Lessons in Love (5 page)

Harriet Walters has her hand subtly perched near the side of the other tray. She makes a pointed look at the biscuit near her and motions for me to do the same. Looking closely as Lindsay makes nice-nice with Mrs. Ray, I see that the biscuit in question has a small mark on it; a barely discernable ‘L” scraped into the side.

“You planted this,” I say before I think whether this will mean certain doom.

Lindsay’s caught off guard. “What?”

Mrs. Ray’s mouth flips into a frown. “How could this be?”

“If Lindsay will let go, I can show you.”

Mrs. Ray looks at Lindsay. Lindsay shakes her head. “Really, this is uncalled for. She’s ruining the tradition.”

Mrs. Ray sighs. “Lindsay’s correct — this really is a most unsuitable accusation for this special night.”

All the girls are gathering around now, those with roommates, those without, waiting to see who will back down.

“I’m not accusing Lindsay,” I say. “I just want a fair placement. It’s my belief that she has orchestrated this entire thing to her advantage.”

Lindsay gives a scoff, then a laugh that’s full of disbelief. “You’re so out of line, Love. You think you can show up here — your first night at Fruckner — and take over?”

This doesn’t sit well. A couple sneers from girls, and a dubious look from Mrs. Ray let me know I’m on the verge of getting lambasted. I look at Harriet Walters. She’s one of the smartest girls I know, and also has that rare quality of being impartial. She would make an excellent judge.

“Here,” Harriet Walters says and holds the biscuit she’s been biding time with up for inspection. “I took a course in forensics over the summer…” she turns to the side and comments about herself (“Good for college apps”) before continuing. “This biscuit has an L on the side. See?” Mrs. Ray goes over to inspect.

A look of panic crosses Lindsay’s face and before I know what’s happening, she grabs the biscuit. “She took it!” I yell. The whole scene is so surreal I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or run home, pound on the door and demand that my dad let me back in.

As it turns out, none of that happens. Lindsay squishes the cookie so no one can tell if she’d drawn an L on it or not. “Harriet — the one you have means nothing. It looks like an L? It could be a unicorn. Or a star. Or…” her voice thick with sarcasm. “Or…the slip of a baker’s knife.” She crosses her arms over her chest, revealing a chunky gold bracelet on her wrist, the kind that one me would look as though I were masquerading as a superhero but on Lindsay looks elegant and refined. I am screwed.

“It doesn’t matter if you crush the evidence, Lindsay,” Harriet says. “It’s math — an equation. You might have bashed the evidence, but show us the paper inside.”

Lindsay stands, foiled. Mrs. Ray holds her palm out and reluctantly Lindsay puts the paper there. “It’s blank.” Mrs. Ray looks confused. “That’s impossible. The biscuits are…they’re meant to either contain no paper or if they do…”

“Of course it has no name,” Harriet says. “She planned this. Lindsay wanted the only single in Fruckner.” Harriet points upstairs like we can see it from here.

“But that room is specifically for the person who is last to be paired up,” Mrs. Ray says. Her eyebrows meet as she clenches her jaw and furrows her forehead. “Lindsay?”

Lindsay does what any deceitful person caught out might do. “I have no idea what you mean. I didn’t make the cook — biscuits. I’m just playing along like everyone else.”

Playing along, I think and make a mental note to tell that to Chris later. It’s exactly what she’s doing.

“Look,” I say, my voice finally filling up with real emotion after feeling disconnected all night. “I didn’t ask to be here. I’m supposed to be in my own bed, with my own family, waiting for classes to start tomorrow. Will someone just please tell me where I can go to unpack my stuff and go to bed?” It’s the truth. It might not be exciting. It might not make me seem super-cool, but right now I just don’t care. I only want to find my footing and move on.

Mrs. Ray snaps to attention. Without uttering a word, she pairs people up by their draws, consults her list of rooms and sends off the various duos, trios, and one quad.

“So this is what we have left,” she says, circling us like we’ve been hauled down to the station for questioning.

“Mrs. Ray, I really think that I —”

Mrs. Ray cuts Lindsay off. “It would be in your best interest to be quiet now, Ms. Parrish.”

The final five: me, Chili — who looks terrified in her baggy sweats, her fingers raking through her ringlets, a nervous habit, Harriet — ever calm and convinced good will triumph over evil, Lindsay — glib rather than shamed, and Mary Lancaster who, from the looks of things, couldn’t give a crap.

Mrs. Ray looks at her list, then turns to us. “Harriet Walters, you may go to room twenty-two.”

“But that’s…” Lindsay clamps her mouth shut, but is clearly distressed at being overruled.

“That’s the single,” Mrs. Ray says. “Please go get settled.” Harriet gives me a wink and then starts to do what everyone else in Fruckner is doing — hauling their gear from the store room and common room up to their new digs.

Suddenly, a new realization hits me. Odds are very good that I will be Lindsay’s roommate. All those jokes about it over the summer could come back and smack me in the butt. Please, no. I imagine being a prisoner in my own room, with Lindsay peering over me while I work, plotting against me as I sleep.

Mrs. Ray opens her mouth and points to me, and my whole body clenches. Just as she’s about to speak, Mary Lancaster — long and lanky and leaning against the wall while eating leftover biscuits — saunters over. “You know what, Mrs. Ray?” Mary puts her big palm on my shoulder. “I’ve been here the longest out of this group. I think as long as we’re reshuffling…” she sounds like she’s calling the team in for a huddle. “Love’s in a bind — she’s new but not new, you know? So she’d benefit from being with someone who knows the ropes…”

Lindsay sees her opening and rips it. “Like me. I’m well-versed in the Fruckner code and…”

Mrs. Ray rubs her nose, looking tired. “I’ve had it — this night is such a special occasion…and it’s been sullied by…” She stops herself and clears her throat. “Mary, please take Love to your double…room fourteen. Second floor.” Mary grins, having scored numerous points apparently, and pulls me out of the room with her.

I’m psyched and relieved, all of my limbs slightly shaking with the myriad emotions of the past few minutes.

“You,” Mary says, hefting a monogrammed duffel over her shoulder and a laptop bag around her neck, “Are in for the most awesome surprise. We scored big time on the room front.”

She doesn’t ask for thanks, though I’m grateful that she potentially pulled me from Lindsay’s wrath. She just nods for me to follow her up the stairs to the room we’ll share for a year. Only when I’m halfway up that flight, my wrists straining with the weight of my bags, do I realize what’s on the other side of the coin. Downstairs, looking small, left all alone with Lindsay the Parriah, is Chili, who looks at me, but doesn’t wave.

My alarm buzzes, hauling me from my brief sleep into the present:

As of today, I am officially a Hadley Hall senior.

Poppy Massa-Tonclair, my writing professor in England — who is also a world-reknowned novelist — told me once to treat my eyes like a film camera. I do this now, waking up in the position I fell asleep in, on my side, with the blankets pulled up, my feet exposed to the morning air.

Just as Mary Lancaster told me, the room is a pleasant surprise. More than that. Catalgoues always depict boarding school rooms as bookshelf-lined and paneled with dark wood, but the truth is, most of the dorms were redone in the seventies, when the students were politically active and rallied against the “old regime”. Along with the no pants for girls rule, they also succeeded in “modernizing” many of the dorms rooms to reflect the current styles. Flash forward to now and the rooms are either total kickbacks to that hazy dazed time — with fading paint on the walls and shag rugs in the closets — or they are minimally overhauled at the request of many parents who visit and find their kids’ digs grim. Your basic Hadley room is a square, plus or minus a window, with two twin beds (or three if it’s a triple), white walls, standard issue dresser that with three narrow drawers were, when the school had uniforms, useful, but now hold virtually nothing.

So that’s what I’d prepared myself for: plain white room or moldy oldy.

But with my camera eye, I take it all in: the odd shape — like a V with a flattened point, four windows, hardwood floors, freshly painted white walls and wonderful light. The quality of light is important to me — this much I learned from my squalid room in London. My natural happiness is much closer to the surface when I’m closer to light — and if it sounds high-maintenance, I can live with that.

At this moment, the campus bells have yet to ring, mottled morning sunlight ripples on the hardwood floor, and on the other side of my room, Mary Lancaster is asleep with her back turned to me, all five feet eleven inches of her spread out on the too-short bed.

“Hey,” she says, sensing that I’m awake. She rolls over so we’re facing one another, but still in sleep position. “What’s up?”

I don’t know Mary, not really. She’s the kind of acquaintance that if we passed in the hallway we might say hello — or not — and if we were seated next to one another in class, we’d probably smile but not exchange much in the way of conversation. So to suddenly be plopped in a room with her, in my pajamas, with all of senior year rolling out before me, it feels slightly odd. But also kind of good. Fresh.

“I was just thinking of how blank this room is now,” I say and sit up. I brought a duvet (white with white swirled pattern on it) and white sheets. I’m in a phase of all white — purity of mind while I sleep. Or maybe it’s because my mind hasn’t been filled with such pure thoughts now that my relationship with Charlie has turned from summer fun into full-on romance.

“You mean, like no posters or anything?” Mary scratches her head, pulling her collarbone-length hair into a ponytail and stretching. Her hair is the color of fancy chocolate, the kind with cinnamon in it, or something equally sweet and appealing. “Because we can get some, if you want…”

I shake my head and stand up. My feet register the cool floor, instantly bringing me back to summer and waking up in the apartment above Mabel’s café where the sunlight was so intense I once burned my soles. “More like — nothing’s happened yet.” I look around the room. We haven’t figured out where our standard-issue desks should go, nor the future of our wardrobes and beds. I haven’t even looked out the windows properly since it was dark when we came in last night and my bed — right now — is far from the windows.

Mary gets out of bed and walks over to me, her baggy Princeton t-shirt hanging off her shoulders, the orange of it clashing with her red plaid boxers. She points, “Shirt is from my older brother, Dan, Princeton class of way before us, and these…” she plucks at the flannel of the boxers. “Are Carlton’s.” Just saying his name makes her smile.

“You guys are really serious, huh?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Mary says. Then she sighs.

“What?” I begin the search for first-day apparel, wishing I didn’t care what I wore, but knowing I do. Kind of. A little. Some. Anyway.

“It’s just hard, you know? Carlton — he and I have been together since the first day of freshman year, okay? And now it’s like we’re looking at places —”

“Colleges?” I ask and Mary shoots me a look like what else could she possibly mean.

“And who knows? I could wind up at Stanford and he could be at Uconn…” She tightens her ponytail.

Hearing her say Stanford makes me think of my own non-interview out there, how I could have applied — or at least looked — and how the rest of my life seemed to take over. My heart skips one normal beat when I think of how crammed fall will be — with college visits and Charlie visits and all of the usual Hadley events, how I could be facing the same thing if things with Charlie continue on track. With a Harvard boyfriend, I could limit my choices to the Boston area, but what if I do that and then we break up? How do you know when something’s serious enough to plan around?

I know I’m getting way ahead of myself and that right now I have to get dressed for senior meeting, where we’ll get our class schedules, a calendar of senior events, and basically hang out while the underclassmen listen to my dad’s speech. It’s a bizarre feeling to know I’ll miss it. I mean, he’s been my definition of home for so long, but it makes sense somehow — like if I’m here, in Fruckner, and he’s at home — then we’re really apart. And if I’m a senior, it’s just one more step to fully breaking away. Pangs of sadness come through me while I watch Mary rifle through her bureau drawers to find clothing for today. Maybe I can’t plan around anyone or anything just yet.

“You could always look at colleges together — you and Carlton,” I say. Jeans are too thick for this time of September — it feels chilly now but by noon it’ll be t-shirt weather, with kids basking in the sun on the quad. I need something in-between. I settle on a simple chocolate colored linen dress with red flip-flops Chili and I bought at a tiny seaside hut near Menemsha. Chili. I know I’ll have to deal with her sooner or later — and I just hope she’s not angry about the room situation.

“Hey, Love?” Mary asks when she’s back form the shower and I’m all set to go. My backpack is first day-light, one notebook, several pens, and a further plea I typed out to Mr. Chaucer about his advanced creative writing class.

“Yeah?” I figure Mary wants to do the roommate thing — hug or bond — but instead, she pulls me into the center of the room.

“I thought about it — and you’re right. About this room, I mean. For four years I’ve gotten here and just settled into my random room and dealt with everything. But now — it’s senior year.” She had one of those wide smiles that highlights her pretty features. “Two things. No, wait, three.”

“First?” I say, putting my backpack on my bed so it doesn’t seem like I’m rushing out the door, despite being totally obsessive about not being late.