The St. Ambrose School for Girls(10)

The way they stare across the hall at me makes my throat tighten with fear. I wonder if she told her pals about our nocturnal meeting, and decide if she did, she clearly framed it that I interrupted something private, that I cheated her out of something: Those girls have the circle-the-wagons vengeance of best friends protecting the interests of their other half. The fact that residential advisors and students are two chemical compounds that are explosive if mixed seems not to matter.

Then again, I could be constructing a reality because, like my mother, I am possessive of things I will never, ever have, no matter my age.

“Hi, Sal,” Greta says with a smile. “How are you? Adjusting okay?”

She’s the only one who calls me that, a hangover from my mother introducing me that first day. And as the girl sends out her inquiries as to my welfare, her pretty face is arranged into a composition of concern. Her eyes sparkle like something that can burn me down, however, turning the toothbrush and tube of toothpaste in her hand into weapons that fight more than dental caries.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asks. “Just kidding. Let me know if I can help you get settled, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

“You’re so welcome.”

The pair of brunettes—Stacia and Francesca, if I have the names right—tilt inward and cover their mouths with a cup of their hand. Both of them have colorful woven bracelets on and I have a thought that Greta must also wear one. She does. As well as a gold bangle that is thin and delicate.

Greta ignores whatever the girls are whispering to her. She is staring at me, recording me, filing some kind of assessment report in her head. And then she turns away, and the brunettes follow, flags tied to the stern of the mother ship. The door to the vault is closed.

Strots walks into our room. “Hey. What’s up, Taylor.”

Her presence is a jarring relief, pulling me out of my head, and yet I’m saddened by seeing her, too. Five days after I first met my roommate, I’ve realized that as nice as she is to me, there’s no opportunity to be her friend. She’s busy with her fellow athletes, busy with her sports, busy with her busyness. I still want to be her, but I am no longer actively mourning my lack of khaki shorts and blue Tshirts.

“Mind if I close this?” she asks at the door.

“Sure.”

She shuts the thing with her foot, and goes over to smoke by her open window. As usual, she solves the ashtray issue with Coca-Cola, which she drinks all the time. Leaving two inches in the bottom of the plastic bottles does the ticket, her butts drowning in sugar and carbonated caffeine.

“You got Crenshaw for geometry?” she asks.

I look at my textbook. “Yes, I do.”

“She’s a pushover. My friend had her last year. I got Thomas.”

I feel compelled to offer an opinion on Mr. Thomas. “I’ve heard he’s good, though.”

“Her. It’s Ms. Thomas.”

I flush and go quiet. As we sit in silence, I try to think of something, anything that would be normal to say.

“You gotta meet some people, Taylor,” Strots tells me. “You gotta get out more.”

An image of the dining hall comes to mind, and my memory of the two hundred girls in there, all of them talking at once, eating, drinking, scraping their chairs back and their trays off, is an electrical shock down my spinal cord.

“I’d ask you to sit you with me, but we don’t have room,” Strots says like she’s reading my mind. “They don’t let us pull chairs.”

This is not true. I’ve seen other tables that have a Saturn’s ring of seats around the core. Greta’s is one. But I appreciate Strots trying not to hurt my feelings, and have a sense that she feels as though I am a responsibility of hers that she wouldn’t have chosen, but will not shirk.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“You don’t talk much.”

“I don’t have much to say.” I look back at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Doesn’t bother me.” She taps her ash into the soda bottle. “You need friends, though.”

“Greta and the two brunettes?” I say in a wry tone.

Strots laughs. “Oh, my God, like it’s a band and they’re the backup singers. That’s fucking perfect.”

The idea Strots has found something I’ve said funny makes me tingle with happiness, and I realize I want to be my roommate not because she’s sporty. I want to be Greta not because she’s popular or pretty. I just want to be something, anything, as opposed to in the “other” category I inhabit. I want a full table of people who are from the same dye lot as myself, whose voices I recognize, whose ears want to hear what I have to say, whose eyes seek out mine to acknowledge inside jokes.

There’s no one in my orbit for sure, and there’s another reason I keep my mouth closed. I have a secret I’m ashamed of, and pride is the only thing that the poor have plenty of in their wallets and their cupboards, and I am destitute not just from a money standpoint, I am poor all over, in all ways, I am Tiny Tim, I am disabled by a fireplace, hungry at Christmas, begging for—

I stop my thoughts as a cold rush hits the top of my head.

It’s too late. My mind coughs up countless Tiny Tim images, Tiny Tim syllables, a deluge of the spines of Dickens novels along with that old movie my mother made me watch on the TV with turkey meat TV dinners—