Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [90]
Outside the air was clean and dirty at the same time. The snow was magnificent. It was everywhere. But the sky was filled with ash. At first it looked to Shipley as though Root’s roof was on fire. Tom’s in there, she thought guiltily. But as she drew closer, she could see that the fire was out back, beyond the dorm.
The yurt was a cone of fire rising thirty feet into the air. Sea Bass and Damascus and Geoff and the three Grannies and a crowd of other students fed the fire with sticks and newspaper, trying to make it last as long as possible—anything to procrastinate.
Adam kept his hands in his pockets as they approached. Indeed, this was news. This was excitement. But he needed to go home.
“Nick!” Shipley cried when she spotted him, gazing up at the fire with his flap hat on backward, eyes bloodshot from smoke and allergies. “I’m so sorry,” she commiserated. “All your hard work.”
Eliza slipped her arms around Nick’s waist. “He doesn’t give a shit.” She lifted up one of his earflaps and licked his ear.
Nick swiped the hat off his head and threw it into the fire.
“Yes! Thank the lord!” Eliza cried. She unzipped her cutoffs beneath her long down coat and stepped out of them.
“No, not those. I love those!” Nick rescued the shorts before she could throw them into the flames.
“Aw.” Eliza cupped his rashy face in her hands and kissed him.
“Wow,” Shipley remarked. “That must have been some party.”
“I think maybe—” Nick bent down and retrieved the gigantic red bong that was lying at his feet. “I think maybe this is the dawn of a new era.” He tossed the bong into the fire and it exploded with a dramatic popping sound.
Grover threw his red bandanna into the fire. Then Liam took off his tie-dyed shirt and threw that in too. Next came Wills’s skirt. All of a sudden everyone was taking off their clothes and throwing them into the fire.
“All right, all right,” Mr. Booth, Dexter’s president, shouted into a bullhorn from the front steps of the chapel. “The fire department is standing by, but I wanted to let you kids have your fun first. I know this is a stressful time, what with exams coming up tomorrow. You’ve got half an hour to go crazy around that bonfire of yours, and then I want you all in the library, studying.”
If he hadn’t won over the students before, he’d won them over now.
“And don’t forget your coffee. The Starbucks café will be open twenty-four hours a day for the next week. The first coffee of the day is on me. Just show them your ID.”
“Yeah, Boothy!!”
Adam cleared his throat. “Hey, will you be all right?” he asked Shipley. “I mean, would you mind if I just went home? I kind of have to clean up and everything, before my parents get home.”
Shipley nodded, blushing. She wondered if Tom was watching from his window. “Good. That’s good. Go home and I’ll call you later, okay? I mean, I have two exams tomorrow, so I’m going to be cramming, but we’ll figure something out.” She couldn’t believe how casual and distracted she sounded. “Okay?”
Adam was in too much of a hurry to even notice. He’d have to dig out his car. “Okay. So, I’ll see you,” he said, and strode away with his hands still in his pockets.
The fire burned with gusto. Students frolicked around it in various stages of undress.
“Fire, fire on the mountain!” Wills sang out in a high falsetto, making everybody laugh.
The house was just as Adam had left it except for the crisscrossing car tracks the party-goers had made on the snowy lawn. The porch steps were slippery, and he cursed Tragedy for not shoveling them and coating them with salt the way their parents had taught them to do when they were each about six.
“Hey, I’m home!” he called as he stomped into the kitchen, eager to tell his sister all about last night. On the drive home he’d imagined how he would quietly gloat at dinner that night while