“All right then…” He shook the curtain of chestnut brown hair from his face and began slowly:
“I am full of love tonight
Come look into my eyes, and let’s go off
Sailing, my dear, on a long ocean ride.
This world will not touch you,
I will keep you snug upon my seat.
Let’s plot
To make the moon jealous
With a radiance leaping from your cheek.”
“How’s that?” He beamed.
Violet could hardly believe she was on a date with a good-looking athlete who wasn’t embarrassed to read poetry. Even more incredible was that he actually seemed to like it and be moved by it.
She hadn’t had the chance to answer him, as Hugo had already put the book back on the shelf and then taken her into his arms and kissed her.
That night when he finally walked her back to Lowell House, the full moon shone in the dark sky.
He pointed it out to her as he stood outside the main door of the stately brick residence hall. “I think we made the moon jealous tonight, Vi.”
She looked up at the white orb with its rings of bright light.
“I think we absolutely did.” She gripped her fingers around his.
Now, on the floor of her junior-year dorm room, those memories of Hugo seemed to coexist in her memory between something in the past and something ever-present. She found another postcard from his trip to London. A snapshot of Portobello Road, with its pastel-colored storefronts. Pink. Powder blue and lemon yellow. The sunlight hitting off the windows and iron balconies. A shiny red teakettle hanging from one of the exterior facades.
On the back, Hugo had simply written, “Miss you. See you in ten days. Love, H.”
He’d come back a few days before they had to return to school and she’d visited him at his family’s home in Connecticut. That’s when he’d given her the lilac-colored scarf and a box of Cadbury chocolates he’d bought for her in England. It was all pressed into her mind like a permanent snapshot etched into her brain.
She began putting the keepsakes back in the shoebox when Jenny knocked on the door.
“Hey,” she said, peeking her head into the room. “Theo invited us all to a party tonight at the Owl. You want to come?”
In her soccer gear, her blonde hair pulled tight in a ponytail, the sight of Jenny pulled Violet immediately back to reality.
Jenny must have sensed Violet’s reluctance. “You know if you don’t ever show up to these things, people will move on. They’ll invite other girls who they know appreciate it more.”
“Sorry that my boyfriend died and now I’m such a downer, Jen.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Not really,” Violet said as she stood up and put the box back on the shelf. She pushed the wardrobe door closed.
“Look, I don’t think the invitations to the parties are going to stop coming just because I don’t show up. I’m not dating a rower anymore. Those guys probably never even liked me to begin with. I don’t havea summer house on Nantucket. I didn’t know all of them from the boarding school circles, like you did.”
Jenny rolled her eyes. “All this outsider shit is getting really old, Vi. No one treated you any differently when Hugo was alive, and they’re not going to now when he’s gone. There’s no invisible hierarchy here. It’s just a regular party at the Owl. Not a freakin’ cotillion.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Violet shook her head. “When you fit in somewhere, it doesn’t feel like work.”
“This is all in your head, you know that? Just come out tonight. Hugo wouldn’t want you holed up in your room every weekend, looking at some old postcards. He’d want you to live your life.”
