Luce shoot up from the bed. How would anyone know to find her here? She tiptoed to the door and pulled it open. Then she stuck her head into the very empty hallway. She hadn’t even heard footsteps outside, and there was no sign of anyone having just knocked.
Except the paper airplane pinned with a brass tack to the center of the corkboard next to her door. Luce smiled to see her name written in black marker along the wing, but when she unfolded the note, all that was written inside was a black arrow pointing straight down the hall.
Arriane
had
invited her over tonight, but that was before the incident with Molly in the cafeteria. Looking down the empty hallway, Luce wondered about following the cryptic arrow. Then she glanced back at her giant duffel bag, her pity party waiting to be unpacked. She shrugged, pulled her door shut, put her room key in her pocket, and started walking.
She stopped in front of a door on the other side of the hall to check out an oversized poster of Sonny Terry, a blind musician who she knew from her father’s scratchy record collection was an incredible blues harmonica player. She leaned forward to read the name on the corkboard and realized with a start that she was standing in front of Roland Sparks’s room. Immediately, annoyingly, there was that little part of her brain that started calculating the odds that Roland might be hanging out with Daniel, with only a thin door separating them from Luce.
A mechanical buzzing sound made Luce jump. She looked straight into a surveillance camera drilled into the wall over Roland’s door. The reds. Zooming in on her every move. She shrank away, embarrassed for reasonsno camera would be able to discern. Anyway, she’d come here to see Arriane—whose room, she realized, just happened to be directly across the hall from Roland.
In front of Arriane’s room, Luce felt a little stab of tenderness. The entire door was covered with bumper stickers—some printed, others obviously homemade. There were so many that they overlapped, each slogan half covering and often contradicting the one before it. Luce laughed under her breath as she imagined Arriane collecting the bumper stickers indiscriminately (MEAN PEOPLE RULE … MY DAUGHTER IS AN F STUDENT AT SWORD & CROSS … VOTE NO ON PROP
666 ), then slapping them with a haphazard—but committed—focus onto her turf.
Luce could have kept herself entertained for an hour reading Arriane’s door, but soon she started to feel self-conscious about standing in front of a dorm room she was only half certain she’d actually been invited to. Then she saw the second paper airplane. She pulled it down from the corkboard and unfolded the message:
My Darling Luce
,
If you actually showed up to hang out tonight, props! We’ll get along juuust fine
.
If you bailed on me, then … get your claws off my private note, ROLAND! How many times do I have to tell you? Jeez
.
Anyhow: I know I said to swing by tonight, but I had to dash straight from R&R in the nurse’s
station (the silver lining of my Taser treatment today) to a makeup biology review with the Albatross. Which is to say—rain check?
Yours psychotically,
A
Luce stood with the note in her hands, unsure about what to do next. She was relieved to read that Arriane was being taken care of, but she still wished she could see the girl in person. She wanted to hear the nonchalance in Arriane’s voice for herself, so that she’d know how to feel about what had happened in the cafeteria today. But standing there in the hallway, Luce was ever more uncertain how to process the day’s events. A quiet panic filled her when it finally registered that she was alone, after dark, at Sword & Cross.
Behind her, a door cracked open. A sliver of white light opened up on the floor beneath her feet. Luce heard music being played inside a room.
“Whatcha doin’?” It was Roland, standing in his doorway in a torn white T-shirt and jeans. His dreads were gathered in a
Except the paper airplane pinned with a brass tack to the center of the corkboard next to her door. Luce smiled to see her name written in black marker along the wing, but when she unfolded the note, all that was written inside was a black arrow pointing straight down the hall.
Arriane
had
invited her over tonight, but that was before the incident with Molly in the cafeteria. Looking down the empty hallway, Luce wondered about following the cryptic arrow. Then she glanced back at her giant duffel bag, her pity party waiting to be unpacked. She shrugged, pulled her door shut, put her room key in her pocket, and started walking.
She stopped in front of a door on the other side of the hall to check out an oversized poster of Sonny Terry, a blind musician who she knew from her father’s scratchy record collection was an incredible blues harmonica player. She leaned forward to read the name on the corkboard and realized with a start that she was standing in front of Roland Sparks’s room. Immediately, annoyingly, there was that little part of her brain that started calculating the odds that Roland might be hanging out with Daniel, with only a thin door separating them from Luce.
A mechanical buzzing sound made Luce jump. She looked straight into a surveillance camera drilled into the wall over Roland’s door. The reds. Zooming in on her every move. She shrank away, embarrassed for reasonsno camera would be able to discern. Anyway, she’d come here to see Arriane—whose room, she realized, just happened to be directly across the hall from Roland.
In front of Arriane’s room, Luce felt a little stab of tenderness. The entire door was covered with bumper stickers—some printed, others obviously homemade. There were so many that they overlapped, each slogan half covering and often contradicting the one before it. Luce laughed under her breath as she imagined Arriane collecting the bumper stickers indiscriminately (MEAN PEOPLE RULE … MY DAUGHTER IS AN F STUDENT AT SWORD & CROSS … VOTE NO ON PROP
666 ), then slapping them with a haphazard—but committed—focus onto her turf.
Luce could have kept herself entertained for an hour reading Arriane’s door, but soon she started to feel self-conscious about standing in front of a dorm room she was only half certain she’d actually been invited to. Then she saw the second paper airplane. She pulled it down from the corkboard and unfolded the message:
My Darling Luce
,
If you actually showed up to hang out tonight, props! We’ll get along juuust fine
.
If you bailed on me, then … get your claws off my private note, ROLAND! How many times do I have to tell you? Jeez
.
Anyhow: I know I said to swing by tonight, but I had to dash straight from R&R in the nurse’s
station (the silver lining of my Taser treatment today) to a makeup biology review with the Albatross. Which is to say—rain check?
Yours psychotically,
A
Luce stood with the note in her hands, unsure about what to do next. She was relieved to read that Arriane was being taken care of, but she still wished she could see the girl in person. She wanted to hear the nonchalance in Arriane’s voice for herself, so that she’d know how to feel about what had happened in the cafeteria today. But standing there in the hallway, Luce was ever more uncertain how to process the day’s events. A quiet panic filled her when it finally registered that she was alone, after dark, at Sword & Cross.
Behind her, a door cracked open. A sliver of white light opened up on the floor beneath her feet. Luce heard music being played inside a room.
“Whatcha doin’?” It was Roland, standing in his doorway in a torn white T-shirt and jeans. His dreads were gathered in a
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