“You got all . . .” I waved my hands around my head. “Nice hair.”
Reid laughed and stood up. “So you do remember me.”
Hard to forget the guy whose father—who also happened to be Dad’s oldest friend—died in a freak accident, or the funeral your parents dragged you across three states for, or the fact that you sat with him in his room while everyone else mourned for his father downstairs. Hard to forget the first guy who rejected you.
When my lack of speaking turned awkward, Reid shuffled his feet and asked, “Need help orientating?”
“No thanks,” I said. I would’ve thought that after two years, I wouldn’t feel the pit in my stomach when I looked at him. Wouldn’t feel the urge to spin on my heel and self-righteously walk away. And definitely wouldn’t feel the urge to close the space between us.
Walk away, Mallory.
I spent the rest of the morning orienting myself at the computer lab and the student banking center and the registrar’s office. Then I spent the afternoon orienting myself at the cafeteria and the bookstore. The new kids stood out—we hadn’t assimilated yet. Hadn’t learned how to wear our hair or carry our books. Hadn’t put on the red shirt and adopted the sameness yet. So when they smiled at me, I smiled back, like we were in this together.
I had my laptop bag swung over my shoulder and a stack of books propped between my arms and my chin as I moved slowly back toward my dorm, rocks getting stuck in my flip-flops every few steps. Reid was still under that same oak tree, like there was nothing worth moving for, but now he was eating a giant sandwich.
He was watching me, but I didn’t know whether he was staring because he’d heard about what I’d done or whether he was remembering me, reconciling the Mallory in his head with the Mallory in front of him. Whether he was remembering the same moment I was: his hand in my hair and his face an inch from mine the moment before he walked away.
Or maybe he was staring because I had to stop every few steps and shake my feet while simultaneously balancing a stack of textbooks. He put down the food as I passed by again. “Hey,” he said.
I kicked off my shoes and started walking faster.
There was a girl in my room. Actually, she was only half in my room. The upper half of her body was leaning out the window, blowing smoke toward the trees.
She turned around when the door slammed shut behind me but held her cigarette out the window. She had blond hair cut blunt at her shoulders, a heart-shaped face and jeans that fit her perfectly, and a T-shirt that fit too tight, but guys probably wouldn’t agree.
She watched me, expressionless, until I dumped my gear on the bed and said, “Hey.”
She smiled, which I guess meant I had passed some test. She held up a neon-pink lighter from her other hand and said, “You want?”
“I’m good,” I said, and she ground the cigarette onto the bricks outside the window and flicked it somewhere toward the forest. Apparently not worried about being caught. Or starting forest fires.
“So,” she said, quirking her mouth to the side and leaning her back against the wall. “Like what I’ve done with the place?” She had hung band posters over the other standard-issue bed, and there were stand-up lights in the corners of our room now. She walked over to me and stuck her hand out all formal like. “Brianne Dalton. Bree.”
I shook her hand and said, “Mallory Murphy. No nickname.”
She stepped back and looked me over, scanning me slowly from my bare feet to my bare shoulders and raised an eyebrow at me. “Hmm. Well, you don’t need one. You new here?”
I nodded, searching through my suitcase for another pair of flip-flops, feeling her eyes on me.
“Me too. Transferred from Chelsey. You know it? No? All-girls school. Can you picture me at an all-girls school?”
Actually, I could. Probably how she learned to make other girls uncomfortable just by looking at them. She reminded me of Colleen, even though they looked nothing alike. Colleen was the one who taught me how to walk when you know someone is watching, and how to walk to make someone watch. She oozed attraction just by being in a room. Same as this girl.
Bree looped an arm through mine and led me back into the hall. “Come on, orientation tours are about to start. And trust me, you are in for a treat.”
I looked down at the registration paper. Bree’s idea of a treat was my idea of perpetual humiliation.
“I see you made it unscathed,” Reid called to me as we approached the grass. Unscathed. Who says unscathed? Prep school boys, apparently. With perfect hair. Who reject you.
Bree leaned closer into my side. “You know Reid?”
“Not exactly,” I said, because it was true. I knew him two years ago, when his hair stuck out in every different direction. I knew him before his father was taken from him, before all of this. I didn’t know him anymore.
“Whatever,” she said. She kept her arm looped through mine, but I felt her pull away.
The whole quad area between the dorms and the school buildings took up the space of two soccer fields. Students were scattered in circular groups, like they were singing “Kumbaya” or something. Reid was already surrounded by two guys and one other girl. He must’ve been the leader since he was the only one in uniform.
Reid held my flip-flops out in an extended hand. “Hey, Cinderella, you lost your shoes.” He smiled and showed his dimple, which I’d forgotten about until right that moment, and suddenly I was back, three years earlier, a year before Reid’s dad died, walking into Dad’s twenty-fifth reunion and pushing through the crowd until I’d found Reid, and he was saying, “Miss me?” with that same dimple, and I was saying, “Hardly,” and trying not to smile.
Now he was holding my shoes and smiling, like this whole thing wasn’t horrifically awkward. “I didn’t lose them. I left them right there.”
“Well then, you’re welcome for keeping them safe. There’s a big demand around here for worn-out flip-flops.”
Or maybe this wasn’t awkward for him. Maybe two years was long enough to forget. Maybe he started the process of forgetting as soon as he walked out of his room. Not that I blamed him. He’d had enough going on that day, and in the days that followed. And if I could’ve made myself forget that, I would have.
I took them from his outstretched arm. “They’re not worn out,” I said, careful not to touch his fingers. But I threw them back onto the ground because I was pretty sure they actually were. I’m also pretty sure I was grinning.
Bree caught sight of someone over my shoulder and smiled a “hello, I’m cute and somewhat mysterious” smile that, as it turns out, was not at all mysterious. Must’ve been a boy. A cute one.
“When’s the tour start?” My shoulders tensed because I recognized that voice. I turned around just in time to see Jason, nighttime dorm lurker, skillfully pull out yet another obnoxious grin.
Reid narrowed his eyes and looked around the group gathered in front of him. “What do you want, Jason?” he asked. For the moment, I trusted Reid’s untrusting expression.
“Hanging with my new friend, Mallory.” He rested a hand on my shoulder.
I slunk down and stepped away. “New friend, huh?” Reid asked. But before I had a chance to throw an “I’d rather have my teeth pulled” expression his way, Reid shrugged, and it didn’t seem like the shrug was directed at me.
“This is the quad, obviously,” Reid said as he started walking backward, like he owned this place.
Jason leaned in close as we followed Reid. “I get the feeling you don’t like me.”
I didn’t answer.
“Didn’t mean to scare you last night. I wanted you to feel welcome.”
I grabbed Bree’s arm and said, “This is Bree. She’s new. Welcome her.”