Lessons in Love (23 page)

“Good lord, who knows.” She checks her hair for sings of any strays. “Who can say who they will be?”

“Then why the bravado?” I sidestep a pile of dog poop, glad that for once I haven’t fallen or spilled or stepped in something foul before my interview. The leaves overhead make the yard idyllic, a vision of fall the way it is on film or in the catalogues. “Man, no wonder they have you tour now — it’s beautiful.” Even though I’ve been here many times before, it feels different right now. Not like I’m trespassing. But that it could be my school, my yard, my rightful place. Or not.

Harriet turns on her heel and puts her hands on her hips. “You’ll need some sort of bravado to get through the interviews. I did all mine — this is my last.” She gives me the once over to see if anything needs fixing before we meet up with the rest of the tour. Apparently, I meet with her approval. “I’m applying here Early Decision. At least, that’s my plan. What’s yours?”

My plan. My map, chart, sketch, strategy. “Tour, interview, break-up?”

Harriet nods like it’s official. “Good order. No break-ups prior to interview — don’t want to expose yourself before being quizzed.”

I nod but don’t tell her how I’m feeling, how that inner conflict sucks and breaking up stings, even if you’re the one doing it. I picture Charlie at Hadley and feel semi-sick but picture him in the summer and feel sad, like ending things means losing everything we had. Which I guess it does. I check the time. “We should go. I don’t want to be late. Early Decision — that’s so…binding…” I can’t imagine doing that, committing right away to a single place. But then again, maybe I haven’t found the right one.

“Yeah…” Her shoes click on the stone ground. “But you never know. I could see something on the tour that would completely make me change my mind.”

Here is what all campus tours boil down to: architecture (“The library was built in 1708 by a mercantile sailor”), a few random facts about students tailored to the specific place (“we’re a pretty studious/fun/athletically inclined/enviro/international bunch!”), and one message (“You want to go here.”). All of it’s only mildly useful because what you need to know you pick up between the facts, underneath the strong sell from the tour guides. After the required information session, during which Harriet Walters takes notes and I listen for signs that this is the school that would be right for me, the tour starts.

“This is….”

Insert name of building and its function.

“We always have…”

Insert name of specific tradition — snow sculpture contests/science experiments/the largest outdoor omelet competition.

Not that I’m not enjoying myself. Without a doubt the school is gorgeous, famous, historic, and very difficult to get into. With every fact and story that comes from the tour guide’s mouth, the interview gets closer and closer. What if this is my first choice and I can’t get in? What if I clam up and can’t explain where I see myself in five years or whom I admire most or which historical figure influences me in my day to day life? And what if I can’t even concentrate because I know that afterwards I need to find Charlie and tell him?

Harriet whispers to me as the tour guide explains the residential houses. “Love, you look way too nervous. It’s not good for your pallor.”

I pinch my cheeks — Aunt Mable’s old trick for looking less pale on a moment’s notice. I wonder if she learned that from my mother in college and what I might learn when I’m there. Or if. “But I am too nervous.”

“Then bag the tour and collect yourself. Seriously.” She raises her eyebrows and removes her wireframe glasses so I know she means it. “You know your way around here. Go get a coffee — or no — no caffeine. Just go do yoga or something and meet us at the end.”

As the herd of touring enthusiasts move onto the next place of interest, I hang back then slink away, hoping no one notices. Instantly, a bit of the pressure eases up and I walk a few yards without feeling weighted by stress. Past Widener, past benches filled with students, I head for the gates on the other side of the yard which I know will lead me to Bartley’s Burgers, site of many a days and nights in my life. Harriet’s got a good head on her shoulders, and gives good advice. The tour won’t shed much new light, but walking around does. I could be here. This could be it, right? I indulge a momentary fantasy in which the interviewer loves me so much he/she announces I’m already accepted. My spirits soar, then I think about how even if I do that, I still have to find Charlie and deal with that, not to mention the fact that just because someone says you’re accepted into something doesn’t mean it’s the right place for you.

Rather than use the minutes I have left before the interview to further fantasize at Bartley’s, I veer left instead, and find myself in a side yard that’s dotted with large sculptures and further decorated with Shetland wool-sweaters and jeans all worn by current students who hold text books and soak up the warmth of the morning sun. A feeling of peace starts to fill me. If I could bottle it up, keep it for the interview, I’d be fine. Only, just when I start to do that, I see that one of the dots on the grass way over in the corner is familiar. Feeling like a bad spy, I go closer, ducking behind the ancient elms for coverage.

Charlie and his read-a-thon in full action — close enough that I can hear the words. Close enough that I can see the other readers and the listeners, as well as the sign behind them that announces the event. I check my watch. Is ten minutes too fast to break up with someone? I feel like a bitch but know that in this case, having seen him, Harriet can’t be right — I have to do this now if I’m going to make it through the interview without bursting.

I walk over, knowing I look interview-ready and hoping that after all’s said and done, Charlie doesn’t think I dressed up for dumping him. What constitutes the correct clothing for dumpage? I broke up with Robinson Hall in something stained. Ugh. Thinking of him leads me back to Lindsay and Jacob. It can’t be true. Is it? I pick lint from my pants. When Asher ended it I wore a new pink t-shirt I’ve never worn since. Will these black pants go the way of the cast-offs?

Oh, dumping him — he looks so sweet on the ground, the book in his lap where my head has rested so many times, his hands on the pages. What if those feelings I had for Jacob were just passing?

I look to the blue sky and know it’s not true. Those feelings haven’t passed for more than two years. But Lindsay and him? No. Maybe. I suck in the cold air. I have to do this. I stand a little ways off, at the back of the groups, with a view of their backs, all anonymous sweaters and shirts. And I’m about to make my presence known, by waving or saying hello, but I don’t want to interrupt.

I scan the people next to him to see if Miranda is there, if she’s touching him, if that hunch I had about her was correct — and they are more than just old friends. Then I get proof: from the front row of listeners, a mop of perfectly tousled hair and a scarf that’s print announces its brandname. The woman and her hair lean forward, too close to Charlie for my own comfort even though we’re about to break up. I mean, he doesn’t know that and yet there’s a female so close she may as well be on his lap. Which, until said break-ups occurs, is my place. I step forward. Miranda. I shake my head. Note to self: never buy the old friend excuse.

Then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I spin around thinking it’ll be Harriet or an irate tour guide, but it’s not.

“Love?” A woman with a big smile and a pixie haircut extends her hand to me.

My face says do I know you but I reach my hand out anyway, wondering if maybe Harvard plants random interviewers on campus to trick you. “Hello…”

The woman laughs. “Oh, sorry — I know you — or feel like I do but you don’t…” She makes a nametag shape on her chest. “I’m Miranda.” She looks at me with something that registers as pity, her eyes full of knowledge. But of what? We shake hands and a chill runs through me, my gut pulling me back to where Charlie is seated. If she’s Miranda then…

I get a better look now at Charlie. The Read-a-Thon banners undulates with the wind, and as piles of leaves swirl, the hair, the scarf, the girl in the lap — she turns to face the crowd, sitting as close as she can to Charlie, and after taking the book from him so she can read, slips her legs over his. First she leans onto him, then into his chest. He holds the book for her and they sit linked like one person. One intimate person.

Miranda looks at me, whispering so as not to disturb. “You know her, right?”

I nod, and gulp for air. “Yeah. Lindsay. Lindsay Parrish.”

Three hours later and I’m finding solace in a frappe and burger at Bartley’s, my ACW journal in front of me, only slightly smeared with ketchup. Harriet’s been across from me, working in silence for a while. She’s attuned enough to know I’m in no mood for chit-chat. I don’t even like that word.

“Another hour and we’ll go?”

I nod. Another hour will give me enough time to obliterate Harvard from my list, finish some math homework, and finally end the story I’m working on. In it, a farmer in the 1930s deals with a flood and has to save all the animals he can. I know it runs the risk of Dalton calling it biblical, and Chaucer hating it, and Linus Delacorte being critical because he hates all stories with animals, but I have to know I can finish it. The ending has been tricky because I don’t know if any of the animals survived and was it means if they do or don’t. I want to have created a character — the farmer — who as Dalton phrased it, jumps off the page. And I think I have. But I can’t figure out that damn last line.

The barn’s small gate held behind it a cluster of chickens. Soon the water would reach them, and the Holsteins, too.

Am I really writing about cows? I ask myself while tapping my pen on the page. Is that the lesson I’m learning? Part of me feels badly about leaving Amelia and Nick Cooper on that beach with everything still unsettled.

“Still going for Early Decision?” I ask her. My pen is poised to write, if only that last line would come. I bite my lip, flinching when I bite too hard, and wishing I didn’t feel quite so betrayed on a day when I was supposed to be the breaker-upper. So Lindsay’s more than just “gracious” to Charlie. Or, that’s the way it looks.

“Definitely.” She looks happy, settled. “What about you — did you see anything on the tour to make you go one way or the other?”

“You could say that.” I sip my frothy drink. The interview went fine, but I had that outer body experience of watching myself interview. A disconnect that maybe didn’t show — I held up my end of the questioning and gave respectable answers, but something was lacking. I guess that’s how you know it’s not your top choice. I want to feel knocked over by a place, totally sure.

I wave a now-floppy French fry around and flick back to the image of LP and Charlie. With certainty I can say this: it’s not that Lindsay is all over him. It’s not that he never told me about her coming to the read-a-thon that gets me. It’s not even that now, instead of having a college I love and a guy I’m broken up with, I have only the image of my nemesis and my summer love together. It’s that yet again my actions have been foiled. Each time I think I’ve made a decision — like with Jacob and the planets, or even choosing a college — one gets made for me.

Back in my room, Mary’s at her desk with her history book open.

“I’m doing a report on the suffragettes,” she says before I’ve even dropped my bag.

For the first time this whole fall, when I walk inside, drop my bag, and shed my shoes I realize I’m actually happy to be here. Away from the Square, away from Lindsay and college interviews and unpleasant sights. No pangs of elsewhere, safe in my hideout.

“Go female power!” I say and raise a fist. Then I flop onto my bed.

Mary stops writing and pivots in her chair so she’s facing me. “Did you get the ‘Hadley Hall is known as feeder school for Harvard — how do you stand out amongst your classmates?’ question?”

I nod. I’ve been so distracted by the sights I’ve seen that some of the interview details have slid by. “That one and many more. It went okay, though. All things considered.”

I dish it all out to her, the nervousness, the tour, meeting Miranda and seeing LP and Charlie, rehashing Lindsay’s virginity claim on Jacob from yesterday.

“So all along it wasn’t Miranda you had to worry about.” Mary talks like she’s an inspector on a crime show.

I neaten up my desk, enjoying the feeling of knowing my homework is almost done and the next ACW class is tomorrow. If only I could get the last line of the story. At least Dalton’s up this week. I still have a week to make my story worthy of inspection. Math — check. History — check. I’ve even studied those lame Hadley facts in case I have a test in my campus history class. But still no last line. Maybe I can’t finish it because I haven’t taken care of my intrapersonal situation.

“I’m going to call Charlie and get this over and done with,” I announce. “It’s the only way.”

“Right on, Sister Suffragette.” Mary taps her text with her pencil. “And then…” she gives me a wicked smile and cackles.

“What?” I grab my bag of coins for the pay phone. How do you start a break-up? Oh, yeah. We have to talk. Or, I’ve been doing some thinking. Or, Lindsay Parrish is a mean haggy whore.

“Tonight’s the night.” She puts her finger over her lips.

“Really?” I raise my eyebrows. “You mean there’s a light at the end of this stressful day?”

“There is a light. And its name is sweet potato.”

Having taken the stairs two at a time, I arrive in the phone room but find it’s in use. The foreign students hog the line all day during the weekends, taking advantage of the rates and the time zones. I make it clear I’m waiting and then sit on the porch with my bag of change. If my dad were here, I’d suggest we go apple picking or hiking. It’s that kind of afternoon. But he’s off with Sadie. Thinking of them together makes me smile — a quiet kind of hope for a family that’s different but complete somehow.

I stare out the window while I wait for the phone. Over in the green oval, the white flagpole stands straight into the blue sky. When I saw Chloe and Jacob hugging there, they were breaking up. This makes my heart lift a little until a nearly duplicate vision appears before me.