Running From Fate (3 page)

With hungry eyes she devoured every word
,
almost hear
ing
his voice as he
told her
about his
mountains of
homework,
his
latest project
, and
his
new
friends.
He spent two paragraphs
describing a new class that he was attending on green building and sustainable development.
The
enthusiasm
that came through
made her smile.  She skimmed down and laughed with delight at his
detailed description of one of his more eccentric professors. 
He finished the letter by saying that
he missed her sweet smile and her humor.
It wasn’t a declaration of love
but
hey, she consoled herself,
at least it was something.

She finished the second page and was seriously considering re-reading it when she
heard a commotion in the hall
way
. 
She quickly
put the letter back in its envelope and hid it in her top drawer.
Lily had made fun of her for a week when she had gushed over James’ last letter.
She didn’t want to deal with that again.

“I don’t understand how yo
u could think that man was sexy
.  He
was old.”
The voice cam
e from just outside the door
.

“Honestly, Sarah, you’re such a prude.
Anyone over 20 is old to you,
” Lily Parsons said as she sashayed into the room.
She came to a halt in front of Mira and propped her right foot on the bed.
“So, Mira, how do you like them?”
She bent down and rubbed an imaginary smudge off the toe of her boot.

Mira tilted her head slightly and c
arefully considered her answer. 
The ‘them’ that Lily was referring to were a pair of lipstick red, patent leather boots that came up to
her knees and sported
three-inch heel
s. 
On anyone else the outrageous footwear would
have looked
ridiculous
, especially paired with green and blue stripped stockings, a short, dark blue skirt, and a flowing, gypsy blouse of emerald green.
At 15, however, Lily had already developed her own, unique style
and,
with her honey
blond
hair, leggy height, and sparkling blue eyes, she had all the boys, and some of the men, within a 50 mile radius panting after her.

“Well,” Lily p
urred in her husky voice
.
“What do you think?”

“I think,” Mira
said
, “that they are exactly you.”

“See,” Lily
taunted
as she lowered her foot and
swung around
to face the doorway.
“That is precisely the type of comment that you should have made.”
She turned her head to look at Mira.
“Do you know what Sarah said?
She said that my new boots were loud and obnoxious.”

“Yeah,” Sarah retorted as she
walked
into the room dragging two large shopping bags.
“Just like you.”

Lily bent down and grabbed a discarded shoe from the floor.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Sarah clasped the bags to her chest and danced toward her bed.
“
I’m s
till
holding
all your new clothes.”

Lily dropped the shoe and darted forward.
She snatched
the bags from Sarah, hopped onto
her bed, and immediately started pulling
things out
.

Mira looked at her two friends and thought of how strange it was that they had all become
so close
consi
dering how different they were. 
She came from an upper-middle class Irish Catholic family
and
her father’s business was pushing them into the upper class.
Her hair was nice and thick and her eyes weren’t too bad, but she wasn’t exactly
pretty
.

Lily, on the other hand, was a striking, Nordic beauty.
She came from a very affluent family and she had never lacked for anything.
Despite this fact she was one of the most loyal, offhandedly generous people Mira had ever met.
She was also flamboyant, highly artistic, and was already going through boyfriends like they were water.

Sara
h Mason was her polar opposite. 
Where Lily was tall and
blond
, Sarah was short with glossy black curls that hung down to her waist.
Her darker skin tone, inherited from her Spanish mother, set off deep brown eyes
that were
surrounded by thick
, curling
lashes.
Currently, she
was a little
chubby
, but she was starting to develop the kind of curves that would one day make men drool.

She had come to St. Catherine’s on a scholarship and her parents were solidly working class.
They lived and worked on a large ranch where her mother did the cooking and her father worked in the extensive stables.
Sarah seemed more interested in learning as much as she could than
obsessing over
boys, but she was a hopeless romanti
c
who
teared
up
during movies and
sometimes wept over
commercials.

The hopeless romantic was currently sitting cross-legged on her bed rubbing her feet.
When she noticed Mira looking at her
,
she
shrugged her shoulders and grinned good-naturedly.

“You’re really lucky that you decided not to go with us,” she said.
“Lily made us walk all over New York City searching for just the right boots
.  My
feet are killing me.”

Lily was sitting on her bed methodically taking the tags and stickers off her new clothes.
She paused in her work and glared at Sarah.
“What are you complaining about?
I did buy you that pair of earrings that you wanted so much and my parents took us out to lunch at the Russian Tea Room.
You should have come, Mira, there was this one guy…”

“He was way too old for you,” Sarah interrupted.
“Besides, Mira wouldn’t have noticed him anyway.
She’s too busy mooning over James.”

“I’m not that bad,” Mira countered.

“Yes you are,” they both said in unison.

Mira could
feel her face starting to heat. 
“It’s not that I didn’t want to go.”
She said in an effort to change the subject.
“It’s just that I would have felt bad going somewhere with your parent’s when I haven’t
actually talked to
mine in months.”
  It was strange to realize that it was the truth.  Perhaps she should think about calling them.

“
Are you trying to tell me
,” Lily said, breaking into her thoughts,
“
that it had nothing to do with the fact that Sister Beatrice forbi
d you from going
anywhere for a week?”

“It
was
rather funny,” Sarah
mused
.
“Falling asleep during mass can be concealed.
If you’re kneeling you can put your head on your arms and you just look very pious, but snoring is not something you can hide.”
She laughed and ducked as a pillow fl
ew
toward
her.

*******************************
***************************

It was late at night
a
t night
and Mira couldn’t seem to sleep.
She tossed and turned trying to get comfortable, but something was bothering her
and
she couldn’t fi
gure out what the problem was.  Sighing, she gave up.  In times of unease she had always found that
a
large helping
of
ice cream
was just what she needed to calm her, well put her into a sugar coma anyway, whi
ch was almost the same thing.  And s
he was pretty sure there was a carton hidden in the freezer.
As she was considering
waking her roommates for
a midnight raid on the kitchens
a soft knock came on the door.

“Mira, dear are you in there?
” a voice called from the hallway.
 
“
There’s someone he
r
e to see you. 
He came all the way from Boston.  I’v
e put him in the front parlor for now, but c
ome as so
o
n as you can
. 
He said it was very important
.”

T
hat had to be Sister Mary Alice, Mira thought
with a smile
.
  She was the only sister who called everybody dear.  She was also the only one who would
comfortably hold
a conversation through a door without knowing whether or not someone was on the other side.

As the
footsteps retreated, Mira
climbed out of bed and pulled on a robe.
Tiptoeing so she wouldn’t
wake her friends, she headed for the door
.  Who could be waiting for her?
  It couldn’t
be
her parents, they
would have called first
,
and s
he hadn’t talked to her old friends in over a month.
Her overactive, hormone filled brain came up with an insane idea
.  It
could be James. 
Perhaps, she thought dreamily, he had finally realized that he couldn’t live without her.