The Bennet Women

by Eden Appiah-Kubi

  He looked at her expectantly—right! He’d asked her a question. For a moment her loyalty to EJ warred with her inner fangirl. The fangirl won, and she answered enthusiastically.

  “The universe has conspired to give us a spectacular light show, a once-in-two-hundred-years meteor shower,” she explained. “We’re especially lucky because of our time zone and weather: nighttime with no clouds.”

  “So people are watching from the library?” Will asked.

  “People are, but we’re going to . . .” She looked around before whispering, “The roof of the Physics Building. It’s at a slightly higher elevation than the library, and the crowd will be more hardcore enthusiasts than tipsy amateurs. If you’re at all interested, you should come with us. Physics kids won’t put you on TMZ.”

  Will’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and Tessa struggled not to laugh. Who does he think he’s fooling?

  He removed his sunglasses and set them down with a sigh. “It seems my subterfuge is ineffective.” He let down his hood and unzipped the sweatshirt.

  Tessa decided to help him out. “Okay, number one: the sunglasses inside—never done unless you’re hungover. This is New England in October. There is not that much sun to begin with. Two: there are several cute Asian guys on campus but only three, including you, who are movie-star hot: Tony Keng has a beard and like five visible tattoos, and David Cho has an English accent. The sweatshirt doomed you from the start.” Tessa opted not to mention that she’d seen almost everything Will had starred in since he was fifteen. Instead, she added, “And three: you dress like an adult. I mean, I’m pretty sure you iron your jeans.”

  Will pursed his lips. “I send my clothes to the dry cleaner. Most real New Yorkers have their clothes cleaned.”

  I guess all those laundromats are just decorative, Tessa thought snarkily. She didn’t get a chance to reply, though. Will was talking again.

  “The guys here are in for a rude awakening once they leave this campus. Most women develop standards by the age of twenty-four. The wanton slovenliness that’s so pervasive here will not fly,” he said, shaking his head.

  She laughed. “I think half the point of going to college is doing stuff that you wouldn’t get away with in the real world.”

  Will didn’t seem to be listening; he was staring at his immaculate boat shoes. “What if I wore sneakers? I could have passed for someone’s visiting boyfriend, right?” he protested mildly.

  “Nah, I’m Filipina, dude. That would’ve made it through the Asian grapevine in about six seconds. I would have a dossier on you by now.”

  Will chuckled, and they lingered in that odd conversational place where each had more to say but didn’t know where to begin. No longer starstruck, Tessa dove in first.

  “Look, you seem concerned with being inundated by unwanted attention, but there have been a lot of rich kids and even a couple of famous ones that have passed through this campus unscathed. Act normal, and people will leave you alone. At most, you may feature in an anecdote or two over Thanksgiving dinner, but no one here wants to make their name on you.”

  “Like fame in New York,” Will inferred. “Some people might care a little; most don’t give a shit.”

  Tessa nodded encouragingly. There was another beat of silence, and Will seemed to be getting up to leave. She spoke again.

  “Do you mind if I say one more thing?” Gathering her courage, she slid to the edge of her booth. “So, freshman year: despite being super excited to be here, I was really homesick for the first month, and I didn’t really get into campus life. After a while, I realized I had missed this crucial window where you could trip into a big pile of friends with, like, no effort. Well, I kind of gave up. I’d just go to class and then go back to my room to study. The most social thing I did was play video games with my high school friends online, like I never left home.” Tessa spoke quickly to her coffee mug, occasionally darting glances at Will to see if he was listening.

  “Thankfully, when I finally made an actual friend, she was a great one. At first, she’d just come over to play Portal or we’d stargaze from the Bennet House balcony. Then she started inviting me to things, like all the time. She was a sophomore and seemed to know everyone. I’d never say yes, but I’d also never say no. Finally, we were walking together between classes, and she says, ‘I’m not going to pressure you into accepting any of my many invitations, but here’s the thing about Longbourn: for the magic to happen for you, you have to show up. It’s not going to come to your dorm room.’

  “I don’t know why, but something clicked. I started trying things. I joined clubs. I organized nature photography hikes. I got a flipping boyfriend.” She giggled. “Once I started showing up, the Longbourn magic started happening.”

  “I didn’t really come here for the magic,” Will replied with a small smile. “Just to wrap up my BA.”

  Tessa let her face express her disbelief. “Okay, I’ll pretend to accept that . . . and forget that there aren’t lots of college courses from great universities online—that there are colleges in New York, LA, and Vancouver where actors usually work. I’ll even forget that someone with your resources could have banged out your last classes over a concentrated summer session.”

  Tessa looked at Will directly. “I’m going to forget all that and say this: you’re here. Try showing up.”

  She shrugged as if to say, “Think about it.”

  Will nodded as if to say he would. He went back to sketching, and Tessa got ready to go. As she made her way to the door, he called, “Eleven, tonight?”

  “Yup, we’ll meet up at Cassler Library—it’s pretty central—then head to the Physics Building.”

  Will thanked her. It was noncommittal but sincere. Tessa would take it. Now she had to figure out how to tell EJ about their possible guest for the evening.

  EJ

  After meeting with her delighted advisor, EJ took a short victory lap in the nature reserve and returned to her room. Now that her capstone fog had lifted, she could see her single with fresh eyes: it was a mess. Protein-bar wrappers were scattered across her desk. Various plastic bottles rolled on the floor, rattling stray cans of soda and seltzer. Her trash overflowed with tangerine peels and takeout containers. Her laundry pile was inexcusable. EJ’s standards had more than slipped; they’d taken a nosedive off a cliff.

  “The universe is telling me to get my life together,” she said to herself. She hung up her jacket, threw on some neon leggings and her gray “Model, Analyze, Repeat” tank, and got to work. First, she carried a couple of loads of laundry down to Bennet House’s creepy basement and, after a prolonged argument with the washing machine, started her darks and colors. When she returned to her room, EJ attached her laptop to its external speakers and scanned through her music selection for something energetic but encouraging. She settled on the soundtrack from The Young Girls of Rochefort. Cheerful, brassy French jazz was just what she needed.

  A swept floor, a clean mirror, and four trips to the creepy basement later, EJ was folding her laundry to SZA’s Ctrl when Tessa’s face appeared on the screen of her silenced phone. She frowned and put the phone on speaker. “You’re calling,” she began cautiously. “You hate talking on the phone. What’s wrong?”

  Tessa’s reply was too cheerful. “Wrong? Who says anything’s wrong? In fact, things could be very right.”

  It was times like this EJ wished she could raise a single eyebrow. “If you want to convince me of something, you’ll do better in person,” she responded flatly. “Plus, I finally cleaned, and it’s not gross here anymore.”

  “All right, I’m coming over,” Tessa replied. “And I promise it’s nothing horrible.” Her friend disconnected the call.

  That means it must be something only I think is truly horrible, like a cappella.

  EJ shook off that thought with a shudder and took a moment to look around her freshly tidied space. She was proud of how she’d decorated her little single. She didn’t (and couldn’t) point to a page
in the Restoration Hardware catalog and have her parents purchase everything, like her freshman roommate had.

  But even if she had the money, she liked stuff with more personality. She liked thrift shops and Etsy. She liked old things. She liked that everything in her space had a story: her grandma Elizabeth’s quilt on her bed, the trio of her completed embroidery projects on her wall, the record player she got from a garage sale and learned to repair via YouTube. These days EJ needed a very good reason to buy something wholly new. Researching climate change for her capstone made her really want to consume less.

  Laundry done and put away, EJ was watching Tiny Desk Concerts on her laptop when Tessa knocked on her door. Before EJ could say “Come in,” Tessa had entered and started explaining.

  “First let me say, I didn’t approach him, he approached me. He was hanging out in Cousin Nicky’s—he must tip well if your old boss hasn’t poisoned him—anyway he was asking about the meteor shower, and you know how I get so excited, explaining things—” She was pacing the length of EJ’s bed now.

  “And he was clearly super sad. He’s lonely. Like, I never bought hot people being sad and lonely, but he definitely is. He just works really hard to hide it. Like, he is arrogant, but the arrogance is definitely a shield, and maybe there’s a good guy under there—”

  EJ held up a hand. “T, stop explaining. Summarize.”

  Tessa sighed. “I invited Will Pak to watch the meteor shower with us.”

  EJ’s face fell. “Ew! Boo! Ew and boo!”

  “Oh, come on, Eej,” Tessa complained. “It’s just one night, and there’ll be a ton of other people there.”

  EJ closed her laptop and pursed her lips. “Just tell me one thing: Would you have invited him if you weren’t a fan?” Again, she really wanted to raise one eyebrow. Tessa’s motivations were probably mostly noble, but she sincerely doubted that her friend would be making the case for your average annoying prick of a senior.

  The question burst Tessa’s balloon. She stopped pacing, and her shoulders slumped.

  “Then you’re just asking me for a favor. In that case, I can be bribed,” EJ said plainly. “It’s not a matter of principle, only personal taste. I don’t like Will Pak, but I can put up with anyone for the right price.”

  Tessa’s expression wavered between hope and skepticism. She slumped into EJ’s desk chair. “What’s it going to cost?” she asked impatiently.

  EJ sat up and crossed her legs, humming thoughtfully until she landed on an idea.

  “Since this is about having to quietly grin and bear something, you must accompany me to the following: one a cappella concert, the fall musical, and Mime’s the Word’s fall performance. There are Bennet Women in all three shows, and they must be supported.” The sharkiness of EJ’s smile belied the sweetness of her words.

  “Mime? Mime? I have to endure the garbage breakfast of musical theater, and you add a silent, boring cherry to that crap sundae?” Tessa cried. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Shifting on her bed, EJ looked at her friend without pity. “My dude, you’re asking me to play nice with someone I know was actively talking shit about me. Besides, it’s not like I’m not going to suffer. I’m putting myself through a whole a cappella concert because Tiffany started a new group that sings sixty percent medieval music and forty percent renaissance music.” She frowned at the thought. How was she ever going to stay awake?

  “That does sound rough for you,” Tessa admitted. “Not as bad as a Longbourn musical, though.”

  EJ snorted. “The fall musical is always well done. It’s the spring musical that gets wacky.”

  “The problem isn’t the fall musical,” Tessa growled. “The problem is all musicals!” She huffed.

  EJ couldn’t control her giggles. “I’m sorry, I don’t get how musicals are your cultural bridge too far. You are the person whose senior quote was from CSI: Miami. You hold 90 Day Fiancé watch parties. You have a Real Housewives and a Bachelor fantasy team.”

  Tessa huffed and rolled her eyes. “God save me from the tyranny of good taste,” she muttered.

  “Oh, don’t give me your snob talk. You make fun of my lack of pop-culture knowledge. I get to make fun of the stuff you like. Fair is fair.”

  “Fine,” Tessa huffed. “I don’t like musicals because there’s no reason for the people to be singing! I have never received a satisfying answer to the critical question ‘Why are they singing?’ Ugh.” She drooped at EJ’s desk.

  EJ looked away from Tessa’s forlorn face and addressed her framed, autographed photo of Dolly Parton. “What do you think, Dolly? Should I be merciful? Should I be kind?”

  Tessa turned to the photo. “Dolly, please. EJ tells me you’re really great, and I’ve never made fun of her for being a black girl into country music—”

  “Hey! I’m fine being a weird black girl—it’s like my brand. And also, I’m only into good country music: Dolly, Patsy, Reba, the Chicks—”

  Tessa interrupted her with a cough and, hands still folded, turned back to the photo. “Anyway, Dolly, if you could get her to take mime off the table, I’ll be so grateful, and I won’t complain, out loud, about the other stuff she makes me sit through.”

  EJ smiled at Tessa, genuinely this time. “All right, hon, how about this: you get to swap the mime for an unnamed event in the future. Think carefully, though. That mystery show may involve slam poetry.”

  Tessa swallowed hard and stuck out her hand. “I’ll take my chances. So we have a deal?”

  “Yes,” EJ confirmed as they shook on it. “I will not make Will Pak feel unwelcome. I will share cocoa with him, and I will tolerate him.” She couldn’t help grumbling the last part.

  “Thank you,” Tessa cried. “I can’t wait to tell my brother! He’s a huge Wolf Pack fan! He’s gonna die! Maybe I can get a picture?”

  EJ raised her eyebrows. “Of course, all of this assumes that he’ll show up.”

  Will

  It was only after EJ’s friend left that Will realized he didn’t know her name. Her words stayed with him, though, through his salad and his walk home. Even as he tried to get a little coursework done back at the condo he was renting, Will simply couldn’t concentrate. That was like the intro to a TED Talk, he thought, revisiting the unsolicited advice. Maybe he should go. The event sounded like a good idea: intellectual but fun—perfect for the image he was creating post-Carrie. He could even snap a few photos for the ’gram. His sister, Lily, had called his campus sunsets “basic” and his bookshelf photos uninspiring.

  But he didn’t want to go alone, and if he went with . . . that girl, it would definitely involve EJ, which could be uncomfortable. Conflicted, he sent a text to his sister. She was a freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology and was navigating a similar social minefield with the grace he lacked.

  Hey, Tiger Lily!

  Hey, big bro. What’s up?

  Okay . . .

  So . . .

  Spit it out!

  Got invited to meteor shower watch thing.

  2 issues:

  Katerina still wants me to lie low.

  Also, weird vibe from friend of inviter

  She’s friends with Lee’s new g/f, so can’t ignore.

  OMG!

  JUST BE A PERSON!

  You’ve forgotten how unfamous ppl work

  Friends once removed are often awkward

  It happens when people aren’t in the habit of faking nice.

  But!

  NO!

  Go be awkward

  See some stars or whatever

  But . . .

  Tiger Lily out

  Will looked at his phone screen quizzically. “What does she mean?” he complained. “Katerina says I’m remarkably grounded, and so did Us Weekly.” Reflecting on the fact that he’d just cited his agent and a gossip magazine as his evidence, Will realized his sister might have touched on something.

  As evening fell, he found himself pacing the length of his sublet’s kitchen. He
wanted to call Lee but remembered that he had a cappella rehearsal tonight. As his fingers hovered over the screen, Will realized he had no one to call. He hadn’t made any real friends yet. It was harder than he’d thought.

  One thing that was certain: he needed to get out of his apartment. The surrounding decor did nothing to lift his malaise. He was renting a condo from a Longbourn anthropology professor currently on sabbatical in Belize. She had a large collection of tribal masks from her trips around the world. They were on literally every wall—even in the bathroom. When he first saw the place, Will thought the masks added a cultured charm. He insisted that Dr. Blakenship leave them up—he might have promised to dust them.

  Will shook his head. Now their silent faces peered from every wall. They seemed to judge him. Something needed to change, and soon. In the absence of another idea, he grabbed his coat and made his way to the library.

  EJ

  That night, EJ sat on a ledge of planters adjacent to the library steps, next to a small bronze statue of Longbourn’s mascot, Wally the Walrus. She tugged on the sleeves of her superwarm ballroom hoodie and riffled through her duffel bag, making sure she had all the evening’s essentials.

  “Binoculars? Check. Water? Check. Massive cocoa thermos? Check. Flask of Baileys? Check. Flashlight . . . flashlight? Where is that thing?” She dug into her duffel bag and started searching in earnest. EJ was so wrapped up in her search that she didn’t notice a figure approaching in the dark until he said, “Hello there.”

  She started and sat up. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed. “What are you, part ninja?”