Lunatic Fringe (2 page)

The college square stood empty, an
effect of the rain. A red banner advertising the Campus Socialist
Society dangled limply from one column of the Student Affairs
building. A folding table supporting stacks of fliers sat unmanned
on the sidewalk, its surface covered with a sheet of plastic. The
hand-painted words on a nearby sign, Milton Animal Rights (MAR),
lived up to their acronym as the rain washed the paint down the
posterboard. The interruption of what must have been bustling
activity added an air of the ominous to the campus, like a
prominently placed alleyway in a film noir. Lexie wondered how long
the eerie silence would last, hoping she could use it to steel
herself for the arrival of her new classmates.

By the time she pulled up outside Rice
Hall, the raindrops were thick and heavy. Deep puddles had already
formed and rivulets raced down the gutters. The dormitory was ugly,
and the weather did it no favors; it was a drab box of brick and
stucco from the seventies, when architects seemed to be the only
people for whom psychedelics did not inform their creative output.
The plain, two-story building seemed utterly out of place on the
campus, where stone Tudors and a Gothic sensibility, however false,
dictated the aesthetic.

Lexie sighed with equal parts relief
and anxiety as she turned off the engine. She was alone for the
moment, and she feared it would be her last moment like it for a
while. The raindrops fell cold and heavy on her scalp as she raced
to the dorm. She swiped her keycard and took the stairs two at a
time to reach her room on the second floor.

The dorm was as empty as the streets
below. She felt like the first one to arrive at a party, while the
host ran out for more booze. Lexie took in her new surroundings, a
simple room of cinder block and cheap wood paneling, reminiscent of
a bomb shelter or a prison. A meager mattress lay on a simple
wooden bed frame. There was a desk with an upholstered chair, a
small nightstand, a dresser built into the wall, and a closet. It
was carpeted, which seemed nice until Lexie noticed that its dark
burgundy concealed numerous blotchy stains. She pulled aside a pair
of drab beige curtains that framed the window and looked out onto a
massive oak tree.

“
Oh! Hello!” a voice hooted
from behind her. “Are you Alexis Clarion?”

Lexie turned to see a squash-shaped
girl standing in the doorframe.

“
I’m Anna, your R.A., or
‘Resident Advisor’.” She added air quotes with her fingers. “I see
you found your room. So listen, this is a single, right? You were
supposed to be on the first floor in an open double, but I’m afraid
your roomie had a bit of a . . .” Anna paused, pursing her lips and
wiggling them from side to side. “Well, I guess I can tell you
since you’re never going to meet her. She tried to kill herself.
Terrible, right? But she didn’t do it here! Ha ha!” She waved her
hands as though trying to strike down flying insects. “Don’t worry,
no crazy roommates for you. You get a single! Congratulations!
Everyone else in the dorm is going to hate you!”

Lexie stood dumbfounded as Anna sped
through her monologue. To hear the solemn silence of the dorm so
crudely interrupted made Lexie want to hide under the covers of her
bed. Unfortunately, everything, including her mother’s quilt, was
still in the truck, likely getting soaked as Anna prattled
on.

“
Anyway!” Anna said. “Neat!
You’re here and you’re settled. I have to run off to a meeting, but
make yourself at home. The upstairs bathrooms are girls only and
the downstairs are co-ed. The dining halls start serving dinner
tomorrow. And make sure you have your parking tag displayed on your
dashboard or else you could get towed. Oh! And here’s your
wolf-slash-rape whistle, you know, just in case.” She lurched
forward and threw an orange, plastic whistle around Lexie’s neck,
then pulled her into a thick and awkward hug. “Welcome home!”
Anna’s head fell just above Lexie’s breast. Lexie held her breath
until Anna released her.

With that, Anna hurried away, her
footsteps echoing down the linoleum stairs. The only other sound
was the buzz of the fluorescent lights casting their greenish hue
over the hallways. The silence chilled Lexie as it draped itself
throughout the space. The house she shared with her father had
always hummed with the muffled voices of news anchors, soap stars
and ad men, droning from the TV set in the living room. These
voices had been the soundtrack of her adolescence. Though their
absence discomfited her, she would not miss them.

Years before, Lexie’s father had been
injured on the job, leaving him stranded on his back in front of
the television all day, every day. When he slept, which was as
often as it was fitful, Lexie tiptoed around the house, haunting
her own home as she skulked from room to room. Her father had once
been a hunter, a hiker, a fisherman, and a climber. His skills as
an outdoorsman were what established his career at the Department
of Fish and Wildlife as a large game surveyor, and a shoddy tree
stand was what ended it.

Lexie imagined that this same woodsy
nature had also landed him his wife, the strange and beautiful
Summer Pace. Though Lexie had only vague memories of her
long-disappeared mother, she remembered her family’s shared love of
hiking and canoeing. Those airy days were long dead, though, and
now her father idled away his life flipping between the sordid
stories of daytime television.

Lexie looked forward to exploring the
unfamiliar quiet of her room, where she could unpack and collect
her thoughts. In two days, the rest of the students would arrive
and fill the halls with music, shouts, laughter, and all the other
sounds endemic to college life. She hadn’t even thought about
classes yet, focusing instead on the possibilities of skinny
dipping, drinking, staying out all night. These things she had
never done before, or at least not with the facility and comfort
she pictured her new, collegiate self to have. The new Lexie, she
decided, was going to be sexy, savvy, and strong. She would be
invited to all sorts of things, and, standing in her room’s
doorframe, she promised herself that she would always say
“yes.”

It was during her third trip to the bed
of her truck, the hazards tossing yellow light against the damp
asphalt of the darkening driveway, that Lexie finally saw more
people. The rain had dwindled to a light drizzle, and two pairs of
footsteps echoed on the pavement around the corner, accompanied by
the hushed conversation and giggles of young lovers. Lexie paused,
box in hand, wondering what to do. It felt somewhat pervy to wait
and see what these people were up to, but if they were two
well-disguised murderers, well, it’d be better to meet them
head-on. She reached to the back of her waistband, expecting to
find her mother’s knife, until she remembered that she had stowed
it in the duffle bag in the cab of the truck.

From the shadow of the dormitory, the
couple emerged holding hands. They were too far away for Lexie to
make out their faces, but already she felt foolish for having
panicked. The woman was tall, thin, and improbably blond. She was
so pale she could pass for another street lamp, her hair a spiky
nimbus about her head. The boy was smaller, squarish, with brown
hair cropped close to his scalp. He wore the cuffs of his shirt
buttoned, but the collar was open revealing the v-neck of the white
t-shirt he wore beneath it. Despite the rain, they were barely wet,
as though they had just emerged from shelter.

The pair clearly didn’t notice Lexie,
who stood frozen in uncertainty beside her truck, as though she had
interrupted them rather than the other way around. The luminous
girl leaned against her date, pushing him up against the brick wall
of the dormitory. She pressed her mouth to the boy’s, while his
hands wandered up and down her body. This was about to get awkward.
Lexie wouldn’t be able to get into the building without disturbing
them, but hiding in her truck seemed childish and absurd. What
would the new Lexie do in this situation?

Setting the box back in the truck bed,
she tiptoed to the driver’s side door, opened it, and slammed it
shut. The boy whipped his head toward the origin of the noise, but
the girl merely chuckled. They walked toward her, the blonde girl
leading the way.

The girl stuck out her hand, white in
the mottled street lights. With unflinching eye contact and a
friendly, robust voice, she introduced herself as Blythe and her
friend as Mitch. Mitch thrust his hand forward in greeting, and it
was then that Lexie noticed his smallish hands and smooth cheeks,
and realized that Mitch was not a boy, but a short, boyish-looking
woman. It was a lot for her to handle right away. But Mitch didn’t
comment on Lexie’s hesitation, and, after making brief and cordial
eye contact as they shook hands, he left the talking to Blythe, who
seemed determined to create a conversation.

“
Moving in?” Blythe asked.
Her pink lips parted to reveal a row of straight, white teeth. The
silver frames of her glasses complimented her skin, which was
nearly translucent in its paleness.

Lexie shoved her hands into her pockets
and shrugged, swinging her head to indicate the remaining boxes in
the truck. Her facility with speech evaded her, and she struggled
with her options before nodding. Her ears grew hot as she realized
that this was her first chance to make friends, and she was blowing
it with her awkward non-conversation. Blythe chugged onward, happy
to fill in the blanks.

“
Here,” Blythe said,
stepping toward the bed and lifting two boxes filled with books.
She foisted them onto Mitch and grabbed another two for herself.
Despite her thin arms and overall pallor, Blythe carried the heavy
boxes with ease. There were plenty of thin, sweet-faced women in
Lexie’s hometown, but most of them were content with letting their
men do all the heavy lifting. Blythe didn’t seem to subscribe to
this philosophy of deferral. With a soft grunt, she stepped towards
the propped-open door. The streetlight haze drew shadows along
Blythe’s face as she walked, her cheekbones slicing into the night
air around her face. Her eyes were eerily pale, the color one might
associate with ice water, but her lips looked naturally rosy. She
could have passed for a fairytale princess, all fair and bright, if
it weren’t for that short, spiky hair. Though it seemed unnaturally
blond, Blythe’s hair didn’t carry even a hint of root color, as if
its hue relied on a recessive albinism rather than a debt to a
bottle of bleach.

Only three trips between Lexie’s room
and her truck and they were done. It was a painless endeavor, save
for the moments they passed each other en route when Blythe would
wink, smirk, or stick out her tongue, making Lexie wonder how many
faces she had in her repertoire. Each theatrical expression left
Lexie feeling plain in comparison. She didn’t have the facility
with her body and face that Blythe seemed to possess without
thought. Mitch, on the other hand, seemed content with her role as
the affable lunk attached to the beautiful heroine. She simply
smiled, presenting deep dimples in response to her girlfriend’s
ebullience.

Mitch reminded Lexie of her father’s
old colleague in the forestry service, a massive, be-flanneled
woman named Leslie, whom everyone called “Wes.” Wes was unlike any
woman Lexie had met before. Wes was unlike most women in general.
She was taller than Lexie’s father and roughly the same width. Her
shoulders were like a linebacker’s, and her breasts were
perpetually glued to her chest in round, solid mounds, looking more
like vestigial organs than reproductive or sexual attributes. Lexie
liked watching Wes, the way she seemed so solid, so heavy, like all
the men Lexie had grown up around. She hadn’t known until meeting
Wes that women were made like this, that they wore rough work pants
and kept their hair buzzed and carried oil and grit under the short
fingernails on their rough, calloused hands. The first time Lexie
had met her, as a child on one of her father’s surveys, Lexie had
referred to Wes as “him.” It was her father who corrected her,
while Wes just leaned on the open passenger door of the pickup,
smiling a broad, gap-toothed grin. It wasn’t that Lexie thought Wes
was a man; to her six-year-old mind, it just seemed like the better
word to use. Thinking of Wes as a “woman” felt odd, but so did
thinking of her as a “man.” Wes was just Wes. That seemed to be the
consensus of all the guys working in the Department, including her
dad, so she didn’t give it too much thought. Now Mitch was the
second of such women that Lexie had ever met. She wondered if Mitch
was going to go into forestry, too, but then backpedaled when she
realized how bigoted that sounded in her head.

Inside Lexie’s new room, amid stacks of
boxes and bags, the three girls sighed with relief, but none more
than Lexie, who was eager to be rid of her unsettling new
friends.

“
Thanks, baby,” Blythe
said, resting on one of the larger boxes. Mitch smiled, her
doughboy cheeks growing rosy.

Lexie offered them a ride home out of
simple courtesy, though the thought of huddling in her cab with
them intimidated her. Blythe mercifully refused, choosing instead
to bestow some upperclassman wisdom on Lexie

“
Stay away from Phi Kappa
Phi,” Blythe said. “They’re a bunch of vile misogynists who hide
behind the safety of their little club.” Lexie looked at Mitch, who
shrugged and nodded. “Oh, and the professors in the philosophy
department aren’t much better,” Blythe added, rolling her
eyes.