Cum Laude

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  His sister seemed to forget that she was no longer five. She seemed not to realize that clogging in a too-small bikini top in front of her brother was entirely inappropriate. If only she had friends who could tell her what was okay and what wasn’t, but the girls from school all hated her. Her legs, eyelashes, and hair were all longer than theirs. She’d started wearing a bra in fifth grade. She was their nemesis.

  “Scooby dooby doo, where are you…?” Tragedy kicked the clogs off her feet and removed the blanket from her waist as she sang.

  Adam averted his eyes and sighed. His life thus far had been full of these bored, tiresome moments, but at least it was quiet at home with their parents away. The Gatzes never ceased shouting. Not because they were angry, they simply preferred to shout. And the more Tragedy riled them up, the louder they shouted. The house was almost peaceful with them gone, although still not peaceful enough for him to really think. Not with Tragedy around. She never shut up.

  “…the way you shake and shiver…,” Tragedy sang. She dropped the plaid blanket on the floor and tied a white chef’s apron over her bikini. She knew she should have put on a pair of shorts and maybe a shirt, but it wasn’t like they were expecting the queen mother or anything.

  Adam crossed and recrossed his legs. He kicked his sister’s flip-flops across the room. He pulled a string out of the weary gray sofa. His mind paced restlessly. Tomorrow he would register for courses at Dexter, and the day after that classes would begin. Shouldn’t I be doing something to prepare? I don’t even know what college is for, he thought morosely. But at least it was something.

  Tragedy ran up to her room and came back downstairs with a small blue teddy bear stuffed into the front pocket of the apron and a pair of sweatpants pulled on over her bikini bottom. She retrieved a Yankees cap from the hall closet and put it on. “What am I now?” she asked, standing in front of Adam with her hands on her hips.

  Adam just scowled at her.

  “I’m a baseball mom from Florida, although it really should be a Marlins cap. Or maybe I’m the head chef for the Yankees.” She stuffed her feet back into the clogs.

  Adam didn’t respond.

  “I guess you’re not playing anymore.” She bounced onto the sofa next to him and picked up her Rubik’s cube. “Bet you I can do all the yellow and all the green before the next commercial.”

  The country road was deserted. There weren’t any streetlights. There weren’t even any cows. The van plowed through a four-way stop and eased down a hill.

  “How do you know where you’re going?” Eliza demanded. She crouched between the two front seats, gazing anxiously out the windshield like the family dog. Tom sat in the passenger seat. He kept turning up the volume on the radio and then turning it down again.

  Nick knelt sideways in the backseat, clutching the door handle. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he complained.

  “I’m sure if we keep driving we’ll come upon a town eventually,” Shipley mused. She wasn’t driving very fast. The van’s steering column was out of alignment and she could barely reach the pedals. It felt scary topping twenty.

  Off in the distance a blue light glowed on the tip of a tall church spire. All of a sudden the road wasn’t deserted anymore. A white shingled farmhouse loomed up ahead, its windows blazing with cheery light. Puffs of gray smoke rose from the chimney, and a yellow rocking chair stood on the porch. Behind the house was a red barn, and behind that a white-painted fence surrounded a hilly pasture dotted with fluffy white sheep. It looked like Santa and Mrs. Claus’s summer home.

  “Let’s stop there,” Tom suggested. “I’ll ask someone for directions.”

  “Just be careful,” Eliza warned. The countryside was beginning to creep her out. Axe murderers and serial killers lurked behind every tree.

  “Watch out!” Nick cried as Shipley steered the van toward the house. She ignored the driveway entirely, veering off the road and into the yard.

  A yellow light flashed through the window. The twin beams of a car’s headlights bounced across the yard toward the front porch.

  “Hello, psycho drivers?” Tragedy rushed into the kitchen and threw open the screen door. “Hey, slow down!” she shouted, waving her arms. “There are kittens around here! Kittens and lambs!”

  Adam followed his sister, throat dry and knees stiff. Nothing truly exciting ever happened in Home, but he was pretty sure something was about to.

  A maroon van pulled up directly in front of the steps leading up to the porch. Adam could just make out the Dexter College pine tree logo printed on the side. A blond girl in white shorts got out from behind the wheel. Her pale blue eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

  “Yowza!” Tragedy exclaimed. “Holy guacamole!”

  Adam gripped the screen door’s dinky metal handle. The passenger door opened and a huge, muscular guy emerged. He wore preppy Bermuda shorts and a bright yellow belt. Behind him tumbled a tough-looking girl with black bangs. The back door slid open and a guy wearing a wool earflap hat poked his head out, like a groundhog checking to see if spring had sprung. All they were missing was a big, slobbery Great Dane.

  “Hey.” The guy in the hat jumped down from the van. He wore a gray Patagonia fleece vest and looked exactly like everyone else at Dexter except for the Band-Aid in the middle of his face. “Sorry about the lawn. She…We…got lost?”

  The blond girl’s lips parted. Her blue eyes shone up at Adam with luminous intensity. “We’re not lost,” she insisted.

  “Hello, Dolly! Well, hello, Dolly…!” Tragedy belted out ridiculously. Any excuse to make as much noise as possible. Adam wanted to smack her.

  “Can we help you?” he greeted the visitors.

  “We were looking for Dunkin’ Donuts,” the girl with the bangs explained. “You’re probably going to tell us they don’t even have Dunkin’ Donuts in Maine.”

  Adam was disappointed. He was hoping their van had broken down or their orientation leader had had a heart attack. Something dire. “The nearest one is in Augusta, I think.”

  The big guy chuckled. “That may mean something to you, but not to us. Can you draw us a map?”

  “Hold on.”

  Adam was about to go inside and get a piece of paper and a pencil when Tragedy shoved him aside. No way was she going to pass this up.

  “Hey, why don’t you guys come in? Our parents are away and we’re so friggin’ bored. We have beer and wine and fresh sheep’s milk. It tastes like ass, unless you add a whole shitload of Quik. Then it’s not bad.”

  Pot did wonders for Shipley’s shyness. She took a step forward, placing her right flip-flopped foot on the porch step. The wood creaked. “I’m sorry. I’m a terrible driver. You’re lucky I didn’t run over your dogs or whatever.” She glanced around, looking for signs of animals. She thought she’d seen a cat scamper beneath the porch.

  “I’m Adam,” the lanky redheaded boy introduced himself with a freckle-faced smile.

  “And I’m his little sister, Tragedy,” the tall, olive-skinned girl standing beside him explained, hands on the hips of her white chef’s apron. She wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a white bikini top and a Yankees cap. A blue teddy bear peeked out of her apron pocket. She was obviously a sports fan. “Let’s hope you didn’t fuck up our lawn or my dad will nail your ass to a tree. He’s completely anal about his grass.”

  “Do you have any food?” Tom asked, barging up the steps. “We’re starving, so if you have anything to eat at all, we’d really appreciate it.” He knew he ought to have been more polite, but all that vomiting had left him feeling pretty hollow inside. If he didn’t get a ham sandwich, quick, he was going to pass out.

  “Of course. Definitely.” Tragedy held the screen door open wide. “Please, come on in.”

  Shipley glanced behind her to see what Nick and Eliza were up to. Nick stood on one foot like a flamingo, looking hesitant and uncomfortable with that ridiculous Band-Aid pasted between his eyebrows. “And then we’d better get back,” he mumbled. “Othe
rwise they’ll think we got eaten by bears or something.”

  Eliza stuffed her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs and approached the porch. “As long as they’ve got food,” she agreed with stoned reluctance.

  The four newcomers sat stiffly at the kitchen table while Adam and Tragedy dug around for food and drink. The house was topsy-turvy, with books and clothes and tools for gardening or welding or fixing cars scattered all over the place. A woodstove hunkered in the corner of the kitchen. It seemed to be the only available cooking device.

  “Is this really where you live?” Shipley asked incredulously. She meant was this where they lived all the time; it wasn’t just a country house where they pretended to be farmers while most of the time they lived someplace urban and modern like Los Angeles.

  “I was even born here in the house,” Adam admitted.

  “Mom doesn’t believe in doctors,” Tragedy elaborated. “She and Dad are from a place called Park Slope, in Brooklyn. They met at Dexter, but they dropped out to start this farm. They grow vegetables and raise sheep for wool and milk. And they make these totally useless fireplace tools. That’s where they are now—at a crafts fair, selling their stupid tools.”

  Adam put four brown bottles on the table. “Dad makes his own beer. It’s kind of cloudy and it tastes a little funky at first, but once you get used to it it’s pretty good.”

  “I’ll have wine,” Eliza said.

  “Me too,” Shipley agreed.

  “A wise choice.” Tragedy arranged this morning’s batch of chocolate chip cookies on a plate and presented it to her guests. She liked to bake. It helped relieve the boredom. “Let me guess. You guys are freshmen and you bagged the overnight?”

  “Kind of.” Hat Boy shoved a cookie into his mouth. “I’m Nick.” He pointed at the beefy guy seated across from him. “That’s Tom.” Then he pointed at the blonde. “That’s Shipley.” Finally he pointed at the girl with the bangs. “And that’s Eliza.” He swallowed the cookie and reached for another one. “Sorry if we’re acting wacko. We’re pretty stoned.”

  So that was their problem. Tragedy removed the blue teddy bear from her apron pocket—a weird accessory, even for her. Then she grabbed a tall Coca-Cola glass and filled it to the brim with red wine. “Adam’s going to be in your class.” She handed the glass to Shipley and poured another one for Eliza. “He was too cheap to sign up for orientation though.”

  Adam uncapped a beer and took a gingerly sip. “I would have had to pick $150 worth of blueberries to pay for it,” he told his sister. He noticed Shipley was staring at him and instantly regretted any mention of picking blueberries.

  “That’s a lot of blueberries,” Tom observed with his mouth full of cookies. He’d never eaten anything so good in his entire life. He could actually taste the cocoa beans in the chocolate chips. He could taste the sunshine that had shone down upon the heads of the chickens that had laid the eggs that were in the batter. The cookies were life-changing.

  A large gray cat swaggered lazily through the kitchen, licking her chops. Yellow fly tape hung from the ceiling like an ornament, festooned with dead flies. The air smelled of blueberry jam and freshly baked cookies.

  Shipley sat directly opposite Tom, sipping her wine with rhythmic precision. She was glad she’d already peed.

  Eliza bit the rim of her glass. Any minute now she’d hear the roar of a chain saw and heads would begin to fly.

  “Hey, we should play a drinking game or something,” Tragedy suggested.

  “Please, no,” Adam groaned. Tragedy always had the worst ideas.

  They played Bullshit with two decks of cards. Tragedy called “bullshit” every hand, which was annoying, but meant that they all got very drunk. Six bottles of wine and a case of beer later, Shipley lay on the living room sofa with her head in Tom’s lap and her feet in Adam’s, watching Tragedy and Nick dance to the Gatzes’ collection of Bee Gees albums. The operatic wails of the brothers Gibb sounded almost futuristic, even though the music had come out almost two decades ago. Eliza knelt on the floor next to the coffee table, staring at the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The Scooby Doo marathon continued to play on the muted TV. Scooby and Shaggy tiptoed around a deserted amusement park, their teeth chattering noiselessly. It was two o’clock in the morning. The sheep would be waiting for their grain at six.

  “Plum,” Tom said, gazing down at the side of Shipley’s head. “That’s what color I’d start with if I were going to paint your hair. Everyone thinks blond hair is yellow, but it’s really not.”

  “Mmm.” Shipley had never been this intoxicated. She’d long given up trying to speak. Way down at the other end of the sofa she could feel Adam’s knuckle brush against her bare foot. She closed her eyes.

  The next song was a slow one. Rather than attempt an awkward promlike slow dance, Tragedy and Nick knelt down beside Eliza to help her with the puzzle.

  “It’s from the Mensa Society,” Tragedy told them. “I joined just for fun. It’s a picture of the first landing on the Moon and it’s got eighteen hundred pieces—eighteen hundred and only four corners. I’ve been doing it for almost a week and I lost the cover of the box with the picture on it so now I’m really screwed.” She grabbed the piece Nick had just picked up. “Hey, gimme that. That’s Neil Armstrong’s thumb.” She pressed the piece into place. “One small step for womankind!”

  Another slow song came on, and even as their bodies continued to participate with what was happening in the room—talking to each other, moving puzzle pieces around, pretending not to fall asleep or stroke a foot or a lock of hair—their minds were elsewhere. Each of them in his or her own way was marveling at how they’d gotten there, to this particular house in Maine, this wee-hour moment together, when at breakfasttime they’d been in their own houses, in their own hometowns, with no inkling of this whatsoever.

  “Life is like an hourglass. Consciousness is the sand.” Nick repeated a phrase he’d memorized from a book of Taoist meditations, or maybe it was another one of Laird Castle’s bumper stickers. His mom had been putting away money to send him to college since he was in utero, and here he was, throwing it all away on the very first night. It was only a matter of time before they got caught, and then they’d be in deep shit.

  Eliza weighed her own propensity for violence. In the last twelve hours she’d seen five guys fall under the spell of Shipley’s infuriating white shorts—their neighbors in the dorm, the injured Nick, puke-faced Tom, and now this farm boy. If the serial killer never showed, she would have to murder Shipley herself.

  Tom was having second thoughts. When he’d filled out his preregistration forms, it was all about Economics and Government. But Shipley’s hair was an inspiration. Tomorrow he’d sign up for painting. Even if he sucked, it would probably be an easy A.

  Tragedy had just realized that she did not own a single book about space travel. After she’d visited every destination she’d marked up in her travel guides, she’d start saving for the Moon, Mars, or your anus—gotcha!

  Adam was also dreaming of an extraterrestrial existence. If this were Star Trek, he thought, boldly taking hold of Shipley’s drowsy bare foot, I’d beam everyone back to the ship except for her. We’d start our own civilization on some abandoned planet, and I’d set up some kind of force field around her so nothing bad could ever happen to her. Even if keeping up the force field meant sapping power from the planet, or losing contact with Earth or the mother ship, I’d do it. I’d even die for her. All at once, his life was imbued with meaning.

  But in the fecund forest of her imagination, Shipley had already yielded to another boy’s charms. The wood creaked as Tom carried her upstairs, the gray cat butting ahead of them like a nosy chaperone. He laid her down on a bed. The comforter was purple and blue Ralph Lauren paisley and the walls were decorated like a diorama at the Museum of Natural History. Ducks skated across icy ponds, the tips of their wings touching. A rabbit crouched, sniffing the air as it held up its injured foot. The branches of a willow tree
wafted over a burbling brook. Sheep grazed on a grassy hilltop. A wolf looked up from its prey, its fangs dripping. Tom kissed her and their clothes fell away like onionskins. The animals stood watch while they made love.

  Tragedy picked up her Rubik’s cube. “Who wants to time me?”

  Like jigsaw pieces that had been cut to fit but until now had roamed randomly disassembled in the box, the six of them were now inextricably linked. Of course the puzzle was largely unfinished—it would take a lifetime to complete, or at least four years.

  The screen door banged in the kitchen. Shipley bolted upright on the sofa, relieved to find that she was still wearing her shorts.

  Here we go, Eliza thought morbidly. Cue chain saw.

  “If you’re in there, I want your rear ends back in the van!” It was Professor Rosen. She sounded winded, like she’d been running hard. “I’m taking you back to campus. Obviously you can’t be trusted on your own in the woods.”

  5

  College has a break-in period. First there is the unfamiliar task of sleeping in a strange bed in a noisy building with a virtual stranger sleeping across the room from you. Your roommate might be an early riser who, after snagging the first shower, is fully dressed and blow-drying her bangs by seven. The roar of the hair dryer hurts your head. When you get up, you will probably have to wait outside the bathroom down the hall to use the toilet or shower or sink. You might be hungover after staying up most of the night doing funnels with the upperclassmen next door. Then there is breakfast in the dining hall, a confusing combination of preschool cereal options and tiny cups of weak coffee.

  Next is registration, a madhouse in the field house. Professors of unpopular courses like Geology or German try to hawk their syllabi like door-to-door salesmen, while the line to sign up for Creative Writing or Film Studies goes out the door. You remember what your high school guidance counselor said about taking a variety of courses your first two years of college. By dabbling in every subject you will open up more options as to your major and complete your core requirements so you can focus on the courses you really want to take. Besides the required Freshman English, you sign up for Intro to Geology to fulfill your science credits, Intro to Psychology to use up your social science credits but also because you think the class consists of lying on a couch and talking about yourself, Music Comprehension (aka Clapping for Credit), The Romantics because it sounds romantic, and Creative Writing: Poetry because Fiction was full and poems are shorter and therefore require less work.