Page 13 of This Changes Everything

NEW YORK 20 years old

BEING BEN’S ROOMMATE WAS STRANGE. I HAD NEVER LIVED WITH anyone other than my family, and the only man I’d lived with was my dad.

Not only was our space small, but it was entirely shared. We had no room for ourselves except for on the toilet or in the shower, and even then, it was hampered because we didn’t have a kitchen sink. Within the first month, I was sitting on the ledge of the bathtub shaving my legs, while Ben was doing the dishes right next to me. The number of times that my stomach cramped in the night from holding in gas had become obscene.

Our comfort level was tested the first time I got sick. I turned on the sink and the shower to drown out the noises, but Ben knocked on the door, and instead of offering his support, he quietly said, “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in there.”

Ben would wake up early to make breakfast, and I would get ready in the bathroom first. We liked to walk down Broadway to school, always stopping for coffee. In those walks, we told each other everything, then would pick the conversation back up on our walks home.

I got a job as an unpaid intern at a film production company that was run by a young, up-and-coming actor named Justin Bordin, who was only a couple of years older than I was. Other than panicking over stocking the kitchen with kombucha and the exact right energy drinks, my job was to answer the phones and make sure the printer always had paper. The goal was to eventually get miraculously discovered, but I quickly learned that Justin didn’t give two craps about the nobodies in his office when he fired his assistant mid mood swing because he “didn’t like her haircut.”

At night, Ben and I would run lines. We would often meet for dinner on the days that I had shifts at my internship, at either the diner across the street or the Indian restaurant attached to our building. We had a system in place, and it worked. On nights when he didn’t come home, I assumed he was staying over at a friend’s place or a girl’s place. On nights when I didn’t come home, he assumed I was dead, because I always came home.

It had only been a month, but there was an ease to our instant friendship. Ben and I drifted toward each other like two magnets snapping into position. At school, we were scene partners and were always standing or sitting next to each other.

Most classes were held in small, old-fashioned, original rooms spread across four floors of the historic Upper West Side building. The ground floor was Bronwyn’s newly renovated six-hundred-seat theater, and because there was a show in the middle of a run on our theater’s main stage, we rarely, if ever, had access to that theater. We practiced Alexander Technique, Speech and Dialect, Classical Text, Mask, Dance, everything, in those small rooms. The exceptions were Movement for Actors and Stage Combat, which always ran early in the morning and onstage to save our bodies from being run ragged against the lead-painted floors. So we were all taken aback when our Combat teacher, Don Gomez, sent us upstairs and into one of the old rooms, where he would be teaching us how to roll safely.

Ben and I coupled up. The yellow chairs that usually lined the walls for Scene Study were stacked and pushed into the corner, and individual mats were placed in front of us. Ben was wearing shorts and a white tank top, while I was in black leggings and a black top, with my hair tied into a ponytail. Ben tugged at my ponytail, and I hip-checked him as Don made his way around the room, weaving in and out of the pairs.

“Tuck your head inside your shoulder, then hit the ground, or you’ll break your wrists. Easy.” Don demonstrated by rolling against the hard ground like a teenager.

Ben extended his hand for me to go first. “You heard the man. Easy.”

“That’s all we get? Just tuck my head? I’m going to land on my ear.” I watched everyone around us start throwing themselves to the ground. It was moments like this when I often thought about what Kara was doing back home in her Introduction to Environmental Science class. Or what Hannah was doing in her Cognitive Neuroscience class. I wondered what my parents would think if they knew this was what their child was getting up to on her big New York adventure. The week before, I’d had to actively prevent a premature quarter-life crisis. As I lay on the ground next to Ben and all my new friends while we birthed our inner clowns, I found myself thinking, “What am I doing with my life?”

“Don’t land on your face or your wrists, and you’ll be fine. Like this.” Ben flipped himself over and landed back on his feet like he was a gymnast.

“It’s hilarious that you think I can do that,” I said, straight-faced.

“Turn your body on the way down, Ellie.” Don stopped at Ben and me. “Start on your knees and let your shoulder lead the way.”

I dropped down on one knee and placed my hands on the mat in front of me. Don put his hand on the top of my head, tucked my chin into my chest, then playfully kicked me in the ass to roll me over. Don had become one of my favorite teachers at Bronwyn. He was the only teacher who appeared to realize that we were all spending two years of our lives delaying reality and just wanted us to have some fun. I got back up, and Ben threw himself over again, accidentally knocking into Lucas, who had coupled up with Zoë.

“You alright there, Lucas?” Don asked.

Lucas tossed a thumbs-up and then put his hands back on Zoë to help her.

“I see what you’re doing, Zoë,” I snarked.

“What?” Zoë cooed.

Lucas’s black hair fell into his face as he bent her over. They weren’t fooling anyone as they enjoyed their sneaky little public groping session.

“Alright, go for it, babe.” Don clapped my back.

Once Don moved on to another pair, I turned to Ben, who had his hands on his hips, waiting impatiently for me. “Don Gomez just called me babe.”

Ben shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go. You being a chicken-shit here isn’t cute.”

“Fine.” I turned my palms inward, so they faced my body, hoping that would stop me from landing on my hands. The last thing I wanted was to snap my wrist in my first month in New York. I leaned forward, shoulder first, and I missed the mat and inadvertently slid hard against the floor. Somehow, as fate would have it, an old chunk of the chipped lead paint that coated the floors jammed under the first layer of skin beneath my index finger. It was like bamboo had been rammed beneath my fingernail, only it wasn’t bamboo, it was hardened, poisonous paint.

“AHHHHHHH! FUUCKKK!” I screamed.

“What?! What happened?!” Ben dropped to the ground and grabbed my shoulder.

“Hooooooooooly shiiiiit,” I said, losing clarity in my speech. I was drowsy and nauseated. It was as if I were drunk. The class stopped, and I lifted my trembling hand to show Don and Ben my finger.

“What is that?” Don asked.