(You) Set Me on Fire

(You) Set Me on Fire by Mariko Tamaki Page B

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Authors: Mariko Tamaki
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world. Maybe this will teach her not to wander around the halls sobbing and looking for sympathy.">“What do you think?toDo”
    On the way home, Shar demonstrated Rattles’s wristbanging technique on various surfaces. The railing on the steps outside the restaurant. A tree down the street from residence.
    “Like this so BANG BANG BANG BANG!”
    “Problem,” I finally said.
    “HA!” Shar hollered. “Are you kidding? Oh poor little Rattles can’t handle exams! Oh poor Rattles! Let’s all FEEL SO SORRY for her. Poor Rattles and her DEADLY office supplies! Fuck. It might just be the funniest thing I’ve heard this year. Oh! Do you think she did it fifty times? Is fifty enough to chip bone?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Allison”—grabbing me by both shoulders, Shar pressed her forehead against mine—“you must RELAX and enjoy this moment with me!”
    I could almost taste the red candy she was sucking on. Cherry.
    The rest of my exams, after that, were a bit of a blur.
    Linguistics was multiple choice; that is, the choice between a bunch of things I didn’t recognize (so not much of a choice, really). Thankfully the Cultural Studies exam had an option to write about the one movie I’d managed to attend. Social Problems was an essay on a specific social problem; I chose sex. Shar finished her essay in fifteen minutes. I ended up sitting next to Jonathon, who was still there when I left. It looked like he was writing a novel.
    The night before students left for Christmas break, each floor in the whole dorm had a secret holiday elf gift exchange. A stack of presents sat by the elevator in a cardboard box, cryptically labelled.
    I’d gotten Carly, so I bought her a little magnet that looked like a Super 8 camera. Someone got me a giant chocolate A. Shar got a massive bottle of bubble bath.
    “Because I take soooooo many baths,” she drawled.
    Shar was supposed to get a gift for Rattles, but when she walked down the hall she noticed a huge pile of presents with Rattles’s name on them in the box.
    “Fuck that,” Shar said.
    So we snuck into the St. Joseph’s Debate Society Karaoke, which had made the mistake of stuffing a flyer into Shar’s mailbox, and drank what would have been Rattles’s present instead.
    Shar said the last thing Rattles needed was more sympathy, let alone a bottle of Amaretto.
    The karaoke night was a RETRO SPECIAL. We stayed for three versions of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” an extremely shrill rendition of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry,” Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” one too many interpretations of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” and four rounds of Heart’s “Barracuda.”
    “JeSUS we just HEARD this song,” Shar would scream after every encore. “YOU GUYS SUCK!”
    Every three songs we went up to the MC and requested the Rolling Stones until the DJ refused to talk to us anymore.
    When we got back to residence, someone had giftwrapped Rattles’s door in pink paper and bows. Shar tore a ribbon off and stuck it on my head.
    “Merryeconds later">OH Christmas, Sonny.”
    Later, sitting on her bed watching Jaws , Shar held my arm in her lap and drew fifty tiny x’s around my wrist.
    Shar’s train home left at nine the next morning.
    I walked her to the station through the first few flakes of snow as they drifted down like tiny paper airplanes. The station was a cloud of white noise and bustling bodies, like Grand Central, like you see in the movies.
    As soon as we got in line to pick up her ticket, Shar changed. I kept waiting for her to say something shitty about all the slacker students in their track pants waiting in line. Shar hated track pants. But she just stood there, holding her coffee, looking off in the distance.
    “You should go back and pacdrink we were

NINE
    Break and split
    Going home felt like a humongous waste of time.
    I had basically no desire to see my parents (that sounds harsh but it’s true). It wasn’t as if I’d spent any time at St.

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