English as a Second Language

But Suzanne was wreathed in disturbingly authentic-looking smiles. She grinned around the table, and in particular at Toby and me. Well, mostly at me. It was such a shock that I found myself smiling back automatically.

  “I’m so glad you’re all here!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”

  We watched her march off toward the food counter.

  “I’m sorry,” Toby said. “Was that Suzanne, the drama queen?”

  “I think it was her cheery body double,” I said, still dazed. “I have no other explanation.”

  “Perhaps she got a good mark,” Jason chimed in, shrugging.

  Ah, I thought. Mystery solved.

  Suzanne came back and sat herself right down. “Did you see Sean yet?” she asked me.

  “I did,” I said. She giggled.

  “It’s so hard to pay attention to what he’s saying, don’t you think?” she trilled. “I keep thinking about how hot he is instead.”

  “That’s the problem I have,” Jason told Toby very solemnly.

  “I think we all do,” Toby replied in the same tone.

  “He’s awfully hot,” I agreed. I had a flash image of that kiss, except in the image there was no Miss Sexy Only in Britain. There was just me. I felt a hot flash wash over me and chugged my soda.

  “Why have you gone red?” Toby demanded.

  “Shut up,” I muttered, and gulped down some more diet Coke.

  “So,” Suzanne said, trying to be casual. “How did you all do on the papers?”

  “Fair enough,” Jason said, smiling, all blue eyes and charm.

  “Did you read your comments?” Suzanne asked. “Jessica Ferrar is scary. She really didn’t like some of the things I said in my paper.” She tossed her photocopied comments into the center of the table, so we could all look down and see, in Sean’s distinctive hand, a number with a circle around it. The number, based on the British grading system, which completely escaped me, was a mark just below Distinction. Suzanne had done very well.

  “Congratulations,” I said, and meant it. “You did really well.”

  She looked at me almost pityingly. “I didn’t mean for you to look at the mark, Alex,” she twittered. “I wanted you to read the comments . . .”

  “That bitch!” I snarled. “Like I was some slathering competitive seventeen-year-old trying to beat her in the Academic Decathlon!” I was practically shouting.

  “In the what?” Cristina asked.

  “Never mind!” I shouted. “The point is, Suzanne is the embodiment of all that is evil!”

  “This is not new,” Cristina pointed out. “But here’s something new. You know that bloke, David’s friend, right?”

  “The one who was here.”

  “Yes.” She shrugged. “His name is John. He knows my name. I think he is interested.”

  I watched her face as I reached over and stole one of her cigarettes. “Are you interested?” I asked carefully.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t know.” She took a drag of her cigarette and leaned back so she could look out her window. We were in her room, which was always much messier than mine. Which I found comforting.

  There was a knock on the door, followed by Melanie pushing her way in.

  “I thought you’d be in here,” she said. She wandered over and seated herself on the wide windowsill. “Well? What are you talking about?”

  “That Suzanne,” Cristina said.

  “Suzanne is boring,” I said. “We were talking about John.”

  Melanie grinned. “John,” she said. She looked at me. “He quite likes Cristina. He was practically following her around today, like a sweet little puppy.”

  “He was not!” Cristina protested. But she was fighting off a smile.

  “He was,” Melanie said. “And she was cool and distant and mysterious, and only smiled at him once, from a distance, as she was leaving. He was smitten.”

  “You tease,” I scolded her.

  “I cannot be a tease,” Cristina said dryly. “I have already surrendered the prize.”

  “That’s not the point,” I said dismissively. “He was pretty cute, as I recall.”

  “He’s very cute,” Melanie agreed.

  “None of this is the point,” Cristina said softly.

  “I know,” I said. Melanie and I exchanged a look. “But maybe it’s better to have a real relationship than to yearn for something that might never happen anyway.”

  “How can it be better?” Cristina asked quietly. “In my heart I will always know that it was never my first choice. That David with a single look . . .” She shrugged. “In any case, who cares? John will get over it.”

  We were all silent.

  Then, “What about Suzanne?” Melanie asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I hate her.”

  “Did she shout at you for sleeping with Toby?”

  “I did not sleep with Toby!” I shouted. I coughed. “Just to make sure that’s clear.”

  “Technically—” Melanie began.

  “And no,” I continued, cutting her off. “Suzanne was everybody’s best friend today. She wanted to show off her mark.”

  “We don’t like her,” Melanie said. “How was your mark?”

  “Distinction,” I bragged, and grinned. They both reacted with whoops of joy. Very satisfying. Maybe, I dared to think for the first time, I was in the right field after all. “Which, I’m pleased to say, is better than Suzanne’s mark.”

  “She must not have liked that,” Cristina said.

  “I didn’t share.”

  “Good choice,” Melanie said, nodding. “Her sort always like to compete, but only if they think they’ll win. She wouldn’t have reacted well, given the fact you keep beating her.”

  “She sucks,” I said mildly. “And I’m not trying to beat her. I’m not competing.”

  “This makes it worse,” Cristina said. “This keeps her awake in the night.”

  “By the way,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Did you see George today? He’s turning into a wino.”

  “The night of John,” Cristina said, “we found him lying in the entryway, asleep.”

  “Or unconscious,” I said.

  “He’s very upset,” Melanie said. “I was in the library, and he came to tell me. Fiona has moved on.” Her eyes were bright with laughter. “George’s suspicions were correct, it seems.”

  I scowled. “How come the Vulture has a wild and happening sex life and I’m only accused of having one by an unhinged drama queen?”

  “You could have a sex life,” Cristina sniffed. “You just ignore the possibilities.”

  “If you say ‘Toby’ one more time, I’ll scream,” I warned her.

  “Toby, yes, but anyone,” Cristina said. “You glare at any men who approach you. You dare them to take the chance of speaking to you.” She waved a negligent hand. “And this is England. British men are afraid of their own shadows. They find you terrifying.”

  “That is absolute shit,” I said. The two British men in my own life came to mind, and I was suddenly furious at both of them. Not to mention the jackass Physicist and his stupid housemate. British, every one of them. “I’m so sick and tired of hearing about poor, intimidated, cringing little British men. It’s a complete load of passive-aggressive bullshit. Men are almost never that shy. I think testosterone forbids it. It’s a fucking act. Claim that you’re a shrinking violet and the woman can be made to feel like a marauding beast and you win. She’ll be so grateful for the crumbs of your attention that you can behave however you want and she’ll take it and thank you.” I shook my head. “They just want everything both ways. They want to pretend they’re too shy and scared to make any moves, but they also want to be able to sit in judgment of any women they decide are aggressive. Absolute shit. They’re not shy and scared, they’re manipulative, and I’m sick of it.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a specifically British trait,” Melanie mused. “Not to defend men, who, it goes without saying, are shit. But I
think it might be an international male issue.”

  “Bloody hell, Alex,” Cristina said after a small pause, almost admiringly. “Your mouth is a thing of wonder.”

  Twelve

  So,” George said. He was hunched over a meal at the kitchen table. “Easter break.”

  “Yeah,” I said, eyeing him. Was he drunk? Or sober and thus returned to his original personality? Because I’d be tempted to throw him an emergency beer if we were having a rerun of Horrible George.

  “Any plans?” he asked.

  “Maybe I’ll go to church.” And maybe I would sprout wings and fly myself home to New York for a weekend, you never knew.

  George was frowning at me.

  “Church?” he echoed. “Is that the name of a pub?”

  The campus cleared out. Everyone who could went home for a while. That meant everyone I knew was gone while I sat in my room and pretended I was working on a PhD proposal. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to do a PhD. My basic philosophy boiled down to: why not? What else was I going to do? Slink back to Jay Feldstein, tail between legs? I would rather be dead, and a PhD seemed to me to be a slightly better option than death.

  I didn’t actually know if I wanted to do a master’s, as it happened, and I wouldn’t know until I wrote my dissertation. For all I knew, writing long academic papers would make me break out in hives, or I’d hate it so much I’d have to leave. Nevertheless, it was the time of year for PhD proposals. Toby had already spent hours in the library, researching. This ran counter to my plan, which was to lounge around and wait for inspiration to strike. If inspiration didn’t strike, well, it was unlikely that I would want to spend three or four years of my life buried in a topic I yanked off a library shelf.

  Jason called to announce that he was back for a few days, saving me from staring in despair at my application form.

  “Fantastic! Brennan!” he cried by way of greeting when I picked up the phone. “Get down to the pub immediately!”

  I ran out of the house, unduly excited. It was a week or two into the six-week holiday, and I was going stir crazy. The night before, I had actually considered pounding on George’s door to see if he wanted to go get a drink. Reason had prevailed—he was hardly good company, being comatose most of the time—but I was still reeling from the urge.

  I made it into the village in record time. I was charging along the sidewalk, head down, when I literally slammed into another person.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, without looking up.

  “Oh, hello, Alex,” Sean said. My head snapped up.

  Of course.

  “Oh,” I said, turning bright red.

  Sean, naturally, looked like something out of a magazine, all lean and hot with dark glasses and a smirk in the spring sunshine. I didn’t care if he was dating ten Miss Sexy Only in Britains, he still made my palms sweat.

  “In a hurry?” he asked.

  “Just to get to the pub,” I said. His smirk deepened. If possible, so did my blush.

  Nice one, I congratulated myself. You lush. It is one in the afternoon.

  “I’m, uh, doing my PhD proposal,” I stammered. “Not in the pub. But soon. I mean I’ll give it to you soon, if that’s okay.”

  Just kill me now.

  “I look forward to reading it,” Sean said, politely enough, or at least without any overt contempt. “Have a nice holiday.” His smirk arched into the unholy range. “Don’t spend it all in the pub.”

  I just stared after him as he stepped around me and continued on his merry way. Sometimes I thought that the Jet Lag Dinner should have changed things between us. I suspected he was unlikely to topple head over heels in love with me spontaneously, but I thought, you know, we should be friends. Of course, I didn’t generally stalk my friends. And I tended to be able to form complete sentences while in their presence. Truth be told, I was probably a pretty unappealing prospect from Sean’s perspective. What guy wanted the stammering freak girl who either stared at him intensely or veered way too close to inappropriate emotion? Repeatedly? And who, for that matter, would want the sort of guy who found Freak Girl appealing anyway? I realized that he had probably forgotten he’d even seen me the moment I disappeared from his line of sight. This failed to make me feel better.

  “I am humiliated,” I told Jason, slumped over the table with my head buried in my arms.

  “There, there,” he said. “Have a medicinal pint and the pain will ease.”

  “That’s the problem,” I moaned. “My entire life is about medicinal pints. When am I going to stop drinking and start living?”

  “Not today, one can only hope,” Jason said. He clanked his pint glass into mine. “Cheers.” When I didn’t move, he heaved a sigh. “Brennan,” he said very seriously. “You have to pull yourself together. Sean Douglas is Satan in professorial form, sent to this university to plague you. You must not give in. We must all fight the good fight.”

  “I’m not concerned about Sean,” I snapped. Which wasn’t exactly a lie. My love was true. I didn’t care if he thought I was a freak.

  “The force is with us,” Jason said serenely. “Please begin drinking.”

  Another week dragged by. I decided to be really tricky the day I went to drop off my PhD proposal and various other forms for Sean’s perusal. Running into him again was about the last thing I thought my heart could handle. In the sense that I might collapse with cardiac arrest. So, thinking I was tremendously sly, I staked out the main entryway to the professors’ wing and waited for him to leave the premises. Which he eventually did. Congratulating myself on my stealth, I ran up and shoved my papers under his office door. I was beyond self-congratulatory and moving right along into jubilant as I skipped down the stairs—and almost smashed into Jessica Ferrar, she of the steely glint about the eye and the firm belief that I was an absolute moron. The steely glint seemed particularly pronounced as she shied away from me.

  “Oh,” she said, pursing her lips and focusing on me. Her eyes narrowed.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, becoming as I spoke the physical embodiment of apology. Jessica Ferrar, radical lesbian and eminent scholar, was unmoved.

  “Yes,” she replied in a withering tone. “Excuse me, please.”

  She swept around me and continued climbing the stairs.

  How had she done that? I wondered in some awe. How had she managed to slice me into microscopic bits with five short words and a single glare?

  I walked down the remaining flight of stairs, subdued. When was I going to learn that all attempts at stealth led directly to hideous personal embarrassment?

  “I’m back,” Toby announced unnecessarily when I wrenched open the front door, and only then removed his finger from the buzzer.

  “Thank you,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “I was a little confused that you might be somewhere else, standing here in my doorway.”

  “I see the holiday has really sweetened you up,” he said. “A period of personal reflection and observation that—surprise—has led only to further rudeness.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m already sick of you. Please go.”

  “I’ll phone you,” he said. “We’ll go out.” He grinned at me. “Unless you’re afraid that people will think we’re dating.”

  I let the door slam shut without answering.

  I decided not to go out for about a week, preferring to sleep, read, and cocoon myself in my cot with the covers pulled up. This led to very late nights. One day I went to bed when it was turning light and woke up when it was falling dark outside. I was completely disoriented.

  The newly returned Cristina and I had a quiet dinner. She regaled me with stories of her holiday back home in Madrid.

  “Where,” she said wistfully, “we have a real social life.”

  She went out with some of her Spanish-speaking friends, and I decided to stay in again and read a book. For pleasure and not class. I pulled my last unread romance novel from my shelf and settled down for some pure escapism. Which was int
errupted when I was about halfway through—and right at a really good part.

  “What?!” I yelled, annoyed.

  Toby swung through the door and threw himself on the end of my bed.

  “Ow,” I muttered, yanking my feet out from under him.

  “Brennan, are you really reading that?” He sounded scandalized. He picked up the book with his thumb and forefinger.

  “I like romance novels,” I snapped, snatching the book away from him. “And I’m proud of it. I came out of the closet about my reading preferences when I was still in junior high, so you know what? If you want to mock me, you can go.”

  “Settle down,” he said, laughing at me. “Jesus. You need a drink.”

  “Is it inconceivable to you that I might want to go a single night of my life without a drink?” I was exasperated, but I was mostly kidding. He ignored me in any case and busied himself opening a bottle of wine and pouring us both some.

  “By the way,” I said archly, “don’t think I haven’t noticed that you always drink my alcohol and never contribute.”

  “Are we keeping score?” He was incredulous. “Because I think you’ll find that when you get pissed out of your head in the pub, I end up paying for all the drinks.”

  “And since I’m usually too drunk to remember such details,” I said dryly, “I can hardly argue, can I?”

  He grinned. “Why no,” he said. “I don’t believe you can.”

  We chattered about all kinds of things, and put away the first bottle in good time. The second bottle went down even more smoothly. I suspected that I might be drunk when we were into a third bottle and I found myself jumping up and down on my bed, singing along—or in any case trying to sing along—to a very bad song by an even worse British boy band.

  “Brennan, you nutter, come down from there before you break your bed,” Toby said, but he was laughing too hard to sound very serious. He reached over and yanked me off the bed and onto the floor.

  “Ouch,” I said when I landed, on my feet but hard. “I think I broke my knees.”

  “You’re mad,” Toby said quietly.