I look around the laundry room, as if answers will present themselves courtesy of the peanut gallery of Tides and Drefts and Persils. There are a couple of different bottles of bleach in and among the detergents and fabric softeners, and I have a passing thought that I need to check out the names on those labels. I’m utterly fatigued, however.
I assess the dryers, especially the one that is operating. Before I look away, there is a click and the carousel inside of it falls still. My heart pounds harder as I go across and pull open the door. Reaching into the hot, soft air, I pull out whatever my hand touches first. And I already know the answer. My body trembles as I turn the shirt around, and open the boat neckline to look at the fabric name tag that has been stitched into the—
Karen Bronwyn.
I don’t even know her.
I look around the laundry room again as if it’ll explain how the name is not Margaret Stanhope. Putting the shirt back where I took it from, I make sure the door is closed properly.
I go back to my washer. I don’t move my clothes over to a dryer. I have some thought, which is expressed in the voice of my mother, that I need to rinse everything first through another wash cycle. If I put my things in the dryer with the bleach still wet on them, I’ll do even more damage.
My first instinct is to ignore the advice. I want to shove everything in the clothing kiln, crank up the dial to “High Heat/Cottons,” and let it all roast in a chemical bonfire.
But like I’m going to wear a towel to class?
One by one, I transfer my stained clothes out of the chosen washer into another, two units over. I can’t bear to rinse them in what I thought was my anointed machine. My hands continue to shake as I gently put each shirt, and the three pairs of heavy canvas pants, and the seven underwears, and a school of black socks into their new bathing accommodation.
But maybe it wasn’t Greta. Maybe this was a mistake, somebody thinking they were adding a little bleach to brighten their load in mid-cycle.
As I try on this hypothetical, every cell in me revolts at the fallacy, and I consider the practical implications to what is clearly a trend. To Greta and her backup band of suck-ups, these petty pranks are minor injuries inflicted for fun. To me, they’re bombs that do structural damage, creating ragged gaps in my ability to function that I don’t have the resources to patch. I can’t go to the student center and blithely whisk shampoo bottles off the shelves to replace what’s been washed down a bathroom sink because the bill will go to my mother and she’s stretched thin. I can’t go to a clothing store and buy an entire new wardrobe of long-sleeved shirts and pants for the same reason.
And I can’t believe I’m stuck with no one but my unreliable self to watch over me, something that is irrespective of geographic location. Even if my mother were in the same town, that wouldn’t change.
In the periphery of my vision, I note the clock on the wall, its white face and black numbers and hands proclaiming that I have twelve minutes before fourth period starts.
I want to stay to make sure no one else messes with my clothes, but I can’t. We have a test in French.
Before I leave, I look at the shelf above the washers. There are three bleach bottles in the lineup on it, and all of them are nearly full. None of them have Greta’s name on them. Or Francesca’s or Stacia’s. But when I check the trash bin, an empty Clorox container is lying on top of a bed of dryer lint bundles, cushioned and self-satisfied as a pasha. I pick it up and inspect its white body and blue product label. There is no name. I throw it out once more.
I go over to the dryers and put my hand on each of the ones that have been silent and immobile since I walked in. The one on the far end is still warm. As I open its door, the sweet-smelling, warm breath of the machine hits my face. The clothes that lie in a jumble from their tumbles are bright and sunny, tiny and pretty. I reach inside and pull out a pale orange shirt, one so small you would think it is a child’s size.
The tag reads Margaret Stanhope.
“Bitch,” I whisper.
It requires discipline on my part not to do something, anything in payback. I ultimately resist the urge. And there’s no way to report this to the RAs. I’m assuming that no one saw her mess with my washer, or, if there were witnesses, they were giggling participants. And so what if my clothes were destroyed while hers were down here? That girl Karen’s clothes are in a dryer as well, and the room is never locked. It could be anybody.
Even though it isn’t.
As I turn to leave, I glance at my new favorite washer and pray that what comes out of it is wearable. I imagine the glee Greta will have in telling the Brunettes and the others to wait for it, wait and see what the freak is wearing now.
The idea that they consume my suffering as a snack makes me want a mother—not my actual mother, with the lit cigarette and the cheap perfume, but one of the other mothers I used to watch on the playground when I was younger. The ones who rushed over to a scraped knee, who scooped their children up and held them to a breast that was modestly covered, who rocked and cajoled and soothed. I want a gentle, Jergens-smelling hand on my cheek and in my hair. I want a soft voice telling me that it’s going to be okay.
I want someone in my corner.
Anyone.
chapter SIX
I am not going to give Greta what she wants.
It’s the day after I found my laundry ruined. Wednesday. And Wednesdays we only have classes in the morning, because the afternoons are reserved for athletic games against other prep schools—or, if you’re not on a varsity sport, free time. I’ve been to Wycliffe to eat lunch and I’m walking to the student center in the last clean, untampered-with shirt I have and a pair of pants I don’t like because one leg is slightly shorter than the other. I have a five-dollar bill with me.
The oppressive weather we’ve been toiling under is about to break, but the heat and humidity are being stubborn about their eviction by a cold front coming down from the north. The conflict zone between the two extremes is boiling up heavy clouds that spill bowling balls of thunder out from their overstuffed duffel bags of rain. The worst of the storms are still off in the distance, but the warnings are all around, the green leaves of trees flipping to flash their silver undersides in gusty hot winds, the birds extra chatty, as if they’re energized by the stir of ions in the air, a tingle on the back of my neck warning me I better be quick about what I’m doing if I don’t want to get drenched.
My destination is the Petersen Auditorium, which is in the middle of campus. The building is a Victorian Gothic with a patterned red and gray slate roof, patterned gray and black stone walls, and a flourished entrance of dark gray steps and gargoyles. It’s my favorite building, a marvelous Halloween-come-to-life oddball in the midst of all the prim and proper brick dorms and classrooms.
The student bookstore is in the basement. As I enter, I’m flinchy and on the lookout for pinks and pastels, for long hair and scrunchies, but there seems to be nobody inside except me and the townie clerk who couldn’t care less that I’ve entered. She’s sitting on a stool behind the counter at the cash register, leafing through one of my mother’s kind of magazines. She’s of college age, but she’s clearly not going to a university, and she has a choppy haircut that I suspect is an attempt to elevate her otherwise cheap and uninspiring clothes. She’s chewing gum and snapping it between her molars, the popping beat exactly the kind of uneven, yet repetitive, sound that goes through my body like a volt of electricity.