Any Place But Here

by Sarah Van Name

  “Ginger should be around here somewhere,” Oma said from behind me. “Normally, she gives new students their schedules…”

  “It’s only seven fifteen,” I pointed out. “School doesn’t start until eight.”

  “Well, the lights are on, so she’s definitely here. I guess she’s just not here.” Oma put her hands on her hips. “Come see my classroom then? You can wait there until she gets back.”

  “Yeah, okay. Then I think I might walk around a little bit.” I didn’t want to be in my grandmother’s classroom when the other girls started arriving. Thankfully, because she taught ninth and tenth grade, I would not be Oma’s student.

  Oma led me down the hall to the right and unlocked one of the closed doors. I absorbed the room while she started unpacking her bag and setting up her laptop. There was a bookshelf full of textbooks and another of historical fiction, a gigantic world map, a projector screen, a whiteboard, and two big windows looking out at the river. The sun was finally up, and the light on the water looked cold and beautiful.

  “You’re welcome to come in here any time you want,” Oma said, sounding as awkward as I felt. “I have fourth and sixth periods free. Plus lunch, of course.”

  I hated the implication that I would have nowhere else to eat, but I said, “Thank you.”

  “So you’re going to go explore?”

  “Yeah. A little.”

  “Well, give me a hug.” I walked over to her desk, and she enveloped me close, her wiry arms wrapping tight around me. My parents would always hug me before the first day of school, but usually the first day of school was in August, and they would take pictures of me and Candace and Bryan with our backpacks. This wasn’t August, and they weren’t here. Instead, it was my grandmother in the winter, so the hug, which should have felt familiar, was something new. I pulled away.

  “I have a meeting after school,” Oma said. “You have your key to the condo?” I patted my bag. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you later.”

  “Have a good day,” I said.

  “You too,” Oma said. She looked like she might say something else but then shook her head and turned away.

  I wandered down the long, empty hallway, up the stairs and across the building and down again, where I finally ran into Ginger the admin, who had been looking for me. She gave me my class schedule and a map and showed me to my locker on the second floor. I waited until she left to pull out the picture of me and Jess from my bag and tuck it into a corner of the locker door.

  Girls were starting to filter in, yawning, texting. They came in pairs and trios and leaned against the wall or sat underneath the lockers, and though I saw a few curious glances, none of them talked to me. I busied myself looking at my schedule. It was the same every day, except for the period before lunch, which was an SAT prep class on Monday, photography on Tuesday and Thursday, and study hall on Wednesday and Friday. I was thankful for the study hall. With all the AP classes I was taking and a new school that I had been assured was at least as academically rigorous as Greenmont, I needed the extra time for homework. I was thankful, too, that there were no required religion classes. Despite the name, Oma told me, St. Anne’s was pretty secular; according to her, the only time I’d have to listen to a religious speech was at an Easter gathering in April.

  From the very first bell, the day was a blur, interrupted only by lunch, during which I sat under my locker alone, texted Jess, and tried to start on some reading for AP U.S. History. Teachers introduced me to their classes, handed out syllabi, gave lectures, assigned homework. Girls stared, smiled, didn’t smile, introduced themselves, ignored me. I didn’t mind them ignoring me. I did not expect to make friends.

  I had thought school would be different without guys around, and it was—in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on—but it also wasn’t. There were loud girls, quiet girls, cliques, couples, jokes, flirting, gossip. There were the athletes and the artists and the kind of girls who seemed to do nothing except be beautiful. It was the same as Greenmont in these ways. A different school, but still just school.

  By the time I got to my last-period physics class, I was ready to return to my new room and fall asleep for hours. The beginning of the class was the same as the others: an introduction, an awkward raise of my hand, a few jokes between the teacher and the class, an outline of our next few weeks. A lecture on the physics of a ball rolling down a hill took up the next twenty minutes.

  “And now,” Mrs. Talpur continued, “let’s go through our working groups for this semester. We’re switching them up from last semester.” There was a mixture of reactions from the class, a few girls clearly annoyed and others pleased. “Group one: Feng Parker, Natalie Jenkins, Beatriz Weber. Group two…”

  I wasn’t sure what a working group would entail. I looked around the class as I waited for my name, which didn’t come until the very end. “Group six,” Mrs. Talpur finished, folding the paper in her hand. “June Jacobsen, Claire Isaac, Tabitha Kim. Find your lab benches, please, and decide who will take notes for today’s activity.”

  I picked up my notebook and moved to the lab bench labeled six, which was at the end farthest from the door. Two girls who had been sitting next to each other behind me followed. One was a tall white girl, with long curls and deep brown eyes emphasized with lots of eyeliner. The other was smaller and Asian, her straight black hair cut short, wearing a green striped sweater. The taller one walked close on the heels of the shorter one, and they spoke quietly, smiling, their heads tilted toward each other in mutual deference. I lifted a hand in greeting as they sat down.

  “Claire,” said the taller one.

  “June,” I said. “I’m new. As you heard.”

  “That’s a great name,” said the shorter one. “I’m Kitty.”

  “Tabitha became Tabby, and then…” explained Claire.

  “Like the frivolous one in Pride and Prejudice,” Kitty said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Are you also a big fan of womanizing soldiers?”

  Kitty laughed. “If anything, I am a womanizing soldier.”

  I smiled despite myself as Mrs. Talpur explained the activity, which involved rolling a ball down a wedge of wood at the bench and calculating its speed. I had aced physics the previous semester at Greenmont, but my success was all memory. Jess and I had quizzed each other on formulas and answered practice word problems until we could do well on tests, but the principles had never really clicked.

  Claire grabbed the wedge and the ball from the basket of supplies at the back of the table. I looked at them helplessly.

  “I’ll be note-taker,” Kitty said, seizing my only chance at contributing to the group.

  “She has perfect handwriting,” Claire said as Kitty labeled a page January 4 Ball/Wedge in neat block letters.

  “Physics is not my best subject,” I said. I didn’t want to be the girl who was bad at science, but they would find out soon enough. “I’m good at math. I just…don’t understand how the numbers relate to the physical objects.”

  “Well, you are in luck, because Claire is a physics genius,” Kitty responded promptly.

  “It’s true.”

  “I don’t want to just copy off your work,” I protested, but Claire cut me off.

  “I don’t mind, really. Although I appreciate the thought.” She handed me a stopwatch. “Here, time this. Three, two, one…” She released the ball she had been holding at the top of the wedge and let it roll down into her cupped hand. It took just over two seconds. I showed the timer to Kitty, who jotted down some notes.

  “So,” Kitty said as Claire reset the ball. “Are you rooming with Natasha?”

  “Who?”

  “I thought she was the only one without a roommate this semester. Because Evie left. Right, Claire? Unless we got another new girl, too.”

  “Yeah, Evie went back home.”

  “Oh,” I said, finally u
nderstanding. “No. I’m just a day student.”

  Both of them looked up at me. “Interesting,” Claire said.

  “Why interesting?”

  “Well, St. Anne’s doesn’t take day students anymore.”

  “Except for special circumstances,” Kitty chimed in.

  “Right. Which has us wondering what your special circumstance is.”

  “My grandma teaches here,” I answered, feeling more than a little self-conscious. But the confusion on their faces cleared up as soon as I said it, and they nodded in unison.

  “I forgot about the teachers’ kids,” Claire said. “Time me again?” The ball rolled down, I clicked the timer, and Kitty’s pencil scratched on the page.

  “Yeah, there are a few girls like that,” Kitty said. “Although you’re our first granddaughter, I think. Who’s your grandma?”

  “Marie Nolan. Ms. Nolan, I guess. History, downstairs? Tenth grade?”

  Kitty laughed, a loud and unexpected sound. “Hell yeah,” she said. “I love Ms. Nolan.”

  “She’s the best,” Claire said.

  “She’s very strict.”

  “But fair.”

  “Yes. I miss her. Mrs. Keller isn’t nearly as good.”

  “Not even close.”

  “So…” Kitty looked at me with open interest. “Does your whole family live with her? Why are you just starting this semester?”

  I wasn’t sure where to begin. I had tried all day to hide inside a tough shell, to be spiky like my cactus. It had worked until now, when the camaraderie and curiosity of these girls had thrown me off guard. “I—”

  The bell rang. Relieved, I started packing up my things as Mrs. Talpur yelled something about recording our results and finishing the activity tomorrow. My phone buzzed in the pocket of my bag. Jess had finished school twenty minutes ago and, judging by the number of buzzes, had been texting me ever since. I tossed my bag over my shoulder, already mentally out of the room, and Claire said, “To be continued.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  “See you tomorrow,” Kitty said.

  “See you,” I said, and then I moved as quickly as I could out of the classroom, down the stairs, and out the doors. The cold hit me like a wall as I stepped outside, but I welcomed it. With my head tucked against the wind, I walked quickly across the brown grass, hopped over the low wall, ran down a steep hill, and was in the parking lot of Oma’s building. It was a lot faster if you didn’t walk on the roads and sidewalks.

  I spent the next hour in my bedroom, texting Jess and avoiding Eleanor Roosevelt, whose desperate need for attention felt less cute today. I had to eat lunch with just Patrick and Ethan, Jess texted me. I missed you.

  I missed you too, I responded. I didn’t eat lunch with anyone.

  omg. did you eat in a toilet stall like in the movies?

  no, under my locker. the lockers are high up on the walls here.

  weird.

  The history textbook for the second semester of AP U.S. History was the same one I’d used at Greenmont, so when Jess said she had history reading to do, I pulled out my textbook, too. I didn’t actually have an assignment yet, but my class here was a little ahead of where we’d been at Greenmont. I read and texted her about history. After a while, she stopped responding. Dinner, maybe, or Patrick.

  At five, the light was almost gone, Jess hadn’t texted me back in ages, and Oma still wasn’t home. I closed my history book and took my phone and the novel I was reading to the chair beside the window. The river was dark and still. By the water near the dormitories, though, I saw a little spark of movement.

  I got up and stepped closer to the window. It was three people, walking down the hill to the small strip of beach, fluffy blankets wrapped around their shoulders like capes. Claire and Kitty and a boy; the boy had unruly curls and a smile I could see from five stories up. They laughed and nudged one another, playful. Halfway down the slope, they stopped to point at something near the dorm, and I saw the two girls embrace and kiss, then linger before continuing to walk, hands entwined, the boy a little ahead of them. When the three of them got to the sand, they sat down on the ground huddled together in a soft shivering little clump. I watched them like a silent movie until the air got so dark I couldn’t see them at all, and then I was looking at my own reflection.

  Four

  My anxiety did not wake me up on the second day of school. Nor did the alarm I’d set on my phone; I had forgotten to plug it in, and it had died in the middle of the night. Instead, I was greeted by a dog licking me full in the face, an experience so shocking and unpleasant that I shrieked in fury. When I managed to sit up, I saw Oma standing in the door, giggling.

  “I fucking closed the door so this wouldn’t happen,” I said, wiping my face.

  “Well, you weren’t awake yet, so I opened it,” she said mildly, not commenting on the curse. “I’m leaving in ten minutes, which means you need to leave in half an hour, and I didn’t want you to be late. Of course, if you do want to be late, you can go back to sleep.”

  She shut the door. Eleanor Roosevelt leapt onto the bed and cocked her head at me.

  “Fuck,” I said into the empty room.

  After plugging in my phone to charge, I got ready and left the apartment in twenty-six minutes. My hair felt like it was freezing into icicles on the walk over, and I made a note to myself to shower at night from now on. I texted Jess I am so fucking cold and received a response almost immediately: I am in history class and the heat is on very high so I am not so much cold as sleepy. but my heart is cold without you.

  I’ll take it, I told her. I tucked my hands inside my jacket pockets and hurried up the hill to campus. Without Oma to supervise me, I jumped the wall and cut across the grass.

  This morning, I was not early, so I was not alone. Girls emerged from the dorms by themselves or in pairs, yawning and texting and making their way to class. I recognized a few faces from the day before, but it still felt like a group of strangers. On the bright side, they seemed sleepy enough that they weren’t looking at me with any kind of curiosity, which was a relief. In English, I sat quietly as the other girls talked about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, answered when the teacher called on me, and otherwise focused on waking up.

  At fourth period, I had to leave the warm cocoon of the main building to go to the arts building for photography, my Tuesday-Thursday elective. I was not especially excited. I was not a creative person, but starting in the middle of the year, my elective options were limited. At least photography was a one-semester class, so I’d be starting at the beginning with everyone else.

  The art building was a labyrinth, and I slipped into the last remaining seat just as the teacher was quieting down the class. I had my notebook open before I noticed the person next to me. That person was a boy.

  St. Anne’s was an all-girls school. My parents had made it clear that was one of the reasons they wanted me here, even though I had never gotten in trouble because of a boy. But here was a boy, definitively masculine, with pale skin, dark curls, wide shoulders, and something familiar that I couldn’t quite place. A few of the other girls were also looking at him askance, but most of them seemed unbothered.

  “Welcome to photography,” said the teacher before I had a chance to figure out where I had seen him before. “For those of you who don’t know me already, I’m Erica. I know a few of you have taken some version of this class with me already.” Erica was a slight, short-haired Black woman with a commanding voice. She smiled at a few people she clearly knew. Oma had explained that she changed the class projects each semester, so like orchestra or choir, students could take her class multiple times if they wanted. She continued, “Here or elsewhere, how many have done any shooting with a film camera?”

  A handful of girls raised their hands, as did the boy next to me, but I was stuck on her phrasing. A film camera?

 
; She nodded. “Good. Well, we’re going to start with the basics.” She grabbed a large, sturdy box from a table at the front of the room. “Grab a camera and pass the box around. They’re all basically the same, but pick one you like the feel of. You’ll be using it for the rest of the semester.”

  When the box got to me, it was half-empty. I looked in, helpless. All the cameras seemed the same. I picked out one that was marked with a little gold star sticker, flaking off at the edges. It felt both heavier and more fragile than I had expected. I passed the box to the boy next to me, who promptly slid it to the next girl. Maybe I looked surprised, because he caught my eye.

  “I’ve got my own,” he said. He pulled a camera out of his backpack. It looked like the one I had just chosen, but it had been better cared for and had a slightly bigger lens. It was attached to a worn leather neck strap. “I’m Sam,” he said.

  “June,” I said. “I’m guessing you’ve taken this class before?”

  He nodded. “Last year. But I had the camera before then.”

  “And are you also a new student here?”

  He smiled. I liked his smile. It started small, as if he was giving into happiness with reluctance, and then split into its full glow. “I go to Stevenson High. But we don’t have darkrooms there. Or any photography curriculum, really, so I worked out a deal to take just this class at St. Anne’s. Study hall before and lunch after give me enough time to get back and forth.” He paused. “I take it you are actually new, though?”

  I started to answer, but Erica interrupted, her voice rising over the conversations that had started up all around the classroom.

  “Okay. Let’s talk functionality. You see this wheel on the top of the camera here?”

  Over the next forty minutes, Erica walked us through how each element of the camera worked to capture an image on film. She explained how to tweak the f-stop and shutter speed, after explaining what an f-stop and shutter speed were. She talked about the focal length of a lens and what ISO meant when you were using different kinds of film. I took notes frantically; I had heard some of these words before but never understood what they meant. Finally, she passed out film and led us through the process of loading and advancing it, getting the camera to show the little 1 in the window that meant it was ready to shoot a picture.