Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [1]
“Tradition and Modernity” was the college’s most recent motto, indoctrinated during the Student Union’s ribbon-cutting in June. The Dexter College bookstore even sold a pair of wind chimes with the word “Tradition” printed on one bulky brass chime and “Modernity” on its slim stainless steel mate. Of course the Dexter College letterhead still bore its original Latin motto—Inveni te ipsum (“Find yourself”)—but very few students knew or bothered to find out what it meant.
Shipley inhaled the clean country air and imagined kicking up the maple leaves this fall when they were red and crisp and covered the ground. Bundled into her favorite cream-colored cable-knit sweater, she’d stroll along the stone walks with a group of new friends, drinking hazelnut-flavored coffee from the Starbucks café, discussing poetry and art and cross-country skiing, or whatever people talked about in Maine. Eager to get on with it, she popped open the trunk and grabbed the handles of her largest duffel bag.
“Want some help?” Two boys appeared at her sides, flashing eager, helpful smiles.
“I’m Sebastian.” The taller of the two reached for the duffel bag and then ducked into the car for another. “Everyone calls me Sea Bass.” He tossed the second bag at his friend, whose dense thicket of hair could only be described as a Greek afro. “That’s Damascus.”
Damascus clasped the duffel against his burly chest. His knuckles were meaty and tan. “We’re totally harmless,” he assured her with a mischievous smile.
Shipley hesitated. “I’m on the third floor. Room 304. I guess that’s kind of a hike?”
“Fucking A!” Sea Bass crowed, the corners of his mouth spreading so wide they nearly touched the tips of his carefully sculpted sideburns. “That’s right next to us!” He dropped Shipley’s bag on the ground and threw his arms around her, hugging her with such force that her feet left the ground. “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!”
Shipley took a startled step backward and tucked her long blond hair behind her ears, blushing furiously. She wasn’t used to being hugged by friendly, boisterous boys. She’d gone to the same girls school—Greenwich Academy—since kindergarten. It had a brother school—Brunswick—and she’d sung in choir with boys and even had a male lab partner in AP Chemistry. But because her father was of the mostly absent variety and her older brother was strange and remote and had been away at boarding school almost since she could remember, she remained unsure of herself around boys. She walked around the car and opened the door to the backseat, where she’d stowed her goose down pillow and her portable CD player, wondering if she would take to fraternizing with males as easily as she had taken to chewing gum and smoking.
“Okay.” She tucked the pillow beneath her arm and slammed the door closed. “I’m ready.”
“So why’d you choose Dexter?” Sea Bass asked as she followed him up Coke’s dark and winding back stairs.
Shipley shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she answered vaguely. “My brother went here.” She paused. “And I didn’t get into Dartmouth.”
“Me neither,” Damascus replied from behind her. “I guess that’s why we all end up here, huh?”
Shipley followed Sea Bass down the hallway. Dexter provided a dry-erase board on the door of each room so that students could leave messages for one another. Yesterday, the staff from the Office of Student Housing and Campus Life had marked each board with the names of the students who would occupy each room. The names “Eliza Cheney” and “Shipley Gilbert” were written in loopy cursive on the board outside room 304.
The room itself was small and plain, with two single wooden beds pushed up against the white walls. A wide wooden desk stood in front of the only window, with a chair on either side and a lamp in the middle. Across from the desk stood a built-in set