room, the empty white walls, the unadorned dresser and closet, the bare desk. As I empty my duffel and fold my clothes, I take deep breaths, quietly arranging the space. My space. My time here. My place where what I love is perfectly acceptable. Where I’m not constantly reminded how different I am from everyone else in my family.
I flop onto my newly made bed. The sheets smell like home, like the jasmine laundry detergent my mom favors only for washing sheets and towels, the small girly indulgence she allows herself in a house filled with boys. I still need to put up my posters of France, and the pictures I downloaded of the school in Paris where I want to spend my last semester of high school, the motivation behind this summer college program for rising seniors. If I can prove that I’m truly fluent in French, I’ll be accepted to the Paris School, which in turn will make it easier for me to get into a French university. And everything will unfurl from there. I’ll make my home in a city that prizes culture over everything else. Culture over sports. Or at least, I’ll get four and a half years of all things French. At minimum.
I know this summer won’t be perfect. I know that it’s entirely possible that my roommate is here for an easy A in Introduction to Family Dynamics or Astronomy for Arts Students. Or she’s meek and mousy and will annoy me by going to bed at nine, and have a row of colored highlighters lined up on her desk. It may be that she’s just as gum snapping, hair swishing, athlete loving, and makeup obsessed as everyone else is at Wilmette Academy. I know that.
But still I hope. I hope and I hope and I hope. I hope until I fall asleep.
I awake to a pounding on the door. “Dorm meeting in five!”
Merde. My room is dark and the bed across from mine is still empty. Yawning, I glance at the clock. The shouting voice outside is right. It’s five to five, which means I’ve been asleep for more than two hours.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes as I jump out of bed. Four minutes. I hate being late. Dragging my fingers through my tangled curls, I slip on my flip-flops and stretch out my limbs. I don’t have enough time to find my toothbrush and the bathroom, so I opt for gum. Three pieces, killer minty. Good in a pinch.
One more yawn and then I force myself out my dorm room door and follow the hordes.
Scanning the rapidly filling common room, I find a small opening on the floor against the wall, a great perch for people watching. The only reason my mom agreed to this was that while I’d be taking classes with college students, our dorm is limited to high school students with residential advisors to look after us. I would have been perfectly fine with living with college students. But maybe it’s not so bad that we’re all the same age here, and that there appears to be a pretty neat distribution between the sexes. For the first time in a long time, I’m in a room where nobody is wearing a Cubs T-shirt. And that fact alone makes me smile.
“Mind if I sit here?”
I scoot to the right, making room as what appears to be a very large boy body slides down the wall to sit next to me. At first all I see are his well-worn red Chucks, unlaced, and his muscled legs as they fold themselves into a cross-legged position, his knee swiping mine.
I love Chucks.
I love Chucks unadorned, none of those foofy colors, plaids and stripes and patterns. I like pure, simple Chucks.
Boys who wear red Chucks? My kind of boys.
“Zeke Martin,” the boy says, sticking a remarkably large right hand in front of me.
It’s only then that I glance up and see the cap, the hair, the glasses, the easy smile. The boy from outside. The boy who mentioned Martinez’s play.
Merde. If he follows baseball enough to reference yesterday’s Cubs game, he’s into sports. And Chucks wearing or not, I’m not looking for a guy who’s into sports. My life is already filled with them.
“Abby Berman,” I mumble, figuring the odds are slim he’ll even remember our encounter. He looks like a golden boy with an easy tan, pale blue eyes, and the faintest evidence of scruff on his cheeks. He’s probably already