Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

Author:J. Courtney Sullivan [Sullivan, J. Courtney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 0307454967
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

CELIA

Celia wasn’t at all surprised that four years out of college, Sally still had her King House key on her key chain. They used it to sneak into the dining room for old time’s sake after the rehearsal dinner. Lara, Jack and Jill, and the adults had gone to bed. Jake, his friends, and Sally’s brother went to Packard’s to play darts and drink beer.

Celia had suggested it as a joke: “Let’s break into King House,” she said, picturing them running up and down the hallways drunk, hugging first years in flannel pajamas and asking if they wanted to be snorkeled. (Snorkeling was a game that straight Quad girls used as a prelude to kissing. The person being snorkeled would lie flat on her back. The snorkeler would blow hard into her nose, so that a burst of air shot from the other girl’s mouth.)

Sally jingled her keys. “Yes! We can sit at our old table and have some girl talk.”

Celia had gotten to the point of drunkenness where she wasn’t much interested in girl talk. She hadn’t realized how hammered she was until she found herself in the Pizza Paradiso bathroom, mopping Chianti off her dress and singing “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men at the top of her lungs. Now, all she really wanted to do was go downtown and find some ridiculous townie to make out with, preferably on a pool table. But she reminded herself that this was Sally’s weekend, and if she wanted girl talk in the King House dining hall, that’s what she would get.

It was exam week. They could tell because the dining hall ladies had left out the usual enormous bowls of treats, each one inscribed with an FK for “Franklin King.” There were M&M’s in one bowl, packages of peanut-butter crackers in another, licorice whips, chocolate-covered pretzels, and a box of Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts. It was as though the girls were bulking up for hibernation instead of studying for finals.

The dining room stood empty. It hadn’t changed one bit since they had left, Celia thought. The gold chandeliers still sparkled, the long oak tables and chairs were the same ones they had carved their initials into the night before graduation, with Sally pointing out that this was rude and disrespectful, something that only twelve-year-old boys would do. (She added her carefully etched SPW all the same.)

The girls took their usual table in the corner, and Bree placed the box of doughnuts in the center.

“Looks like we got here just in time,” she said, shoving one into her mouth and licking the cinnamon from her fingers. “The little piglets upstairs don’t know there’s a fresh batch of food here yet.”

Like most things at Smith, the dining hall experience was extreme. Either you ate everything in sight, or you ate nothing. There were girls you did not want to sit with. They were called EDs, which was short for “eating disorders.” EDs tended to compensate for not eating by talking excessively about food.

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