Free The Snow Garden by Unknown Author Page A

They had almost two-stepped into one of the stalls when the bathroom door swung open. Their laughter abruptly ended when they saw Tran staring back at them, a six-foot-two former Atherton Eagle defensive lineman and their resident advisor, who would clearly rather be crushing the skulls of quarterbacks then watching over freshmen. He did it for the free dorm room.
         “Are those cigarettes?” Tran asked.
         Randall tossed his into the nearest sink.
         “They better just be cigarettes,” Tran added.
         “Sorry. You got us. It’s crack," Kathryn told him.
         “Put it out,” Tran ordered.
         “Just kidding. It’s not crack.”
         “Out!” Tran barked.
         Kathryn nodded and made no move to extinguish the cigarette. “Kathryn!”
         “I don’t want to clog up the sink.”
         Randall couldn’t contain his laughter. Tran let out a defeated groan and let the bathroom door bang shut behind him.
         “Behold the power of steroids,” Kathryn muttered, popping the cigarette back into her mouth.
         “Has anyone ever told you that you have a problem with authority?”
         “Just my parents,” Kathryn responded, sucking one last drag and moving to a stall. And look what happened the last time I kept a secret  from them? she thought, and then tossed the cigarette into the toilet, flushing it with one foot on the handle before she could answer herself. “Speaking of which, have you talked to yours lately?” Kathryn asked. 
         “No. Why?”
         “I got an E-mail from my father. About Thanksgiving.”
         Randall groaned, a little theatrically, Kathryn thought. “I think I managed to wiggle my way out of that one,” he said.
         “It’s only two weeks away. God, it’s like a cruel trick, making us go home this soon.”
         “Why don’t we go to Boston?” Randall asked.
         Kathryn turned, surprised. “Are you serious?”
         “Yeah,” Randall turned from his reflection to face her. “It’s only an hour by train.”
         “Where will we stay?”
         “I’ll ask Mummy and Daddy to get us a hotel room.”
         Kathryn furrowed her brow. “Will they?”
         “Of course,” Randall said defensively. “If I point out how many hours of my childhood were spent in the care of a nanny who didn’t speak my language.”
         Kathryn laughed. The idea was appealing. Thanksgiving had been a vague concern in the back of her mind for several weeks, but after receiving the E-mail from her father it had turned into a nagging worry. The ease with which Randall had offered her a way out made her slightly giddy. “I’ve only driven through Boston on the way here. What will we do?”
         “Whatever we want,” Randall said casually.
         Kathryn met his gaze. “Poor little rich boy.”
         Something flickered in Randall’s eyes and his smile weakened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that... . It’s just like, well, hey, let’s go to Boston! I wish everything could be so easy.”
         “It isn’t," Randall said, tone clipped. “Ever.”
         Brittle silence settled and Kathryn felt a strange mixture of defensiveness tinged with guilt. She knew that Randall’s parents and their money was a touchy subject. Randall told tales of being locked in his parents' Park Avenue apartment, shuffled between stuffy private schools and after-school clubs his parents had enrolled him in without his consent and tended to by an endless succession of indifferent nannies and incompetent baby-sitters, but throughout his war stories he employed just enough self-conscious sarcasm so as not to seem arrogant, while painting a picture of his parents’ wealth as oppressive, as his mother and father’s best tool for keeping him at arm’s length. But whenever she made reference to it, the result was an awkward stop in the conversation. 
         “Do you want to go?” Randall