Page 9 of The Black Table
“I certainly hope this isn’t going to be the kind of situation where we need ground rules,roomie.” She laces the final word with an expert dose of passive aggression, her pouting lips curling into a slow, measured smile. “Will it?”
Fuck. I don’t want to be doing this. I want to be under my weighted blanket, listening to binaural beats and Hildegard von Bingen music and dissociating myself to sleep. I want to be brewing tea and wrapping myself in a scarf and heading to the library so I can enjoy every luscious aspect of this college and its campus,finally.I want to be focusing, regrouping, armoring up for the battle for normalcy that will be this semester.
But I guess the battle’s started. With a sneak attack, here on home turf.
So I exhale hard. Wave the white flag.
I surrender to normalcy.Please don’t hate me. Please let me be.
“No,” I say, and I mean it.
Morgan’s mouth curves, but there’s no smile in her voice. “Good.”
THREE
GWENNA
I sleep like the dead—mercifully—andwhen I wake up, it’s to a quiet room.
Warm, bathed in golden light, empty.
I’malone.
The sheer uncut relief of being unperceived is druggingly good, such a welcome rush that I almost pull my blankets back over my head and bask in it like a cat in a patch of sun.
Then I remember my mission. And, I notice the white strip of a folded letter slid under the door.
Slowly, I swing my feet to the floor and pick it up, my heart pounding with…not excitement, not anxiety, butsomethingas I slice it open hard and fast enough to draw blood on my index finger.
GWENNA VALE
LATIN 302 — EMRYS
FRENCH 203 — BOULANGER
CALCULUS 101 — NEWMAN
Well. There it is. Typewritten notice of myplacement exam results. Calculus can screw itself, but the rest I’m pleased with, and as I sink back down on the mattress, skimming my schedule, I even allow myself a smile.
I’m going to class today.
And soon, I realize. It’s Friday, which means I have—I check the schedule—just French today, at 10:00 a.m. in Lecture Hall 3, which gives me just under an hour to get dressed and into place. I’ll have missed both sittings of breakfast, but so long as I can procure coffee at some point, I’ll live.
Slowly, I stand again. Outside, lime-green and fire-orange leaves alike fringe the windowpane, with just a glimpse of blue sky and cottony clouds beyond—cold, though, judging by the hissing and clanking of the massive iron radiator. To my left, Morgan’s side of the room is haphazardly tidied—duvet roughly thrown back over the mattress, her strange little trinkets in disarray on the desk while leaving the center clear, a sort of manmade fairy circle—but she has done me the courtesy of leaving a note on the little framed chalkboard beside her desk.
Class. Back c. 3:30.
Friendly, I think sarcastically. Then I chide myself for being such a bitch: clear is kind and kind is clear, as Mom likes to say, and aboutthat, at least, she’s right. I drag a fingertip along the edge of Morgan’s desk, just for the thrill of it, and for a moment, I consider fishing around in her billions of tiny drawers to see what earthly delights she has in store to traffic to people like Kingston, but I quickly think better of it. As valuable as it could be to havekompromaton Morgan and her potential drug-dealing side hustle, I also don’t want to risk getting flung even further onto her bad side.
For all I know, she’s got poison in there, and I doubt she’d hesitate to use it.
Besides, knowing that Morgan has vacated the premises for the duration means I can shower without worrying about…
I don’t let myself finish the thought as I rush to peel out of the heavy sweatshirt that served as my nightgown and dart into the bathroom. The mirror is big, framed, and shows every corner of the white-tiled space, but I studiously avoid making eye contact as I strip out of my underwear and yank at the shower knobs for a blistering torrent of water that drags a hiss out of me when it hits my skin.
Hot water hurts, but hot water makes steam, and steam hides my body, my skin, from view.
Quickly, blessedly quickly, the stall pumps so full of steam that I’m practically in a cloud, and can’t make out anything except for my hands occasionally emerging to squirt out soap and shampoo from the provided bottles. After a slapdash scrub and a balletic leap to avoid the mirror once again, I wrap myself in one of the picnic-blanket sized towels folded to the side of the sink, give the top several firm rolls to secure it under my armpits, and shove my toothbrush in my mouth so I can go reread my schedule.
