Back home, she rarely met anyone without having her brother serve as context. She was always “Cady, Eric Archer’s little sister.” Everyone knew or had heard of Eric Archer; he was the type of kid in high school whom people referred to by his full name. Then, no one had been a stranger. Now, everyone was. And Cady was making it worse. Why couldn’t she tell her roommates she had a brother who died? Cady told herself she didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but there was the more selfish reason; she didn’t want to be tragic. Tragedy taints a person, and no one wants to touch that sadness, just in case it spreads. A genius brother was one thing, a brother dead by suicide was another. She so badly wanted to rewrite that story, to give him, both of them, a better ending. And if that wasn’t possible, she didn’t want to tell the story at all.
Cady stepped away from the window and returned to Eric’s notebook. Maybe Eric could still introduce her to some people after all. She flipped through its pages once again, looking for any names mentioned. “Prokop” appeared several times on the earlier pages, once where Eric had jotted down “Prof Prokop’s” office hours, and Cady vaguely recalled the name as the professor who advised Eric on his Bauer Award submission, a project he never finished. She wondered if his office hours were the same this year.
There was another note that stood out to Cady because it wasn’t in Eric’s handwriting. It was on one of the earlier pages, when Eric’s calculations were still in neatly printed pencil, except on one page there were blue-pen corrections on one of Eric’s proofs. And in the margin the pen said, “Cheers!—Nikos.”
Nikos. An unusual name like that should be easy to find on Facebook, Cady looked him up on her phone and quickly found him. She enlarged his profile picture—chiseled features, dark hair and eyes, looking dapper in a tuxedo. Damn, Eric, she thought, you couldn’t have introduced me to him sooner? She clicked around his profile: He was a senior physics major like Eric, so it made sense they had classes together. Skimming his groups, she saw he was a member of Harvard Intramural Squash Team and University Choir. Cady sang in the chamber choir in high school and had considered going out for one of the choral groups on campus, an idea that had just become more appealing.
Cady heard the suite door open and close from inside her bedroom; one of her roommates must have come home. She got up and poked her head out to see which one it was, secretly hoping it was Ranjoo, just in time to see the door to Andrea’s bedroom close behind her.
Cady stepped out and walked to Andrea’s bedroom door, hesitating before giving a light knock. “Andrea, hey, it’s—”
“I’m changing!” Andrea yelled from inside.
“—Cady,” she said only to herself. So much for roommate bonding.
She felt awkward just waiting for Andrea to emerge, so she padded down the hall toward the communal women’s bathroom, half-intending to wash up for bed and half-hoping to find someone to persuade her not to, but no one else was wandering the halls. She pushed her shoulder against the door’s smudgy steel panel. A girl was showering in one of the near stalls, and the smallest sliver of visible flesh between the curtain and the tiled wall made Cady feel like a pervert. She turned her back to the row of showers and put her toothbrush and paste on the edge of a sink, clean except for a squiggle of one anonymous hair. She would have to get used to this communal bathroom thing. Growing up, Eric ceded bathroom territory to her entirely; she had only his ginger beard shavings with which to contend, and they weren’t much. Eric was cowed by the sheer force of his sister’s feminine mystique; out of respect or fear, he always gave Cady and her strange girl-things like tampons, body scrub, and flat iron a wide berth, although sometimes he did steal her Herbal Essence shampoo. She would catch him smelling of roses or mangoes or whatever the scent du jour was and bust him. “It was the jojoba that gave me away, wasn’t it? Damn you, jojoba!”
She looked in the mirror, smiling at the memory, and swept her hair up into a high bun.
The main door to the ladies’ room swung open and Andrea entered, dressed in purple plaid pajamas and lavender slippers. “Oh, hi,” she said, oddly bashful. “Sorry, I was changing.”
“Yeah, no worries.” Cady smiled reassuringly. “How was dinner?”
“Fine.” Andrea set her matching purple caddy of toiletries on the sink next to her.
The conversation was slower to warm up than the faucet water. Cady bent to wash her face. “Ranjoo is still out.”
“I know.” Andrea squeezed a line of toothpaste onto her electric toothbrush with an intensity of focus beyond what Aquafresh should require. “We ran into her after dinner in the Square. Her parents had taken her to some fancy restaurant in their hotel. I invited her to get frozen yogurt with us—just to be nice—but she said she was meeting up with some people.” Andrea put air quotes around some people and said the rest with the toothbrush muffling her speech, her mouth literally frothing. “What people? What’s the big secret? I didn’t want to join her, I was getting fro-yo!” She paused to spit. “Rude.” She replaced the whirring toothbrush in her mouth.
Cady patted her face dry, trying to think of what to say.
Andrea rinsed and spat a last time. “I guess she makes friends easily. I don’t know how.”
Cady felt an unwelcome kinship with Andrea, bonded with the glue of jealousy and self-doubt.
“Can I borrow some toothpaste? I forgot mine.”
Andrea handed her the tube. “How did you get that scar on your neck?”
Cady dropped the tube in the sink. “Oh, shoot, sorry.” She fumbled to get it, flustered. “I, um, this?” She covered the scar with her hand and lied, “I had a mole removed.”
“Skin cancer?”
She pulled her hair down to hide it. “No, but they thought it could be, so…” Although the scar was only an inch-long depression into her skin, it traced a shame so deep it cut to her core. “I don’t like it, it’s ugly.”
“You should wear sunscreen daily. Redheads are prone to skin cancer.”
“Where did you go for dinner with your parents?” Cady shoved the toothbrush into her mouth so she wouldn’t have to talk anymore.
“Bartley’s, you know that famous old burger place? My parents had their first date there, so they wanted me to experience it. They said nothing had changed but the menu, which was nice for them, but I don’t really like hamburgers. Then my parents went home. They’re not the type to waste money on a hotel unless they absolutely have to.”
“Same with mine.”
“You mean your father and your aunt? Ranjoo told me your mom didn’t come.”
“Well, right.” Cady stole a glance at Andrea in the mirror. When did those two have a chance to talk about me? “I meant in general.”