Sweet Nothing (3 page)

Are you getting a fresh start there, or do people ask you about Dad all the time? My friends don’t say anything about him anymore. But I know they’re thinking about it constantly. I can tell.

Maybe none of us gets a real fresh start. Maybe we have to do the best we can with what we have.

Love you for infinity,

A

When I wake the next morning, my head is pulsing. It feels like my skull isn’t big enough to contain everything inside it: the details of my new identity. My nearly naked pre-party run-in with Gregory. Dr. Goodwin’s assurances that my secrets were safe with him. The notes flowing from Luke’s guitar. All shrouded in a boozy fog.

I groan and roll onto my side, angling the digital clock on the bedside table in my direction.
7:08
. A grand total of about three hours of sleep. Last night I’d followed Waverly back to campus after the reception ended, only to realize that we were housemates. She’d helped me unpack a few essentials before declaring that with any less than five hours of sleep, she’d turn into a total “bi-yotch”. Then she’d disappeared for the night.

I’d stayed up late, putting some of my clothes away and strategically moving my possessions around the room like chess pieces. Writing a quick Email to Aria.

Sitting up, I rub my temples and yawn. My new room is nothing like the lavish suite I called mine in New York. The home I didn’t deserve. This room is small and ultra-modern, with stark white walls and dark, shiny hardwood floors. There’s not much furniture: a platform bed, low dresser and matching bedside table, and a full-length mirror in the corner. Next to the bed sits an Allford Academy itinerary for the next few days, printed on creamy stationary with two gold scripted A’s intertwined at the top. My open suitcases are scattered around the room, spewing buttery leather flats, tailored jackets, and flowing maxi-skirts. Even my wardrobe doesn’t have an identity.

I collapse back onto my pillow and stare up at the ceiling, not ready to face the day. And if I can’t face the day, how can I face a whole new life? Sure, there’s something really freeing about getting what Aria called a fresh start. But what if I screw up my second chance? What if someone recognizes me, or if I slip up and use my real name? My heart throbs in triple-time. I can’t afford that kind of mistake.

“Elle? Knock knock!” A voice singsongs on the other side of the door.

Before I have the chance to answer, Waverly hip-bumps her way inside, dressed in perfectly tailored white skinny jeans and a blousy, electric peach tunic. She carries two plastic grocery bags. A girl I’ve never seen before trails in behind her.

“Um, come in?” I croak, running a hand through my tangles.

“We brought you a little welcome breakfast!” Waverly chirps. “Oh. This is Gwen.”

“Hey. Gwen Markley. English Lit,” Gwen yawns. “And I help with the school paper.”

“Elle. Econ.” I like Gwen instantly. She’s tall, almost lanky, but moves with an easy kind of confidence. Her long brunette waves are piled in a messy nest on top of her head. She wears no makeup, and the tiny diamond stud in her right nostril is her only piece of jewelry. She’s dressed in ripped jean shorts and a t-shirt that says something about commas saving lives.

“Cool.” Gwen’s eyes flicker over my face. “Elle, did you say?” She pauses, squints at me. Is that a flash of recognition in her eyes? Not possible. I’m just tired. Paranoid.

“Yeah.” I reach for my glasses.

“Gwen lives in the other room down the hall,” Waverly informs me. She unloads the contents of her grocery bags onto my dresser: bagels, cream cheese, and plastic knives. Then orange juice and cheap champagne. My head starts to pound again.

“We got paired together last year when we were both new teachers,” Waverly continues. “And at first, I was thinking we might not get along all that well, you know? Because it’s not like Gwen was somebody I would have hung out with in college.” She whirls around. “No offense, Gwennie.”

“None taken, bitch.” Gwen rolls her eyes at me.

“But then I told myself, ‘
Waverly, you have to work on expanding your horizons’.
And it actually worked out, and we requested to live together again this year.”

“It’s been magical,” Gwen deadpans.

“Please. You love me.” Waverly mixes mimosas in plastic flutes, then hands us each a drink.

“Thanks.” I accept mine gratefully and take a long sip. It’s strong. My headache evaporates.

“So I saw you at the reception last night but didn’t get to say hi.” Gwen kicks off her sneakers and settles into a cross-legged stance on my bed. “Have a good time?”

“Definitely,” I nod. Instantly, my thoughts find Luke, the musician. I’ve never met a guy who knew that much about art before, and was still all man. He’d looked like he could sit on Dr. Goodwin’s loveseat and talk about Monet over cocktails one second, then rip your clothes off and pin you down on that same loveseat the next. The thought makes my skin tingle.

None of the guys I knew in Manhattan cared anything about art. Aria and I had a name for the type of guy who ran in our social circle: PERVs. Pretty. Entitled. Rich. And Vapid. The kind of guy who asks for your number while searching the crowd for someone better.

But Luke seemed different from the kind of guy I knew back home. Stronger. Definitely smarter. And when we’d talked, he’d actually looked at me. With those piercing eyes, it had felt like he was looking into me, like he could see through me.

I shake the thoughts from my head. Thinking about him, about the way he’d felt familiar and exciting at the same time, is useless. I’ll never see the guy again. And staying unattached is vital in my situation.

“—remember I was pretty blown away by the way they do things at Allford,” Gwen is saying. “I mean, I spent two years with Teach for America before this.” Her eyes darken for a brief moment. “In a really poor school where I barely had the supplies I needed, and then I get down here and it’s like,
Surprise! Johnny’s dad is actually a direct descendent of Shakespeare, so if you want to take a field trip to the Globe, you can just hop Johnny’s private jet!
” She looks impressed and disgusted at the same time.

“So, the school has resources. The families have resources. That doesn’t mean teaching here is any less important than teaching up there,” Waverly argues, passing out paper plates piled with bagels. “You can’t blame people for being rich.”

“Did I say that?” Gwen squints at me. “Ellie. Did you hear me say that?”

“Up where?” It’s sweet, the way she slips so easily into a nickname. Like we’ve known each other forever. I swipe a bagel half and take a giant bite. Warm blueberry with honey cream cheese. “Where were you teaching?”

“New York. Queens.”

Queens.
I swallow, almost choking on my bagel. At least choking would be an effective subject change.

“Ever been up there?” Gwen asks me.

“Not Queens, really.” I shake my head.
Don’t screw this up, Elle.
“I went to NYU for undergrad, though. I graduated this year.”

“Ohhh. Okay.” Gwen nods. “I know this sounds weird, but I was thinking you looked familiar. I lived in the city for a summer. Maybe we had a mutual friend or something.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” I can feel the heat in my face, on the back of my neck, spreading through my body. I’m jittery; restless. Does she know? Maybe not. Maybe it will come later, when she’s in the middle of teaching a Dickenson poem, or about to fall asleep. Suddenly, she’ll realize why I look so familiar. She’ll remember my picture from
The Times,
or recall a news clip of me headed up the courtroom steps, head bowed, trying to avoid the lightening strike of flashbulbs. And everything will fall apart.

“Why’d you leave New York?” I ask carefully.

“Well, my gig was up. And there was this… guy. I thought things were gonna work out, but they didn’t.” She takes a deep, fluttery breath. “Basically, I needed a new start.”

That makes two of us.
The look in her eyes is familiar. I’m not the only one who’s running from something.

“We’ll have to play the name game sometime,” Gwen smiles.

Waverly snorts and swipes a bit of pulp from the rim of her glass. “
Hey, Elle, do you know Nature, my psychic yogi friend who grows her own weed and makes mumus out of organic hemp and positive energy?
”

Gwen turns to me. “Hey, Elle, have you met Waverly, my incompetent princess of a roommate who bleached an entire load of clothes when she first got here because she’d never even had to do her own—”

“Hey! Laundry is
hard
,” Waverly protests. Her expression twitches as she tries to remain indignant, but eventually she and Gwen both dissolve in laughter. I laugh too, but it sounds forced.

“Anyway.” Waverly raises her champagne flute, and Gwen follows. “We hope you have an awesome year, girl. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I whisper, and raise my glass.

A long, steamy shower kneads the anxiety from my body, and I feel almost human again as I towel-dry my hair and slip into a sleeveless white sundress and sandals. The dress is slightly wrinkled, but I didn’t pack an iron, so it will have to be good enough. I dig a small pair of turquoise studs from my jewelry pouch, slide on my glasses, and add a careless swipe of sheer pink gloss.

According to my itinerary, I’m supposed to use the morning to organize my classroom. The afternoon holds lunch with my faculty mentor and a few boring but necessary errands: getting my faculty ID and parking pass; attending a computer training to set up my Email and online gradebook.

Waverly and Gwen aren’t around when I finish getting ready, so I grab the campus map and keys on my dresser and step into the hall. Our cottage is a square, made of stucco and glass, with a small, open courtyard in the center. I picture Waverly, Gwen, and me hanging out in the evenings, grading papers and swapping student stories over sushi and chilled white wine. It’s a nice image, but I’ll have to be careful around Gwen.

Once I’m outside, I wonder why I showered in the first place. The humidity is so thick that I feel like I’m walking through water. I’m used to humidity. What I’m not used to is the smell here. Instead of subway stench oozing through the grates and onto the searing pavement, a fresh, saltwater scent slips through my hair and tickles my skin.

The rows of faculty cottages occupy a few side streets to the west of the campus. The Allford Academy campus itself spills over several blocks on the south side of Miami, just west of Biscayne Bay. I consult my map and follow my street onto a gated, lush campus dotted with sparkling white modern structures, similar in style to the cottage. On the other side of campus, the bay is bright and blue-green.

It only takes ten minutes and four wrong turns to find my classroom, which is large and airy, with a glass wall that looks over the bay. I can see why Gwen would be shocked to come from Queens to this place. It doesn’t feel real.

I spend most of the morning arranging my textbooks, plants, and posters, all of which I ordered online and shipped before I left New York. Then I settle in at my laptop to put the finishing touches on my syllabus and lesson plans. I lose myself in terms, definitions, and group project assignments. And for a split second, drift into a daydream about what life would have been like at Wharton. I see myself in lecture halls with brilliant professors, telling me about their positions with international corporations, about the books they’ve written and the research they’ve done. I picture my life starting. My real life; the life I was supposed to have.

And then I pull myself back, because this kind of wishing is pointless. Torture. This is my life now. I rub my eyes beneath my glasses and glance at the clock.
12:30.

“Oh, shit.” Pawing frantically through my purse, I search for the day’s itinerary. I find it, smooth out the wrinkles, and scan my list of activities.

12:15 Lunch with faculty mentor (Location TBD)

“Oh, SHIT!” I throw my keys and cell into my purse and scoop my files and notebooks into a pile, trying to shove them into a too-small leather tote. “Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.” How could I let this happen? I haven’t even been at Allford for 24 hours, and already I’m missing important meetings? At this rate, I’ll get fired before the week is out. I sprint to the door, my hand slippery with sweat against the doorknob.

I’m standing in the hallway, gasping for air, before I realize I have no idea where I’m going. I consult the itinerary again.

12:15 Lunch with faculty mentor (Location TBD)

“Ahhhhh,” I moan. I close my eyes and lean against the closed door, knocking the back of my skull in even rhythm against the wood. The welt from my throw-down with Dr. Goodwin’s mantle hurts like hell.

“That bad already?”

My eyes snap open. I blink, just to make sure I’m not hallucinating or having a stress-induced stroke. Then I blink again.

“Luke? What—why are you—” I stammer.

“Fifteen minutes late? I’m really sorry. I got caught up with somebody. Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.” He smoothes the rumpled salmon-colored t-shirt he’s wearing with gray shorts. Instantly, my gaze finds its way to his hands again. The green swipe of paint from last night is still there, joined by splatters of orange and bits of dried clay.

My head is whirring with questions. I want to ask them all at once. “But you—you’re not—”

“Your faculty mentor?” He smiles and shrugs. “Guilty.”

I don’t think I could tear my gaze from his hands if I wanted to. Unless, of course, it’s to look into his eyes. Today, they look more green than blue. Every cell in my body is acutely aware that I am pressed against my classroom door. And he’s just a few inches away. “But you’re… the guitar player!”

“And the photography instructor, and the art teacher and ceramics guy, and, for one brief but humiliating season, the boys’ chess coach.” Is it my imagination, or is he leaning even closer? “What can I say, Ms. Sloane? I’m a complex guy. Many layers.”

“I’ll bet.” He smells like the beach. I sneak a deep breath.