Here We Lie

Suddenly, the urge to pee, which I’d been battling since we crossed into Connecticut, became insistent. With the bus station closed, my only option appeared to be a secluded space behind a commercial-sized trash container. I heard the Honda’s clunky tailpipe again while I was zipping up and cursed myself. Someone could be rooting through my bags right now, making off with my clothes and books and my beloved afghan with the red, white and blue Chevron stripes, not to mention my wallet and driver’s license and the painting I’d taken off the refrigerator, the oversize stick figures of Dad and Mom and me. I zipped and broke into a run.

A man in jeans and a black T-shirt was leaning against the Honda, smoking a cigarette and not looking in my direction, as if he’d been there forever and his being there was in no way connected with me. I stopped next to the platform, catching my breath. It startled me when he spoke, as if he might be addressing a third, unseen person.

“You know, any one of the local creeps could have come by and made off with your stuff.”

“Are you one of the local creeps?” I asked.

He dropped his cigarette, grinding it beneath the toe of a scuffed Doc Marten. “I am the local creep.”

I laughed despite myself.

“Actually, the city of Scofield has hired me to enforce its public urination laws, which is a common problem with our—” he hesitated, looking at me pointedly “—vagrant population.”

Conscious of my unwashed hands, I jammed them into the pockets of my jeans. “Guilty,” I confessed, blushing bright red.

He grinned. “So. Not from around here?”

I shook my head. “Kansas.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, not Kansas, specifically, but I knew you were from somewhere in the Midwest.”

“I have that Midwest look about me, do I?”

He gave me an appreciative up-and-down glance, taking in the greasy blond hair I’d pulled into a ponytail, the teeth I hadn’t brushed since that morning, somewhere in Ohio. I was wearing a baggy T-shirt—I always wore baggy T-shirts—but I felt his gaze linger for a moment on my chest. “Yep. Corn-fed goodness,” he said.

I looked past him, out toward the road, trying to figure out what came next.

He cleared his throat. “Isn’t there anything you want to ask me?”

“Like what? Your name?”

He dipped at the waist in a mock bow. “Joseph P. Natolo, at your service. Actually—I thought you might need a ride.”

“Well, yeah. I’m a—”

“A student at Keale,” he finished. “That’s not exactly rocket science. Come on, let me load you up.” He grabbed one of my duffel bags, mock wincing at its weight. “What did you do, pack your library?”

I hesitated, watching him cram the bag into his trunk, already cluttered with loose shoes and clothes and fast food bags spotty with grease. “Do you work at the college?”

He took the other bag from my grasp, his hand brushing mine. “Would you believe I teach cultural anthropology?”

“No,” I said.

He laughed. “Good for you, Midwest. Being gullible is never a good thing. No, I’m just Scofield’s one-man welcoming committee.”

The trunk was so full, he had to lean his weight against it before we heard the telltale click. He looked at me. “Well? Come on.”

* * *

Joe’s car smelled faintly of pot, although an evergreen air freshener dangled from the rearview mirror. I belted myself in, heart hammering beneath my rib cage to warn me this was not my brightest idea. Outside my window, the scenery was a dark blur of open meadows divided by wooded areas, dense with trees. I rested my fingers on the door handle, planning an emergency exit—stop, drop and roll.

Joe glanced at my hand. “Seriously, I’m not a psycho. I was driving by and I spotted you there, and I figured you needed some help.”

I gave him a weak smile. “Thanks.”

He pointed at a rectangular green sign that appeared in front of us and receded in the side mirror: Keale College, 3 Miles. “See? We’re heading in the right direction.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled as he laughed. “Could have fooled me. So let me ask you this. What’s so horrible about men, anyway?”

I half turned in my seat. “When did I say men were horrible?”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Please. You come all the way from Timbuktu or wherever just to go to a school where there are no men, except the odd janitor or history professor. What’s that all about?”

“It’s not about hating men,” I said, my mind searching for one of the phrases from Keale’s brochures. “It’s about empowering women.”

Joe shook his head. “Why would anyone want to deprive themselves of this?” He raised a hand from the steering wheel and made a circle in the air, meant to encompass the two of us.

I snuck a sideways glance, trying to determine Joe’s age. At least as old as me, maybe a few years older. Still, there was a confidence to him—the way he’d tossed my bags into his trunk without getting my explicit permission, his easy, flirtatious jokes. He seemed decades more sophisticated than the boys (men, really, although they didn’t seem to have earned the title) I’d known in Woodstock. I cleared my throat. “So, do you go to school around here, too?”

He shrugged. “It’s been a few years now.”

It wasn’t clear if he was referring to high school or college. “Here in Scofield?” I pressed.

“Sure. You’re looking at a proud graduate of Scofield-Winton High School, class of 1995. Well, I was proud to graduate. I’m not sure the powers that be at SWHS are thrilled to claim me. But beyond that—no. I’m not what you’d call scholar material.”

He didn’t seem embarrassed to tell me this, but I was embarrassed that I’d asked. Without taking a single college class, I was already a snob. Joe’s car slowed, and I spotted twin brick walls, formed like parentheses around either side of a wide entryway. Giant steel letters spelling Keale College rose out of a manicured lawn. “The school was established in 1880,” Joe boomed suddenly, adopting the inflections of a tour guide. “If you look straight ahead, you’ll see the place that has been home for more than a hundred years to privileged girls from Connecticut, the larger New England area and, apparently—” this was said pointedly to me, with a raised eyebrow “—regions beyond.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

We passed acres of gently rolling lawn before coming to the buildings themselves—towering brick structures bathed in golden lights. Footpaths crisscrossed the campus, cutting around and between buildings. Joe stopped to let a girl pass with her rolling suitcase and then cleared his throat, preparing to launch into the next stage of our tour. “Keale was founded by prominent members of the Episcopalian Church, presumably as a way to keep young ladies away from the horrors of intermingling with the opposite sex. I hear that the school isn’t particularly religious today, although they have maintained a fine tradition of refusing young eligible bachelors entry into the sacred dormitories of said young women.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Joe said, dropping the tour-guide impression. “And believe me, I’ve tried. Men aren’t allowed to step foot in the dorms unless they’re family. So up here we have the Commons—that’s the dining hall. Classroom buildings, the science center, fine arts auditorium, a gym complete with indoor track and racquetball courts...”

I followed his gestures, trying to take it all in. Keale looked like its own small town, separate and distinct from Scofield, operating on its own purpose and pace. I knew from the brochures that there were just under two thousand students at Keale, but only a few were visible that night, including a girl lying on a blanket, looking up at the stars, and a trio running past in gym shorts and tennis shoes, ponytails swinging, their steps perfectly synchronized.

“What’s your dorm?” Joe asked.

“Stanton.” I’d read the housing form so many times that I’d memorized the details by heart. Stanton Hall, room 323 South. Roommate, Ariana Kramer.

Joe circled a row of buildings and pulled into a parking lot that was mostly empty. He nodded his head in the direction of a brick monolith, patches of ivy creeping up its sides. “That’s it, then.”

I unbuckled my seat belt and it zipped back to its holster. “Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it.”

“Hold on,” he said, shifting the car into Park. He popped the trunk and met me there, hoisting both of my bags over his shoulders with an exaggerated groan.