Keaton School 01: Escape Theory

September 10, 2010

Freshman Year

Those Nutter Butters are going to need milk
.

Devon glared at the package of peanut butter cookies at the foot of her bed. The bright red plastic caught the light from her desk lamp, taunting her, daring her to break into the package. Of course she wanted to devour them, but there was the problem of living in a dorm room. Milk—the milk required to have on standby when eating Nutter Butters—wasn’t just out the door, down the hallway, past the living room. No: here the milk was across a grassy courtyard, past a library, two boys’ dorms, and the teachers’ lounge, tucked away, in the oak-paneled dining hall.

They can wait
. Devon swiveled on her stiff twin bed, twisting her toes into her crisp new Ikea bedspread. It felt hotel phony, not like something that was
hers
, in her new room. She put her focus back on the smiling pair of girls she’d tacked up to her wall. In the
picture her best friend, Ariel, was holding two fingers up to the camera, all-cool peace sign/Hollywood starlet, while Devon smiled but kept her eyes toward her feet. The photos always followed a pattern: Ariel confronting the camera, leading the way, Devon a willing passenger. But that was just an Instagram memory now.

Devon’s eyes drifted back to the package of Nutter Butters. Her mom had snuck them into her suitcase before she left for boarding school four days ago. Devon re-read the purple Post-it:
Share with your new friends, but save one for Derek!

The peanut butter cookies
were
a nice gesture. They were Devon’s favorite after all and only because her mom had turned her on to them. The two had a ritual of demolishing a package over an episode of
Grey’s Anatomy
and saving just one in case the handsome “Dr. Derek Shepherd” miraculously appeared at their door. Mom subscribed to the “ya never know who you’re going to run into” philosophy. Always on the prowl for a classic Leading Man (she wore lipstick for even the quickest errands) and always leaving a cookie for a charming stranger who might appear at her doorstep.

That was before boarding school. Before Devon got a scholarship to Keaton, and before her mother told her it was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to turn down. “The doors Keaton will open for you.…” Devon’s mom had begun on more than one occasion without ever actually finishing the thought. Devon wasn’t sure where those doors led, but she knew she was supposed to walk through them for one reason alone: her mom had never had the same opportunity.

That wasn’t Devon’s fault or problem, of course. Just because her mom’s family couldn’t afford some ritzy boarding school when she was a kid didn’t mean Devon had to go to one now. The scholarship was nice and all, but Devon didn’t ask for it. Her mom had applied and set up an interview before Devon had even heard of Keaton. To her, boarding school was full of
those people;
and nothing she’d seen so far had changed that perception. Devon still didn’t want to be one of
those people
who used seasons as a
verb, like “My family summers in the Hamptons” or “We winter in Aspen.”

Once again, Devon felt herself getting angry. She had spent her summer break listing many cogent psychological reasons about why she
shouldn’t
attend Keaton, which of course her mom chalked up to being “just an ungrateful teenager,” which only infuriated Devon more. Really? Couldn’t Mom come up with a more creative phrase to describe her only daughter? Sure, Devon was thirteen, and sure she was annoyed that her “mature” body hadn’t quite come in yet, but mentally she felt old enough to be in control of her own life: as in perfectly justified in not wanting to live in some upscale mountain penitentiary for the absurdly rich.

Next week Ariel would be headed to public school in Piedmont. Ariel: who made Devon feel like she belonged anywhere they went simply because Ariel
acted
like they belonged everywhere they went. No awkwardness about cliques or cafeteria seating. No first day jitters. New friends, new crushes on boys, new after-school hangouts; none of that fazed her.

And here was Devon, stuck at the top of a mountain at The Keaton School.

Ariel’s ease could never spill out of the photo and into her, no matter how hard Devon stared at it. She turned to the Target digital alarm clock (“Because you won’t have the Mom Alarm anymore,” her mom chided on a dorm room shopping trip), blinking 10:18
P.M.
Twelve minutes until the bell rang and everyone had to be inside their dorms for the night. Twelve minutes until she could stop feeling bad about not socializing and reasonably crawl into bed, crossing off another day of her sentence at Keaton. Twelve minutes until roll call and Devon’s dorm head would peek in.…

Devon Mackintosh: check
.

Where else would she be? Or more importantly, as Ariel would ask, whom would she be with? Keaton was perched above the small beach town of Monte Vista. It’s not like Devon could wander over
to the nearest shopping mall and catch a late movie with some locals. No, Devon was physically trapped on the mountain. There was only one way up and one way down, as far as she knew. It was almost funny.

When they built these dorms Devon suspected that “durability” was the prime objective. The thin gray carpet could absorb any dirt, footprint, or stain. (And probably had. Yuck.) The cinderblock walls were painted a slick and glossy white, which made it virtually impossible to stick, pin, nail, or tape anything to the wall. But there
was
a single framed corkboard. Someone must have taken pity on the students and allowed them at least an iota of space to post mementos of their pre-Keaton lives. But apart from that teeny area of suggested self-expression, Devon’s twin bed, lean closet, and rickety desk was definitely more white-collar prison than the golden door of opportunity her mom described.

“Knock, knock. Devon?” came a sing-songy voice.

The Senior RA, June Chan, poked her head inside.

Devon sighed, but mustered a smile for June.
Who actually says “knock, knock” out loud?
June was from Taiwan and spoke Taiwanese, Mandarin Chinese, and English fluently. To Devon she seemed like an over-eager cheerleader who’d been at Keaton since birth. When Devon first arrived, June was there to greet all the girls in the dorm with a neon-bright smile and a bouncy ponytail. “Hi, I’m June. Like the month!” She spoke in exclamation points. Since that first day Devon had only seen June wearing dark green The Keaton School sweatshirts and sweats, like an athlete in training. But Devon could never figure out which sport. Maybe being at Keaton was the training itself.

Behind June, doors slammed. There was a burst of high-pitched giggling, the kind she and Ariel once reserved for slumber parties. A cry echoed down the hall—“Hey, that’s my bra, bee-yotch!”—followed by another round of laughter and footsteps. June smiled at the mayhem. She caught Devon’s gaze and turned back. Her mouth tightened into a thin, sympathetic smile.

Even June, the month, would rather hang out with them
.

“Just checking in on you,” June said, sounding concerned yet upbeat all at once.

Yes, Devon was already the charity case. The girls in her dorm all seemed to have gone to volleyball camp or ski school together. Insta-Friends by the end of the first day. But somehow Devon missed her chance. Her Insta-Friend sponge pellet—the one that would turn her into a perfect friend if you just added water—turned out to be a dud.

“
Clueless
just finished,” June added. “We’re starting up
Bring It On
if you want to come and join us? It’s the Spring House Pajama Formal. Kind of an annual tradition.”

Devon reached for another photo. “Thanks, but I’m cool. Just want to get this done,” she said.

“Okay, but you’re welcome any time, all right, chica?” June flashed Devon another encouraging cheerleader smile.

The harder people tried, the less Devon wanted to hang out with them. Ariel
never
tried. Maybe that’s why this whole orientation week sucked so much; everyone was desperate to be everyone else’s friend. But, it was all too soon and would never last; couldn’t they see that? She saw the way the seniors sat in the dining hall in tightly formed cliques. Surely they were all fake smiles freshman year too.

June left the door open.

Closed doors were frowned upon at Keaton. Devon had read in the rule book—in typical form, it was called
The Keaton School Companion
(as in: another fake friend)—that if a member of the opposite sex visited your room, doors had to remain open at least twelve inches. Also, “four feet” needed to be on the ground. That was Rule #4c if she remembered correctly, only to be surpassed by #5a, where having sex was an offense punishable by suspension. Basically it was against the rules to do anything with a boy in her room except stare at their dueling feet.