The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [7]
There was no full-length mirror to gauge the effect. Using the mirror over the fireplace, I got a partial look. I still really needed to see the whole thing. That was going to require some ingenuity. I tried standing on the end of the middle bed, but it was too far over, so I pulled it into the center of the room and tried again. Now I had the complete picture. The result was a lot less gray than I’d imagined. My hair, which is a deep brown, looked black against the blazer, which I liked. The best part, without any question, was the tie. I’ve always liked ties, but it seemed like too much of a Statement to wear them. I pulled it loose, tugged it to the side, wrapped it around my head—I wanted to see every variation of the look.
Suddenly, the door opened. I screamed and knocked the headphones off my ears. They blasted music out into the room. I turned to see a tall girl standing in the doorway. She had red hair in an incredibly complicated yet casual-looking updo, and the creamy skin and heavy showers of golden freckles to match. What was most remarkable was her bearing. Her face was long, culminating in an adorable nub of a chin, which she held high. She was one of those people who actually walks with her shoulders back, like that’s normal. She was not, I noticed, wearing a uniform. She wore a blue and rose skirt with a soft gray T-shirt and a soft rose linen scarf tied loosely around her neck.
“Are you Aurora?” she asked.
She didn’t wait for me to confirm that I was this “Aurora” she was looking for.
“I’m Charlotte,” she said. “I’m here to take you to dinner.”
“Should I”—I pinched a bit of my uniform in the hope that this conveyed the verb—“change?”
“Oh, no,” she said cheerfully. “You’re fine. It’s just a handful of us, anyway. Come on!”
She watched me step awkwardly from the bed, grab my ID and key, and slip on my flip-flops.
3
So,” CHARLOTTE CHIRPED, AS I STUMBLED AND SLID over the cobblestones, “where are you from?”
I know you’re not supposed to judge people when you first meet them—but sometimes they give you lots of material to work with. For example, she kept looking sideways at my uniform. It would have been so easy for her to say, “Take a second and change,” but she hadn’t done that. I guess I could have demanded it, but I was cowed by her head girl status. Also, halfway down the stairs, she told me she was going to apply to Cambridge. Anyone who tells you their fancy college plans before they tell you their last name . . . these are people to watch out for. I once met a girl in line at Walmart who told me she was going to be on America’s Next Top Model. When I next saw that girl, she was crashing a shopping cart into an old lady’s car out in the parking lot. Signs. You have to read them.
I was terrified for a few minutes that they would all be like this, but reassured myself that it probably took a certain type to become head girl. I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.
“New Orleans,” I said. “Well, not New Orleans, but right outside of. Well, like an hour outside of. My town is really small. It’s a swamp, actually. They drained a swamp to build our development. Well, attempting to drain a swamp is pretty pointless. They don’t really drain. You can dump as much fill on them as you want, but they’re still swamps. The only thing worse than building a housing development on a swamp is building it on an old Indian burial ground—and if there had been an old Indian burial ground around, the greedy morons who built our McMansions would have set up camp on it in a heartbeat.”
“Oh. I see.”
My answer only seemed to increase the intensity of the smug glee waves. My flip-flops made weird sucking noises on the stones.
“Your feet must be cold in those,” she said.
“They are.”
And that