Loner: A Novel by Teddy Wayne

Author:Teddy Wayne [Wayne, Teddy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501107894
Amazon: 1501107895
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I was awoken the next morning by Steven passing through my room on the way back from the shower. Dripping wet with a Doctor Who towel around his waist, he stooped to pick something up.

“This Sara’s?” he asked.

Your bathrobe belt. I’d carelessly left it beside me in bed as I fell asleep. It had slipped onto the floor overnight and was now dangling from Steven’s hands.

“No,” I said through a phlegm-clearing cough. As I reached out to take the belt, he retreated a step and examined it more closely.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just found it.”

“Where?”

If I named a Harvard building, upstanding-citizen Steven would recommend I bring it to a lost and found. “Au Bon Pain.”

“Mind if I take it?” He balled it up in his palm. “I’m learning this trick for my magic show in the common room Sunday night. I want to pull a long strip of material out of my mouth, and I haven’t found anything that can fit inside.”

He brought it up to his open maw.

“Don’t!” I said. “Your braces will tear it!”

“What do you need it for?”

“A sweatband,” I told him.

“You don’t even exercise,” he grumbled, dropping it on the floor as he proceeded to his room. I got out of bed and returned the belt to its proper place in the dresser.

That night at dinner, as I ferried my tray out of the food area, I considered ditching the Matthews Marauders and sitting down at your table with manufactured self-assurance. But that would raise understandable questions from Sara. Furthermore, the previous evening had been a bust with the others; I needed to focus on only you before trying to ingratiate myself with your group again.

And you seemed disenchanted with them anyway. As my tablemates debated whether they’d rather time travel to Renaissance Italy or Ancient Rome, you aimlessly twirled your fork in your pasta while resting your face on your fist, the graceful sweep of your jawbone meeting the sine wave of your knuckles. The distracted pose of someone wishing she were elsewhere, the same look you’d had that very first night at Annenberg, when I knew you wanted someone to rescue you, even if you weren’t yet aware of it. Now you had a better idea.

“Speaking of Pompeii, anyone else worry that this place is a fire hazard?” Steven canvassed the table, where silently amused grins anticipated his answer to his own rhetorical question. “Its legal seating capacity is six hundred and seventeen students, and there are approximately sixteen hundred freshmen, not including staff. Granted, dinner stretches two hours and forty-five minutes, so the population density ebbs and flows, but there’s still a high probability of exceeding carrying capacity at any given point—assuming, of course, that everyone’s body mass averages out to predicted levels.”

“Steven Zenger, everyone,” said Kevin. “Steven Zenger.”

The pronouncement of the full name; Steven Zenger was such a character, the type of guy who often said things just like this, that’s so Steven Zenger, they’d grown to love him for his habitual expressions and quirks.

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