In Nina’s head it was still only four in the afternoon, not seven, not time for dinner. It was already getting slightly dark out, and the dining room of the old Victorian hotel on Broadway was dim anyway—all candlelight and yellow wicker with black trim. A far cry from the dining hall, with the salad bar lettuce that was always just slightly frozen and the low-fat ranch that was usually contaminated with raspberry vinaigrette or peas or hard-boiled egg or whatever was positioned close by the dressings.
Beside her, Nina’s mom was delicately eating her very rare tuna. On the other side of the table Avery tore into her chicken and Mel pushed a large mushroom back and forth across her plate. Avery’s hair had grown a little—it hung about an inch below her earlobes now. Avery and Mel had almost nothing to say. In fact, only Nina and her mother were doing much talking. Nina heard herself say the words “so amazing” for what had to be the twenty-fifth time, and she had just finished up an extremely long and detailed description of her so amazing leadership class and her final project—a nine-month plan, totally overhauling the current student council activity program for the year.
She was only talking now to fill the void, to chase away the terrible feeling that seized her whenever she remembered that she wasn’t going back to her building to see Steve after this. She would see Steve again in a year, if they both managed to get into Stanford.
A year.
It might as well have been that she’d see Steve on Mars once they both got into that new NASA program.
When her mother excused herself, Nina leaned over the table.
“So, what didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
Glassy stares.
“About what?” Avery asked.
“This summer.”
“What about it?”
“Was there anything you didn’t tell me about?” Nina pressed. “Meet anybody?”
“Nope,” Avery said. “It was a long, dry season.”
“Mel? What are you holding out on me here?” Nina probed again.
Mel had abandoned the mushroom and was absently playing with a drop of water that had beaded on the tablecloth. When Nina said her name, she suddenly stopped.
“It was pretty boring,” she said with a shrug.
“Oh.”
It was hard for Nina to figure out where to go from there. Her summer had been anything but boring.
As she gazed at them over the bread basket and the water glasses that the waiter was constantly refilling until they were impossible to pick up, Nina had a strange thought. Maybe Avery and Mel were resentful that she didn’t have to work, that her parents had flown her all the way across the country to go to a college program for the summer. This would never have even occurred to her before she met Steve, but now it seemed obvious. It was unfair that she didn’t have to spend every day waiting on tables—and it was even more unfair that she’d have an advantage getting into a good school just because her parents had money.
It just brought her back to Steve. Steve had managed. He’d gotten a scholarship. It almost choked her up to think of how hard he worked, or how hard her friends worked, how hard her parents worked….
She twisted her napkin into a knot under the table and tried to figure out if this wave of emotion was exhaustion or hormones.
“I got to see Mel sing and dance,” Avery added. “We had lots of quality time.”
These emotions had to be hormonal because they were shifting at every second. Now Nina was jealous. There were experiences Mel and Avery had had that she would never really get. And why? Because she was the spoiled one.
“Sounds hilarious,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to add, so she passed out the dessert menus. They spent a few minutes trying to figure out if they were sharing two chocolate fondues, or if Nina and Mel were getting the lemon cake and Avery was getting the blondie sundae.
“My ass is getting so wide,” Avery mumbled. “Two airplane tickets wide.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mel said. She actually seemed distressed.
“Yes, it is. I have to smoke more. Keep my appetite down.”
Before Mel could answer back, Nina’s mom returned, and the subject of Avery’s smoking was dropped. Nina could tell, though, that Mel had been working on Avery all summer about mat. Both Nina and Mel hated this new habit of Avery’s, and Avery knew that. She’d probably said that deliberately just to get a rise out of both of them.
They picked the separate desserts, and the conversation switched over to student council—to the meeting Nina had to be at in the morning, to the speech she had to give on the first day of school, to the multitude of projects she would have to run. None of these things could have interested Mel or Avery much. They weren’t interesting things unless you were the one doing them. But these were the kinds of things she was expected to talk about, and everyone listened. At least, they were quiet and they pretended to listen until the desserts came.
“Did you have a good summer at the restaurant?” her mom asked.
“It was educational,” Avery said, spearing the lemon slice in her iced tea with her straw and forcing it to the bottom of her glass. “I learned how they make those fried onion blossoms. If that shows up on the SAT, I’m totally ready. The math is going to be bad, but I’m going to nail the appetizer section.”
“Good to see nothing’s changed,” Nina’s mom said with a laugh. Her mom always laughed at Avery’s little comments. Avery had always been Avery—a little cranky, observant, wry. Avery was like that when she was eight, giving running monologues, entertaining the grown-ups. Mel had always been the sweet, shy one everyone said was cute. And Nina was the laugher, the talker, the planner. The loudest voice.
So why didn’t she feel like it was the same? Why did she feel like she wasn’t even here, like this wasn’t her life?
Because she had a life with Steve. They had lived together, and done routine things together. They saw each other first thing in the morning in the hallway. (Sometimes they had their first kiss before Nina even had a chance to brush her teeth.) They’d meet up after Nina had her run and Steve had his morning ride, and they’d go to breakfast and microeconomics together. They sat side by side in class, and when it was over, they figured out when they would meet for dinner, since they had different afternoon schedules.
In the evening, they’d spend way too long at the dining hall with the other people from their floor. Steve would always watch Nina’s big plastic cup, jumping up to refill it with water or diet soda whenever it got low. Someone would point this out and make a remark about it. These ranged from the nice comments about being the perfect couple, to the not entirely joking remarks about Steve being whipped, usually from one of the guys. (But he wasn’t whipped. He was just unbelievably attentive. He was the best kind of abnormal, and those guys just didn’t know how to take that. She always blew these remarks off, but they bothered her. She didn’t like the idea that anyone thought she was ordering Steve around.)
Her soda was low now. And as obsessed as their waiter was with refilling their water, he didn’t take the same interest in the other glasses.
Right about now, just as it was starting to get dark, they’d usually be having their nightly discussion about whose room they were going to work in. This depended on whether Steve’s roommate Mike or Strange Ashley were around. Sometimes they’d walk into town, to the place that sold both the regular and the soy ice cream, or they’d end up out in the hall, playing textbook hockey (a sport that was developed early on). Then there were the few, amazing nights when Ashley was gone and Steve had stayed with her….
It was too much to think about. Nina stared at the lemon cake that had just been stuck in front of her and tried to look interested in Avery’s story of how she’d managed to convince a couple of her customers that nachos were a genuine Irish food developed during the potato famine.
Everything was the same for Mel and Avery. They’d stayed here. They’d keep working during school, just switching their hours around. Nina was not the same, and she didn’t know how to explain that Steve affected every part of her day, and that now she was away from him, she wasn’t actually sure if she could breathe.
She took a moment and forced a deep, even breath from her abdomen. It didn’t help. She took another.
“You in labor?” Avery asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Nina’s mom paused with a spoonful of sorbet halfway to her mouth, obviously trying to figure out if jokes about pregnancy were funny or not.
“I’m just so happy to see you,” Nina said, steadying herself and forcing a wry smile. “I can barely breathe.”
“Yeah,” Avery replied. “I have that effect.”