Page 3 of All These Beautiful Strangers
In the bottom right-hand corner, in bold red letters that mimicked the title card of the show, we wrote: Vote Sorantos.
All of the other candidates had gone the serious route with posters spewing platitudes, or worse—making some pun off their name. Stevie won by a landslide.
“Fine,” I said, because I saw I had no other choice. “How about, ‘I’ve been doing this job for two years now. If you don’t think I’m qualified, go fuck yourself.’”
Yael pretended to consider it. “So much subtlety and finesse,” she said. “But is it too sophisticated?”
Stevie set her glass of milk down so hard on her tray that it sloshed over the sides of the glass. I looked down and saw white pearls of milk dotting my sleeve.
“I see even pretending to take this seriously is too much to ask,” Stevie said, slinging her cheap Target bag over her shoulder and standing up.
“Stevie—” Yael started.
“I’m going to the library,” Stevie said, and headed off toward the far end of the dining hall, her bag bouncing against her back with every purposeful stride she took.
Yael sighed and gathered her things, giving Drew and me an exasperated smile.
“DEFCON Three,” she said. “I’ll run damage control.”
“Now I feel bad,” Drew said when Yael was gone. “But I was serious about my DGAF idea.”
I shrugged and grabbed a napkin to dry my sleeve.
Stevie and Yael were my friends by default only—mainly because they were always around Drew, and Drew and I were always together. We ate our meals together, we sat next to one another in class, we spent long hours hanging out in the common room before curfew, and we shared a room. So, I made an effort with them—I went sailing with Yael’s family over the summer when our families were on Martha’s Vineyard at the same time. I invited Stevie to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Greenwich, since I knew the plane ticket to spend the holiday with her own family in Ohio was too expensive and she would have been stuck on an empty campus alone. I got along with them all right (most of the time, anyway), and I liked them okay, but we didn’t click the way Drew and I clicked. She and I just got each other.
Drew and I had been serendipitously placed together in the same dorm room freshman year with another girl we loathed named River, who never shaved and didn’t believe in deodorant, table salt, or listening to her folk music at a courteous volume. Apparently, she didn’t believe in studying either, because she was gone by the next semester. Living with River was like being hazed, and Drew and I had gone through it together. It had created an unbreakable bond.
Now I eyed Drew as she chewed animatedly and talked about the upcoming volleyball meet against our rival, Xavier. I tried to ask her without asking her: Did you get one too? Did the A’s pick you? Because I couldn’t, well, just ask.
“What?” she said, and I realized too late that my attempts at telepathy had resulted in creepy hard-core staring. “Do I have something on my face?”
“Yeah, some sauce, just here,” I lied, pointing to a spot on my own chin for reference.
“Thanks,” Drew said, dabbing the corresponding spot on her chin with her napkin.
It was hopeless. Drew had an impenetrable poker face. So, I scanned the dining hall for my cousin Leo instead. Leo was two months my junior, but you’d never have guessed it by the way he loomed over me at six foot two. You also wouldn’t know we were cousins based solely off appearance. Leo had the traditional Calloway good looks; he was all bright turquoise eyes, golden-blond hair, and distinguished cheekbones. I, on the other hand, looked like my mother. I got her dark brown hair and wide gray eyes and pale, translucent skin, her short stature. This was a ring of hell that Dante had not imagined: looking in the mirror every day and seeing the one person you wanted most desperately to forget.
I spotted Leo two tables away, sitting next to Dalton and a mix of other popular junior and senior boys. His hair was still wet from his post-football-practice shower and it hung down into his eyes slightly as he leaned forward to say something to his friends. I knew just by looking at him that he had been tapped by the A’s—I didn’t even have to ask. I saw it in the way he smiled that cocky, lopsided smile of his, the one that made the dimples peek out of his left cheek. Leo and I had always had an uncanny ability to read one another, a result of his seeing me through the hellfire that was my childhood. Leo had been the one to save me in the end, or at least, he had been the one to show me how to save myself.
“Shit,” Drew said. She had knocked over her water glass. The water spilled everywhere, running off the side of the table. I picked up my napkin and started to dab at the mess as Drew righted her glass.
“Your bag,” Drew said, and I pulled it off the table just before the spill reached it.
And then, it clicked. That was it. I knew where the A’s were meeting that night.
“I’m sorry,” Drew said. “I’m such a klutz.”
“No, thank you,” I said, without really thinking.
“What?”
“Uh, nothing,” I said. “I meant, it’s no big deal.”
Curfew at Knollwood Prep was nine o’clock on weeknights. Normally Drew and I hung out in the common room until as late as possible, and then we’d sit up for hours at our desks finishing our readings or assignments and talking. But tonight, we both turned in early. I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark, trying to tell from Drew’s breathing if she had fallen asleep across the room and wondering how I would sneak out our window without waking her.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the A’s.
Knollwood Prep had four types of clubs: the athletic, the academic, the special interest, and the, well, ridiculous (see the Cheese Club, where they sat around and, you guessed it, ate cheese). Being in these clubs meant silly rituals, or sweaty practices in the gymnasium doing suicides across the court in some primitive drive to prove your physical prowess, or meetings where you sat around a buzzer and answered questions while an elected secretary kept inanely detailed minutes. These clubs had meets with other schools and held events like bake sales or car washes to raise money for the local women’s shelter. At Knollwood Prep, you were expected to collect these clubs like trinkets on a charm bracelet so that on your college application, you could say that not only did you get a rigorous academic education at one of the top preparatory schools in the country, but you were also a contributing member of your community, and were—that buzzword college admissions officers salivated over—“well-rounded.”
