Page 15 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

Huh. That’s actually a good solution for the times when I snap the wristband so hard that it breaks, leaving me untethered. Uncaged. I make a mental note of it.

She gives a brittle, eager smile before taking another swig of wine, and I realize that like me, she’s nervous.

“I’m Pam, by the way. What’s your name?”

I don’t want to give her my name, but I’m trapped. I’m here to make a fresh start, and fresh starts don’t involve walking away mid-conversation with your schoolmate, even if said schoolmate is as interesting as a piece of chewed gum.

“Jane.” One-word answers. That’s safe.

“Jane.” Her smile turns even more eager, if that’s possible. “I like that name. Down-to-earth. Like Pam, I guess. I feel like everyone here’s got some fancy name—they’re either exotic or, like, one of those long, old ones. You know—Hubert Weatherby the Third.”

That gets a smile out of me, because among the throng of people who had swarmed me and Thalia at the canapés table, there had been a “the Third.” I think he was a Robert though, not a Hubert. I’m sure there’s a Hubert here somewhere in this crowd, and perhaps a Rupert or two.

“Which course are you doing here?” Pam asks. She’s actually clutching her wineglass with both hands, strangling the stem with her pudgy fingers. I’m torn between pity and secondhand embarrassment for her.

“Creative Writing.”

“Ooh, that one’s intense, I hear.”

Is it? My stomach twists, whether from the alcohol or from anticipation, I don’t know. But an “intense” course that involves Thalia sounds like something straight out of my darkest dreams.

“I hear that every year, about a quarter of the students flunk out of the course.”

What? I hadn’t even been aware that you could flunk out of a Creative Writing course. “How do you flunk out of a Creative Writing course?”

Pam shrugs. “By writing badly, I imagine.”

I suppose it seems obvious when she puts it that way.

“I’m doing the master’s in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.”

I have to stop myself from snorting out loud, because of course she is.

“I’m kind of really nervous about it, are you? I’m from March?You know it? No, of course you don’t. It’s a small town outside of Cambridge,” she says apologetically, as though the fact that she came from a small town is a personal affront to me.

“I’m from Oakland.” San Francisco’s armpit, a half-abandoned, half-industrial city that’s being threatened by gentrification, if the techbros can be bothered to colonize Oakland. My own answer startles me, because I usually tell people I’m from San Francisco. Why admit to Oakland when you can cover yourself under the sheen and sparkle of SF? But something about Pam is so sad and honest that it compels me to drop the act, if only just a little. I hadn’t expected English girls to be like Pam, so unworldly and unattractive. I suppose I’ve only ever seen the ones on TV, the English Roses fed on a diet of poetry and wine.

“Oakland, that’s nice,” Pam says, nodding like she knows of it. Nobody who isn’t Californian knows of Oakland, but she’s trying so hard. It makes me feel a tad better, being with someone who’s even more out of place than I am. Though, with a nasty jolt, I realize then that I don’t know if Pam does look more out of place than I do. I look down at the dress I’ve borrowed, by far the most expensive thing I have ever worn. It doesn’t fit me well; Thalia’s waist is smaller than mine, so her dress is ungracefully tight around my midsection, squeezing so that my lower belly bulges out. My boobs are bigger than hers, so the chest section is also tight, showing the lines where my bra is slicing into my skin, squashing my boobs like grotesque balloons. The thought hits like a fist. I’m no better than Pam.

I’m about to make my excuses and rush back to Downing to lock myself in my room for the rest of the evening when I become aware that the crowd is suddenly headed toward us. Because Thalia is leading them here. I sense Pam turning rigid with fear at the advancing crowd.

“There you are,” Thalia says, and truly, she is dazzling in all senses of the word. The nearness of her knocks every other thought out of my head, and I am left confused and off-balance. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Pam stares at me with mouth slightly open. I’d been feeling slovenly only moments ago, but now, as the subject of Thalia’s smile and Thalia’s kind attention, I feel myself unfurling once more, blooming from deep inside the rotten core of me.

“I’m Thalia.” Thalia extends a hand toward Pam. I can’t help noticing how slender her wrist is compared to Pam’s. How Pam’s meaty hand completely swallows Thalia’s. The sight of it sends a thrill down my back. So thin, so snappable. After she shakes Pam’s hand, Thalia turns to her side, and that’s when I notice the girl standing way too close to Thalia. A girl I hate on sight.

“And this is Ani,” Thalia says, pronouncing it Ah-nee, and not Annie.

Ani is Asian, and she is everything I’m not—tall, slender, her features flawless.

My entire being wants to cringe away from her. Growing up, my Asian-ness was the source of poverty, the reason for everything that was lacking with my life. I was used to Asians like my mother—women with bedraggled hair, stooped shoulders, faces lined with bitterness and need. I was used to rejecting it, to running away from it. But Ani is unapologetically Asian, and fabulous. Unlike the rest of us, she’s not wearing a dress but a navy-blue jumpsuit that hugs her slim figure, the kind of expensive outfit that is all elegant clean lines.

She looks down her nose at me and Pam, her dark eyes lined with eyeliner so sharp it looks like it could cut me, and there’s a gnawing in my stomach, because I am just now realizing that Ani is grouping me together with Pam. Whatever magic hadcaptured me today and fooled me into thinking I might be on the same level as Thalia, under Ani’s aloof, derisive gaze, it dissipates, and I am thrown to the curb, exposed for the fraud I am.

Everything goes by in a bit of a daze after that. I’m vaguely aware of making our way across the Chapel Quad and into Haygrove Hall, aka the dining hall. It’s styled like a medieval great hall, complete with an arched roof with hammer beams, large bay windows, chandeliers, and wood-paneled walls, on which hang portraits of disapproving white men. In other words, yet more hallowed, ostentatious wealth that serves to remind me of how much I don’t belong.

Worse still, at some point, Thalia says to Pam, “I love your dress. Prada?”

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