SWEET GIRL
SARA WOLTZ
Content Warning: “Sweet Girl” contains discussions of suicide, grooming, sexual abuse, and substance abuse.
Miranda remembers very little from her sophomore year. Fall had been filled with fruity vodka and weed, her spring semester defined by a burgeoning addiction to party drugs, a habit she swiftly kicked after a deeply embarrassing suicide attempt.
Her roommate, Kaylee, had fucking hated her. Miranda still isn’t quite sure why; it may have had something to do with how often she’d stolen Kaylee’s snacks or because of that one time she’d stumbled into the room past midnight and thrown up all over the rug.
That might have happened twice. She can’t quite remember. At most three times.
She hadn’t planned to do so badly. She’d wanted to go to college because she was excited about the classes, not any of that party scene bullshit. Belkman University had one of the best Medieval Literature programs in the country and, more importantly, Theodore Lamon.
Dr. Theodore William Lamon. The man who wrote the article that made her not only understand The Book of the City of Ladies, but inspired her to write the sixteen page analysis that had nabbed her a place in the school’s honors program.
She’d been so excited when she had found out that he taught the first year English seminar. She’d had it all planned out; take every single one of his classes and impress him in all of them. Attend his office hours, often but not so much that it seemed desperate, and ask questions about his published works. Slowly start to bring up her own ideas. Eventually get him to be her thesis advisor, sometime around her last year. Maybe even pursue an independent study under his tutelage.
Lately though, she’s been thinking about dropping out with alarming regularity. She’ll be lying in her childhood bedroom, unable to sleep, or sitting in front of her crusty old laptop struggling to type up a single word, and think to herself -
What’s the point anymore?
She never went out her first semester at Belkman, even when all her suitemates did. She had no interest in partying or alcohol or boys. While they’d all dress up and go out, she would stay in the dorm with a pot of tea, one she’d make using the hot plate she’d snuck in, and catch up on all her homework.
And Miranda is a feminist, she even has ‘girl’s girl’ in her Instagram bio, but she couldn’t help but make fun of her roommates in her head whenever they would come stumbling home with smeared makeup and dark hickies.
It probably came from jealousy, a nasty feeling that rooted from them having fun without her, but being able to laugh at them a little made her feel less left behind.
She’d started going out with them sometime during that spring semester. They’d dress her up, in cropped tank tops and little skirts, and they’d all play drinking games before they went out.
It was good. Miranda had fun with them.
She kept up with all of them the first few months of sophomore year. They’d go out every weekend, and Miranda would sleep on Mary Lou’s couch after getting so drunk they didn’t want her to ride home alone. She stopped hanging out with them right before Thanksgiving break, after picking a fight with Naomi who couldn’t seem to mind her own business. “What’s going on with you?”
“Are you okay?”
“You can talk to me.”
“You shouldn’t drink that much, give it to me.”
“Miri, talk to me.”
So Miranda had screamed at Naomi, some nasty shit she doesn’t really remember. Naomi didn’t even yell back. She just stared at her, with big wet eyes, and it made Miranda feel even more like shit than usual. She ghosted them, not just Naomi but that whole group, and spent the spring getting fucked up with strangers.
She’s always divided her life up into sections, ones labeled with whatever she was most into during that period. She knows she was eleven when her mom was diagnosed with cancer because she was reading Warrior Cats. She was dating Alex in eleventh grade because that was the peak of her Game of Thrones phase.
When she thinks about her sophomore year, she thinks about it by what she was using. Peach vodka and stolen joints. Whiskey lemonades, always followed by half a pack of cigarettes. Cheap gin, straight from the bottle. Mary-Lou’s bong. Xanax. Molly. Acid. Back to Molly. GHB but only at parties. An entire bottle of Xanax, mixed with Everclear. A brief stint in the psych ward of a hospital where she had no access to drugs. And now she’s mostly clean, and struggling to find anything to remember her summer by.
Her freshman year, though, she thinks in terms of what essay she was working on. An analysis of Marie de France’s poetry. Storytelling within The Canterbury Tales. The portrayal of women in George R.R. Martin’s novels.
She would spend hours and hours reading, and researching, and writing, and editing. And she loved it. It was her favorite thing in the world. She would read her own work over and over, and imagined how it would look formatted to fit one of the academic journals she fawned over.
She pictured her name underlined in JSTOR.
Dr. Lamon, who hated when students called him that, who insisted that Miranda call him Theodore or Theo or even T, had promised to get some of her papers published in one of those journals. He had friends in high up places, he had told her. I’ll proofread it, no problem. Of course, even your personal work. My pleasure. Anything for a student.
She’d been writing a paper about the idea of legacy within The Divine Comedy, something for his course rather than another passion project, the first time that he hit on her.
It wasn’t a surprise. Really, it wasn’t.
Miranda had been craving his attention since long before she came to Belkman, ever since she first read his work. She wanted to hear him explain his thoughts, to say her name. She used to wonder how the syllables would sound on his lips. More than anything though, she wanted to know him. She wanted him, this person who was more brilliant then she thought people could be, to think she was smart and witty, that she had a real future. Hearing him lecture in person only made the urge grow stronger, this desire to know him so well that she would become another version of him.
It wasn’t romantic, or even sexual really. She didn’t fuck herself thinking about him, or imagine his lips against her neck, or whatever her roommates would talk about when discussing college boys. She just wanted to be his friend, even though that was probably more pathetic. She had wanted to be him, to absorb his intelligence until she was the kind of person that people would travel to hear speak.
She worked hard to cultivate the perfect persona for his class; engaged, knowledgeable about his work, not a crazy fangirl. Miranda isn’t entirely sure how well this worked; she’s not a particularly good actress or liar. She had spent the month before her first class with him thinking about the different points she could raise in class, the questions she could bring to his office hours. She’d been expecting to have to work to impress him, to get him to see her in a room full of students richer and prettier than her. What she hadn’t expected, though, was for him to seem as interested in her as she was with him.
“You’re a writer?” Theo had asked her after that first class. Miranda had gone off on some uncontrolled rant about the presence of women within The Iliad, and she’d been mortified when he called after her when she was leaving. She had hastily started to explain her connection to Homer’s work, the essay she’d worked on, and how she hadn’t meant to overstep when he cut her off.
“Not really,” she had responded bashfully. She still doesn’t know why she said that; it’s not true. “It’s just something I do sometimes.”
“I don’t think it can be a ‘not really’ thing,” he said. “You’re a writer or you’re not.” He’d stared at her, brown eyes sharp. “And I have a hunch that you, Ms. Thesp, are a writer.”
She had started to meet with him during the week and they’d talk for hours, until he had to go teach his next class or attend a meeting. He emailed her articles and poems, always attached with the message “Thought of you.” Theodore thought she was funny. Theodore read her work and said she was brilliant. Theodore confided in her about his wife’s miscarriage. Theodore let her read the manuscript for his upcoming book. Theodore told her that she was pretty.
When he’d invited her to his house for dinner, saying that he wanted to discuss her ideas about Beowulf more in depth, she’d had an idea about what was going to happen. She’d hoped for it even.
He made salmon, cooked in some yogurt sauce she hadn’t been a fan of, and made them both cocktails. A martini for him, a Cosmo for her.
“My wife likes them,” he’d said. “Figured it’d be up your alley too.”
Miranda hadn't expected to like it as much as she did; back then she hadn’t been huge on the taste of alcohol. But in the one he’d made her, she couldn’t taste it at all. She’d gotten drunk, which was humiliating. Not off the one, because that would have been truly ridiculous, but rather the three she’d had throughout the course of dinner. He’d laughed at her, not unkindly.
“Sorry, I’m kind of a heavy pour,” he’d chuckled, and Miranda had laughed along, swaying a little in her seat. The next morning, after she’d sobered up, she had gotten embarrassed. She apologized for her uncouth behavior at his office hours but he’d waved her off.
“Not the first time,” Theodore had said, smile wide and charming.
Miranda had been enraptured by the sound of his voice from the first time she’d heard it, even when it came from the tinny speakers of her dingy computer. It reminded her of an espresso shot, warm and flirtatious. She could practically taste it on her tongue. He’d be lecturing to a class full of students, and she’d be convinced that he was speaking just to her; intimate and loving. Sometimes she’ll be alone, walking through the grocery store or trying to do her class readings, and think about his voice, the way that he talked to her that night.
Sweet girl, that’s it. Yeah, you’ve got it. Pretty baby. Sweet girl. My girl.
She got tired of it eventually. The talking. She hadn’t thought she could get tired of his voice but it was difficult to focus when she couldn’t stop thinking about his constant stream of dialogue.
His wife hadn’t been in the house. He’d never said as much but it was obvious from the way he was acting, and Miranda hadn’t wanted to ruin the mood by asking about her. She’d read somewhere, a bio for Theodore in some journal, that his wife was a corporate hotshot for some bullshit marketing or PR company. Miranda had wondered why Theodore was married to someone like that, someone who probably didn’t have any interest in Medieval poetry, or introspective literary fiction the way he did.
That was, Miranda wondered until she saw a picture of her. She was thin and blonde, with long acrylics and straight teeth. Stunning. Her and Theodore make a beautiful couple, one that Miranda can picture doing pottery classes and taking strolls through Vermont.
After that night with him, she tried to masturbate thinking about them having sex, and it worked for a little bit until she got overwhelmed with how fucking weird that was. She had thought she might feel better about the whole thing if she felt like she was in a sexy threesome with a beautiful older couple, but Miranda knew the truth. She was just some college freshman with a permanent retainer and fat arms sleeping with a married man.
They’d only sleep together two more times after that, before Theo called it off. She’d never even been invited back to his house; the second time was in his office, the third in his car. Miranda tried to convince herself that it was because of something outside of her; his guilt, maybe, or fear about his wife or administration finding out. That he would still mentor her and see value in what she says, would help her get published or secure a job transcribing in an archive somewhere.
Something inside of Miranda, though, something buried deep down knew that wasn’t going to happen. She knew on that first night, the second that he kissed her forehead before pulling out. Him seeing her as an intellectual equal, someone worthy and interesting and smart, was over the second they crossed that line. Affairs with your potential advisor are where theses go to die.
She still signed up for his Medieval Romances class that next year, though this decision was made more because she was too embarrassed to explain to her advisor why she was switching up her four year plan rather than any real desire to see Theo again. She couldn’t bring herself to speak in class, to feel his eyes on her, all while knowing that he’d seen her. Seen her half-dressed, and whimpering, and crying, and coming.
She’d ended that class with a C, which was honestly higher than she deserved considering how often she skipped his class. Miranda had spent most of her days, especially after October, laid up in her dorm smoking out the window and thinking about emailing his wife. She never would have, of course. She knows she’s just as much at fault as Theo; she had known he was married, knew it before she’d even met him.
Later, at some house party, she got too high to stand up and she started to think about Theodore. She thought about him constantly that year, images of him flitting in and out no matter what she did to suppress them. Normally it was her imagination running wild, picturing the way his tongue ran across his teeth before he spoke or the Medusa tattoo she’d seen on his shoulder. That night, though, she thought about what he’d said that day in his office. Not the first time. She couldn’t stop herself from wondering about the other girls lying in his bed, if they’d been brushed aside the way she had. She pictured them as pretty, prettier than her, and cool. Acrylics that would scratch down his back, curly hair chopped into a wolf cut. Maybe a tongue piercing. Those girls painted with watercolors, and collected jewelry made out of animal bones, and could wear overalls without looking frumpy.
The guy hosting the party, Robbie, had dealt her Xanax a few times. Miranda had mentioned how she was struggling with sleeping, and he’d given her a little baggie. He had her venmo him ten dollars, which seemed a little cheap to her but she wasn’t going to complain. She figured he had more upstairs so she had wandered up to his room, bottle of vodka in hand.
She hadn’t planned to overdose. Not really. But something inside of her, something dark and twisted, wishes it had worked. Miranda imagines Theodore at her funeral; standing over her embalmed body in a neat black suit. Would he feel bad?