SHIFT

Rule #1: Keep a low profile.

Aunt Beatrix and I are new here.

New state = Massachusetts.

New town = Darby Cove.

New school = Darby Prep.

And this is what I have learned so far…it rains. Like, all the time. In the month Bea and I have lived here, we’ve seen all kinds of precipitation: warm and steamy, cold and spiky; soft, sharp, sideways; in fat clumps and pitter-pat drips. If this is autumn in the Bay State, I think I’ll have drowned by the time April showers descend.

The town is nestled in the crook of the arm of and if you don’t think the looks like an appendage, try squinting at a map and you’ll notice the resemblance. Now imagine a speck of a village – a freckle on the state’s arm – tucked into that elbow. That’s Darby Cove. Where it rains. All the time. Eskimos and their 400 words for snow haven’t got a thing on Darby Cove’s varieties of rain.

Bea is new because she’s the most recent addition to the English department at Darby Prep and I’m new because I go wherever Bea goes. There’s nothing like changing schools for your last year of high school to shake up your world.

Yippee for me. If I’m lucky, I’ll manage to make one decent friend before I graduate and then…then what? No idea. I really do admire the kids who have had their lives planned out since they were ten years old. When I was ten, I was…well, let’s say I was busy with something. But it certainly wasn’t planning my career.

To an outsider, isn’t any different from . They’re both undersized states, the kinds of places tourists like to visit and snap photos of multi-hued trees, maybe schuss down a mountain or two. The states are staunchly democratic and littered with liberal arts colleges with picturesque campuses. But to me, they are as dissimilar as night and day.

was where I was raised, where I went to school for eleven years (a parochial school called Sisters of Mercy but whatever, it was mine), where I learned to ride a bike and drive Bea’s Volvo.

Bea calls a tabula rasa but to me it feels harsh and a little cruel, like a spinster who’s been rejected for most of her life and has made it her mission to enjoin other people in her pain. It feels bitter.

Did I mention that it rains here? All the time?

I asked Beatrix the other day, “If this place is a blank slate, does that mean I’m free to reinvent myself as someone way cooler than myself?” She frowned and went back to dunking an Earl Grey teabag into a cup of honey-sweetened water.

A classy “no” but a “no” nevertheless.

The answer is always no.

Rule #2: Remain in control at all times.

Academically, Darby Prep is superior to my old Sisters of Mercy. The school has a class in just about every subject (Myths in Arabic Literature? Sign me up! Social Mores of ? Bring it!), athletic facilities the Red Sox and Celtics would envy, and architecture that draws its own tourists to the campus. I think – I think – Sisters of Mercy had a soccer field.

The point of Sisters, though, was not to dazzle college admissions departments with the bells and whistles of a fancy private education. It was to train young minds to become obedient and God-fearing. The Sisters instilled thoughtfulness and generosity and kindness in their students through discipline and rigorous self-control. In other words, it was the perfect place for me and Bea.

Since fifth grade, Beatrix and I have meditated together every day. The three C’s, that’s Bea and me: calm, cool, collected. I have rarely seen my aunt get riled up about anything, not even when one of her students complained to Sister Catherine that Bea had given her a poor grade because she was a girl. As if Beatrix would ever do such a thing!

While my own meditation skills are less-than-stellar, I have to admit they have helped me when I’ve felt my heart begin to race and my emotions flutter. Knock on wood: nothing bad has happened in a while.

Rule #3: No touching.

I have the utmost respect for my aunt. She took me in when I was a baby and no one wanted me. She has cared for me, day in and day out, for seventeen years. She has only asked of me the simplest adherence to her few rules, what she prefers to term 'guidelines.'

“I’m not your mother,” she reminds me when, on the rare occasion, I attempt to defy her 'guidelines.' “I can’t tell you what to do. I can merely suggest...”

Long pause.

“…based on the vast experience I have had with you and your mother, which others, including yourself, Calliope, do not possess.”

How do I argue with that? So when Bea says no touchy, that means hands to self, avoid skin-to-skin contact, keep your distance. It also means, for obvious reasons, no boys.

My greatest hope is that I get a decent roommate for the year. My ideal? Someone who’s kind of like me, who likes books and movies, who studies but isn’t a workaholic, who doesn’t think owning a store full of clothes is something to aspire to.

But it would also be nice if she isn’t at all like me: outgoing, outspoken, maybe even a little popular.

I imagine us hanging out in our room, talking late into the night about cute boys until our neighbors complain and our house mother knocks on the door. I can see us in the quad, sprawled on side-by-side benches as we read silently, perhaps breaking the quiet with a passage or two read aloud for inspiration or a laugh. Maybe she’ll be into dances and parties and invite me to come along. Maybe she’ll introduce me to her brother, who’s handsome and looking for a girlfriend like me who has, you know, issues. Maybe…let’s just stop with the fantasies for now.

It’s Dorm Move-In Day and I am the first one to schlep my backpack and suitcase into Chalmers. Not a single soul is in the dormitory, not even our house mother. Although the day is remarkably bright outside, the heavy Oriental runners and the wood-paneled walls, dense with curved molding and traditional wainscoting, absorb all light and sound. I feel eerily alone and wish I hadn’t been so quick to get rid of Beatrix who offered to help.

I push aside thoughts of creepy-crawlies and prep school-loving serial killers and hustle through the silent corridors to the third floor. After throwing open the blinds and flooding room 315 with as much light as I can grab, I immediately stake my claim on the twin bed closest to the microwave and mini-fridge. It’s the blue-striped mattress with the fewest rust stains.

At least I think they’re rust stains.

Yes, let’s go with rust.

One-by-one I line up my books – mostly mysteries – on the shelf above my desk, a simple faux-wood rectangular thing with the sharpest corners I’ve ever seen on a piece of furniture; I make a mental note to be cautious during late-night bathroom trips. It’s so unsettling to see my paperbacks like this, alone and missing the rest of their friends which are crammed into boxes in a storage facility in .

I’ve never lived in a dorm before. Never had a roommate before. Never shared a bathroom with someone other than Bea. My hands on my books tremble with excitement.

And fear.

There are so many people here, so many lives being lived on this campus. Even with the school empty, I felt the residual energy of students past and present when I walked across the quad from Beatrix’s room in MacAllister to Chalmers. And in this dorm, this bare-bones third floor room, I can sense the others who have come before me: decades of students – boys only at first then co-ed after a century– running and yelling and reading and kissing and weeping and cheering and living.

For most of my life, I’ve felt as cloistered as the nuns at Sisters of Mercy, shut up in my aunt’s one-bedroom home, save for the hours spent in classes. Just me and Bea.

But now…it’s my turn to live.

I feel my lips turn up toward a smile and my immediate thought is to suppress it, to swallow it back down and ignore it but then…why the hell not smile?

So I do.

Not many minutes later, I’m in the midst of tossing my meager belongings into my wardrobe when I hear a voice call hello. The second person to move into Chalmers is my roommate.

“Hi, I’m Julia Poole!” she thrusts her hand at me. I hold up my boots in a wave.

“Hey.”

“You’re…” She glances down at a scrap of paper. “Calliope Bellflower?”

“Call me Callie.”

“Callie, cool. Senior?” Her grin widens as she takes a few steps into our room.

I nod. “You too?” I know she is; we corresponded a couple of times over the summer and I memorized every detail about her and the school contained in those precious emails. I know her schedule, her boyfriend’s name, her scores, and the college she wants to attend.

But it would be so uncool to let her know that.

Julia rolls her eyes to the pockmarked ceiling. “Finally. God.” She kicks a box marked Jules toward the empty wardrobe next to mine. “You’re from , right?”

“Ayuh,” I say, affecting my most of accents. I don’t really talk like this but well, it’s kind of funny and I’m feeling like I want to be funny with my new roommate.

Am I? Funny, I mean? I watch Julia for some sign that I didn’t just make a fool of myself.

She grins again as she begins to unload shoes and makeup and salon-brand hair conditioner.

“Boarding school?”

“Um, no. Sisters of Mercy was a parochial school but we didn’t live on-campus.”

“Awesome name. I can just imagine what the cheerleaders looked like,” Julia says. An amused smile tickles her lips. “Long black dresses… what are they called? Habits?”

“Habits, yeah. But only the principal and some of the teachers wore them.” I think I answer much too quickly to be totally Zen but I don’t want my brand new roommate from San Diego – yes, I know that too – to think I hung out with weirdos.

Maybe it’s best just to change the subject.

“How was your flight?” I ask.

“Completely torturous!”

I take a seat on my bed and watch her unpack. It’s like a show, The Julia Poole Show.

Julia is exactly what I expect a girl from to look like. She resembles a Barbie doll I wanted as a little girl, with a tiny waist and long lean legs and her tan nearly glows under the fluorescent tube lighting.

Moreover, her wardrobe is like an explosion of color in the dank cubby beside mine. My wool overcoat and black hiking boots are no match for her aquamarine flip-flops and seersucker Bermuda shorts. As I watch, fascinated, while she unearths one cute outfit after another, I can’t help but wonder where she’s going to wear them.

Rain, remember? Lots and lots of rain. Then again, she’s been attending Darby Prep for a long time so maybe she knows something I don’t.

Like how to dress and put on makeup and effortlessly converse with a near-total stranger.

“Uh-huh,” I add when she looks to me for confirmation that I can keep up my end of the discussion. I can’t. I’m too distracted by the flower blooming in front of me.

It’s not fair how gorgeous Julia Poole is. In one of her emails, she described herself as gawky and shy and told me she’d had a bad haircut recently that made her look like a boy.

Her definition of male must be very, very different from mine.

I was half-expecting a compatriot in the looks department, a like-minded individual when it came to self-assessment. I should have requested a picture, like an internet dater would, before making my judgment.

Julia is radiant, a stunner. Her blonde hair cascades down her back and waves side to side like a string of flat S’s; her straight bangs are blunt-cut at an angle, giving her heart-shaped face a mystifying yet intriguing asymmetry. Her blue eyes are the color of swimming pool water from the rich side of town. She’s tall too, taller than me, and would be a runway model if it weren’t for the coltish gait her long legs give her.

Is that what she meant by gawky? Pfft. Please. I can do gawky way better than that. With my eyes closed. In my sleep.

I stretch out my own non-horsy legs and mentally picture them against Julia’s. They’re easily four inches shorter than hers, the skin French vanilla-white, and with an equal mix of freckles and hair stubble because I ran out of razor blades a week ago.

When next I glance up at my new roommate, I realize she’s very nearly unpacked.

“How did you do that?” I ask.

She flaps a hand at me. “Years of practice. By the time I get to Bates next year, I’ll be moved in before they’ve assigned me a room.”

Right, is her first choice. She and her boyfriend, Mackenzie, have it all figured out: college together then marriage then a trip around the world for their honeymoon after which Mack will go to law school while Julia attends med school. Then house and babies and happily ever after. When I read her email, I nearly swooned with envy.

World travel…college…medical school and babies…I don’t see any of that in my future.

Julia takes a brush out from her dresser drawer and begins to slowly and methodically brush her hair as she stares into the mirror mounted above. With each stroke, the nylon bristles grab hold of her golden mane, gently curling the ends. Watching her is mesmerizing.

My own hair is short and spiky and inky black. I cut it myself over the summer, using a pair of scissors I found while we were packing up the house, aiming them at the back of my head as I gazed into a compact. Yeah, it had been awkward but worth it; I couldn’t deal with the humid summer heat baking my scalp.

When I see Julia’s hair, though, I curse my decision to lop off my locks. I want hair just like hers.

With one smooth move, my roommate replaces the brush in her hand with her cell phone; with the flick of a pink-tipped nail, she opens and closes the clamshell. “Time for lunch. You ready?”

An invitation to dine so soon? Sweet. Then I remember a previous commitment. “Uh, I have to eat with my aunt today.” I’m pretty sure I told Julia about Beatrix teaching at the school but my roommate stares at me, perplexed. “Bea teaches the poetry and Shakespeare classes. And she lives in MacAllister,” I add to show off my independence.

Julia’s blue eyes light up. “Beatrix Bellflower! I have her! Cool.”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe you can put in a good word for me.” She leans in to touch my arm but I instinctively shrink back so her hand grasps futilely at empty air and her face shows her disappointment.

No touchy.

I play it off like I didn’t just avoid her like she has the plague. Big smile, Callie, all teeth. “So I’ll see you at dinner?”

“Oh yeah, sure.”

“Awesome, awesome.” I swipe my card key from my desk, along with my cell and wallet, and head for the door. “Well, good to meet you, Julia.”

“Back at ya, Callie.”

I hear the door close solidly behind me. God, that was a close one.

I find Beatrix in the faculty dining room, a more intimate version of our dorm dining halls with the same floor-to-ceiling windows and heavy muslin and velveteen curtains that could thwart a nuclear blast. The table and chairs, however, don’t look like thousands of students have sat on them, though.

Bea is at a corner table in the shadows, nibbling at a salad. She sees me and smiles. It’s nice to know I can brighten her day.

“You’re late,” she says, still smiling. “I fended off two math teachers while I was waiting.” She nods toward a pair of men in their late fifties, slouchy and soft in the stomach, at a table on the other side of the small room. “I had to use my very dull-bladed butter knife.”

I shudder, imagining them hitting on my aunt. “Sorry. I was talking to Julia.”

Bea slides out from the table and returns with a salad and a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes for me. Always the caretaker, my caretaker. I dig in gratefully.

“Your new roommate,” she says, leaning both elbows on the table. “What do we think?”

“Uh-mazing,” I say.

“Chew first, please,” Beatrix says, as if I’m still five years old.

I exaggerate a swallow. “Pretty. Smart. Funny.”

“Your new BFF?”

“Bea, please don’t use that ever again.”

“What? BFF?”

I cringe. “Right.”

“I can’t say BFF? Why can’t I say BFF?”

“La, la, la…” I cover my ears with my hands and a piece of garlicky chicken flies off my fork and lands on Bea’s salad. She gently picks it off with her own fork and pops it in her mouth. It’s such a Mom thing to do.

But she’s not. Not mine.

My voice softens. “What about you, Bea? What do you think?”

“I haven’t even met Julia yet.”

“The school, I mean. What do you think of Darby Prep?”

Honestly, if Bea tells me she made a horrible mistake and she wants to leave and go to another school in or or , I will go. Even back to Sisters of Mercy. I’ll go wherever she goes.

“It’s okay so far,” she says, holding up crossed fingers. “I had a meeting with the headmaster this morning to go over my schedule.” She laughs. “It’s kind of refreshing not having to sit across from a nun.”

“Sister Catherine was kind of old-school about things.” I always felt like I was being judged by an overgrown penguin when I was called to her office which, thankfully, was not very often.

“Headmaster O’Brien warned me about a few students,” Beatrix said in a low voice. “One of them’s a senior with you.”

Gossip! The best part of having a teacher in the family. “Who is it?”

Bea glances over her shoulder at the other faculty members. They see us but don’t pay us any mind. When we want to, Beatrix and I can be practically invisible. It’s all about maintaining a low-profile. “Her name’s Fiona something…Geddes. Fiona Geddes. She’ll be taking Shakespeare with me.” She shakes her head. “O’Brien says she’s utterly self-centered. A real MG, you know?”

“MG” is our code for “mean girl,” that particular sub-species of high school student who likes to pick on people just to watch them squirm, just because she can.

“Her father’s the mayor of Darby Cove so watch out for her,” Bea tells me. “We don’t want to attract any attention.”

Attention can lead to investigation. Attention can lead to touching. Attention can lead to all sorts of things that might make my life – our lives – uncomfortable.

“Gotcha,” I say, making a mental note of the name. Fiona Geddes. “Anything else I need to know?”

My aunt cocks her head to one side. Her dark hair is pulled back so tightly into a low bun and her clothes so starched and stiff that she could be a dress shop mannequin from the 50s. Now that we’re out of the parochial environment, maybe she’ll embrace a more casual 21st Century wardrobe. “You’re having a pop quiz in your poetry class at the end of next week,” she says.

“Classes haven’t even started!”

“Which means you have plenty of time to study for it.”

“Well, now that’s useful information.” I take a last bite of my lunch and place a kiss on Bea’s cheek. “Thanks.”

“Don’t stay up too late tonight. No texting after nine and no caffeine after dinner—”

“Bea, please. We just got here,” I hear myself whine. “Let me have a little…”

I’m about to say “fun” but that word really doesn’t have much impact on my aunt.

“Sure, Bea. See you later.”

On the way back to Chalmers, I pass a group of jocks tossing a football in the sliver of sun the Darby Cove clouds have allowed to warm our patch of earth. I slow my pace to watch the boys tackle one another, not so roughly that anyone gets hurt, not so weakly that anyone is called a pansy. A couple of them are kind of cute, in a square-jawed, brush-cut way.

I haven’t been entirely honest about the whole boy thing. Despite my daily meditations, despite Bea’s rigid guidelines, I can’t help but notice them and yeah, I like them. But liking them nearly always gets me in trouble.