Read Online Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld - Free Book Online

chance that you might find out one of the pieces of hidden information. This was why I felt excited when life was different from normal, when things happened—snow and fire drills and the times we had chapel at night, evensong, when the sky outside the stained glass windows was black. Depending on circumstances, a wild fact could be revealed to you, or you could fall desperately in love. In my whole life, Ault was the place with the greatest density of people to fall in love with.
    Gates rang the bell to tell people to settle down. Dean Fletcher stuck two fingers in his mouth and wolf-whistled. “Okay, guys,” he said and made a gesture meant to calm us, patting the air with his palms. “Enough. Listen up. We’ll be sending a bus to Boston at ten o’clock, and another bus to the Westmoor mall at noon. Sign up in my office if you want to go. I know I don’t need to remind anyone that while you’re away, all school rules are in effect.” This was what teachers always said before you left campus.
    When roll call was over, students surged out of the room, toward Dean Fletcher’s office or else outside, toward the dorms. I headed to the mail room, which was in the basement, and saw through my mailbox window that nothing was in there. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. My focus up to this point had been avoiding the biology test, and now that I had, I was at a loss. The problem was, I didn’t have anyone to go with to Boston or the mall; I still didn’t have any friends. Surprisingly, this was not a fact that greatly affected my day-to-day life, at least not logistically. At meals, the sections of the dining hall were unofficially divided by grade, and within your grade—it was strangely democratic—you could sit at any table with an empty seat; formal dinner was even better because then there was assigned seating. In chapel you could also sit anywhere. And the rest of the time, wandering the halls between classes, changing in the locker room for practice, you could inconspicuously be by yourself, walking a few feet behind other people, or standing on the periphery.
    It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious—on Saturday nights, when there were dances I didn’t go to, and during visitation, which was the hour each night when boys and girls were allowed in each other’s dorm rooms. I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut; Sin-Jun didn’t seem to care and Dede went down the hall to Aspeth’s room.
    But on certain occasions, I could not conceal my friendlessness. When we’d taken a field trip to Plimoth Plantation, I’d had to ride on the bus next to Danny Black, a day student whose nose was always running because of allergies; when I asked if I could sit with him, he said in his snot-laden voice, “Fine, but I want the aisle,” then stood while I slipped in. There was also the Saturday when the freshman prefects organized an ice-skating party in the hockey rink, and I went because I didn’t yet understand that just because it was nighttime, just because this had been billed as a party, it didn’t mean I’d find it any easier to talk to people. On the ice, the girls were gliding around in jeans and pink or gray wool sweaters, and the boys were trying to knock each other over. Behind the plastic barrier, those of us who didn’t know how to skate or didn’t own skates stood by the bleachers. Just standing there in the frosty air, not skating, I felt like my feet were frozen lumps, and you could see people’s breath when they spoke. Intermittently, I tried making conversation with Rufina Sanchez, who’d been recruited to Ault from a public school in San Diego and who was so pretty that I’d have been intimidated to talk to her if she were white, but really my attention was on the skaters. Watching them, I felt that familiar combination of misery