My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by Perkins Stephanie

Author:Perkins, Stephanie [Perkins, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466863897
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-10-14T05:00:00+00:00

In the fifteen weeks since starting her freshman year at the University of Bumfuckville, Sophie had counted at least a dozen What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments. The first was when Sophie’s mother dropped her off at the dorms, which were covered in brick and ivy, just like the catalog promised. The rental car’s engine had not yet stopped ticking when Sophie understood that the idea of a college in the country, in the middle of the country—pastoral was how’d she’d been describing it to friends back in Brooklyn—wasn’t so much pastoral as it was foreign, as if she’d decided to enroll at the University of Beirut. Attendant sinking feelings in the stomach soon followed the revelation that really shouldn’t have been a revelation—it was so obvious. It had been obvious to all her friends, who were perplexed by her choice to go here, and to her mother, who wasn’t.

As she and her mother hauled her suitcases into the dorm, Sophie didn’t dare let her feelings show. It would only make her mother feel guilty. The University of Bumfuckville being pastoral wasn’t the real reason Sophie had enrolled.

The second What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment had come later that weekend when she’d met her roommates. Nice girls, pretty girls, welcoming girls, but that first night together—beer and pizza with crusts thick as the length of Sophie’s thumb—Sophie had had to say I’m kidding at least a half dozen times, a trend that continued well into the term until Sophie finally realized that sarcasm was like a separate dialect, one not universally understood. “You’re so big city,” one of the Kaitlynns (there were three on her hall) would say. Sophie was never quite sure if this was an insult.

Sophie had imagined she would be the mysterious one on campus—she was from the big city, after all—but it was the girls from the small Midwestern towns who had dreamed of going to college here all their lives, whose parents had gone here, who were inscrutable.

The guys were no better. Strapping and big-toothed specimens, with names like Kyle and Connor. At the start of term, one such guy had asked Sophie out on what she’d thought was a date, but what had turned out to be a group outing to play ultimate Frisbee. Sophie had been grouchy about it, but then to her surprise had gotten into the game, catching a scoring pass, talking smack against the other team. On the walk back to the dorms, Kyle/Connor had said, “You’re really competitive, aren’t you?” Sophie had no doubt as to whether that was an insult.

That was What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment number four—or maybe it was five. There’d been several with the boys here. She was starting to lose count. She’d long since lost hope.

* * *

She had no one to blame for tonight’s What the Hell Have You Done moment except herself. Finals had ended two days ago and most of the students had decamped for winter break.

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