The Bermudez Triangle (22 page)

“You had
me lie
for you about you and Gaz. I never told her. That’s not me sticking myself into it.”

Avery couldn’t say much to that one.

Nina tried to simmer things down with some common sense. “All I’m saying is that you should talk to her. She’s freaking out because she doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

Bang
. Avery slammed her locker and walked around Nina toward the stairs. Nina followed close behind.

“And I know
you
might not either,” Nina added.

“Deep. They teach you that at camp?”

There was serious cynicism in Avery’s voice now that surprised Nina. Avery seemed to be making fun of her—not in a joking way either.

“Why are you being like this?” Nina said.

“I just want you to stay out of my business.”

“Friends are into each other’s business,” Nina shot back.

Now they were at the top of the stairs, in front of the frosted glass door that led to the main hall. They both knew this conversation couldn’t go past that door.

“Listen, Nina. It’s over,” Avery said sharply. “We’re not dating anymore. Are you satisfied now that you’re in the loop?”

“Are you going to tell her, or are you just going to run for cover?”

“Why don’t you do it?” Avery asked. “You seem to like playing counselor.”

“Oh, I love it.”

“I think you do.”

The bell rang. Nina rubbed under her eyes. They were burning. She was tired. She didn’t know this Avery. She wanted to go home, back to bed.

“I have to go,” she said. “I’m going to tell her if you don’t.”

“Do it, then,” Avery said, looking down. “And leave me the hell alone.”

“Fine.” Nina went through the door and slipped into the chaos of the hallway. Everything seemed rough to her. It didn’t feel like the normal morning rush of people bumping and rushing to class. The hall was full of vicious, foreign mobs.

Nina planted her thumbs in the corners of her eye to cork up anything that might have leaked out.

For the rest of the day Nina had a blistering headache. The loudness of her heels and their shuddering impact with the linoleum didn’t help much. The dark came early. By two the overcast sky made it look like dusk. Frost’s class was gloomier than usual, although she ignored Nina for most of it. Devon was her chosen target of the week. He’d made the mistake of asking what was going to be on the midterm exam. That kind of thing never went over big with Frost.

When Nina got home, her mother’s secretary, Gina, came bursting through the communicating door between the living room and the office. She was pinching an envelope between her fingertips.

“Look what came!” she said, wielding an envelope. “Look!”

Sometimes it was a little weird having someone who always went through the mail.

Nina took hold of it. This wasn’t some generic letter. The envelope was made of high-quality paper—heavy, with a velvety
finish. There was an insignia alongside the return address. Stanford.

“I saw you pull up,” Gina said. “Your mom’s with a client, but she’s so excited. We’ve had this for four hours. We were going to call you, but we figured we’d wait.”

Nina weighed the envelope in her palm. She couldn’t gauge what was in it.

“I think I’m going to take it upstairs….”

Gina looked a little disappointed, but she nodded anyway.

“Come tell us,” she said. “No matter what.”

“Okay.”

Nina wearily walked upstairs and sat at her desk. This was the last moment of not knowing her fate. She carefully tore the envelope open along the stamped side, keeping the seal intact. The first words told all.

On behalf of the admissions committee, I am pleased to inform you …

Her eyes skipped along the page.

… the enclosed forms, along with a $500 deposit … look forward to seeing you on campus this fall.

She shuffled through the papers, barely processing what she was seeing. Forms on blue and green paper. Some kind of postcard. She spread everything out on the desk and looked at it.

Automatically she opened up a new e-mail and quickly sent a note:

Steve
,

It came. I got in. Write to me.

Love, Keen

There wasn’t excitement yet. More like a dull thrumming in her head. It had happened—it was all real. She closed her laptop and stared at her bed.

She just had to tell Mel.

Nina reached For her phone and numbly dialed Mel’s number. As soon as Mel picked up, Nina realized she didn’t know what to say first.

“Did you talk to her?” Mel asked.

Maybe she should ask Mel to come over. No. Mel would just get stuck in the middle of the celebration that was about to break out in the house. Nina couldn’t just leave either. Her mom and Gina would want to take her to dinner.

There was no good way of doing this.
How did I get here?
she thought.
Why am I breaking up for Avery?

“Neen?” Mel prodded.

“I talked to her,” she said.

Be direct. Don’t drag it out.

“She thinks it would be better if you guys … didn’t date.”

“What do you mean?” Mel’s voice was frightened. Nina could hear her mom and Gina bustling downstairs now, waiting for news. Pretty soon they would come up and knock on the door and they wouldn’t understand why Nina couldn’t talk.

“It’s probably a good thing,” Nina added, hopelessly. “It’s good to know. It’ll be okay.”

“You mean we broke up?”

“We’ll go out,” Nina said. Then, not wanting to be misunderstood, she quickly added, “You, me, Parker. It’ll be just like before.

We
can even put Parker in a dress and give him a cigarette.” No response. She shouldn’t have joked. She knew she wasn’t funny.

Footsteps on the stairs. Nothing from Mel except some breathing. And Steve was lost somewhere in the wild. Nina heard herself talking, telling Mel over and over how it would be fine. In fact, that it would be great and Avery had been wrong—and they’d been wrong about Avery forever. It had
always
been just the two of them—Nina and Mel. She just talked and talked until Nina wasn’t even sure what she was saying or if Mel was still on the phone. She talked until the knock on her door finally came, and she really did have to go. Mel never said a word, not even a good-bye before hanging up the phone.

Nina’s mother poked in her head.

“Well?” she asked, her eyes glistening. “Are you in?”

“I’m in,” Nina said, forcing a smile. It was true. She didn’t elaborate on
what
she was in, though.

If Nina’s life
was a movie, Steve would have shown up on her doorstep as a surprise. He would have been waiting on the porch with snow in his hair and a goofy smile and he’d say something like, “Should I have called first?”

But okay. He lived in Oregon. She wasn’t asking for miracles. But he should have at least
called
. On New Year’s Eve an e-mail does not do it. Especially an e-mail like this:

Neen
,

Happy New Year! Hope you have fun tonight. Talk to you soon
.

Love, Steve

What the hell was
that?
Her mom sent more heartfelt and gooey holiday notes to her old clients. Nina knew this for a fact. She usually stuffed and licked the envelopes.

Four notes in four weeks. That’s what he had sent. At first she’d found it hard to get annoyed at him. How did you fault someone who was trying to save the world and who didn’t have a cable modem or call waiting or a cell phone or anything from this
century?
Still, even the people she read about in
English wrote to one another constantly. If you could send two letters a day two hundred years ago, Steve had
no excuse
for four short, impersonal notes in four weeks.

She looked over at her phone. It was resting on the lip of her carefully folded-over flannel snowflake sheets. This was not the time to have this nervous breakdown. She had something much more important to concentrate on tonight.

For the last two weeks Mel had barely left her house or changed out of her pajamas. She sat in her room, playing Norah Jones and Elliott Smith and reading breakup stories online. It had taken Nina three days to persuade Mel to come to this New Year’s party, and even then she had to bring Parker in for backup. In an attempt to wear Mel down, he rambled on for two hours about how this party was going to be the social highlight of his year and that if Mel didn’t go, his whole life would be ruined and he would end up a lonely middle-aged guy who spent all of his time playing EverQuest. She eventually, albeit reluctantly, came around and agreed to take a break from her monklike existence.

If Mel could briefly drag herself out of her mournful stupor, Nina surely felt she should. Of course, she would be kissless and bitter, but she would be there for Mel in her hour of need. It was just the distraction she needed.

“No one goes upstairs,” Georgia greeted them at the door. “No sex on the beds. That was the only thing my parents said.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Nina replied.

Mel and Parker were standing behind Nina, taking in the wonder
that was Georgia’s house. Nina had seen the B&B many times, but they had never been inside before. A ten-bedroom house in a prime location across from the racetrack, Georgia’s humble little abode was packed floor to ceiling with antiques, and the walls were either covered in expensive-looking dark wood or heavy old-fashioned wallpaper. Every surface was adorned with greenery, fruit, or little sparkling lights. Nina was amazed that Georgia’s parents had turned the place over to her for the night since they didn’t take guests over the holiday. But then again, they had company over for a living. Somehow the house seemed to explain Georgia’s whole personality.

“Beer’s on the back porch. Booze is in the breakfast room. If you’re too drunk to drive home, you can pass out on one of the rugs or couches in the sitting room. Try not to barf on anything. You can put your coats behind the front desk. Go drink.”

In the breakfast room there was a huge cut glass punch bowl filled with blue liquid with little red Swedish fish floating all over the top. Parker took their coats, and Mel and Nina took their drinks to the living room and stationed themselves on one of the heavy Queen Anne sofas. The people who had already arrived were from no particular group. Every part of the AHH population was represented, proof of Georgia’s popularity and influence.

For a few minutes they sat quietly, sipping their punch. After Nina finished hers, she had a brainstorm and turned to Mel. “We need to find you a new girl,” she blurted.

“Um, not really.”

Nina ignored this feeble protest.

“What about her?” Nina asked, nodding to a girl in the corner. “I think her name is Lisa. She’s in my French class. Or Rebecca, that girl there. She’s a sophomore rep.”

“You can’t just point out girls with short hair,” Mel mumbled, her chin pinned to her chest.

“That’s not what I’m doing!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Okay,” Nina admitted. “Maybe. But how else can you tell?”

“Tell what? Who’s gay?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea.” Mel sighed.

“So she might be! Go talk to her!”

“You go talk to her.”

“I don’t want to hit on her!”

“Neither do I.”

“Mel …” Nina set down her glass rather unsteadily. She took one of Mel’s hands and clasped it between both of hers. “You have to move on. There are so many girls out there….”

Mel shushed her.

“Sorry. Was I loud?” Just then Nina realized what a lightweight she was. Only one cup of punch in and she was already nursing a good buzz. “You know what I’m saying. You’ve got to do something. If you play that album one more time, Norah Jones is going to come to your house and take it from you.”

“It makes me feel better.”

“It’s sad.”

“That’s why I like it.”

Parker returned from the Land of the Coats and sat down with them. He looked at Mel and Nina curiously. “What’d I miss?”

“I’m counseling her,” Nina slurred.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mel said before scurrying off.

As she scanned the room, Nina saw that couples were starting to clump together, magnetized by the approaching New Year and the influence of Georgia’s blue punch. Nina put the tail of her Swedish fish between her teeth and started pulling.

“I guess I shouldn’t be trying to set her up.” she said.

“No,” Parker said. “It’s a good idea. She needs to move on. She’s obsessed.”

“She’s not
obsessed
,” Nina heard herself snap. It wasn’t fair to snap at Parker. He couldn’t understand what it was like to be in the Triangle. It probably did look like obsession from the outside, but Nina knew the truth. It was withdrawal. It was horrible. “I can’t even give her any good advice,” Nina added quickly.

“Why not?”

“Because I have a boyfriend who I never see and never talk to who never writes to me.” Oh, how Nina’s brain was praising the sweet nectar of the blue punch.

“How does
that
work?” Parker asked, raising his eyebrows.

“It doesn’t. It sucks.”

“Break it down for me.”

“I have a cell phone and he doesn’t.”

“He can’t call you because he doesn’t have a cell phone?”

“He lives in Oregon,” she explained. “It’s long distance.”

Nina immediately felt a backlash of semidrunken guilt. She was complaining about Steve because he didn’t have as much money as her family did. And that was evil.

“It’s totally understandable,” she added quickly. “When I call, it’s free.”

“Sounds shady, but I’ll let that one slide.” Parker took a long sip of his drink. “But why doesn’t he write?”

She leaned back and sighed.
Don’t say any more
, she told herself. But she’d started talking, and the Swedish fish from the blue punch seemed to be insisting that she go on and on. Also, Parker was such a good listener and funny as hell—all of a sudden it made perfect sense why Mel would confide in him so much.

Nina tried to ignore this weird whirring noise that had just entered her head and focus on what she was saying. “He used to write every day. Now he writes once every couple of days, and the notes are pretty short. He’s just a really busy guy. But I’m busy too, and I write
every
day.”