Dreamland City. Larina Lavergne

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      And he kissed me. I was breathless. He tasted of salt and whisky, and I had never tasted anything so sweet.

      4

      I got an email last week reminding me to write to my scholarship sponsors, because the donors like to hear from us lucky recipients from time to time. “Just an update on how you’re starting out. It’ll help them picture your upcoming years,” wrote Jessica Tyrell, Scholarship Administrator. I don’t think she meant to make it sound like a threat, but there’s always the chance they won’t renew my scholarship for next year. And then what would I do?

      Well, I guess Tommy said they were looking for a cashier at one of his jobs.

      Crap formal letters like these always feel like they need pen to paper, so I get out a writing pad that I found jammed under the cushion in the couch. I chew on the pen and notice a coffee ring on the paper. It takes me several page turns to get to a semi clean page.

      Dear Scholarship Board,

      This is Lily Anderson. You awarded me a Merit Scholarship for socially disadvantaged youths. I am very grateful for the opportunity. I am enjoying my first semester at Duke, and am happy to be with such intelligent and similarly minded people. I love all my classes and although it is too early yet, I hope one day to become a doctor or a lawyer. Thank you.

      Sincerely, Lily Anderson.

      I tear up the “letter.” Even the dumbest privileged old fuck would be able to feel the insincerity dripping from my words. I could do a lot better, but honestly, all I can think about now is sex, and I don’t care with whom.

      I squeeze my thighs tight.

      On cue, Tommy texts me, asking if I want to hang out tonight, and if Beau will let me. Not that I need permission, but I don’t even know where Beau is. I woke up as he was putting on his pants this morning, and he left my room without saying a word or looking at me.

      5

      I convinced Tommy to take off work for a few days and stay with me on campus so I could show him around. Tommy’s one of the smartest guys I know—he just doesn’t know it himself. He never got the chance to finish high school, and he’s always had an awe for stuff he doesn’t understand, which is why he can’t help going through all my homework and textbooks, tracing his rough fingers down the lines of symbols and math.

      It’s nice walking around the usually threatening campus grounds with him holding on protectively. The other kids don’t know that he doesn’t go here, so we blend in as just another campus couple, and obligingly, I glare at the other girls checking him out.

      I’ve known Tommy forever, and I remember the first time we kissed. It was maybe a year after I’d started fooling around with Beau. We were sitting out at the table behind his trailer. Tommy had this wide-eyed look on his face, and then his eyes closed, he leaned in, and his mouth swallowed me. God, that kiss was awful. But I taught him what I had learned from Beau, and he got a lot better. We had sex for the first time soon after, and he asked me how I knew so much, and I didn’t see any reason not to tell him the truth. He went all quiet, and sad.

      Sometimes I like it, when he’s quiet and sad.

      Not this time though. We go to lectures together, watch old movies, break into random professor offices late in the night for the heck of it, fill shampoo bottles with nail varnish and fuck every day with free condoms from the health center. He fixes my rickety bed and my chair doesn’t squeak anymore. But mostly, we just lie together and he makes me tell him more about my classes and explain what was going on in lecture that day.

      Too soon, though, he has to go back. I stand forlorn at the window in my room on the third floor, watching his lonely red truck pull away in the distance. That truck could be my heart.

      +++

      Tommy leaving sucks. Worse, I get news later that day from the housing administration. They found bedbugs in my dorm—(in itself not news that would strike me as that horrible or anything), but it apparently violates some kind of health code and they have to relocate all the students in Randolph (my dorm) to temporary housing immediately while they deal with the problem. I lucked out this semester with a single, so the prospect of moving into someone else’s room is particularly undesirable.

      I delete the email, as if that will make the situation go away. Then I shut my laptop and go outside.

      The main quad is eerily quiet, and it’s getting dark. A couple sits on the far side making out. Odd infrequent light flickers in the massive buildings surrounding the quad. I stand, looking up at the shadowy sky. Then I lie back on the grass, relishing the feel of the pokey blades against my bare skin. Soon, it is completely dark.

      I wonder where Tommy is and if he’s looking at the same stars.

      I wonder where my mother is, and if she still looks at stars.

      6

      It doesn’t take me that long to move rooms since I barely have anything. My new roommate isn’t in, so she doesn’t see the face I make when I enter. Everything in there is surreal, from the Fortitude posters to the pictures of a blond girl with big boobs in a cheerleading outfit—I guess that’s her—hugging her friends in a fancy high school. The same perfect blond girl with her perfect parents in front of a perfect big mansion.

      Fuck.

      She’s even put up college photos already, and I recognize David in a tight group photo where he’s standing with his arm around her as she leans into him amidst other tall blond laughing people. Great. Maybe she’s the famous girlfriend. I sigh.

      I dump the contents of my duffel bag and backpack on the rollaway they’ve hastily brought in and squeezed against the opposite wall to her bed.

      The room smells of some kind of citrus shampoo and a light perfume, and yet I hate it more than the constant smell of sweat and booze of my old dorm, or even Dreamland on a bad night.

      I look at the “Paris, J’adore!” clock on the wall. I have to get to class.

      +++

      I’m starting an advanced senior-level thermodynamics lab section today. When I walk in late, everyone turns to stare. I scrunch into the last table in the row by myself, but the Professor in the front points to an empty seat in the middle. I sit without a word. Already there are little high-school type cliques forming. The black kids are at a table by the side, with the one enlightened white guy who will no doubt be able to quote Public Enemy and do slam rap poetry. The Asians are grouped in the front, typing away furiously at their laptops even though class hasn’t even started yet. Three jock-types are near the back, talking about some kind of training session and game stats.

      And then there’s me.

      Grad-level, Senior, Freshman or otherwise, college isn’t that different from high school, I don’t think. I was bused to one of the richest schools in North Carolina because of the state’s diversity initiative, and I spent half my time in school being called into the principal’s office because they always wanted to talk to me about “realizing my potential” or “showing more effort,” or some other crap like that. Tommy said at the school he went to, they forgot he was enrolled, and when he told them he was dropping out, they couldn’t even find his records.

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