Viola in Reel Life

by Adriana Trigiani

  The atriums are starting to fill with girls on their way to the dining hall. Some of them look a lot like me—the arty ones in jeans and hoodies—while the science/business/math brainiacs wear jeans with sherbet-colored sweaters with a white collared blouse peeking out. My shoes seem to be getting a lot of attention, and not exactly the kind I want. The girls look down at my feet like they’re huge yellow taxi cabs instead of the coolest flats they had at Verve on 8th Avenue.

  As I push through the crowd alone, I wish I’d have made firmer plans with my roommates for breakfast. Why didn’t I hear them leaving? Why didn’t they wake me up? Romy was so nice yesterday—she even forgave me on the spot for snapping at her when I was editing. I begin to make a list about how I’m going to change my ways at this school and start over with a better attitude. I walk quickly and sort of desperately alone, and promise myself that I will make friends with my roommates, so I never again feel this sense of sheer abandonment. It’s a horrible feeling to be someplace new and on your own. I vow to film anything they ask me to, and to keep my bed made and my stuff neat, and my desk cleared. I need Romy, Suzanne, and Marisol. They’re the only family I’ve got at this godforsaken school. And no family is perfect but I’ll take them.

  I push through the glass doors of the cafeteria. The buttery scent of pancakes, sweet maple syrup, and smoky bacon fills the air. I close my eyes and see my parents in our sunny kitchen making breakfast and my eyes fill with tears. I quickly wipe them away.

  The cafeteria kitchen is open and is in the center of the room with the serving area shaped like an L around it. The bottom of the L is where you pick up your orange plastic tray, then follow the line as it snakes around cafeteria-style with windows filled with selections: individual cereal boxes dropped in small ceramic bowls, sliced fresh grapefruit, bananas cut in half, bagels. There’s also an area to order hot food, like the pancakes Marisol was raving about last night. I make a note of where the line ends.

  First I’m going to look for my roommates. I start at the tables closest to the door, round walnut laminate tables with orange, blue, and green plastic chairs around them. I scan them for familiar faces. Then I turn around.

  Some girls look up at me. Maybe it’s the bandanna, but they size me up real fast then go back to their breakfast. Finally, I see Marisol’s shiny black hair pulled back in a braid. I wave. Marisol waves back, then turns to Suzanne who is dumping syrup on her pancakes. Romy sips her orange juice and looks the other way. I feel a freezing blizzard of a cold front as I weave my way toward my roommates.

  “Hey, guys,” I say as I pull out a chair. They greet me back, but it’s not enthusiastic at all. “How are the pancakes?” I ask.

  “They’re good,” Marisol says.

  “You know, you guys could’ve woken me up. In fact, in the future, feel free.”

  “We didn’t think you wanted to get up early,” Suzanne says matter-of-factly.

  “I went to the gym first and ran on the treadmill,” Romy says. “I do that every morning.”

  I’ve never run for exercise in my life, but I’m not going to admit it. “That’s great,” I tell her.

  “And I went on a walk around the campus this morning.” Marisol smiles. “Trish gave a tour.”

  “Oh, I would have done that,” I tell her.

  “Really?” Marisol looks at Suzanne and Romy.

  “Look, I know I was in a bad mood yesterday….” Just saying it makes me almost start to cry, but I stop myself. “I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t anything about you guys—it’s me.”

  Suzanne looks at Marisol, who looks at Romy. “Well, we thought…”

  “What?” It sounds almost desperate coming out of my mouth.

  “We heard you were taking a single room—moving out.” Suzanne shrugs.

  “It isn’t definite.”

  “This morning Trish said the list cleared and that you still wanted a single.” Marisol looks down at her breakfast. That Trish has a big mouth.

  “Well…” And I don’t know why this comes out of my mouth, but it does: “I don’t have to take the room.”

  “You should if it will make you happy,” Romy says.

  “I don’t know what will make me happy.” My eyes sting with tears. I can’t believe these girls have, like, talked about me and decided that I’m not worth fighting for after one day. One day!

  “That was obvious yesterday. You seemed…annoyed.” Marisol chooses her words carefully.

  “We’re all new here. You seem to forget that.” Suzanne now sounds like a diplomat at the U.N. “It’s hard for everybody. So you should do what’s good for you because the truth is, we want to have fun in our room and we don’t need an anchor dragging us down.”

  “I’m not an anchor. And…I wasn’t annoyed at you.” I turn to Romy. “Or you.” I look at Marisol. “Or even you.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t adapt quickly to new situations.”

  Marisol smiles with relief. She looks at the girls. “I told you Viola had her own sense of humor. We misinterpreted her feelings.”

  “That’s it. That’s all. I was on the single room list when I applied. Now I’m here, and it’s changed.” I don’t need to tell them even I’m shocked that I’m turning down a single. I’ll look like a wing nut. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, but I know for sure that I don’t want to wake up another morning and feel what I felt on this one. “I want to stay in our quad.”

  “Well, go get your breakfast. They stop serving in ten minutes. By the way, the pancakes are scrumpts.”

  I don’t even mind that Marisol drops the end of the word just like Trish. I go to the line and pick up an orange tray. I load on my carton of milk and orange juice and napkin and utensils. I look over at the girls, who laugh and talk as though we didn’t just have a totally intense conversation.

  “What would you like with your pancakes?” asks an upperclassman on work study wearing a chef’s hat and a name tag that says “Shawna.”

  “Everything.” I exhale. “Hash browns, bacon, hot raisins, syrup.” I pile on a small paper hat of butter and another filled with peach marmalade. I don’t even like marmalade, but I take it anyway. I’m going to fill my tray with food options till it’s so loaded down and heavy it practically breaks my arms in half. Suddenly, I realize that I’m hungry, really hungry—the kind of hunger that can only come from being given a second chance.

  “Wow. You don’t look like a big eater,” Shawna remarks.

  “You have no idea,” I tell her.

  Caitlin Pullapilly’s mother does not allow Caitlin to text or IM unless it’s a life-or-death emergency. It’s like 1990 for crying out loud, when it comes to communicating with Caitlin. What’s next, Mrs. Pullapilly? Hello Kitty stationery and postage stamps? Please!

  Caitlin and I have to send plain old emails—and only on a schedule—because at Caitlin’s house, everybody shares one PC and it’s in the living room so it’s not like there’s a lot of privacy. I think this is so lame. Practically all of Caitlin’s relatives work in computer science. They are, like, geniuses and brilliant. Ridiculous that at home they live in the Old West when it comes to computers. So when I open my email there’s a long letter from her because she has to get in everything all at once.

  Dear Viola,

  I got your email about your new roommates. I agree you should stay in the quad. I don’t think you should be alone in a room. You need people. Besides, they sound nice. Even though they are new to you, I’m sure you will grow to like them in time. Be a good listener. My mother always says this when I’m upset by other people’s behavior and it helps me. Hope it helps you! LOL!

  Now, about your camera and filming the fields. Andrew downloaded the video you sent and it’s so cool. I would probably never get to visit Indiana, and seeing it means I probably don’t need to come out there. I saw the lady in the field in the red dress—who going forward, I would like to refer to as…the ghost, because I believe you when you say she wasn’t there. In fact, when I zoom
ed in close up on her, she became so pixilated, she could’ve been a twisted red flag or blanket or something else like a parachute (sorry I’m not of much help).

  Right away I emailed my aunt Naira, who is a part-time mystic and a full-time veterinarian. You might remember her—she was at my last birthday party and she saved the life of our cat, Sir Mix-a-Lot, by performing brain surgery. Anyhow, without saying your name I told her about the video you took and how a red lady appeared in the far field. She agreed that the image could well be a ghost! And she said that a lot of times spirits live in old buildings (which for sure your dorm is) and that you have to tell the spirits to move on or they’ll just stay. She also said to burn sage to get rid of the spirits. That is effective. Aunt Naira said that spirits stay in the earthly realm because they have something to do. Let me see if I can find out more for you.

  I have seen Tag in the hallway six times and at lunch twice, which is pretty good as he’s got AP classes and I just have regular ninth grade. Tell me more about where you are! Love, Caitlin

  Dear Caitlin,

  Okay. This is so weird. I don’t think it’s a piece of fabric or a bird. I keep looking at it, and it seems more like a woman. Ask Aunt Naira if this is just a fluke or will the ghost be back, because if she comes back I’m afraid I’ll have a stroke. I can’t burn sage—they don’t even allow scented candles in this school! Can I just wave the sage without lighting it? And is it the same sage that my mother puts on chicken? Like dried green herbs? As for Tag, there are no boys here, so a couple of times a day, I do look at the footage of him from the God’s Love charity day. Does he have a girlfriend? Find out. Andrew refuses to ask anybody about Tag’s love life, which has slowed my reconnaissance efforts to a standstill. Only YOU can get to the bottom of Tag’s private life, and I know you’ll be stealth. Keep me in the loop. Love, Viola, aka Violet Riot

  I’m a little late to pick up my class schedule, but not so late that anyone notices.

  The lines inside the Geier-Kirshenbaum auditorium are long. The longest are for admission into the gut courses: Blog This; TV & Me, from Lost in Space to Lost; and Makeup for Theater. These are probably all easy A’s but it doesn’t matter. You can’t sign up for them until tenth grade. The freshman class assignments were made prior to our arrival. All we have to do is officially register and by lunch we’ll know where we have to be.

  “Whatcha got?” An upperclassman takes my computer printout of my classes from my hand. She’s very Upper West Side of Manhattan. Casual. “Wow. You got Dr. Fandu for horticulture.” She whispers, “We called it ho-hum.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m Diane Davis.” She extends her hand. “I hear you have a video camera and that you make movies.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Your profile.”

  “Oh yeah, right. I forgot about that.” Now I could kick myself for being so eager to share my interests on the school Facebook page. What was I thinking? It’s private of course, but not private enough if Diane could get her hands on it and then act all chatty with me about the information I put there.

  “We could use your help for the Founder’s Day events.”

  “Founder’s Day? It sounds lame.” I shrug.

  Diane throws her head back and laughs. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We could use your expertise.”

  “Well, okay.” I agree to help, but I feel like she sandbagged me. The only thing I’ve signed up for officially is the pizza club.

  “I’ll email you,” she says and walks away.

  Marisol joins me with her schedule. She looks down at her list of classes with the books needed for each in bold letters beside them. “You wanna go to the bookstore?”

  “Sure.”

  I follow Marisol out of the auditorium and down the stairs to the bookstore in the basement. We have most of the same classes, so we each pick up a plastic basket in the front of the store and, with our computer printouts as guides, begin to fill them with the books we need.

  “I don’t know how they can call this a store. It’s a storage room with shelves in a basement,” I complain.

  Marisol gives me a copy of The Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks and an anthology by the poet Rita Dove. “And even paperbacks aren’t cheap,” I tell her. “They’ve got us right where they want us—we have to shop here. We can’t drive to the mall.”

  “We can’t drive period,” Marisol reminds me.

  “Besides the point. Don’t you get it? We’re retail hostages at this school.”

  “We’ll survive,” Marisol says. We load our math textbooks into the plastic baskets.

  “Marisol, may I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you ever have a bad mood?”

  Marisol laughs. “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  “Everybody has bad moods,” she says practically.

  “But what about you?”

  Marisol looks up from her list. “I’m a survivor.”

  “You are? How, exactly?” For a moment, I imagine Marisol swinging from ropes on an obstacle course on a reality television show. I bet she could win; she has guts.

  “Well, I’m Mexican and in Virginia, there aren’t too many of us. So I had to learn how to make friends with people who might not normally know or like any Mexicans. It’s sort of a challenge to me to make friends.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m always sure to speak first, and be friendly. And if I click with someone, I try to support them. You know, like I do with you and your camera work.”

  “That’s very mature,” I say thoughtfully.

  “It’s not hard to be your friend, Viola. You have a lot to offer. You’re just scared. But we all are. So you shouldn’t feel like you’re the only one, because you’re not.”

  “Thanks.” If there was a basket by the check-out counter that I could fill with the shame I’m feeling right now, it wouldn’t fit through the doors. I haven’t taken ten seconds to look around and see what the other girls are going through. I’m a total Mimi. Me. Me. Me.

  “Besides…” Marisol checks Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass off her list, then looks at me. “Does it make it better to complain? I mean, we’re here for the duration and I don’t want to be miserable. Do you?”

  I follow Marisol to the check-out line. And for the first time since I’ve landed at Prefect Academy, I feel a little twinge of belonging, as though maybe I can make this work until it’s time to go home and go back to my real life in Brooklyn. It’s just like my mom always says, “You can make friends anywhere in the world. Just say hello.” Well, this is taking a lot more than just hello, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.

  FOUR

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  Well, you were sort of like maybe half right about me adjusting to PA. It’s almost a month or a quarter way into the term and I’m starting to almost sort of actually like it here. I played pick-up basketball with the girls from my hall after dinner tonight. I just sort of grabbed the ball and started dribbling. My days on the public court by LaGuardia really paid off as I’m one of the only girls here who can do a proper layup (omitting the varsity team of course). Anyhoo, (that’s Indiana for a Brooklyn vamp) I’m doing okay in my classes. So far. The teachers are on the lookout for any girl having what looks like a mental breakdown due to homesickness or anything else that’s tragic. I’m pretty lucky. I haven’t had a crying jag in the library yet. But maybe it’s coming. Who knows? I sure wish I was with you. And please, Mom, don’t let Dad hog the footage you’ve shot. Send it and let me see what you’re seeing. Dad is, like, way too much of a perfectionist and he’ll wait till the job is completely done before he shows me ANY footage at all. Afghanistan is in the news, like, every day over here. I have it on auto-news pop-up. I liked the pix of your layover in London. I could use some of those scones and clotted cream you had at that tea room called Nigel Stoneman’s. It looked delish. As for the food: The breakfast here is the best, so I l
oad up then. Scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a doughnut machine. Lunch is salad bar and stuff, and dinner is like casseroles that Grand makes when four billion people are coming over to her apartment after the theater. You know, ground beef, cheese, and mystery sauce. Oh, and I might do something with Founder’s Day stuff. More to come on that later. That’s all I got for now. Love you both, V.

  Mrs. Carleton is one of those teachers who, when you’re sitting in class and only half listening, you imagine a beauty makeover for her. She has potential with nice features like pretty brown eyes and brown hair and a petite figure. But her eyes are all bleary and red from being up all night (she has a new baby), and her haircut is a bob that’s all uneven on the bottom (she probably cuts it herself with nail scissors), and she wears khaki pants with a baggy seat and one of those XL sherbet-colored sweaters that seem to be so popular on the Indiana side of the dividing line of the French and Indian War. She starts out the period wearing peach lip gloss, but by the end she’s bitten it all off, and then she has absolutely zero makeup on.

  Mrs. Carleton requires us to leave all cell phones and BlackBerrys in a basket on her desk before class begins. On the first day of class, a couple girls left their phones on vibrate and the vibration actually made the basket walk off the edge of her desk and fall on the floor with the phones going everywhere. All twelve of us ran to pick up our phones to make sure they weren’t damaged. Now, when Mrs. Carleton collects the devices, she leaves the basket on the floor by the door so if anything vibrates it will just shake the basket, not hurl it into infinity and beyond.

  Mrs. Carleton wakes me from my daydreams of makeovers. “Viola, tell us about the ghost in Hamlet.”

  “Well, he’s Hamlet’s father, who was murdered by his brother. Now the evil brother will be king in Hamlet’s father’s place.”