The Outlier

We leave the game unfinished—tiles hidden, scores untallied—and Dad goes to bed. It’s after I’ve soaped out the beer bottles to put in the recycling that I turn on the TV and see her. I go close to the screen and drop to my knees. It’s Melanie, all right: skinnier, no longer mousy but blond, and hosting some icky reality show about husbands swapping wives.

I reckon it must’ve been ten years ago that I started messing with Melanie’s stuff, after we arrived as undergrads at the same dorm in Hopkins. I never stole anything, only took something and left a replacement—always close to the original with a little twist of difference—another color, maybe, or another size. Some of her stuff I tossed in the trash behind the cafeteria, some I kept in my locker at the gym.

What started it was that one day she’d picked up my Sharpie off the communal desk in the library by mistake and I watched her cover a whole page before she noticed the ink was a different color. Then—and this is the kicker—she shrugged and kept going. I found that an interesting scenario because we were revising basic concepts of probability and equilibrium in my economics class. I had a theory: we’re indifferent to shit we see every day but subconsciously rely on consistency and routine, and any subtle changes from the norm will cumulatively loosen our flimsy hold on sanity. I was curious to know how far I could mess with someone’s head before she lost it.

Whomever I chose for this experiment should be close to the mean, I felt that was important. And I mean the mean, not the average. Melanie was that type, though I guess she had a few more freckles than strictly necessary, and she didn’t have what you’d call a fixed wardrobe. She was borderline plump like most of us, and some days she wore Empire-cut tops, but not the kind that made you look pregnant, and other days she wore boot-cut jeans, but not so low her ass fell out. She liked Keds and UGGs. A born-again Christian, she had a crucifix around her neck, but she wasn’t a wailer or an arm-waver. She had a long, bland face like a cow, brown eyes, and decent teeth—sure, we all have decent teeth—and hair the color of watery coffee, not quite curly, not quite straight. Her complexion changed depending where she sat: in the library it was lit from within like a paper shade over a twenty-watt bulb, but in daylight it was opaque, making her face smooth and spherical like a soft-boiled egg. Thoughts, when she had any, crossed her face like clouds. She never seemed to mind you looking at her.

I remember the night Melanie came into the student lounge and told us that when she’d fished her shoes out from under her bed they were the wrong color.

“I had a pair almost identical to these,” she said, holding up the pumps. “Same size, same style, same daisies on the straps, but in cream not black.”

Jenna plucked a beer from the crate. It opened with a hiss. Pizza boxes littered the table. Campus trees crowded the windows; I heard them scratch against the glass. The shoes hung from Melanie’s fingers like hooked bait.

“They’re not really lost then,” I said. “You had a pair: you have a pair.”

“Yeah, but not the same pair.”

“The same in essentials.”

“They were originally and essentially cream.”

They wouldn’t match the dress she’d bought for her parents’ wedding. They were renewing their vows, as if their first marriage were a cheap Band-Aid.

“Lend her something,” Terry said to me. “You’re the same size.”

“God, I loved that black dress you wore for Freshers,” said Jenna.

No way Jenna loved that dress.

“I loved it too,” said Melanie. Only she meant it.

“Wouldn’t it be more logical to lend her shoes...