I Kissed Alice - Anna Birch

CHAPTER 1

ILIANA

Hate is a complicated word.

Some people believe hating is wishing death on someone.

Others think it’s three-minutes-in-a-dark-broom-closet away from True Love™.

If this is the case, I don’t hate Rhodes Ingram at all: I don’t hate her, and I would rather die myself than be alone with her anywhere.

But, oh, it feels good to say it:

I hate Rhodes Ingram.

I hate Rhodes Ingram.

I. HATE. RHODES. INGRAM.

We’re standing in the doorway of the dorm room Rhodes shares with Sarah Wade, my best friend since we were kids, and I never have any idea what’s happened here. She doesn’t tell me when she fights with Rhodes, or when Rhodes makes her feel small, or when Rhodes bites her head off for turning on the overhead lights too early in the morning. Sarah only Velcros herself to my side, and then I have to needle around for details until I can finally pull everything out of her.

And oh my God.

I despise Rhodes for it.

I’ve memorized every square inch of Rhodes’s face—her dark, full eyebrows, the way her hair hangs in long sheets past her shoulders, the wisps that curl at her temples, too short and too new to be forced into submission. I’ve blended shades of orange and pink watercolor until I could find the precise shade of her cheeks when she flushes either from embarrassment or anger, and I find myself comparing sticks of soft pastel to match the blue of her eyes.

Every day, we take seats across from each other in Drawing III. We spend seventy-five minutes in uncomfortable eye contact over the tops of our sketchbooks instead of working, ignoring the endless blathering of our drawing teacher, Benjamin Randall.

Which is exactly what we did today—literally nothing.

Nothing at all, but glaring and fuming and whispering snide remarks over the tops of our sketchbooks at each other. And now we’re here, two hours later, standing three feet from each other while she scrambles—because that’s the only thing she knows how to do—flushed and shoving dirty clothes into a hamper.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I whisper to Sarah.

Her face pinches up in that way that it has since childhood, a little red and a lot ugly.

She doesn’t respond—she doesn’t have to.

Her texts in our messaging app earlier today said more than enough:

Its_sayruh_17 6:13a: look you don’t have to talk to her ok

Its_sayruh_17 9:42a: it’s my birthday

And

Its_sayruh_17 10:46a: don’t you think you can just like pretend to get along for five minutes

And

Its_sayruh_17 12:15p: you’re both my best friends??? Clearly you both have good taste??? Like?

And

Its_sayruh_17 1:52p: ANSWER

Its_sayruh_17 1:52p: YOUR

Its_sayruh_17 1:52p: TEXTS

Its_sayruh_17 1:53p: BITCH

So, here we are.

Thirty minutes later leaving than we had originally intended.

Rhodes’s things are nice enough—I recognize her quilt from the cover of a Pottery Barn Teen catalog I saw in my orthodontist’s office. She has one of those boutiquey burlap-tufted headboards and crystal bedside lamps that are completely ridiculous paired with the cinderblock walls. Her curtains match her bed skirt, a preppy kelly-green-on-white lattice print.

But six half-empty water bottles litter Rhodes’s shelf over her bed, and two have plummeted between her headboard and the desk. Her office supplies match, too, all the way down to a cup filled with unsharpened pencils that have sat there as long as Sarah and Rhodes have shared a space, but today they’re scattered willy-nilly across her desk.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s side of the room is meticulously tidy. She possesses a kind of ingenuity I don’t see from the Conservatory kids who come from money: She’s broke, the other sophomore-year transfer besides me, and she’s only here due to one of a handful of scholarships the school extends to the area’s talented poor. Whereas the girls down the hall order their room supplies from places like West Elm or Pottery Barn, Sarah has upcycled literally everything she owns from thrift stores, dumpsters, and her grandmother’s attic.

There are three rows of bins on the shelves that hang over her bed, spray-painted white and fitted with DIY tie-dyed liners. She braided the rug that sits on the linoleum floor between the two beds from old sweatshirts and crocheted her shower bag with strips of old plastic bags from the grocery store.

I like Sarah’s side far better.

Rhodes has moved on to stowing dirty bowls spirited away from the dining hall beneath her bed, cursing under her breath, so I direct my attention to Sarah instead. She nudges me toward her bed; I duck under Rhodes’s long arm, which is flailing out to grab a dining hall mug from where it sits