“I was tired,” Melanie lies. “Good night. Happy New Year.” She pads off toward our room, and Mom gives me a New Year’s kiss and goes back to hers.
I’m nowhere near tired, so I sit out on the balcony and listen to the dwindling sounds of the hotel’s party. On the horizon, a lightning storm is brewing. I reach into my purse for my phone and, for the first time in months, open the photo album.
His face is so beautiful, it makes my stomach twist. But he seems unreal, not someone I would ever know. But then I look at me, the me in the photo, and I hardly recognize her, either, and not just because the hair is different, but because she seems different. That’s not me. That’s Lulu. And she’s just as gone as he is.
Tabula rasa. That’s what the reggae singer said. Maybe I can’t get my wish, but I can try to wipe the slate clean, try to get over this.
I allow myself look at the picture of Willem and Lulu in Paris for a long minute.
“Happy New Year,” I tell them.
And then I erase them.
Nineteen
JANUARY
College
Two feet of snow fall in Boston while I’m in Mexico, and the temperature never rises above freezing, so when I get back two weeks later, campus looks like a depressing gray tundra. I arrive a few days before classes start, with excuses of getting prepped for the new semester, but really because I could not handle being at home, under the watchful eye of the warden, one day longer. It had been bad enough in Cancún, but home, without Melanie to distract me—she took off for New York City the day after we got back, before we got a chance to ever resolve the weirdness that had settled between us—it was unbearable.
The Terrific Trio comes back from break full of stories and inside jokes. They spent New Year’s together at Kendra’s family’s Virginia Beach condo and went swimming in the snow, and now they are ordering themselves Polar Bear T-shirts. They’re nice enough, asking about my trip, but I find it hard to breathe with all that bonhomie, so I pile on my sweaters and parkas and trudge over to the U bookstore to pick up a new Mandarin workbook.
I’m in the foreign languages section when my cell phone rings. I don’t even need to look at the caller ID. Mom has been calling at least twice a day since I got back.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Allyson Healey.” The voice on the other end is high and winsome, the opposite of Mom.
“Yes, this is Allyson.”
“Oh, hello, Allyson. This is Gretchen Price from the guidance office.”
I pause, breathing through the sickening feeling in my stomach. “Yes?”
“I’m wondering if you might like to stop by my office. Say hello.”
Now I feel like I’m going to throw up right on the stacks of Buon Giorno Italiano. “Did my mother call you?”
“Your mother? I don’t think so.” I hear the sound of something knocking over. “Damn. Hang on.” There’s more shuffling and then she’s back on the line. “Look, I apologize for the last-minute notice, but that seems to be my MO these days. I’d love for you to come in before the term starts.”
“Umm, the terms starts the day after tomorrow.”
“So it does. How about today, then?”
They are going to kick me out. I’ve blown it in one term. They know I’m not a Happy College Student. I don’t belong in the catalog. Or here. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
That tinkling laugh again. “Not with me. Why don’t you come by—hang on.” There’s more shuffling of paper. “How about four?”
“You’re sure my mother didn’t call?”
“Yes, Allyson, I’m quite sure. So four?”
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, just getting-to-know-you stuff. I’ll see you at four.”
Gretchen Price’s office is in a crowded corner of the ivy-covered administration buildings. Stacks of books and papers and magazines are scattered everywhere, on the round table and chairs by the window, on the love seat, on her messy desk.
She is on the phone when I’m ushered in, so I just stand there in the doorway. She gestures for me to come inside. “You must be Allyson. Just move a pile off the chair and take a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”
I move a dirty Raggedy Ann doll with one of the braids chopped off and a stack of folders from one of the chairs. Some of the folders have sticky notes on them: Yes. No. Maybe. Paperwork slips out of one. It’s a printout of a college application, like the one I sent in a year ago. I shove it back into the folder and put it on the next chair.
Gretchen hangs up the phone. “So, Allyson, how’s it going?”
“It’s going fine.” I glance at all the applications, all the comers who want a spot like mine. “Great in fact.”
“Really?” She picks up a file, and I have the distinct impression my goose is cooked.
“Yep,” I say with all the chipperness I can muster.
“See, the thing is, I’ve been looking at your first-term grades.”
I feel tears spring to my eyes. She lured me here under false pretenses. She said I wasn’t in trouble, it was just a getting-to-know-you session. And I didn’t fail. I just got Cs!
She looks at my stricken face and motions for me to calm down with her hands. “Relax, Allyson,” she says in a soothing voice. “I’m not here to bust you. I just want to see if you need some help, and to offer it if that’s the case.”
“It’s my first term. I was adjusting.” I’ve used this excuse so much I’ve almost come to believe it.
She leans back in her chair. “You know, people tend think that college admissions is inherently unfair. That you can’t judge people from paper. But the thing is, paper can actually tell you an awful lot.” She takes a gulp from one of those coffee cups that kids paint. Hers is covered in smudgy pastel thumbprints. “Having never met you before, but judging just from what I’m seeing on paper, I suspect that you’re struggling a bit.”
She’s not asking me if I’m struggling. She’s not asking why I’m struggling. She just knows. The tears come, and I let them. Relief is more powerful than shame.
“Let me be clear,” Gretchen continues, sliding over a box of tissues. “I’m not concerned about your GPA. First-term slides are as common as the freshman fifteen. Oh, man, you should’ve seen my first-semester GPA.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Generally, struggling students here fall into two categories: Those getting used to the freedom, maybe spending a little too much time at the keg parties, not enough time in the library. They generally straighten out after a term or two.” She looks at me. “Are you pounding too many shots of Jägermeister, Allyson?”
I shake my head, even though by the tone of her question, it seems like she already knows the answer.
She nods. “So the other pattern is a bit more insidious. But it’s actually a predictor for dropouts. And that’s why I wanted to see you.”
“You think I’m going to drop out?”
She stares hard at me. “No. But looking at your records from high school and your first term, you fit a pattern.” She waves around a file, which obviously contains my whole academic history. “Students like you, young women, in particular, do extraordinarily well in high school. Look at your grades. Across the board, they’re excellent. AP, science classes, humanities classes, all As. Extremely high SAT scores. Then you get into college, which is supposedly why you’ve been working so hard, right?”
I nod.
“Well you get here, and you crumple. You’d be surprised how many of my straight-A, straight-and-narrow students wind up dropping out.” She shakes her head in dismay. “I hate it when that happens. I help choose who goes here. It reflects badly on me if they crash and burn.”
“Like a doctor losing a patient.”
“Great analogy. See how smart you are?”
I offer a rueful smile.
“The thing is, Allyson, college is supposed to be . . .”
“The best years of my life?”
“I was going to say nourishing. An adventure. An exploration. I’m looking at you, and you don’t seem nourished. And I’m looking at your schedule. . . .” She peers at her computer screen. “Biology, chemistry. Physics. Mandarin. Labs. It’s very ambitious for your first year.”
“I’m pre-med,” I say. “I have to take those classes.”
She doesn’t say anything. She takes another gulp of coffee. Then she says. “Are those the classes you want to take?”
I pause. Nobody has ever asked me that. When we got the course catalog in the mail, it was just assumed I’d tackle all the pre-med requirements. Mom knew just what I should take when. I’d looked at some electives, had mentioned that I thought pottery sounded cool, but I may as well have said I was planning on majoring in underwater basket weaving.
“I don’t know what I want to take.”
“Why don’t you take a look and see about switching things up a bit. Registration is still in flux, and I might be able to pull some strings.” She stops and pushes the catalog clear across the desk. “Even if you do wind up pre-med, you have four years to take these classes, and you have a lot of humanities requisites to get in too. You don’t need to jam everything together all at once. This isn’t medical school.”
“What about my parents?”
“What about your parents?”
“I can’t let them down.”
“Even if it means letting yourself down? Which I doubt they’d want for you.”
The tears come again. She hands me another tissue.
“I understand about wanting to please your parents, to make them proud. It’s a noble impulse, and I commend you for it. But at the end of the day, it’s your education, Allyson. You have to own it. And you should enjoy it.” She pauses, slurps some more coffee. “And somehow I imagine that your parents will be happier if they see your GPA come up.”
She’s right about that. I nod. She turns to her computer screen. “So, let’s just pretend we’re going to jiggle some classes around. Any idea of what you might like to take?”
I shake my head.
She grabs the course catalog and flips through it. “Come on. It’s an intellectual buffet. Archaeology. Salsa dancing. Child development. Painting. Intro to finance. Journalism. Anthropology. Ceramics.”
“Is that like pottery?” I interrupt.
“It is.” She widens her eyes and taps on her computer. “Beginning Ceramics, Tuesdays at eleven. It’s open. Oh, but it conflicts with your physics lab. Shall we postpone the lab, and maybe physics, for another term?”
“Cut them.” Saying it feels wonderful, like letting go of a bunch of helium balloons and watching them disappear into the sky.
“See? You’re already getting the hang of it,” Gretchen says. “How about some humanities, to balance you out? You’re going to need those to graduate anyway as part of your core curriculum. Are you more interested in ancient history or modern history? There’s a wonderful European survey. And a great seminar on the Russian Revolution. Or a fascinating American Pre-Revolution class that makes excellent use of our being so close to Boston. Or you could get started on some of your literature classes. Let’s see. Your AP exams tested you out of the basic writing requirement. You know, we could be devilish and slip you into one of the more interesting seminar classes.” She scrolls down her computer. “Beat Poetry. Holocaust Literature. Politics in Prose. Medieval Verse. Shakespeare Out Loud.”
I feel something jolt up my spine. An old circuit-breaker long since forgotten being tested out and sparking in the darkness.
Gretchen must see my expression, because she starts telling me about how this isn’t just any Shakespeare class, how Professor Glenny has very strong opinions on how Shakespeare should be taught, and how he has a cult following on campus.
