Blending Out

by Priyanka Bagrodia

  Her mother interrupted Sarah to scoff. “She doesn’t want her cartilage pierced.”

  Sarah looked over at Ryley with a single eyebrow effortlessly raised. Ryley looked down at the floor.

  Sarah turned back to her mother. “Okay, anyway, I didn’t know how long all that would take, so I just saw people who would be quicker.”

  “Well, can you fit her in now or can she pierce my daughter’s ears?” Ryley’s mother pointed at the other employee standing off to the side.

  “What?” Sarah asked innocently, her head cocked to the side. Her mother’s accent tended to get thicker when she was flustered.

  “Can the other employee pierce my daughter’s ears?” Her mother carefully enunciated the words, her voice frigid.

  “Sure,” Sarah said shortly.

  As Charlie led Ryley over to the white chair, she looked apologetically at Ryley’s mom and said, “Honestly, I’m not very good at piercings. Sarah’s way better, which is why she normally handles them. I think she’s just in an off mood today.”

  Charlie only looked at Ryley’s mom as she spoke, not acknowledging Ryley once. They knew Ryley didn’t belong in their world even if her mother seemed to be a question mark for them.

  Her mother tightened her jaw and then curtly said, “Never mind. We’ll go elsewhere.” Turning to Ryley, she said, her voice soft, “Ryley, come on.” She lightly rested her hand on Ryley’s arm and gave it a quick squeeze before letting her fingers trail down the arm, soothing the nerves she knew would already be aflame. The look in her mom’s eyes frustrated her; Ryley didn’t want her pity.

  Ryley shook her hand off and strode out of the store rapidly, not daring to make eye contact with anyone. Maybe it was worth it to make the effort; to dress like them, to dress like her mom. To at least try to lean into being the same.

  CHAPTER 2

  SEPTEMBER 2018

  Ryley walked rapidly, matching her steps to the electronic beat thrumming in her ears; she let herself feel the rhythm, internalize the singer’s confidence. Today was her first day of orientation at Harvard Law School, and she felt like her whole life had been building up to this point. She had finally arrived, attending a hallowed institution whose very name caused every one of her parents’ friends to say, “You must be so happy.” She supposed she was; she didn’t know. Regardless, she strutted along now. She would have preferred her heeled boots over the flats she had on; she liked how her boots’ startlingly loud staccato strike pattern sounded indoors. Unfortunately, the boots would have looked a bit out of place in late-summer, muggy Cambridge, so she’d gone with her floral designer flats, paired with a dark-blue shirt dress instead. Perhaps it was better that she’d been forced to go with the dress—it did a good job of projecting fun and casual. She repeated aloud that she was the epitome of relatable as she moseyed along in the general direction of campus.

  The main building was imposing enough with its white limestone façade but not unduly so. The arches framing the entryway were free of Latin, free of ostentation, and formed three upside-down Us at a reasonable, friendly height. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe everyone would be nice and laid-back.

  She momentarily paused outside the building, shooting a quick prayer up to the sky, before skipping up the three small steps and sliding through the already-open doors. Her flats slapped gently against the blue and gray tiled floor as she looked around. The corridor was flanked by classrooms to the left and small seating areas to the right. The walls were composed of wooden panels, the light brown shade surprisingly warm although the comfort of the color was offset by the dramatic black and white framed faces of storied professors lining the walls. Clumps of students were scattered along the corridor; she scanned their faces as she walked past, curious to get a sense of her classmates. The make-up aligned with that of past institutions she’d attended: a sea of white with a splash of color here and there. She was unsurprised and slightly appeased by the normalcy of it all.

  When she finally reached the reception area, she reluctantly pulled out her headphones, immediately opening herself up to an overwhelming influx of chatter and high-pitched how are yous. She was amazed so many people seemed to know each other already. Two seconds later, unwilling to just blankly stare at the check-in people as she waited for the line to move, she pulled out her phone. Fortunately, the screen wasn’t blank; she had good luck texts from her mom and a couple of friends from college. She typed slowly, writing out an essay in response to each person, partly because she’d never learned how to be concise and partly to kill time. At least the people directly in front of her were also similarly consumed by their phones.

  Three essays later, she glanced up to get her bearings and see if the line had moved at all. Only four more people to go. She began to study the portrait of a professor hanging up on the wall opposite her. He had been captured mid-lecture with his mouth slightly agape. She wondered if the intensity in his eyes was real or staged. She would have liked to ask him how he liked his life and if he’d known what he wanted to do from a young age or if he’d just slotted into it because he was good at it.

  Before she got too carried away by her profundity, Ryley found herself compelled to look to her right. A girl was leaning adjacent to one of the frames, staring at her. Ryley calmly waited for the girl to look away, as polite people did. The girl didn’t, slouched against the wall with her arms folded in front of her like a shield. She looked to be a mish-mash of different ethnicities. She was pretty, with olive skin, a narrow face, prominent, dark brown eyes, and an aristocratic nose; she was dressed in light-wash high-waisted jeans and a white crop top that spoke of her willingness to make a statement.

  As Ryley watched, the girl let her eyes drift down to clearly linger on Ryley’s knee. Unwillingly, Ryley looked down and saw that it was ashy and looked dry and ill-moisturized because of course, she must have knocked it against a wall when she was doing her power-walk over. She quickly brushed at her knee and then looked back over at the check-in table, hoping the red on the tips of her ears was adequately covered by her hair. She didn’t look back over at the girl, except there was Harrison, suddenly walking toward them with his eyes focused on her newly-found arch-nemesis—Ryley was potentially jumping the gun in labeling her so, but having an arch-nemesis was something she thought Law School Ryley should have.

  As he neared them, he loudly exclaimed, “Olivia!” He was a second-year at Harvard but had transferred from Cornell, so he was as new to the school as Ryley was. Ryley wasn’t surprised he’d somehow already made a friend.

  Ryley let them chatter away for a minute or so before poking her body halfway out of line and interjecting with a nonchalant, “Harrison.” She impressed herself with the careless way she said his name.

  “Rye Bread?” he exclaimed. After pausing to give his shock its requisite due, he asked, “What are the odds I bump into my little sister two feet from my new best friend?”

  Ryley shrugged in response, having nothing to say. She glanced over at Olivia, wanting to be formally introduced. She hoped he’d scrap the nickname; Rye Bread was pretty homey and she sounded like a dumpling person. Besides, he no longer had the right to refer to her with such familiarity. They didn’t have that relationship anymore; they hadn’t had it since she was in high school.

  He followed her gaze to Olivia and immediately said, “Olivia, this is my sister, Ryley. She’s a One-L here.”

  Ryley had learned One-L meant first-year from Harrison when he had been going through it. He’d made a show of huffing out irritably the two times Ryley had asked how “first-year” was going during the two times they’d talked in the last year. Ryley had said “first-year” the second time on purpose.

  Olivia gave her a smile and a nod of acknowledgment, chirping out “Hi!” as if she hadn’t just been eyeing Ryley’s scuffed-up knee.

  “Hi,” Ryley said, stretching her lips just enough to give Olivia a semblance of a smile. Ryley turned back to Harrison. “So how do you two know each othe
r?”

  “We’re both transfers,” Olivia said, responding for Harrison and comfortably setting the dynamic. Turning to Harrison, Olivia asked, “What time did you get back yesterday?”

  “Late last night.” Harrison had moved in a couple of weeks early and had then embarked upon a two-week road trip with Genie, his girlfriend of two years. Apparently, he’d just gotten back. Ryley had yet to meet Genie. All she knew was that Genie seemed to be an Instagram influencer of some kind.

  “Ryley, did your move go okay too?” Harrison queried.

  “Yeah,” she said shortly. Her mother had come out and helped her. They could have used Harrison’s six-one frame and his bodega-store owner vibe when two Bostonians had seen their out-of-state license plate on the rental car and said, “We don’t need more outsiders. Get out of here.”

  Harrison opened his mouth to ask a follow-up, but Olivia interjected once again. “I think you’re about to be up. It was nice meeting you.” She softened her dismissal with a pleasant enough smile.

  In spite of herself, Ryley liked Olivia’s confidence and the easy way she took charge; however, determined to have the last word, even though the man in front of her was wrapping up, Ryley looked over at Harrison and said, “We should get a coffee soon. Catch up.”

  He responded, “Yeah, definitely,” recognizing her statement for what it was and content to keep any future plans to meet up vague.

  Ryley stepped forward to the check-in table. She kept her posture straight and her shoulders back throughout and upon receiving her documents, gave the woman her careful, practiced smile. Ryley wished she could put her headphones back in and get that power walk back as she followed the woman’s instructions up the stairs to the temporary breakfast room, but she should play up her approachability.

  As soon as she entered the room, she made a beeline for the food, all the better to center herself and get her bearings. An astonishing number of people were packed into what was essentially a glorified conference hall with small high-top tables sprinkled throughout. The crimson carpet and matching curtains might have been a bit overkill, but she supposed the school had a brand to uphold and a favorite color to honor.

  Most of the easy-to-eat food was gone—she’d timed her arrival to be on the tail-end of what she imagined would be an uncomfortable meet and greet—and so she made do with snagging the rather pathetic dilapidated bagel sitting there by itself, taken as much out of pity as desire.

  She began to slowly and meticulously apply cream cheese to the bagel, but no sooner had she finished with the spread than she was scraping the cream cheese off the bagel and into a napkin. She would not be the putz walking around with cream cheese on her dress. She scoped out the room as she made quick work of the bagel. A couple of tables had huddles that had already progressed from acquaintanceship to best friendship across the span of the morning. Their bodies were turned inward and toward each other; further newcomers were not welcome nor needed. She continued her quick skim of the room and saw a couple more manageable circles to the right, the mélange of bodies replete with welcoming empty spaces. One circle was predominantly white, the other predominantly East Asian and Indian. She walked over to the one predominantly white.

  Arriving at the outer bounds of the circle, she slipped in between two boys and plastered a generic, pleasant expression onto her face, asking politely, “Hi! Can I join?”

  The two nearest her instantly chorused, “Of course!” Everyone was all smiles on this first day of orientation. Ryley was denied any opportunity to make an introduction though; the blonde across from her didn’t stop talking.

  “All I’m trying to say is that the Justice’s opinion in the immigration ban case, while eloquent in delivery, was not based in context. It was good that the dissent brought up Korematsu.” The girl was wearing a red sundress straight out of a Kip Moore country song, with her Ray-Bans still perched atop her head and the tan from summer lending a natural bronzing to her skin. Her face was broad and her eyes spaced widely around a dainty, flat nose, before it tapered to end in the form of a neat, small mouth and pointed chin.

  In the momentary silence that followed the girl’s words, Ryley hurriedly interjected, “Cool, yes. Anyway, hi, I’m Ryley.” She punctuated her introduction with an insipid, little hand wave. If she’d had any idea what she was going on, perhaps she could have acknowledged the blond girl’s point with some witty rejoinder. She just wanted to get her introduction out of the way.

  A doe-eyed brunette quickly glanced at the blonde before introducing herself as Sophie.

  The blond girl noticeably flinched at Sophie’s squeal of an introduction before saying assertively, “I’m Cassidy, Cass to my friends. Where were you before this?”

  Ryley replied, “DC.”

  “What’d you do there?”

  “Drink.” The word dropped out almost reflexively.

  Sophie and a couple of others chuckled, but she was met with an unimpressed look from Cassidy.

  Grimacing slightly, Ryley said, “Just kidding. I worked in consulting. What about you all? Are you from DC as well?” She directed this last sentence to a boy to the left of her. He looked like a DC-type with his black Warby Parker spectacles and his generally clean-cut look. His blond hair was neatly combed and his button-down shirt carefully pressed. Nerdy, but too confident and self-assured to be labeled as such.

  He responded, “Yep, good call! I’m Zeke by the way.”

  Ryley gave herself a mental pat on the back. From what she’d heard, no one else here would be doing it for her.

  Sophie chimed in, “Oh, I love DC; there’s always so much to do! I used to love going to Tryst—that cafe in Dupont Circle—on Sundays.”

  Ryley quickly latched onto the shared point of commonality. “Oh, nice. I used to go there all the time too!”

  Zeke scoffed. “Basic.”

  Ryley ignored him—he was already looking at Cassidy to check her reaction—and continued along with Sophie instead. “Where else did you go in DC?”

  As Sophie began listing places, Zeke’s too-cool-for-school demeanor proved too hard for him to maintain, and soon he was sharing memories from places much more basic than Tryst.

  Ryley chimed in with her own stories, naturally embellished to make an eleven p.m. night a two a.m. night, a concert in which she was high off the electronic beat a concert in which she was high off of so much more, and a two-month barely-there relationship a one-year on-and-off affair. She never spoke for long though, providing only enough detail to hint that she was so much more than whatever they, whatever Cassidy, thought the average Indian Harvard Law student consisted of before throwing the conversation back to Sophie and Zeke. Ryley only looked at Sophie and Zeke as she spoke, knowing she was rankling certain members of the group, but she kept her hands from fidgeting nervously by loosely clasping them together in front of her. And even though she never looked at Cassidy, she saw Cassidy re-calibrating out of the corner of her eye, glancing down again at Ryley’s floral flats and giving Ryley’s watch a second look.

  Cassidy eventually interrupted their DC talk, clapping her hands to get their attention. “How about we include everyone? Has anyone checked out the Cambridge restaurant scene yet? During Admitted Students Weekend, my boyfriend and I went to a couple of restaurants in Harvard Square, but none of them were great.”

  Sophie responded, “Oh, my boyfriend and I checked out Felipe’s! We liked it, but we’re not exactly high-class.”

  Zeke responded, “Oh, yeah, not high-class over here either. My girlfriend and I went to Felipe’s too.”

  Ryley would have liked to say her on-and-off boyfriend and she had gone to Felipe’s as well, but that really would be taking a two-month affair too far. Regardless, that topic of conversation seemed to die quickly because no one had done anything in Cambridge beyond go to Felipe’s with their significant other. Most of them were transplants; from what Ryley could gather, only one of them had gone to Harvard for undergrad. Luckily, even as the last dreg
s of conversation drained away, a newcomer joined.

  Zeke clapped him on the back. “Oh, Cassidy, you worked as a paralegal for Carson & Kline, right? Brad here worked there too.”

  Cassidy nodded and almost immediately, the newcomer, Brad, asked for a quick primer on what everyone did before getting into Harvard, prompting everyone to stand at attention.

  Ryley presented her very standard and unimaginative background as “two years in consulting,” delivered with a shrug. Others threw out consultant and paralegal with the same sort of dismissiveness, but all clearly had their ears perked to hear about the expected Rhodes or Marshall Scholar, the McKinsey consultant, or the math PhD. Indeed, when the title of Rhodes Scholar was inevitably dropped, her fellow classmates delivered, in impressive synchronization, hums of admiration, even as they couldn’t help but shuffle their feet.

  After the last person in the circle had spoken, Sophie said, “I’m so nervous. Everyone here is so smart.”

  Everyone else, the Rhodes Scholar included, immediately and instinctively nodded. Ryley’s nod came two seconds too late. Cassidy, of course, noted that and narrowed her eyes—a shade of brown that would have been friendly on any other person—evaluating Ryley as if to see whether the hesitation had come from arrogance or inattentiveness. Ryley held her gaze calmly.

  Fortunately, another girl butted in and interrupted their staring match, wrapping Cassidy in a long hug as she squealed, “Cass! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  Cassidy immediately turned to the girl, a move for which Ryley was enormously thankful; her confidence, notwithstanding all her recent posturing otherwise, was about as tenable as scotch tape. As the two started talking loudly, half-in and half-out of the circle, the rest of them awkwardly stood there before Cassidy finally said, “Oh, we’re being so rude. Everyone, this is Lily.”