This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright ©2021 by Salima Appiah-Duffell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542029179
ISBN-10: 1542029171
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Lindy Martin
Cover illustration by Jordan Moss
For Momma, who gave me everything,
including a deep love of books,
and my John, who kept me believing in this one.
CONTENTS
THE FALL FORMAL
EJ
Jamie
EJ
EJ at the Dance
Jamie at the Dance
EJ at the Dance, Later
THE MORNING AFTER THE FALL FORMAL
Jamie
EJ
Will
A GODDAMNED COSMOLOGICAL EVENT
EJ
Will
Tessa
EJ
Will
EJ
Will
EJ
HALLOWEEN AND AFTER
Jamie
EJ’s November, in Text Messages
THANKSGIVING BREAK
EJ Goes Home
Will’s Thanksgiving
Breakfast at Pemberley
EJ
BACK TO CAMPUS
EJ
Will
READING PERIOD
EJ
Jamie
EJ
CHRISTMAS BREAK
Will
EJ
SPRING SEMESTER
Jamie
Dia
EJ
THE LETTER AND AFTER
Dear EJ . . .
EJ
Will
Jamie
EJ
Will
The Date
SPRING BREAK
EJ
Will
EJ
EJ’s Lunch with Dia
The Chat
Katerina
THE GIRLY SHOW
EJ
The Star
EJ
The Star
EJ
Will
EJ
Will
Jamie
THE INTERVIEW AND AFTER
EJ
SUMMER
A Surprise
On the Road
California
A New Moon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE FALL FORMAL
EJ
“What fresh hell is this?” EJ exclaimed, entering the common room through wisps of white-gray smoke. It was a little early in the morning to be referencing Dorothy Parker, but she couldn’t help herself: the couch was (ever so slightly) on fire. She ran out of the room and quickly returned with the fire extinguisher, unloading at the flames until they were smothered by the foam. EJ took a moment to be grateful the fire alarm hadn’t gone off before she located the source of the mini-blaze: a flat iron resting on the threadbare arm of the sofa. It was set to high, and still plugged in. Shaking her head, EJ turned it off and set it on the floor.
Bennet Women are better than this, she thought, shaking her head.
The term Bennet Women was not simply the collective noun residents of the dorm used to describe themselves, but an ideal and an identity. There were several contributing factors.
The first and most significant factor was Bennet House itself. It had been a gift from Dorothea Bennet, the school’s first female math professor. She’d offered her palatial family home as the school’s first female residence when Longbourn finally went coed. The former mansion was the most beautiful building on Longbourn’s quaint, but otherwise unremarkable, campus. The house was a long walk from the rest of the school, save for the Physics and Mathematics Buildings. This remoteness helped give the house its own subculture, especially in the winter, when people did all they could to avoid being outside.
Another factor that went into shaping a Bennet Woman were the many house rules. There were the official sexist ones set down by the school’s trustees that were somehow never changed (more on those later). On top of those there were many unofficial rules, customs really, that might have annoyed your average college student: residents received a copy of The Second Sex with their keys and were prohibited from referring to themselves as “girls.” (Each such infraction cost the guilty party a quarter.) And then there were the house commandments, something between an honor code and a set of guidelines most Bennet Women held sacred. They were reviewed annually by the house’s resident advisors and presented at the first house meeting.
EJ had inherited a beautifully calligraphic poster of her first commandments from a graduating RA. It now lived on the wall that faced her love seat:
THOU ART A BENNET WOMAN, FULLY GROWN AND RESPONSIBLE: ACT THINE AGE, NOT THINE SHOE SIZE
THOU SHALT KNOW THINE WORTH AND ACT ACCORDINGLY
THOU SHALT LOVE THINE BENNET SISTER AND SUPPORT HER IN HER ENDEAVORS
THOU SHALT TAKE NO MESS
The last three commandments had survived from its very first iteration. Across the decades they were deemed the most important:
THOU SHALT TRY, EVEN WHEN AFRAID OF FAILURE
THOU SHALT ASK FOR HELP; THERE IS NO SHAME IN THIS
THOU SHALT PARTICIPATE IN AND EMBRACE THE ADVENTURE THAT IS LONGBOURN COLLEGE
The type of woman who was attracted to the house for its architecture despite the drawbacks tended to be a little more romantic, a little more feminist, and a little nerdier than the usual woman who would ordinarily be drawn to a single-sex dorm. (Nerdier because of the proximity to the Math and Science Building—not to say that STEM automatically equals nerdy, but . . . STEM ≅ nerdy.) This mix of personalities turned Bennet House into something between a sorority and a benevolent cult. For EJ it was simply home. As one of about a dozen female engineering majors, EJ spent most of her time surrounded by young men. When not in class, she desperately needed a break from men and their nonsense. Bennet House was a refuge. It provided an oasis of positive femininity.
With a final look at the foam-covered couch, EJ left another voice mail for janitorial services. Then she sighed and hurried back down the hall. For a moment, she wondered why she’d signed up to be an RA. Then she remembered that (1) she got paid in room and board at her small, but criminally expensive, liberal arts school, and (2) since tuition went up every year and her aid package stayed the same, she probably couldn’t afford Longbourn without the RA gig. Still, even if it was worth it, there were times when it didn’t feel worth it—like this morning, when she’d had to defuse three different crisis situations before 10:00 a.m.
Let me get back to my room before anything else happens.
EJ’s day had started with an SOS call to janitorial services, too. One of her residents had attempted to make herself a redhead in the floor’s shared tub—it now resembled a bloody crime scene. Later, her breakfast of yogurt and Netflix was interrupted twice: first by a screaming argument over an eyeshadow palette, then by an actual fistfight over a missing pair of heels. And then there was the fire. EJ returned to the sanctuary of her single and closed the door with an authoritative thud. Getting ready for the annual Fall Formal had always thrown the inhabitants of
Bennet House into a tizzy.
But this year her dormmates had lost their damn minds.
She fished her smartphone out of her bra and texted this sentiment to her best friend, Jamie.
I’m a feminist and all, but women be crazy.
She took a moment to lean against her door and sigh in weary relief; then she walked to her window and peered out. Ordinarily, on sunny Saturdays like this, EJ would throw on her hoodie and go for a long walk in the nearby woods. The west side of the campus was at the edge of a wooded nature preserve, home to a remarkable owl, or something small and endangered. From her window, EJ could spot the lightly worn path where the bed of fallen pine needles would have made her steps almost silent. Unfortunately, the cell phone coverage was spotty in the preserve, and due to the dance, she was on call through the weekend. EJ dreaded these big party weekends because of the sexist rules mentioned earlier.
Because the trustees back in the day found women drinking “unseemly,” Bennet was—and remained—a dry dorm. The same fight against “unseemliness” meant that men could not be anywhere in the dorm but the main common room after 10:00 p.m. EJ didn’t love busting girls for hiding marshmallow vodka in their shower caddies or emailing her floor after spotting empty bottles of Goldschläger in the hall trash cans. But the absolute worst was being forced into her residents’ personal lives. She’d likely have to drive out any leftover boyfriends / male hookups tomorrow morning. That wasn’t fun for anyone. Yesterday, she’d sent a house email asking her hetero residents to “just crash at his place” and hoped for the best.
Shaking her head at the thought, EJ opened the window and took a deep breath of fresh air. Then she stood and looked around the room. Her eyes landed on her giant whiteboard, where she’d drawn the timeline for her senior capstone project. While most of her fellow engineering students were just submitting their project proposals this semester, EJ had set an ambitious (or “nuts,” according to her advisor) goal of getting her project finished and defended by Winter Break. That meant the responsible thing to do now was get back to designing her models.
But just because she was working didn’t mean EJ couldn’t get into a party spirit. She crossed the small room to her record player, which was balanced on two milk crates decorated with a scarf from Barcelona. Going into grand plié, she thumbed through her small album collection until she lifted her Harry Belafonte best-of album with a victorious cry. Lovingly, she withdrew the album from its cover, blew away any suggestion of dust, and dropped the needle. Her room was filled with the bouncy opening guitar notes from “Jump in the Line.” EJ eagerly kicked off her flip-flops and samba-ed to her bed. She grabbed a bath towel, stretched it taut, and danced it around the room.
Midway through the song, EJ gave up the towel and the pretense of steps, letting her body do what it wanted, as long as she moved. This took her back across the room from her closet to the “inspiration station” at her desk. As the song ended, she winked at the Rosie the Riveter poster above her desk and gave finger guns to her signed and framed pictures of Dolly Parton, LeVar Burton, and Misty Copeland. Thus energized, EJ fired up her laptop, only to hear a soft knock on her door.
That had better not be a noise complaint, she thought.
“Eej? Help?” pleaded a small voice from the hallway.
“Coming.” She closed her laptop. It looked like working on her project was not in the cards, for now.
“What’s up, buttercup?” she asked, opening the door. Quickly she bit down on her lower lip to stifle her laugh.
It was Dayspring Kaylin Shumway, better known as Dia, a petite, chipper freshman with—in EJ’s opinion—an endearing but excessive enthusiasm for new experiences. This morning it had apparently led her into a losing battle with false eyelashes. One strip seemed to have sealed her right eye shut; the other was glued halfway up her left eyelid, creating a jaunty mustache effect.
“Oh dear.” EJ forced a sympathetic tone. “You’d better come in.”
“I only wanted some vintage glamour.” Dia pouted as she stepped inside.
“Don’t we all?” EJ replied reassuringly. “That”—she gestured to the sequined dress carefully draped over a chair—“is the closest I think I’ll ever come to looking like Dorothy Dandridge or, more accurately, Jessica Rabbit.”
“I don’t know who either of those women is,” Dia said, sitting down on EJ’s cozy hand-me-down love seat.
“Of course you don’t—it’s the freshman’s job to make the senior feel ancient.” EJ chuckled, then sang, “You’re my pearl, my twenty-first-century girl.”
Dia looked up at her, perplexed. Her wonky lashes made her look like she was raising three eyebrows. “Sorry, what?”
She couldn’t be mad at Dia. It was unreasonable to expect people their age to know T. Rex—or any glam rock besides David Bowie, really. Also, since her pop culture knowledge was, in the words of her best friend, Jamie, “abysmal,” she had no right to complain.
“I’ll send you a link later.” With that, EJ walked the short distance to her narrow dresser and grabbed a sizable Caboodle off the top. Dia filled the gap in conversation as EJ rummaged for makeup remover and cotton balls.
“That dress will look so, so great against your dark skin!” the freshman offered brightly.
EJ stiffened. Between her time at an elite ballet academy and her three years at Longbourn, she’d seen/heard/experienced that many well-intentioned white folks could and did say cringe-inducing stuff to their nonwhite friends. She braced herself as the younger woman continued.
“Anything metallic makes me look like an ice cube, but you’re like . . . Lupita! You can wear anything.”
Oh bless. That could have been worse.
“I also get Issa Rae. We’re both tall and have warm undertones.”
It was nice to live in a time when there was more than one dark-skinned female celebrity EJ could say she resembled. She pulled over her wheeled desk chair and gestured for Dia to take a seat. “I like to think I have her hustle, too.”
Though EJ couldn’t tell a Kardashian from a Cardassian, she’d grown up in an Ebony/Essence/Jet household and could identify who most black celebrities were—if not always why they were famous.
“Who?” Dia chirped.
“She has her own show on HBO and—oh, and she did The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. It was a web series. It made me feel very seen.”
Dia giggled. “Well, she sounds great, but if it had sex or swears, I wasn’t allowed to watch it growing up. That cuts out a lot.”
“That sounds rough,” EJ said and bent to examine the younger woman’s face. It was strikingly expressive with large, wide-spaced eyes, an anime mouth (very small when closed but somehow gigantic when open), and a slim, crooked nose—all under a mop of curly blonde hair. Dia wasn’t traditionally pretty, but her look was distinct. This face would serve her well as an actress.
After tilting Dia’s face left, then right, then left again, EJ made her diagnosis. “Doing ballroom team, I’ve seen some false-eyelash application go really, really awry. This isn’t that terrible, hon. I can get you fixed up in no time.”
Dia brightened. “Oh, thank goodness!” she exclaimed. “I was afraid I’d miss the dance, which would be the ultimate disaster. I mean, it’s the social event of the season!”
“So they say.” EJ gave a wry smile. This year’s dance had a Victorian theme promoted with the tagline Dia had just quoted. EJ was sure that somewhere the English major who’d thought it up was quite pleased with herself.
“I wouldn’t have thought a few posters could be so persuasive. I mean, sure, it’s a bigger deal than Homecoming, but your hallmates are acting like they’ve never been to a school dance before.” She clicked her tongue. “The floor’s been wildin’ out today.”
Dia blinked questioningly. “C’mon, you know this isn’t any Fall Formal, it’s Lee Gregory’s Fall Formal. The posters say it’s ‘A Lee Gregory Joint.’ That’s why everyone’s excited.”
&nbs
p; Now it was EJ’s turn to tilt questioningly. “Lee who?”
“Are you kidding? He’s like über-Longbourn famous. He’s the president of the Gordon Campbell Society, and he’s got three solos in the BournTones. Plus, his parents are ultrafamous Hollywood people. Their divorce got its own profile in Vanity Fair,” Dia exclaimed.
“That’s sad,” EJ said. She doused two cotton balls in makeup remover and handed them to Dia. “Close your eyes, hold these on your eyelids, and hum your favorite song.”
As Dia obeyed, EJ whipped out her phone to text her best friend.
Who dafuq is Lee Gregory
Jamie texted back a shrug emoji.
I’m actually having my own teensy crisis
Can you come over?
As soon as Dia stops humming
Umm, what?
Nm, I’ll be over soon.
Jamie
Once she confirmed that EJ was coming, Jamie turned to her mirror and went back to brushing her hair. She had copper waves that she’d grown to almost her waist through a considerable amount of time and effort. This included brushing her hair one hundred times daily, which she’d been doing when Ma said she’d sent her a dress for the Fall Formal via her cousin—an act of surprise kindness that took about five minutes to send Jamie into a blind panic.
Thankfully, Dia didn’t take too long with her humming—whatever that meant. EJ was knocking at her door before Jamie had plugged her phone back into its charger.
“Hey girl, hey,” Jamie said, answering her knock.
“Hey girl, hey,” EJ responded, coming into the room. It was how they said hello, only to each other, at twenty-five cents a pop. Jamie forgot how it had started, but it was a necessary step in the move from friendship to best friendship. Jamie was pulled into a strong hug, and she felt herself relax; it was what she needed most. After a moment EJ squeezed her hands and sat on the bed.
“J? What is it?” EJ asked with a touch of concern.
Jamie sat next to her and said in a low tone, “Ma bought me a dress for the Fall Formal.”
EJ frowned, looking as confused as Jamie felt. “When, today?”
“Essentially.” She nodded sadly. “My cousin Davey brought it by, unwelcome as bad news,” Jamie confirmed.
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