Lessons in Love (2 page)

But now there’s tons of them. Boys, that is, all clumped on the oval either talking with friends or playing an abbreviated Frisbee (the oval’s not that long), or just sitting on their suitcases, waiting.

I shuffle with my stuff over toward Fruckner, wondering what the situation is that demands such a gathering of testosterone, but figure my curiosty will have to be kept in check. Right now, I have to check-in.

“Bukowski, Love,” Lindsay Parrish holds her clipboard and puts a mark by my name (a hex?) as soon as I’m through the door.

“Present and accounted for,” I say and then wish for a retraction. While I might want to be a writer, I’m badly in need of an editor. Present and accounted for is redundant, right? Or, no, it’s fine. Or maybe I should stop thinking about that and start wondering why Lindsay sounds so…normal.

“You can place your personal items in the common room,” Lindsay cruise directs me. “Past the staircase on the left.”

Like I haven’t been here before? Like I’m really new as opposed to semi-new? Like she and I don’t already have a sordid history of mean pranks (her), rude remarks (me) and general mutual dislike (both).

“Okay,” I put the first of my bags in the corner of the common room and wait for Lindsay to say anything else. We take a moment to eye each other — no doubt she’s checking out my recently restyled hair, my attempt at summerizing (read: hints of color on my face, arms, and legs, and brighter reddy blonde hair at the front). Like a well-preserved painting of royalty or something equally pricey but cold, Lindsay Parrish looks remarkably well. Her skin is tan enough to prove she’s partaken in the outdoor pursuits of the wealthy (polo, pool, parties at estates) but not enough so that she looks like she waited tables outside or hauled yacht lines (oh, note to self: tell Charlie about boating reference!). Her subtle bronze makes it perfectly clear she’ll never be a camp counselor teaching water skiing, never ask if someone wants cole slaw or fries with that. Dressed to look like anyone else at Hadley, only the discerning eye can tell that true, she’s in a tank top — but it’s one of those hundred dollar ones Arabella showed me in London. And sure, she’s wearing a fairly standard issue canvas skirt that sits on her hips, but it’s not one you could find at a mall. It’s the kind Lindsay has made for her by her mother’s personal tailor.

“Good summer?” I ask, being polite in the face of weirdness.

“Lovely. Thanks.” Lindsay looks up from her clipboard again, smiles without showing her teeth, and the leads us back to the front door so she can keep registering people. “The room draw is in an hour. After that there should be a little bit of down time before the picnic.” She waits for me to come up with something equally banal. I’m semi-dazed, though. Where is the tried and true class a bitch of yore? Where’s the girl who publicly humiliated me, stole Jacob (even though true, technically he wasn’t mine to steal), threatened me and Chris last spring after Chris made her dip into her personal trust fund to give to my Aunt Mable’s breast cancer fund?

“Well, it’s official,” I say to Chili Pomroy when I’ve heaved my bags into the common room. “Lindsay Parrish is either medicated or else she’s been invaded by alien beings who erased her former personality.”

“Maybe she found inner peace this summer,” Chili suggests. She’s got black and white prints, framed rather than rolled, with her, along with an antique lamp. She’s one of those boarders who see their dorm rooms as potential apartments, complete with new curtains, rugs, and home makeovers on any and all furniture. “Didn’t Chris’s old boyfriend Alistair head to some ashram in India?” I nod. Chili shrugs. “Maybe La Lindsay went to the same one.”

“You could be right,” I say, but my brow is furrowed. “I wish I could accept that…Maybe she’s on best behavior for check-in day, what with parents around and everything.”

“Or maybe…” Chili looks at me and I know from her expression what she’s thinking.

“Calm before the storm?” I ask and she nods. Maybe senior year is all about that misleading calm. You enter thinking that this year, finally, will be different. It’s the last one, after all. And it starts with placidity that’s akin to an early morning sail. Only midway out do you find that the winds have picked up with colleges, misplaced family members, and people you can’t trust. Maybe it’s a sucky analogy, but that’s my hunch. That all this moving in chatter, the jumble of hey
how are yous
and suitcases and potted plants and
you look greats
are just a cover for later when we all get slammed.

Outside, parents shuttle their kids into dorms, and I wonder what it would be like if my whole family — that is, my dad, my until recently missing mother Gala, and my incredible newly found sister Sadie, were here. Probably, the world would cease to spin. It would be that bizarre. For the minutes I think about such a reunion, I feel off-kilter, and actually stumble on the wide steps by Fruckner’s back door.

“You know what I can’t imagine?” I ask Chili.

“Going back to sophomore year?” she asks, pouting. She wishes she could fast-forward to seniority.

“No. Parent’s Weekend.” In the Hadley calendar, an entire fall weekend is blocked off for “special visits”. Parents are not required but “very strongly encouraged” to attend classes on Friday, visit all day on Saturday, come — along with their children — to a formal dinner that night, followed by a big brunch on Sunday. Of course, this sounds lovely in theory. It sounds lovely if you have a family from a television show. But if, say, you’re parents are divorced and loathe each other (Harriet Walters), or are married but still loathe (Chris, whose Dad cannot come to grips with his son’s sexuality while his mother totally over-compensates), or your father’s Head of School and your mother’s been absent for almost eighteen years all the while hiding a sibling (me), it sounds hellacious.

“I think it sounds fun!” Chili says, sounding every inch her sophomore self.

“You would, what with your adoring parents and their matrimonial multi-cultural bliss.” I tug on one of her curls. I am forever doing this because my hair is so straight her coils are fascinating, and she lets me even though it’s annoying.

Chili and I hunker down the shade between Fruckner and Deals to partake of possibly the highlight of back-to-school: watching people arrive and talking about them. Not in a bad way. Not in the mean way. More in the random notable: “Hey — Marty McCallister grew seven inches.” “Lissa’s going out with Brad Winston — happened on the Cape.” “I’m not sure about advanced calculus with Peterman — it sounds too hard.”

Chili turns to me, “What happened with
your
class requests?”

I keep looking at the steady stream of arriving students and shrug. “Not sure. Only new students — such as yourself — get the honor of knowing in advance.”

“Why do they do that?” Chili tucks her legs to her chest, looking small, her eyes bright against her dark skin.

“So we can’t moan about it. See, new students don’t know which teachers to avoid and which to hope for. They don’t know that having lunch fourth period means you’re starving by eighth. Whereas we…” I point to my breastbone. “We know all too well the highs and lows of Hadley and could easily tie up the phone lines with complaints before opening day.”

“So you don’t know about Chaucer’s advanced creative writing,” Chili gestures with her chin so I see Mr. Chaucer walking toward Bishop, and herding some of the boys with him.

“Not yet. But the chances are slim. I have to present my case in person.” I’d love to be accepted into his small circle of the students who are truly talented writers, but I haven’t even taken one creative writing class let alone the three that are prerequisites for his group. Limited to five students, the class meets at night, and feels more like an members-only talent club than a class. “Rumor has it Chaucer brings snacks,” I say.

“So, you’re trying to get in so you can have brownies and graham crackers?” Chili elbows me and I laugh. I keep laughing, for no good reason except it’s funny to be sitting here, at my school but doing something — registering — that I’ve never done, with my friend from the summer.

“I’m so glad you’re in Fruckner,” I say and laugh more.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we were roommates?” Chili sighs, over-dramatically. “We’d be studying and talking, hanging out and not having to deal with anyone else…”

“You know we have no control over it, right?” I mime picking a name from a hat. “You do the roommate draw and bam — that’s it — your fate is sealed for the year.”

Chili lowers her voice. “You nervous that you’ll get Lindsay?”

I stick out my tongue then reel it in fast. “It seems too obvious, doesn’t it? Like oh, two enemies room together and learn to love one another’s differences…”

“This movie of the week brought to you by feminine products and diet aids,” Chili says, doing voice-over.

Then we pause. “It could happen,” I say. The thought of bunking in with Lindsay, of deciding what configuration to make our beds, hearing each other’s phone calls, knowing the comings and goings — it’s all too much to bear.

“Whoa,” Chili says. “Just — wait — hold everything.” She has her tongue pressed to the inside of her mouth making a lump on the outside as she sucks in air between her teeth. I follow her gaze to the oval, where a certain boy duo is kicking a soccer ball.

“Hey,” I say and smile at Chili. “Jacob…” I use my hand as a visor, checking him out as though he could have radically changed since I saw him on the Vineyard. Hard to believe it was only a few days ago, really, what with the change of scene, stress level that’s already entering the airwaves, and the fact that my stomach gave just the smallest of leaps when I saw him. I switch tacks right away. “Jacob’s with Chloe Swain. Did you know that? Oh, yeah, you were at the fair with us when it happened.” I pause and think about catching Chloe and Jacob is surprise lip-lock in the hall of mirrors are the fair on the Vineyard. “But, anyway…” I look again. “Charlie’s visiting this weekend.” Saying his name brings a smile to my face. “He’s so…”

“Am I allowed to have a turn to gush?” Chili raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Sorry. Just…I have a lot of words — and no place to put them.”

“It’s called a journal and according to Chris you have tons.” Chili turns back to the oval and then her tongue resumes its place on the inside of her mouth. “Who. Is. That?”

I pay attention to Chili’s verbal punctuation because she’s not usually interested in the male species. Or not in an overt way. “He’s — he’s just…”

“You wanted the space for words…”

Chili tilts her head. “You’re the lyricist turned writer. You tell me —”

I look over where Jacob heads the ball back to, “Dalton?”

Chili looks satisfied. “That’s his name?”

“Him,” I clarify. “People call him Him. Or Himmel. Or Man.”

“But not Dalton?”

“No, that, too,” I say. “He’s one of those many named guys — Dalton Himmelman.”

“And he’s…” Chili looks at them again but this time they notice.

“He’s Jacob’s best friend and he’s…”

Chili bushes and for some reason I do the same. “…Coming over here.”

I manage to get through most of the crush of “welcome events” — registration, dorm meeting, boarders’ tea (not to be confused with the picnic, which is just starting), without giving much pause to all of the knowledge that’s been dished out to us.

“So,” Chris asks when we’re near the statue of the ugly fish behind the science center. He sticks his arm out like he’s interviewing me. “Quick — tell me your thoughts about senior year thusfar.”

“I don’t know, you know?”

“With language like that you’re hoping to get into Chaucer’s class?”

This provokes a smirk from me. “It’s just — I wanted a normal year.”

“Look, you’re talking to a guy who came out to the whole school, whose first boyfriend wound up at some ashram in India and who is currently chasing the unattainable Haverford. I don’t know much about normal.”

I put my hand on the metal of the fish statue, thinking back to all the times I’ve jogged past before, or stood here talking, or walked by wishing for something — someone — I didn’t have. “Normal. You know, like with a regular boyfriend and going to pep rallies.”

“So you wanted to be a senior in a movie.”

“Yeah.” I look at the swell of people all milling about in picnic form. “At least — I want to feel like things were more tied up from the summer. A clean break. But with Charlie and the sort of leftover weirdness between me and Jacob…”

Chris leans on the statue’s fin and nods. “Like how Harriet Walters came back as a hippy, all leggings and dreads and crunchy fabrics.”

“Right. But she’s still Harriet. I wanted to be me, but more. Or less. Or different. Because I feel it.”

Chris points to my hair. “You look it, too.” Then he watches some people walk by, nodding at us, everything very familiar. “It’s a repeat — this year — even though it’s new. So I think it’s our job to make it what we want.” He glances to the crowds, knowing Chili’s brother Haverford is in there, along with his steady Ben.

I breathe in the hot air, the smell of cut grass, the grounds crew’s hard labors of the past week to get the campus ready. “What if you don’t know what you want?”

Chris twists his mouth and runs his hands through his hair. “Then you’re pretty much screwed until you do.”

“Thanks,” I say and mime kicking him. “Thanks a lot.” I think about being in the ocean with Charlie, about fooling around with him and where it could have led, where he thinks it might still. And maybe it will — but there’s just the smallest part of me that isn’t sure about any of it. How we met up at this formal gala, the Silver and White, on the Vineyard and how we were dressed up and it felt so glamorous, but so not me. And while I like trying on new hats, so to speak, I just wonder if Arabella was right. She said at the beginning of the summer that summer flings never turn into more, and if they do, they’re always tainted with the knowledge that the waves, the beach, the pier, Paris, wherever you first met and kissed and seamed yourselves together, will always be better than the year-round environment.