Authors: Marianna Baer
I
HURRIED TO THE CAR
and slid into the driver’s seat, rainwater beading around me on the crackled pleather upholstery. Abby had turned the rearview mirror to face her. She stared up at it and flicked a mascara brush across her lashes. Her warped copy of the play
Buried Child
lay spread-eagled on the dash.
“What took you so long?” she asked, glancing over at me. “I ran through all of my lines while you were in there.”
“Can you grab an ibuprofen from the glove compartment?” I massaged the bridge of my nose.
“What? More shabby than chic?”
“No.” I waited until she handed me the orange tablet, washed it down with a swig of flat soda followed by a cherry Life Saver, and told her about the addition to our Frost House family.
“Hold on,” she said. “Celeste is Green Beret Girl, right?”
I nodded.
“Isn’t she completely nuts? She’s the one who burned all José’s clothes last year!”
“Not all his clothes,” I said, remembering the story that had been the talk of campus for a few days. “Just his boxers.”
“Whatever.” Abby waved her hand dismissively. “And, you know, it doesn’t even matter if she’s crazy. They can’t just give you a random roommate senior year. It’s not right.”
I turned on the engine. As the windshield wipers brought Frost House back into focus, an elongated shape moved past a downstairs window. David, I assumed. I rubbed the almost invisible mark on my palm. He probably thought I was a selfish jerk after that closet incident. But I couldn’t help having been unnerved by his news. The administration shouldn’t just go around changing rooming assignments.
Like Abby said, it wasn’t right.
Before backing into the road, I readjusted the rearview mirror. I met my own gaze, and my eyes stared back with a controlled confidence the rest of my body didn’t feel.
“I’ll talk to Dean Shepherd,” I said. Then, in a stronger voice, “I’m sure she’ll understand.”
The registration room in Grove Hall swarmed with people. I hugged, kissed, and how-was-your-summered my way to the R–Z line at the check-in table. “Our last first-day-of-Barcroft ever,” Whip Windham said as we waited for our information packets, echoing the predictable, clichéd thought I’d been having ever since I woke up that morning.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying not to be maudlin. We still have a whole year.”
“Dude.” Whip raised one eyebrow—his signature look. “I meant it as a good thing. A friggin’ awesome thing.”
Oh. Of course.
Sometimes I forgot that most people were actually anxious to graduate. I understood the feeling in general, but didn’t quite get their “good riddance” fervor. While there were things about Barcroft I was sure none of us would miss—curfew, off-campus restrictions, tofu schnitzel at the dining hall—most of us would go to college, so it’s not like we’d be free of classes or teachers or Sisyphean mountains of homework.
Maybe, I thought as I stared at the sunburned back of Whip’s neck, maybe the difference between me and him was how ingrained I felt here. My parents had just gotten a divorce when I arrived in ninth grade. And although they liked to say it was amicable—neither of them had cheated and they’d used a mediator instead of lawyers—it had hit our lives like a wrecking ball. I’d had to build a new life; Barcroft was the foundation. Of course I was worried about leaving.
“Leena Thomas,” I said when I reached the guy handing out manila envelopes. I took mine and slid out the multicolored sheets of paper. My housing assignment form had a note in familiar, flowing handwriting:
Hello, L! Please call or stop by and see me ASAP. Looking forward, NS.
NS—Nancy Shepherd: Dean of Students, faculty advisor to the peer-counseling program I’d started, my mentor. I’d been looking forward to seeing her, too. I wanted to hear about her summer camping trip, which had involved an encounter with a “feroshus beer,” according to my postcard from her seven-year-old daughter, who I babysat during the school year.
Now, though, instead of asking about that (Budweiser? Corona?), I had to start the semester by bothering her about Celeste.
Shaking off the thought, I slipped my registration papers back in the envelope, stood up straighter, and searched the crowd for Abby’s walnut-brown curls. A shriek rattled my eardrums.
“Leena-bo-beena!” Vivian Parker-White loped toward me, all long limbs and flowery skirt and skin tanned from weeks in Greece.
“I’ve missed you!” I said, my smile buried in a rain-wet mass of coconut shampoo smell as we hugged.
“No,” she said, “
I
’ve missed
you
!” I squeezed even tighter, trying to make up for months of only virtual communication. Boarding school had spoiled me—I was used to having my friends around me all the time.
As Viv and I broke away from our hug, Abby materialized next to us. She bounced up and down. “Can we show now, since we’re all together? We don’t have to wait till we’re back at the dorm, do we?”
“I almost forgot,” I said. “Here, though?” A couple of sophomore boys stood right next to us. One of them grinned when our eyes met, as if he knew I was considering unbuttoning my cutoffs.
“No chance,” Viv said. “Mine’s not for public viewing.”
“Come on.” Abby grabbed our hands. She pulled us through the registration room, into a black granite hallway, and down a set of polished concrete stairs, chattering about her horrible class schedule and the “Green Beret disaster.”
“It’s not a disaster,” I said, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it. I’d go see the dean in a bit. Now, I just wanted to enjoy this moment, wanted to see if my guesses were right—an Aries symbol for Viv, and a butterfly for Abby. At the end of last semester, we’d made a pact to get tattoos over the summer and had forbidden further discussion about it until the moment of revelation.
Abby pushed open the door to the girls’ bathroom.
“Who goes first?” Viv asked.
“Me,” Abby said.
Doing a mock striptease move, she lowered the right strap of her tank top. Two hollow-eyed faces stared up from her shoulder blade. A comedy/tragedy drama-mask thing. One face smiling, one frowning, the expressions exaggerated almost to the point of dementia.
“Ooh, I love it,” I said. “Really well drawn.”
“Exdese,” Viv agreed, using the dorky word for excellent we’d made up freshman year. “And very appropriate, of course.”
“It’ll be even more appropriate if you become bipolar,” I pointed out.
“Ha, ha.” Abby flicked me on the arm. “Who’s next?”
Viv turned around and lifted up her skirt. Smack in the middle of the left cheek of her thong-clad butt was a heraldic crest: black and red, with fleur-de-lis designs around a knight’s helmet and a stag’s head.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s . . . amazing. It’s so elaborate.”
“Oh my God,” Abby said. “It’s the Parker family crest! Isn’t it? The one you showed me online?”
Viv turned back around. “Yup. Isn’t it funky? It’s thanks to Orin.”
“Your astrologer—sorry, your
advisor
,” I corrected myself, “told you to get your family crest tattooed on your butt?”
“No, of course not,” Viv said. “He told me I should incorporate my family history into my identity.”
Abby covered her mouth; a snort escaped her nose.
“It’s an important part of my being,” Viv added.
I made the mistake of looking into Abby’s glimmering brown eyes, and we lost it.
I shook with laughter until my cheek muscles ached. It was perfect. The Parker-Whites are a bizarre hybrid of old money aristocracy (Parker) and new-age bohemianism (White). Their psychic “advisor” is practically a full-time employee.
Eventually, the bathroom filled with wheezes and deep breaths as Abby and I struggled to compose ourselves. Viv waited, arms crossed.
She leaned back against a sink. “Laugh all you want. But Orin said something else, too. Something not so good.”
“What?” I said, bracing myself for another absurdity.
Before she could continue, the bathroom door swished open and three of our dorm-mates from junior year bustled in.
“I heard about your new roommate, Leena,” Jessica Liu said as the other two went into stalls. “That should be entertaining.”
“You heard? How?” I didn’t like that. Other people knowing made it seem more like a done deal.
“My brother went to school with her brother. They were on the phone yesterday and her brother asked to talk to me. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t rooming with some psycho.”
“Hah!” Abby said. “That’s rich.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked Jess.
“The truth. That Celeste was in serious danger.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s going to work out for her to live with us. Dean Shepherd wants to meet. Speaking of which . . .” I checked my watch. “She won’t be in her office much longer. I should get going.”
“Leen, we’re not done!” Abby said.
“We’ll finish later, okay?” I gripped the chilly metal door handle. “I need to deal with this.”
A
LTHOUGH THE RAIN HAD STOPPED
, the humid air still clung to me like a full-body sweater as I hurried past the stately brick buildings of the main quad on my way to Irving Hall. Barcroft is one of the oldest boarding schools in the country, and while the newer buildings are flashy and modern, the central campus is quintessential New England prep school.
Marcia, the dean’s assistant, said I’d have to wait a few minutes. I sat on a leather chair and rearranged the legs of my cutoffs to separate my clammy skin from the slick surface, then took out my packet and thumbed through my registration materials. Black type floated into abstract designs as I silently rehearsed my conversation with the dean.
Until now, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that it would have been her decision to move Celeste to Frost House. But sitting here, I couldn’t understand it, given how well Dean Shepherd knew the situation. How well she knew
me
.
After answering a posting on the job board freshman year, I’d started babysitting her daughter on Sunday afternoons while the dean was with her husband, who was in hospice with terminal cancer. We kept the arrangement after he died, as well. Sometimes I stayed to help with dinner and ended up eating with her and Anya. I think she was happy to have someone to distract her from stuff with her husband, and I loved listening to her talk about books and music and places she’d lived and traveled. Growing up as an only child, I’d spent a lot of time with my parents and their friends; she reminded me of one of them.
Probably some kids at Barcroft thought I was a suck-up, hanging out with the Dean of Students. But I didn’t ask her for any special treatment. Until Frost House, of course.
I called her the day I discovered it last fall. “I saw the most amazing house all hidden in the bushes,” I said, words rushing out. “And I peeked in the windows and I think it might be a dorm. Is it? Because it would be the most perfect place to live for senior year. All quiet and separate, kind of like living off campus, away from the frenzy. And if it is a dorm, how many—”
“Slow down,” she’d said. “Describe it for me.”
“Off Highland Street, by the playing fields. White clapboard, Victorian.”
I could have described it down to the fish-scale pattern of the shingles on the roof. My father restores old houses and my mother is a realtor, so I grew up learning all about colonials and Victorians, gables and lintels and cornices. From the moment I saw the little house, I’d felt a weirdly intense desire to live there. As if it was the answer to a question I didn’t even know I’d been asking. I’d wandered around all four sides, appreciating its architectural quirks and fantasizing:
warm evenings hanging out on the porch; reading, curled up in a window seat. . . .
“Off Highland Street?” the dean had said. “That’s Frost House. A four-student dorm. Reserved for senior boys.”
“Boys?
” I hadn’t considered that possibility.
My reluctant acceptance of this news lasted less than twenty-four hours, during which I kept going back to Frost House in my mind. The next day, I couldn’t resist an urge—a pull—to visit again in person. As I stood there, staring up like I was lovesick for one of the guys inside, I struggled with what to do. I wanted to call the dean back, wanted to see if there was any chance it might be switched to a girls’ dorm for the next year. But it seemed like such a big favor. While I debated, a slender column of smoke rose from the chimney and curled into the blue sky. A working fireplace? In a dorm? I took my phone out of my bag and called.
I told her honestly how worried I was about the stress of senior year, and how much difference living in a small dorm would make. I told her that boys didn’t appreciate window seats and wraparound porches. She laughed.
“Even if we could switch it to a girls’ dorm,” the dean said, “you’d still have to go through the housing lottery. There’s no guarantee you’d be the girls who get to live there.”
“I know,” I said, watching the smoke from the chimney dance away. “But if it’s a boys’ dorm, we won’t even have a chance.”
“Well,” she said after a moment. “It
is
only a matter of four students. Let’s see what we can do.”
And now she’d moved Celeste in, without even telling me?
I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the blue paper that listed my class schedule: Molecular Biology, Gender Relations in America, Calculus—
“Leena?” The dean’s voice made me look up. She was standing in the door to her office, smiling warmly.
“Welcome back,” she said, beckoning me to her. “Come on in.”
Dean Shepherd closed the office door behind us and drew me into a hug. “It’s wonderful to see you,” she said. “You look healthy, rested, all those good things.”
“Thanks. You too.” Her ash-blond hair had been cut pixie-short, bringing out her bright hazel irises.
She patted the chair next to her desk. “How was your summer? You survived the twins?”
“Barely,” I said, sitting. I was indescribably thankful my stint at all-day babysitting for five-year-old twin boys was over. “But it paid really well. So thanks again for recommending me. How’s Anya?”
“Great. She can’t wait to see you.” The dean’s smile lingered, but not in her eyes. “I want to talk more about everything later, Leena. There’s another reason I wanted to see you now. Not to catch up.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” She nodded once. “I’m so sorry you didn’t hear it from me first. I left a message with your father for you to call me yesterday, when we made the decision.”
“He must have forgotten,” I said, unsurprised. It did make me feel a little better to know she’d tried to get in touch with me, though.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I should have called again. Celeste is just one of the crises I’ve had to deal with this week.”
“I feel bad for her, of course,” I said. “But, the thing is, it’s only me, Viv, and Abby in Frost House, and I’m wondering if she might feel uncomfortable, living with a group of friends. Not that we wouldn’t be nice to her. Just . . . it might be awkward. Do you know if . . . if there might be another first-floor room open somewhere?”
From the slightest intake of her lips, I could tell this wasn’t what the dean wanted to hear. A pang of guilt twitched in my gut. “Maybe one of the dorms in the middle of campus,” I added. “More convenient.”
“There were a couple of other rooms we could have moved her to,” she said. “But I talked it over with faculty who know Celeste, and we all felt that Frost House was the best option.”
“Really? Can I ask why?” There were other rooms—that was good news.
She placed her palms together and interlocked her fingers. “Between us, there’s been some difficulty with Celeste’s family over the past year. We think it’s best if she’s in a small, quiet dorm. More like a home.”
With Celeste there, it wasn’t a home anymore. Homes are for families, not strangers. And our family was set—Viv, the caretaking mother; me, the problem-solving, fix-it father; Abby, the impatient, excitable kid. Where would Celeste fit in?
“I just don’t picture the two of us as roommates,” I said.
“I know, Leena. But Ed Roper told me you got along beautifully as lab partners in his class last year. One of the things we all appreciate about you is your ability to get along with different people. Frankly, I didn’t feel comfortable with the other possible roommate matchups.”
Her eyes held mine. I saw admiration in them, but also expectation. The vise tightened around my chest again.
A knock came at the door.
“Yes?” Dean Shepherd said.
While the dean had a conversation with Marcia, I scanned the paper-strewn surface of her desk. Two thick manila files sat by a Lymphoma Society mug. Handwritten tabs read
Celeste P. Lazar
and
David M. Lazar
.
I never wanted to be a thick file.
“Of course,” Dean Shepherd said, once we were alone again, “if you have any serious objections, I’ll rethink the other options. The last thing I want is to make you unhappy. And I know how much you’ve been looking forward to Frost House.”
Even though she knew that, she was counting on me to agree to this. For some reason, she thought Celeste needed Frost House, and I trusted Dean Shepherd. Could I do this for her?
“Just this one semester, right?” I said. “When Kate comes back from Moscow, she’ll be able to move in?”
“Definitely. Kate will be your roommate this spring, as planned. Celeste’s cast will be off by then.”
“What if it’s not? Or what if she wants to stay?”
“Leena.” The dean smiled. “You have my word that Kate will be your roommate in Frost House next semester. No matter what happens with Celeste.”
I looked down at my hands, pale and veiny. White and blue. Like porcelain, I’d been told. I curled them into fists.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d taken that resolve and told Dean Shepherd I wanted Celeste moved somewhere else. Would things have turned out differently in the end?
For Celeste, yes, of course. But for me?
I still would have lived in Frost House, after all.