Principles of Love (5 page)

Robinson shakes his head, clearly having dealt with Ms. Thompson before. I follow her inside but turn back just in time to get in, “I’m Love, by the way.”

Robinson smiles his Cheshire grin, his eyes slightly sleepy. “I know who you are,” he says in a near-whisper and walks away.

Inside Trig Hell, I proceed to be lectured by Ms. Thompson who doesn’t understand the overwhelming size and scope of the campus confusion I’ve had.

“I’m sorry if the campus seems large to you, Ms. Bukowski, but I sincerely hope you’ll familiarize yourself with the maps provided in your new student handbook.” Yeah, okay bitchy lady — except I didn’t GET the handbook and new student welcome package because the administration office just assumed I’d be fine, what with being the principal’s daughter and all.

“Sorry,” I say for the third time.

Thompson fiddles with the yellow stick of chalk in her hand. “If your tendency towards tardiness should present itself again — well, let’s just try not to have this happen.”

She doesn’t say I will most certainly be sent to the principal’s office, but I can hear it in her voice. Um, hi dad. After what’s left of class, Thompson gives me another blurb about how “that boy” isn’t worth jeopardizing my academic future. It’s the first damn day of class and already I have apparently succumbed to the evils of the male student body. Robinson Hall is “that boy.” Can’t say her warning made my interest in him dwindle.

Second period is Great Works and Performances. In Hadley-speak this means English, and luckily for me, a girl from my math class looks over my shoulder at my schedule and swivels my body so it faces a set of stairs. “Up two floors and third door on the left.”

Unlike the math and science rooms where chairs with those little bubble desks are set in neat rows, the English rooms are straight out of the catalogue. The room is sun-filled, warm with hanging plants and stacked books. In the center of the room there’s a large oval table and sturdy wooden chairs. I find a seat and slip my backpack under the table, following suit with everyone else. Ancient graffiti pocks the surface in front of me, quotations from 1960 (
Clapton vs. Hendrix = the ultimate showdown, Out of Vietnam!, Love You
— ah, the irony of my name yet again) obsolete initials, a tiny perfect star someone — maybe many students over the years — have traced again and again. Around me, students sit down, chat to the familiar faces (total sum of familiar faces for me = 0), leaving the obligatory empty spaces next to me — New Girl cooties. The last to arrive is a guy in a gasoline attendant jacket that bears the name Gus across the left breast pocket. I assume this isn’t his name, but I could be wrong; Dad is always saying not to go on assumption, but on fact merged with feeling. He’s also prone to using sports analogies despite not being particularly inclined towards athletics. Go team!

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, When?” Mr. Chaucer writes “Hillel”, presumably the author of this quote, on the wall-sized blackboard and slugs his worn leather case onto the table. “Welcome to my class — I’m Mr. Chaucer, as you may know — and yes, I’ve heard the jokes before. You might think that I was destined to become an English teacher due to my name. Possibly.” He looks around the table at all of us, we follow his gaze. “Names introduce us, but aren’t ours by choice usually — so they may not reveal as much as we think.”

He asks us to go around and say who we are without using our names, just bits and pieces of what we do, what we like. For once — I am free of being Love Bukowski. With four people to go, I suddenly feel scared shitless — if I’m not Love with a capital L, who am I?

One of the field hockey playing girls goes next. She’s got car keys in her hand, and fiddles with the Tiffany key chain as she speaks, “I play defense, transferred last year from Andover, and I like long walks on the beach.” A boy in a ripped Hadley Hall sweatshirt says in a fake-cough, “Not just walks” which lets us all know that he’s personally given Ms. Tiffany a sandy night to remember. She smiles and shrugs.

Long walks on the beach? I’m in a beer ad, minus the bikini and hot twin sister. I have to come up with something more than my shopping tastes, or food preferences. These kinds of exercises always make me nervous. There’s clearly a cool response, or at least one that flies under the collective student radar, but is still truthful.

One more to go. The guy next to me, not Gus the gasoline man but someone who will reveal himself in a minute, sits silent and hunched down in his seat. Then he sits up. I catch a glimpse of him from the side. Beautiful. Not hot; beautiful, like one of those English guys in a historical movie. Dark coils of hair dip into his eyes — green? Hazel? Can’t tell. And he’s kid-caramel brown from the summer. He looks around the table, unafraid and says, “Man of Words, Man of Music. A voice like sandpaper and glue.” He stops.

Mr. Chaucer’s grinning and for a second I’m puzzled — then I click into action. Before I can introduce myself with saying “Love” I say to Quiet Boy, “That’s a David Bowie quote.”

“Quotation,” interjects Mr. Chaucer. “And she’s correct.”

“Yeah,” quiet boy nods, not ashamed at being found out. “It’s what he wrote about —”

“Bob Dylan,” I blurt out. “Whose real name is — was — Robert Zimmerman.”

Mr. Chaucer stands up. “Which brings me to my next point — do we think that the great, the infamous poet of a generation, the father of music as we now know it — would have gotten all the accolades if he’d kept on being Robert Zimmerman instead of
The
Bob Dylan?”

Mr. Chaucer segues into name-changing as a cultural and societal measure of something — something I’m supposed to be following but really I’m sidetracked by quiet boy and his slightly obscure Bowie knowledge. I decide to test him after class. We’re given an assignment — to read the first half — not the first chapter, the entire first half of
The Scarlet Letter
by Monday. The first paper’s due at the end of next week. What happened to that beginning of school grace period?

Quiet Boy stands up and I swallow and cough to get his attention. He turns to me. “Did you know that
man of words, man of music
is actually not a quote — quotation — of Bowie’s, but a title?”

“Oh yeah?” He’s smirking so I can’t tell if he’s humoring me or impressed.

“It was the original name for the Space Oddity album,” I say and he opens his mouth to respond but Mr. Chaucer interrupts him.

“Jacob — let me steal Love away from you for a moment.” The corners of Jacob — aka Quiet Boy’s — mouth turn up and he slides out of the room. Jacob. With a tiny bit of irony, I remember that Bob Dylan’s son is Jakob with a ‘k’.

“Love?” this from Mr. Chaucer who no doubt can tell I’m in a hundred other worlds and yanks me back to the here and now. “Don’t think I noticed that you talked your way around the nameless introduction.” I shake head back and forth and sling my bag onto my left shoulder. I can never get a book bag or purse to stay on my right shoulder ever — another mystery of life. “Do it now.”

“Huh?” I ask, eloquent as ever.

“Don’t say Love — say anything else.”

I’m halfway out the door at this point and I pause, balancing on the threshold. “I’m on the threshold,” I say, not entirely bullshitting.

“Of…?” Mr. Chaucer waits for me to continue.

The hall bell rings, the campus chapel bells chime, and I’m officially going to be late — again — and I shoot a pleading look at Mr. Chaucer, who shoos me out the door with a
next time
. And maybe I would’ve had something to say, found the right words if the bells hadn’t sounded, but I think — no, I know — that I’m not sure enough of who I am
with
my name at this point to be able to blurt out who I am without it.

I’ve seen pictures of New Delhi streets teeming with people, I’ve dealt with one horrible Manhattan rush hour commuter train ride. But the mass of bodies in the Hadley Hall dining hall makes those places feel calm. You’d think that people had never had factory-enhanced macaroni, never experienced the wonder of fro-yo (I’ll admit, I was psyched to see a coffee-vanilla swirl on offer today — but still, I didn’t scream or butt anyone out of my way to get a taste). Being the unfamiliar one in the dining hall sucks for so many reasons. With no clue what line to get in — I stand for twelve minutes, salivating at the thought of a tuna sandwich, only to find I’m in the utensil line. Nice. Salad stations, hot meal lines, drinks hot and cold, dessert table, cold cut bar. So many choices, I hardly have time to throw together a turkey wrap before rushing to my next class.

I do, however, manage to have enough time for said turkey wrap to unroll and empty its contents onto my lap (shredded lettuce = my accessory of choice right now) and look lost as I wander around with my tray-as-shield looking for a seat. Not even my father, who takes advantage of the mayonnaise-laden potato salad, acknowledges me as I drift and bump from one place to the next. I find a chair in what is surely considered the arctic of the dining hall social sphere, but one which offers a good view. While pecking at the remnants of cold cuts on my jeans, I watch bouncy girls and their clots of friends nibble at non-caloric broccoli n’ salsa combos. I notice guys shoving fistfuls of deli meats as if they are contestants on a new reality show, and see the other aimless newcomers straggle between bonds of old friends.

Four tables away (an acre in high school dining real estate), two girls eat sandwiches and frozen yogurt, talking and laughing. I want to be them. Not them personally, but part of their friendship. The closest girlfriend I have right now is my Aunt Mable — and she’s got decades on me. Someday I’m sure I’ll meet someone my age who can be as funny, freakish and cool as Mable is — but so far, I haven’t met her.

“What’cha doing?” Cordelia shoulders me outside the dining hall where I’m breathing in the fresh air, just glad for a hint of personal space. She reads over my shoulder as I check my schedule. Free period. Cool. Except I don’t know where to spend it. Without structure, I’m left to more Love-as-a-pinball, rolling my way around campus (Beep! Bling!).

“Me, too,” Cordelia says and motions with her chin to the building directly in front of us. It’s the newest of the bunch — glass-faced and tall, with multiple doors and Starbucks-style hanging lights. We are student center bound, and — just like with movie stars in LA — the whole place turns to look at us when we walk in, and then goes back to what they were doing.

“Were they expecting Julia Stiles maybe?” I ask.

“Too classy. Tara Reid — way hotter,” Cordelia says and grabs us a spot on the couch near the foosball table. We watch people compete for control over the Lilliputian soccer players — and sip lukewarm coffees Cordelia procures from the snack bar.

“Anyway,” she continues as if we were just speaking of it, “I hear you have No-Ass Thompson for math. Sucks to be you.”

“Pretty much,” I say. “Tell me the highlight of your day so far.”

“That’d be drama workshop with Herr Fritzman.” She sees confusion waft over me. “Herr Fritzman, aka German Drama God — gay, but totally Pitt-worthy and so great at making you get to this…” Cordelia gestures to her chest.

“Your bra?” I’m not even trying for humor — it looks like Cordelia either has a rash or that the German Drama teacher is doing decidedly unteacherlike exercises in class.

“No, fool. Herr Fritzman — Claus — gets you to, you know, reach inside yourself and figure out what’s there. That way, your performance on stage is — an in-depth article.”

“Sounds, um, deep?” I say. I just can’t stomach one more
who am I
, reach inside and feel my innards, blah blah blah. I’m sinking further into the grimy couch and a moodswing sponsored by my alter-ego known to Mable as Brick. Then Cordelia yanks me out of my sandpit of despair and gloom.

“Someone’s checking you out,” she whispers and toes my shin. I look up and see none other than my photo lab buddy, Robinson Halll — so cute he deserves an extra ‘l’ on his name — who guy gestures at me with his head and takes his place at the foosball table. Nothing hotter than a rousing game of mini-soccer I tell you. Who knew that spinning a handle and yelling “Dude, score!” would entice me to near-fainting extremes.

“Earth to Love, tune in — do you need epinephrine or will you survive?” Cordelia rolls her eyes.

“Clear!” I yell, electro-charging my own heart like a gurney-bound patient on ER. “I’m back now. Sorry for the delay.”

“No problem,” Cordelia tips the rest of her coffee back into her mouth and sighs. “He’s totally taken, he and Lila Lawrence are practically conjoined twins — but I completely get the vibe — what’s not to like?”

Taken? I try to have this not register. I want to be the kind of girl who doesn’t care. I’m fairly good at that, since with my claim to fame as Friend Girl (Friend Girl=me as a superhero, minus the tights), I get a lot of practice at lusting/loving from afar and never admitting to it. Lila Lawrence? No idea what two by two photo claims her in the facebook, but damn sure I’m looking her up.

“I’m not into him or anything,” I say, taking a huge interest in stirring invisible grains of sugar into my coffee. “He was just nice to me earlier today — that’s all.”

“And you practically fell at his feet at Whitcomb,” Cordelia throws in, sharp as a tack, a hawk, a needle — whatever is too sharp for its own good. “Besides, he’s a senior, you’re a new sophomore, and despite the age-old senior-sophomore hook up scene, it’s never gonna happen. He’s, like — and no offense…” Of course, this means take offense. “…he’s out of your league.”

“Sure,” I cover. “He’s cute — but not really my type.” Out of my league? Am I the NFL? The ACL? The ACLU? In my head I think a) I am not a league and b) Just say I were a league, who’s to say what guy is out of it? Another way of responding to that would be “screw that — I can get him if I want to” but since I’m not Tara Reid in the latest teen flick, I just shrug.

“Oh yeah? What is your type?”

“Eyes of David Bowie, grin of John Mayer, coolness of Elvis Costello circa 1979, and…”

Cordelia cuts me off, “So basically obscure musicians turn you on.”