30 Guys in 30 Days (2 page)

Her honest-to-goodness niceness, coupled with her “oh, dear lord,” blond-haired, blue-eyed, Elle-MacPherson-if-only-she-were-in-better-shape looks, made it pretty hard not to warm to her. As far as first impressions were concerned, I decided that rooming with Miss Manners could have plenty of advantages.

At the very least, there’d certainly never be a shortage of dust ruffles in 131 Thompson. That was something, right?

Orientation seemed to be very much about “getting involved.” I was particularly looking forward to getting involved with the ice-cream shop in the campus center, but Charlie insisted that we take more “initiative.” (I’ll bet she always aced the talent portion of her beauty pageants.) There was an inauspicious-sounding “activities fair” slated for Thursday around lunchtime, and she made me promise to attend with her. I figured there was no harm, and I might even check out the school paper. The thought of seeing my name in type appealed.

I awoke feeling disoriented. I still wasn’t used to those borders on the walls. Charlie was at the gym, I knew—shudder—but she would be home soon. I guessed that meant it was time to get my butt out of bed. We’d been up late doing the chatty female bonding thing the night before.

I shoved the covers aside, rose, and walked over to the little dresser-vanity
combo that lived behind my bed. The mirror did not pull any punches. Okay, so, it wasn’t my finest hour, but there were measures I could take. I ran a brush through my shoulder-length, light brown hair and dabbed on a touch of lip gloss. Better. Maybe not a contender for Miss Georgia Peach, per se, but I could hold my own. I shimmied out of my pj’s and into a light blue tank top. Surprisingly, August in Massachusetts was pretty damn humid.

The door opened and Charlie walked in. Seriously, the girl even
sweat
pretty. “Hiya!” she beamed. “Just give me twenty minutes to shower and we can swing by the activities fair.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’m in no rush. I can even give you thirty, if you want to use the showers upstairs. The ones that aren’t coed.”

In a nod to egalitarianism, each dorm at Woodman featured one-third coed bathrooms. I was appalled to discover that through some computer glitch, we had landed on a coed floor.

“Oh, sweetie, are y’all afraid of seeing a few harmless boy parts?” Charlie teased.

“Of course not!” I protested—perhaps a shade too vehemently. “Parts are fine. I’m just, uh, not used to stranger parts. I mean, the parts belonging to strangers,” I stammered.

“Right, the high school boyfriend,” she said, remembering our conversation from the night before. “You guys were together for four years?”

“Yup,” I said. “Since freshman year.”

“So you haven’t been single in ages—and you’ve never been single on a college campus,” she said, rather stating the obvious, if you ask me.

“Well, I mean, neither have you,” I said defensively. “Been single at college, I mean.”

“Clauds,” she said, putting a consolatory arm around my shoulder, “if the look on your face is any indication, then something tells me I’m just a touch more prepared than you are.”

She must have sensed that this was a sensitive subject. She gave my shoulder another squeeze. “Don’t worry, babe,” she promised. “I’ve got your back.”

“Watch your back!” Charlie shrieked, hustling me aside in a mild panic.

I jumped backward in the direction that she was indicating. “What?” I asked, heart racing. We were hovering adjacent to where I
believed
the student activities fair was being held, and I could see no apparent reason for hysteria.

Charlie shrugged and gestured to her left, where a very small, slim, tense-looking boy was carrying a box that definitely weighed at least twice what he did. He dropped it down onto the ground with a thud, sighing heavily and dusting himself off.

“He was going to crash into you. He couldn’t see over that box,” she said.

“I would have seen her,” the boy in question snapped. He must have been wound a little bit tight, because it was pretty inarguable that, left to his own devices, he would definitely have barreled directly into me, possibly causing serious harm. I kept my mouth shut.

“I’m Charlie,” Charlie said, offering her hand. The boy shook it, still managing to look slightly peeved.

“I’m John O’Shea,” he said. “I’m the editor in chief of the
Chronicle.”
He
sounded very impressed with himself.

“Oh, right!” I said, hoping to win him over with my upbeat enthusiasm. “We were here to talk to you about that. Don’t you guys have a table set up at the activities fair?”

He nodded, sending a thousand face freckles back and forth before my very eyes. It was actually making me dizzy. “We do. But we also have an open-house thing going on at our office.” He tilted his head toward the door. “Right now, if you’re free.” He pointed. “The activities fair is next door.”

John walked us one building over, where, as expected, a stretch of tables was arranged in what was actually a rather intimidating amalgamation. Fresh, welcoming faces beamed out at Charlie and me (I swear, the words “fresh meat” must have been branded on our foreheads), calling to us as we passed by: “Do you want to save the children?” “Have you ever thought about becoming a peer-to-peer tutor?” “Stop world hunger!” “Take back the night!”

These all sounded like lofty goals. I was
aiming for something a tad less noble. My byline was beckoning.

“Hey, aren’t you into tutoring?” Charlie asked, grabbing my hand and weaving our way over to a particularly well-leafleted tabletop.

“Oh, uh …,” I stammered. I thought I had made my intentions clear. But the last thing I wanted to do was alienate my new friend. “I really wanted to check out the newspaper,” I said, feeling guilty.

I shouldn’t have worried. Charlie couldn’t have cared less. “Sure,” she said, turning her back to me to beam beatifically at the boy manning the tutoring booth. “I’ll just be here when you’re done. Or, whatever, I’ll come down and get you.”

I wasn’t wholly convinced of her sincerity, but it did get me off the hook. I figured I should probably wait and see how my own grades panned out before inflicting my study skills on another poor, helpless soul.

I pushed past the activities fair and toward the interior offices of Colby Hall. John had disappeared completely. Once I’d found my way to the
Chronicle,
however, I
was disappointed to find that there wasn’t a whole lot of open house going on. Walking through the front door I found two tired-looking types standing behind a desk, sorting mail and arguing listlessly. Beyond the front room was a larger, open area, which smelled vaguely of mildew and resembled an homage to a high school news office. Ancient computers sat on rickety desks that scaled the perimeter of the space. Overhead, the walls were adorned with soggy corkboard covered in photos, clippings, and inside jokes that, with any luck, wouldn’t be inside to me for too much longer. It was a far cry from the bustling bull pens I’d seen on TV. I turned to a girl sitting at the closest computer. “Have you seen John O’Shea?” I asked. She pointed to the final uncharted territory of the office, a back room where, presumably, production took place. I saw grease pencils, Fun Tack, and oversize tables for laying out pages, and beyond all of that, sitting at some scary über-computer in the corner, I saw John in his multifreckled splendor. I cleared my throat.

“Oh, you came!” John said brightly,
looking up briefly from a monstrous computer screen.

Hadn’t we just established this, like, ten seconds ago outside? I wanted to join the newspaper staff. Hence, I came. “Yeah!” I said, trying not to sound confused. Where was the famed “open house”?

“So you, ah, want to write for the paper?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I decided a direct approach was probably best. “Can you tell me a little bit about the process?”

“It’s not too complicated,” he said, turning away from the computer screen and joining me in the doorway. “Basically, you tell us what you’re interested in writing. If we’ve got something in that department to assign to you, we will—”

At this, the thin girl who’d soundlessly helped me managed a short laugh.

“And, you know, you’ll try it out. If we like what you write and you like writing, then you can probably contribute more regularly. After three pieces you go from contributing writer to staff writer, and if you’re staff writer for at least a semester, you are eligible to be nominated for department editor.”

“Sounds fair,” I said, since it did. Also, I wasn’t sure why the girl sitting in the main room was practically choking back her laugher.

“That’s Megan,” John said, clueing in to my complete bafflement. “She’s one of the news editors. And she’s laughing because, as a daily paper, we will almost always have something to assign to you, if you’re game.”

“Please. You’d have to be pretty crap not to make staff writer if you wanted,” she clarified.

Fab. Thanks for the pep talk.

“Do you have any clips?” Megan asked, suddenly all in my face and brusque.

“Um, do I really need them?” I countered. It didn’t sound like they were so selective.

“You don’t,” John said, glaring at Megan.

Right. Me being the only person at the open house, and all.

“We can assign something to you. Deadlines are five p.m. the day before the article is set to run. You’re welcome to come down here and write. Our office opens at ten.
The editors put their departments to bed at nine. When you come down, you’ll download your article onto the respective department’s disk. Does that make sense?” He looked at me intensely, freckles quivering.

I nodded.

We gazed at each other for an uncomfortably long time. Even John’s freckles were still—no small feat, I noted. Finally, I had to break the moment. “Right. So, ah, what should I write on?”

“Yes!” John said, clapping his hands together as if celebrating my incredible brilliance (which he was, of course, welcome to do). “Do you want to cover the Senate’s first meeting of the semester?” The look on my face must have given me away, because he quickly amended, “Or, you know, I think there’s a ‘take back the night’ thing…”

“Right, I think my friend’s going to that,” I said, feeling panicked. I didn’t want to reject his every suggestion outright, but then again … maybe I did.

John looked at me semi-desperately. “What would you
like
to write?” he asked pleadingly.

I shrugged. Back at my high school I’d been one of the arts editors. But in high school, “arts” meant covering the middle schools rendition of
Fiddler.
I had a feeling it was slightly more competitive here. Still, it was worth asking. “I like, um, plays, and books, and movies, and music,” I said slowly.

“Arts!” John said, slapping his hand against his forehead in either relief or despair. “Got it. Cool. Okay, so the person you want to talk to is Gabe Flynn.”

He put his hand on my shoulder—surely unnecessary, no?—and rotated me about three feet clockwise. He reached out his hand and pointed. “That’s Gabe,” he said. “Hell hook you up.”

The floor fell out from under me and it was all I could do not to swoon. If you had asked me my own name at that moment, I don’t think I could have told you. There was only one thought I could process, and it was quite straightforward:

I for damn sure hope so.

To clarify, “always” should, in fact, never constitute any hour before 10 a.m. 10 is really a very key hour for me, as I’m sure you’re starting to see.

8/27, 9:14 p.m.

from: [email protected]

to: [email protected]

re: Life-Altering Events

Hey, lady—

Just kill me now.

Since my last e-mail, I have had the questionable benefit of undergoing no fewer than three life-altering events.

“But how?” you ask. Well college is the time for new experiences, for expanding one’s horizons, is it not?

“And so quickly?!”

Yes, I do not fault you your disbelief. And yet. Fate plays no favorites, my dear.

But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

“I want to write for the paper,” I said, “once I get to college. It’s my ‘thing,” it’s what I do. I want to get ‘involved.’

“And, by the way, I want to be boyfriend-less.”

How do these thoughts tie together? Work with me, sister.

When last I left you, I was a mere naive babe in the woods. Now, Charlie was interested in the orientation “activities fair.” She had designs on tutoring her peers and taking back the night, but I myself had eyes for the
Chronicle
and the
Chronicle
only.

Thus, I found the editor in chief, one John O’Shea, who schooled me in the ways of the daily paper. It wasn’t complicated. He directed me to one Gabriel Flynn, the chief department editor of the arts section.

Behold: A Life-Altering Event.

You ask if I’ve spoken to Drew, if I’ve wanted to speak to Drew, how I feel about the breakup with Drew, and I’ll admit, I’ve had my moments. I’ve wavered, and I’ve questioned my decision, to be sure. Oh, but Ellen, if you could have been there, with me, at my side, you would have understood why I solemnly
swore instantaneously to waver no more.

Gabe Flynn, you see, is a god among mortals. And I, precious sister, am in love.

Now, I had just selected “arts” out of thin air. I mean, really, I’m not an alterna-girl, I’m no rock diva, and I’m no big into film theory (though, who knows, with my new major in media studies, we shall see …).

I mean, there was nothing inherently drawing me to Gabe. Hence, I must fall back on the Fates.

Clearly, it was the Fates that inspired me to “cut the cord” (or any number of puns we’ve made at poor Drew’s expense) that caused John O’Shea to nearly decapitate me (don’t ask). And clearly it was the work of the Fates that Gabe
happened
to have two tickets available for Rice and Beans at the Tin Room (that’s a group, and a club, respectively. Latin-punk fusion. Keep up, babe).

John pointed me in Gabe’s direction. I turned, saw Gabe, and the angels wept (provoked, in part, by a tight T-shirt and thick, styled-yet-somehow-carelessly-mussed hair). I stumbled, momentarily, but regained my composure.