Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [4]
Eliza grabbed the first sweater she could find, a magenta-colored acrylic V-neck she’d bought at JCPenney. Magenta was like a big, loud fuck-you to light pink, a color she absolutely loathed. She wadded up the sweater and tucked it under her arm, watching as Shipley pawed through an array of pretty sweaters until she settled on a cream-colored cable-knit cardigan with pockets and tied it around her waist. She looked like a model in one of those clothing catalogs Eliza’s mother always threw out because “Penney’s has everything.”
They followed Professor Rosen downstairs and outside the dorm. Most of the other freshmen had already left for orientation, and the temporary parking lot was quiet now.
“Oh no!” Shipley cried. “My car!” She sprinted over to an elegant black Mercedes sedan with Connecticut plates. A neon yellow parking ticket was tucked beneath one of its windshield-wiper blades.
“Hurry up!” Professor Rosen barked. “The main parking lot is across the road. We’ll wait for you in the van.”
Eliza’s roommate assignment hadn’t mentioned that Shipley would be beautiful or blond, or that she would drive a black Mercedes with tiny windshield wipers on its headlights. It hadn’t mentioned that Shipley’s trim, suntanned legs looked great in white shorts, especially when she ran, which she did now with the effortless grace of a Thoroughbred. Eliza didn’t know how to drive, her legs were shapeless and pale, and the only shorts she owned were the butchered black denim ones she’d worn today. It was growing increasingly difficult not to be envious of Shipley, and even not to ever so slightly hate her.
Professor Rosen slid open the door to the waiting van, a beat-up maroon Chevy with Dexter’s logo of a single green pine tree emblazoned on it. Eliza couldn’t help thinking that Harvard probably had a whole fleet of Mercedes.
Inside, the van was musty and crowded. Professor Rosen, who was in fact female, tapped her fingers impatiently against the wheel while Eliza squeezed into the very back seat, next to three girls wearing matching powder pink cap-sleeved Dexter T-shirts. This particular feminine cut of T-shirt was new this year and had proven to be a hit with incoming students. The bookstore had already sold out of them.
In the second row of seats, directly in front of Eliza, Tom Ferguson and Nicholas Hamilton waited impatiently for Professor Rosen to start the engine and crank up the AC.
“Freaks,” Tom muttered under his breath. Freaks in their wool hats and Birkenstocks. Even the professor in charge of their orientation trip, the one behind the wheel with the spiky brown hair and gold earrings. Mr. or Ms.? He had no freaking clue.
“Why am I even going to this place again?” he’d asked his dad that morning in the car. Tom’s parents had given him a new Jeep Cherokee for graduation. His father rode with him while his mother followed them in the Audi.
“Because you’re a legacy, and it’s the best place you got into,” his father reminded him. “Hey, don’t knock it, kid. Dexter’s my alma mater and look how I turned out: ma—”
“Yeah, Dad. I know, I know. Manager of your own fund, happily married to a beautiful woman, two boys in good colleges, big house in Bedford, beach house on the Cape.”
Tom smoothed his dark hair back with his hands—what was left of it anyway. He’d wanted it cut short for the Westchester triathlon, but his dad’s barber didn’t get what he was asking for and had given him a crew cut. He glanced at his father. His gray, neatly trimmed hair was flawless. His skin was flawless. His white shirt was flawless. He looked like the fucking “advertisement of the man” to quote The Great Gatsby, the only assigned book Tom had actually finished and enjoyed. But he hadn’t always looked like that. Tom had seen pictures of his dad in college. A hippie with bad skin—long stringy hair, stoner smile, zits all over the place, even on his eyelids.
His father gazed out the window and nodded his head with that annoying parental