I notice Josh is laughing with them, as if resigned to the humiliation.
“Isn’t that the most hilarious thing?” Heather asks me.
“Pretty funny,” I agree. Josh’s laidback attitude is refreshing. I was so horrified when I made the same mistake that I almost dropped the class.
“So, Emily.” Heather shifts her attention to me. “Are you in a sorority?”
I let out an abrupt laugh. “Um, no.”
I immediately regret my judging tone. Greek life was never something I wanted to be a part of like a lot of girls I grew up with. “Oh, Em. It’s such a good way to meet people,” Tamara always said. She was just as quick to judge the other sororities though. “Full of QRs,” she’d say, then add in a conspiratorial whisper, “You know. Questionable. Reputation.” (Irony wasn’t Tamara’s specialty.)
“Sorry—are you in a sorority?” I ask Heather. I could easily see her as the girl at the front of the group photo, draped over a giant Omega or X or triangle—a prime recruit.
“Oh, no,” Heather dismisses with a flip of her hand. “I’m on full scholarship, so there’s no time for that. Also, I like to focus on … deeper things,” she says. “There are way more important things in this world than watching 90210 with fifty other girls in a common room or getting so wasted that you can’t even remember what you’ve done.”
“Amen to that,” Andrew says, raising his coffee cup as if to toast.
I sip my coffee through a smile. Where were these people last semester?
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around, Emily,” Heather says. “What dorm are you in?”
“The Towers,” I answer.
“Oh, nice! Do you like your roommate?” Heather asks.
“Oh. Uh. I don’t have one,” I stumble. “Sadie, um …” I pause. “She moved back home over the break. I guess she missed the California sunshine.” I realize the irony in this statement, as Sadie pretty much holed up in our blacked-out dorm room all day and stayed out all night only to do it all over again for weeks on end.
“Ugh, I’m so jealous,” Heather says. “My roommate gets on my last nerve. She never shuts up. Thank goodness she’s taking eighteen hours this semester and is always in the library, or I swear I would’ve killed her with my bare hands by now.”
I laugh politely. Sadie was likable on her good days, and I actually miss our “camaraderie of opposite upbringings” (as she called it). With her gone, I would welcome an overly chatty roommate.
I shake off the encroaching loneliness and add, “Well, if it makes you feel better, it’s never quiet in the Towers, even without a roommate.”
“So that’s why you study here,” Josh says. He turns to Heather. “I met Emily here reading Henry James for the… What was it? Third time?” He turns back to me and gives a small wink. I blush.
Heather cups her coffee in both hands just under her chin, her eyes wide with interest. “Oh, tell me about your class!”
“Yeah, it’s just a survey class, but I’m really enjoying it.” Heather, Josh, and Andrew all look at me, urging me to continue. My words dry up and I shift nervously with the awareness of the attention directed at me from every angle.
Andrew must notice my discomfort and thankfully cuts in. “I adored my survey class. The classics and all. Of course, I’d already read them in prep school,” Andrew says.
“Where are you from?” I ask Andrew.
“The Midwest,” he says vaguely, straightening his posture. He tucks his hair behind his ears again. “But I was pretty much raised by boarding school headmasters.” He leans forward to pick up his coffee and glances at his watch. “Guys, we’d better get going soon or we’ll be late,” he says to Heather.
Heather looks at her watch. “Oh my goodness, where did the time go?”
My mood suddenly deflates as I helplessly watch them gather their things.
“Sorry, we have a symposium tonight,” Josh explains to me, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
“Oh, no problem,” I insist, adding a casual, dismissive flip of my hand to hide my disappointment. “Are you all taking the same class?”
“It’s also a Bible study,” Heather says matter-of-factly.
I glance at Josh, surprised. He doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. “I would have asked you to come, but—”
“It’s invitation only,” Heather interjects, sounding simultaneously apologetic and condescending. She loops her bag over her shoulder and stands. “The reading assignments have to be completed in advance, like your lit class.”
“Sometimes we get together just to hang out, though,” Josh says quickly. “Maybe you’d like to join us? We could meet here again.”
“Sure,” I say, still a bit stunned by the abrupt end to our evening.
Josh lingers behind as Heather and Andrew make their way to the door, watching until they’re a certain distance away before saying in a mock-serious tone, “Well, I guess I’m going to need your phone number, then.” He digs into his backpack and hands me a pen and piece of paper.
I write down my number, trying to suppress the smile on my face, and hand it to him. “Have fun,” I say.
He leans down to whisper as he walks past, “Yes, ma’am.”
mystical manipulation: when things seem coincidental, but in reality, they are carefully planned and orchestrated
Primary Research
I straighten things when I’m anxious.
The photos on my desk are a welcome distraction as I wait for Josh’s call. My dad under a tailgate tent, his arm around the freckled shoulder of my stepmom, Patti, in a ruffled top. Me with Summer in her dad’s boat, Summer’s tongue rolled out in homage to the Rolling Stones logo on her shirt. Tamara’s party pics featuring tipsy smiles hovering over red Solo cups. Patti mails so many of these that I’ve never had to ask why Tamara doesn’t call me … like, ever. The reasons are printed under the Greek symbols labeling each one: Woodstock. Sadie Hawkins. Spring Fling. “Wish you were here.” Yeah, right.
Then there’s the other one, the photo Dad snuck into my suitcase before I left for Boston: a black-and-white candid shot of my mother. It’s slightly blurry, and her expression is distant, like she’s lost in a complicated thought sitting under a tree on the campus where she met my dad. Looking at her photo is like staring at an empty blank on a test when you can’t remember the answer, and even when you try and try, nothing comes except the blinding frustration that you’ll never get it right.
I sigh and put the photo down. My attention moves to my window. Thousands of lights blink and shift outside, like a jittery constellation that echoes my sense of restlessness. When the phone finally rings, my heart leaps as I answer.
“So did you have fun?” Josh asks.
“Did you?” I still feel a tinge of resentment over being abandoned for their exclusive meeting.
“I did, actually. Both at the coffee shop and at the symposium.”
I pause. “So. You’re religious?”