Confessions of an Estranged College Freshman

by Kitty Parker

  "What should we order?" Elena asked.

  "Thai," I answered, just as Amory blurted "Mexican."

  We looked to Elena to settle the difference.

  She put her hands up defensively. "It doesn't matter to me. You two sort it out."

  "Rock, paper, scissors?" I suggested.

  Amory nodded. "Deal."

  We both put our right hands behind our backs. "Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!"

  I grinned triumphantly as I bashed his "scissors" with my fist.

  "Two out of three!" he insisted.

  I rolled my eyes. "Fine."

  We paused, staring each other down. "Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!"

  I happily snipped his "paper" in half.

  "Three out of five?" he tried.

  Elena snorted as I gave him a look.

  Amory pouted. He was not a good loser. "Fine." He begrudgingly logged on to Cornell's RedRover wireless network and went to to place an order with Taste of Thai Express. "What do you want?"

  "Veggie Pad Thai and fried bananas," I told him. I already had a "usual" with the Thai place.

  Elena scrolled through the list of curries. "Masaman with chicken," she decided.

  Amory added these things to the list before placing his own order and sending it through. "It'll be half an hour to forty-five minutes."

  Elena stood up. "I'll go get our things, then." Waving, she headed out the door.

  I watched Amory as he checked his email. He was still frowning. "You are such a sore loser."

  "Shut up."

  Rolling my eyes, I pulled out my iPod. Sticking the earphones in my ears, I put on the Red Hot Chili Peppers and leaned back against the climbing wall contentedly. I watched as my fellow Cornellians attempted to amuse themselves. Someone had shown up with Twister and the game that ensued was quite the spectacle, especially when two of the participants fell on top of each other and then randomly started to make out. They stopped when those nearby began chucking things at them.

  After about ten minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I pulled out an earphone and turned to face Amory.

  "Evie!" he whispered excitedly. "Dr. Burry's here!"

  That got my attention. Switching off my iPod, I sat up and looked over by the door. Sure enough, there stood my favorite professor, surveying the room with a grin and a twinkle in his eye, as though he found the student body's obsession with hockey incredibly amusing. Having been a star forward himself, he probably did.

  Amory sat up straighter and attempted to make eye-contact. He knew Dr. Burry would recognize him immediately, since he made a point of sitting in the first row for every lecture (dragging me with him, of course) and going to office hours rather frequently.

  In spite of his first encounter with our professor, Amory had come to respect and even admire him for his brilliance. I had a hunch that when he declared economics as his major, he would probably ask Dr. Burry to be his advisor.

  Sure enough, Amory caught the professor's eye. The latter chuckled, then headed over to where we were sitting.

  "Hey, Dr. Burry," Amory greeted him.

  The middle-aged man squatted down in front of us. "How's it going, Amory?"

  "Alright, sir. And yourself?"

  "Well, thanks." He turned to me. "I recognize you from my class, but I don't believe I've met you yet."

  I held out my hand. "Evie Kaiser."

  He shook it. "Nice to meet you. You both camping out for tickets?"

  I nodded. "We're with my roommate as well, but she ran back to our room to grab some things."

  "Excited for the season?" he asked, grinning.

  "Yes, sir, very much," Amory replied. "My roommate's actually on the team."

  Dr. Burry seemed pleasantly surprised by this news. "Oh really? What's his name?"

  "Tully McFadden."

  "He's a forward," I chimed in.

  Dr. Burry nodded. "That's great. You know, I was a forward for the Big Red back in my day."

  I chuckled. "Trust me, we've heard all about it. You're pretty much Tully's hero."

  He beamed. "I'm flattered."

  An idea popped into my head. "Would you mind if I called him? He really wants to meet you."

  "That's fine, I love meeting the new players."

  Pulling out my cell phone, I pressed seven and held it down. Oh, how I loved speed dial.

  Tully picked up on the third ring. "Hey, Evie, what's up?"

  "Not much, just hanging out in The Line," I replied. "What are you up to right now?"

  "Procrastinating."

  I rolled my eyes. "It's Friday night, Tully. You don't have to pretend to work until Sunday."

  "Yeah, I know, but you all are camping out, Elizabeth's at Lehigh with the marching band, and I'm not going out until ten, so it's not like I have anything better to do."

  "Well, now you do."

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "Oh, it's nothing important," I began nonchalantly. "It's just that Dr. Burry's here and I thought you might like to meet him."

  "SERIOUSLY?!?" Tully exclaimed.

  "Mhmm," I answered.

  I held the phone about a foot away from my ear as he gave a whoop of triumph. "I'll be there in a few!" he declared before abruptly hanging up.

  I shook my head in amusement as I hung up the phone.

  "What's he doing?" Amory asked.

  "Probably sprinting here," I replied. "He pretty much shattered my eardrum while shouting for joy. Probably did a happy dance, too."

  Amory rolled his eyes. "He would. We'll try to keep him from drooling on you, Dr. Burry."

  After about ten minutes - far faster than it would've taken a normal human being to walk from North Campus to Bartels - Tully charged through the doors to the Ramin Room, completely out of breath. He took a moment to compose himself and look around the room before spotting Amory and I and heading over. His green eyes widened to the size of saucers when he saw our companion.

  "You're Jude Burry!" he exclaimed, pointing a finger at my professor.

  Amory doubled over with silent laughter.

  Dr. Burry's eyes twinkled with amusement. He stuck out his hand. "Yes I am, and you must be Tully. Nice to meet you."

  Tully looked like he'd died and gone to heaven as he shook hands with his hero. "Oh, it's an honor to meet you, sir. I'm a big, big fan."

  Dr. Burry chuckled. "Nice to have a fan. So I hear you're a forward on the hockey team?"

  Tully nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, sir. Left wing, just like you."

  "Great! How's the team looking so far?"

  "Pretty good, I think," Tully replied. "Schafer seems happy, anyway. First exhibition game's on the eighteenth."

  Dr. Burry nodded. "I hear Princeton's the team to beat this year in the ECAC."

  I zoned out as the two of them started discussing the team's chances for getting the league title and going to the NCAA tournament.

  "Hey," Elena greeted me as she returned, armed with pillows, blankets, and other random knick-knacks. "What's Tully doing here?"

  I grinned. "I told him Dr. Burry was here and he freaked out."

  "Oh, right," she recalled. "I keep forgetting that your econ professor is a hockey legend."

  Said hockey legend suddenly approached Amory and I. "Evie, Amory, I have to get going. My wife's expecting me for dinner. It was good to see you both!"

  We said our goodbyes (Tully made a point of shaking his hand again, of course), and Dr. Burry headed out the door.

  "Wow!" Tully exclaimed as soon as he was out of sight, flopping down onto one of the pillows Elena had brought (mine, in fact). "I just metJude Burry and talked to him about hockey!"

  I raised an eyebrow at him. "Were you expecting to talk about Tchaikovsky?"

  He scowled at me.

  "Post-impressionism, perhaps? Humpback whales?"

  He fought to keep from smiling.

  "The gallbladder?"

  I grinned as he finally snorted with laughter.

  Amory's cell
phone rang. He quickly picked up.

  "Hello?"

  There was a pause.

  "Great! Where are you?"

  Pause.

  "We're over by the climbing wall. Just look for a really tall guy and a guy with red hair."

  Pause.

  "Alright, thanks!"

  "Food?" I inquired as Amory snapped his phone shut.

  "Food," he affirmed.

  After a minute or so, a guy in a white zip-up hoodie and jeans entered the room carrying two large paper bags. Amory stood up and gave him a wave. Delivery Dude smiled, gave a nod of recognition, and headed over, stepping carefully over the other people sprawled out on the floor. I smiled, amused at the way his dark brown curls bounced ever so slightly as he walked. He'd definitely delivered to me on more than one occasion and I remembered him being nice.

  "Amory?" he asked, looking up at the male in question. He couldn't have been more than five-foot-seven or eight and at six-foot-four, Amory towered over him.

  "Yup," Amory answered, taking the bags and setting them down next to Elena. As he paid for the food, I gazed absently at the silver ring in the cartilage of Delivery Dude's left ear. I hadn't noticed it before. I wondered vaguely if it hurt.

  "Hey, you're the girl who always gets fried bananas, right?" he asked me.

  I laughed. "Yeah, that'd be me."

  He grinned. "Nice."

  "I feel dumb asking this since you deliver to me so much, but what's your name?" Hey, I couldn't always refer to him as Delivery Dude in my mind.

  "Kevin," he replied.

  I nodded. "Evie."

  He turned to address the whole group. "Alright, enjoy your food!" With that, Delivery Dude - er, Kevin - left.

  Amory nudged me. "Evie Kaiser, what was that?"

  I raised an eyebrow at him. "What? He brings food to me all the time and he's a nice guy! Can't I ask his name without it being a come-on?"

  "You were staring at him, too," Tully pointed out.

  I scowled. "I was zoning."

  "You were flirting."

  "Why do you care?"

  That shut him up.

  "Let's eat, I'm starved," Amory declared.

  "Good plan," Elena agreed, ripping open one of the paper bags eagerly.

  Tully pouted. "Aw, you guys got food without me? Not cool."

  "You can have some of mine if you want," I offered. "Not the fried bananas, though. Touch those and die."

  He rolled his eyes. "You and your bananas…"

  We parceled out the food and started to eat. Oh, how I loved Thai!

  My view of my (insanely delicious) veggie Pad Thai was suddenly obstructed by a pair of hands. I was so startled that I nearly choked on a pea pod.

  "Guess who?"

  It was obvious. "Lars."

  "Bingo!" he exclaimed, coming around in front of me. "Camping out for tickets?"

  "Mhmm," I replied.

  "You guys, too?" he asked my three friends.

  Elena and Amory nodded, but Tully shook his head. "Not me, I'm on the team."

  Lars's eyes widened. "Whoa, seriously? That's awesome!"

  Tully gave him a lopsided grin. "Er, thanks."

  "In any case," Lars went on. "I feel that it's my responsibility to teach you freshmen the ins and outs of being part of the Lynah Faithful."

  "There are ins and outs?" Elena asked.

  He looked at her like she were completely mentally deficient. "Fuck yes! Don't tell me you guys have never heard of the traditions!"

  We all stared at him blankly.

  "Aw, man!" he groaned. "That's gotta change! Alright, listen up. You, too," he added to Tully. "You'll wanna know why they're doing all this stuff so you don't get distracted and fuck up."

  Tully shrugged. "Sure."

  Lars plunked himself down between Amory and Elena and cleared his throat dramatically. "Lynah Faithful 101. First and foremost, the other team's goalie is not a goalie. He is a sieve. We remind him of this whenever he's down our end of the ice.?HeH There are a number of ways of doing this. First," he held up a finger. "We chant 'sieve' over and over, starting out slowly, then getting faster. Second," he held up another. "We spell out his name, then say 'What's that spell? Sieve!'"

  "Won't that distract him?" asked Elena.

  "That's the point!" Lars gestured emphatically. "If he's distracted, we're more likely to score. A few years ago, the sieve got so pissed that he left the goal, went over to section B, and started doing pelvic thrusts at the crowd. We scored on an empty net!"

  Tully snorted. "Idiot."

  "Anyway," Lars continued. "There's also a chant - let's say the sieve's last name is Evans - that goes like this: 'Hey Evans! You're not a goalie, you're a sieve! You're not a sieve, you're a funnel! You're not a funnel, you're a vacuum! You're not a vacuum, you're a black hole! You're not a black hole, YOU JUST SUCK!' Then we repeat 'you just suck' for a while."

  "Wow, you all really bite into these guys," Amory noted.

  Lars grinned. "It's all in good fun. They expect it, too. Playing at Lynah is like a rite of passage for ECAC hockey players."

  "Sounds like it," I chuckled.

  Lars's grin widened. "You haven't even heard the half of it yet, Ms. Evie. You want to know what we do after we score a goal?"

  "What?"

  "Well," he replied. "The pep band plays Davy, we count off the goals, remind the sieve that he is, in fact, a sieve, and then we inform him that the blame for the goal rests entirely on him."

  "How do we do that?" Elena asked.

  Lars's eyes twinkled. "We chant 'it's all your fault' for a while."

  "Man, I can't wait to see that!" Tully laughed. "Talk about a home-ice advantage!"

  "Don't forget to bring some newspaper when you come, either," Lars went on. "You'll need it when they announce the other team's lineup."

  Amory raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

  "Because their lineup doesn't interest us," Lars explained. "So we rattle our newspapers and chant 'boring' until they're done."

  "Creative," I remarked appreciatively.

  Tully snorted. "Yeah, nice to see you're all putting those Ivy League educations to good use!"

  "Coming up with witty ways to taunt the opposition is a noble cause!" Lars insisted, placing his hand over his heart. "Anyway, there's a lot of other stuff you'll have to pick up as you go, 'cause my attention span has reached its end. One thing, though: if we're winning, people are gonna start jingling their keys toward the end of the third period. Don't be a douchebag and start doing it too early. You don't want to be That Guy, you know? There's a mathematical formula for it: you take the difference in goals and then subtract one to get the number of minutes before the end that you can start."

  We stared at him, blinking stupidly.

  He sighed. "Like, if we have three goals and the other team has one, the difference is two, right? You subtract one from that and get one. So you can start jingling your keys when there's one minute left, get it?"

  "That's… specific," Elena commented.

  Lars shrugged. "Superstition. If you start too early, the other team'll score."

  Amory nodded. "Ah, gotcha."

  "Right, see you guys!" Lars got to his feet abruptly and bounced off into the crowd, leaving us once again scratching our heads at his eccentric behavior.

  * * *

  Trying to sleep on the floor of a crowded room is no fun. Even though it seemed like everyone waiting in The Line slept at some point, there were always a number of people who were awake and making noise. In an attempt to block them all out, I'd put in my earphones before curling up with my pillow and one of the blankets Elena had brought.

  The funny thing about listening to music while sleeping is that sometimes the lyrics of whatever song was playing somehow worked their way into your dreams.

  Or maybe I was just a freak. That was also a good possibility.

  At any rate, random lines from Rage Against the Machine's Bulls on Parade became dialogue for an old man yelling
at people over a loudspeaker in my subconscious. I was being imprisoned by Abercrombie and Fitch. However, there was a gap in the bars of my cell window that no one but me seemed to notice. Looking around apprehensively, I quickly clambered through it and leapt to the ground below.

  "I'M FREE!" I shouted sleepily, waking myself up in the process.

  Elena, who had been playing solitaire quietly, snorted with laughter. She'd witnessed my sleep-talking before.

  Amory was not so amused. I'd evidently woken him up as well.

  "Evie, what the hell?" he grumbled as he sat up from his spot on the floor. "It's four in the fucking morning!"

  I blushed. "Uh, sorry. I was… sleeping."

  "I was having a great dream, too," he continued to bitch. "I was the CEO of some huge company and was making a crap-ton of money. There were also some random hookers floating around in a tank in the lobby of my building, but whatever."

  I raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like the weirdest porno in the history of pornos."

  "What about Pirates, the porno?" Elena prompted.

  Amory and I stared at her.

  "You know, 'it's a porno, it's a porno, it's a porno, it's a porno…'" she sang, putting the words to the tune of the "He's a Pirate" theme music from Pirates of the Caribbean.

  "Dude, get some sleep," I suggested. "You're getting kind of loopy."

  Amory checked his watch. "Only five more hours to go!"

  And counting, I thought.

  * * *

  "Tully, I told you: I flat out refuse to make myself look like an idiot in front of a bunch of other people!"

  Tully pouted up at me from the floor. "Aw, come on, Evie, it won't be that bad."

  I glared at him from my position on my bed. "Do you seriously want me to wind up in the emergency room again?"

  "I'll help you, I promise!" he insisted.

  "Free skate is not how I intended to spend my Sunday evening."

  "So?"

  I rolled my eyes. "So, I don't want to go."

  "But it's fun!" he argued.

  I shook my head. "Not for me."

  "It would be if you'd at least try," he maintained.

  "The last time I tried, I was on crutches for a week," I reminded him.

  He grinned. "Well, you know what they say: If at first you don't succeed…"

  "Don't finish that sentence."