The Trouble With Flirting

by Claire Lazebnik

  “You have your own room to sleep in, but there’s only one bathroom,” she tells me as she leads me around. “Please wipe down the sink after you use it. I can’t stand finding hairs lying around.”

  “I’ll try to remember,” I say. “It’s nice of you to let me stay here.”

  “I’m looking forward to the company.”

  She sounds as stiff as I do, and I wonder if she means it or not. My mom claimed this whole thing was Amelia’s idea, but now that I’m here, my presence seems to be making her uncomfortable.

  I unpack in the guest bedroom, which is small and clean like the rest of the apartment, while Amelia boils some penne pasta for dinner. She mixes it with some pesto from a jar, and heats up a box of frozen brussels sprouts to serve on the side. “Tomorrow the dining hall will be open, and you can eat as many meals there as you like,” she says as we sit down at her small table. “I’m sure you’d rather be with kids your own age.”

  “This is nice too,” I say, but of course she’s right. Plus . . . frozen brussels sprouts? On my first night there? Really?

  After dinner she turns on the TV and settles down with a cup of chamomile tea to watch House Hunters International.

  “I’d like to live in Europe for a while,” she says during a commercial break.

  “Why don’t you?” I ask.

  “Because life doesn’t work that way.”

  I really don’t know all that much about my aunt, other than that she’s older than my mother, and thinner and crabbier. Whenever she used to come visit us, William and I would try to keep our distance, because if we got too close, she would grab us by the arm and interrogate us about our studies and extracurriculars, an activity that would end with her shaking her head and pursing her lips in a way that suggested we weren’t performing up to her expectations.

  I know she was married once, a long time ago, before I was even born, but all Mom ever said about that was a flat “It didn’t work out.” As far as I know, Amelia hasn’t had a boyfriend since then. Of course, it’s possible she leads a much more exciting personal life than we’re aware of, but after spending today with her, I kind of doubt it.

  Which makes me feel tender toward her. Poor Aunt Amelia. Stuck in this small, plain apartment, sewing costumes for other people to wear all day long.

  So I say, “Hey, maybe someday you and I could take a trip to Europe together.”

  “And who do you think would pay for that?” she snaps in response. “Your mother? Me? We’re both barely getting by. Dreams are easy, Franny, but you can’t live on them.”

  “Or not,” I say, and we wait in silence for the commercials to end.

  When we walk to campus the next morning, I can feel a difference in the air: it’s like the school has come alive in the last twelve hours. The dining hall is pumping out bready, coffee-ish smells, which make me glad Amelia scored me a meal card.

  “We’ll have lunch there today, right?” I say hopefully.

  “I won’t be eating in the dining hall,” Amelia replies. “I ate there once, and that was enough for me. I found five hairs in one plate of food. I’m amazed they don’t get cited by the health department. But I’m sure it’ll be fine for you. Kids have stomachs of steel.”

  We go to her office, and she puts me to work for the next few hours mending a splitting seam on an enormous stage curtain. The actual sewing isn’t difficult, since I can do it on the machine, but wrestling huge armfuls of velvet into submission is hot, exhausting work, and time passes slowly. The all-female seventies folk music Amelia plays at a low wail only increases my restlessness.

  All morning long I can hear happy voices outside in the courtyard and cars pulling up and doors banging. The students are definitely arriving. When Amelia finally says, “You might as well go—you’re obviously not focusing on your work anyway,” she doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m on my feet and out the door in seconds.

  I stop outside and blink, dazed for a moment by the bright sunshine.

  Dozens of kids my age are milling around, greeting one another with squeals of excitement, rolling and hauling luggage across the courtyard, and running in and out of the dorm across the way and the dining hall next to it.

  I see a girl grab a guy by the arm a few yards away from me. “You have to be Jorey!” she cries. “I recognize you from your profile pic!”

  “Carson?” he says. “Carson Bailey?”

  “Oh, my God, I can’t believe we’re actually meeting after all those endless IM sessions!” She’s screaming and he’s screaming and they’re both jumping up and down. “You’re like the male equivalent of me! I totally love you!”

  “I totally love you!”

  More screaming, more jumping.

  I move through the throng, with no particular destination in mind. I’m thinking that if I can just connect with someone who seems nice, then maybe she’ll introduce me around and I’ll have people to eat meals with. I’m not going to spend my entire summer hanging out with Amelia.

  I feel funny, though: I’m not one of them. But I’m sort of one of them. But I’m not one of them.

  Like that.

  I spot a girl who’s struggling to get through the dorm door with two large bags. I race ahead to grab it and hold it for her. “Thanks,” she says as she moves through. “That is so nice of you.”

  Some other kids are coming out of the dorm, and because I’m already holding the door open, I’m stuck there holding it for them, too. Everyone thanks me, but no one stops to talk.

  There’s finally a break in the traffic, so I let go of the door. I step back without looking and almost collide with a slim boy with large brown eyes who instantly says, “Sorry!”

  “My fault,” I say.

  He shakes his head in friendly disagreement and slips around me to get into the dorm. I decide to follow him in and see what it’s like inside.

  I step into a big lobby that’s dominated by an industrial-looking stairwell. There are bulletin boards running at eye level along all the walls, which are already filled with notices, most of them of the ONLY GIRLS ARE ALLOWED ON THE THIRD FLOOR AFTER 9 P.M. variety. I wander past them and then through an archway into an enormous common room with a bunch of sofas and armchairs, a row of vending machines, a piano, and a TV.

  No one’s hanging out in there: kids stick their heads in and say “Nice!” or “Ugh,” depending on what they think of it, but they all move on, eager to unpack or explore more, I assume.

  I head back out toward the stairs, thinking maybe I’ll sneak up and see what the actual rooms look like. I get to the bottom of the stairs at the same time as two girls with lots of luggage, and I move aside to let them go up first.

  “Thanks,” one says, with a distracted glance my way. She’s tall and skinny, with light brown skin, wildly corkscrewing black hair with gold glints that’s currently being held off her face by a wide headband, and enormous dark eyes framed by chunky glasses. She’s wearing black lace-up work boots, denim shorts, and a narrow tank top.

  “No worries,” I say.

  The taller girl at her side halts. “Franny? Franny Pearson?”

  I whip around to get a better look at her. She’s pretty, with thick, dark layered hair and big blue eyes. And I totally know her. “Julia? Oh, my God!”

  Turns out I can squeal with the best of them.

  I know someone here!

  Or at least I knew her, back in eighth grade. I haven’t seen her since then.

  “I can’t believe it!” She drops the bag she’s carrying and lets go of the handle of her rolling suitcase so she can throw her arms around me. “Why didn’t I see your name anywhere? You didn’t join the Mansfield Facebook group!”

  I hug her back. “Yeah, that’s because—”

  But before I can explain, the other girl is asking, “How do you guys know each other?”

  Julia releases me. “We went to middle school together, but then we went to different high schools and kind of lost touch. But I should have guessed y
ou’d be here, Franny. You were always one of the best actors.”

  “So were you,” I say. “But I’m not actually here.”

  The other girl raises her eyebrows. “You a ghost?”

  “I mean, I’m not in the acting program. I’m working here this summer—helping my aunt. She’s the costume designer.”

  “Oh.” There’s an awkward moment of silence. Then Julia says, “Cool. Wish I could sew.”

  “Yeah,” the other girl says. “Me too.” She nods up the stairs. “Where are you staying? Here in the dorm?”

  “I wish. No, I have a room in my aunt’s apartment.”

  “My name’s Vanessa, by the way.”

  I introduce myself and say, “Can I help you guys carry your stuff up?”

  “Yes, please.” Julia instantly hands me a bag. It’s covered in Burberry plaid. “Have you seen the dorm rooms yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “Julia and I started talking outside and then realized we were in the same room,” Vanessa explains as we all struggle our way up the stairs, their rolling trunks making a thunk, thunk, thunk sound on each step. “We don’t know if it’s just the two of us or not.”

  We reach the second floor. There’s a locked door to get onto the hallway and a sign on it that says, ONLY BOYS ARE ALLOWED ON THE SECOND FLOOR AFTER 9 P.M.!

  “What do you think they think changes after nine o’clock at night?” I ask, nodding toward the sign. You can hear voices from behind the door and see some blurry movement through its smoky glass panes.

  “Sex,” Julia says. “I mean, I assume.”

  “I’ve heard you can have sex as early as seven p.m.,” I say. “But never before five on a Sunday.”

  Vanessa laughs as we head up the second flight. “You know what’s really funny? This is an acting program—most of the guys are gay. So if they think telling girls to stay away is going to keep anyone nice and innocent, they’re nuts.”

  “I’m glad we’re on separate floors, though,” Julia says as we reach the second landing and stop in front of another smoked-glass-paned door. “I have a twin brother, and believe me, you don’t want to share a bathroom with a seventeen-year-old boy. They’re pigs.”

  “Your brother—” I start to say, but Vanessa’s already speaking: “Hold on, we need a key.” She juggles her stuff so she can slip the card out of her back pocket; then she unlocks the door and we step through. The hallway runs the length of the building, with doors on both sides.

  “Room 307,” Julia murmurs, scanning the numbers as we move along. A lot of the doors are open, and you can hear girls discussing who should sleep where and which side of the closet they want.

  “There it is—307!” I spot it first. It’s about halfway down, on the right.

  Vanessa is still holding her key card in her hand, and it opens this door too.

  The carded lock is the only modern touch. Otherwise, it’s your basic unadorned dorm room, probably unchanged for decades: white walls, bunk beds, scratched-up wooden desks and chests of drawers. There are plain plastic shades on the windows.

  “Looks like there’ll be four of us,” Julia says, since there are two sets of bunk beds and four dressers.

  “That could just be during the year,” I say. “Maybe it’s different for the summer students.”

  “Well, there are at least three of us—someone’s already left her stuff,” Vanessa says. There’s a duffel bag on one of the bottom mattresses, and an enormous rolling trunk pulled right up next to it, which is open. A pair of jeans dangles out the top, and one fancy high-heeled jeweled sandal has fallen on the floor next to the bed. The label says Prada.

  Of course.

  Julia and Vanessa are discussing which beds they should take.

  “The thing is,” Julia says, screwing her pretty mouth up uncertainly, “I get really freaked out on a top bunk. When I was little, my friend’s brother fell off and broke his arm, and that’s all I can think about.”

  “Go ahead and take the other bottom then,” Vanessa says. “I’m happy to take one of the tops. See, I figure that if the whole thing crashes down, it’s not the girl who’s on top who’s in trouble—it’s the girl on the bottom.”

  “Oh, God, don’t say that. Now that’s all I’m going to think about.”

  “You want me to sleep over the other girl? In case we don’t have a fourth?”

  “It’s up to you,” Julia says, but she doesn’t say, No, don’t, it’ll be more fun to share with you, the way I would have.

  I’m beginning to remember what Julia’s like.

  “The other one’s closer to the window anyway,” Vanessa says diplomatically. “I’m going to go ahead and make the bed now in case we don’t have much time later.” She climbs halfway up the bunk-bed ladder and starts unfolding the sheets that have been left in a pile on top of the bed for the students to use.

  Julia removes the folded sheets from her own mattress and puts them on top of one of the dressers. “Don’t laugh at me, guys. I brought my own from home.” She kneels in front of her brand-new-looking wheeled suitcase, unzips it, and digs through until she pulls out a pile of neatly folded snow-white sheets. The scent of lavender wafts toward me as she stands up with them.

  “That was smart,” Vanessa says. She’s perched on the bunk-bed ladder, trying to arrange the bottom sheet without losing her balance. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “I learned the hard way,” Julia says. “Last summer I went to this language-immersion program, and their sheets were so rough I felt like I was sleeping on sandpaper. I was red all over for months afterward.”

  “You’re like the princess and the pea,” Vanessa says with an amused glance over her shoulder.

  “I’m very delicate,” Julia says, fluttering her eyelids. “Hey, Franny, what does ‘the princess and the pea’ make you think of?”

  “Once Upon a Mattress!”

  “Exactly. We both had lead roles in it in middle school,” she explains to Vanessa.

  “It was a lot of fun,” I say.

  Here’s what I remember about being in a show with Julia Braverman:

  The Good: She seemed genuinely pleased that we both got good roles in the school musical and happy to hang out with me at rehearsals. Even though her family was über-rich—everyone knew it, even back in middle school—and she wore expensive clothing and was always traveling to places like Belize and Thailand, she wasn’t snobbish. We had come from different elementary schools and had different groups of friends that didn’t overlap much, but we got along fine.

  The Bad: I don’t think Julia ever once asked me about myself or my family. At rehearsals I heard a lot about her life. Like I knew that she got so nervous before every performance that she had diarrhea (not exactly the kind of thing you want to remember about someone you haven’t seen in almost four years, but I don’t seem to be able to forget that little detail), and I knew that she had a crush on Steven Segelman even though it was pretty obvious that he was obsessed with Rachel Goldman. But she never bothered to learn anything personal about me.

  The Ugly: She was always going through some kind of emotional crisis, always grabbing on to me and moaning about how scared/tired/overwhelmed/anxious/miserable she was, even though (as far as I could tell) her life was pretty good. I endured it because I didn’t know anyone else in the cast very well—my friends were mostly athletes, not performers—and she always seemed happy to see me.

  Actually, things aren’t that different now. When you’re away from home, any familiar face looks pretty good.

  Any familiar face that’s not your annoying aunt’s, I mean.

  “Hey, Julia?” I ask casually as I reach up to tug on Vanessa’s sheet from my end, to help smooth it out. “How’s your brother doing?”

  She’s pulling something big and white out of her bag—ah, a pillow. She fluffs it up a bit. “Alex?” she says absently. “He’s good, I guess. Same as always. He’s here too, you know.”

  I turn around to look at he
r. “Wait, really?”

  “Uh-huh. Room 203.”

  “I met him outside,” Vanessa puts in. She clambers down the ladder and surveys her handiwork, then reaches up to tuck in an uneven bit of sheet hem. “He’s pretty cute.”

  “I totally had a crush on him back in middle school.” I say it lightly, which makes me feel like I’m betraying my thirteen-year-old self. Back then I wouldn’t have called it a crush. I was seriously and totally in love with Alex Braverman.

  “Oh, God, everyone did. They still do.” Julia places the pillow at the top of her bed. “At least you never tried to wangle an invitation to the house just to meet him. Do you remember Cara Sackeroff?”

  “The one who always wore glittery eye shadow?”

  She shakes her head. “That was the other Cara. Piecrust.”

  “Cara Piecrust?” Vanessa repeats incredulously.

  “That was what we always called her—I think her last name was really Pietz. Something like that.”

  I nodded along, but I didn’t recognize the nickname. Must have been something Julia’s circle called her, not mine.

  “Anyway, she begged me to do this English project with her and then said we had to do it at my house because her younger sister was a total pain in the butt, and so I said fine and then she spent the entire time following Alex around. She even went into his room after he’d gone in there and shut the door just to get away from her. I wasn’t allowed to invite her over ever again. Not that I wanted to.”

  “He was really nice to me,” I say. “He even gave me a flower once.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. Your parents had brought you a bouquet, because of the show, and I was standing next to you after the performance and my parents weren’t there that night—they had just separated and everything was like this big deal with them and there had been some confusion about which one was going when—and anyway, I guess I looked lonely or something because Alex pulled out a flower from your bouquet and handed it to me.”

  “That is so sweet,” Vanessa says.

  “I should get the credit,” Julia says. “It was my flower he stole. I’m going to have to yell at him for that.”