This is the point when they tell the parents to go home.
Angela’s mom, Anna, who’s been her intensely quiet self, sitting in the backseat of my car reading her Bible for the entire thousand-mile trip, suddenly bursts into tears. Angela is mortified, red-cheeked as she escorts her sobbing mother out to the parking lot, but I think it’s nice. I wish my mom were here to cry over me.
Billy gives me another one of those encouraging shoulder squeezes. “Knock ’em dead, kid,” she says simply, and then she’s gone, too.
I pick a comfy sofa in the lounge and pretend to study the patterns on the carpet while the rest of the students are saying their own tearful good-byes. After a while a guy with short, dyed-blond hair comes in and sits across from me, sets a hefty stack of folders on the coffee table. He smiles, reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m Pierce.”
“Clara Gardner.”
He nods. “I think I’ve seen your name on a couple of lists. You’re in B wing, right?”
“Third floor.”
“I’m the fee here in Roble,” he says.
I stare at him blankly.
“P-H-E,” he explains. “It stands for peer health educator. Kind of like the doctor of the dorm. I’m where you go for a Band-Aid.”
“Oh, right.”
He’s looking at my face in a way that makes me wonder if I have food on it.
“What? Do I have the words clueless freshman tattooed across my forehead?” I ask.
He smiles, shakes his head. “You don’t look scared.”
“Excuse me?”
“Freshmen usually seem pretty terrified, first week on campus. They wander around like lost little puppies. Not you, though. You look like you’ve got things all under control.”
“Oh. Thanks,” I say. “But I hate to tell you, it’s an act. Inside I’m a nervous wreck.”
I’m not, actually. I guess next to fallen angels, funerals, and forest fires, Stanford feels like a pretty safe place. Everything’s familiar here: the California smells of exhaust and eucalyptus trees and carefully landscaped roses in the air, palm trees, the Caltrain noise in the distance, the same old varieties of plants that I grew up with outside the windows.
It’s the other stuff that scares me: the dark, windowless room in my vision, what’s going to happen in that place, the bad thing that’s happened before I end up hiding there. The possibility that this is going to be my entire life: one vague, terrifying vision after another, for the next hundred years. That’s what’s scary. That’s what I am trying very hard not to think about.
Pierce writes a five-digit number on a Post-it and holds it out. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll come running.”
He’s flirting, I think. I take the Post-it. “Okay.”
Just then Angela bustles in, running her hands down the sides of her leggings like she’s wiping off her mother’s emotions. She stops short when she sees Pierce.
She doesn’t look scared, either. She looks like she’s come to conquer.
“Zerbino, Angela,” she says matter-of-factly when Pierce opens his mouth to greet her. She glances at the folders on the table. “Have you got something in that pile with my name on it?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, flustered, and rummages through the folders until he lands on Z and a packet for Angela. Then he fishes one out for me. He gets up. Checks his watch. “Well, nice to meet you, girls. Get comfortable. We’ll probably start our getting-to-know-you games in about five minutes.”
“What’s that?” Angela gestures to my Post-it as he walks away.
“Pierce.” I stare at his retreating back. “Anything I need, he’ll come running.”
She shoots a glance at him over her shoulder, smiles thoughtfully. “Oh, really? He’s cute.”
“I guess.”
“Right, I forgot. You only have eyes for Tucker still. Or is it Christian now? I can never keep track.”
“Hey. Like, ouch,” I say. “You’re being awfully rude today.”
Her expression softens. “Sorry. I’m tense. Change is hard for me, even the good changes.”