Lessons in Love (3 page)

Chris flicks the metal statue so it pings and pongs and then flicks my shoulder so I stop thinking. “Change of subject. Which of the new rules is the worst?”

“I don’t even know,” I say, looking out at the sun-kissed masses. “I remember my first day here — at this picnic, and how everyone looked like golden retrievers.” As if on cue, Malty, one of the campus hounds, presents in front of me and I reach down to pat her. I love dogs.

“You love dogs,” Chris nods, watching me fluff up Malty’s hair, pat her soft ears.

“Being allergic to cats gives one a natural affinity toward other domesticated creatures.”

“Is that what it does?”

“Yeah, that plus makes all feline-lovers seem automatically off-limits.” I say this and then think it sounds funny. “Do you get that?”

Chris crouches with me, so we’re the same height as Malty. “Yeah, like one of those things where if someone likes dogs it’s sort of a mental point in their favor. Like on your list of ideal qualities in a dateable.”

“Well put.” I hug Malty, resting my face on her clean, fluffy back, not caring that her hair will show up on my clothing for days to come. “I like Malty probably the best of all the resident dogs.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chris asks. “Can I just say how bizarre and senior-like it is that we’re talking about dogs when there’s clearly so much campus gossip and general buzz to catch up on?”

I nod, take a brief look at the crowd of students waiting for toasted hamburger buns, the others in the vegetarian line waiting for grilled zucchini sandwiches, and how this scene looks just like the catalogue pictures. Maybe there is truth in advertising. Then again, I notice the staff photographers aren’t around during the slushy hell of Farch (February — March) and they never snap up two girls bickering outside the dining hall, nor the tongue-probing that happens toward the end of a campus dance. But now they’re having a field day, with the tank topped masses all aglow from summer break, the guys with Frisbees, girls with their arms around one another, happy to be reunited.

Malty pants, waiting for me to stop patting her so she can grub for food. “Malty’s the best. She’s friendly without being exuberant, gentle but not a pushover, athletic but not particularly graceful…and cozy.”

“Can a being be cozy?” Chris shrugs. “Sounds like you just described yourself.”

I think back. “NO….well, maybe a little. Okay, yeah.”

This gives Chris an idea. “Let’s go randomly poll people about their favorite animal and ask them why and then laugh as we share the private joke that they’re really describing themselves.”

“Oh, good fun,” I say and pat him on the back. We head off in search of out pathetic though amusing psychological fun, passing by Harriet Walters — my constant classmate who waves but remains in her heated talk with my dad, who also nods — and Chili, who along with her brother sit listening to Jacob play the guitar. Chili is clearly smitten with Dalton Himmelman, who rather than being Jacob’s sidekick, is more his counterpart. Dalton’s part of that breed of boys who is witty as well as book-smart, slightly goofy, but good-looking enough to pull it off. Chili has positioned herself as any girl with a crush and a brain would — off to the side so it seems like she’s checking out Jacob’s mastery of the instrument when really she’s just vying for the closest seat near Dalton.

“We can go over there if you want,” Chris offers, looking to the widening circle around Jacob.

“I was going to say the same thing to you.” I squint at Chris. “Isn’t your boyfriend right there?” I make reference to Haverford Pomroy with my toe.

“Isn’t that
your
boyfriend right there?” Chris points with his toe toward the strumming offender — Jacob.

“Hey — you’re the one messing around with a taken guy,” I say, my voice full of warning. Chris and I hashed all this out over the summer — I’m not fully approving of his fling with Haverford, since Haverford has been in a long-term relationship with Ben Weiss.

“And you’re the one drooling over Jacob when your mythical boyfriend is….”

I clutch Chris’s shoulder. “Hey — don’t compare your fling thing with my steady one.”

Chris sighs. “Right. Sorry. When are you seeing Charlie anyway?”

“As fast as this week can fly by — he’s coming here on Friday.” My shoulders slump. “What the hell am I supposed to do with him on campus? This whole time, when I asked him to come, I kept thinking we’d be at my house.” I look through the trees, past the soccer field and can just make out the yellow of my house by the field hockey grass.

“Welcome to boarding life, babe.” Chris slips his arm around my shoulder. “There’s always Friday Night Flicks.”

“I’m supposed to take a college sophomore to see a rerun of an edited pg movie?” It sounds so lame I have to laugh. “I think dining hall food and homework sounds better.”

We walk around, interviewing people — teachers, students, boarders and day students, feeling like we’ve gained secret knowledge into their psyches — until somehow we wind up with Cordelia — a fellow faculty brat who I used to know — and Lindsay Parrish. Inside my body, a roiling as I wait for Lindsay to break — to show her true colors. But again, she is placid, listening to Cordelia talk about her favorite lizard.

“Izzy — we called him,” Cordelia says, her corkscrew curls are long now, mellower, and she looks older.

“Izzy the lizard?” Chris asks and I have to fight not cracking up because his tone is so serious. He looks at me and has to look away. “And what qualities did Izzy possess that made him your favorite.”

“Well, first of all, we couldn’t tell if Iz was male or female…” Cordelia starts. Cue laughter from Chris that he disguises with a cough. “But he — or she — was always getting into other people’s business, whatever you call that. Nosy, I guess. And she’d let you stroke her but then she’d suddenly bite — she was feisty. I liked that…”

It’s amazing, really, how accurate people have been in there descriptions. I make a mental note to remind Chris that he hooked up with Cordelia not once but twice back in his hetero days.

We’re about to move on, when Cordelia stops me with a hand on my forearm. “One more thing — Izzy was slimy.” I can tell from her wistful expression that Cordelia’s back in the age when she had Izzy as a pet, but the rest of us are right here in the now.

“What about me?” Lindsay asks. “Do you want to know which animal I prefer and why?”

Chris bites his upper lip, his signal to me that we can bolt if I so choose. But I’m feeling lazy, and tired from the unfamiliar back-to-boarding routine, so I tuck a strand of my short hair behind my ear and wait. “Sure.”

With a serenity bordering on psychotic, Lindsay stares me straight in the eyes. “I like Gloria.”

“The cat in Deals?” Cordelia asks. She’s probably taking notes on all this — to use for later and so she can be more like her Hadley Idol, La Linds. Gloria is butterscotch colored and I do my best to avoid her, like I do all cats.

“Yes. She’s superbly beautiful, choosy about whom she likes…” Lindsay pauses and swings her eyes over toward Jacob’s circle of friends. The group has widened so it’s all-inclusive — with faculty members nodding in time to the Dylan lyrics like they have some hope in hell of retaining their youths, campus couples clutching hands, the stoners psyched that the buffet is endless and the tunes are good, and gaggles of girls swoon over Jacob and his posse.

It takes me a second to realize Lindsay looked over there on purpose. As though she wants to make a reference to Jacob, to someone she knows links us, someone she knows still means something to me. But someone she’s tied to with her position as Jacob’ co-head monitor. “So, to recap and add on…” Lindsay say, staring at me again. “Gloria is stunning, socially discerning, and…” she looks at Chris to make sure he’s getting this. “She can hide whenever and wherever she likes, she never gets caught for any of her infractions…” That is true — cats somehow sleek through a room, knocking cups over with their tails or scratching your thighs with their claws, but they’re hard to catch in the act. “And when you least expect, Gloria’s there.” Lindsay’s voice hasn’t changed, her pitch is still calm and collected. But her eyes are hard now. “So that’s why I like her. She has the power to evade, disrupt, and surprise.”

Chris clues in and stops Lindsay in her tracks. “And all while looking like the sexiest feline ever to grace the campus. Got it. Fascinating. See you.”

He pulls me by my shirt hem and we go to shake off her craziness, the impending roommate draw tonight, and the fact that classes start tomorrow, with some good old fashioned lemonade.

By the time we (and by we I mean my fellow Fruckners) get back to the dorm filled with too much punch and hot dogs, it’s nearly eight pm and time for our dorm meeting. Each one of the dorms meets individually on this first night before classes. Day students are dining with their parents or out having one last hurrah before capitulating to class, but we — the boarding population — are huddled in the common room like a vision of slumber party comfort from a catalogue.

There are females on every available surface — couches, floor, perched on the arms of the sofas, leaning against the white trimmed windows. Some are involved in back-to-school chit chat, others are already complaining to one another about the bathrooms (they haven’t been updated since the school ruled to allow girls to wear pants…), and a couple are doing all that typical girl stuff, braiding hair and giggling.

Chili watches them with a mix of envy and ridicule.

“You know,” I say softly, “If you want to go be with them, you can. You’re new — new new, as opposed to fake new, like I am, and you should meet people.”

Chili shrugs. “It’s like I can’t decide yet which camp I’m in — or even what the choices are.”

I lean back onto the sofa from my position on the floor and breath in, wondering why my dad insisted I join this life, why I couldn’t be with him, doing our back-to-school ritual of going out to dinner and eating by the harbor. “Well, that’s understandable,” I say to Chili. “But you will, just give it time. I know that’s one of those annoying things people say when you’re hoping they can spell out an answer for you, but it’s just the way it is.”

“What about you?” Chili stretches her legs out so they’re under the narrow cherry wood coffee table. In a few weeks, there’ll be outdated magazines, some with pages torn out on this table, along with random text books and someone’s overly lined
The Scarlet Letter
. Certain things about dorm life I already know — those details I sucked up from visiting Arabella or Lila Lawrence, my first year. There’s a particular grace and sleepy sameness to prep school life — like if you page through the yearbooks from any given decade, the only thing that’s markedly different are the haircuts and cut of the jeans, though even those two things cycle through, too.

I furrow my brow, thinking about the day last spring when Jacob and I cracked each other up while looking at college catalogues and thinking basically the same thing. “You know, I just sometimes wonder…” I start to Chili as Lindsay and Mrs. Ray, the dorm mother, come in the room and silence is ushered in with them, “Am I making a difference anywhere? Are we all just repeating the same classes and conversations as the people who graduated before us?”

Photos line the school and dorm walls; black and white grainy pictures and later the colored ones, of head monitors and award-winning students, times gone by. Part of me feels like it’s great to be part of tradition (Go Hadley!) and another suspects that this, like any place where masses of people grow up, is a treadmill that drops you off at one place and swings back to collect someone else.

“Today is a day that changes history,” Lindsay says, gathering everyone’s attention — even mine since I figured she’d start with the standard room draw into dorm rules and how important bonding is and so on (perhaps while giving me an evil look).

All the hair braiding, massages, and whispers about summer and the picnic fade as Lindsay, looking poised and still dressed in her outfit while the rest of us have downgraded to sweats and aging t-shirts, tells us the news.

“As many of you know, it’s long been considered unfair that the boys of Hadley have no commute while we, the fairer species, have to trudge nearly two miles every day, even in the middle of winter.”

No one points out that it’s good exercise, or that many a Hadley girl has used this distance to the dorm to their advantage — no teacher can ask you to go quickly and get the homework or book you left in your room, since by the time you’d return, class would be halfway finished. Only Chloe Swain, who up until right now I hadn’t even seen since she’s blocked by a few other girls on the far side of the room, speaks up.

“Sometimes,” Chloe says, “It’s kind of an advantage to have the space from campus.”

She doesn’t say why, exactly, but if memory serves (and mine usually does), I seem to recall a rumor about Chloe and her old boyfriend Matt Stone (a guy who should have added a ‘d’ to his last name). Chili leans in, “What did Chloe mean by that?”

I shake my head and whisper, “I don’t know — sometimes people sneak back during the day and, you know…” I turn my attention away from Chili’s ear and toward the front, where Lindsay is outright glaring at me. There. Finally. She broke, and over nothing — just a little whispering. I look her right in the eye, determined to meet her intensity, but as soon as our eyes meet, her face changes back to bland. Her smile is even, her face turned slightly upward to me giving her the appearance of someone open, concerned, and patient.

“Regardless of any potential benefits the girls have from our distance to campus, the primary concern for me as co-head monitor, is to make sure certain issues are addressed. “Over the summer I worked with faculty and administration and the first big item on my list…” Lindsay looks at Mrs. Ray, ever the dorm mother in her long corduroy skirt and maroon cardigan, and takes a breath. “Bishop House is no longer a girls’ dorm. As of tonight, for the first time since its construction in 1801, Bishop will have boys in the beds.”

Cue laughter from girls who hear beds and boys in the same sentence and may as well be playing spin the bottle.