“Tom,” she said sharply. “Didn’t you hear me knock?”
Tom pushed himself up on his elbows. “Where’s Shipley?” He sat up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Man, what is that burning smell?”
One side of Professor Rosen’s mouth twitched upward in a grim half smile. “Your parents came by to check on you early this morning, but they didn’t want to wake you. They had to get back to New York. I promised them I’d stop by and see how you were doing later on. Your dad wanted me to be sure you got some studying time in before exams.”
Tom blinked and looked at his wrist. His watch wasn’t there. He’d taken it off for the play. “So it’s Sunday,” he said.
“And that burning smell is the smoke from the yurt your friend Nicholas built out back. It burned down this morning,” she said.
“Holy fuck!” Tom glanced at Nick’s upturned bed and frowned. “Nobody, like, burned up inside it or anything, did they?”
“No.” The professor walked over to Tom’s desk chair and picked up the blue bath towel that was draped over the seat. She tossed the towel at Tom. “Why don’t you take a shower? I’ll see if I can find Shipley. Meet me outside the dorm in twenty minutes. I’ll take you guys out for some food.”
Tom picked up the towel. “Isn’t the dining hall still open for breakfast?”
The professor gave him another one of her half smiles. “Tom, it’s after four. The dining hall won’t be open until dinner at six.”
Shipley burst into the room as Tom was staring out the window at the black ring of yurt ash in the deep, white snow. Water dripped from his freshly showered body onto the floor.
“Tom!” she cried, thrusting a gigantic cup of Starbucks coffee in his direction. She’d been lying on her bed, exhausted and dozing and pretending to study, when Professor Rosen called. “I got you a venti latte.”
Her blond hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. The cuffs of her jeans were damp and salt-streaked. Tom thought she looked wonderful. He held out his arms. The blue towel slipped from around his waist. “I love you,” he said, fully naked.
Shipley put the coffee down on his paint-spattered desk and walked into his open arms. He hugged her tightly through her coat and rested his dripping forehead on her shoulder.
“I hope I didn’t fuck up too much last night,” he murmured.
She patted his damp back with her mittened hands. He was so big and his room was a mess. He was a mess. But she loved him anyway. She would love him always. Adam too.
“You were fine. You were great,” she said, and bent down to retrieve his towel. “Here, get dressed. Professor Rosen’s downstairs. She says she’s going to buy us donuts.”
Outside, the setting sun was already drifting downhill. Professor Rosen’s minivan was waiting for them. Stray flakes of snow drifted down from the trees and fluttered to the ground. Tom opened the van’s side door. A baby was strapped into a car seat in the back.
“Hey, I didn’t know you had a baby!” He thumbed his ears at the baby and stuck out his tongue. The baby seemed to be asleep with its eyes open.
“Hop in.” Professor Rosen turned around and scraped the stuff on the backseat onto the floor. Diapers, maps, baby bottles.
Tom and Shipley got in. Nick and Eliza were in the very back seat, holding hands.
“Hey, Slutcakes,” Eliza said. “What is this? Musical boys?”
Nick’s cheeks were pink and shiny from so much cortisone. “You guys all ready for exams?”
Tom slid the door closed and settled into the seat on one side of the baby while Shipley sat on the other. “So who knew it was going to snow last night?” He caught the professor’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Did you know?”
Professor Rosen backed the van out onto the road. “The storm was on the news all week. People were buying up the whole grocery store. The turkeys were all gone. No potatoes even. Guess people thought the whole system would shut down.”
They coasted down the hill toward town. Snow was everywhere. The entire campus had been transformed into a winter wonderland.
“Just look at it all!” Tom marveled, as if he’d never seen snow before. He turned his head to admire Shipley’s profile against the white snowbanks outside the window. Then he glanced down at the baby. Its eyes were dark brown and its skin was the color of maple syrup. It was holding Shipley’s finger.
“I can’t wait for Christmas,” Shipley murmured. Beetle’s skin had reminded her of Hawaii.
“Me too,” Professor Rosen agreed. “We’re going to Sedona.”
“I’m going to stay in my pj’s till New Year’s,” Tom yawned.
Nick spoke up from the way back. “I’m going to Eliza’s house.”
“I can’t wait for donuts,” Eliza chimed in. She stuck her hand down the back of Nick’s pants and kept it there. “Hey, is anyone else having major déjà vu?” She stared out at the snow for a while, then turned around and stuck her tongue out at Nick. He looked so much better without his hat, and his skin was beginning to calm down.
Nick pushed her bangs up off her forehead to see what she would look like without them. “Whoa,” he said, and let the bangs drop. “Maybe you should start wearing hats.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I could knit one for you.”
“Oh God.” Eliza grimaced. “Please, someone just shoot us now and put us out of our misery.”
Shipley undid her seat belt and crawled over Beetle’s car seat to sit in Tom’s lap.
“Oi!” Professor Rosen called out.
Nick and Eliza were all over each other now, the moist sucking sounds of their kisses muffled by the smack of the tires on the wet road. Tom put his arms around Shipley and pulled her in close. Through the very back window of the car she could see the blue light of Dexter’s chapel spire, shining significantly on top of the hill, like a beacon. It was hard to believe it could ever go out.
Behind them, the road was a black river cutting across a glistening white field fringed with dark trees. A curl of smoke rose up from the chimney of a nearby farmhouse. She imagined Patrick and Adam and Adam’s parents sitting around a fire, eating Tragedy’s cookies and drinking wine. If Adam went to England, Patrick could drive his car instead of hers. Patrick might even move in with the Gatzes. It might work out for everyone.
She wrapped her arms around Tom’s neck and kissed him in a roving, tentative manner, like a person trying to get into a house when they’ve forgotten the key. She kissed his forehead, his temples, his ears, his neck, his chin. He smelled like Ivory soap and Gillette shaving cream and Colgate toothpaste and Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo—all the things she was used to. But there were other things she craved, things she didn’t even know existed. Once you got a taste for the unexpected, it was hard to settle for anything less.
She paused for a breath. “Did you know they have snow in Hawaii?”
“That’s why I went to college,” Tom joked. “To learn shit like that.” He tilted his head back and puckered his lips, eager for more of her.
Shipley slammed his head against the back of the seat and kissed him on the mouth, this time with conviction. Then, without another word, she pulled away and crawled back over Beetle’s car seat. The van lurched over a bump and, for a moment, was airborne. One of Nick’s Philosophy textbooks dropped out of his bag and slid across the floor beneath Shipley’s feet. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, she read upside down. Thank goodness she wasn’t in that class.
She refastened her seat belt and gazed out the window. The sky was swollen and ripe. It would snow again, soon. There would be more snow, more kisses, more sex, more gunshots, more fires. This was what she had come for—what they had all come for. This was college.
Acknowledgments
I would be plagued by guilt and unable to write anything if I didn’t know that my children were always having a good time without me, and for that I thank Marsha Torres, Erasmo Paolo, and my mother, Olivia. Thank you, Suzanne
Gluck, agent extraordinaire, for being fierce, wise, sympathetic, and funny at all the right times; and Sarah Ceglarski, Elizabeth Tigue, and Caroline Donofrio for being wonderful. At Hyperion, thank you, Brenda Copeland, for your wit, keen insight, swift responses, and good taste in cheese; Kate Griffin for your professionalism; and Ellen Archer, for giving me a chance and then some. Thank you Barbara Pavlock for your help with Latin. Thank you Paragraph, where this book’s beginnings were written. Thank you Karaoke Wednesdays. Thank you Ambien. Thank you Agnes and Oscar, my children and the teachers from whom I’ve learned the most. And thank you Richard, for reading this thing more than once, and for being a really good husband, despite being married to me.
About the Author
Cecily von Ziegesar is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gossip Girl novels, upon which the hit television show is based. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction and the events, incidents, and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 Cecily von Ziegesar
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4013-1048-6
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0425-6
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Cover photograph by Katie Kaars/GalleryStock
First eBook Edition
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Permissions
Lyrics to Fire on the Mountain, Uncle John’s Band, and Eyes of the World copyright Ice Nine Publishing Company. Used with Permission.
Selections from “The Zoo Story” reprinted with permission from Edward Albee.
“THE ZOO STORY”
Copyright © 1959 by Edward Albee, renewed 1987
All rights reserved
CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that “The Zoo Story” is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), the Berne Convention, the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention as well as all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author’s agent in writing.
Inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to:
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Attn: Jonathan Lomma
THE ZOO STORY was first produced at the Billy Rose Theatre in New York, USA on October 9, 1968.
Edward Albee has since written a companion piece to “The Zoo Story” titled “Homelife.” The two pieces form the play “At Home at the Zoo.”
Cecily von Ziegesar, Class
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