“I almost forgot,” I said. “Here, though?” A couple of sophomore boys stood right next to us. One of them grinned when our eyes met, as if he knew I was considering unbuttoning my cutoffs.
“No chance,” Viv said. “Mine’s not for public viewing.”
“Come on.” Abby grabbed our hands. She pulled us through the registration room, into a black granite hallway, and down a set of polished concrete stairs, chattering about her horrible class schedule and the “Green Beret disaster.”
“It’s not a disaster,” I said, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it. I’d go see the dean in a bit. Now, I just wanted to enjoy this moment, wanted to see if my guesses were right—an Aries symbol for Viv, and a butterfly for Abby. At the end of last semester, we’d made a pact to get tattoos over the summer and had forbidden further discussion about it until the moment of revelation.
Abby pushed open the door to the girls’ bathroom.
“Who goes first?” Viv asked.
“Me,” Abby said.
Doing a mock striptease move, she lowered the right strap of her tank top. Two hollow-eyed faces stared up from her shoulder blade. A comedy/tragedy drama-mask thing. One face smiling, one frowning, the expressions exaggerated almost to the point of dementia.
“Ooh, I love it,” I said. “Really well drawn.”
“Exdese,” Viv agreed, using the dorky word for excellent we’d made up freshman year. “And very appropriate, of course.”
“It’ll be even more appropriate if you become bipolar,” I pointed out.
“Ha, ha.” Abby flicked me on the arm. “Who’s next?”
Viv turned around and lifted up her skirt. Smack in the middle of the left cheek of her thong-clad butt was a heraldic crest: black and red, with fleur-de-lis designs around a knight’s helmet and a stag’s head.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s … amazing. It’s so elaborate.”
“Oh my God,” Abby said. “It’s the Parker family crest! Isn’t it? The one you showed me online?”
Viv turned back around. “Yup. Isn’t it funky? It’s thanks to. Orin.”
“Your astrologer—sorry, your advisor,” I corrected myself, “told you to get your family crest tattooed on your butt?”
“No, of course not,” Viv said. “He told me I should incorporate my family history into my identity.”
Abby covered her mouth; a snort escaped her nose.
“It’s an important part of my being,” Viv added.
I made the mistake of looking into Abby’s glimmering brown eyes, and we lost it.
I shook with laughter until my cheek muscles ached. It was perfect. The Parker-Whites are a bizarre hybrid of old money aristocracy (Parker) and new-age bohemianism (White). Their psychic “advisor” is practically a full-time employee.
Eventually, the bathroom filled with wheezes and deep breaths as Abby and I struggled to compose ourselves. Viv waited, arms crossed.
She leaned back against a sink. “Laugh all you want. But Orin said something else, too. Something not so good.”
“What?” I said, bracing myself for another absurdity.
Before she could continue, the bathroom door swished open and three of our dorm-mates from junior year bustled in.
“I heard about your new roommate, Leena,” Jessica Liu said as the other two went into stalls. “That should be entertaining.”
“You heard? How?” I didn’t like that. Other people knowing made it seem more like a done deal.
“My brother went to school with her brother. They were on the phone yesterday and her brother asked to talk to me. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t rooming with some psycho.”
“Hah!” Abby said. “That’s rich.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked Jess.
“The truth. That Celeste was in serious danger.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s going to work out for her to live with us. Dean Shepherd wants to meet. Speaking of which …” I checked my watch. “She won’t be in her office much longer. I should get going.”
“Leen, we’re not done!” Abby said.
“We’ll finish later, okay?” I gripped the chilly metal door handle. “I need to deal with this.”
Chapter 3
ALTHOUGH THE RAIN HAD STOPPED, the humid air still clung to me like a full-body sweater as I hurried past the stately brick buildings of the main quad on my way to Irving Hall. Barcroft is one of the oldest boarding schools in the country, and while the newer buildings are flashy and modern, the central campus is quintessential New England prep school.
Marcia, the dean’s assistant, said I’d have to wait a few minutes. I sat on a leather chair and rearranged the legs of my cutoffs to separate my clammy skin from the slick surface, then took out my packet and thumbed through my registration materials. Black type floated into abstract designs as I silently rehearsed my conversation with the dean.
Until now, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that it would have been her decision to move Celeste to Frost House. But sitting here, I couldn’t understand it, given how well Dean. Shepherd knew the situation. How well she knew me.
After answering a posting on the job board freshman year. I’d started babysitting her daughter on Sunday afternoons while the dean was with her husband, who was in hospice with terminal cancer. We kept the arrangement after he died, as well. Sometimes I stayed to help with dinner and ended up eating with her and Anya. I think she was happy to have someone to distract her from stuff with her husband, and I loved listening to her talk about books and music and places she’d lived and traveled. Growing up as an only child, I’d spent a lot of time with my parents and their friends; she reminded me of one of them.
Probably some kids at Barcroft thought I was a suck-up, hanging out with the Dean of Students. But I didn’t ask her for any special treatment. Until Frost House, of course.
I called her the day I discovered it last fall. “I saw the most amazing house all hidden in the bushes,” I said, words rushing out. “And I peeked in the windows and I think it might be a dorm. Is it? Because it would be the most perfect place to live for senior year. All quiet and separate, kind of like living off campus, away from the frenzy. And if it is a dorm, how many—”
“Slow down,” she’d said. “Describe it for me.”
“Off Highland Street, by the playing fields. White clapboard. Victorian.”
I could have described it down to the fish-scale pattern of the shingles on the roof. My father restores old houses and my mother is a realtor, so I grew up learning all about colonials and. Victorians, gables and lintels and cornices. From the moment I saw the little house, I’d felt a weirdly intense desire to live there. As if it was the answer to a question I didn’t even know I’d been asking. I’d wandered around all four sides, appreciating its architectural quirks and fantasizing: warm evenings hanging out on the porch; reading, curled up in a window seat….
“Off Highland Street?” the dean had said. “That’s Frost. House. A four-student dorm. Reserved for senior boys.”
“Boys? ” I hadn’t considered that possibility.
My reluctant acceptance of this news lasted less than twenty-four hours, during which I kept going back to Frost House in my mind. The next day, I couldn’t resist an urge—a pull—to visit again in person. As I stood there, staring up like I was lovesick for one of the guys inside, I struggled with what to do. I wanted to call the dean back, wanted to see if there was any chance it might be switched to a girls’ dorm for the next year. But it seemed like such a big favor. While I debated, a slender column of smoke rose from the chimney and curled into the blue sky. A working fireplace? In a dorm? I took my phone out of my bag and called.