“Be honest. Were you, or were you not, wearing the Oakland A’s T-shirt?”
Her mouth twitches. “No comment.”
“Good morning,” Ms. Shaw says from the front of the room. She’s figured out how to turn the microphone on and off so we don’t hear her mumbling to herself. The screen overhead is paused on the title credits for Citizen Kane. I don’t know anything about the plot, but at least I’ve heard of it before. And it’s in English.
“As you can see, we’ll be watching Citizen Kane. Unlike last week, there will be an assignment after this film. By now you should all have a copy of Introduction to Film Theory, and you’ll see on page sixteen there are a number of questions. Your assignment, due by nine a.m. next Wednesday, is a thousand-word essay answering—or debating—any one of those questions.”
After a bit more lecturing, she dims the lights and starts the movie. I do my best to pay attention, but almost instantly my mind wanders. I pull out the text book and flip to page sixteen, squinting at the questions. Describe how deep focus was used to... There is only one word spoken in the film’s opening sequence. What can we discern from the imagery? Describe how Bernstein and Leland's flashbacks represent the two men’s different relationships with Kane.
I give up and close the book, gulping down half of my juice and praying for mental alertness. Maybe the questions will percolate in the back of my brain and the answers will come to me by the end of the movie.
“Psst. Wake up. Hey. Loverboy!”
I jerk awake, wincing in the too-bright light of the auditorium. Marcela has dumped my bag on the floor and kneels on the seat beside me, shaking my shoulder. On my other side Andi finishes sending a text, shoves her phone in her pocket, and stands.
“Move,” she orders, kicking my knee.
“Why are all women so wretched?”
Marcela grins at Andi and I feel only horror when I see Andi smile back.
“Don’t be friends with each other,” I order, straightening so Andi can pass without kicking me again.
“But she’s your childhood friend,” Marcela says. “And your friends are my friends.”
“That’s not true at all.”
“Come to Beans for lunch,” she continues. “I’ll give you a discount.”
“I want no part of your scheme. Besides, I’m...hanging out with Andi.”
“No, you’re not,” Andi says promptly.
“I hate you.” I finish my drink, zip up my jacket and stand.
“Ditto,” Marcela says brightly, standing up too. She’s wearing skin-tight turquoise pants, white rain boots, and a red coat. She looks like a comic book character. “Come on, boyfriend.”
“That’s not an improvement.”
“Free brownies,” she whispers.
“No.”
Andi laughs and leaves. I watch her go, belatedly realizing that maybe she’s not the worst person in my life.
“I’m not pretending to be your boyfriend,” I say firmly.
“Two brownies,” she counters.
“No!”
“Two brownies and I’ll help you with your homework.”
“I need to pass this class. I don’t think trusting you is the way to do it.”
“Nate’s a hipster. He owns this movie and made me watch it like, three hundred times.”
“Remind me why you like him?”
“I don’t, remember? But come to the shop, sit at one of the tables, and I’ll help you with the essay.”
I sigh. “Are you lying about the movie?”
“I was lying about the two brownies. You can only have one.”
“Marcela.”
“And it’s just a fifteen percent discount, it’s not free.”
I look past her helplessly, but Bertrand is standing at the door, chatting with Ms. Shaw. With her Audrey Hepburn dress and flats, she looks dainty and miniature next to Bertrand’s wrestler’s build. But they way they’re looking at each other says that opposites are most definitely attracting and explains why Bertrand insists on walking me to class. While I’m happy to have at least one of life’s mysteries solved, seeing Bertrand flirt is almost worse than being threatened by him. Then he catches my eye and waves.
“Let’s go,” I say to Marcela.
***
Half an hour later we’re stationed at a corner table at Beans, a quirky independent coffee shop in the heart of downtown Burnham. The owner supports lots of local artists and the walls are filled with paintings, sculptures and various types of art that are available for purchase. It’s warm and colorful and half-full on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.
Steaming cups of tea sit in front of us, and I have a sandwich and cinnamon bun I had to pay for. Marcela is steadily working her way through the outer layer of the cinnamon bun, taking the pieces with the most frosting. She may have lied about the food, but from what she’s said so far, it seems she was telling the truth about Citizen Kane. My essay will address question one, discussing the use of deep focus.
She digs out her phone, finds a specific clip from the film online, and we watch an interminable scene in which we look out through a window at young Kane playing in the snow, while inside his mother and father argue about sending him away somewhere.
“Okay,” she says, when it’s over. “What did you get from that?”
“The mother wants to send the kid away. The father’s not okay with it until he hears there’s money involved. The boy just wants to play outside.”
“How does the boy feel about it?”
“Um...fine, because he doesn’t know what’s happening?”
“Why not?”
“Is this a trick question?” I sip my tea and nearly burn off my tongue. I shoot a glare at Nate, who’s manning the counter and pretending not to spy on us. I haven’t agreed to do anything more than come here, but apparently that’s enough to irk him. I have no idea what’s up between these two, I’m just glad it’s not me. Well, mostly not me. Sort of.
“No, dumbass. Why doesn’t he know what’s happening?”
“Because he’s outside and his parents are inside?”
“Yes!”
“You’re messing with me. That can’t be the answer.”
Marcela puts down her phone and pulls the text book from her bag. The spine cracks when she opens it, leaving little doubt that this is the first time these pages are seeing the light of day. Marcela’s family is very wealthy and she couldn’t possibly care less about her education, she’s just here because they’ll cut her out of the will if she doesn’t get a degree.
“What’s your major?” I ask.
She licks a flinger and flips through the pages, not looking up at me as she answers. “Psych.”
“You want to be a psychologist? Psychiatrist? What’s the word?”
“They’re both words. And no, I don’t want to be either one. I just needed a degree and that seemed popular. Okay, here it is.”
“Do you have a course advisor?”
“Yeah. I take her advice every year and she leaves me alone. If you look at this—”
“And that’s fine? She doesn’t like, come to your house or anything?”
She looks up, brows drawn together like a disapproving arrow. “What? No. Why?”
“Just asking.”
“Just randomly asking if my course advisor stalks me?”
“Uh-huh.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Look at this picture. Page fifteen.” She turns the book and I look at a still taken from the same scene we just watched. In the foreground Kane’s parents huddle around the table looking at paperwork with a lawyer; in the background, out the window, is a little boy playing in the snow.
“Okay. I see it.”
“This is an example of deep focus.” She taps the parents. “They’re in focus.” She taps the kid. “He’s in focus. The foreground, the middle ground, and the background are in focus. This is because you’re meant to be aware of everything, even as the subject—Kane—is not.”
&n
bsp; I stare at her. “Say that again?”
She sighs. “The characters’ dialogue is just a fraction of the story. Welles—that’s the writer, director, actor—didn’t just slap the scenes together. He thought about them.”
I study the picture. “Huh. Maybe you’re not so bad at this.”
“That’s why I’m taking the class. I’ve already watched half the movies on the syllabus, so I don’t have to do much more than show up.”
I eat the last of my sandwich and put away my things. Marcela has eaten the entire cinnamon bun. “Thanks for explaining.”
“You’re welcome. Now do your part.”
“This is my part. I show up, look good, and make you look good.”
“Just kiss me.”
“On the cheek.”
“That’ll do.”
Nate works at the counter, polishing silverware. He’s wearing a beanie, a carefully trimmed hipster beard, and a fitted plaid shirt with skinny jeans. I don’t know what Marcela sees in him.
I lean over the table and peck her on the cheek, throwing in a heartfelt smile for good measure. I don’t need to look at Nate to know he’s watching; I can feel the imaginary blow darts piercing my neck. Jealousy and petty revenge resonate in the foreground, middle ground and background of this little scene.
chapter seven
“Hey,” Jackie says.
“Hey. You look great.”
“Come on in.”
Jackie’s dorm room is an equally small but slightly tidier and infinitely more colorful version of Crosbie’s, and almost every item is some shade of pink or orange. It’s a little bit blinding.
“Do you like it?” she asks. “I’m from Florida so I wanted it to feel like summer all year long.”
“It’s very bright.”
She laughs like I’ve made a joke, then turns to finish applying her makeup in the mirror. Her hair is pulled up in a high ponytail and she’s wearing a short black dress with sparkly silver heels. I think of Andi. All of the doors have names on them, and I’d passed hers when I came looking for Jackie five minutes ago. It had taken far too much effort to resist the urge to knock, to see if she’d taken my advice for wooing Crick. Now my brain replaces Jackie’s curves with Andi’s leaner lines, and while last year I’d have sworn up and down that I preferred curves, this year I’m not so sure.
I blink and shake my head.
“Just one more minute,” Jackie says, catching the gesture and misreading it as impatience.
“No problem.” I’m not all that eager to go, actually. I spent the morning at Beans with Crosbie for our “dress rehearsal” and now I wear a too-small black leotard beneath my jeans and long-sleeve navy shirt. The original plan was to walk over in case we went to the bar after, but there’s no way I can walk twenty minutes in these tights. The only consolation is that I know Crosbie’s wearing the same thing.
“All set!” Jackie chirps a minute later. She turns and grins at me, her boundless energy making me feel like I’m a hundred. Or maybe it’s the stuffed cats on her bed or the rainbow-print curtains or the nine thousand inspirational quotes tacked to the pin board over her desk.
We take the elevator down so she doesn’t have to navigate the stairs in her heels, and when we step outside into the crisp, dry night, I take a deep breath. It might just be the bodysuit, but something about being in that residence made me feel claustrophobic.
I hold Jackie’s elbow as she totters down the front steps of the building, chattering about how excited she is to see her friend’s performance.
“Hey.”
We look over at the sound of Andi’s voice. Even though I was being a gentleman, I still feel like she caught me doing something wrong.
“Hey, Andi!” Jackie exclaims. “Oh my God, you look so gorgeous.”
And she does. She’s taken my advice and left her hair loose, and now it tumbles halfway down her back in a heavy golden mass. In the stark overhead light her brows look darker, sharper in her pale face, and she’s brought out the red lipstick again, looking like a pouty supermodel, the kind that resent their own beauty.
She wears a yellow pea coat that she clutches together in front to further ward off the cold, and dark tights showcase her endless legs.
“I lent Andi my coat,” Jackie says, answering my unasked question about what happened to Andi’s puffy Oakland A’s jacket. “Doesn’t she look beautiful?”
“Um, yeah,” I make myself say, sticking my hands in my pockets. I shouldn’t have given her that advice about the hair and hoodies. I don’t want Crick to see her. Hell, I don’t even want to see her. Not when I can’t figure out what the hell it is I’m feeling when we cross paths. Two years after she broke my heart, I assumed I was beyond that stupidity. Totally better. Sixty-something names past it. Sixty-something names that fade to nothing when I think about what should be the first name on that list.
“Thanks.” Andi tugs on the jacket some more.
“Is Julian running late?” Jackie peers around, oblivious to the weird tension simmering between us.
Andi waves at someone over my shoulder. “No. There he is.”
It’s just after seven o’clock and the October night is already dark, but when we turn it’s very easy to see the tall guy loping toward us with a bundle of flowers in his hand. I glance at Andi to see if she’s as off-put as I am by the cheesy gesture, but she’s not. She’s smiling. I see the chipped tooth.
“Hey,” Crick says, stopping when he reaches us. “Sorry I’m late. I stopped to get these.”
“These” is the most boring bouquet of flowers ever, tiny white ones with a couple sprigs of green and some purple thing in the middle. They might even be weeds.
“These are so nice,” Andi says, accepting the bouquet. “No one’s ever given me flowers before.”
The words stop me in my tracks and I rack my brain to think of an occasion on which I’d given Andi flowers. I’m sure there must be one. A birthday, maybe. Or when her grandmother died. But I can’t actually remember giving her flowers, or even considering it. I’ve given her gifts, of course. A new baseball glove; comic books; a lizard I caught in a homemade trap. Then the trap itself, so she could catch more lizards on her own. But flowers... I didn’t think she was a flowers kind of girl.
“We’re driving to the coffee shop,” Jackie is saying when I tune back into the conversation. “Do you guys want a ride? It’s pretty dark.”
I see Andi open her mouth to say no, but Crick speaks up first. “Do you mind?” he asks me. “I twisted my knee at practice and a ride would be awesome.”
“Of course,” I have to say. “I’m right over there.” I point at the car and we walk toward it, the flowers’ cellophane wrapper crinkling obnoxiously with every step. Because Crick is so tall he has to sit in the front seat while the girls climb in the back. I start the car and let it warm for a second to melt the thin sheen of frost on the windshield.
“I’m so excited,” Jackie announces. “My friend Becca is doing an acoustic version of ‘Take My Breath Away’ and I heard her practice and she sounds fantastic.”
Everyone murmurs polite interest as I ease away from the curb and start the short drive to Beans.
“So how’d you two meet?” Crick asks when I stop for a red light.
“We met at the Welcome Party,” Jackie volunteers, leaning in between the front seats. “There was this stupid game and we—”
“Oh, right,” Crick interrupts. “Seven Minutes In Heaven. That must be how your name wound up on the wall.”
Jackie blinks, her fake lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. “What wall?”
“In the Student Union bathroom? All of McVey’s conquests are posted up there.”
“But I’m not—”
“It’s a tradition,” I tell Jackie while glaring at Crick. He’s an athlete. If he’s got any game—or reputation—at all, his name is on there, too. And then I stumble in my thinking, because if he’s got a list...Andi might wind up on it. “A distasteful
tradition,” I add for good measure. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But we haven’t even—”
“It’s a lot of names,” Crick says. “What number are you up to now?”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not counting.”
“Have you seen the list, Andi? How long have we been at school? A month? Five weeks? It must be close to a hundred.”
Jackie gasps.
“It’s not a hundred,” I say hastily. “It’s not even...eighty.” Okay, that’s really not helpful. “And a lot of it’s not even real.”
“Did you see it?” Crick presses, twisting in the seat to look at Andi and gauge her reaction. I take a peek in the mirror but her expression is carefully bland.
“I saw it on the freshman tour.”
“What’d you think?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
Crick resumes facing forward, looking like a befuddled giant now that his plan to make me look bad hasn’t panned out. We’re on Main Street by then and still early enough that I snag street parking just two blocks from Beans. We climb out, Andi on my side, Jackie at the curb near Crick.
“What a fucking asshole,” I mutter. “Really? Him?”
“Really?” Andi mutters back. “Just eighty?”
She rounds the car to walk with Crick before I can reply.
“It’s freezing!” Jackie exclaims, her mood apparently restored by the cold.
I make myself smile. Two years ago I would have been fine with this. With her. She’s sweet, she’s pretty, she’s here. That should be enough. But as I watch Andi walk away with Crick, I know that it’s not.
* * *
A hundred plus folding chairs have been arranged in rows of semi-circles in front of a small platform stage set up along one wall of the dimly lit shop. About half are already occupied, but on Crosbie’s instruction Nora has saved seats for me and Jackie on the end of the first row.
“Sorry,” she says when she sees us enter with Andi and Crick. “I didn’t realize there would be four. I only saved spots for two.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say quickly. “They can find their own seats.” They’re already wandering away, Crick leading Andi over to a group of guys in Burnham letter jackets.
Undeclared (Burnham College #2) Page 10
