Strange and Lovely (Part 1) (2 page)

I grimaced at her. “You want to work at a hotel for the rest of your life?”

“I want to
own
a bunch of bed and breakfasts,” she said. She shrugged, pulled out her pink lipstick and slid it over her mouth. It appeared flawlessly on her lips.

“Get real. You’re far
far
away from your parents for the first time, and all you can think about is your major? Samuel Larousse, who’s clearly into you, is the son of one of the wealthiest financial magnates in New York, maybe even the east coast. The Larousses are cloistered in the heart of Manhattan. Their family bloodline goes way back and they rarely make appearances, but loads money.”

Here I was, judging Kaylee for her obsession with pink, and now I envied her certainty. I may have been smart, but I was too stupid to make real plans for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I glanced out of the my window. The sun dimmed as it disappeared further down the stretch of the horizon.

N
ew York City was a grid of strangers clogging the streets until the twilight hours. At dawn, white collar types stirred at rush hour. At dusk, the sky was lit with neon bars signs and the streaming headlights of speeding cars. It had its own way of drawing you in, demanding that you pay attention.

I bumbled off the bed and peeked out the window. Our window faced the parking lot, so there wasn’t much to see. There were a couple of students walking toward Cooper Hall, and a car passed by on a nearby road. I tried to look up toward the sky like I’d done on my roof back home, but too many skyscrapers blocked my view from every angle.

I grabbed my sweater and keys and slipped out the door. I walked up to the top floor, and wandered through the hall. While searching for a stairwell or a doorway to access the roof, I stopped at the lounge in the middle of the hall. The farthest wall was made of a single panoramic window.  Below me was a bird’s eye view of the campus at night. A couple kissed under a street lamp, and a group of rowdy boys in letterman jackets prowled together in a pack.

A woman was walking on the sidewalk and appeared to be texting on her phone. Something flashed by her, seemed to tackle her with lightning speed, and they both disappeared into an alleyway.

I kept my eye on the alley, but the woman never resurfaced.  With my cell phone halfway dialed for emergency, a sudden shadow emerged. The woman tottered back in view for a brief second before balancing in her heels. Maybe I was just exhausted. There’s no way any person could have picked up that woman and moved
that
quickly. But there was something. Something was different about her as she disappeared further away down the street. Shimmering big city lights cast an uneven shadow on my floor. The gauzy glare of street lamps made something primeval of all who passed underneath the window. My first night alone in New York City and already I was seeing things.

I looked away from the window and walked back to my room.

***

M
y scholarship covered most things, except for my meal plan and living expenses.  There was a little money saved up from my summer job waitressing, but sooner or later my small stash was going to dry up. When I meandered inside Valhalla’s cafeteria, a smorgasbord awaited me. Fresh hors d’oeuvres, towering Greek salads, luxury imported red wines and food of every imaginable taste and texture was all at my fingertips. I plopped a caprese Panini on a fancy tray.

Almost all of the tables were taken by groups of friends. No seats. Not one. I thought I had left behind total social alienation my senior year. Being an outcast wasn’t anything new, but being alone was. Declan always ate with me and we always claimed our very own table. We had fringe friends—people who carried the label “friend” but they never did compare to what we had. People avoid like girls like me. Girls they can’t quite peg.

I shifted my tray in my hand. I tried to see if I recognized anyone from orientation. There was that one black haired girl I got along with. What was her name? Ashley? Jessica? Eileen?...It was something that started with a letter and ended with another letter...

“Rory!” a voice called out. I turned to see Sam and his friends at a corner table, farthest from the windows. I didn’t want to be grateful to see him, but I smiled and walked over. Sam stood up and pulled a chair up to the table. I sat down. “What’s up, girl? How’s your very perky roommate?”

“She’s nice,” I said. “....she likes incense. And perfume. I’m surprised our room hasn’t blown up from the mixture of fire and ethanol.”

He laughed. “Well, it’s either incense or B.O., so I guess you got lucky.”

When I glanced down at Sam’s tray, he had nothing on it, not even a glass of water. He pointed to his friend next to him.

“Rory, these are my fraternity brothers. James, Charlie, Eric, Wes, Cameron, and Cameron’s girlfriend,” he said.

“My name is Orchid,” the girl said. She was pale with dyed black hair and a piercing under her lip. “Though, I wouldn’t expect you to remember a girl’s name that you can’t fuck.”

“It doesn’t matter to me if a girl has a boyfriend or not,” Sam said. “Their boyfriend will be their ex-boyfriend soon enough.”

Orchid rolled her eyes.

“Why am I not surprised that you’re part of a fraternity?” I asked.

“Because you have some kind of cliché inside your head?” Sam asked.

“Touché,” I took a bite out of my panini.

“So, what’s your major, Rory?” Orchid asked. I was going to get sick of that question fast.

“Undecided,” I said.

“You should become a psychology major,” Orchid said. “Then you can diagnose everyone with a mental illness.”

“Orchid would know,” Sam said. “She’s the queen of mental instability.”

Orchid punched him in the shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him,” Orchid said. “He’s a theatre major because he’s a pathological liar.”

“I’m not a pathological liar,” Sam told me. “I have perfect control over my constant lying.”

He leaned toward me. His eyes were a hypnotic shade of green, a color I had only seen in postcards of exotic beaches I’d never visit.

“I’d always tell the truth to you, though,” he said.

“Liar,” I teased. He smiled, and his teeth were perfectly white.

“I like you,” he said. I looked up at him. He used a knife to move around the innards of my half-eaten sandwich. That may be the first true thing he told me.

***

I
elected to take astrophysics because my father used to name me all of the stars as we laid on our roof. Rows and rows of seats descended all the way to the bottom of the lecture hall. I sat down with my textbook, a tome heavy enough that it could be used for deadlifts. All of the other students in this course looked like they dedicated their lives to studying and becoming more pale. I dug my pen out of my bag.

“Hey, freshman.”

I looked up as Sam sat next to me. He lounged in the chair.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I thought you were a theatre major,” I said. “What are you doing in astrophysics?”

“Well, you go to Hollywood to become a star, and there are stars in the sky,” he said. “It made perfect sense to me.”

“That makes nearly zero sense,” I said. He grinned.

“The professor gained my respect my freshman year,” he said. “He called out my friend for texting during his class. Then, he took his phone, called my friend’s Mom, put her on speaker phone, and then my friend had to stutter through explaining why he had been texting through class.”

I smiled. “Did your friend learn his lesson?”

“Did I say my friend? I meant it was me,” Sam grinned. “The guys got balls, which is more than most people can say.”

“Balls aren’t that great,” I said. “They’re saggy, sweaty, and a huge weak spot on men.”

“I don’t know what balls you’ve been looking at, but my balls are tight, clean, and super strong,” Sam said. I shook my head at him. I heard a slamming door as a well-dressed man entered at the bottom of the lecture hall. He stopped at the center, with his back facing us, and grabbed a dry erase marker.  He scrawled ASTR241 in red and then spun around. He had a chiseled face, and hair that was blonde or white depending on which way the light hit it.

“Welcome students,” he said. “I’m Professor Federov, and you are in The Physics of Stars and Stellar Systems, ASTR 241. If you’re not supposed to be in this class, please leave. And when I say leave, I mean leave the college. If you can’t figure out what class to go to, you don’t belong here.”

Sam laughed. Dr. Federov focused in on him. The professor grimaced.

“Mr. Larousse. I would say I’m glad to see you again, but I’m a man of facts, not fiction.”

“Dr. Federov,” Sam leaned forward. “Do we have to play this game where you pretend I’m not your favorite student?”

“Mr. Larousse, do we have to play this game where you pretend that you didn’t get into this institution because of your father?”

“I’m not denying that.” Sam shrugged. “But it won’t stop me from popping into your classes every semester.”

“Wonderful,” Dr. Federov drawled. He looked over to me. His pale blue eyes seemed to dissect every part of me, like I was a lab rat. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is—“

“My name is Rory,” I interrupted.

“There’s no Rory on the registry,” Dr. Federov said.

“It’s short for Aurora,” I said. He closed his eyes for a second, and then he looked back at me.

“Miss Villanova, then,” he said. I nodded. Did he have photographic memory? “Tell me, Miss Villanova, why are you here?” The whole of the lecture hall turned and faced me.

“I find the universe interesting. There’s whole galaxies that we don’t know about, and everything about the universe is a huge mystery,” I said.

“And you think you’re the one to solve that mystery?” he asked, crossing his arms. Sam opened his mouth. “Shut it, Mr. Larousse.”

“I’d just like to learn what I can about it,” I said.

“So, you’re taking this class just to learn, and then you’re going to do nothing with that knowledge,” Dr. Ferderov said. I struggled to find some kind of defense or explanation. He shook his head, and walked over to the whiteboard. “You can leave, Miss Villanova. I have no need for underachievers here.”

I looked over at Sam. He shrugged. I grabbed my bag and stood up. Dr. Federov wrote on the board, and didn’t say anything. Everyone turned forward and prepared to take notes as I walked out of the lecture hall.

I had won spelling bees, talent shows, and too many academic awards to care about. I had been in every advanced class my school offered. And that was just in elementary school. I have never in my life been considered an underachiever.

I heard footsteps following me. I turned around to see Sam.

“Hey, Aurora Borealis,” he said, swinging his arm around me. He smelled like Old Spice body spray. “I tried to warn you. Dr. Federov is a dick.”

“My last name is Villanova. Never call me Aurora Borealis again,” I said. He only smirked at me. “He called me an underachiever.”

“Yeah, he generally doesn’t think highly of anyone. I hear he doesn’t even think highly of himself,” Sam said. “But cheer up, buttercup. The other Omegas and I are going to a bar called The Legend, and I am personally inviting you.”

“The semester just began,” I said.

“And you’re in a college,” Sam said. “Everyone drinks Wednesday through Saturday. We’re meeting there at ten. Be there or you really
will
be an underachiever.”

He turned and started down some stairs, avoiding walking outside with me in the warm summer heat.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “The door is this way.”

He pointed down the basement hallway.

“Almost all of the basements here are connected. I have another professor I want to bother a couple of buildings away,” he said. “I don’t like to go out into the academic quad. The ladies get distracted by me, and the professors get mad.”

“Are you really this cocky or is that just a facade?” I asked

“It’s a facade. I’m really much more cocky,” he said. He winked, and disappeared down the hallway. I walked out of the building.

You’re taking this class just to learn, and then you’re going to do nothing with that knowledge.

I stared up at the sky. What am I supposed to do with it?

T
he Black Keys played on my iPod as I flipped through my astrophysics book. There was a knock on the door. I assumed it was for Kaylee, who gained more friends within two days than I could gain in a year. She was watching television, but jumped up to answer it. I felt the breeze of the door opening, but I just continued to flip the pages of my textbook. I didn’t look up until Sam leaned against my bed frame. I took my earphones out.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

“Where?” I asked. He sighed like I was an impertinent child.

“The Legend,” he said. He looked around my side of the room, as Kaylee slinked to her bed.

“Isn’t that a dive bar?” she asked. “I’ve heard that a lot of the Valhall-ians hang out there.”

He ignored her, and tapped on my astrophysics book.

“Federov kicked you out, remember?” he asked. “Stop studying. Go drinking.”

“I thought you said you wanted to meet at the bar,” I said.

“First off, I’ve figured you out and I know you wouldn’t have gone by yourself. Second, I would never let a pretty girl like you walk around the city alone,” he said.

“You think you have me figured out?” I asked. He nodded.

“I’m guessing you’re from a small town or even further out in the middle of nowhere, and you’re new to the big city,” he said. “You have some Iranian in you, so you’ve probably faced some shit for that, and therefore you have some trust issues. Lower middle class family. And you are completely, utterly in love with me.”

I snorted. “You were close until that last part.”

“You’re right. I was wrong. I should have said you’re going to be completely, utterly in love with me...once we go to the bar, and you drink some good vodka,” he said. I looked at the clock. It was 9:30 pm. This was college. Hadn’t Declan told me that I’m supposed to change?