Under the Same Stars(34)
After we left the office, Shelly walked at a fast clip, and I kept my head on a swivel while trying to keep up with her. Spring had officially sprung on the Princeton campus; its dramatic Gothic architecture spiraled into the blue sky, far above the trees that burst green, white, and pink. Students had spread blankets out on one of the lush lawns, and there wasn’t a free spot to be had on any of the benches.
We speed walked across campus until we reached Shelly’s dormitory. It was gorgeous, looking like an old estate house—or a vintage hotel, even. Three stories tall, the entrance was white clapboard with soaring white columns and black-shuttered windows, and on each side of this already-incredible entrance were two stone wings, windows flung open to the fresh air. Dormer windows popped out of the roof, as well as four sturdy brick chimneys. A red and white FORBES COLLEGE banner hung from the third-floor balcony. “Wow,” I whispered.
Shelly hummed, the polite equivalent of clearing her throat. “Would you like me to turn all tour guide on you and recount its history?” she asked. “Or should we both say it’s beautiful and head up to my room?”
“Oh, um…” I said, a little taken aback. She hadn’t sounded rude, just unexpectedly direct. “I’m cool with seeing your room.”
Truthfully, I did want to know about Forbes’s origin story. But I could tell Shelly had no genuine interest in telling me, and it probably would be more informative (and amusing) hearing it from Simon, Marco’s friend who spoke like he was from a distant era.
“Get ready for two flights of stairs,” Shelly warned as I unlocked my phone and texted a group chat I’d dubbed The Princetonians. Marco had set it up for whatever reason after I’d crashed their dinner at Ember & Ash.
Forbes College? I wrote, and by the time Shelly and I’d made it to the first-floor landing, I had some answers.
Timothy Hobson-Kirby IV: best freshman residential college.
Zach Danzig: Are you staying there this weekend?
And then, Simon Fielding: Built in 1927, FC was originally christened the Princeton Inn. It was a hotel until 1970, when the university bought the property and converted it into student housing to accommodate a growing population. Women were being admitted—
“Okay, here we are!” Shelly chirped. I’d mindlessly followed her to a dorm room midway down the third floor’s hallway. Two construction-paper-cutout tigers were posted on the door—one said Shelly, the other read Lois—and a mini whiteboard had been tacked up in between them. Return my leopard leggings, Seashell!!! the message read. Shelly pointed to Lois’s tiger while swiping her student ID over the door’s sensor. “Lois is another freshman on the team,” she said. “She’s from the Netherlands.”
I nodded, already well aware. Lois Hansen, number six, forward. She’d racked up almost thirty goals this season. Da and I watched a lot of college field hockey.
Shelly and Lois’s room was tidy, but I sensed it had been cleaned up for my visit rather than kept clean regularly. There was a standard dormitory-issued twin bed tucked in each corner, and while the wardrobes were shut, I could tell they wanted to burst open from all the clothes inside. The walls were decorated with Princeton field hockey posters, cute art prints, and so many strands of twinkly lights that I questioned the fire marshal’s judgment.
An air mattress floated like a life raft in the middle of the room, equipped with lavender-colored sheets, a fuzzy turquoise blanket, and a fluffy pillow. “You can dump your stuff and unpack later,” Shelly said. “We have econ in twenty minutes. It’s held in McCosh.”
McCosh, I soon learned, was the English building. Its lecture hall was all warm wood and sunlight streaming in through its monstrous cathedral windows. Instead of velvet theater seats, hundreds of classic chair-desktop combinations sprawled in a semicircle around the professor’s podium and projection screen. I looked up to see a dark wood-paneled ceiling finished with arched mahogany beams. Two medieval-inspired chandeliers hung above us.
“Follow me.” Shelly pointed toward a staircase. “I usually sit up in the balcony.”
The room was rapidly filling up, so we hurried up the stairs and into the first row. Our view of the projection screen was crystal clear, but instead of unpacking her backpack like her classmates, Shelly put it on the desk next to hers. “Saving a seat for someone?” I guessed.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “My friend—or kind of more than a friend.” Her cheeks pinkened a bit. “We’re not in a relationship yet. Right now, it’s just a situationship.”
I looked at her blankly. “What is a situationship?”
Shelly shrugged. “It’s like a casual, commitment-free relationship. We’re hanging out but not thinking too much about it.”
So you’re hooking up, I almost said. Literally just hooking up.
“It’s pretty much the end of the semester,” she added. “No point getting into something serious.”
Oh, but you want to get serious, I suspected, because her thoughtless words did not match the thoughtfulness in her voice. You are head over heels for this—
“Shelly, hey,” someone said, and I turned to see Marco walking toward us. He smiled. “I see you brought a friend today!”
No way, I thought while at the same time also thinking, Of course.
Because who wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with Marco ?lvarez? And who wouldn’t settle for a “situationship” when he avoided agreeing to be in a relationship?