ALL OF HAVENPORT rendered in gray scale. It wasn’t as if Devon was that far from her New York home, but somehow winter was worse here, the way the January wind blew off the water right through your bones. Lulu noticed a general sense of depression among her classmates as campus life settled into a somewhat dreary routine. For Lulu, this meant classes, assuming she woke up in time, and working out at the university gym. At least she’d managed to avoid the dreaded “freshman fifteen,” something she made easier by assiduously avoiding student dining halls. Most meals, to the extent she ate them at all, she took just off campus at a chopped-salad place that wasn’t horrible. Socialites were whippet-thin; gaining weight was out of the question.
Years ago—Sheldon thought it was in the seventies—some Devonites decided that the month of February was wanting and, well, something had to be done. Opting for overkill, their solution was to have a party every night of the month. They dubbed it the 28 Club for the number of days in February. Every night, a different group volunteered to host, and it was open to all, assuming one was wired enough to know the schedule. Lulu had been to a couple out of boredom, although she skipped the one at Beta. No need to be seen there again.
When Lulu first got into Devon, she didn’t react the way most did. She didn’t film herself screaming with excitement reading her electronic acceptance letter. She didn’t humble-brag on Facebook, Guess I’ll be spending the next four years in Havenport. I hear the winters are terrible! Truth was, she was surprised to get in. She figured she’d go to NYU, a school much more geographically desirable for her purposes. But there was Sheldon to consider, plus she found that being accepted at Devon while simultaneously making it clear she didn’t give a shit infuriated people. That part was fun. Anyway, Lulu figured she’d stay long enough to please Sheldon, then get on with things, with the brand. But now she wasn’t so sure. There were some people here—not many, to be sure—that she didn’t find completely horrible and might even miss a little if she left. This was an unexpected development. In particular, the Fellinghams lot, they were friends she imagined she might keep. She did have to ward off Win’s advances that one night, which proved painfully awkward. Win was too light in his loafers for her tastes. But on the whole, other than that and a roommate she wanted to pack off on the next cargo ship to Rangoon, things were tolerable. Almost pleasant.
Campus was blanketed with snow from an all-day blizzard, and the paths were only partially plowed. It was the kind of wet snow that caked tree branches, giving everything a winter wonderland look. Deciding her Stuart Weitzmans were not up to the task, Lulu pulled on some Bean boots and made her way to the campus post office. The walk was not made easier by her hangover, courtesy of Fellinghams the previous evening. She could swear a small man with a ball-peen hammer had taken up residence somewhere just behind her eyes. She would open her third Diet Coke of the day as soon as she got back to her room.
The PO was practically deserted. Once, maybe back in Sheldon’s day, the PO had been a hub of activity, but no longer. The internet had seen to that. Today, though, it was a place that held infinite promise; Lulu was there to pick up this month’s On the Avenue. Surely, this would be the one.
OTA had an online presence, of course, but its glossy articles and oversize pages were meant to be a tactile experience. The magazine encouraged this by delaying online content until the print version had been out for a couple of days.
Peering into the window of her little box, Lulu could see it was stuffed with mail. After checking her phone’s Notes app for her box combination, she spun the little dial and opened it up. Mail spilled out, almost all junk. Lots of credit card offers. She picked up the pile and rifled through it, throwing almost everything in a nearby trash can. She found a card from the PO that said, You have additional mail at the desk. She handed the note to the postal worker behind the counter, who, seemingly in slow motion, retrieved another bundle. “You should get your mail more often.”
“Why?”
Lulu dumped the mail on a nearby table, and the big, glossy copy of OTA was hard to miss. Right away, she could see she wasn’t on the cover. A shot of some society-matron types was under the heading “The New Astors.” Old people, who cares. She flipped rapidly through the pages … boring article … boring article … nothing. Where the hell is it? It should have run by now. She was briefly tempted to call Wendy Faircloth, but thought better of it. Too eager.
She walked back to her room, which was blissfully devoid of Song. Plopping down on her bed, she leafed through OTA at a more leisurely pace, flipping to the party pictures first. It was the usual benefits and openings. Cassie Little, one of Lulu’s erstwhile modeling partners, was shot at an opening for a contemporary art show at the Odeon Gallery in Chelsea. The show featured the work of up-and-coming artist Lucien Smith. Lulu thought his paintings looked like a bunch of black dots on a white background, but a New York Times art critic had dubbed Smith the “new Dada,” so she took it on faith that his work was important. It annoyed her to think of Cassie sashaying around the Odeon Gallery, pretending to understand everything, especially when photographers were nearby. Bitch.
Now bored, Lulu tossed OTA aside and thumbed through Newsweek, a free copy of which had also been stuffed in her box. She guessed they were looking for younger subscribers, although she didn’t know a single person her age who subscribed to a newsmagazine. The very idea seemed ridiculous.
About halfway through, past the hard news, an article caught her attention. Called “Campus Nightmares,” it was about the wave of sexual assaults on American campuses. The victims—known as survivors—were bravely coming to the fore, exposing their pain for the common good. There was a lot about Emma Sulkowicz, the famous “Mattress Girl” at Columbia, who had carried a mattress around campus for an entire year to protest an alleged assault by a fellow student. Lulu thought there must be less exhausting ways to get attention, but she couldn’t argue with the results. Sulkowicz had become a campus celebrity and a feminist hero. She even got invited to one of Barack Obama’s States of the Union. Lulu googled Mattress Girl, and there were 2.7 million hits.
Another girl had accused a teacher of assault and her whole campus had rallied around her cause. She was hailed with words like brave and pathbreaking and was said to be taking on the “power imbalance” between teacher and student.
Something new was happening here. Victims as celebrities. Yolanda Perez had kept on her about that black eye last month, the one that forced Lulu to hide her first week in St. Barts. Perez had even shown up at her door with some woman from a campus feminist group. They pressed Lulu hard for a name, promising to “title nine his ass.” As much fun as it might be to get the hairy man-boy in trouble, Lulu didn’t have time for a bunch of dykes. As a likely English major, she was, however, intrigued that title nine was now being used as a verb.
The article also reminded her uncomfortably of her encounter in Professor Russell’s office. The anger she had felt afterward had devolved into something that most people would understand as shame, although in Lulu the feeling was banished to a dormant level of consciousness before it was allowed to be recognized as such. Alcohol helped with that. And then, to get that B+ on her final paper! She was still smarting over that. Not that she gave a shit about grades, and not because she gave a rat’s ass about Louisa May Alcott, either.
Craving a distraction, she made an exaggerated frown into her phone’s camera and posted the shot to Instagram with the hashtag #SoBored. She was up to two thousand followers. The near-instantaneous likes and comments that caused her phone to vibrate put her in a better mood.
That the picture captured more than she intended she would only come to realize later.