Cecily Von Ziegesar (15 page)

H
olidays are a state of mind. You spend all day preparing the meal, tolerating your family, and trying to be pleasant. Then, when you sit down to eat, that thing that's been nagging at you—that thing you thought was hunger—is on the tip of your tongue, and you just have to blurt it out. The inevitable result: tears or, at the very least, shouting.

Adam scooped another spoonful of stuffing out of the turkey that his dad had lovingly dressed and roasted.

“I'm thinking of transferring,” he announced. “You know, to another college? In maybe even a different state?”

Shipley had continued to avoid him even after their kiss, and each hour he spent on campus was torture. Tragedy was right. He never should have gone to Dexter in the first place. He should have gone somewhere far away, where he never would have met Shipley and where he'd be too busy sightseeing and learning the language to feel as miserable as he felt right now.

“I hear it's very nice in Argentina this time of year.” Tragedy pulled the platter toward her, picked up the carving knife, and
sliced off four big slabs of juicy breast meat. She glanced up at her parents. “Don't try to talk him out of it.”

“Watch it, baby,” Eli Gatz warned, his drooping mustache drenched in gravy. “Don't cut yourself.”

Ellen Gatz smashed her stuffing into her potatoes and swirled in some peas. Her frizzy salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into the purple plastic clip she wore only on special occasions. “Where would you go?”

Adam poked his drumstick with the tines of his fork. He hadn't been very hungry lately. “I'm not sure. UMass? It's pretty cheap and not too far away. Or maybe I could try for a scholarship somewhere great, like, I don't know, Stanford?”

“Ha!” his mother exclaimed.

“Your grades are good, but not that good,” his father said.

Adam glared at them. This from a guy who hadn't even finished college. “Well, it's worth a shot.”

“Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening, ain't we got fun? Not much money, oh but honey, ain't we got fun?”
Tragedy belted out as she got up and dug around in a kitchen drawer for a plastic bag.

“Tragedy, what in the world are you doing? Get back here and eat your dinner!” Ellen shouted.

Tragedy returned to the table with three empty yogurt containers and a rumpled paper bag. “Waste not, want not,” she said. “I'm taking some food to the hungry. That okay with you folks?”

“Our little Samaritan,” Ellen trilled, although she didn't look too happy about it. Ellen had long given up trying to lose the extra fifty pounds she'd gained while pregnant with Adam. She liked to eat.

“Well, just make sure you leave us enough for turkey sandwiches tomorrow,” Eli said. “And maybe give away those brownies you made yesterday. They gave me the runs.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Adam said, his mouth full of gravy-drenched mashed potatoes.

Ellen grabbed the turkey platter before her daughter could raid it any further. “Stop stealing our dinner and go get some beans. We've got frozen beans from the garden up the wazoo.”

Tragedy put her hands on her hips. “Mom. Ellen. Frozen beans? What's a hungry person with no kitchen going to do with frozen beans? I'm sure they'd much rather have a Big Mac.”

“Well, this is our dinner and we're still eating it.” Ellen turned back to Adam. As was the way with so many parents who'd frittered away their own educations, she didn't want her son to fritter away his. “Seems to me you haven't given Dexter much of a chance, hon. They're giving you free tuition, and it's a way better school than UMass. What's wrong? You told me you liked all your teachers.”

“I know,” Adam said. “It's just…I don't know. It's hard to explain.”

“What is it? Are the kids there not nice to you? You've always been a little shy.” Ellen frowned. Then her face lit up. “I know! Why don't you have a party? You could throw one after the play next weekend. Invite the whole damn school. We don't care. We'll leave you to it. We can spend the night at Uncle Laurie's.”

Tragedy pulled a bag of frozen beans from the freezer. She turned it over in her hands and sniffed it. Then she tossed it back inside the freezer and slammed the door. “A party? Rock on!”

“No one would come,” Adam said quietly.

“Please,” Tragedy argued. “All you have to do is make it very clear that there will be beer, and believe me, people will come.”

Adam rolled a pea across the table. He flicked it at his mom. She flicked it to his dad, who flicked it back to Adam. “Go on,
son. We promise to get out of your hair,” Eli said. “And we'll get the keg. Heck, we'll get five kegs!”

Adam put the pea back on his plate. If he had a party, maybe she would come. And if she came, she might give him another chance. She might even kiss him again.

“We'll need to put up flyers,” Tragedy advised. “But we have to make sure they're not queer. You know, so people will actually show up.”

“We're having a party!” Ellen slapped the table with her pudgy, work-worn palms. She glanced at Adam. “Are you in, or what?”

“All right,” Adam said. “I'm in.”

Tragedy gathered up her containers and put them into the backpack she'd filled with warm clothes stolen from her father. Then she added a couple of bottles of home brew.

Ellen elbowed Eli in the arm. “She's running away again.”

Eli tugged on his mustache. “Honeybunch, you're not, are you? You're not running away.”

Tragedy cinched up the pack and slung it onto her back. For once in her life the thought hadn't occurred to her. “And miss the party? No freakin' way.”

 

P
atrick stood in front of Nick's yurt, admiring it. It was beautiful. Bent timbers, white canvas walls, and a high ceiling with a hole in it so you could see the stars. He'd been watching it all day. No one was in there. Almost everyone at Dexter had left campus, including his sister. But she had taken her car, and now he had no way to get around, no place to sleep, and nothing to eat. Last night he'd slept in the woods. When he woke up his limbs were so stiff he could barely stand. This big tent would still be cold at night, but he could use the sleeping bag the guy who'd built it had left behind and maybe build a fire.

Normally he went south at this time of year. Florida was always good, as long as he stayed away from Miami Beach. Sleeping on Miami Beach was like writing yourself a personal invitation to jail with no get-out-of-jail-free card. But he couldn't leave now. Not when things were just starting to get interesting.

He snuck into the tent, put down his copy of
Dianetics,
and scooted into the red sleeping bag, curling his legs around the pole that held up the roof. It was newly dark and the flap in the ceiling was open. He could just make out the handle of the Big Dipper, beginning to twinkle. The sky was a deep violet, enhanced by the purplish-blue light that shone atop Dexter's chapel spire. Vaguely he remembered a Dexter myth about that light. It was supposed to shine all the time, twenty-four hours, rain or shine, winter and summer. The light would only go out when a girl managed to graduate with her virginity intact. Back in the day, his goody-two-shoes sister might have been a contender, but not anymore. Now that she wasn't so good, he was even starting to like her.

“Hey, you hungry?”

It was that girl. She was standing in the doorway of the tent. “You better be, 'cause I brought a shitload of food.”

She had turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and brownies and bottles of beer. Patrick hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning. He wasn't sure where to begin.

“What happened to your Rolls-Royce, or whatever that car was you were driving?” the girl asked.

He grabbed a brownie and shoved it into his mouth.

“Man, I can't watch you eat.” Tragedy glanced around the yurt. “It's pretty awesome in here, but you should close up the roof. It's getting cold.”

Patrick didn't say anything. Why was she being so nice to him when he hadn't done anything to deserve her kindness? He
unwrapped the turkey and devoured it. Tragedy grabbed the long pole that Nick had rigged to pull the roof flap closed, and wrestled with it until the heavy canvas flap covered the hole.

“There. Snug as a bug.” She rested her hands on her hips, waiting for Patrick to speak. He was the worst conversationalist she'd ever met. “I put some blankets and some clothes in the pack. My dad's a little smaller than you, but a sweater is a sweater.”

Patrick cracked open a bottle of beer and slurped it greedily. “Mmmm,” he murmured.

Tragedy sat down and picked up
Dianetics,
paging through the book without reading it. Her hands needed to keep busy and she'd forgotten her Rubik's cube. “You don't care how I knew you were in here or why I'm, like, feeding and clothing you, or how come I'm even wandering around at night when I'm supposed to be at home eating drumsticks and dancing to
Saturday Night Fever
?”

Patrick watched her hands as they worked the pages of the book. “That's my book,” he said.

Tragedy glared at him. “So?” She put the book down. “There, you happy?”

Patrick cracked open another beer.

“Did you know it was a leap year?” she demanded.

Patrick just sipped his beer.

“Freaky things happen in a leap year.”

He shrugged his shoulders. Every day was pretty much the same to him.

She stood up. “Okay. Well, I guess I'm off. It's been real.” She pulled the flap back in the doorway. “It's Thursday night, by the way. Thanksgiving. So relax. Enjoy. You've got, like, two or three more nights before the kids get back.”

 

N
ot far from the yurt, Tom was locked in his room, painting. The Grannies had sold him enough E to last the weekend. He had six tabs left.

For a project of this size, floor space was key. He'd tipped both beds on end—he couldn't sleep when there was so much work to be done—but there was still hardly enough room for him to move around. The mini fridge in the corner was chock full of milk. That's all he needed. E and milk. Food and sleep and social interaction had become irrelevant, especially if the painting was going to be finished by next weekend.

He'd decided to do Shipley's portrait on small eight-by-ten prestretched canvases purchased at the college bookstore. He'd bought out their whole supply, all forty of them, and laid them on the floor on top of strips of double-sided tape to form one giant rectangular canvas. His aim was to complete the portrait exactly as he'd photographed it, head to toe, Macy's bag included. Then he'd shift around the canvasses and remove some entirely, so that the final product would look like one of those little puzzles where you move the squares around, after it had been scrambled up. So far he'd completed four canvasses—the two red squares that formed the lower half of the Macy's bag, and Shipley's breasts. Now he was working on her hair where it hung below the bag, spaghetti-length strips of plum and black and cream and tangerine.

“I feel it! I feel it!” he shouted, egging himself on. Naked, he squatted over the canvas and blotted his brush on his bare calf. “Nice and easy,” he said, remembering that Nice 'n Easy was a brand of shampoo or hair color. He'd seen the ads on TV.

The phone rang out in the hall. It had been ringing all day. He was pretty sure it was his parents, but he couldn't very well talk to them when he had so much work to do. And he didn't trust himself to talk to Shipley. He was too excitable. Oh boy, did he want to kiss her! He'd already made out with her Polaroid.
He'd even tried to kiss his own penis, and found he wasn't flexible enough. Just this week of solitude—long enough to get the painting done—and he'd put the bed back where it belonged, let Shipley in, and show her how much he'd missed her.

He took a step back to admire his efforts, his jaw working as he gnawed the end of his paintbrush. Everything he'd painted before was bad because basically all he'd been doing was sending a big fuck-you message to Eliza, telling her to put some clothes on and stop annoying him. With this one he wasn't trying to make a statement or tell anyone anything. He was just showing what he saw. It wasn't about him, he was just the vehicle. On a journey. On a path to discovery. Of course he didn't know what he was discovering, but he'd know when he found it.

It was exactly like the Volkswagen ad when they used that crazy German word,
Fahrvergnügen.
It didn't really mean anything, but you knew you wanted your car to have it.
Fahrvergnügen
transformed the driving experience. When people looked at his painting, they would never be able to see things in the same way again. Everything would be imbued with color and beauty. Yellow would no longer be just plain yellow. Blue would no longer symbolize the sky or water. There was blue in Shipley's breasts and yellow on her thighs. The red Macy's bag wasn't a red Macy's bag anymore. It
was
the color red. He was going to change people's lives, or at least better them, one canvas square at a time.

He squatted down and smeared a tendril of grayish-purple paint on the canvas with his thumb. It might be nice, he thought, if she had a few tentacles mixed in with her hair.

D
ecember came, and it was as if Thanksgiving had never happened. The days were short. The nights were long. Students were getting nervous about midterms. Would cramming for Psychology damage their synapses? Was it possible to read
Moby-Dick
in one night? Would there be an essay or just multiple choice? Would exams be graded on a curve? The library was suddenly the most popular hangout on campus and the suggestion box in Coke's dining hall overflowed with pleas to
Make the coffee stronger!

Nick still couldn't get into his room. Each morning after Nick showered, Tom was kind enough to toss some extra clothes out the door.

“It's only for the week,” he promised. “And you'll be glad you made the sacrifice. You'll be
thanking
me.”

Nick thought he'd go back to sleeping in the yurt, but it was too damned cold and dark, and he was already sort of over it. The honest truth was he'd built the yurt to impress his mom, and he hadn't even had a chance to tell her about it. He didn't really
want to live out there anyway. Eliza had given him a camping stove, which was very thoughtful of her, but he hadn't even taken it out of the box.

He just had to face it, he'd never be like Laird Castle, no matter how hard he tried. Laird was hard-core, the type of guy Nick's mom would have shacked up with in college. She would have been delighted to sleep under the open roof flap, stargazing and toking up and expounding on the wonders of karma. But sleeping outdoors wasn't even safe—look what had happened to Laird. The common room had a TV, and the sofas were about as comfortable as the futon his mom had replaced his bed with. He could make do, as long as it was just for the week.

Tom stopped painting and left the room only for play rehearsal. He and Adam had the whole play memorized, and they were down to their last three rehearsals.

“I can't tell you how pleased I am,” Professor Rosen gushed after their Wednesday night run-through in the auditorium. “Tom, I had my doubts about you at first, and I don't know how you've done it, but that was incredible. What'd you think, Nicholas?”

Nick was up on a ladder, adjusting the lights. He hadn't really paid attention to the rehearsal because he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
The Zoo Story
was a one-act with only two actors who never strayed far from the park bench at center stage. He really only needed two spotlights. The problem was figuring out which ones. It didn't help that he was so high. The pot he'd stolen from his mom was pretty intense.

He sneezed once and then sneezed again. It was dusty up there in the rafters. “Great,” he called back. “Definitely really great.”

“I'm having a party after the play on Saturday,” Adam told Tom. “You should come.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his wool pants. “There's going to be a keg.”

Tom hadn't had a drink since he discovered ecstasy. He hadn't been to any parties either. Or eaten many meals. “Cool,” he said, furiously working his jaw. His beltless, paint-spattered khaki pants hung a few inches below his boxers and his white undershirt clung to his half-starved stomach. His dark brown hair had grown out and stuck up in all directions. He looked nothing like the preppy Westchester boy his parents had dropped off in August.

“Are we done here?” he asked Professor Rosen. “Because I have a lot of work to do.” He'd finished the top two-thirds of Shipley's portrait, but he still had the entire bottom third to do.

“Same time, same place tomorrow night and Friday. Don't forget,” Professor Rosen reminded him. “And I like the disheveled look, but try to find something to wear without any paint on it,” she called as Tom barreled toward the exit. “Jerry doesn't paint.”

Adam remained onstage. “Shouldn't I wear a suit?” he asked. “Peter goes to the park from his job. He works in an office. Wouldn't he be wearing a suit?”

“Just wear whatever you have,” Professor Rosen said. “He's sitting in the park. He'd probably take off his tie and his jacket. Just a nice white shirt and a pair of trousers and loafers would be fine. And maybe a suit jacket and tie to put down on the bench next to you.”

The only suit Adam had ever owned was the Frankenstein suit he'd worn for Halloween three years running. And he'd never had any need for a tie. “Can't I borrow something from the costume department?”

Professor Rosen laughed. Dexter's theater department was tiny. Adam made them sound like the Metropolitan Opera. “You could ask your father,” she suggested.

Adam nodded. His dad didn't wear ties either, but his mom's
favorite store was called Family Clothes of Yesteryear, a used clothing store lovingly run out of a trailer beside the Baptist church in the next town. She could probably rustle up something there.

One of the doors in the back of the theater swung open. It was Shipley and Eliza, dressed all in black except for Eliza's hot pink earmuffs—long black coats, black boots, black gloves, and black wool hats. They looked like spies.

“Oh!” Shipley exclaimed when she saw Adam onstage. Her face flushed. “I'm so sorry. We were looking for someone else.”

Ever since they'd returned to campus, she and Eliza had been fast friends. They dressed together in complementing colors. They ate together in the dining hall. They even peed together, giggling through the walls of the stalls.

It was Eliza's idea to make a game of finding Patrick. Of course it was Patrick who'd borrowed Shipley's car for days at a time, leaving those surly notes and storing food in the trunk. It was a wonder he hadn't left any books behind. He never went anywhere without a book—Carl Sagan's
Cosmos,
George Orwell's
1984, On the Road
by Jack Kerouac. He even carried around
Mein Kampf
for one long, scary week in Barbados. And he never took off his jacket. What a jerk. As a child Patrick was forever stealing Shipley's thunder. Now he was stealing her car.

Shipley found it completely infuriating. Patrick had always gotten all the attention with his hyperactive tantrums and need for specialists. He was ADD. He had sleep apnea. Chronic ear infections. Reflux. Doling out his medication alone took over breakfast and bedtime. And then there were the special private skiing instructors and running coaches because he was so good at sports. Five boarding schools, and he'd managed to get kicked out of every one. Meanwhile there Shipley was, the younger sister, trying not to cause any trouble or attract any attention.

Patrick didn't know her anymore. He'd never taken the time to get to know her. To him she was still the little girl he'd always ignored, teased, or outshined. More than anything, Shipley feared his presence would somehow cause her, out of sheer habit, to revert back to the demure simpleton she used to be. And her new life—the life she'd made for herself at Dexter—would be taken away from her.

They decided to lure him by displaying the clothes Shipley had bought for him on the front seat of the car. It didn't take long. They'd returned from Greenwich on Sunday night. Fifteen minutes later, the car was gone.

Tonight it was back.

“We'll just look everywhere until we find him,” Eliza declared that night at dinner.

But Shipley wasn't so sure she wanted to find him. What would she do with him when she did? Still, she decided to play along because Eliza was so keen, and it was better than studying.

“Hello, Shipley,” Professor Rosen called down to her from the stage. “You just missed a fabulous performance. But you'll be here for the real thing on Saturday of course.”

“Definitely,” Shipley agreed, blushing beneath Adam's steady gaze.

“Tom went back to the dorm,” Nick called from atop his ladder. He sneezed. A shower of backlit germs rained down on the stage. “Hey, is he, like, lit up enough? Can you see him?”

Nick's earflap hat was askew. He looked very professional up on that ladder. Eliza stuck her chest out even though she was wearing her full-length black down coat. “I can see him fine.” She turned to Shipley. “Hey, I forgot to tell you, Tom cut Portraiture today. He missed a good class too. It was so fucking awesome. I got to wear this snake they borrowed from the Bio lab. I felt like a fucking goddess.”

Shipley was too busy staring back at Adam across the rows of seats to hear what Eliza was saying. His red hair shone in the hot white spotlight and his freckles danced around on his cheeks as he smiled at her.

“Hi,” he said.

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. “I'm sorry,” she said and spun around, using her entire body to force open the heavy black door.

“What the hell was that?” Eliza demanded, following Shipley into the Starbucks café. “Why'd you take off?”

“I don't know.” Shipley put her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. She was out of breath even though she hadn't been running. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one. “Patrick wasn't there anyway. Where else should we look?”

“Hey, you can't smoke in here!” the guy behind the counter called out.

Shipley tossed the smoldering cigarette into the trash. “I'd like a double shot of espresso,” she told the guy. “You want anything?” she asked Eliza.

“Make that two.” Eliza nudged Shipley with her elbow. “That guy Adam. You're boning him, aren't you?”

“No!” Shipley protested. She inhaled the pungent smell of freshly ground espresso beans. “Well, not really.”

Eliza grinned. “I knew it! You're such a fucking slut!” She held up her palm for Shipley to slap. “I love that you're fucking Tom over. Put it here, Slutcakes.”

Shipley grinned weakly. Eliza's distaste for Tom had become a constant joke between them. “I'm not fucking anyone over,” she insisted. “I kissed Adam once. End of story. Tom is my boyfriend. You'll see. As soon as he's finished with his crazy top secret art project, we'll all hang out together.”

“Motherfucking fuck!” Eliza pointed out the tall windows of
the Student Union. Shipley's black Mercedes pulled out of the parking lot across Homeward Avenue and swept downhill toward the interstate.

“That's okay,” Shipley said, relieved. She had enough to think about without having to worry about Patrick. “He can't go far. There's hardly any gas in the tank.”

“You know if you really don't want him to take your car, you could keep the keys in your pocket instead of leaving them on the tire,” Eliza suggested. “Then we could probably catch him.”

“You're probably right,” Shipley responded. Maybe this time Patrick wouldn't come back. He'd figure out a way to get more gas and just keep going.

They paid for their espressos and drank them on the spot. Shipley shivered violently. The rush of caffeine had given her the chills. She started toward the exit. “I need a cigarette. Come on.”

They headed down the walkway toward Coke. The Dexter chorale was gathered on the steps of the chapel, singing Christmas songs. “
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie….
” A steady stream of students trudged across the frozen quad, from the campus's three dining halls to the grand Greek revival–style library, to begin the age-old ritual of cramming for exams. Tragedy was outside Coke, taping a neon orange flyer to a lamppost. Dressed in her father's gray one-piece welder's suit and a red-and-white-striped pom-pommed ski hat, she looked like a character from a book by Dr. Seuss.

“Nice earmuffs,” she called out. “Hey, Shipley, have you seen Adam?”

“He's in the auditorium. They're just finishing up.” Shipley thought it best not to explain that she had barely spoken to Adam. Tragedy would not approve.

“Good.” Tragedy smoothed down the flyer. “Then he can drive my ass home.” She cocked an eyebrow at Shipley. “Unless
you guys want to give me a ride.”

Eliza snorted. Shipley glared at her. “Sorry, my car's…unavailable.”

Tragedy slung her hand through the roll of tape like a bracelet. “Okay. Well, see you Saturday,” she said. “And don't forget to bring a blanket. It's supposed to be warm as summer.”

Tragedy's long legs propelled her toward the Student Union. Shipley stared after her. Eliza went over to examine the flyer.

“It's a party,” she said. “Saturday night. The flyer's sort of old-fashioned. It's kind of cute. It says there's going to be refreshments and horseshoes and sheep-tipping.” She giggled. “It also says to bring a date.” She turned back to Shipley. “Who're you gonna bring?”