A Sense of the Infinite by Hilary T. Smith

Author:Hilary T. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

55

I WAS HOPING AVA AND I would go to bed right away so we wouldn’t have to talk anymore, but Ava’s roommates started bubbling in and soon it was impossible to escape.

Ava’s roommates were different from anyone I knew from back home. I couldn’t keep their names straight. Girls in thick glasses and tight sweaters and dresses rescued from the costume department thrift sale, they made tea and sat on the counter and picked at the runs in their stockings.

“What’s your name?” they asked me.

“Annabeth.”

“How old are you? Where do you live? I like your jeans. Aren’t her jeans cute? Where did you get them? Did you drive up here alone? A bunch of us are going out for breakfast tomorrow morning, do you want to go out for breakfast?”

I kept hoping Ava would step in to save me like Noe always did when people were overwhelming me with too much attention, but she left me to answer for myself.

“I took the bus,” I said, “I’m seventeen,” feeling like the contestant in a rapid-fire trivia game.

“Were you on the eight o’clock?” said a girl with dreadlocks.

“Mm-hmm.”

“My friend was on that bus, she said there was this girl who was crying and throwing up the whole way.”

Heat flooded my face. If Noe were here, she’d be distracting Ava’s roommates, telling them about vegetarianism or gymnastics. She’d be making plans for us to go to a physics lecture with one of them and a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals meeting with another. I wouldn’t have to talk at all except to peep my excitement or consent. This was why I couldn’t go to Northern without her, exactly this: surrounded by strangers, my only ally a cousin who apparently refused to protect me.

“What’s wrong?” said the girls. “What’s wrong?”

I was doing my werewolf thing, my capacity for language disappearing, my ability to smile and present a functional social face melting away. Where’s Noe? my inside self was howling. Already, my mind was frantically making plans. I would tell Mom I hated Northern, I would rip up the application I’d been working on, I would go to Gailer College and be the water girl for the gymnastics team and never leave Noe again.

Ava was gazing at me across the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows and tipped her head to the side as if to say, What’s going on in there?

“Nothing,” I squeaked at the girls who had asked me what was wrong. “The bus ride was shitty.”

I looked at the floor. The roots of my plant were crying out in alarm and groping for familiar soil. I ordered myself to stay and talk, but my feet began to move without my consent and suddenly I was on the front steps of Ava’s dorm, huddled up against a brick column. Through the kitchen window, I could hear Ava and her friends.

“Is she okay? She, like, bolted.”

“She’s really shy. It’s pretty much her first time away from home. I’ll go out there in a minute if she doesn’t come back in.

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