Chapter 3
3
E ight o’clock comes with no further insight into my dilemma. In fact, my confusion has only increased because Orientation is in King’s Corner Lecture Hall. Orientation for Univ—that’s what the locals call University College—is all basics. The building where we live and study is called a college, similar to a dorm. The University of Oxford is composed of thirty colleges within the town. Formal dinners on Sunday. I have a University College Latin prayer I’m to memorize that we say in unison before the meal. Expectations for dress—the robes are decidedly less Harry Potter and more American Graduation cap-and-gown. What libraries I can access. What parts of the campus are off limits to undergrads. No mention about ASC, or why I got a special card to invite me to Orientation. No one at my little table received a formal invite—I asked.
The lights come up for the reception, which consists of cheap drinks in small plastic cups and hors d’oeuvres served by students in suits. Once again, I reach in my pocket and find the card. I can’t stop fiddling with it. Forty of us fill this room, spread out as people move away from the lecture space and into the stone hallway to enjoy mingling in fresher air. These stone rooms are gorgeous but stuffy , my God. No one enters for a second presentation, the lecture space looks abandoned.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand, a feeling of being watched coming over me. I turn slowly, perusing the room until I’m facing the culprit. Kendall. Leaning in the doorway of the room. His gaze is a brand—he is not happy to find me here. As if his little threat would keep me from my dream? Ha. I got into Oxford without the aid of a parent working here. The world has finally deemed me equal. Enough. I do not have to play it safe and quiet, or wait until later to finally be myself. It’s now. It’s here. And I’m not going to let Kendall ruin yet another four years of my life. Enough is enough. I have a moment of smugness and I give a little wave. I might twiddle my middle finger just a little too long.
He doesn’t return the wave. His face turns thunderous. He stalks forward, repeating his new trick now that he’s done ignoring my existence. I have a flashback to the one time I tried to say hi to him at school, about a week after the closet incident. He’d stared at me as I approached this table, then stood and walked past me after I said hello. I’d run for the bathroom that time, everyone laughing at me. I’d never felt so second class before, so clearly not worthy of someone. And so now that I’ve decided we’re equals? He doesn’t get to use his arrogance to wound me again. I stand my ground. I relish his approach. I cannot wait to take the crackle of his energy and turn it back toward him. I’m not that timid girl in high school anymore .
And then he does something odd. He looks over my shoulder and screeches to a halt. His eyes shift from my face to behind me, then he disappears just as suddenly as he came. He’s gone. Lost in the milling crowd and suited servers and mingling Freshmen.
I pivot, looking for a hooded figure with a scythe or something equally macabre. Nothing. In fact, it’s mundane. People sitting at tables. Pretty girls in slacks, and one in a nice black dress with long blond hair.
Wait. I know that long blond hair. The ski-jump nose.
Surely not.
“What the actual fuck is happening in my life right now?” I whisper to myself. The girl sitting and chatting with a tall gangly professor? None other than Kendall’s high school girlfriend, Clara Gorton. I can’t help but drift that direction, pulled by equal parts horror and fascination.
“Clara?” I ask, hoping the girl doesn’t turn around in response. But turn around she does, eyebrows arched in surprise.
The surprise ratchets up as recognition washes over her. She gapes, mouth opening and closing before she finally speaks. “Helen! Wow, fancy meeting you here!” She doesn’t even pretend to add a “good to see you”, and I can appreciate her candor.
“ Helena ,” I correct her, “and yeah. I’m shocked to see you too.”
Not only am I surprised at how many of my high school classmates from a tiny town are now attending Oxford University, but I’m confused at Kendall’s reaction to seeing his girlfriend.
Clara smiles politely and then just like every day in high school, she looks past me. At everything but me. I’ve never been important enough to even warrant much interest. Not even in a rude way, which almost makes her apathy more hurtful. Clearly searching the crowd for someone, she smooths her hair and fidgets with her napkin as she cranes her neck around me. I’m an inconvenience to her.
“Kendall is in the hallway if you’re looking for him.”
Her smile brightens and then dims. “Oh, okay thanks. So he’s here? You talked to him?”
I snort because I can’t help it. “He glared at me, if that counts?”
Clara’s laugh is genuine. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I never knew why he hated you so much .” She says it like we’re discussing the weather.
The guy at the table coughs, and an awkward silence descends.
I roll my eyes at her tactlessness. “Yeah, I never knew either. Lovely that I get to deal with more of it.” If I’m going to have to share Oxford—and University College—with Clara, I might as well be honest. She shrugs and nods like she understands so I surprise both of us by sliding into the seat next to her. I lean around her shoulder and wave at the boy sitting at the table. He looks perturbed I interrupted him talking with Clara but waves back.
“Helena,” I say.
“Hugo,” he says back.
I turn to Clara. “How come Kendall isn’t sitting with you?”
Her face falls. “Oh you didn’t hear? We broke up at graduation.” The emphasis on the “we” feels forced, and tears shine in her eyes. Translation: Kendall broke up with her at graduation.
My heart cracks a little for her. Thawing despite my dedication to new, teflon-Helena. “That must make this pretty awkward if you planned to go to college together.”
Delicate pink blush sweeps over her features, and I feel jealous at her effortless charm. She is very pretty in a classic fine-boned way. If you’re into that whole ageless wide-blue-eyed-beauty thing. Even worse, it works here. She’s striking instead of stuck-up. Classy instead of prudish. Oxford is a natural backdrop to set off her statue. Even her black dress is perfect for this room and this event, where my outfit screams American.
She mumbles something.
“I’m sorry?”
She meets my eyes and then looks back at the table. The napkin twists in her fingers. “I didn’t tell Kendall I applied. I just hoped…”
“Oh. Oh .”
She hoped that seeing her again would bring about their reunion. And here she sits, a million miles from home, still jilted. Hugo decides he sees someone he needs to talk to across the room and leaves in a hurry. Silence descends.
“I’m sorry.” What else can I say?
“Yeah.” She flags down a server and we take cups of the red wine. It’s not bad, but it’s room temperature and the plastic cups are flimsy. My euphoria at being old enough to drink here diminishes. I finish mine in one big gulp.
I slam the cup down in front of me. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s an asshole and you’re better off without him.”
My candor surprises her. She chokes on her wine from laughter. “Thank you,” she says, tapping her chest to clear it. And this time when she meets my gaze, she looks at me instead of through me. “You don’t have to be nice to me. I wasn’t very nice to you in school.”
“I think you’re being punished enough.” And I’m shocked to find I believe what I’ve said. She toasts me and I lift my empty cup to tap hers before she drains it. “So are your parents going to be pissed you paid to come all this way for a boy?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I didn’t tell Kendall because I wanted it to be a surprise, but I got a scholarship. There’s no way my family would have agreed. I was just going to go to a state school and get a business degree or something otherwise, I don’t want to be a lawyer or anything, without the scholarship, zero way my parents would have paid for me to come here. They think my degree is more of a formality, and that I’m better off attending as many social events with my mother as I can.”
Dread pools in my stomach, and my hand goes to my pocket, slipping inside to run my fingers over the black card stock. “Wait. Go back. Scholarship?”
Clara glances at her watch. “They must really want more Americans here. That’s what I thought at first. And then when I interviewed…well, I assumed Kendall recommended me so that we could be together.”
I nod, pieces sliding into place. “You met Kendall’s father. And he told you that Kendall recommended you for the scholarship.” Why would he say that, when Kendall clearly doesn’t want either of us here? Why surprise Kendall by bringing two classmates to Oxford for a term? Had his father thought he’d be homesick?
In that school of thought, Clara makes sense. But not my presence. I’m the very last person Kendall would have wanted here.
Clara looks floored. “How did you know I met his father?”
I reach into my bag and pull out the black card. I set it on the table between us. “Because I did too.”
Her mouth falls open. She reaches into her clutch and produces her own black card.
Our gazes meet. I need to understand what’s happening here. “Let’s go find Kendall and ask some questions.”
A guy in a suit carrying a tray stops by our table. “Are you finished with your cups?”
“Yes, thank you.” I gather our plastic cups together and hold them up, glancing to our server. Only then do my eyes meet warm hazel ones set in an alabaster brow. I give a start, a jolt of electricity running through my body. My lizard brain knows it before my logic brain. He’s the guy from the choir—messy black hair and all. Inside my head, I want to blurt several versions of “oh my God your voice is like an angel and you are so hot, can I have your babies”, and I can’t tame it into a socially polite greeting.
He takes in my wide eyes and gives a small wink. I watch him go, still unable to form words.
“Huh,” Clara says, glancing between me and the guy’s retreating back. “I’ve never seen anyone actually freeze like a deer in headlights before.” She appraises his backside. “Can’t fault you for your taste though. Wonder if he’s in Univ.”
“Um, I think I met him already once. Or saw him. Singing in the choir. New College, not Univ. They’re the college next door to ours.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, still watching his progress. He’s gathering plastic cups from tables, but on top of his tray are two goblets—crystal goblets. And a bottle of amber liquid that I assume is scotch. Something itches in my brain, and I do a quick scan of the room.
I don’t see anyone else drinking from nicer glasses.
And now the guy appears excessively focused on a set of shelves near the lecture hall’s back door. He pulls the string on a lamp that doesn’t light. Tossing a cheeky look over his shoulder, he meets my gaze and tilts his head like he wants me to follow him. Then without seeing if I do, sweeps around the door jamb into the dark stone hallway and vanishes.