“What’s the difference between a line and a ray?” she prompts.
“A line has two fixed points,” I say. “A ray has one fixed point and then infinitely extends in the other direction.”
“Exactly.” She exhales as if she’s been rescued out of the jaws of a bear. “Thank you, Sarah.”
I nod to her and then refocus on my book. Or pretend to.
One of Greta’s Brunettes is sitting in front of me, her long, long hair blanketing her back like dark silk. Francesca is enviably slim, with a tiny waist and long, long legs, and I have a feeling she must be stuffing her bra because at her swizzle stick body weight, I can’t imagine her breasts are as big as they seem.
I have been stalking her at night and I wonder if she knows it.
Actually, no, it’s Greta I’ve been following. She and Stacia are collateral foci.
Every evening, about an hour before curfew, Greta and her Brunettes leave out the back of the dorm. A week ago, I decided to follow them. At the appointed hour, I hid down on the lawn, and when they emerged, I slid into the shadows behind them, making sure that I stayed out of earshot as I tracked their progress. They ended up going to the river behind Tellmer and Wycliffe, penetrating the brushy overgrowth and hooking up with a well-trod path of which I was previously unaware. Their destination was an outcropping of flat broad stones within the waterway, and they sat in a circle and smoked.
It was a window into another world, and their nightly tradition has become my own. I have discovered the perfect hiding place from which to eavesdrop. Right by their perch, there is a great sugar maple with a bifurcated trunk, and as they talk and gesture theatrically, I watch from behind its craggy cover the firefly ends of their dancing, flaring cigarettes, and I listen in on their conversations. Mostly they talk about the boyfriends they’re with when they return home on breaks or are off during the summers. These boys go to boys’ schools just like Ambrose, and letters and phone calls are dissected within the group, picked apart for hidden meaning and any evidence that some other girl may have entered the picture when their back was turned. They also talk about giving head, and third base, and going all the way, something the three of them have done more than once.
In the darkness, with their lit cigarettes, Greta and the Brunettes blow smoke with extravagance, ever ready for their close-ups though there are no cameras around. I wondered, in the beginning, whether they even noticed the lack of audience. Now, I realize that narcissism provides a perpetual one.
Overhead, the classroom bell rings and there’s an instant rush of girls jamming their feet into the floor as they slam shut their textbooks, scoop up their backpacks, and shoot themselves free of the uni-desks.
“Quiz on Friday,” Ms. Crenshaw calls out. “Don’t forget!”
In other classes, I am slower to extract myself, preferring to let my classmates tangle into a traffic jam at the door. With Ms. Crenshaw, I leave inside the great exodus, making sure there’s a blur of students between us. I worry that she’ll trap me into a heart-to-heart, two misfits catching up on what it’s like to be an outcast.
I do not want to bond with an adult over the very thing I’d change most about myself.
The front entrance of Palmer is opened wide, students blindly holding the heavy wooden doors for the girls behind them, the torrent released by the bell like a storm-swollen brook flowing down stone steps that have worn grooves in them from countless years of this phenomenon. I am pushed to the side because I don’t fight for a position in the middle, but I must keep with the pace or I’ll be trampled.
As soon as I’m on the sidewalk, the tsunami disperses into a trickle, students heading off in all directions to their assigned dining halls. I meander now. Overhead, the sun is brutally hot behind a translucent veil of thin clouds. I assess the heavily leaved maple trees for signs of color change. There still are none. I’m disappointed.
It’s lunchtime, but I don’t feel any urgency in this regard. My enthusiasm for food has waned for a variety of reasons, and my gastronomic ennui has been heightened by the fact that late last week I was informed that, in fact, I may not remove food, silverware, or plates from the dining hall. This is a problem, but what can I do?
I am stuck eating as quickly as I can, sitting at my table alone and trying to tune out the sensory overload. Maybe if I had someone to talk to it might be easier, but no one’s volunteered to take a chance on me and I won’t take a chance on anyone else. I always perch at the table closest to the wide archway to the left of the dining hall’s entrance. There’s a trash bin right behind me, one that’s rarely used by anyone else, and if I am efficient, I can get in and out in about fifteen minutes.
Overall, I’m doing okay with my brain. Sleep is critical for someone like me, and I’ve become disciplined with my bedtime. There’s the ten o’clock curfew after which we’re not allowed to leave the dorm and a mandatory eleven o’clock lights out. When Strots finishes her homework, she usually goes up to the third floor where two of her field hockey teammates live. She stays there from ten to eleven, and as soon as I am back from my spying, I use that quiet time in our room to get settled in bed and close my eyes. Most nights, when she comes back in for lights out, I’m still awake, but I’ve put in my REM sleep prep time so I’m half asleep.
Today, however, in all this heat, exhaustion is something I drag behind me. I just don’t have it in me to tangle with the cafeteria. I go back to Tellmer.
“No lunch for you?”
As I arrive at my dorm, Greta is coming out of it, a bounce in her step, her hair loosely knotted on top of her head, a ball of flaxen silk. Her perfume changes daily, something she accessorizes to her outfits, I assume, and today her sartorial stylings are a version of the belly shirt, short skirt, and leggings Francesca had on in geometry, only executed in bright blue and pink, no doubt to set off the tan she regularly refreshes out on the lawn my mother liked so much.
“You know,” Greta tells me as she pauses by my side, “you’re not the kind of girl who has to bother with a diet. Lucky, lucky you.”
Continuing on her way, her smile, like her comment, is a casual middle finger, a screw-you that she feels the need to share but isn’t inclined to put much effort into. I don’t respond because my mind has gone blank and I’m therefore grateful that she seems distracted by whatever pressing matter awaits her at lunch.
In her perfumed wake, I’m even more tired.
So much for being grateful for her bullying distraction. Today, she deflates me.
On dragging feet, I go up to Strots’s and my room. Given we don’t have a lock, I’m instantly paranoid because Greta was here in the mostly empty dorm with access to everything I own. Gripping the knob with a sweaty palm, I open things up slowly, as if she might have jury-rigged the door with something that belongs in a Stephen King novel.
Nothing happens, and yet I remain careful as I step inside. I am also anxious for another reason. Heart in my throat, I go to my dresser. Although I don’t want any of my meager belongings tampered with, there’s one thing that I absolutely cannot have somebody violate. I yank open the top drawer, shove my black cotton underwear out of the way, and push my hand all the way to the back. When I feel the little cylindrical container, I shake with relief, and then I pull it out to double-check something isn’t wrong with its contents.