Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [34]
Liam giggled. “Dude, you’re not dead, right? If your neck was broken you’d be way dead.”
“Jesus,” Nick muttered, rubbing his sore hands together. “Hey, can we go now? There’s someone creepy in there.” He stood up and started for the car, wanting to run, but fearful of looking like a huge chicken.
“Someone’s in there? Holy cow!” Grover exclaimed. He leapt to his feet and sprinted toward the car.
“Damn, why didn’t you say something?” Liam chased after him.
“Yeah,” Wills agreed, falling into step with Nick. “We can go diving another time. Maybe try a different Dumpster, like the one behind the natural food store down in Camden.”
“Or maybe you should just go to the store and buy stuff like everyone else,” Nick snapped in annoyance. “A head of cauliflower costs what—a buck?”
“Dude, that’s not the point,” Wills reminded him. He lowered his voice. “Hey, who do you think that was with the flashlight anyway?”
Nick opened the door to the Saab and scooted into the backseat next to Grover. “I don’t know. Nobody, I guess.”
Nick returned to the site of his yurt, leaving the Grannies to finish their curry without him. He would have invited them in, but the roof wasn’t covered and the Grannies were loud. He’d only managed to convince the Office of Student Housing and Campus Life and the Dean of Students Office to permit him to build the yurt by claiming it was for “spiritual purposes.” It was no party pad.
The yurt was supposed to be built right on top of the ground, but he’d cheated and built a platform out of plywood and cinder blocks scavenged from a pile behind Buildings and Grounds, hoping to add some distance from the earth come spring when the mud thawed and the rains came. It was rumored that Dexter’s campus had been erected on top of an old turkey farm and in the March–April mud season, the whole place stank of turkey shit. Right now though, his yurt smelled of freshly cut wood.
From his dorm room window the yurt looked like a tiny circus tent. It was a good eight feet high, and once he’d installed the waxed canvas cover, the crown of the roof could be rolled back to reveal the sky or to provide ventilation for a stove or fire. He had to be very careful with fire in the yurt. There was an entire booklet on it in the kit, covered in bold exclamation points and the word “WARNING” in red. Without proper ventilation, the whole thing would go up in a matter of minutes, since it was basically made out of twigs.
Eliza was huddled on the rough plank floor, reading his book of daily zen meditations. She looked up. Nick’s headlamp shone from her forehead. “Do you really believe all this shit?” she demanded.
Ever since Shipley had virtually moved into Tom’s room, Eliza had tried to enjoy her roomy single. Studying at the desk beneath the window, she would flick booger bombs onto Shipley’s unwrinkled Ralph Lauren sheets. What a shame to have such nice sheets and never sleep in them. Sometimes she fantasized that the bearded guy in the ripped parka would return and either befriend her or stab her in her sleep. Her own solitude had become oppressive, and he seemed like someone who was used to being on his own. Maybe he could give her a few pointers. To her surprise, college was even lonelier than high school. At least in high school she’d had her parents to blame for the lousy state of things. It seemed to her that at college you had to be in love not to be lonely. You had to have someone to hold hands with while walking to class and someone to eat with in the dining hall. You had to have someone to lie down with on the lawn and kiss, or someone to sleep with, packed like sardines in a narrow single bed. If you didn’t have someone, if you weren’t in love, you felt like an asshole.
What Eliza and so many of her classmates were discovering was that living on a small college campus in the middle of the woods was like being trapped in a snow globe. The best