Chapter 4 Mary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, had suggested Faye be invited as soon as Davey floated the idea of an all-night party to her, though Davey didn't remember that suggestion at all and took all the credit for the last-minute addition himself. Mary found the quiet girl intriguing.

It was about three weeks before graduation, and Mary had been sitting on the gray stone steps of the library in the sunshine, contemplating the carved stone lions on either side of her. Mary Xiao had been smitten with these lions since the day she'd first set foot on campus. She'd now spent two years rubbing their gray stone noses on the way up the stairs, and her ardor had only deepened. She'd come to tour the campus one winter with her mother before deciding whether to apply. They'd flown from California to tour a number of New England schools, and while Mary's mother grumbled about the cold, Mary found it energizing. The day of their campus tour, which met on the stone steps of the William E. Woodend Rare Books Library, heavy snow had been falling and Mary suggested her mother stay in the hotel. Arriving early, Mary snapped photos and videos of the twinkling snow on the handsome campus that would have done the Vermont tourist board proud. On either side of the library steps were two mysterious figures, sheathed in layers of wrapping that looked both soft and serious. Mary tried to peer under, but the coverings were well secured. When the guide finally arrived and explained they were lions, covered for the winter, she was even more insistent she see them. She rallied the others on the tour to her cause until eventually a groundskeeper was summoned. It was quite the show, the unwrapping of the lions. They wore protective blankets beneath their waterproof plastic, and the anticipation was so great that the whole tour, guide included, spontaneously burst into applause when the head of the lion on the right of the stairs was finally revealed.

Now, at the end of her time in Vermont, Mary was less smitten with the cold than she'd been at the beginning, but she still loved her lions.

On the steps in the early June sunshine, she could see the whole of the campus out in front of her. The library and its cluster of buildings sat on a bit of a hill, and a red brick path that started at the bottom of the library steps led clear across a wide lawn to the massive colonial revival-style humanities building, where Mary often snorted crushed Adderall between classes.

The red bricks in the pathway were an aesthetically pleasing, if illogical, choice for a campus that was subject to harsh Vermont winters. The bricks were forever crumbling and leaving gaps in the path or tripping hazards beneath the ice and snow, and it was a rite of passage to injure your ankle your first winter on campus. The running joke was that the college was doomed to be without a notable athletic team because they specialized in ruining young people's joints. That wasn't true though. It was a liberal arts college. They were never going to be good at sports.

"Invite the quiet girl who does the lasers or whatever," Mary said, offering David her vape. He stood in front of her on the red brick path. Probably didn't want to risk getting his slacks dirty.

He waved away the vape and the suggestion.

"You'll come then?" he asked. He hadn't explained much besides that it was all night, it was at the library, and it was a secret. She didn't know he had it in him.

"It's an intriguing proposition," she said, and that was that.

A couple of days later, Mary took some of her savings and bought the nicest piece of jewelry she could find in Montpelier, Vermont. It was a delicate gold chain, pretty, short enough that it sat right at her throat, and a tiny accompanying cross. Mary wasn't especially religious, but she liked the zipping sensation of the cross when pulled back and forth across the chain, so she'd taken to wearing it every day.

She was tired of Vermont, tired of the people in it. The fatigue with it all was why she had suggested Davey invite the quiet girl. If nothing else, she was a change. The silence was exactly opposite to how Mary conducted herself. Mary read Cantonese and Mandarin, making her an asset for the library and a useful tool to haul out for donors, and Mary made entertaining short videos on her phone that thousands and sometimes millions of people watched, and Mary recognized in Faye a shared quality—how badly both girls wanted others to like them—and Mary was jealous of Faye's ability to bottle her need, to not dance around begging for approval.