The Bermudez Triangle (2 page)

“Probably just soda or something,” Avery said with an evil grin.

“Since I’m in here, we’re doing Triangle Power!” Nina shouted.

“I am not doing Triangle Power.”

“We’re in a
ball pool
, and now you’re worried about looking stupid? Triangle off!”

Avery sloshed her way over. They arranged themselves in a triangle pattern and took hands.

“Okay,” Nina said, looking at each of them. “We need the power to get through ten weeks apart. I need the strength of mind to get through this program and kick ass. Mel, what do you need?”

“Well,” Mel said, biting her lip, “I’m going to miss you, so I need some help with that. And this job requires a lot of talking to people, so I can’t be shy.”

“Good.” Nina nodded. “Avery?”

“Let’s see,” Avery said. “It probably would be good if I didn’t kill any customers, so I need some help with my people skills.”

“All right,” Nina said, “so we call on the power of the Triangle. Everybody say it with me.”

Even though they hadn’t chanted it in years, no one needed reminding of the words:

“Okay!” the girl said. “Everyone ready?”

“Do it!” Avery called.

“Smile and look at my hand!” She had put on a mouse puppet and was holding it next to the camera.

“Beautiful,” Avery whispered.

The Polaroid coughed out a picture. The girl quickly inserted it into a glossy card with four punched-out corners. Nina carefully made her way back out of the pit.

“You love us,” Avery said, jogging over and throwing her arm over Nina’s shoulders.

“Remember, Ave.” Nina was getting caught up in all the nostalgia. “The last time we were here, we were playing Spice Girls. That was our girl-power mantra.”

Avery narrowed her eyes. She prided herself on her taste in music and hated to be reminded of things like that.

“I was a juvenile then,” she said. “My record has been cleared, and the spirit of Jack Black has purified my soul.”

“Be good or I’ll tell everyone how you used to do that dance to ‘Spice Up Your Life.’ I’ll bet the guys at the vinyl store would love to know that.”

“At least you got to switch,” Nina said. “I always had to play Scary. Make the girl with the curly hair play Scary.”

“Ave switched too.”

Avery was still very consciously not acknowledging this conversation.

“She was better as Posh,” Nina said to Mel. “It was embarrassing to have a Sporty Spice who couldn’t do a cartwheel. But she could do that little Posh walk.”

“I don’t remember any of this,” Avery said. “You must be thinking of someone else.”

“If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends …” Nina sang.

“It’s going to be
so sad
when you leave.”

“You miss me already,” Nina said, throwing her arms around Avery’s neck. “Don’t you?”

Even the joking about Nina’s leaving was too much for Mel. She got out of the ball pool.

“See what you did?” Avery said, though she didn’t really look so happy herself. “Don’t you know she’s going to be crying on my shoulder for the next ten weeks? You’re going to have to stay.”

“It’ll be nothing,” Nina said, continuing her careful walk across the frightening tarp. She couldn’t let herself get upset. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Two hours later Nina was back in her room at home, gazing at the suitcases sitting open on her bedroom floor. She double-checked the color-coded Post-it notes that lined the edge of her desk, each one detailing a certain type of item: exercise clothes, casual clothing, dress clothing, sleepwear, underwear, sheets, towels. Everything was accounted for and had been packed in
space-saver bags in between layers of dryer sheets. All of her toiletries were sealed up in Ziploc bags.

She poked into her carry-on and examined her computer and cords, her phone, her charger, her MP3 player, Starbursts to chew on takeoff and landing, the photo from the ball pool that afternoon. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, just like the last four times she’d checked.

Nina sat on the edge of her neatly made bed and looked around her room. She didn’t want to touch anything, as she’d spent several hours cleaning and arranging it so that everything would be in perfect order on her return. She had Endusted, vacuumed, and Windexed. Her bamboo shades were lowered, making the room dark. It was as if the place had been prepared for some stranger who was coming to stay.

There was a knock on her door. Her mother poked her head in.

“All right,” she said. “You’re confirmed. The flight’s on time.”

“Great.”

“Nervous?”

“No,” Nina lied.

“Ready to go to dinner?”

Nina nodded. It was all happening now. An early dinner. A flight from Albany to Newark, where she’d get on the connecting flight that would take her to San Francisco. Once there she would have to find her contact from the program at the airport. She’d planned for this moment for months, yet she felt like it was sneaking up on her now, tearing her away from her mother, her bedroom carpet, her bed, and her friends. She wouldn’t have
a kitchen to raid whenever she felt like it. She wouldn’t have a private bathroom. She wasn’t even going to know anyone.

She wished her dad could be here, but he was traveling on business. Her brother, Rob, was an intern at Boston Medical and never had time to sleep or eat, much less come all the way to Saratoga Springs to help his little sister get on a plane. And Avery and Mel were at orientation for their new job.

You’re being such a baby
, Nina told herself.
Everything’s going to be fine. It’s just until August.

She stood up, pulled on her denim jacket, and grabbed the second suitcase.

The Emil Watts
Summer Program for High School Leaders wasn’t actually run by Stanford University, it was just attached to the school during the summer. The students lived in Stanford dorms and used Stanford classrooms and the Stanford library, but the program’s organizers constantly made it clear that Stanford was merely the host—as if the EWSPFHSL (pronounced “Oohspuffhisill”) was some kind of parasite living in the belly of this great center of learning.

There was an unceasing cycle of orientation activities—lectures, a library tour, a mass trip to the bookstore for textbooks, well-organized games of Twister in the dorm lounge. Every morning the students took statistics and microeconomics, the mandatory college-credit classes. Every afternoon was spent in a rotating series of seminars and discussions on government, multicultural issues, leadership techniques, current events, and effective writing skills.

In fact, Nina barely had time to get homesick. Soon the red-roofed, mission-style buildings, the palm trees, and the breezes off San Francisco Bay were all pleasantly familiar. The only thing she couldn’t get used to was her roommate, Ashley. Ashley came from
Georgia and supposedly ran six different organizations at her school. She spent her time in incredibly odd ways, like practicing back bends for half an hour at a stretch or nibbling at the corks that she kept in a bag on her desk. She’d down a few caffeine pills with a can of Red Bull and then spend strung-out hours talking on her cell phone, chomping away on a cork, wearing only the tiniest pair of lingerie shorts and a low-cut tank top. This was her minor concession to wearing some clothing while she was in the room—she always slept naked.

At this moment, late on a Tuesday night of the second week, Ashley was sitting on her bed, considering a large, deeply ripe avocado. Nina didn’t know where she’d gotten it; it was just the kind of thing that Ashley turned up with when she had enough stimulants in her system. She focused her clip lamp on it and stared at it as if it contained the secrets of the universe. Her foot tapped furiously on the metal bed frame and she scratched compulsively at her neck. Nina was sure ribbons of skin were about to come streaming down on the mattress.

“Hey, Nina?”

Nina didn’t look up from her microeconomics textbook.

“Yeah?”

“What are you?”
Tap, tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

“What?” Nina asked.

“What’s your … heritage?”

Since her mother was black and her father was Cuban (and white), no one ever knew where to place Nina on the spectrum.

“Swedish,” Nina said.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“On both sides?”

“Yeah.”

Ashley thought this over for a moment, then jumped off her bed and took off running down the hall. Nina could hear her bare feet smacking the linoleum. Since she was sitting cross-legged, the backs of her knees were getting too warm and the heavy book was growing uncomfortable. Nina shoved it off her lap and stretched out her legs. Then she flopped down on her back and threw her legs up against the wall and stared at her toes. It took her a minute to realize that someone was standing in her doorway staring at her. She tilted her head back to get an upside-down view.

The guy in the doorway was Steve Carson, a hard-core environmentalist from Oregon. His room was down the hall from Nina’s, and from a few glances through the open door, she saw that he lived with all the flamboyance of a monk. He’d brought only a bike, books and music, some special environmentally safe detergent and lightbulbs, and a small bag of clothes. He generally kept to himself and could usually be found sitting on his bed, reading, or working on his laptop. Even when the whole hall would go together for meals, he often sat at the end of a table and read the little laminated menu tents over and over.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Nina slid her legs down and went back to her cross-legged position. “Come on in.”

“Nina?” he said. “It’s Nina, right?”

Nina nodded.

“My computer is going crazy,” he said. “The battery or … I don’t know. Can I use your computer to check my e-mail for a second? I’m waiting for a message. There’s this thing we’ve been doing for the Savage Rapids Dam on the Rogue River and … It would take a long time to explain.”

He spoke quickly, in an insistent mumble.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nina said, waving a hand in the direction of her computer. “It’s no problem.”

Nina pulled the book back onto her lap. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she watched him. Steve had a strong, slim build, probably from his constant biking. The red T-shirt he had on had bled out in the wash, and his dark blond hair looked like it had been cut at home. He typed away at full speed without looking at the keyboard. Then he began to scrutinize her bathroom basket, which sat on the bureau, filled with a full line of aromatherapeutic shampoo, conditioner, body wash, moisturizer, and facial scrub. As he turned back, he caught her watching him.

“I was just looking at your shampoo,” he explained, as if that were the most normal thing in the world.

“Oh.”

“You have a lot of the organic stuff, all the same brand.”

Steve reached up and plucked out Nina’s green tea facial wash and examined the label. He turned the bottle over and examined it, then replaced it.

“All these big companies are jumping on the organic bandwagon,” he said, typing away again, still without looking at the keyboard. “And then
they put soap in a plastic bottle. Then sometimes they put the bottle inside a box. The amount of packaging they’re using is insane. You must like it, though. You’ve got the whole line there.”

“I get it for free. My dad works for the company.”

“Oh,” he said. A curious “oh.” An “Oh, your dad works for a major chemical conglomerate” kind of “oh.”

“In product development,” she added, rather deliberately. “He’s really proud of the organics line. It took a while to get it made.”

“I’m third-generation hippie,” Steve said. “I notice these things. My parents grew up on a famous commune in New Mexico called the New Buffalo. They lived in teepees in the desert. Everyone in my family has always used natural remedies and organics. It’s just strange to see them in Wal-Mart.”

“I guess you can thank my dad for that.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad.”

Nina went back to reading and he returned to typing for several minutes. She saw him pause again and stare thoughtfully at the screen.

“We live alongside a berry farm,” he said suddenly. “Berries love our kind of weather. I’m used to eating them every day, so I’m kind of jonesing for them. Do you like blackberries?”

“I guess,” Nina said, once again stunned by the strange turn of the conversation. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever had them.”

“Really?” Steve shook his head incredulously. “I’ll send you some jam. We make it at home. It’s incredible.”

It was too much. He had just gone through her toiletries, subtly accused her dad of wrecking the environment, then launched into his
life story. Now he was offering to send her some of the family jam? Maybe he had been too busy chowing down on tempeh and chaining himself to redwoods to have developed social skills.

Suddenly there was an enormous boom from down the hall. Before Nina and Steve could get up to see what happened, Ashley swung through the door and shut it behind her.

“Did you hear that?” she gushed.

“Everyone heard that,” Nina said. “What was it?”

“I put it in the microwave.” Ashley laughed. “It blew up.”

“Your avocado?”

Steve looked at Nina in confusion.

“She had an avocado,” Nina explained. “I guess she blew it up.”

“I did.” Ashley belly flopped onto her bed, which gave a threatening creak. Steve shot a glance at Nina before going back to his typing.

“You’re Steve, right?” Ashley asked.

“Yep.”

“You’re like a nature boy, right? Are you with Greenpeace or something?”

“No. Smaller group. We work with them, though. What do you do?”

“Oh, you know.” Ashley sprawled herself over the bed and started braiding her hair loosely. “Food drives, stuff like that. Sort of. I lied about half the stuff on my application. They don’t care, anyway, as long as you pay. It’s all bullshit. You want a Red Bull?”