known to dread.
I was a math major and didn’t know anything about generational trauma, but my grandmother fell through the ice of a pond she was skating on, drowning when my mother was five, and I was afraid of water.
Leilani appeared outside the doorway, standing there in her bathing suit, dripping wet.
“I brought an extra suit for you,” she told me, pointing toward her bag.
Leilani disappeared back out onto the floating deck. I caught a flash of her standing at the edge of it, arms overhead, her body lengthening before she lifted off and there was only the bottom of her feet as the water cracked open to accept her.
Henry followed the party outside.
I found myself following Henry.
The deck was small and slick with water. Only the twinkle of city lights gave structure to an otherwise formless dark.
“You going in?” Henry asked.
I had no intention of getting in and went to great lengths to forget my swimsuit. Leilani noticed this, apparently, and found it unacceptable.
“Let’s get in,” Henry said.
He pulled his shirt over his head, unbuttoned his shorts, standing there in his boxers. He threw a quick grin in my direction before catapulting into the water.
“I forgot my suit too!” he yelled.
There was some sort of game underway, voices in the dark, a ball whizzing past.
“Over here,” Leilani yelled. “I’m open.”
I went inside to pour myself another beer from the keg and stood before the professor’s books again. Nothing, not even the worst the world had to offer, could distract me from the choice I needed to make.
I grabbed Leilani’s bag and went into the bathroom. I took off my clothes, stepping into Leilani’s extra suit like a recalcitrant toddler. When I opened the door, Henry was there, wrapped in a towel, waiting. I left my clothes in a careful bundle on the floor.
Henry offered his hand and I took it, following him to the floating deck where we sat on its edge.
The game with the ball ended and the swimmers quieted, most of them floating on their backs, holding hands to stay together.
The water was dark as ink.
“I’m out of my comfort zone,” I said.
I lurched forward then as if pushed, letting my body fall. The water was cool and moved like something with a will of its own. I swam back to the floating deck and held onto it with both hands.
Henry didn’t offer a fist bump or anything, but his smile felt different from the one he’d pointed at people the day I’d first seen him.
I imagined strong currents and silver-skinned fish slipping beneath our feet.
“Henry!” an unfamiliar voice called. “Over here, man, with us.”
Henry offered his hand again and I grabbed hold, unsure how deep I’d let myself go.
Liz Ross
Liz Ross is a recent graduate of The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She has attended Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Sewanee Writers’ Conference and is currently working on her first novel. She lives in San Diego with her family.