Page 18 of Distortion
‘I think this building could use some TLC,’ I murmur.
Lu stares up at it. ‘Jesus, I hope it doesn’t come downaround us. They aren’t evenpretendingthey care about the Arts in this damn school anymore.’
I glance at her. ‘Whatdothey care about?’
‘The two S’s, baby! STEM and sports. The Novelles and the other rich folks don’t hardly open the family wallets for anything else around here.’ She suddenly looks at me and winces. ‘Hey, sorry. Shit, that was really tone-deaf, even for me.’
I wave a hand the way I saw her do earlier. ‘No, it’s fine. John Novelle might be my stepfather, but he and I aren’t friends.’
I wonder now if that’s why he decided to put me in English Lit, a program he doesn’t give any rich-person, a-hole funding to, but maybe I’m being paranoid. Why keep me here if I’m supposed to fail? That wouldn’t make sense.
‘What’syourmajor?’ I ask, belatedly realizing that I hadn’t reciprocated her question in the coffee shop.
The oversight would have got me a demerit in session with Stoke. Five demerits, no popcorn for me on movie night. Ten demerits, no movie night.
‘Uh, Draaama, of course!’ she practically yells, waving her fingers at me. ‘Can’t you tell? I thought everybody could!’
I take a tiny step back at her outburst and cover my slight alarm with a forced smile. ‘You’re right. Totally can. I don’t know what I was thinking,’ I rattle out.
She grins, and I allow myself a moment’s relief. I’m doing all right with this social thing—better than usual. Maybe I just need to relax into it, and things will be morenatural.
Lu looks up at the steps and then at her watch. ‘It’s almost six, so we better get in there. Let’s hope the door doesn’t fall off its hinges, huh?’
We go inside and, though there are some ominous creaks, the structure is still standing by the time we get to the long row of cubbies. On the left, there must be over a hundred.On the other side, there are fewer, larger ones around a door that leads into an office where a grey-haired woman is typing at a desk. As we get closer, I see these bigger ones are for the professors.
‘Let’s find your name, Novelle,’ Lu mutters.
They’re in alphabetical order, so we go halfway down and find ‘No’, but my name isn’t there.
‘Are you sure you’re an English major?’ Lu asks, squinting at the wooden boxes that line the wall.
I frown. John was always adamant that I was a Novelle, but unless he and my mom actually legally changed my name ... ‘Try Evans.’
Lu walks back toward the door and stops. ‘Is your name Marguerite?’
‘Yeah, but I’m going by Daisy here.’
‘Okay, Daisy Duke. I think I found you.’
‘DaisyDuke?’ I ask. ‘No. It’s Evans.’
She gives me a grin. ‘It’s from a TV show, English.’
Oh.
She draws a large envelope from it and holds it out to me. I take it and examine my name.
Marguerite Evans.
I get a small pang low in my chest. I haven’t seen my name as Evans in years. My dad’s name was Mark and I was always a Novelle at The Heath. I cover up the last seven letters of my first name and pretend my finger is just covering a K.
‘Are you okay?’ Lu asks. Her expression is less happy now.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
I open the envelope and empty the contents on a nearby bench. My schedule is inside, along with a map of the campus and a small, sealed letter. Lu immediately picks up the schedule and lets out a thoughtful noise as she looks it over.
‘So, it looks like you only have two classes tomorrow. Chaucer at ten and then Nineteenth Century Literature at two.’
