Chapter 2

CHAPTER

2

PRESENT

I push through the swinging wooden door to the women’s restroom with such force that it ricochets off the door stopper. The restrooms in the Hall of Letters are vaguely Edwardian, reflective of the hundred or so years that the building’s been standing: lacquered wooden stalls and glazed subway tile, the grout blackened with age. The handle on the sink squeaks as I turn it and splash cold water on my face, but even after I finish patting dry with a paper towel, my reflection still looks like I’ve seen a ghost. I grip the sides of the porcelain, sniffing hard. “Get yourself together, Clara,” I mutter to the tarnished mirror.

Behind me, there’s the woosh of a toilet flushing and the stall door creaks open. A lanky girl in a skater skirt and ripped fishnets emerges. Likely a freshman—classes don’t start until next week, but new students arrive early to move into their dorms and attend orientation. She stands at the sink next to mine and lathers her hands with three pumps of citrus-scented soap, casting a concerned smile at my reflection. Her hair’s that bluish-black color of box dye, pale roots peeking out. She reminds me a little of how I wanted to dress when I was a teenager.

I return her smile, albeit weakly. I should probably feel embarrassed, but chances are she doesn’t even know I’m an instructor. I’m only thirty-one, easy enough to mistake for a stressed-out grad student having a pre-semester bathroom breakdown. And my clothes don’t exactly scream professor, in part because I’m not doing any professing today: tennis shoes with black jeans and a sleeveless graphic tee. Just have to cross my fingers that she doesn’t turn up in any of my classes this semester.

She digs a violently red lip tint out of her bag and pumps the wand a few times before leaning close to the mirror to apply it. “I saw their Reunion Tour,” she says offhandedly. I shoot her a questioning look and she nods at my shirt. “A couple years ago.”

I glance at the shirt in my reflection, the backward letters spelling out MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE . I’ve had it since high school. “I saw them once, during the World Contamination Tour,” I say, smoothing the age-crackled graphic of the lovers from the Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge album cover.

Her crimson-tinted mouth drops open. “Dude. I’m so jealous. I was like, five. I wasn’t even born when The Black Parade came out.”

Great. On top of everything else, I’ve now been made aware that the infamous opening G note—the calling card of all former emo kids—is officially old enough to buy itself a pack of cigarettes.

She peppers me with a few excited questions before losing interest, parting ways with a rather ominous, “See you around campus!”

As soon as the door swings shut behind her, I blow out a breath. My eyes are rimmed with pink, and errant blondish hairs have escaped my braid. I wet my hand in the sink and smooth them flat against my head, hoping to salvage some semblance of professionalism.

Get it together.

Nine years. It’s been almost a decade since that phone call outside Manchester Cathedral. A lifetime, really. Empires have risen and fallen in less time. But it still stings like it was yesterday, a self-inflicted wound that never quite had the chance to heal. It’s not that I think I should have said yes. I’m firm in my belief that the timing just wasn’t right. But I wish I hadn’t handled it all so recklessly. I wish he would’ve answered my calls or texts in the weeks that followed, and I wish I hadn’t given up on calling altogether.

I wish, more than anything, that I hadn’t lost my best friend.

I dry my hands on a paper towel and toss it in the wastebasket before digging my phone out of the front pocket of my messenger bag. I search my contacts for Izzy Santos and press call. While the phone rings, I push through the bathroom door and out into the hall.

The call goes to voice mail. Unsurprising. We’ve been playing phone tag all summer. She’ll call me back later, probably when I’m in the middle of something and can’t answer. By the time I’m off work it’ll be 10 P.M. in Portugal and she’ll be at some club where they play electro house music so loud it’s impossible to think, let alone hold an actual conversation. And so it continues. I stuff my phone back in my purse and start down the stairs.

I run my hands along the handrail as I descend, tracing the places where the quarter-sawn oak has been worn smooth by a century of hands. Irving isn’t that old or prestigious a school, comparatively speaking—it’s a private liberal arts college, built in the early nineteenth century—but I’ve always appreciated what history it has, even if it’s a bit recent for my tastes.

My phone buzzes in my purse. And then buzzes again. And again. I pause on the landing to check it, the etched-glass window refracting a kaleidoscope of colors across yellowed hardwood planks. I’m not so na?ve as to think it might be Izzy. Our texting habits are even worse than our long chain of missed calls—GIFs and shared Instagram reels that have gone largely unanswered, nothing of substance.

The President: Helllooooo

The President:?!?

The President: Where are you

The President: Don’t tell me you forgot AGAIN

Technically, I did not forget. I remember full well that I’m supposed to meet my little sister in the parking lot so that we can go to an early lunch, but I maybe lost track of time. I zip my phone back into my purse and take the remainder of the stairs at a gallop before exiting the Hall of Letters, emerging onto the patio beside the rose garden.

The skies are clear and the air is thick with humidity—the death throes of a muggy Maryland summer. I wave at Westley the security guard across the parking lot, sitting in his Polaris, his Hi Vis vest gleaming in the sun. Freshmen stop in the middle of the sidewalk to squint up at brick buildings and consult the campus map on their phones, familiarizing themselves with campus before the start of term. Parking placards dangle from rearview mirrors. A couple of the Spanish Department faculty chat by the curb. It is, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly average prelude to the semester.

Except for the parts that aren’t. But I force myself not to dwell on that, shoving it into one of the dark filing cabinets in the far corner of my brain. I’ll deal with that when I come to it. Adjusting the strap on my cross-body bag, I power walk toward a bumblebee-yellow Jeep Wrangler idling in a faculty parking space. Exhaust rises from the tailpipe in billowing clouds. Our campus green initiatives are a lost cause as long as that thing is still on the road.

“William Shakespeare,” Reagan announces as I approach. Her golden-blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s leaning against the hood of her Jeep, arms folded over the University of Irving crest emblazoned across the front of her hoodie.

I arch a brow. “What about him?”

“He once said ‘Better three hours too soon than a minute late,’” she says, pushing herself off the Jeep and walking around to the driver side door.

I climb into the passenger seat. It smells like artificial cherries, dried-up jars of gel air freshener cluttering the drink holders. “When did he say that?”

“The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

I pause in the middle of buckling my seat belt. “And you memorized it?” I don’t recall The Merry Wives of Windsor being standard reading, but then again, I didn’t major in literature.

“Of course not. I Googled ‘quotes about punctuality’ a few minutes before you got here.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “That would explain it.”

We swerve out of the parking lot and onto a narrow one-way street, shaded beneath Federal-style brick buildings and gnarled trees. I rest my fingers in the overhead grab handle as a precaution. Reagan’s driving is terrifying. She’s not a bad driver, per se—she’s got a clean driving record as far as I know. It’s more that the Jeep instills a tad too much confidence in her. If another car gets in her way, she could probably just run them over. That’s what Reagan’s used to doing: just barging her way through life and hoping it works out.

She stops at a stop sign, but she only seems to remember to do so at the last second: the tires squeal in protest, and I brace myself against the dashboard.

“Stop doing that,” she says, continuing through the intersection like it’s nothing. Thankfully, there are no other cars around, but there are students waiting at the crosswalk, and they’re staring at us.

I hide my face by resting an elbow against the door, shooting a covert glare at Reagan. “Doing what?”

“Putting your hand on the dash like that. It reminds me of Mom.”

“Seems to be a trend among your passengers. Maybe you should take it as a sign.”

She huffs, but doesn’t acknowledge the dig. We swing into the parking lot of Bucky’s Burgers and Dogs—less of a burger joint and more of a sports bar using sloppy hamburgers as a cover story, but the good news is that it’s completely dead at noon on a Monday, so I can drop the whole professor act without worrying about bumping into any students. We order at the counter and then grab a table beneath a lazy ceiling fan that’s fighting a losing battle against smoke from the grill.

I watch in horror as Reagan pops the lid off of her iced tea and proceeds to add not sugar, but several pink packets of Sweet’N Low. “What are you doing?” I ask warily. Mom was born and raised in Tennessee and sweet tea was sacred in our household, growing up. This is blasphemy. It’s like I’m sinning just by looking at it.

She mixes the abomination with her straw, ice clattering. “I’m on a diet.”

“Yes, but—” I resist the urge to remind her that she just ordered a chili cheeseburger and fries. “Wouldn’t you rather let yourself enjoy things?”

Her forehead crinkles. “You’re one to talk. Look at you.”

“What about me?”

“Old. Single. The antithesis of fun.”

Ah. There it is. The payback for my driving comment. I take a long sip of my Pepsi through the straw, trying not to focus on any one accusation in particular, but try as I might, there’s one that eats at me. “I’m single by choice.”

“No one’s single by choice. If they say they are, they’re lying. Or maybe working through some shit. You don’t even have shit to work through.”

“I’m too busy for a relationship.” That’s always been my reasoning, but it tastes especially bitter today. Ever since finishing grad school, I haven’t had the time to meet people. Always working on the next paper (right now, an article analyzing the language used in a letter from Elizabeth of York to Isabella, Queen of Castile regarding the betrothal of their children) and juggling three classes with student advising and committee meetings. University of Irving isn’t exactly a hotbed of attractive singles—not ones in my age range, that’s for sure—and between hours spent figuring out the nightmarish departmental transition from Blackboard to Instructure and recently learning that Facebook is for old people, it’s become woefully apparent that I’m no longer tech-savvy enough for dating apps.

“Anyway, how’d it go this morning?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.

“Fine,” she says on a sigh. Reagan language for incredibly fucking boring. “We’re not really allowed to talk. This lady kept shushing us while we were shelving books.”

“That is generally the nature of a library,” I point out. This morning marked her first day of training for a student position in the Reynolds Library at the heart of campus. It’s part of a work-study program that the financial aid office set her up with after she failed to qualify for any of the merit-based scholarships on admission.

Reagan’s relationship with school couldn’t be more different from my own. Not that it’s her fault. She’s younger than me by ten whole years; Dad’s vasectomy wasn’t as foolproof as they’d assumed. I was homeschooled for most of my life, but circumstances had changed by the time our parents enrolled her at a local public elementary school. When her high school GPA landed squarely at 2.4 and her SAT scores were underwhelming, our parents shrugged and told her to enroll in community college.

That’s where she got it together, at least academically—visiting the tutoring center when she needed help and staying up late editing her papers until they earned her a passing grade. But while it got her admitted to Irving, it wasn’t enough to earn her a free ride. Our parents are still knee-deep in medical bills, part of an ongoing battle with worker’s comp. I co-signed some of her loans for this semester, but I’m still paying off the loans I took out for my Ph.D. This isn’t sustainable long-term.

Just another reason tenure would work in my favor.

Which reminds me of the conversation in Julien’s office this morning, no matter how hard I’m trying to push it aside.

Absently, I use the straw to push the ice around in my drink, plastic squeaking against the lid. “Maybe you were too young,” I say, “but do you remember I had this friend a long time ago, Teddy Harrison?”

Reagan shakes her head.

“You met him. He was”—so many things that would be difficult to summarize, so I settle for—“the tall one, with the glasses. He came to my graduation at UMD, when I got my bachelor’s. You would’ve been, what, ten? Eleven?”

This seems to jar her memory. “We went to get dinner afterward.”

“Right.” I hesitate. I promised myself I wasn’t going to dwell on it. But I also feel the need to tell someone. To acknowledge it out loud, so that the truth of it can calcify, become tangible, and maybe then I can figure out what I’m supposed to do. “We had a sort of falling-out. I haven’t talked to him in probably a decade. And then this morning, I found out that he’s coming here. To teach at Irving.”

“What, were you stalking his LinkedIn or something?”

“No.” I’m slightly offended she thinks I’m enough of a workaholic to have a LinkedIn account. “The chair of the History Department asked me to share an office with him. Share an office with Teddy, I mean, not with the chair. There are chairs in my office. Just not, you know, the chair.” I should really get into the habit of thinking through a whole sentence before speaking, but word vomit is sort of a Fernsby family trait. I’ve just accepted that it’s genetic at this point and given up on trying to change it.

We’re interrupted by an employee in a baseball cap and a bright red Bucky’s polo delivering two plates to the table. “Why are you telling me this?” Reagan asks warily.

“Because,” I say, self-conscious. Little sisters have a way of doing that to you. “I guess I just needed someone to vent to.”

“You could try a life coach. See if they can help you get your priorities straight.”

I flick a french fry across the table at her. “You’re one to talk.”

She deconstructs her burger, peeling slices of mayo-slathered tomato from the bun and setting them on a napkin. “So, is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing? Like, are you hoping to reconnect with him, or are we talking more of an ‘avoid him at all costs’ situation?”

“It’s complicated,” I say, picking at the sesame seeds on my own bun. I’m not sure that I’m all that hungry, but I should probably eat. “It’s just—” I shrug. “There’s a lot of history there.”

That doesn’t even begin to cover it.