Until You

She was a good storyteller with a nice flair for the dramatic. Right now, she was telling him about her very first roommate at her very first boarding school, and what they'd done to get back at the headmistress for the awful food the girls were served.

"Beryl wanted to dump the sugar out of the bowls in the cafeteria and fill them with salt instead but I said, heck, we'd get caught whatever we did so we might as well do something interesting."

She'd been twelve then, she said, and he could just imagine her sitting cross-legged on her narrow bed, dressed in a flannel nightgown and with her hair in braids and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose, whispering and giggling in the dark with another poor little rich girl every bit as homesick as she was.

"...and I said, 'Beryl, did you ever notice, Miss Blakely'—she was the headmistress at the Jefferson Academy, did I tell you that?—'Miss Blakely never eats at the faculty table in the dining room, she just sits there and goes through the motions?"'

He was going through the motions, too. He was too damn distracted to keep his mind on the story but even a Martian would have responded to Miranda's shining eyes and mischievous smile, to the animation in her voice and the feel of her hand as it touched his for emphasis.

"...and that was when I said, 'I'll bet Blakely dines on lobster and pâté in the privacy of her rooms.'" She frowned and shot him a mock glare. "Are you paying attention to this, O'Neil? There's gonna be a quiz, you know."

"Of course I am. You guys were being served stale bread and gruel but you figured Madam Ogre was chowing down on lobster and pâté." He grinned. "Lobster and pâté, huh? Pretty sophisticated thinking for a gawky kid."

Miranda gave him an indignant look before grinning back at him.

"I was not gawky. Skinny as a stringbean, maybe, and convinced I was never going to stop growing until my head hit the ceiling, but not gawky. Miss Blakely wouldn't have allowed it."

"I see. A dead ringer for Michael Jordan, but with a classy palate."

"Give me a break! My idea of gustatory paradise—"

"Gustatory paradise?" Conor said, laughing as he sat up.

"If you can think of a better way to describe peanut butter, onions and sardines on whole wheat bread, let me know."

"You're joking."

"Cross my heart and hope to die. It was the midnight dorm rage that entire semester."

Conor shuddered. "What they say is true. There are inconceivable differences between little girls and little boys."

Miranda's smile grew wicked. "Are you only just figuring that out?"

Their eyes met. After a minute, Conor cleared his throat.

"Go on with that story," he said softly, "or I'm liable to show you that I know the difference, right here and now."

Miranda reached out, put her hands against his shoulders, and he let her tumble him backwards into the grass.

"How?" she whispered, scooting into the curve of his outstretched arm.

"Behave yourself, Beckman, and finish your story. You were about to corrupt poor Beryl."

"Right. She wanted to do the salt-for-sugar thing but I said, if we're gonna go, let's go big time." Miranda rolled onto her belly, plucked a blade of grass and ran it down Conor's nose. "Did you break this?"

"You mean, you can tell?" He smiled up at her. "Heck, Dr. Frankenstein promised no one would ever know."

"Well, I really wouldn't except one time I had this roommate who broke her nose playing field hockey and after it was set, it healed just fine except it had this ever-so-slight tilt to the left."

"Beryl?"

Miranda sighed and fell back again, this time with her head cradled on his shoulder.

"I don't know if poor Beryl ever got around to playing hockey or anything else, for that matter. She was pretty much in purgatory after we did our thing."

"Which was?"

"Well, you have to keep in mind, I'd organized this very polite petition drive, asking for a review of the food they served us. I even went to the Student Council for their support."