Cecily Von Ziegesar (3 page)

“Ew. Yuck!
” The three pink-T-shirted girls moaned a chorus of dismay from the back.

A farm flashed by. A trailer home. A dilapidated barn. More clover, more daisies, more buzzing bees. Motionless cows blinked at the van, insects hovering over their heads in clouds.

“Damn. Did you see that? This whole geographic region is freaking depressing as hell,” Tom complained.

“Hey, man,” Nick countered. “People live here. And they probably hate us, you know? Rich city kids turning up to go to college in their town? Littering on their farms? Driving up the price of bacon or coffee or whatever.”

Nick could feel his earlobes flush a deep, hot pink. He tugged on the flaps of his hat and glanced self-consciously at Shipley, who was busy pretending to gaze dreamily out the window while secretly admiring Tom's bulging triceps. Eliza continued to glare at the back of Tom's meat-headed skull, while Tom marveled at the way in which the sunlight reflected off the tiny blond hairs on the tops of Shipley's thighs, causing them to sparkle. The van turned onto an old logging road that led directly into the woods. It barreled over a pothole, tossing its passengers together as the trees enveloped them.

T
he relationship between town and college is often fraught with tension. The town would like to think it doesn't need the college, however pretty, to draw visitors. After all, the town has its old mill, its tannery, its rushing river, its dramatic dam. Elm Street is still almost postcard-perfect despite the blight of Dutch elm disease. The pizza and pancakes aren't half bad. The high school wins the regional championships in both basketball and hockey nearly every year. And the townies are friendly, for the most part.

“Of course you don't have any money,” Tragedy snapped at her brother. She manipulated her ever-present Rubik's cube, scrambling it up so she could solve it again. “Neither of us does. And we never will, unless we get the fuck out of Dodge.”

Adam and Tragedy Gatz were not related, but they were brother and sister nonetheless. Tragedy was adopted, and she never let anyone forget it. Their parents, Ellen and Eli, were hippie subsistence farmers and crafts fair vendors. They had both grown up in Brooklyn and had dropped out of Dexter their junior
year after taking too much acid and missing too many classes. They got married and, with their parents' help, bought a dilapidated horse farm right there in Home. Instead of horses, they raised sheep. Ellen spun wool and Eli welded hand-wrought oversized fork, knife, and spoon-shaped fireplace tongs. They ate their own grass-fed lamb and pesticide-free organic vegetables. They baked their own bread and made their own sheep's milk cheese and yogurt. And they gave birth to a son, Adam. When Adam was four years old, Ellen and Eli adopted the infant daughter of Hector Machado, a Brazilian sheep trader who'd died of a heart attack right on their doorstep, or so the story went. As he lay dying, Hector asked the Gatzes to take care of his baby daughter, whose mother had already died in childbirth. The baby had been named Gertrudes Imaculada, after her mother. The Gatzes renamed her Tragedy, after their favorite Bee Gees song, and they raised her as one of their own.

Right now Adam and Tragedy were sitting in Adam's battered white Volkswagen GTI on the shoulder of the road leading through campus, directly opposite Dexter College's new Student Union. They were arguing about whether or not to try and finagle some free coffee. Of course Tragedy would be the one to do the finagling; she always was.

“I don't see why you can't just make coffee at home,” Adam said, trying to be reasonable.

But Tragedy was never reasonable. “Doesn't taste the same. Especially not with ewe's milk.” She set her Rubik's cube down on the dashboard. “A feta-cheese-fucking-cino?” She stepped out of the car. “No, thank you,” she added and slammed the door.

The freshmen had left for their orientation trips, and registration for the upperclassmen wouldn't begin until the day after tomorrow. Except for the few older students who'd arrived early, the campus was quiet. Adam watched his sister cross Homeward Av
enue and stride purposefully up the walk to the Student Union, her waist-length ponytail bobbing behind her.

It was Tragedy's fault Adam had graduated from high school virtually friendless. Over the course of his senior year, Tragedy had grown six inches taller in as many months. Her hips and chest developed at the same rapid rate, forcing her to switch from junior misses to women's sizes. “Your sister is ridiculously hot, man,” Adam's classmates would protest. “How can you stand it? After all, you're not even related.” Then someone seeded the rumor that Adam's relationship with his sister was more than brotherly, and instantly both he and Tragedy became social outcasts.

Of course nothing had ever transpired to justify the rumors, but Tragedy kept right on developing, and for the population of Home High and the town of Home itself, that was justification enough. The irony was, Adam didn't see it. He didn't see what was so ridiculously hot about his sister. She was simply his little sister—annoying, confrontational as hell, impossibly demanding, constantly around, and because beggars can't be choosers, his only friend.

Tragedy studied the menu board on the wall of the Student Union's new Starbucks café, trying to make sense of the ridiculous Italianate lingo. Tall was small, grande was bigger, and venti was the biggest. A few Starbucks had opened in Maine's larger towns—it had been reported that the chain was growing at a rate of one new outpost per day—but this was Home's first, and her first time ever inside one. It was very clean and orderly, definitely a step up from Boonies, the greasy muffin shop littered with old newspapers and overflowing ashtrays and equipped with the most disgusting bathroom in New England.

The pimply guy behind the counter stared her up and down. He was probably wondering why he'd never laid eyes on her before. She was kind of hard to miss.

“I only have a dollar,” she told him boldly. “But I don't want to spend it.” She was fond of getting away with murder. It was her favorite sport.

“That's okay,” the guy responded, staring moronically at her chest. He dragged his palms across the green fabric of his apron. “What can I get for you?”

She glanced up at the board again, searching for the most expensive beverage they offered. “I'll take a venti mocha cappuccino thingy with lots of whipped cream and chocolate powder and a couple extra shots of espresso. And give me one of those chocolate biscotti cookies too, please. Oh, and make sure you use fair trade coffee.”

The guy's pimply cheeks turned pink. “I'm not sure what you mean by ‘fair trade.' It's okay if you can't pay for it.”

She stared at him, enraged. How hard was it to know what was going on in the world? How hard was it to use your mind? “You sell coffee but you don't know what fair trade means?” she demanded with disgust. “And they call this a
liberal
arts college. Who grew that coffee? Who picked it? Who's profiting here?” She blinked her feathery black eyelashes angrily. “I'm still in high school, but I can guarantee you that I'm going to college someplace where people know what's what. Maybe not even in this fucking country!”

The boy blinked mutely back at her, obviously depressed that he'd dropped so miserably low in her supreme estimation. “Do you still want your mochaccino?” he asked timidly. “I'll throw in an extra biscotti.”

“Fine. Sure.” Fair trade or not, she really did want the coffee.

She turned her back as the guy fussed with the machinery. Afternoon sun flooded into the Student Union through a giant wall of glass facing the road. Adam tooted his horn and she
waved at him, waggling the fingers of her left hand to indicate that she'd be back in the car in five minutes, tops.

Adam was such a loser. In two days he'd be starting college at Dexter as a day student. Dexter, of all places! So what that it gave Maine residents discounted tuition? So what that it rated up there with the Ivies and had a brand-new Starbucks café? So what that it had been selected as 1992's Prettiest New England College by both
USA Today
and
Yankee
magazine? Adam could have gone to California or Colorado or Florida or the Sorbonne, in France. Even U-Maine Orono—where most of Home High's college-bound graduates went—would have been ten times more interesting. Orono was far enough away that he would have had to live in a dorm. He would have been able to eat nonorganic, artery-clogging, delicious dining hall food. And she could have left Home to visit him.

Dexter prided itself on being part of the community and encouraged Maine residents to apply. Because Adam had graduated from high school with honors, Dexter had given him a free ride, but due to the housing squeeze, it had fallen short of providing him with a room. He would be a day student and continue to live at home. This was fine with him. He hadn't even signed up for the freshman orientation trip, claiming that it was too expensive. “I know where I am,” he'd insisted. “I don't need any orientation.”

In truth, Adam had no idea where he was. He was eighteen years old and bursting with potential. He liked to read and play tetherball. He could pick a shitload of blueberries. He could weld. He could shear a sheep. But he'd lived every one of his eighteen years with a sense of detachment that frustrated him. When would he start to
live,
full throttle? When would he begin to engage with his surroundings? Even the Dexter College campus,
which had existed prettily in the background throughout his entire life, felt strange and menacing. He felt as if he were seeing it for the first time. The buildings were pristine. The grass was green. The chapel was as white as his car had probably been when it was new, long before his time. He was about to spend the next four years of his life here, patrolling these green lawns, attending seminars in these immaculate brick buildings, or concerts and lectures in the quaint white chapel, but right now he was too terrified to even get out of the car. Tragedy was right, he was a pansy.

Adam tapped lightly on the horn, but he doubted his sister could hear him. The glass walls of the new Student Union were incredibly thick, built to withstand the frigid temperatures of the long Maine winter.

The guy behind the counter was still grinding, filtering, and steaming. Tragedy was about to inform him that she could have flown to Guatemala, picked her own coffee, milked a fucking cow, and baked a batch of biscotti herself by this time, when the door to the bathroom swung open and a guy with a blond beard wandered into the café. He wore a black parka, maroon Dexter sweatpants, and old work boots. A thick book was clutched in his grease-streaked hands. He looked young and old at the same time, as if he'd been through a lot and didn't want to talk about it.

“Shit,” he muttered as he walked by.

“Hey!” the guy behind the counter called out. “Hey man, I told you yesterday. You're not supposed to use the bathroom unless you're a student or a customer.”

Ignoring him, the bearded man pushed open the glass door and stepped out into the sun.

“How do you know he's not a student?” Tragedy demanded. “He's wearing Dexter sweatpants.”

The guy placed an enormous cup of coffee on the shiny black countertop, squirted a dollop of whipped cream on top, and sprinkled it with cocoa powder before securing the lid.

“We only opened a few days ago and that guy's been in here every day to use the bathroom. He never buys anything. He's always wearing the same clothes. He always looks a little dirty and acts a little weird. He's no student.” He slipped a cardboard sleeve around the cup and handed it to her. “One venti mocha cap with two shots and two biscotti,” he announced, pushing the cellophane-wrapped cookies across the counter. He winked. “No charge.”

The coffee weighed a ton. Tragedy grabbed the cookies and tucked them into her back pocket. “You tell your bosses the next time I'm in here I want to see some fair trade fucking coffee,” she reminded him.

The bearded man was sitting on a bench in a sunny spot outside the Student Union, reading his book.

“Hey,” she greeted him. “I'm Tragedy. What's your name?”

He looked up, his gigantic light blue eyes staring without seeing. His face and hands were dirty, and he was younger than she had first thought, but older than her brother was. His parka had a feather-oozing gash in the chest and must have been hotter than hell. The book in his hands was
Dianetics,
by L. Ron Hubbard. She recognized the erupting volcano on its cover from a
60 Minutes
episode she'd watched one Sunday night. The report was all about why Scientology was so appealing to celebrities, who tended to have “lifestyle problems.” The Church of Scientology encouraged fucked-up people to delve into their pasts and “audit” their shitty memories or “engrams” to get “clear.” The thing was, you had to
pay
them to do the auditing because, goodness knows, delving into your past is not something you should
try on your own at home. Just another totally wack concept brought to you by the modern world of Planet Starbucks.

The guy was still staring at her. Or staring through her. She didn't mind. At least he wasn't staring at her boobs.

“Patrick,” he said finally. “Pink Patrick.”

“Here.” She offered him the mochaccino. As with everything, now that she had it, she didn't really want it. “Take this too,” she said, handing him a biscotti. “Sorry, the other one's for my brother.”

Pink Patrick tore open the wrapper with his teeth and devoured the biscotti.

“Fuck it,” she said, and handed him the second one. Adam wasn't hungry, not like this guy. The dude in the café was probably right. He wasn't a student.

Adam observed the proceedings from across the road. He didn't like the guy's ripped parka or how he was talking to his sister without looking at her. He didn't like his beard or his dirty boots. He didn't like how she'd given him all her food, especially not after she'd taken so much trouble to procure it. He tooted the horn again.

The bearded guy shot to his feet and lunged toward the car. “Hey! What's your problem?” he shouted as he stormed across the road. “Is there a problem?”

Adam locked the door. His window was wide open, but he didn't want to roll it up for fear of pissing the guy off even further. He started the engine, revving the gas pedal with what he hoped was a menacing roar. There were crumbs in the guy's beard and his blue eyes were round and fierce. He looked like Kris Kristofferson on crystal meth.

“Don't worry about him,” Tragedy called out as she sauntered across the road to the car. “That's just my brother, Adam.
He's harmless.” She opened the passenger door. “Hey, want a ride?” she asked the bearded guy.

“Jesus.” Adam let his head fall back against the headrest, resigning himself. The guy was either going to hurl that huge cup of steaming hot coffee in his face, scarring him for life, or he was going to get into the backseat and ride with them for a mile or so before bashing their heads in with his boots.