Love Story(4)
Author: Jennifer Echols

She returned to the party, furtively examining the revelers as she entered. No eyes were upon her, not even those of her grandmother, across the room, or Captain Vanderslice, conversing with elderly Mrs. Woodson, boring her ever closer to death. Everybody seemed involved in their own pursuits. The mint julep was Rebecca’s friend tonight, throwing a shroud over others’ powers of observation. Nobody saw her come in or commented on her reticule, obviously full to bursting.

She would not even need to use her pin money to pay off her maid, as she had done several times in the past when David had met her in the barn. They had simply played then, not kissed. He had taught her to swing on a rope from the loft down to the hayrick below like a pirate conquering the poop deck. The issue had been that she was too old to be playing, and much too old to be playing with the stable boy.

The latter had not changed, she thought as she gazed out the doorway she had just entered. Blinded anew by the candlelight, she could not make out shapes in the darkness as she had earlier, but she did detect a flash of blond head keeping its distance across the patio. Watching her, and waiting.

I LET OUT A LONG, SATISFIED sigh. This story set up a grand adventure for Rebecca and David, with a fairy-tale ending—everything I’d longed for with my stable boy. It was perfect. The class would love it.

I only wished they would reassure me by telling me so. But they kept their heads down, focused on their own work, as if we were waiting for the subway. Maybe later in the semester we’d be comfortable enough with one another to start a group convo as we waited for the whole class to trickle in. But it was only our second meeting. Even so, normally I would have started the group convo myself. I hated silence.

Today was not normal. To get my mind off the impending judgment of my goal in life, I pulled my calculator out of my book bag. My boss had offered me a double shift at the coffee shop on Saturday. If I took it, I wouldn’t be able to go to the Broadway matinee I’d scoped out. If I didn’t take the shift and I bought the cut-rate Broadway ticket, I might have to dip into the reserves I’d saved over the summer to make my first payment on my dorm room. My scholarship covered tuition only, and I’d been able to talk the university into a payment plan for my rent since I’d unexpectedly become destitute the night of high school graduation.

A Broadway ticket might have been a frivolous expense when I was faced with eviction. But I’d wanted to study writing in New York City as long as I could remember. Now I was afraid I wouldn’t be here long. And if I didn’t make the most of my experience, it would be like I was never here.

As I crunched numbers—God, my hourly pay was low, and tips were abysmal no matter how low I wore my necklines—I resisted looking up at the students entering the room. I especially avoided meeting the eyes of the two noisy guys who blustered in and sat directly across from me, just as they had on the first day of class. They knew each other from elsewhere, obviously, and the Indian one in particular was the cocky type who might give me a hard time about “Almost a Lady.” People had made fun of me for writing romantic stories before. I hoped he and his friend wouldn’t gang up on me.

Summer was the last one in, and I felt my shoulders relax. I’d never been one of those timid girls who couldn’t take a step without the shadow of her best friend crossing her path. But putting my story in front of these strangers was like stripping naked in a men’s prison rec room. I turned to Summer, expecting a friendly roommate-type question designed to set me at ease, such as, How did calculus go?

She looked me up and down and shrieked, “Where did you get that scarf?” drawing the boisterous guys’ attention.

Busted! I tried to mix my expensive clothes from home with the cheap replacements I could afford. I was aiming for a gradual, graceful decline into poverty. But when I’d gotten dressed that morning after Summer had left for her eight o’clock, I’d been tired. I’d thrown on a T-shirt, a scarf, and my most comfortable jeans—all of which happened to be designer. I should have been more careful. Summer did not own any designer labels, but she wanted them. And she knew them when she saw them.

I gazed at her blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I meant that I knew exactly what she was talking about, and we should discuss it later.

But we’d been friends only five days, too short a time for her to decipher my unspoken messages. She looked me up and down again. “And those jeans,” she murmured.

“I beg your damn pardon?” I asked, still telegraphing for her to shut up.

She dumped her book bag in her richly upholstered chair, grasped my wrist, and dragged me out of my own richly upholstered chair. We both tripped on the edge of the Oriental rug as she pulled me toward the door.

Most of my classes were held in modern buildings, like you’d expect at any college. But the honors freshman creative-writing class met in a converted town house. Our classroom was a long boardroom, the dark wooden paneling hung with portraits of dead scholars staring down at us from their frames. The thick, carved table and big comfy chairs replaced student desks. The stately room made the class and our writing seem important—until Summer and I tripped over the rug, which reminded us that we were just freshmen after all, wearing shorts and hooded sweatshirts. Or, in my case, a designer scarf and—

“Designer jeans!” At least we’d reached the hallway and she’d pressed me against the wall before she hissed this at me, out of our classmates’ hearing. “I thought you said you shopped at the thrift store.”

“I do shop at the thrift store.” The only thing I had actually purchased there was an outfit for my belly-dancing class. A little flamboyant but a lot cheaper than new workout clothes would have been. And I often browsed in the thrift store, which counted as shopping.

“There is no way you got a two-hundred-dollar scarf in a thrift store,” she whispered. “And those jeans. They’re from last year. A size-four woman did not drop dead and give her almost-brand-new designer jeans to charity. I thought you didn’t have any money. You told me you were working at the coffee shop because your scholarship is tuition only. You didn’t say you have a line of credit from back home!”

“I don’t. The scarf and the jeans were gifts.” Not a lie. My grandmother had bought all my clothes for the six years I lived with her.

Summer pointed at me. “I knew all that detail in your story was a little too realistic. You’re really Rebecca, aren’t you? Just in the present day? You own a horse farm in Kentucky.”

“What? No! Why would you think that?”

“Last weekend when Jřrdis brought the Sunday Times to the dorm, you went straight to the horse section.”

“There is no horse section of the New York Times.”