Lessons in Love Read Free

she’s been invaded by alien beings who erased her former personality.”
    “Maybe she found inner peace this summer,” Chili suggests. She’s got black and white prints, framed rather than rolled, with her, along with an antique lamp. She’s one of those boarders who see their dorm rooms as potential apartments, complete with new curtains, rugs, and home makeovers on any and all furniture. “Didn’t Chris’s old boyfriend Alistair head to some ashram in India?” I nod. Chili shrugs. “Maybe La Lindsay went to the same one.”
    “You could be right,” I say, but my brow is furrowed. “I wish I could accept that…Maybe she’s on best behavior for check-in day, what with parents around and everything.”
    “Or maybe…” Chili looks at me and I know from her expression what she’s thinking.
    “Calm before the storm?” I ask and she nods. Maybe senior year is all about that misleading calm. You enter thinking that this year, finally, will be different. It’s the last one, after all. And it starts with placidity that’s akin to an early morning sail. Only midway out do you find that the winds have picked up with colleges, misplaced family members, and people you can’t trust. Maybe it’s a sucky analogy, but that’s my hunch. That all this moving in chatter, the jumble of hey how are yous and suitcases and potted plants and you look greats are just a cover for later when we all get slammed.
    Outside, parents shuttle their kids into dorms, and I wonder what it would be like if my whole family — that is, my dad, my until recently missing mother Gala, and my incredible newly found sister Sadie, were here. Probably, the world would cease to spin. It would be that bizarre. For the minutes I think about such a reunion, I feel off-kilter, and actually stumble on the wide steps by Fruckner’s back door.
    “You know what I can’t imagine?” I ask Chili.
    “Going back to sophomore year?” she asks, pouting. She wishes she could fast-forward to seniority.
    “No. Parent’s Weekend.” In the Hadley calendar, an entire fall weekend is blocked off for “special visits”. Parents are not required but “very strongly encouraged” to attend classes on Friday, visit all day on Saturday, come — along with their children — to a formal dinner that night, followed by a big brunch on Sunday. Of course, this sounds lovely in theory. It sounds lovely if you have a family from a television show. But if, say, you’re parents are divorced and loathe each other (Harriet Walters), or are married but still loathe (Chris, whose Dad cannot come to grips with his son’s sexuality while his mother totally over-compensates), or your father’s Head of School and your mother’s been absent for almost eighteen years all the while hiding a sibling (me), it sounds hellacious.
    “I think it sounds fun!” Chili says, sounding every inch her sophomore self.
    “You would, what with your adoring parents and their matrimonial multi-cultural bliss.” I tug on one of her curls. I am forever doing this because my hair is so straight her coils are fascinating, and she lets me even though it’s annoying.
    Chili and I hunker down the shade between Fruckner and Deals to partake of possibly the highlight of back-to-school: watching people arrive and talking about them. Not in a bad way. Not in the mean way. More in the random notable: “Hey — Marty McCallister grew seven inches.” “Lissa’s going out with Brad Winston — happened on the Cape.” “I’m not sure about advanced calculus with Peterman — it sounds too hard.”
    Chili turns to me, “What happened with your class requests?”
    I keep looking at the steady stream of arriving students and shrug. “Not sure. Only new students — such as yourself — get the honor of knowing in advance.”
    “Why do they do that?” Chili tucks her legs to her chest, looking small, her eyes bright against her dark skin.
    “So we can’t moan about it. See, new students don’t