Class (3 page)

Nick sneezed violently and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Then he sneezed again.

“Jesus, man,” Tom exclaimed in disgust.

“Sorry,” Nick apologized. “Allergies.”

“Bless you,” Eliza murmured from the back.

Tom loosened his canary yellow belt a notch and shifted away from Nick. Obviously his sneezy new roommate couldn’t wait to invite him camping. They could have a gay old time in their tent or yurt or whatever, drinking hot toddies and wiping each other’s
nose and rear-ending each other. Damn it to hell, why couldn’t school just start already so he could get the next four years over with and start working for his dad? He didn’t need any stupid orientation. He was already pretty fucking oriented, and all compasses pointed toward four long years of mise-fucking-ry, starting with an entire year rooming with this allergic twat from Manhattan.

Professor Rosen started up the engine. “Here comes our last passenger—finally. Scoot over, boys.”

Shipley had smoked another cigarette while she looked for a parking space. She wasn’t even sure if she was smoking correctly, but just imagining what her mother would think if she saw the car’s ashtray stuffed with old butts gave her a singular thrill.

“There were no spots left so I had to park in the grass,” she told the professor. “Hope that’s okay.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and contemplated where to sit. Eliza was all the way in the back, squashed between three girls wearing matching pink T-shirts.

“Sit here!” Two boys parted ways, clearing a more than adequate place for her between them. One of the boys wore the same oatmeal-colored J. Crew beach tunic she’d bought as a swimsuit cover-up last summer. The flaps of his wool hat barely covered the headphones of his Walkman. The other boy wore blue seersucker Bermuda shorts and had to crouch to keep from hitting his closely shaved head on the roof of the van.

Shipley sank into the seat as the van eased out of the parking lot and down the hill toward town. Warm wind whipped in through the open windows, blowing her blond hair backward.

“That breeze feels so good!” one of the girls in the back cried.

“Amazing!” her friend agreed.

“Awesome!” the third one chimed in.

“Listen, I’m Tom.” The big preppy boy thrust his right hand at Shipley. “From Bedford,” he added with the implied assumption that Shipley would know what he was talking about. And she did. Bedford, New York, was Greenwich, Connecticut’s smaller kissing cousin. It was hunt country, as in horses and hounds. Shipley had ridden in pony trials in Bedford almost every weekend when her old pony was still sound. “And that’s Nick over there.” Tom glanced at the other boy. “Don’t even try calling him Nicholas. I did and he almost bit me in the sac.”

“Oi!” Professor Rosen shouted from behind the wheel.

Eliza snorted and kicked the back of Shipley’s seat. Nick grinned. “I’m Nick,” he said in a loud voice. He pulled his headphones off and leaned toward Shipley. He smelled like basil, sort of. “You know the person driving, our anal leader?” he whispered.

Shipley giggled. “What about him?”

“He’s a
she,
” Tom murmured in her other ear. “But she seems like kind of a dick anyway.”

“Her name is Professor Darren Rosen,” Nick continued. “I’m pretty sure she teaches Freshman English.”

Eliza stared out the window as she eavesdropped on their conversation. She’d actually seen Tom’s and Nick’s ears perk up when Shipley got into the van. They’d pointed, like horny bird dogs. Her father used to have two springer spaniels that he used for hunting ducks. She knew pointing when she saw it.

The van paused at a stop sign and a pale, skinny jogger ran by, his maroon Dexter basketball jersey flapping loosely against his limbs. He reminded Tom of Salvador Dalí’s famous painting of dripping clocks. He’d been running so long, he was melting.

“Pay attention, folks!” Professor Rosen announced. “We’re about to cross the Kennebec River. Two miles downstream is our
camp. If anyone has to go pee-pee, find a spot
away
from the river. It’s ramen noodles for dinner. You’ll be eating a lot of ramen this winter, so why not get used to it now?”

“Ew. Yuck!
” The three pink-T-shirted girls moaned a chorus of dismay from the back.

A farm flashed by. A trailer home. A dilapidated barn. More clover, more daisies, more buzzing bees. Motionless cows blinked at the van, insects hovering over their heads in clouds.

“Damn. Did you see that? This whole geographic region is freaking depressing as hell,” Tom complained.

“Hey, man,” Nick countered. “People live here. And they probably hate us, you know? Rich city kids turning up to go to college in their town? Littering on their farms? Driving up the price of bacon or coffee or whatever.”

Nick could feel his earlobes flush a deep, hot pink. He tugged on the flaps of his hat and glanced self-consciously at Shipley, who was busy pretending to gaze dreamily out the window while secretly admiring Tom’s bulging triceps. Eliza continued to glare at the back of Tom’s meat-headed skull, while Tom marveled at the way in which the sunlight reflected off the tiny blond hairs on the tops of Shipley’s thighs, causing them to sparkle. The van turned onto an old logging road that led directly into the woods. It barreled over a pothole, tossing its passengers together as the trees enveloped them.

2

T
he relationship between town and college is often fraught with tension. The town would like to think it doesn’t need the college, however pretty, to draw visitors. After all, the town has its old mill, its tannery, its rushing river, its dramatic dam. Elm Street is still almost postcard-perfect despite the blight of Dutch elm disease. The pizza and pancakes aren’t half bad. The high school wins the regional championships in both basketball and hockey nearly every year. And the townies are friendly, for the most part.

“Of course you don’t have any money,” Tragedy snapped at her brother. She manipulated her ever-present Rubik’s cube, scrambling it up so she could solve it again. “Neither of us does. And we never will, unless we get the fuck out of Dodge.”

Adam and Tragedy Gatz were not related, but they were brother and sister nonetheless. Tragedy was adopted, and she never let anyone forget it. Their parents, Ellen and Eli, were hippie subsistence farmers and crafts fair vendors. They had both grown up in Brooklyn and had dropped out of Dexter their junior
year after taking too much acid and missing too many classes. They got married and, with their parents’ help, bought a dilapidated horse farm right there in Home. Instead of horses, they raised sheep. Ellen spun wool and Eli welded hand-wrought oversized fork, knife, and spoon-shaped fireplace tongs. They ate their own grass-fed lamb and pesticide-free organic vegetables. They baked their own bread and made their own sheep’s milk cheese and yogurt. And they gave birth to a son, Adam. When Adam was four years old, Ellen and Eli adopted the infant daughter of Hector Machado, a Brazilian sheep trader who’d died of a heart attack right on their doorstep, or so the story went. As he lay dying, Hector asked the Gatzes to take care of his baby daughter, whose mother had already died in childbirth. The baby had been named Gertrudes Imaculada, after her mother. The Gatzes renamed her Tragedy, after their favorite Bee Gees song, and they raised her as one of their own.

Right now Adam and Tragedy were sitting in Adam’s battered white Volkswagen GTI on the shoulder of the road leading through campus, directly opposite Dexter College’s new Student Union. They were arguing about whether or not to try and finagle some free coffee. Of course Tragedy would be the one to do the finagling; she always was.

“I don’t see why you can’t just make coffee at home,” Adam said, trying to be reasonable.

But Tragedy was never reasonable. “Doesn’t taste the same. Especially not with ewe’s milk.” She set her Rubik’s cube down on the dashboard. “A feta-cheese-fucking-cino?” She stepped out of the car. “No, thank you,” she added and slammed the door.

The freshmen had left for their orientation trips, and registration for the upperclassmen wouldn’t begin until the day after tomorrow. Except for the few older students who’d arrived early, the campus was quiet. Adam watched his sister cross Homeward Av
enue and stride purposefully up the walk to the Student Union, her waist-length ponytail bobbing behind her.

It was Tragedy’s fault Adam had graduated from high school virtually friendless. Over the course of his senior year, Tragedy had grown six inches taller in as many months. Her hips and chest developed at the same rapid rate, forcing her to switch from junior misses to women’s sizes. “Your sister is ridiculously hot, man,” Adam’s classmates would protest. “How can you stand it? After all, you’re not even related.” Then someone seeded the rumor that Adam’s relationship with his sister was more than brotherly, and instantly both he and Tragedy became social outcasts.

Of course nothing had ever transpired to justify the rumors, but Tragedy kept right on developing, and for the population of Home High and the town of Home itself, that was justification enough. The irony was, Adam didn’t see it. He didn’t see what was so ridiculously hot about his sister. She was simply his little sister—annoying, confrontational as hell, impossibly demanding, constantly around, and because beggars can’t be choosers, his only friend.

Tragedy studied the menu board on the wall of the Student Union’s new Starbucks café, trying to make sense of the ridiculous Italianate lingo. Tall was small, grande was bigger, and venti was the biggest. A few Starbucks had opened in Maine’s larger towns—it had been reported that the chain was growing at a rate of one new outpost per day—but this was Home’s first, and her first time ever inside one. It was very clean and orderly, definitely a step up from Boonies, the greasy muffin shop littered with old newspapers and overflowing ashtrays and equipped with the most disgusting bathroom in New England.

The pimply guy behind the counter stared her up and down. He was probably wondering why he’d never laid eyes on her before. She was kind of hard to miss.

“I only have a dollar,” she told him boldly. “But I don’t want to spend it.” She was fond of getting away with murder. It was her favorite sport.

“That’s okay,” the guy responded, staring moronically at her chest. He dragged his palms across the green fabric of his apron. “What can I get for you?”

She glanced up at the board again, searching for the most expensive beverage they offered. “I’ll take a venti mocha cappuccino thingy with lots of whipped cream and chocolate powder and a couple extra shots of espresso. And give me one of those chocolate biscotti cookies too, please. Oh, and make sure you use fair trade coffee.”

The guy’s pimply cheeks turned pink. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘fair trade.’ It’s okay if you can’t pay for it.”

She stared at him, enraged. How hard was it to know what was going on in the world? How hard was it to use your mind? “You sell coffee but you don’t know what fair trade means?” she demanded with disgust. “And they call this a
liberal
arts college. Who grew that coffee? Who picked it? Who’s profiting here?” She blinked her feathery black eyelashes angrily. “I’m still in high school, but I can guarantee you that I’m going to college someplace where people know what’s what. Maybe not even in this fucking country!”

The boy blinked mutely back at her, obviously depressed that he’d dropped so miserably low in her supreme estimation. “Do you still want your mochaccino?” he asked timidly. “I’ll throw in an extra biscotti.”

“Fine. Sure.” Fair trade or not, she really did want the coffee.

She turned her back as the guy fussed with the machinery. Afternoon sun flooded into the Student Union through a giant wall of glass facing the road. Adam tooted his horn and she
waved at him, waggling the fingers of her left hand to indicate that she’d be back in the car in five minutes, tops.

Adam was such a loser. In two days he’d be starting college at Dexter as a day student. Dexter, of all places! So what that it gave Maine residents discounted tuition? So what that it rated up there with the Ivies and had a brand-new Starbucks café? So what that it had been selected as 1992’s Prettiest New England College by both
USA Today
and
Yankee
magazine? Adam could have gone to California or Colorado or Florida or the Sorbonne, in France. Even U-Maine Orono—where most of Home High’s college-bound graduates went—would have been ten times more interesting. Orono was far enough away that he would have had to live in a dorm. He would have been able to eat nonorganic, artery-clogging, delicious dining hall food. And she could have left Home to visit him.

Dexter prided itself on being part of the community and encouraged Maine residents to apply. Because Adam had graduated from high school with honors, Dexter had given him a free ride, but due to the housing squeeze, it had fallen short of providing him with a room. He would be a day student and continue to live at home. This was fine with him. He hadn’t even signed up for the freshman orientation trip, claiming that it was too expensive. “I know where I am,” he’d insisted. “I don’t need any orientation.”

In truth, Adam had no idea where he was. He was eighteen years old and bursting with potential. He liked to read and play tetherball. He could pick a shitload of blueberries. He could weld. He could shear a sheep. But he’d lived every one of his eighteen years with a sense of detachment that frustrated him. When would he start to
live,
full throttle? When would he begin to engage with his surroundings? Even the Dexter College campus,
which had existed prettily in the background throughout his entire life, felt strange and menacing. He felt as if he were seeing it for the first time. The buildings were pristine. The grass was green. The chapel was as white as his car had probably been when it was new, long before his time. He was about to spend the next four years of his life here, patrolling these green lawns, attending seminars in these immaculate brick buildings, or concerts and lectures in the quaint white chapel, but right now he was too terrified to even get out of the car. Tragedy was right, he was a pansy.