Class (29 page)

“I’ll see you,” he said.

He opened the door and closed it quietly behind him. The Gatzes were waiting for him, all smiles and bear hugs.

“Yeah, see you, Pinkie.” Tragedy yawned and fell asleep.

23

S
leep and wakefulness are active states controlled by specific groups of brain structures. The body does its repair work during sleep, restoring energy supplies and muscle tissue. If you happen to be recovering from an ecstasy and ether bender, there’s lots of repair work to be done.

Tom had passed out facedown on his bed, in his clothes, just before nine o’clock on Saturday night. It was now four o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Deep within his cerebral cortex he detected a rhythmic knocking sound that was too loud and too fast to be the beating of his own heart. His toes twitched. He flexed his ankles. Then he rolled over and opened his eyes. Sun streamed in through the windows. The air smelled like burnt toast.

“Tom?”
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock
. “Tom?”

He lay on his back, blinking up at the ceiling. His lips felt like they’d been caulked shut. His nasal passages felt like they’d been worked with a plumber’s snake.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock
. “Tom?”

What day was it? he wondered. He remembered the play, which had gone well, he thought. His parents were there, or maybe that part had been a dream. They’d taken him and Shipley out to dinner to that fishy place on the river. He’d eaten lobster. He’d worn a bib. Right now his stomach felt hollow and sour. Maybe he was allergic to lobster.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.
“Tom? Are you in there? I’m going to come in now. The door’s not locked.”

Professor Rosen opened the door and stepped into the room, looking like she’d just gotten back from cross-country skiing. Her gray wool kneesocks were pulled up over the legs of her brown wide-wale corduroy pants. Her red Gore-Tex jacket was tied around her waist, and she was still wearing her sunglasses and a purple ski hat. She took a moment to scrutinize the scattered paint tubes and brushes, the drying canvasses, the paint-spattered floor, Nick’s upturned bed, and Tom’s prone form.

“Tom,” she said sharply. “Didn’t you hear me knock?”

Tom pushed himself up on his elbows. “Where’s Shipley?” He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Man, what is that burning smell?”

One side of Professor Rosen’s mouth twitched upward in a grim half smile. “Your parents came by to check on you early this morning, but they didn’t want to wake you. They had to get back to New York. I promised them I’d stop by and see how you were doing later on. Your dad wanted me to be sure you got some studying time in before exams.”

Tom blinked and looked at his wrist. His watch wasn’t there. He’d taken it off for the play. “So it’s Sunday,” he said.

“And that burning smell is the smoke from the yurt your friend Nicholas built out back. It burned down this morning,” she said.

“Holy fuck!” Tom glanced at Nick’s upturned bed and frowned. “Nobody, like, burned up inside it or anything, did they?”

“No.” The professor walked over to Tom’s desk chair and picked up the blue bath towel that was draped over the seat. She tossed the towel at Tom. “Why don’t you take a shower? I’ll see if I can find Shipley. Meet me outside the dorm in twenty minutes. I’ll take you guys out for some food.”

Tom picked up the towel. “Isn’t the dining hall still open for breakfast?”

The professor gave him another one of her half smiles. “Tom, it’s after four. The dining hall won’t be open until dinner at six.”

S
hipley burst into the room as Tom was staring out the window at the black ring of yurt ash in the deep, white snow. Water dripped from his freshly showered body onto the floor.

“Tom!” she cried, thrusting a gigantic cup of Starbucks coffee in his direction. She’d been lying on her bed, exhausted and dozing and pretending to study, when Professor Rosen called. “I got you a venti latte.”

Her blond hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. The cuffs of her jeans were damp and salt-streaked. Tom thought she looked wonderful. He held out his arms. The blue towel slipped from around his waist. “I love you,” he said, fully naked.

Shipley put the coffee down on his paint-spattered desk and walked into his open arms. He hugged her tightly through her coat and rested his dripping forehead on her shoulder.

“I hope I didn’t fuck up too much last night,” he murmured.

She patted his damp back with her mittened hands. He was
so big and his room was a mess.
He
was a mess. But she loved him anyway. She would love him always. Adam too.

“You were fine. You were great,” she said, and bent down to retrieve his towel. “Here, get dressed. Professor Rosen’s downstairs. She says she’s going to buy us donuts.”

O
utside, the setting sun was already drifting downhill. Professor Rosen’s minivan was waiting for them. Stray flakes of snow drifted down from the trees and fluttered to the ground. Tom opened the van’s side door. A baby was strapped into a car seat in the back.

“Hey, I didn’t know you had a baby!” He thumbed his ears at the baby and stuck out his tongue. The baby seemed to be asleep with its eyes open.

“Hop in.” Professor Rosen turned around and scraped the stuff on the backseat onto the floor. Diapers, maps, baby bottles.

Tom and Shipley got in. Nick and Eliza were in the very back seat, holding hands.

“Hey, Slutcakes,” Eliza said. “What is this? Musical boys?”

Nick’s cheeks were pink and shiny from so much cortisone. “You guys all ready for exams?”

Tom slid the door closed and settled into the seat on one side of the baby while Shipley sat on the other. “So who knew it was going to snow last night?” He caught the professor’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Did you know?”

Professor Rosen backed the van out onto the road. “The storm was on the news all week. People were buying up the whole grocery store. The turkeys were all gone. No potatoes even. Guess people thought the whole system would shut down.”

They coasted down the hill toward town. Snow was every
where. The entire campus had been transformed into a winter wonderland.

“Just look at it all!” Tom marveled, as if he’d never seen snow before. He turned his head to admire Shipley’s profile against the white snowbanks outside the window. Then he glanced down at the baby. Its eyes were dark brown and its skin was the color of maple syrup. It was holding Shipley’s finger.

“I can’t wait for Christmas,” Shipley murmured. Beetle’s skin had reminded her of Hawaii.

“Me too,” Professor Rosen agreed. “We’re going to Sedona.”

“I’m going to stay in my pj’s till New Year’s,” Tom yawned.

Nick spoke up from the way back. “I’m going to Eliza’s house.”

“I can’t wait for donuts,” Eliza chimed in. She stuck her hand down the back of Nick’s pants and kept it there. “Hey, is anyone else having major déjà vu?” She stared out at the snow for a while, then turned around and stuck her tongue out at Nick. He looked so much better without his hat, and his skin was beginning to calm down.

Nick pushed her bangs up off her forehead to see what she would look like without them. “Whoa,” he said, and let the bangs drop. “Maybe you should start wearing hats.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I could knit one for you.”

“Oh God.” Eliza grimaced. “Please, someone just shoot us now and put us out of our misery.”

Shipley undid her seat belt and crawled over Beetle’s car seat to sit in Tom’s lap.

“Oi!” Professor Rosen called out.

Nick and Eliza were all over each other now, the moist sucking sounds of their kisses muffled by the smack of the tires on the wet road. Tom put his arms around Shipley and pulled her in close. Through the very back window of the car she could see
the blue light of Dexter’s chapel spire, shining significantly on top of the hill, like a beacon. It was hard to believe it could ever go out.

Behind them, the road was a black river cutting across a glistening white field fringed with dark trees. A curl of smoke rose up from the chimney of a nearby farmhouse. She imagined Patrick and Adam and Adam’s parents sitting around a fire, eating Tragedy’s cookies and drinking wine. If Adam went to England, Patrick could drive his car instead of hers. Patrick might even move in with the Gatzes. It might work out for everyone.

She wrapped her arms around Tom’s neck and kissed him in a roving, tentative manner, like a person trying to get into a house when they’ve forgotten the key. She kissed his forehead, his temples, his ears, his neck, his chin. He smelled like Ivory soap and Gillette shaving cream and Colgate toothpaste and Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo—all the things she was used to. But there were other things she craved, things she didn’t even know existed. Once you got a taste for the unexpected, it was hard to settle for anything less.

She paused for a breath. “Did you know they have snow in Hawaii?”

“That’s why I went to college,” Tom joked. “To learn shit like that.” He tilted his head back and puckered his lips, eager for more of her.

Shipley slammed his head against the back of the seat and kissed him on the mouth, this time with conviction. Then, without another word, she pulled away and crawled back over Beetle’s car seat. The van lurched over a bump and, for a moment, was airborne. One of Nick’s Philosophy textbooks dropped out of his bag and slid across the floor beneath Shipley’s feet.
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
she read upside down. Thank
goodness she wasn’t in that class.

She refastened her seat belt and gazed out the window. The sky was swollen and ripe. It would snow again, soon. There would be more snow, more kisses, more sex, more gunshots, more fires. This was what she had come for—what they had all come for. This was college.

Acknowledgments

I would be plagued by guilt and unable to write anything if I didn’t know that my children were always having a good time without me, and for that I thank Marsha Torres, Erasmo Paolo, and my mother, Olivia. Thank you, Suzanne Gluck, agent extraordinaire, for being fierce, wise, sympathetic, and funny at all the right times; and Sarah Ceglarski, Elizabeth Tigue, and Caroline Donofrio for being wonderful. At Hyperion, thank you, Brenda Copeland, for your wit, keen insight, swift responses, and good taste in cheese; Kate Griffin for your professionalism; and Ellen Archer, for giving me a chance and then some. Thank you Barbara Pavlock for your help with Latin. Thank you Paragraph, where this book’s beginnings were written. Thank you Karaoke Wednesdays. Thank you Ambien. Thank you Agnes and Oscar, my children and the teachers from whom I’ve learned the most. And thank you Richard, for reading this thing more than once, and for being a really good husband, despite being married to me.

About the Author

Cecily von Ziegesar
is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of the Gossip Girl novels, upon which the hit television show is based. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction and the events, incidents, and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 Cecily von Ziegesar

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4013-1048-6

eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0425-6

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