Somewhere Else

Chapter 18: The Night Is Young (i)

"So, how does it feel?" Zuzi asks me on Monday. "To be free from Pris?"

"Hey!" Priscilla objects. Zuzi is grinning so hard, I'm worried about the state of her cheeks.

Laughing, I put my arm around Priscilla. "Ignore her. It's no fun without you."

Priscilla looks mollified, and Zuzi lets out a barking laugh.

"Seriously, though," I say, "the apartment is nice and all, just a little quiet now that I'm all alone. I've never really lived alone before."

Zuzi is agog. "Really? What about at university?"

I shrug, "I was staying at the dorms. I had the room to myself, but I shared the pantry and toilets with other students. There was always someone around." I hesitate before saying the next part, then plunge ahead anyway. "And right after that, I moved here to live with Aksel."

"And then with me!" Priscilla offers. I laugh, any awkwardness that might have cropped up from the mention of Aksel blown away by her chirpiness.

"And then with you," I agree.

"Maybe it's good that you get to live alone now," Zuzi says. "I think it's something everyone should try, before they move in with someone else."

I bite back the instinctive annoyance that sparks up at her statement. She means well, I know, but her words sound a little like criticism of me for jumping into living with Aksel right after graduation.

"I guess so," is what I finally settle on.

"Living alone is boring, though," Priscilla pipes up. "I know it's an important part of life and all, but sometimes it plain sucks."

I laugh at the way she rolls her eyes.

Zuzi shrugs, lifting and dropping a shoulder fluidly in a gesture she has perfected. "Yeah. Maybe that's why so many people can't wait to find a partner and move in with them."

As usual, everything she says about relationships and couples sounds vaguely sarcastic, but Priscilla takes her words at face value.

"Right," Priscilla nods vigorously. "Humans are community creatures. We need to be around other people. Otherwise, we get lonely."

"You know," I say, "I've read somewhere that there was a study on loneliness. It used to be nature's way of telling us that we need other people, which was essential for survival, especially in the olden days. The feeling of loneliness was a survival instinct, because it would make people seek out others, increasing their chances for survival."

As I speak, Priscilla is devouring every word with wide eyes. "That's really cool," she says.

Even Zuzi nods. "It is cool," she agrees. "I suppose human beings are quite weak individually, compared to other animals in the wild. We need to work as a group to survive."

"Even now, we're all part of a society," I say. "We are still in a group. And we still seek out connections, so that we can build our own family units and have a group of our own."

"Fascinating," Zuzi says. She isn't being sarcastic this time.

"Yeah," Priscilla agrees. "That's really interesting. Where did you read about it?"

I shrug. "One of those news articles about psychology on the Internet," I say. "I don't really remember, but you could probably find it by googling it."

I don't say that Aksel was the one who showed me that article, once upon a time.

"Psychology can be so interesting," Priscilla is saying now. "Did you know that there have been studies about how mental illnesses can show up in MRI scans?"