by Mia Miller
“Yeah, I’m Leigh, spelled with a g-h,” she purred, not paying them an ounce of attention and training her eyes at Corbin.
“Well, I’m Cordelia, and this is my brother Corbin,” I said, finally catching her eyes.
“Oh, you’re brother and sister?” She said it more like a question, and I stifled the urge to roll my eyes or snort.
Corbin kept pestering that I did that too often and insisted it was unladylike. Truthfully, Corbin was well built and had the body to support a successful career as a lead in a band. I was . . . shapely but definitely not a contender in any athletic way. However, if someone were to look closely, they would see the family resemblance.
“We are. Do you want to hang with us today? Corbin is being a tour guide.” I smiled brightly, but really I just wanted to go get my coffee.
“Where are you going?” She watched as I grabbed my purse from the foot of my bed.
“We have to run to Silver so I can get my student ID, and then we have Intro to Essay . . .”
“Boring,” Leigh interrupted. “I will need to grab today’s notes from you.” She was sizing up her closet space, already lost in thought.
“Okay, we’ll hang later.”
“Yeah, can’t wait to get to know you, honey,” Leigh with a g-h said, in a singsong tone that sounded fake.
“Me too,” I said, hearing the falseness in my own tone as Corbin stalked to the door, chuckling.
***
Being a student at Tisch School of Arts meant you got to experience New York City to the fullest. Our student IDs allowed us access to more cultural experiences than we had room to fit into our lives. The meal plans and the dining dollars, if wisely used, could stretch into being used at coffee houses close by. And the course buildings and dorm locations forced you to be in different neighborhoods, depending on your schedule. Life was never boring here.
I had become acquainted more with Corbin’s usual places, in all the times I’d visited him. With him being a student at NYU School of Arts, at the Institute for Recorded Music, and me as an undergraduate in Open Arts, we needed to be resourceful in setting up our schedules so that we could meet. My best chances of making friends were with the dancers and the drama students. The musicians, filmmakers, and digitized arts peeps went to classes in different places.
Corbin maneuvered us through the flood of freshmen in the Silver Building and toward the orientation room, which was more like an auditorium than a classroom.
“Thanks, bro, I have no idea how I’d make it through all this bureaucracy without you,” I said, squeezing his shoulders in a side hug after we’d gone through a couple of hours of queuing, signing forms and more queuing.
“Not a problem, Twinkle. Do you see Enzo anywhere? He was supposed to meet us a half hour ago on this floor.”
Enzo, which was short for Lorenzo Galli, was Corbin’s band mate, roommate, and best friend. He played the drums, had muscles that looked like they had been chiseled from stone (I didn’t know, I never touched), and had two states: in love or brokenhearted.
“Look, there he is.” I pointed him out at the end of a corridor, slowly making his way to us.
Over the years, some people had asked them if they were brothers. Enzo’s hair and eyes were dark brown, but with his Italian heritage, his skin was a few tones darker, blending in with his multiple black ink tattoos.
“The fuck did you do to your hair, man?” Corbin asked him when Enzo reached us.
“Little one, welcome to the most wonderful year of your life,” Enzo said to me, ignoring my brother. He hugged me, and I squeezed him back, touching the fuzz on his head. He usually wore his hair in an almost military buzz.
“Lena dumped me, and I was upset,” he said, as way of explanation.
Corbin and I exchanged a look and a smile.
“What are you two up to once you leave me to the wolves?” I asked, seeing drumsticks in Enzo’s back pocket. This was something he often did, and most of the time my brother was right there with him, carrying his guitar case everywhere he went.
We are auditioning rookies!” was Enzo’s answer. He turned his body almost entirely after a leggy blonde, while his mouth was still moving and I poked at his ribs.
“Could you be more discrete?”
His only answer was a smug grin.
I smacked Corbin’s shoulder. “You spent the last three days with me and didn’t whisper a word about deciding to start the band!”
Corb raised his hands in a defensive gesture.
“That’s because we haven’t decided. We’re just looking, not buying. I think.” He shrugged. “We’ll see!”
“We might get a gig that will jump-start us, though,” Enzo answered, his tone telling of who it was behind this audition idea. “Besides, I have this one guy coming who’s supposed to be really good.”
“We’ll come and pick you up tonight to take you to the welcome parties,” Corb said, and they were finally on their way.
I had a little time still until the class and wondered the halls, mentally planning my outfits for the parties I would attend later that day, and throughout the week, actually. NYU Welcome Week was notorious for being among the craziest times. At least for rookies like me. There were parties with different themes and degrees of intensity. Some people crashed one place and got wasted there and there only, but the majority preferred to divvy up their energy and travel from one dorm to another, looking for a bigger, higher, newer thrill. Corb and I planned to hit three places tonight.
I walked through the medley crowd, feeling at home and happy. Most of the characters I met here were artists. Rebels with or without a cause. Loud and as free as they could get.
In all the fuss and chaos, something caught my eye. A color that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I looked toward the end of the corridor where there was a cluster of guys laughing over something in that boisterous manner men and boys have when they say something raunchy. One of them in particular—the tall and slender one who had his back to me—had hair that made me blink slowly. Memories from forever ago washed over me. Rust and umber and ocher mixed together in a gorgeous way. There was only one living person I’d seen that color on before.
Heart somersaulting, I went closer. He was still laughing, his head thrown back. I wanted in on the joke. I tapped his shoulder, and he turned slightly, glancing over his shoulder at me, the intruder. Then, as he turned completely, and it was as if everything around me paused. I’d stopped growing taller at around fifteen, and the guys around me had caught up or passed me, but this guy stood at a good five inches above me.
His angular, oblong face sported a fuzz of blond-reddish hair that looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and made my fingers itch to feel its softness. His hair on the top of his head was longer than the back, brushed up in a messy way that made me want to run my fingers through it. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with an imprint that said “zero”, and sported the small head of a fox next to that.
But it was his eyes that gave me pause, brown with so many yellow flecks in them they looked like liquid gold. That unique color, again. Only one breathing person I’d ever seen had those eyes. He tilted his head a bit and smirked.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
He didn’t know me.
I felt like the earth was shifting beneath my feet.
“Hi,” was all I managed to get out.
This guy wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. No way, no how. He was in military school, not in New York. My eyes fell on what looked like luggage near his feet, a large felt bag that looked the right shape to hold a portable keyboard.
“Oscar, introduce us, dude,” a lanky, dark-haired guy next to him said, sending my stomach plummeting into hell.
Oscar’s eyebrow lifted, and his smirk came back as he turned to his friend. I felt like we’d been standing there for days instead of seconds.
“I would if I could, but . . .” He turned back to me. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“Nah,” I answered. “I was just going to say that you were in my way,” I told him, proud that my voice didn’t shake.
Asshole.
One of his buddies snickered, but I didn’t let go of Oscar’s eyes. They crinkled at the corners, and his pretty mouth moved again. It was fascinating.
“Well, go ahead then . . .” he said, moving toward the wall and making room for me to pass.
I moved slowly, catching the lanky guy’s voice behind me.
“Doesn’t even look your type, man.”
If Oscar answered, I didn’t listen. I willed my feet to take one step in front of the other and hurried to change corridors. I saw a sign for a restroom and shoved through the door into the nearest stall. I locked it with frantic fingers, ignoring the mix of bleach and cheap air freshener, as I drew in a deep breath and then smacked my open palm against the metal wall.
“Shit!”
What was he even doing here?
Why didn’t he even recognize me a little?
Okay, so I had no bodily likeness to the girl from six years before. That girl had no breasts; I sported D-cups. That girl had frizzy black hair; mine was sleek and straight as a pin. That girl was pole-thin; I went a bit to the plump side. Okay, so my waist was pretty narrow and my stomach was mostly flat, but I wasn’t going to win a pageant any time soon.
Not that I’d ever enter one.
My mom was proud of how I’d copied her almost to a pixel, and she would always call us “curvaceous.” She was proud of her figure, having been on display on a stage for such a long time, she’d gone a little desensitized. I was almost always hiding the width of my hips under A-line dresses.
But if I saw the person I’d connected with way back then behind those gorgeous eyes, did I ask for too much if that glimpse of recognition was reciprocated? “Why doesn’t he know me?” I said, my chest heaving hard.
“I’m not sure,” a tiny voice said from the next stall over, almost making me jump in surprise, “but you wouldn’t happen to have a tampon, would you?”
I did. Ever since an incident during freshman year of high school, I never changed bags without having one.
“I do,” I told the voice as I dug it out of my bag and passed the small package under the divider.
“Oh my gosh, thank you!” She sounded as if I’d just handed over the Hope diamond or something.
“You’re welcome.”
I stood in the stall for another second and then pulled myself together and stepped back out into the main bathroom to wash my hands. My hands were still covered in soap when a fragile creature emerged, smiling at me in an uneasy way. She glanced behind me.
“Oh, I thought I heard you talking to someone,” she said while washing her hands.
“Only to my inner child, who was throwing a tantrum,” I joked, and her smile became less forced.
She was bony and tall, and had a tote that seemed to contain everything she owned slung over her shoulder. Except tampons, apparently. She must have read my mind when she followed my gaze.
“I’m on my way to rehearsals, but I’m a dancer and rarely get my period, so I always forget to put stuff in my bag.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it; you will laugh when you see the stuff I will carry around to art classes,” I reassured her. And it was true. The sheer number of mandatory textbooks I had seen was scary. Add the supplies and the portfolio most teachers would want to check during their classes, and I was pretty sure my spine was doomed.
Offering a delicate hand, she arched her lips into a smile. Maybe it was ingrained, maybe it was natural, I couldn’t know yet, but that smile completely transformed the girl in front of me from beautiful to drop-dead gorgeous.
“I’m Kayla. I’m a freshman,” she said, and I beamed at her, trying to mirror her radiance.
“Me too! I’m Cordelia, but almost everyone calls me Delia.” I gave her my nickname reserved for friends.
“Oh, Cordelia, like King Lear’s favorite daughter?” she exclaimed. So few people knew that detail, I was thrilled. My mom was playing Cordelia in a play when she found out she was pregnant, hence the seemingly random decision.
“Yes,” I told Kayla, “just like that.”
“I played Cordelia during a recital last summer,” she answered. “It’s a name that will probably always be dear to me.”
“Ballet version? Seriously?” I was a bit in awe.
“Yes, and I have a recording of it in my room at Brittany. Are you staying there?”
“Yeah,” I said excitedly, and her eyes lit up.
“Are you also going to the Essay Writing class now?” She frowned and worried her bottom lip.
“Yep,” I answered, remembering how much groaning about this topic I had suffered through when Corbin had to sit through it.
NYU made a point of having all the students go through two semesters of essay writing. It was the least favorite part for everyone, but I guessed it served a purpose in helping us think for ourselves.
“So who doesn’t know you?” Kayla asked as we went back into the noise of the hallway, and I looked up and down to see if Oscar was still around.
“Just a ghost from my past,” I mused. “This guy I met as a child. I guess we were friends for a few years, but then we lost touch.” I shrugged, not really knowing what else to say.
“I know about this kind of things,” Kayla told me, understanding in her beautiful green eyes.
We started looking for the auditorium. Thanks to orientation maps Corbin had snatched from a desk at the entrance and passed to me, we found it just as the teacher was closing the doors. She gave us both pointed looks, and I took in the immensity of the hall in front of us, which was more like an amphitheater and could easily seat five hundred students.
I ended up sitting closely between Kayla and one gorgeous guy with a black complexion who sported a colorful tunic, one that made me instantly jealos. He noticed my scrutiny and flashed me a gorgeous ivory smile, offering me a very manicured hand.
“Dalton,” he presented himself in a tone a bit over a whisper, which got him an instant shush from Ms. Sour Face. I shook his hand and scribbled my name on his pad, winking.
Ten minutes into the lecture, I was as bored as expected, and I whipped my sketchpad and my graphite pencils out. It always happened the same way, the movement of the black coal against the white of the paper, my wrist rubbing slowly against the desk. Drawing always fed my brain the dopamine it needed to calm itself. I soon forgot where I was and started a profile sketch of Kayla. In high school, this kind of scheme had put me in detention the few times I’d been careless and too obvious about it. I figured that, with fifteen times more students in an auditorium, there were slim chances of the teacher actually minding me. I was wrong.
“I will be grading you as per what you write and not what you draw, despite what third row left seems to think,” the teacher exclaimed, piercing into my thoughts just as Dalton’s knee jerked into mine, hard. I threw her a sheepish smile and made a point of placing the guilty charcoal far away from me, with a small thud.
“Do this right, and this little course will be the foundation for all your career endeavors, from writing an intention letter to script writing. Besides, my laboratories are the ideal place to meet your cross-sectional collaborators, and trust me, you will need those,” Ms. Sour Face continued her tirade.
“You’re really good,” Dalton took a chance at talking again, once she had stepped toward the opposite side of the podium and was no longer looking at us, this time more hushed, and I gave him my best grin.
“There’s a guy, checking you out,” Kayla whispered. “Seven o’clock.” She continued to look straight ahead, her graceful nose raised slightly as if she didn’t just say anything at all. After I waited a beat so I didn’t look obvious, I slowly turned my head to seven o’clock. I saw him there, three rows back. A thunderous look was on his face, illuminated from the auditorium’s vantage point, slightly above us. He was more focused on studying what I had
been working on than the class.
I tried my best to ignore him, switching my attention back to the teacher and to the various assignments she was presenting. The collective groans that interrupted her speech at each of the changes in her slide deck were subtle at first but got louder and louder with each click of the button. It didn’t seem to faze her one bit. I kept my mouth shut and looked straight ahead.
He isn’t the boy I used to know and I don’t even care.
I kept chanting to myself, despite the distinct feeling that there was a tiny drilling machine making its way through the nape of my neck.
As soon as the lecture closed and waves of freshmen started pouring toward the exit, I turned to Dalton.
“Are you staying at Brittany? Will you walk with Kayla and me back? Are you coming to the welcome parties tonight? Do you need company?” I fired my questions at him. I was freaking out. Seeing his eyes going rounder and rounder at my tone and intensity didn’t help the dread in my belly.
“Uh . . . sure?” He gave me one answer.
Discreetly, Kayla placed a hand on my knee.
“You’re giving me whiplash,” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Trying to make small talk and avoid that guy,” I told the both of them.
“Child, that isn’t small talk, that’s verbal diarrhea,” Dalton said, snickering. “We’re due some shots. I’ll teach you the ropes.”
“Are you talking about the seven o’clock?” Kayla asked.
I nodded, forcing myself not to look for him.
“Uh, don’t worry, that guy was the first to burst out of the room, when class was over,” Kayla told me. I involuntarily turned, only to watch an empty seat a few rows up.
“Is that the ghost from your past?” Kayla asked me, in a small voice, as we made our way out of the building, and I nodded.
