All Girls Page 2
* * *
When she thinks about it now, Lauren wants to say that on the scale of decisions, coming to Atwater was really a shrug. Her best friend was leaving, and so Lauren thought maybe she should, too. When she first asked her father about boarding school, he laughed. When he realized she was serious, he kept laughing, adding a “no-fucking-way” for clarity. The no-fucking-way was his mistake: he should have known his daughter had inherited his stubbornness and that his refusal to even have a conversation would turn a passing idea into a capital-G Goal. She applied to six schools—not a halfhearted number like three, and not an insane number like ten. Four of them were girls’ schools. She got in everywhere, and Atwater threw the most scholarship money her way. (Not very much, her dad would remind her.) It was her mother who diligently printed out the suggested packing list and who drove to Target almost daily during the final days of summer, buying extra of nearly everything (four towels instead of two, six washcloths instead of four; ten days’ worth of socks and underwear; double packs of toothpaste and deodorant and, humiliatingly, the hundred-count box of tampons). Shopping was how Lauren’s mother expressed her love, which was not to say that she took Lauren to the mall or that they went on day trips to New York City like Grace and her mom, but rather that a to-do list that involved spending money was Susan Triplett’s love language.
She kept everything in the guest room, where the Target bags accumulated as if it were Christmastime (the guest room was off-limits to Lauren and her brother, Max, during the holidays). As the days until move-in shrunk to the single digits—four, then three, then two—Susan unpacked each shopping bag, organizing the items into two large Rubbermaid-type containers because, she said, they would pack easier. She said this from her knees in the guest bedroom as she smoothed out a towel, folded it in thirds lengthwise, and then rolled it tightly, like a sleeping bag.
* * *
“Bryce! This must be your roommate!” The woman standing in the doorway of Lauren’s new room is thin with spindly ankles and tight, radiant skin. The few wrinkles she has strike Lauren, somehow, as the right kind of wrinkles: a delicate crinkling at the corners of the eyes, barely there curves parenthesizing her lips. “Come say hello, why don’t you.”
“Mom,” says the girl as she emerges from behind her mother’s shoulder, “I’m not five. I know how to introduce myself.” She steps around the woman angling her hip in the doorframe and extends a perfectly manicured hand with the same certainty as Olivia had in the parking lot.
“Hi,” she breathes. “I’m Bryce.” Unlike Olivia, Bryce is Standard American Rich Girl pretty. She has straight brown hair and perfect bone structure and a smattering of neat freckles across her nose. While so many of Lauren’s friends from home are middle-school skinny, Bryce is naturally thin, grown-up thin. “You must be Lauren. Olivia told me your name when she showed us to our room. Where are you from?”
“Albany,” Lauren says, and when Bryce’s little nose wrinkles confusedly she adds, “upstate New York.”
Bryce nods. “Oh, cool. I’m from Danbury, but my dad lives in Chappaqua. That’s upstate, right?”
“If you’re from Manhattan, it is!” Susan waves from the hallway. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Susan, Lauren’s mom.”
“Lillian Engel,” Bryce’s mother replies.
The two moms shake hands, and Lauren feels a reflexive embarrassment at her mother’s mere existence. She cannot imagine her own mother in tight cropped jeans and minimalist sandals; Lillian seems sophisticated in a way Lauren’s mom never has.
“Is it okay that Bryce took this side of the room?” She motions to her right. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind switching to over by the window if you wanted,” she adds.
Their room runs long and narrow and parallel to the hallway, one bed positioned against the wall that buffers the hall and the other against the exterior, beneath the edge of their window. Although they are technically on the first floor, Lathrop is built into a hill; rooms in the back of the building stand a story higher above ground than rooms in the front, so Lauren and Bryce still have a view.
“Oh, no,” Lauren says. “It’s fine.”
“Lauren’s bed at home is under a window, too,” Lauren’s mom adds. “Right, sweetie?”
“Excellent,” Mrs. Engel says, her hands clasped as if in prayer.
Lauren is not much help as they do the actual moving in. Her dad shuttles things up from where the car is parked. Her mother unpacks: she lines the dresser with floral-printed dresser paper; she finds the outlet behind the desk; she organizes Lauren’s shoes on the floor of her closet in neat rows. Lillian Engel does not get on her knees and line her daughter’s underwear drawer with floral-printed paper. It makes Lauren embarrassed, and she finds herself hurrying her mother through the last bit of unpacking.
The rules are the rules: Parents must leave by 4:30 P.M. on Move-In Day, and so at quarter past Lauren stands in the parking lot with her mother and father with the confused feeling of an anticlimax. They hug and remind each other that she’ll be home in just a few weeks, over the fall Long Weekend. Lauren’s mother holds her a beat too long, and Lauren is gripped briefly with the cynical suspicion that this goodbye is performative. Not wanting to make a scene, Lauren pulls her phone out of her pocket and taps into her messages as the car pulls away.
Just said bye to Sue and Brett. How’s your move-in?
Lauren waits in the parking lot until her parents’ car is out of sight, disappeared down the hill they drove up hours before. When Grace doesn’t respond, she’s left with no choice: she slides her phone into her back pocket and turns back toward the dorm.
* * *
That night they have their first Hall Meeting. Olivia and their Peer Educator, Tate McKenzie, and Ms. Daniels review dorm expectations and lead them through some icebreakers. They begin by sharing “roses and thorns”: something that has gone well—a rose—and something that went or is going less well. They’ll do this each night for the next three days, and most of the thorns will involve getting lost, and most of the roses will involve not getting lost. Lauren tries to remember her hallmates’ names: Natalie Howard is pretty like Bryce and spends the week in coordinated athleisure; her roommate is Brianna Heller, but she’s from Texas and within a month they’ll be calling her “Tex” instead. Macy Grant and Jade Wright share the room across the hall from Bryce and Lauren, and Lauren thinks she’ll like them, based on the fact that they, too, don’t say much during Hall Meetings.
At the end of the meeting, Ms. Daniels takes a deep breath and lowers her tone to something Lauren recognizes as more teacherly: empathetic but stern, nurturing but authoritative. She’s pretty, Lauren thinks, with clear skin and honey-blond hair. She could be a college student, in her faded Williams crewneck.
“I want to give you guys a little bit of time to finish unpacking before lights out,” she begins, “but I need to say one more thing before we wrap up Meeting.” She looks around the room, leaning forward off the edge of the couch she shares with Olivia and Tate, who each lean back and train their eyes on the ground at their feet.
“This is a hard thing to talk about, and I want to say in advance that I’m sorry that we have to have this conversation on your first night at your new school. I hope it doesn’t dampen your enthusiasm for being here, because I promise you that this is a special place and that you’re going to love it.” She smiles. She has straight white teeth and tiny dimples. “Some of you may have driven past some disturbing yard signs on your way to school this morning. Like campaign signs you might see during an election, but not. Am I right?”
There is a beat before someone volunteers. “Yeah,” Tessa DeGroff says, a little bit too loudly for the stillness that has settled over the group. Tessa is from D.C., the daughter of lawyers-turned-lobbyists.
“Anybody else? Or just Tessa?”
Lauren wonders if Ms. Daniels knows her name, too. Around her, her hallmates nod, one after another, in half shrugs and chin flicks.
“A recent alum?” Tessa asks.
“Not a recent graduate, no,” Ms. Daniels replies. “But there is an alum who has made an accusation of sexual assault against a faculty member she worked with as a student. And she is—clearly—unhappy with how the school has responded to this allegation.” Ms. Daniels pauses, and Lauren watches how she seems to chew on the inside of her lower lip, curling it in slightly.
“So … but … the teacher still works here?”
Ms. Daniels holds her response for a moment. “The individual in question has a long history of service and dedication to the school and its students. We do not have any reason to believe that the alum is telling the truth about this.”
“When did this alum graduate?” Daphne Martin, Tessa’s roommate, is from London, and—accordingly—has an accent that endears her to the entire hallway.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question. We cannot provide any details that might identify either the alum or the faculty member. I know that must be frustrating and confusing, and I’m sorry. I don’t mean to begin our relationship here in a way that seems to lack transparency.”
Next to Ms. Daniels, Tate picks at her cuticles, her middle finger flicking against the curved corner of her thumbnail.
“So what’s the school going to do?”
“For now, they are trying to work with the alumna to get a clearer picture of her motive and desired outcome. Once they have more information, they’ll communicate their findings and next steps to the broader community.”
There’s a beat of quiet, and Ms. Daniels scans the room again, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“Was it rape?” Tessa has tiny, deep-set eyes.
Ms. Daniels cocks her head to one side, her shoulders rising with an outsize inhale. “I don’t think I can answer that question, either. I’m so sorry.”
“So, what are you telling us?” Tessa asks, her voice short and sharp. Next to Lauren, Bryce leans forward, her lips pursed, undeniably intrigued.
“Can I say something?”
Lauren realizes why Olivia Anderson’s voice feels so familiar: She sounds like a politician, or a television anchor, firm and even-paced.
“Of course,” Ms. Daniels says without taking her eyes off Tessa.
“This school is my home. Three years ago, I sat in this very common room and listened to my proctor—Delaney Mathis—tell us about all that we had to look forward to. And not just our classes and sports, but also all these traditions that sounded so exotic to me at first”—Olivia uses her hands when she talks, and when she says “exotic” she elongates the oh in the middle—“like Ringing and Fall Fest and Vespers and Founder’s Day.” She pauses, turning her mouth into a kind of pleading smile. “I remember the only one I recognized was prom. It was like I’d dropped into a fantasy world, you know? I felt like I’d have to learn a whole different language to survive here.”
Lauren has already started to pick up on the Atwater shorthand: Trask is the arts center; Avery is the library; most faculty live in the on-campus housing in “Professorville.” They live in Lathrop; the upperclasswomen live in Whitney.
“So what you’re saying is that Atwater is magical,” Tate adds.
“Well, I’m supposed to be a cool and jaded senior now, and I don’t want any of you ruining my reputation, but—”
“Oh, don’t worry, nobody thinks you’re cool.” Tate winks.
Olivia reaches across the couch and gives her Peer Educator a shove on the shoulder. Tate pretends the blow is more than it is, bouncing off the couch arm on her other side. Around her, Lauren’s classmates laugh a little nervously, reasonably sure they’re in on the joke. It only works because Olivia is so obviously, untouchably cool.
“But yeah,” Olivia continues, “I’m saying that I’m sorry your first night here hasn’t been like when Harry falls through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, because that’s what you deserve.”
Between them, Ms. Daniels uncrosses her legs, resting her socked feet back on the carpet beneath them. “I know this might be difficult to process, and I want you to know that these two”—she waves an arm across the couch, gesturing vaguely at the young women on either side of her—“are here for exactly this kind of thing.” Ms. Daniels pauses.
“Well, not exactly this kind of thing,” Tate interjects. “More like, this kind of social-emotional processing.”
Lauren wonders where someone would learn a phrase like that—“social-emotional processing”—and then she realizes: Here. Atwater.
“Yes, that. If any of this has been at all triggering for any of you, I want you to know that my door is open,” Ms. Daniels says.
“And so is mine,” Tate adds.
“Mine too, except not right now, because I’m going to bed.”
The room laughs.
“I’m serious,” Olivia says, and even Lauren laughs this time.
* * *
That night, Lauren stays awake for a while, her body alert to the sounds of her new home. The blinds cord catches in the late-summer breeze, and the plastic taps gently against itself in a rhythm too irregular to ignore as white noise; footsteps pad up and down the hallways, personless shadows skirting in the hall light that creeps beneath the base of their door. She tries to imagine this as a place where a girl could be raped, pinned down, a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams. Eventually her ears catch the thrum of the cicadas, like cheap toy-store whistles or a band of the world’s tiniest maracas, the same night symphony she hears in upstate New York, and she is able to fall asleep.
* * *
The three days before classes begin is called Opening Week. It’s a mix of orientation and bonding activities and, for those students who play a fall sport, preseason practice. Lauren takes her French placement exam and receives a perfectly adequate score. She makes the varsity field hockey squad, but the team is so much obviously worse than the public school at home that she has a hard time feeling all that triumphant. She knew this when she applied—that Atwater was not one of the athletic powerhouses; those were the coed schools in New Hampshire and Maine that recruited postgraduates to play on their football and hockey and basketball teams—but still she found the lack of talent during tryouts vaguely alarming. It’s sort of a cliché, isn’t it, she thought, as Chloe Eaton flubbed a free hit, the girls’ school that isn’t any good at sports. But the idea is too complicated to wrangle in the middle of all the rest, and she sweeps it from the synapses of her brain.
In the afternoon on the second day, they play a game that involves rubber chickens. Outside on the Bowl, they’re organized into circles according to Hall. Their Proctors distribute bean bags among them, beginning with just two to a circle. They pass the bean bags to one another per Olivia’s rules: You cannot pass to either of the people next to you, nor can you pass back to the person from whom you just received a bean bag. You have to say the name of the person to whom you are passing. The little pouches feel damp and dusty in Lauren’s hand, the first dirty thing she’s touched at Atwater. Olivia allows them a minute or two to get into a rhythm, and Lauren finds that they more or less pass in a pattern—she receives from Jade Wright across the circle to her left, and passes on to Daphne Martin to the right—until Olivia hurls a rubber chicken at Natalie Howard, who—in her surprise—lets the chicken smack against her chest and fall to the ground. Macy Grant, who had been in the habit of passing a bean bag to Natalie, tries to withdraw her pass mid-throw, and sends the bean bag in a lame arc halfway across the circle.
“Oops!” she says, embarrassed.
“New rule!” Olivia explains. “When I throw a rubber chicken at you, you have to catch it and throw it back to me, outside the circle.
I’ll also be adding more bean bags.”
They look at one another, squinting in the afternoon sun, all a little nervous and none wanting to be the next Natalie (or Macy, for that matter). At Olivia’s urging, they start passing their bean bags again, one at a time, and then Olivia begins tossing rubber chickens into their midst. She has a mesh bag of a half dozen of them, and in the course of their game four or five make their way into rotation. At first the chickens mess up the rhythm: they come at the same time as a bean bag, so the receiver of the chicken also gives a bad pass; they cause rule violations (through some combination of bad luck and timing, Brianna Heller’s only option is to pass to the person right next to her, which is against the rules). Each time they make a mistake, Olivia pauses and allows them to regroup.
Eventually she explains that the game is a metaphor. The bean bags represent your daily routine, she says: classes, homework, practice, meals, chores, et cetera. The chickens are the things that interrupt your routine: The flu, a migraine; a fight with your parents; special events, like Atwater traditions. Success in boarding school—and in life!—is a matter of managing the interruptions, of planning for the unplanned-for.
Olivia smiles at them. “Get it?”
* * *
At meals Bryce and Lauren sit together with a group of freshmen, and Bryce narrates the dining hall. Bryce, as it turns out, is Atwater’s version of Grace: the fourth generation in her family to attend Atwater. Partly because she has been tagging along at Alumnae Weekend since her infancy and partly because her grandmother spent a decade on the Board of Trustees, Bryce is an encyclopedia of Atwater lore. A cluster of juniors sit together by the windows in the back corner; from the way Bryce talks about them—and the way her new classmates lean in, committing the details to memory—Lauren has the sense that these girls are who she might have classified as the popular girls at her school back home. The one with the long, matte-brown hair and lived-in eyeliner is Sloane Beck, and she was a professional dancer before her father shipped her off to Connecticut. She goes before the Disciplinary Committee every year but she will never, ever be kicked out of school because her family has promised to donate enough money to name a building once Sloane graduates. She’s sitting next to Brie Feldman, who has curly blond hair and a doll-like complexion; Brie’s roommate is Chloe Eaton, a round-faced Marylander with dimples and a deep tan. Sloane’s best friend is Blake Trude, another dancer, who takes the train into the city twice a week and most weekends to dance with a company uptown. People who don’t know that Sloane played the role of Marie in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker at eleven think that Blake is the real prodigy, and that the story Sloane tells about her father forcing her to give up professional dancing is just a cover for the fact that she just wasn’t good enough to cut it in New York.