“Six,” I said, after counting them.
“Holy shit!”
I blushed at her blasphemy. I didn’t mean to. I wanted nothing more than to fit in to my new surroundings, yet I still felt the heat rising in my cheeks, like it did during confession.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m just not used to talk like that.”
“Convent school?” she asked.
“Exactly. How did you know?”
“You have the look. I went to St. Andrews.”
“You’re a Presbyterian.”
“Very much fallen away. I’m Jenna.”
“Rachel O’Flanagan,” I said, taking her offered hand.
“Quite the handle. Limerick, right?”
“You’ve been there?”
“Every summer for six years straight. We were actually going to Edinburgh, but I would take the train down, see what was what. This was well after the nastiness, of course. I’m only twenty, so I was still in a stroller when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. You’re Frosh, yeah?”
“Um, yeah.”
My mind was still spinning. I had an idea what she was talking about, but only a vague one. I was born and raised in America. Any Irish accent I had was purely accidental, picked up from my neighborhood, church and elders. Yet Jenna had known where my family was from, down to the city.
I also couldn’t yet fathom the idea of someone losing their faith. Believing and then not believing. It was all a lot to take in.
“I’m third year, due for parole soon! Kidding, I love my classes. I’m doing Poli Sci. Judging from your books, I’d guess you’re over at the Bible Building. That’s our own term for the theology school, among the poli sci kids. It’s not very original but it makes us laugh.”
As subtly as I could, I checked her pupils. It didn’t seem like she was high, but you could never be too careful.
“Good one,” I fibbed, deciding she was just excited about life in general.
We kept chatting, with Jenna mostly talking and me mostly listening, so that our time in the line seemed to just fly by. Before I knew it, I was at the checkout, punching in the numbers to charge nearly a thousand dollars to dad’s credit card.
And I had made a friend. My very first one here on campus, as eccentric as she was.Chapter Two - AugustusThe dorms didn’t look like much on the outside. Just one-floor structures like townhouses. Though inside was an innovation of architectural engineering. A central room, combining living room and kitchen, surrounded by sight small bedrooms, encircling it in a roughly orthogonal shape.
There was one main door, leading to seven separate spaces. At least that was how it had looked on the website. I could only hope the reality would live up to the image in my head.
I could see the campus like a glowing city on the hill as our ancient transit van chugged its way along. Only rolling back a little on the ascent. For a while there was a question whether I would get there at all. Though my dad was crafty and devised a way, so he could afford to drive me himself.
Sending my little sister onto the message boards, they’d found a student at my university, a rich prep brat with a double-barreled last name who was looking for someone to drive the rest of their stuff from their hometown.
The job paid $1,000 plus gas. It was a good thing I’d packed fairly light. Otherwise, we would never have gotten all five of us into the van with the load.
It felt weird being a scholarship kid. I was the first one in my family to make it to university, the tradition being more along the lines of construction work. My uncle Dave went to community college and the rest of the family acted like he was a huge deal.
Me going to university on scholarship to study film was like a peasant-farmer’s son getting appointed to the House of Lords. The overall reaction from my beloved blood-relations was a healthy mix of pride and good-natured teasing.
The van coughed its way into a parking spot before sputtering to a halt. How Dad kept the old beast going was a mystery for the ages. But it probably involved a combination of like-new used parts from his mechanic friends, a smattering of black magic as well as a touch of iron will. They didn’t call us Graves because we gave up easily.
Breaking up into teams, my sister and I took my possessions to the cluster housing as my mom, dad and brother went to deliver the stuff and get paid the other $500 and get reimbursed for the gas. It was amazing how carefully Dad had kept and organized each and every gas receipt, like a stamp collector with OCD.
Outside, continuing the theme of their internal design, the cluster housing was divided between eight buildings surrounding a central courtyard in an octagon. The courtyard itself featured an octagonal bench at its center. If I didn’t know better, I would swear that the architect was an adherent of numerology, using eight as a holy number. Things were already looking up.