Or perhaps a sad opera, where there are asps involved at the end and everybody dies.
When there is nothing left to hear and my recollections have started to harden in my mind, I pivot on one foot.
And find that I am not alone for the second time.
Directly across the hall from my room, Greta Stanhope is in her own doorway, and in spite of the late hour, she is dressed in high-waisted jeans and a jacket that’s the color of the inside of a cantaloupe. She is glaring down at me, as if I’ve trespassed into her house, and I brace myself for a confrontation that I am not ready to have.
All she does is recede like a sea monster, back to the briny depths of Ralph Lauren separates and Laura Ashley bedding.
I look back at the stairs. And promptly dismiss implications that make me feel uncomfortable.
I put my own door to very good use and take cover in my room. Going over to my bed, I don’t lie down. I lean on the windowsill, bracing my palms on the cool wood and pressing my nose up against the even cooler glass.
I don’t have to wait long until my residential advisor emerges down below.
Overcome by the knowledge that I’ve spied on him once unintentionally, and now I’m repeating the privacy violation very intentionally, I quickly duck back and make a messy fumble over the surface of my desk, bumping into notebooks and textbooks, the disruption causing a pen to roll off and chatter across the floorboards like it has four legs and is wearing a quartet of tap shoes.
“Jesus, Magda. Will you quit it with the noise,” Strots mutters. “Granny’s going to sic the butler on us.”
My head whips around to my roommate. She is still on her side, in her running repose pose, and though she chastises me in her sleep using a different name, that’s as far as it goes for her rousing. I lie down and try to mimic her. I suppose it’s a testament to the physical attributes of my residential advisor that I don’t dwell on the girl across the hall, even though she looked at me as if she’d made a target of me.
Nick Hollis is all I can think about.
chapter FOUR
I’m sitting at my desk, alone in the room I share with Strots. It’s three nights later, and I’m trying not to think about the way Greta looked at me out in the hall. Although Nick Hollis held my attention at the time, the aftertaste is all about the girl who lives across from me. I cannot understand why she was so offended by my presence. Unless what I suspected was going on was actually happening.
But maybe the two of them know each other from life outside of Ambrose. Distant cousins? Yes, that has to be it. Two cousins, going out after curfew, for a drive.
Right after the married, mature-adult side of things had a fight with his wife who’s out of town.
As I attempt, and fail, to concentrate on my geometry homework, I glance over my shoulder. The door is open. I would prefer that it be shut, but it’s hot and I need the breeze flowing through the open slat windows above the beds. The voices that intrude are uninvited visitations, and I’m both trying to tune them out and paranoid that Greta’s will be in the mix.
There are also perpetual footsteps, and opening and closing doors.
A toilet flushes. And then another.
This is one of the rush hour periods for activity. It is seven-oh-five and most of us have just come back to the dorm from dinner. The largest residential halls have big restaurant-sized kitchens in them and dining areas with the square footage of a soccer field. We’re assigned to eat at Wycliffe, which is next door to us. I don’t eat with Strots. She sits at a table that is full, all ten spindle-backed chairs occupied by girls who wear Ambrose Huskies sweatshirts even when it’s eighty degrees out.
As far as I’ve seen, there are only two types of girls here. The ones who play sports and the ones who dress like getting a date is their sport even though there are no boys around to compete over. The former use no curling irons, ever, and the strict two-party system is strange to me. In my public high school, you had many divisions and strata. Not at Ambrose.
For the past three evenings, Strots hasn’t returned immediately from dinner because she’s hanging out in front of the dorm on the lawn. I come back here as soon as I’m finished with whatever is on my plate, desperate to get away from the pungent chaos of the dining hall and the fact that I don’t know anybody and eat at a table alone with a book that’s a prop.
Looking down at the notes I took in class, I contemplate the idea of sneaking food back to my room. I vow I will try this at breakfast.
A toilet flushes again. Down the hall, someone laughs.
It’s then I hear the voice I have been dreading.
I look over my shoulder. Through the open door, I see Greta standing outside of her room with two brunettes. She’s in the middle and prominent not only because of her blond coloring but also due to her superior physical attributes. Arranged like that, they remind me of a three-stone engagement ring, where the side diamonds are mounted only to enhance the larger, more valuable center.
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.