Nina woke up the next morning feeling like the world had realigned itself a little. She was fueled by a new sense of purpose. A righteous cause.
She decided to skip her run and took the extra time to take a long, boiling shower that flushed her skin. She got a little overzealous with her cucumber-cilantro body wash and had a distinctly saladlike smell when she emerged.
Today she was going to work it. She pulled out her knee-high, caramel-colored boots with the platform heels. An excellent start. There was something about the way those heels clicked on the floor and the three inches of lift that changed the way she saw the world. Deep brown skirt, a little indulgence she’d gotten for herself a few weeks before. (All hail Mom’s AmEx.) Formfitting, cream-colored cashmere sweater (from Nan). This was her battle gear. Tight and tall. That was the only way to play it.
She tracked Avery down at her locker first thing. Down in the basement, things were fairly desolate. It was the closest thing you could get to privacy at AHH.
“I need to talk to you,” Nina said.
“About what?” Avery was shoving her books into her bag in a “What’s going on with you and Mel?”
“This is your business … how?”
“Because we’re friends.”
“Uh-huh.” Avery seemed unimpressed. This wasn’t actually the way Nina had envisioned this starting off.
“We’re not friends?”
“You can’t fix this one, Neen,” Avery said matter-of-factly. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.”
“Because?”
“You know why.”
Avery pulled hard on the zipper of her backpack, catching paper in the teeth.
“Listen,” Nina said, “after school we’ll all go to my place and—”
“This isn’t a student council project,” Avery said coldly, ripping the tiny corner of paper from the zipper track. “You can’t just call a meeting whenever you feel like it.”
“This affected me too, you know,” Nina said, her tone growing more tense.
“You always do that,” Avery snapped. “You always have to stick yourself into things.”
“You had me lie for you about you and Gaz. I never told her. That’s not me sticking myself into it.”
Avery couldn’t say much to that one.
Nina tried to simmer things down with some common sense. “All I’m saying is that you should talk to her. She’s freaking out because she doesn’t understand what’s going on.”
Bang. Avery slammed her locker and walked around Nina toward the stairs. Nina followed close behind.
“And I know you might not either,” Nina added.
“Deep. They teach you that at camp?”
There was serious cynicism in Avery’s voice now that surprised Nina. Avery seemed to be making fun of her—not in a joking way either.
“Why are you being like this?” Nina said.
“I just want you to stay out of my business.”
“Friends are into each other’s business,” Nina shot back.
Now they were at the top of the stairs, in front of the frosted glass door that led to the main hall. They both knew this conversation couldn’t go past that door.
“Listen, Nina. It’s over,” Avery said sharply. “We’re not dating anymore. Are you satisfied now that you’re in the loop?”
“Are you going to tell her, or are you just going to run for cover?”
“Why don’t you do it?” Avery asked. “You seem to like playing counselor.”
“Oh, I love it.”
“I think you do.”
The bell rang. Nina rubbed under her eyes. They were burning. She was tired. She didn’t know this Avery. She wanted to go home, back to bed.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m going to tell her if you don’t.”
“Do it, then,” Avery said, looking down. “And leave me the hell alone.”
“Fine.” Nina went through the door and slipped into the chaos of the hallway. Everything seemed rough to her. It didn’t feel like the normal morning rush of people bumping and rushing to class. The hall was full of vicious, foreign mobs.
Nina planted her thumbs in the corners of her eye to cork up anything that might have leaked out.
For the rest of the day Nina had a blistering headache. The loudness of her heels and their shuddering impact with the linoleum didn’t help much. The dark came early. By two the overcast sky made it look like dusk. Frost’s class was gloomier than usual, although she ignored Nina for most of it. Devon was her chosen target of the week. He’d made the mistake of asking what was going to be on the midterm exam. That kind of thing never went over big with Frost.
When Nina got home, her mother’s secretary, Gina, came bursting through the communicating door between the living room and the office. She was pinching an envelope between her fingertips.
“Look what came!” she said, wielding an envelope. “Look!”
Sometimes it was a little weird having someone who always went through the mail.
Nina took hold of it. This wasn’t some generic letter. The envelope was made of high-quality paper—heavy, with a velvety finish. There was an insignia alongside the return address. Stanford.
“I saw you pull up,” Gina said. “Your mom’s with a client, but she’s so excited. We’ve had this for four hours. We were going to call you, but we figured we’d wait.”
Nina weighed the envelope in her palm. She couldn’t gauge what was in it.
“I think I’m going to take it upstairs….”
Gina looked a little disappointed, but she nodded anyway.
“Come tell us,” she said. “No matter what.”
“Okay.”
Nina wearily walked upstairs and sat at her desk. This was the last moment of not knowing her fate. She carefully tore the envelope open along the stamped side, keeping the seal intact. The first words told all.
On behalf of the admissions committee, I am pleased to inform you …
Her eyes skipped along the page.
… the enclosed forms, along with a $500 deposit … look forward to seeing you on campus this fall.
She shuffled through the papers, barely processing what she was seeing. Forms on blue and green paper. Some kind of postcard. She spread everything out on the desk and looked at it.
Automatically she opened up a new e-mail and quickly sent a note:
Steve,
It came. I got in. Write to me.
Love, Keen
There wasn’t excitement yet. More like a dull thrumming in her head. It had happened—it was all real. She closed her laptop and stared at her bed.
She just had to tell Mel.
Nina reached For her phone and numbly dialed Mel’s number. As soon as Mel picked up, Nina realized she didn’t know what to say first.
“Did you talk to her?” Mel asked.
Maybe she should ask Mel to come over. No. Mel would just get stuck in the middle of the celebration that was about to break out in the house. Nina couldn’t just leave either. Her mom and Gina would want to take her to dinner.
There was no good way of doing this. How did I get here? she thought. Why am I breaking up for Avery?
“Neen?” Mel prodded.
“I talked to her,” she said.
Be direct. Don’t drag it out.
“She thinks it would be better if you guys … didn’t date.”
“What do you mean?” Mel’s voice was frightened. Nina could hear her mom and Gina bustling downstairs now, waiting for news. Pretty soon they would come up and knock on the door and they wouldn’t understand why Nina couldn’t talk.
“It’s probably a good thing,” Nina added, hopelessly. “It’s good to know. It’ll be okay.”
“You mean we broke up?”
“We’ll go out,” Nina said. Then, not wanting to be misunderstood, she quickly added, “You, me, Parker. It’ll be just like before.
We can even put Parker in a dress and give him a cigarette.” No response. She shouldn’t have joked. She knew she wasn’t funny.
Footsteps on the stairs. Nothing from Mel except some breathing. And Steve was lost somewhere in the wild. Nina heard herself talking, telling Mel over and over how it would be fine. In fact, that it would be great and Avery had been wrong—and they’d been wrong about Avery forever. It had always been just the two of them—Nina and Mel. She just talked and talked until Nina wasn’t even sure what she was saying or if Mel was still on the phone. She talked until the knock on her door finally came, and she really did have to go. Mel never said a word, not even a good-bye before hanging up the phone.
Nina’s mother poked in her head.
“Well?” she asked, her eyes glistening. “Are you in?”
“I’m in,” Nina said, forcing a smile. It was true. She didn’t elaborate on what she was in, though.