“So Aspeth, Gillian, and Martha,” I said. “That’s it for the girls? Only three?”
“The meeting was kind of rushed,” Nick said. “You want to know the guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Thanks, Lee. That’s flattering.”
“No, I just-I couldn’t tell if you were kidding.”
“Hey, John,” Nick said. “Was I nominated for senior prefect?”
John Brindley, sitting across the table, looked up. “Chafee, there’s no way I’m voting for you.”
They both laughed, and Nick said, “I don’t need your vote because I have Lee’s. She says she wants to be my campaign manager, too. Isn’t that right, Lee?” He elbowed me obviously, so John could see (at Ault, of course, there was no such thing as a campaign manager). Had we found ourselves alone, Nick would never have elbowed me, he’d never have touched me at all. Sometimes I felt flattered by this kind of teasing-it was, after all, a form of attention-and sometimes I resented the way that boys included me as a prop in their exchanges with one another: the magician’s assistant who climbed into the box, got sliced in half, and had to beam at the audience while, above her, the magician joked and gestured extravagantly.
“What other guys were nominated?” I asked.
“Let’s see.” Nick counted off on the fingers of his right hand. “Pittard, Cutty, Sug, Smith, and Devoux.”
These nominations, like those for Aspeth and Gillian, were unsurprising. They were all bank boys, except for Darden Pittard, but he was our junior prefect, Gillian’s male counterpart. He and Cross-Sug-were the likeliest to win. Certainly my own vote would go to one of them, either to Darden because I genuinely respected him, or to Cross because of my crush. What was certain was that I wouldn’t vote for Nick Chafee.
After crew practice, Martha lifted weights, and when she got back to the dorm late that afternoon, it was almost time to leave for formal dinner. I was seated on the futon, reading, and Martha’s back was to me as she inspected her closet for clothes to change into. “Did I send out my short-sleeved blouse to be laundered?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“The blue one.”
“I’m wearing it.”
Martha turned.
“I can take it off,” I said.
“That’s okay.” She had turned back to the closet, and she pulled out a pink T-shirt with pink ribbon trimming the neck and sleeves.
I stood. “Really, Martha, I can change.” Remarkably, though I wore her clothes all the time, this had never happened before. And I could have offered her something of mine, but she didn’t wear my clothes, which was not a fact we discussed.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She stuck her head through the pink shirt, pulled it down, then raised one arm and sniffed her armpit. “Fresh as a mountain breeze.” She took a skirt, white with green and darker pink swirls, out of the closet and held it waist-high in front of her, still clipped to the hanger. “This goes, right? So I want you to finish telling me what Dean Fletcher-oh, wow. Lee, this is adorable!”
She had noticed it, finally-the paper crown I’d made using her computer paper and her tape and my own markers. I’d drawn huge jewels in purple and green and red, and yellow lines around the base and the triangular tips, and in black I’d written, Martha Porter, Senior Prefect and Queen of the World.
She set the crown on her head. “Does it suit me?”
“Perfectly. You should wear it to dinner.” In fact, I’d have been horrified if she wore it to dinner. It would be just what people would expect, evidence of our dorky-girls’ glee at Martha’s fluke nomination. “This is so exciting,” I said.
“Well, it’s nice that I was nominated, but I won’t win.”
“You might.” Perhaps I should have been more vehement, but really, she probably wouldn’t get it, and I didn’t like acting fake with Martha. Acting fake with everyone else was okay only as long as you had one person with whom you were real.
“I’m predicting Gillian,” she said. “Too many people don’t like Aspeth.”
“What if it’s you and Cross, and you have to have lots of late-night meetings and hang out together all the time?”
Martha laughed. “I’m not the one who’s in love with Cross. But did you know he was the person who nominated me? Weird, huh?”
Unlike Cross and me, Cross and Martha had a few classes together, and sometimes Martha told me things about him: Devin knocked over Cross’s Bunsen burner in Chemistry today and the table caught on fire. Or, Cross is going up to see his brother at Bowdoin for long weekend. But I wasn’t under the impression they had much direct interaction.
“And Conchita seconded the nomination,” Martha added. This actually wasn’t that weird-Conchita and I had rarely spoken since freshman year, but she and Martha had remained friendly.
“Maybe Cross likes you,” I said in a voice that I hoped would not reveal how horrifying I found this prospect.
“Please.” Martha grinned. “We need to go to dinner,” she said. She removed the crown and set it back on her desk. “Someday you’ll meet a guy who loves you so much and you’ll be like, why did I waste my whole time in high school mooning over that self-centered dork?”
“Okay, first of all,” I said, and I could feel myself warming up for the conversation. Talking like this was sustenance for my feelings, it made Cross exist in my life even though we never spoke. “First of all, why do you think he’s self-centered, and second, if I’m going to think I wasted my time, does that mean he’ll never like me back?”
Outside, other students were also walking toward the dining hall, wet-haired, the girls wearing pastel blouses and flowered skirts and espadrilles, the boys in white or pale blue shirts and ties and blazers and khaki shorts. At Ault, evening was always the best time.
“He’s just cocky,” Martha said. “He knows he’s good-looking, he knows he’s good at sports, he knows girls like him. But so what? Big deal.”