“He’s pre-law,” Mary Katherine said, heading for the door.
“He’s twenty,” Amie muttered after Mary Katherine had stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind her. “And she’s sixteen.”
“Quit being a mother, Amie,” Veronica said, straightening her headband. “I’m going back to my room. I suppose I’ll see you in the morning.” She glanced at me. “I don’t want to be bitchy, but a little advice?”
She said it like she was asking for permission, so I nodded, solely out of politeness.
“Mind the company you keep,” she said. With that gem, which I assumed was a shot at Scout, she walked to Amie. They exchanged air kisses.
“Nighty night, all,” Veronica said, and then she was gone.
When I turned around again, Amie was gone, her bedroom door closing behind her.
“Charming,” I muttered, and headed back to my room.
It was earlier than I would have normally gone to sleep, but given the travel, the time change, and the change in circumstances, I was exhausted. Finding the stone-walled and stone-floored room chilly even in the early fall, I exchanged the uniform for flannel pajamas, turned off the light, and climbed into bed.
The room was dark, but far from quiet. The city bustled around me, the thrum of traffic from downtown Chicago creating a backdrop of sound, even on a Sunday night. Although the stone muffled it, I wasn’t used to even the low drone of noise. I had been born and bred amongst acres of lawns and overhanging trees—and when the sun went down, the town went silent.
I stared at the ceiling. Tiny yellow-green dots emerged from the darkness. The plaster above me was dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars, I assumed pasted there by a former St. Sophia’s girl. As my mind raced, wondering about tomorrow and repeating my to-do list—find my locker, find my classes, manage not to get humiliated in said classes, figure out where Scout had gone—I counted the stars, tried to pick out constellations, and glanced at the clock a dozen times.
I tossed and turned in the bed, trying to find a comfortable position, my brain refusing to still even as I lay exhausted, trying to sleep.
I must have drifted off, as I woke suddenly to a pitch-black room. I must have been awakened by the closing of the hallway door. That sound was immediately followed by the scuffle of tripping in the common room—stuff being knocked around and mumbled curses. I threw off the covers and tiptoed to the door, then pressed my ear to the wood.
“Damn coffee table,” Scout muttered, footsteps receding until her bedroom door opened and closed. I glanced at the clock. It was one fifteen in the morning. When the common room was quiet, I put a hand to the doorknob, twisted it, and carefully pulled open the door. The room was dark, but a line of light glowed beneath Scout’s door.
I frowned. Where had she been until one fifteen in the morning? Exercise seemed seriously unlikely at this point.
That mystery in hand, I closed the door again and went back to bed, staring at the star-spangled ceiling until sleep finally claimed me.
3
My bedroom was cold and dark when the alarm—which I’d moved next to the bed—went off. Not nearly awake enough to actually sit upright, I fumbled for the OFF button and forced my eyes open. My stomach grumbled, but I didn’t think I was up for food. I already had butterflies—the combination of new school, new classes, new girls. Questionable high school cafeteria fare probably wasn’t going to help.
After a minute of staring at the ceiling, I glanced over at the nightstand. The red light on my phone flashed, a sign that I had messages waiting. I grabbed it, flipped it open . . . and smiled.
“SAFE & SOUND IN GERMANY,” read the text from my mom. “FIGHTING JET LAG.”
There was a message from Dad, as well, a little less businesslike (which was pretty much how it worked with them): “HAVE A HOT DOG FOR US! LV U, LILS!”
I smiled, closed the phone again, and put it back on the nightstand. Then I threw off the covers and forced my feet to the floor, the stone cold even beneath socks. I stumbled to the closet and grabbed a robe, then grabbed my toiletries and a towel, already stacked on the bureau, prepped and ready for my inaugural shower.
When I opened my bedroom door, Scout, already in uniform (plaid skirt, sweater, knee-high pair of fuzzy boots), smiled at me from the common room couch. She held up the Vogue. “I’ll read about skinny chicks in Milan. When you get back, we’ll go down to breakfast.”
“Sure,” I mumbled. But halfway to the hallway door, I stopped and glanced back. “Were you exercising until one fifteen this morning?”
Scout glanced up at me, fingers still pinched around the edge of a half-flipped page. “I’m not admitting whether I was or was not exercising, but if you’re asking if I was doing whatever I was doing until one fifteen, then yes.”
I opened and closed my mouth as I tried to work out what she’d just said. I settled on, “I see.”
“Seriously,” she said, “it’s important stuff.”
“Important like what?”
“Important like, I really can’t talk about it.”
The room was silent for a few seconds. The set of her jaw and the stubbornness in her eyes said she wasn’t going to budge. And since I was standing in front of her in pajamas with a fuzzy brain and teeth that desperately needed introducing to some toothpaste, I let it go.
“Okay,” I said, and saw relief in her eyes. I left her with the magazine and headed for the bathroom, but there was no way “exercise” was going to hold me for long. Call it too curious, too nosy. But one day after my arrival in Chicago, she was the closest friend I had. And I wasn’t about to lose her to whatever mess she was involved in.
She was on the couch when I returned (much more awake after a good shower and toothbrushing), her legs beneath her, her gaze still on the magazine on her lap.
“FYI,” she said, “if you don’t hurry, we’re going to be left with slurry.” She looked up, her countenance solemn. “Trust me on this—you don’t want slurry.”
Fairly confident she was right—the name being awful enough—I dumped my toiletries in my room and slipped into today’s version of the uniform. Plaid skirt. Tights to ward off the chill. Long-sleeved button-up shirt and V-neck sweater. A pair of ice blue boots that were shorter but equally as fuzzy as Scout’s.
I stuffed books and some slender Korean notebooks I’d found in a Manhattan paper store (I had a thing for sweet office supplies) into my bag and grabbed my ribboned room key, then closed the door behind me, slipping the key into the lock and turning it until it clicked.