Charade - Chapter Six

Arriving back to the room in the early afternoon, Cary took advantage of the relative quiet to sit down at his desk and begin his second letter to Grace. He paused for a minute and tried to figure out why he felt compelled to write letters to her, deciding it a harmless way to organize his thoughts about the world around him. Michael, undoubtedly weary of his first day, which had been painstakingly scheduled to be a compact mid-day exercise, sat at his desk looking through textbooks and fiddling with his main desktop computer.

Cary found Michael to be quiet most of the time they were in the room together. Certainly the most restrained on the wing, the room had taken on the qualities of a sarcophagus. If it were not for the constant noise penetrating from other inhabitants in the hall, Cary could accomplish a lot of studying.

Grace:

My first day is over and while I started it a little exciting by it all, I ended bored out of my mind in an introductory lecture for my math class. Why waste time with introductions? Get to it. The sooner we start the sooner we’ll finish and all that sort of thing. I’m writing you again so soon, because I know that when this thing really starts going, I am not going to have much time to write

My chemistry class (do not laugh I have to take it to fulfill a requirement) looks like it is going to be extremely hard. The person next to me wants to begin a study group for the class, which in principle sounds like a good idea, but I’m not sure she is serious enough about it. She made the obvious jokes about my name. Are young women at Hampshire so void of academic endeavor? I am beginning to wonder what percentage of my fellow students actually study. Anyway, the class is taught by this gnome-like lady who needs a booster step to use the blackboard. She seems capable and extremely interested in teaching.

I’m still trying to learn something about my roommate. He will talk occasionally, but getting information out of him is exhausting – a bit like me sometimes. He’s very funny, though. Apparently, he doesn’t have a great home life and that has effected him to no end (it usually does!). Michael is a whizz with computers, really knows his stuff, which is funny, because I don’t know a thing about them. They always seem like more work than they are worth, but like I said, what do I know?

Right now, someone across the hallway in our wing is playing music really loudly. Up until this instant, the dorm was pretty quiet and I was looking forward to writing a lengthy letter to you. I hate to go and ask the guys to turn it down, because I’d look like a jerk. And they certainly already think I am (at the very least) strange. Perhaps I will finish this letter later when I go to the

Cary set his pen down, then placed the letter inside his chemistry notebook. He saw Rebecca’s number written on the first page and looked at his palm to see if that version was still legible. Her loopy penmanship made him smile.
He went to his bed and stretched out while trying to recall what the actress Carole Lombard looked like. He could tell by the light outside, dinnertime would be upon them soon. "Are you going over to eat?"

Michael sighed. "I can hardly wait." He plugged his keyboard in and stood up for a moment to give his computer a quick review before hitting the power button. He finally decided to unpack and get what he could consider settled, since he felt more at ease with the room, Cary and the college. Despite excellent high school grades and posting the first perfect SAT score in Fairdale High School’s history, he knew that what came before proved to be a walk-over. College certainly had to be way more of a challenge. Yet, in the first couple days of freedom he had gained more confidence about Aversham -- the school that had given him a free ride based on his walk-over. Seeing what constituted college-level work gave him enormous confidence that he could easily keep up in this environment, surrounded by rich kids who summer in Europe and Mensa poseurs who couldn’t really be bothered with all that.

He pushed the round power button, cracked his knuckles and took a seat. A full system check revealed a computer that traveled well. He configured his modem for the school’s network and as he waited for the reboot to finish, he thought about the stall behind putting the computer together. He had two laptops with him, but hadn’t bothered with them at all. Highly uncertain of getting all unpacked, Michael remained concerned about officially leaving the safe confines of high school behind and settling into the new day rising. On the other hand the restraint exhibited with his computers seemed like maturity.

He set up preferences on his school e-mail account and checked his Google and Yahoo mail folders. Perry and Greg, just across the hall, turned the volume up on some System of a Down song. Michael found it exceedingly annoying. The kids who smoked in the woods out back of his high school liked listening to that sort of stuff apparently in an all out effort to give not only being a teenager, but also smoking a bad name. He put his ear-buds on and dialed the iPod in to My Morning Jacket.

He sat for a few minutes staring out the window, trying to avoid the mail stacked in his in-tray. The sun illuminated the concrete courtyard between Norton and Hart with low slung bars of light slipping through gigantic Tulip trees. Students sat out along the brick walls running parallel across the yard.

His older sister sent most of the e-mail waiting for him, whining about something or other his brothers had done during the usual absence of parental guidance. With his three siblings all still living at home, Michael felt he owed the only sane one, Claire, some sort of lifeline. While he did not want to think about life back at the Slocum split-level, he could tell the e-mails were important to Claire.

She did daily battle with the brother between them, Michael’s main nemesis, Danny. At first he didn’t know what to say in response to a rant about Danny putting a substantial dent in her Sunbird’s rear fender. He typed the word ‘sorry,’ then continued on saying Danny was her problem and in fact, it now fell on her to deal with the whole crazy family. That Donny, Danny, their self-absorbed mother and terminally pre-occupied father would be her albatross and if they bugged her that much, why didn’t she move in with Ned? Michael knew her boyfriend she met while taking classes at community college did not offer much of a realistic prospect. He stopped typing and thought better about what he had written, erasing everything except ‘sorry.’

Danny presented a challenge for Michael as they both grew up sharing a bedroom and wildly divergent attitudes on everything from television and music to drugs and school. Danny had very little interest in school, took a harrowing selection of drugs, only listened to West Coast rap and watched nothing but MTV and ESPN. Danny called Michael a wickedly sharp array of nicknames including ‘Einstein,’ ‘Mr. Hypotenuse’ and Michael’s all time favorite – ‘Bill.’ Danny used this nickname, a reference to Bill Gates, most often as he continuously worked to link Michael to the curiously uncool world of nerds. He thought it was so smart, making it appear as though he knew something other than Rick Pitino’s winning percentage as a college coach and how to best stash marijuana during traffic stops. This nickname, however, was remarkably ironic, since Michael used Apple products and thought of Bill Gates as a con artist and nearly one of Satan’s spawn (if, in fact, he would have believed in the concept of Satan). Thus, in a way, it was by far the most stinging nickname Danny could hurl his brother’s way, because while he did not mind being linked to nerds, he did not like being linked to evil nerds.
Michael knew he should email or text something to Claire about Cary in order to counter his parent’s line of complete bullshit. His roommate, while really strange in most conventional youth-of-today ways, appeared to be really nice, very smart and interested in all sorts of things Michael knew little about. Despite nothing in common he felt certain they would be good friends. He did not know why, because he did not have a lot of experience with making or keeping really good friends.

Though he had one ill-fated encounter with a church camp in fifth grade, for all practical purposes, his stay in Norton Hall on the Aversham campus represented Michael’s first time away from home. He tried to describe for Claire the fantasy world within which he now found himself. A world where kids who attended fancy private schools had graduating classes that could fit in their father’s SUV, where the people were casual with their intellect and possessed an innate ability to absorb information quickly. His world now incorporated kids with money to burn on clothes, gadgets, drugs and all the crappy music one could think up – also kids with old movie star names. There were flyers stapled to light poles promoting rallies opposing Wal-Mart, the draft, eating meat and racism. Posters hung on every kiosk promoting the unparalleled social opportunities of the Union Dining Clubs. He felt now dropped into this world, there would be no returning to the other two car garage, bumper pool table, vinyl sided cul-de-sac culture to which the rest of his family clung by the thin stick of an old Bush/Cheney sign.

Michael looked all this over and thought it sounded a bit like an attempt to rub Claire’s nose in his escape. He shrugged and once again erased it all, back to the simple word, ‘sorry.’
He hit the send button, muttering "whatever," then stood up. "Ready to go eat?"