Long May She Reign

by Ellen Emerson White

  Now Vicky looked—faintly—amused. “You need to do better with your eating, Meg. I’m not kidding about this.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  When she got back to the campus, she had her agents drive her as close to the dining hall as possible, so she would have to do less walking. She wasn’t looking, of course—not even peeking, much—although if she had been, she might have been sad not to see Jack either in line, or at any of the tables. In fact, she didn’t really see anyone she knew. But then, a couple of guys from her entry waved her over to their table, and she was relieved not to have to sit by herself.

  Dinner was more relaxing than she expected—Andy was a really funny, high-energy African-American guy from New York, who had just gotten cast in a huge part in the next play the Theater Department was putting on, and she had already gotten to know Quentin a little, because he had a mild case of cerebral palsy and she saw him on the dorm elevator pretty frequently. He had something of a political science bent, too, and she had had an unexpectedly stimulating conversation about the pitfalls of free trade with him down in the laundry room once. So she couldn’t exactly say they were her friends, but they were definitely moving out of the mere acquaintance category.

  It was also, in all honesty, a relief to walk up the hill to the dorm, and not be the only one who moved slowly.

  “I gotta get a sling,” Andy said, watching Quentin swing back and forth on his metal crutches and Meg limp on her cane. “Then we’d all look really good together.”

  “Or an eye patch and a parrot,” Meg said, and was pleased when they both laughed.

  “Or a piccolo,” Quentin said, and it was Meg’s turn to laugh.

  When she got off the elevator, there was a certain amount of emotional turmoil taking place on her floor. It turned out that Tammy’s longtime high school boyfriend had broken up with her earlier that afternoon—by email, no less—and she had been crying in her room pretty much non-stop ever since, while Susan kept her company. Actually, Susan was so universally well-liked as a JA that a steady stream of people from all over the dorm—not just their entry—often shuffled into the JAs’ suite to weep, or get gentle advice and sympathy about whatever was currently going wrong in their lives. Dirk handled some of it, but even the guys—Dirk included, probably—seemed to prefer confiding in Susan. If it hadn’t been for the security issues, freshmen from other dorms—and maybe even other campuses—might well be showing up on a regular basis, too.

  After filling her in, Juliana started shoving books into a knapsack and getting ready to escape to the library.

  “I can wait for you,” she said, “if you want to clear out for a while, too.”

  If she weren’t so exhausted, it would have been a relief to tag along—even if it meant having to do some concentrated studying in exchange. Meg shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m really tired. I’m just going to crash.”

  “Okay, your call,” Juliana said. “Keep your head down, though.”

  Meg nodded. With luck, she’d be able to go get cleaned up, and then disappear into her room without anyone else even knowing that she was here.

  But when she went into the bathroom, Mary Elizabeth was standing in front of the mirror, brushing her hair and putting on makeup, apparently getting ready for a date—or what she was hoping might turn into a date. “Juliana tell you?”

  “Yeah,” Meg said, using her arm to press the toothpaste tube against her right side so that she could open it. “By email. That really sucks.”

  “Sure does.” Mary Elizabeth carefully applied some mascara. “My girlfriend pulled the same thing last October. Then she thought we were going to get back together during Christmas break. Oh, yeah, like that was going to happen.”

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said. Wait, girlfriend? Well, okay. What the hell. She squeezed out so much toothpaste, that a large blob landed on her clothes. Which happened more often than not, so she ignored it. “You must have been really upset.”

  Mary Elizabeth looked disgruntled. “That’s your whole reaction?”

  Meg stuck her toothbrush in her mouth, recapped the tube, and flicked most of the stray splotch from her shirt into the sink. “Why? Did you want something else?”

  “I don’t know.” Mary Elizabeth put away the mascara rather sulkily. “I mean, I just came out to you. Couldn’t you have cringed and asked if I was attracted to you, or planning to check you out in the shower, or something?”

  Yeah, and purple cows could all fly. “You don’t exactly hide the fact that you actively dislike me,” Meg said. “So I can’t say that I’m really plagued by the notion of your suddenly becoming besotted.”

  “Well, okay,” Mary Elizabeth conceded. “I’m not crazy about your personality.”

  It was mutual.

  “But even though you’re not at all my type, objectively-speaking, you’re damn attractive,” Mary Elizabeth said, and looked her over critically. “Except for being such a slob. I mean, yuck.”

  Meg laughed. Yeah, she was a slob. Always had been. Even before becoming crippled and ungainly. So what? “I’ve forgotten more about sweatpants than most people will ever know.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Mary Elizabeth said, but she was smiling now. “Straighter than a ruler, anyway, right?”

  Meg nodded. So far, at least. “Enough to make a certain percentage of rulers very nervous.”

  Mary Elizabeth’s smile broadened. “That was the vibe I got, yeah.” She started to walk out, then paused. “You’re not who I thought you’d be. Not even close.”

  Meg shrugged. “Who the hell is?”

  “Well, yeah,” Mary Elizabeth said, and then she did leave, the door swinging shut.

  Meg finished brushing her teeth and turned off the faucet, resisting the urge to sit down on the cold, tile floor and fall asleep right there.

  It had been a very god-damned long day.

  21

  TIRED AS SHE was, she couldn’t convince herself to go to bed at eight o’clock at night. She thought about calling home, but then remembered that—according to an excited email she’d gotten from Neal earlier—her father and brothers were going to a Washington Capitals game, and her mother had been at the UN all day, and was still in New York, as far as she knew, at what was politely called “a dinner,” but was actually a major fund-raiser.

  Maybe she should have gone to the library with Juliana, after all.

  She turned on C-Span, where a State Department spokesperson was giving a briefing, mostly about the Secretary, who was off grandstanding, as usual. India, this time. She watched for a few minutes, until the self-aggrandizement-by-proxy became too irritating, and flipped around the channels to see if anything interesting was on.

  Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t.

  Of course, she should be studying. She should probably always be studying.

  However.

  Without giving herself time to think of all the reasons why she might regret it, she went out to the hall, and then, tentatively, down to the second floor. With the constant snow, she pretty much always had to use her cane outside, but when she was in the dorm, she usually tried to get along without it. As long as she stayed close to a wall, or hung on to the banister, so far, it seemed to work out okay.

  She could hear a lot of laughing and talking inside the common room—and lost her nerve. Only, that was pretty stupid. So, she made herself open the door.

  A bunch of the guys were in there, along with Debbie and Natalie from the fourth floor. Gerard, Quentin, Khalid, and—unexpectedly—one of her agents, Jose, were having an intense battle of what looked like some dumb sci-fi combat game, while Debbie, Mikey, Andy, Natalie, and Dirk hung out on the stained green couch and the beat-up futon, giving loud advice and making less than flattering comments.

  Dirk saw her and gave her a wave with his Coke bottle. “Hey, Meg. You looking for Susan?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh.” He got up. “You looking for me?”

  It felt sort of rude,
but again, she shook her head.

  “Oh,” he said, and looked puzzled.

  Jose had also noticed her, and put down his game controller, resulting in the almost immediate demise of one of the clunky robot warriors on the screen. “Do you need anything?” he asked.

  Jesus. They couldn’t exactly make it much more obvious that she wasn’t inclined to come down here and mingle. But she just shook her head.

  “Okay,” he said, and gestured towards the game. “Sorry about that. I’m not actually—”

  She nodded. “On duty yet. I know.” It would be nice if everyone in the room didn’t seem so uncomfortable. “I just thought I’d, you know, come down and see what’s going on.”

  Everyone seemed to be making a point of not exchanging glances.

  “So, sit down,” Andy said, breaking the silence, and moved over on the futon to make room for her.

  She nodded, but lost her balance a little, and Mikey, who was the closest, grabbed her right before she would have hit the cushion with most of her weight on her splint.

  He was gripping her by the waist, and he quickly pulled his hands away. “Uh—sorry.”

  “No problem,” she said. “I mean, thank you for catching me.”

  He nodded self-consciously, and as she lowered herself down, with him on her left, and Andy sitting on her right, she was all too aware the entire atmosphere of the room had changed, and that even the furiously competitive game seemed to have petered out.

  Jesus, maybe she should just go back upstairs. “Keep playing,” she said, “okay?” She looked at Jose. “You, too.”

  Jose nodded. In fact, all of them nodded, but it still felt very tense.

  “Come on, Jose,” she said. “Just play already. This really is one of those pretend-I’m-not-here times.”

  His nod was uncomfortable, but he returned to the group around the screen again.

  “Uh, do you play?” Gerard asked politely.

  She couldn’t remember the name of it, but the game looked like one of the ones her brothers liked. Neal had talked her into trying out a few of their games during Christmas week, but—well, dexterity had been an issue. “I don’t really know this one,” she said. “But, thanks.”

  “You could give it a try,” Khalid said. “We’ll help you out.”

  From what little time she had spent with him so far, Khalid seemed like a good guy. Tall, medium-brown skin, and so preppy that he often wore loafers without socks even when it was snowing. For that matter, they all seemed pretty nice. Mikey was a big, broad-chested blond guy, who looked like a dumb jock, but was such a talented violinist that no one in the entry minded when he practiced at all hours of the day and night. Debbie was a hearty, cheerful Miss Porter’s graduate who played field hockey, rugby, and lacrosse. Natalie, who was from Memphis and wrote for the Williams Record, was on the quiet side—and rumored to have a serious crush on happy, hyper Andy, who—according to Juliana—was entirely oblivious to this. And Juliana was convinced that Quentin had a big crush on Natalie—who was oblivious in her own right.

  Oh, Christ, they were all waiting for her to answer. “I’m sorry, I’m not very good with a gamepad,” she said, motioning in the general direction of her splint.

  “So, buddy up with me,” Khalid said, and then looked at Gerard. “Let’s set up Slayer, and start her off with Ice Fields.”

  Gerard shook his head. “No, Danger Canyon’s more fun. Mikey, go down and get your stuff, and then we can all play, if a couple other people buddy up, too.”

  Everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about this, and while Gerard started configuring a multiplayer scenario, the rest of them—except for Natalie, who had also never played before—explained the very complicated rules, the various weapons and vehicles, and so many different strategies and tips that she was lost within a matter of seconds.

  But, it turned out to be fun. Totally confusing, but fun. There was a Red Team, and a Blue Team, and when Gerard asked her which one she wanted to be on, she said, “Which one do you think?,” and he laughed, and put her on the Blue Team.

  They played Slayer, and Rally, and Capture the Flag, and rode around in Warthogs and tanks and hovercrafts, and everyone fired their weapons at everything in sight, and got killed a lot. She and Khalid had some trouble making coordinated moves on their gamepad, but the first time they successfully blasted away a Red Team member—Dirk and Natalie, also buddying-up—with their flamethrower, she was more pleased with herself than it was probably politically correct to be.

  If she thought about it, the violence of it all probably would have bothered her—but the one time she did think about it, her reactions slowed, and the Warthog they were in flipped over. Besides, it was cartoonish, and silly, and entirely not based in reality. Not at all worth having a flashback of any kind.

  They played for a long time, and people—including Jose, who went on duty—came and went, and nobody except for Gerard was keeping score. When the game finally wound down, as people started worrying about studying and getting some sleep, she still thought video games were profoundly stupid—but in an undeniably entertaining way. And she felt less like an unwanted stranger, which was a very good thing.

  When she finally got back up to her room, after midnight, her right hand was throbbing, even though she had gone out of her way not to use it. So she covered it with a gel ice-pack, and stretched out on her bed to read Plato for a while. Then, she switched over to her psychology book, and studied until she was so tired that she was sure she would fall asleep the second she turned the light off.

  Except that she didn’t.

  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to do more than doze briefly, because she was having lots of stomach-turning nerve pain in her hand. Sickening pain. And her knee didn’t feel so great, either—probably because she had done the stairs, instead of taking the elevator. At about four, she gave up and went out to get some water, so she could take more ibuprofen. Maybe she could try to get Dr. Brooks to authorize a new prescription for something stronger. At the moment, she felt like begging for it.

  The entry was very quiet now, everyone else asleep presumably, or, in some cases—most notably next door, judging from the sounds she kept hearing coming out of Juliana’s room—locked in carnal embraces, and Martin was sitting behind the security table, with a thick book. He lowered it when he saw her, but she motioned for him to keep reading and limped to the bathroom.

  Susan was already in there, one hand resting on either side of the sink on the left, staring down at a stream of running water swirling around the drain.

  “Um, you all right?” Meg asked.

  Susan looked up with a fatigue-dulled expression, then shook her head. “Yeah. I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”

  Neither Tammy nor Susan had ever appeared in the common room during the game marathon. “Have you been up here this whole time?” Meg asked.

  Susan shrugged, instead of answering.

  Jesus. “Long night,” Meg said.

  “Yeah.” Susan glanced at the door. “Don’t ever tell her, but I’ve got a paper due tomorrow, and now I don’t think there’s a chance in hell I’m going to be able to finish it.”

  The notion of which had probably never even crossed poor Tammy’s mind. JAs were generally considered to be available to their freshmen, day in and day out, around the clock—and in Meg’s experience, Susan never, ever indicated otherwise, no matter what else might be going on in her life.

  About which, Meg realized, she didn’t have a clue—and she was suddenly very curious. “You must get really sick of us sometimes,” she said.

  Susan smiled, and shook her head.

  Yeah. Sure.

  Susan splashed some more water on her face, and then turned off the faucet. “Are you okay? It’s pretty late.”

  She wanted to whine a little about how much her hand was hurting, but she didn’t. “I’m fine, just doing some studying,” she said. “Go write your paper.”

  Susan nodded. “Yeah. T
ry to get some sleep, though, okay?”

  Yes, ma’am. “Absolutely,” Meg said.

  And if she couldn’t, well—thank God for twenty-four-hour cable news stations.

  * * *

  SHE ENDED UP being awake all night, but at least that meant that she didn’t sleep through her classes. And, on the even more positive side, she didn’t wake anyone up by screaming, either. When she saw Tammy, who was red-eyed and miserable, in the hall, she mumbled something about being sorry to hear it, whereupon Tammy shrugged and sniffled and sighed, and went back into her room and shut the door. Then, on her way outside, she ran into Susan, who looked like something of a zombie.

  “You finish?” Meg asked.

  “Eight pages of complete gibberish,” Susan said. “My professor’s going to think English is my second language.” She frowned. “Possibly my third.”

  Still, to Meg’s way of thinking, eight pages of gibberish were preferable to eight entirely blank pages.

  Juliana dragged her off to dinner that night with Mark, the still gently, but stubbornly, flirtatious Simon, and an Asian-American girl named Greer from Sage B who Meg barely knew, other than seeing her among the crowd at a couple of dorm-wide get-togethers and occasionally down in the laundry room. She seemed nice enough, though—an ethereal, take-as-many-dance-classes-as-possible type from San Francisco. Tammy came along, too, silent and sad, but reasonably game.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should tell you about this,” Juliana said, as the two of them left the dining hall together, with Tammy, “but—you know that there’s all kinds of stuff about you on the Internet, right?”

  “About me?” Meg asked. “Or Tammy?”

  Tammy laughed, nervously.

  Truth be told, though, she really didn’t want to know if there were new creepy Web sites out there devoted to her. She had specifically requested not to be told about any of the details, ever, but she knew that the Secret Service and the FBI spent a pretty good chunk of time having Web sites taken down, and showing up on people’s doorsteps to make sure that they very much appreciated the importance of permanently ceasing and desisting, and the dire consequences attached to failing to do so. But she was pretty sure that there were still plenty of doctored X-rated photos out there—her head pasted onto someone else’s nude body and the like, as well as pages with long crazed rants about how it would have been better for everyone if the kidnappers had been successful in murdering her, complete with lurid details and hypothetical suggestions—and probably a fair amount of speculative and offensive fan fiction. She had a horrible feeling that there were many even worse sites about her mother, although she carefully never looked.