The Slam (5 page)

“But why is a thigh gap even a desirable quality? If I had a thigh gap, my phone could literally slip through the space between my thighs and splash into the toilet if I dropped it.” I frowned. “And I like being on my phone when I’m sitting on the toilet.”

Piper choked on a laugh. “I do, too!” After a beat, she added, “Honestly, I think thigh gaps are dumb! Ugh!” She cringed at her own words. “And I hate that I even know that stupid phrase! But with girls like Danni around, the self-loathing never ends and there’s always this pressure to attain something else. Trust me, she’s every basic bitch’s nightmare. So the less time I spend with her, the better.”

“Well,” I said breezily. “Then it’s a good thing you won’t have to spend time with Danni after orientation.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Piper let out a heavy sigh. “Danni’s my roommate. And she’s already informed me that her boyfriend goes to school here so he might stay over sometimes. Which is basically code for: I will hardly be sleeping in my own room.” She pulled a face. “Which basically means I’m homeless.”

I was so glad I didn’t have a roommate.

All those secret codes would confuse me to no end.

“I’m so sorry, Piper.” I cast her a meaningful look. “I wish I could help you. Maybe I can start a GoFundMe campaign to get Danni moved to a different dorm room.”

Piper squealed with delight. “You mean we could crowdfund her exit?”

“Correct,” I said. “Or we could start an online petition. You know, like how people got together to petition SeaWorld to save Tilikum? We could tell your tragic story and petition the campus to rally behind you.”

“I like that idea.” Piper grinned broadly. “We could call it ‘Save Piper the pretty mermaid from the evil sea witch, Danni.’”

We burst into girlish laughter.

Piper collected herself slowly, panting with the last chuckles, and said, “As much as I like that idea, it would never work.” Then she slapped me a high-five, which I wasn’t quite prepared for. “But I like it!”

Meanwhile, the scavenger hunt took us through the south edge of the campus, not far from Sather Gate, to the northwest corner of it.

“So what do you think of UC Berkeley?” Piper asked as we meandered down a rolling hill studded with native oaks that probably predated the university.

“To be honest, it’s a lot different from what’s portrayed in the movies and TV shows.”

“Really?” Piper said with a tilt of her head. “In what way?”

“I expected to see more students playing Frisbee.”

“Me, too.” She smiled. “I thought I’d see a lot more tree-hugging hippies, political activists, and engineering nerds. But this place is so… huge,” she said, glancing down at the leaflet in her hands. “It says here that there are over twenty-three thousand undergrads who go to this college.”

“I think that’s why I like it.” I beamed at her serenely. “The student population is so large and diverse that it’s hard to pigeonhole anyone.”

What I truly meant to say was that it was hard to pigeonhole me.

I could get lost in this place.

The moment I set foot on campus this morning I realized I didn’t know one person within a thousand miles. It was gloriously liberating. I was free of any mistakes, any labels, and any aspects of my past.

And maybe for once—
just once
—things would be different.

At long last, this was my chance to start over again… someplace new, where no one knew me as that weird, socially awkward girl who never fit in.

“Howdy,” said a complete stranger with a friendly face and mutton chop sideburns. Tilting his Stetson hat with two fingers, he sent us a lazy grin. “How y’all ladies be?” he drawled.

Smiling in return, I said politely, “We be literate.”

Piper burst into laughter. “Oh, Adelaide,” she said, linking her arm through mine. “I think you and I are gonna get along just fine.”

Chapter Four

ENDER

“How’d it go?” I asked as she slid into the passenger seat.

“Terrific.” Adelaide reached across her shoulder and struggled with the seat belt. “I think I have enough free cups, visors, and T-shirts to last a lifetime. And,” she said brightly as the seat belt clicked into place. “I made a new friend at my orientation. She’s a mixture of moxie, wit, and eyeliner and she’s super nice. Her name is Piper, and she even gave me her phone number. She said I could call her whenever I want to hang out.”

Looking briefly over my shoulder, I pulled away from the curb. “So you didn’t stick out like a sore thumb?”

“Do sore thumbs really stick out?” Adelaide seemed to ponder that for a moment, then seconds later she answered her own question. “I guess if I had a sore thumb, I’d try to keep it away from my other fingers because that might make it hurt more. So, yes… I
would
stick it out.”

“You know what I mean, right?” I said in a toneless voice.

“I do.” Turning toward the window, she said nothing for a while, then, “It was nice for a change. People didn’t think I was weird. At least I don’t think they did. They chalked it up to me being from Australia.”

Silence stretched between us as I kept my eyes on the road. “So what made you decide on Paleontology and Theater?”

“Hmm.” She gave me a considering smile. “I guess I’ve always romanticized the life of a paleontologist.”

“Because of Indiana Jones?”

“Indiana Jones was an archeologist.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Archaeologists are concerned exclusively with humans, while paleontologists study prehistoric life in a much broader sense. Sometimes though, our worlds do overlap.”

“So is your world all about dinosaurs?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “Paleontology is the study o
f
prehistoric life. There has been life on Earth for billions of years so there is a lot to study… plants, animals, vertebrates, invertebrates. It blends geology and biology to make a more complete picture
.
Dinosaurs were only one group of organisms that lived here over a hundred million years ago, which is only .05% of the time that life has been on earth.” She paused. “And fossils are formed from any organic material so paleontologists study wood, leaves, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, pollen, birds, bees, fungi, bacteria, and even feces.”

I stared straight ahead. “Interesting.”

“It is,” she enthused. “I love the idea of doing paleontology fieldwork… working alone out in nature, hiking through the deserts looking for fossils, Cenozoic mammals, and bones from the Mesozoic age of the dinosaurs.”

“Hey,” I said. “Whatever happened to that Kronosauras jaw we found?”

“You remember?” Her face lit up. “Wasn’t that exciting!”

“It was.” And I remembered the day as if it were yesterday.

The sun had begun to set and we were just walking back to Jeff’s cabin through the ghostly Wandoo trees, which stood like tortured sentinels with their twisted trunks.

Pockets of dust had filled the air as we kicked around the sunbaked dirt, looking for spiders. Most of the spiders were pretty harmless with the exception of the Redback.

Our eyes were tuned in to every minute detail… we were, after all, hunting for spiders. Then I spotted something white poking out of the dirt.

At first, I had no idea what it was. It just looked like some type of bone.

But Adelaide knew instantly that we’d found something big. Something significant.

“That Kronosaurus jaw is on display at the museum in Richmond.” A hint of pride tinged her voice. “You know, a couple of months later I went back to that same trail, but I never found anything else,” she said wistfully. “We had so much fun back then, didn’t we? It’s like we had a little corner of the world all to ourselves. That feeling of being miles from anywhere… I miss that. I miss those days exploring the bush lands, coming back at dusk, sitting around the campfire at night. Jeff and Camille let us sleep outside under the stars, remember that?” She smiled at the memory. “Those were some of the best years of my life.”

“We had some good times,” I agreed. “You remember Hector?”

“Of course I do!” she exclaimed. “Hector the carpet snake!”

When you lived in the Australian bush you got used to seeing snakes around the place and after a while, you just took them all in stride.

But you never got used to finding them in the house.

Still, Hector became a regular fixture in our household and a useful member of the family. He kept the mice under control and warned off venomous snakes from the garden.

“Did Hector ever sneak back into the house?”

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, he did. I banished him to the garden but he kept coming back inside. I had to be careful when I put my hands in the washing machine because that was his favorite spot. And one time I was in the shower, I was so annoyed because the pressure pump kept cutting out. Then I looked up and there was Hector, hanging from the shower rod about fifteen centimeters from my head!”

“No shit.” I grimaced. After a beat, I asked, “What happened to Hector after we left?”

“I’m not sure,” she said quietly. “Things were never the same after you guys left.”

“How come?”

Adelaide didn’t answer right away. When I flicked my gaze sideways, she was staring rigidly ahead, a stony sadness in her eyes. “Jeff hurt his back that summer, then about six months later he sold the farm and we moved to a small town. I had a very hard time adjusting.” She laughed—a soft, humorless sound. “I was Nigel No Mates… that girl who ate her lunch in the classroom because I had no one to sit with in the cafeteria.”

“Didn’t you have friends on your varsity team? Camille mentioned you played tennis.”

“Not really. Tennis is an individual sport. I was involved in a lot of individual sports. Not team sports. Nobody wanted me on their team.” She shrugged. “But I was a ball of energy and Jeff signed me up for every individual sport under the sun. You name it—tennis, skiing, auto cross racing, bowling, gymnastics, taekwondo, surfing, rowing, diving.”

“Diving?”

“Correct,” she said. “I’m pretty much an Olympic diver.”

“Show off,” I teased, but I was pretty impressed. “Why so many sports?”

“Take tennis for example,” she said. “The tennis ball doesn’t know who I am. The ball doesn’t know if I’m a girl or a guy, or if I have Asperger’s or not. Sports have always broken down these barriers. Plus, Jeff wanted me to channel all that boundless energy into something constructive… something more socially acceptable.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Wrestling with you and Edric in the mud. Skinny-dipping with you boys in the lake.”

A corner of my mouth lifted in amusement.

“But you guys never came back.” She gazed out the window. “I tried to make new friends. I tried really hard to fit in somewhere… anywhere. I tried to please and not make waves, but I always ended up causing problems. And I just knew I was supposed to pretend I wasn’t full of loneliness even though I was. My teachers told Jeff that I was off with the fairies.” A pause. “I suppose I was. It was easier to retreat into the world inside my head.” She sighed deeply. “High school didn’t get much better for me until I joined the drama club.”

So that explained her wanting to major in theater. “Are you hoping to become an actress one day?”

“Not really.” A smile flitted across her face. “But I’m really good at acting.”

I lifted a skeptical brow. “Really?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. There was no trace of smugness in her voice. Only sadness. “I’ve been acting my whole life,” she said softly. “Pretending to be normal.”

I narrowed my gaze at her. “Are you acting right now?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not at the moment. I’m taking a sensory break right now.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know…” She shrugged. “I can be myself. I never had to put on an act when I was around you and you still liked me.”

“That was a long time ago.” I shot her a quick sideways glance. “People change, you know.”

She studied me a moment, a frown drawing up through her features. “People don’t change that easily. And my memories haven’t changed. Besides, you’re my bosom friend, Ender! We even share the same birthday!”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I changed the subject. “Were you acting just now? At your orientation?”

“Well, I did some research and planned out conversations in my head beforehand.” She expelled a weary sigh. “But that doesn’t work out sometimes.”

“Why not?”

“People don’t always follow the damn script.”

I smiled. “That must be frustrating.”

“It is. And what’s even more frustrating is I’m cursed with a mind that psychoanalyzes every possible outcome and detail and yet I still remain unsure.” She exhaled hard. “And if I want to fit in, I have to somehow learn all the rules.” She cast me a darting glance. “
Your
rules.”

“What rules?”

“Unwritten social rules. I’ve learned to understand social boundaries and group roles, but I still have an awfully tough time figuring out social cues.”

“And how do you learn these… rules?”

“People-watching,” she said. “And I learn from books and movies, acting out scripts. But life is nothing like that and it only helps me so much. Problems aren’t solved between the opening and closing of a chapter or a scene. It’s not neat and tidy, all nicely wrapped up by the end. Reality is more… messy.” Stifling a yawn, she added, “And all that acting and pretending can get tiring at times. So I go back to being me. God…” She yawned again, bending her body in an S shape, leaning her head against the windowpane. “I’m so tired. I think I need a nap.”

Briefly, I glanced over at her sleeping form. This must feel like a whole different world to Adelaide. She was in a new country, new school, with new people.

Camille’s words echoed in my mind:
I want you to be her safe person
.

“Well.” I coughed lightly. “I can be your safe person.”

Straightening herself, she blinked at me. “Safe person? That sounds a lot like ‘safe word,’ which brings to mind stuff like bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism.”

“BDSM?” I coughed loudly. “No, nothing like that.” And I highly doubted S&M sex was what Camille had in mind when she asked me to be Adelaide’s safe person. “What I mean is, if you’re ever unsure about any social cues, you can always check with me.”

“So you’re going to be my coach?” Her eyes grew wide, though a smile played behind them. “My social coach?”

Flicking on the turn signal, I said, “I guess you can call it that.”

The engine purred to a stop as I parked in front of the AT&T store.

“Why are we here?” she asked.

“If I’m gonna be your coach, you’re gonna need a phone.”