“Yay!” Lennie mock-squeals, before pivoting to face forward. She heads toward Carter’s side of the booth like he’s a fridge and she’s one of those cute little miniature fruit magnets. (Missy Banks, my best friend in fifth grade, had them in her kitchen. My mother would never put anything so “gauche” up in her home; all our appliances are that nonmagnetic stainless steel anyway.)
I follow more slowly.
Lennie is already sliding in next to Carter, peppering him with questions—“How are you? What’s new? How has this semester been going?”—by the time I drop my bag on the floor and shrug out of my coat. Carter’s dark blue peacoat is hanging on the booth’s hook like it belongs there, right next to Chessa’s puffer coat and Daan’s ski jacket.
Carter nods in response to Lennie while she continues to chatter at him, but that’s it. He doesn’t say much; he never does. Especially in a crowd. I used to think it was because he believed he was better than the rest of us. Than me. Because he was older. Because he was smarter. Now, I suspect he’s that weird flavor of awkward that comes across as reserved, almost stilted, and semi-intimidating.
He doesn’t feel like he belongs, so he keeps his mouth shut.The thought sends a sharp, stabbing pang through me.
Absolutely not, Jo. We are not doing this again. And no, hedoesn’tbelong here because he’s made his position very clear.
I’m not enough? Not worth the risk? Fine. Then stay the fuck away. Don’t come find me with my friends.
“I mean, right?” Lennie asks Carter with a giggle, carrying on with her mostly one-sided conversation.
I could just leave. But I won’t. This Lennie is bright, sparkling,almost manic at the prospect of capturing Carter’s attention. There’s no hint of the dry bitterness from before.
But this mood won’t last. Carter, however little I may understand him in other ways, is not interested in Lennie inthatway. And she will eventually realize it. With great disappointment or even hurt. I can almost taste it.
Very bad friend.
Chessa darts her eyes toward Carter, then raises an inquisitive brow at me over her clear plastic-framed glasses, asking if I’m okay without a word.
That is the benefit of being friends and roommates for so long. Not only does she know my drama—well, most of it anyway—she knows when to speak up and when to find another way.
I shrug my shoulders in answer. For the moment, I’m just going to do my best to ignore him.
Chessa gives her head a little shake, which might mean “Don’t do this to yourself, stay strong” or “I still can’t believe you’re in this mess.” Actually, it’s probably both.
“Jo.” Daan interrupts our silent conversation in a plaintive voice. “Tell Chessa she is wrong.” He tucks his shoulder-length dirty blond hair behind his ears and waits.
Grateful for the distraction, I smile at him. “I doubt it.” Daan’s insistence on how things should be has gotten him in trouble more than once.
Daan was my first real friend at Beecher. Ever since freshman year when he managed to get himself locked out of our residence hall.
Beecher is both literally and figuratively old school—founded on the grounds of a seventeenth century Puritan village, then converted to a “women’s teaching college” during the Civil War, allbefore its current incarnation—some of the old-fashioned ideas have lingered longer than they should have. Residence hall floors segregated by gender (the year before I started they finally added a gender-inclusive wing as an option), visiting hours for non-residents, and a twoAMcurfew for incoming first-years.
For the first six weeks, the hall doors are locked and building access cards don’t work after curfew. If you ring the buzzer, an advisor or director will let you in, but it costs: a hundred bucks for the first incident, doubling with every additional violation. And if they catch you on camera letting someone in a side door, you both get fined.
It’s stupid, but Beecher admin is not fucking around.
For some of my peers, like Lennie, a hundred dollars is the equivalent of forgotten change tucked into a cupholder. But for the rest of us, it was more than sufficient deterrent.
On the night before classes were due to start, my roommate, Ryann, was already asleep—and snoring like a hibernating grizzly—when I heard the faint tapping of fingertips against the glass of our first-floor window.
When I got up to check it out, Daan’s anxious face was a pale oval staring up at me from the bushes just below. At that point, I only knew him as the tall guy in all black I’d seen in the lobby a few times.
He waved frantically, then gestured with a cranking motion for me to open the window.
“This is ridiculous,” he whispered to me, pushing leaves and branches out of the way. “I was only out talking to people. Locking the doors, it only encouragesonheil.Wat een onzin!” His grip on the bushes slipped in his quiet outrage, and the bushes retaliated, promptly slapping him across the face.
He stumbled back with a muffled curse, clutching at his cheek, and I tried not to laugh. I had no idea whatonheilwhatever whatever was, but the rest of it I agreed with.
“Please?” he asked, peering up at me hopefully, fingers still pressed to his reddened skin. “My roommate is not answering. Will you help me up? I promise, I will not trouble you again.”
I am a sucker for victims of draconian policy. Also, it’s hard not to feel for someone after you’ve seen them backhanded by a boxwood.
Once he pulled himself up, I helped him inside, yanking him across the sill by his belt. He slipped upstairs to his room without anyone the wiser or him the poorer.
