“What?” Danielle pouts, so I snap that, too, and then turn on my heels back toward the building where I can click through the photos without glare. She comes close, leaning over my shoulder, and she smells like sunscreen and pineapple. “So how long have you been into photography?”
“Since I was fifteen.” I squint at the screen, trying to figure out why there seems to be a flare hazing several of the photos. “You do archeology? Or Greek shi—stuff?”
“I’m here for creative writing. Poetry. But I have lots of talents.” Her voice goes low, whispery, and I look up and realize the only thing separating us is my camera and my lack of attention.
I glance over her shoulder. Constance is bossing around a clean-up crew. I figure I only have fifteen minutes before I’ve got to get to the kitchen, but Danielle is toying with the laces of her top, looking at my mouth, her own lips parted. I lower the lens and refocus.
6.
Midnight
I slide into my room at midnight on the dot. From her bed, Faye looks up behind square framed reading glasses. “Hi,” I say, locking the door behind me. I walk to the closet and reach for my plaid pajamas.
“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”
“Not when you’re with a student advisor—what’s he going to do? Report me?” I grin.
She puts down her book and leans forward. “You were with him the whole time?”
I take my earrings out, lay them on the shelf under the mirror, and pull my tank over my head. “Yeah, just talking... and stuff.” I give her a wink.
“What’s his name?”
“Jeremy. He’s doing graduate work at Wake Forest,” I say. I turn on my laptop, and swipe half-heartedly at my makeup while it’s booting up. “He’s cute, nothing to linger over, but better than listening to Julian freak out all evening. What are you reading?”
“Well, while you were out seducing handsome graduate advisors, I went back to the library and found some books for our project. This one is about local folklore. You were right, this campus does have an interesting history.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Maybe. Julian was in the library when I got there. I told him I would let you guys know tomorrow if I found anything interesting.”
I check Facebook and Twitter, and Sonja’s blog that is difficult to access on my phone. No updates on what she’d doing instead of nerd camp. Faye peels off her clothes, layer by layer, skirt and shirt and more skirts and tights, though no bra, and climbs into a ruffled romper straight out of an Edwardian BBC show. I power my laptop down. “Was he pissed?” I ask.
“Who?”
“My brother.”
She shrugs and reopens the book. “Why would he be angry?”
“Because of Jeremy? I don’t know. He doesn’t like it when I socialize, or flirt or have any fun at all.”
“He wasn’t angry, but I do think he worries about you.” She scribbles on sticky note and presses it to the page. “That’s what brothers are for—or so I’ve read. I don’t have any siblings.”
“He’ll understand when he finally finds himself a girl he can talk to.”
“An ugly girl, right?” Faye looks up again, cocks her head funny on her neck. The glasses tilt sideways. “You said he’s intimidated by pretty girls.”
“She’ll have to have the patience of a saint, too.” I sigh, pulling the sheet back on my bed and kneading my pillow. “Poor thing.”
“Who’s the poor thing? Him, or her?”
“Both!” I laugh, and switch off my lamp.
The room, now dark but for the little desk light, is still clear behind my eyelids: Faye, toying with the ribbon at the neck of her little cotton night thing as she reads; the closed red book on her desk, with a stone sitting on the cover, a jagged R etched into the gray surface; my nail polish on my desk, the bottles in a neat row.
“Goodnight, Faye.”
“Goodnight.”