Free Class by Cecily von Ziegesar Page B

on the opposite side of the quad from Coke. Tonight Tom wore a pair of navy blue shorts with little green dogs stitched all over them, a yellow Lacoste shirt, a kelly green cotton webbing belt, and Docksiders without socks. Eliza thought it took courage not to be influenced by all the crunchiness around him. Nick, on the other hand, wore a strategically shredded purple T-shirt with a picture of a yellow gummy bear on it,a pair of ancient brown corduroys, and his trademark earflap hat. “How’s married life?” she asked them.
    The boys shrugged their shoulders uncomfortably. Obviously neither one was too pleased to be rooming with the other.
    “Any luck in the employment office?” Nick asked, changing the subject.
    “Yeah,” Eliza said. “You?”
    “I did okay,” Nick responded carefully. He’d been waiting for Tom to tear into him for needing a campus job at all. The less said about it, the better.
    Eliza and Nick’s tenure at Dexter was contingent on financial aid, and their financial aid package was contingent on their keeping a campus job. The best-paying jobs were in Dining Services and Physical Plant, but the upperclassmen usually snagged those while the freshmen were at orientation. Other jobs included assisting professors with their photocopying and filing, mail room detail, helping students with their papers in the Writing Center, shelving books in the library, operating the audiovisual equipment for films or lectures or performances, or modeling for Studio Art: Portraiture classes.
    At a big public university you could get away with a modeling job without the fear of being constantly recognized, but not at Dexter. It was a small school, and after a few months there were no new faces. A model for any of the studio art courses could count on the fact that by graduation half the campus would have seen her naked. This did not deter Eliza. It was way better than skinning and filleting raw chickens, a restaurant job she’d had in the past.
    Nick had taken a job in the audiovisual department. He liked the idea of getting to watch movies from a little booth in the back of the theater, and he already knew how to use a slide projector. Back at home he often got out the carousel full of slides of his mom smoking pot on the beach while pregnant with him,or of his dad digging sand castles. That was before his dad went to California for business and met a yoga instructor from Santa Cruz, home of the most captivating women in the world. They hadn’t had much more than a postcard from him since.
    “Where’s Shipley?” Nick demanded.
    Eliza made a face. “Who cares?” She’d gotten into the routine of hating Shipley. She even hated her underwear, which looked like it was dry-clean-only, and her jeans, which she hung up on hangers. Her jeans! “I think she already went to the barbecue. She said she’d meet us there.”
     
    T he sun hung low and hot. The Grannies, Dexter’s Grateful Dead cover band, were tuning their guitars on a small makeshift stage beside the Pond, the impressive man-made lake on the edge of campus. It was an all-male band, but each of the Grannies wore the type of flowing Indian-print skirt bought from vendors in the parking lot at Dead concerts. Throngs of students milled around on the grass eating hamburgers and hot dogs cooked on smoking charcoal grills provided by Dexter Dining Services. A few students browsed the literature stacked on tables set up along the banks of the Pond, one table for each of Dexter’s special interest groups: the Women’s Group; the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Group; the Woodsmen’s team; the Chess Club; Dexter Recycles; the Dexter Republicans; the Dexter Democrats; Dexter ROTC; the Dance Club; the Drama Club; the Ultimate Frisbee Club; Dexter Vegetarians; the Knitting Circle. Some of the upperclassmen sipped from plastic cups of Busch near a cordoned-off keg manned by a security officer holding a sign that said, “Please provide ID.” Professor Darren Rosen