Sophomore Switch(8)
Author: Abby McDonald

Sighing, I kick off my heels and drop my purse back on the floor.

“I’m really sorry,” Holly apologizes on the other end of the phone. “I tried to get all the reading done in time, but I’ve still got another six chapters left and labs to write up, and —”

“Really, it’s cool!” I say again, trying to hide my disappointment. “We can party another time.”

“Thanks, Natasha.” Holly already sounds distracted, and I just know she’s already got her textbook open. “Perhaps at the weekend? I’ve got practice on Saturday, but Sunday could work.”

“OK.” It’s not like I have any other plans. “Sunday, then.”

“See you soon.”

I hang up and let out a long sigh. Holly can’t help it, I know. She’s pre-med, which means more lectures and labs than any normal person could handle. My two essays a week are nothing compared to her workload, but somehow she manages to take crew as well: waking up at five every morning to go train in the gym or row lengths on the icy river. I think she’s insane.

Crazy or not, she’s my one and only friend in Oxford — if hanging out a couple of times in the two weeks since we met counts as friendship, I mean. So when we made plans to go out to a bar tonight, then maybe on to one of the tiny clubs for some dancing, well, it was pretty much the social highlight of my stay so far. I even took time away from the library this evening to straighten my hair and give myself a manicure.

Some good perfect nails will do me now.

“Hey, wait up!”

“Come on, we’ll miss kickoff.”

“Give me a second. . . .”

A group of people clatter loudly past my room, and then they’re gone and it’s silent again. I hate the quiet around here; it makes it easier to hear all the fun everyone else is having. And when I say fun, I don’t just mean the good, clean stuff; my walls are so thin I can hear every passionate grunt and moan from the room next door. Every night it’s the same: murmured conversation, the sappy Robin Thicke starts up, and then showtime, while I press my headphones tighter and blast Kelly Clarkson so loudly I probably do lasting damage to my eardrums. I haven’t seen the guy yet (and come on, it’s got to be a guy. I mean, Robin Thicke?), but he’s a player all right.

I check if Morgan’s online to chat, but nobody’s there. Now that I’m all dressed, I can’t bear to just stay in and watch DVDs again, so I grab my coat — and scarf and gloves — pass the cluster of kids by the stairs, and head out, tripping down the uneven stone staircase and letting myself out the side gate. Inside the battlements, Raleigh is calm and ordered, but the moment I pass out onto the street, I’m almost hit by speeding cyclists and the rush of traffic and city life.

I plug in my iPod and set off into town. It’s past 8:00 PM, but I’ve already spent six hours in the library today, gone for my gym workout, and written my next paper, which leaves me the one final choice in my now-regular routine: bookstores. I never got the appeal of hanging out in one before, but in a city where everything except the pubs and bars close by seven, Borders offers one last place to spend the evening. Warm, quiet, and full of armchairs and distraction, it can almost lull me into believing I’m not completely alone.

There are groups of students hanging around by the ATM outside, and I can’t help but stare, the girls in bare legs and tiny jackets despite the fact my face is going numb just peeking out between my hat and scarf. I’m used to girls dressing trashy — I mean, I own skirts that would make Band-Aids look demure — but that’s in seventy-degree weather! Oxford girls may look totally prim during the daytime, but after hours, it’s like the search for the next Pussycat Doll came to town.

I push past the girls, and once I’m out of the damp winds, I make straight for the Starbucks at the back of the store. It’s totally pathetic, I know, but after coming here every night for a week straight, I’ve settled into a routine. First, I stake my claim on one of the prize armchairs. They’re arranged in a little nook, back from the café, and if you can believe it, winning one takes strategy and determination. Sometimes I have to hover, annoying the customers before they give them up, but tonight I spy a free one and only have to slip past an old guy before he can grab it. Stripping off my winter gear, I leave it draped over the seat to mark my territory and then wander back into the main bookstore area to gather my distraction.

Usually, I speed right past the magazine racks, but tonight some masochistic instinct makes me stop and look, and there they are on the cover of US Weekly. “Tyler and Shannon: Wedding Bells?” the cover screams, under a photo of them on the red carpet, grinning for everything they’re worth. With a gulp, I take a copy, facedown, and browse the new fiction aisles for a good ten minutes before I can bring myself to settle in my armchair and look at the piece.

“Rumors . . . sources close to the couple . . . body-language expert claims . . .” It’s nothing new, I realize. Just the same old breathless speculation, fueled this time by Shannon’s confession to a “close friend” that she dreams of a spring wedding. But just as I think I’m free and clear, I turn the page and there it is.

You’d think by now I’d be used to the sight of my own pixilated body. You’d be wrong. I still taste metal in my mouth when I look at the picture: half naked for the (hidden) camera as I straddle Tyler in the hot tub, so clear you can see the harmony tattoo I got on my right hip with Morgan in freshman year. It doesn’t matter that under the water, I’ve still got my bikini panties on, or that I didn’t go all the way with him. No, that picture is all that matters — and the fifteen minutes of giggly, drunken footage that wound up online showing my face, and B cup, to the world.

See, this is the reason I couldn’t stay in California, the reason that no matter how much time goes by, I can’t escape that night. Because every time something happens in Planet Tyler and Shannon, they drag it up again.

And those two are total publicity whores.

Ever since the first season of the reality show 5th Avenue: The Real Gossip Girl, when America’s teens fell in love with the charming bad boy Tyler and sweet Shannon, who’d been crushing on him, like, forever, the two of them managed to build whole careers out of being themselves. Think the kids from Laguna Beach and The Hills did good? LC and Heidi have got nothing on these guys. Their on-off flirtation lasted Tyler’s whole senior year, so when they finally got together (at an oh-so-spontaneous loft party in Williamsburg), the audience and press went crazy. Would Tyler reform for his high school sweetheart? Could their love last the distance to UC Santa Barbara for college? Tune in to Tyler’s spin-off show next season to find out!