Free Prep: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld Page B

Normally, you could tell just by observing people when you were supposed to nod, or laugh, or frown in sympathy. But Cross’s expressions were all so muted that I’d have thought he was hardly paying attention to what we were talking about. It was his eyes that made me know this wasn’t true—they were watchful, but not the way I imagined my own were; his was a disinterested, unself-conscious watchfulness.
    The waitress appeared, and Cross ordered a vanilla milkshake. I opened the menu, and the quantity of words was overwhelming. I closed it. “I’ll have a vanilla milkshake, too,” I said. After the waitress left, I said, “I wonder if it’s bad for me to have dairy right now.”
    Cross shrugged. “You’ll be okay.” There was something in his shrug I envied—an ability to prevent misfortune by choosing not to anticipate it.
    I looked down at the table and then back at him. “You don’t have to stay here,” I said. “You probably were planning to go to a movie, right? And I’ll be fine. Not that I don’t appreciate—” The only thing I could think of to say was
you taking care of me,
and that seemed even worse than
you’re being so nice to me.
Lamely, I said, “But you really can go.”
    “What about my shake?”
    “Oh, I can pay for it. Especially after you helped me.”
    “What if I want my shake?”
    “Well, you can stay if you want to. I’m not telling you to leave. I just thought—”
    “Relax,” he said. Then he said, “Lee.”
    In this moment, I understood for the first time in my life what it was to feel attracted to someone. Not to think they were funny or to enjoy their company, or even to find one thing about them cute, like their dimples, or their hands, but to feel that physical pull toward them. I just wanted to close my eyes and have my body against Cross’s.
    “Are you a freshman?” Cross said.
    I nodded.
    “Me, too,” he said.
    He seemed so much older, I thought, as old as a man—eighteen, maybe, or twenty.
    “I think I’ve seen you before. Do you live in McCormick’s?”
    “No, Broussard’s.” I didn’t ask what dorm he lived in because I knew. There were fewer than seventy-five people in our class, and I knew everyone’s name, even the people I’d never talked to.
    “I have Madame Broussard for French,” he said. “She’s kind of strict.”
    “Do you know Amy Dennaker?”
    He nodded.
    “Well, Amy does these imitations of Madame. She’ll be like—” I paused. I had to do the accent; it wouldn’t be funny without the accent. “Like, ‘There is foie gras on my bidet!’ Or, she’s invented this poodle that Madame keeps, named Ooh La La. So she’ll say, ‘Ooh La La, if you do not stop barking, I shall send you to the guillotine!’ ”
    I looked at Cross; he appeared unimpressed.
    “I guess you have to be there,” I said. But it almost didn’t matter that he hadn’t laughed, because I had said something entirely unnecessary, I had told a story. For a moment, I had shrugged off my flattened Ault personality. “Where are you from?” I asked.
    “The city.”
    “Boston?”
    “New York.”
    “How did you end up at Ault?” Something was definitely different; apparently, I was to be the one carrying the conversation, and this was not even an unfamiliar dynamic. Back in South Bend, both in class and at home with my family, I had been curious and noisy and opinionated. I had talked like a normal person, more than a normal person.
    “It was either here or Overfield,” Cross said. “The teachers here seemed more laid-back. It’s all old men in bow ties at Overfield.”
    “So you always knew you would go to boarding school?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “I guess that’s how it is for people from the East Coast,” I said. “It’s different where I’m from.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Indiana.”
    “Oh, yeah? You’re a Hoosier?” He might have been making fun—I wasn’t sure. “You like basketball?”
    “I don’t really follow sports,”