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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
As I passed, she lifted her arm. It was Gates Medkowski. "Hey," she said.
We almost made eye contact, but then we didn't. It made me unsure of whether she was addressing me, which was an uncertainty I often felt when spoken to. I kept walking.
"Hey," she said again. "Who do you think I'm talking to? We're the only ones here." But her voice was kind; she wasn't making fun of me.
"Sorry," I said.
"Are you a freshman?"
I nodded.
"Are you going to your dorm right now?"
I nodded again.
"I assume you don't know this, but you're not allowed in the dorm during classes." She swung her legs around, righting herself. "None of us are," she said. "For Byzantine reasons that I wouldn't even try to guess at. Seniors are allowed to roam, but roaming only means outside, the library, or the mail room, so that's a joke."
I said nothing.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yes," I said and began to cry.
"Oh God," Gates said. "I didn't mean to upset you. Here, come sit down." She was patting the bench beside her, and then she stood, walked toward me, set one arm around my back -- my shoulders were heaving -- and guided me toward the bench. When we were sitting, she passed me a blue bandanna that smelled of incense; even through the blur of my tears, I was interested by the fact that she carried this accessory. I hesitated to blow my nose -- my snot would be on Gates Medkowski's bandanna -- but my whole face seemed to be leaking.
"What's your name?" she said.
"Lee." My voice was high and shaky.
"So what's wrong? Why aren't you in class or study hall?"
"Nothing's wrong."
She laughed. "For some reason, I don't think that's true."
When I told her what had happened, she said, "Van der Hoef likes to come off like the dragon lady. God knows why. Maybe it's menopause. But she's actually pretty nice most of the time."
"I don't think she likes me."
"Oh, don't worry. It's still so early in the school year. She'll have forgotten all about this by November."
"But I left in the middle of class," I said.
Gates waved one hand through the air. "Don't even think about it," she said. "The teachers here have seen everything. We imagine ourselves as distinct entities, but in their eyes, we merge into a great mass of adolescent neediness. You know what I mean?"
I nodded, though I was pretty sure I had no idea; I'd never heard someone close to my own age talk the way she was talking.
"Ault can be a tough place," she said. "Especially at first."
At this, I felt a new rush of tears. She knew. I blinked several times.
"It's like that for everyone," she said.
I looked at her, and, as I did, I realized for the first time that she was very attractive: not pretty exactly, but striking, or maybe handsome. She was nearly six feet tall and had pale skin, fine features, eyes of such a washed-out blue they were almost gray, and a massive amount of long light brown hair that was a rough texture and unevenly cut; in places, in the sunlight, there were glints of gold in it. As we'd been talking, she'd pulled it into a high, loose bun with shorter pieces of hair falling around her face. In my own experience, creating such a perfectly messy bun required a good fifteen minutes of maneuvering before a mirror. But everything about Gates seemed effortless. "I'm from Idaho, and I was the biggest hayseed when I got here," she was saying. "I practically arrived on a tractor."
"I'm from Indiana," I said.
"See, you must be way cooler than I was because at least Indiana is closer to the East Coast than Idaho."
"But people here have been to Idaho. They ski there." I knew this because Dede Schwartz, one of my two roommates, kept on her desk a framed picture of her family standing on a snowy slope, wearing sunglasses and holding poles. When I'd asked her where it was taken, she'd said Sun Valley, and when I'd looked up Sun Valley in my atlas, I'd learned it was in Idaho.
"True," Gates said. "But I'm not from the mountains. Anyway, the important thing to remember about Ault is why you applied in the first place. It was for the academics, right? I don't know where you were before, but Ault beats the hell out of the public high school in my town. As for the politics here, what can you do? There's a lot of posturing, but it's all kind of meaningless."
I wasn't certain what she meant by posturing -- it made me think of a row of girls in long white nightgowns, standing up very straight and balancing hardcover books on their heads.
Gates looked at her watch, a man's sports watch with black plastic straps. "Listen," she said. "I better get going. I have Greek second period. What's your next class?"
"Algebra. But I left my backpack in Ancient History."
"Just grab it when the bell rings. Don't worry about talking to Van der Hoef. You can sort things out with her later, after you've both cooled off."
She stood, and I stood, too. We started walking back toward the Schoolhouse -- it seemed I was not returning to South Bend after all, at least not today. We passed the roll call room, which during the school day functioned as the study hall. I wondered if any of the students were looking out the window, watching me walk with Gates Medkowski.
From PREP, by Curtis Sittenfeld
Copyright ) 2005 by Curtis Sittenfeld
Published by arrangement with Random House, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
