Chapter 2

At first glance, college seemed like a big buffet of knowledge. Erica had been frustrated with the one-size-fits-all approach of high school, and had suffered from severe boredom even after skipping a grade, and the idea of assembling one's own curriculum was liberating to her.

The first week on campus was intended for orientation and acclimatization, but she was ready to dive into the undergraduate studies halfway through Day Two, after she had figured out the location of the nearest library, the admissions office, the cafeterias, and the student mailboxes. The campus was the size of a small town--it was a large portion of a town, actually--but there was only so much to know about the workings of admissions, records, and student services before the information became repetitive. Erica met with her academic counselor on the afternoon of Day Two, and with his help assembled a course plan for the next two semesters. She had heeded the warning of her mother to not overload her schedule, so the first semester only loaded her down with nineteen semester hours instead of the twenty-six she had wanted to take. Apparently, academic overachievers were the norm rather than the exception at Dartmouth; her counselor never batted an eye at her wish list and only cautioned that any semester schedule above twenty hours would have to be approved by the head of her major department.

Lily, in contrast, hadn't signed up for any classes yet when they got together later that day to get some items from the Wal-Mart in Lebanon, which was ten miles away. Scott's brother shared a house with a few other students off-campus, and he had a nearly new Jeep Liberty, so Lily had given Scott an opportunity to ingratiate himself by recruiting his big brother for a shopping run. There was a bus that made the route to the shopping mile in West Lebanon, but Erica and Lily both had a few bulky items on their shopping lists that would have been a challenge to transport home on the bus.

"It's a bit insulting, isn't it?" Lily said in the back of the Jeep when Erica told her about the orientation. "They're so selective when it comes to admissions, you know? 'Only eight percent of applicants are accepted into Dartmouth', and all that stuff, and then they hold your hand and figure you need to be told how to check books out of a library. They should just toss you a course catalog and a stack of add/drop forms, and say, 'Welcome to College.'"

They spent a half hour loading up a large shopping cart at Wal-Mart. Erica bought a corkboard, some office supplies, and a few items to hang on the bare walls of her dorm room. Lily's shopping seemed to follow no particular pattern. She picked out a few t-shirts, a pair of CDs, and a mop-and-bucket combo.

"Scott's brother is kind of hot," Lily remarked when they walked back out to the Jeep, where the boys were listening to music.

"He's okay," Erica said. Scott's brother Eli looked like a slightly older and taller copy of Scott, and he clearly matched the College Boy cliche, right down to the knee-length shorts and flip-flops.

"You got a boyfriend back home?" Lily asked, drawing out the boyfriend slightly.

"Not really. I was dating this guy from my high school, but we kind of decided to call it quits, rather than do the distance thing. He's from Vermont, actually, but he got accepted into Chapel Hill."

"Bummer. But hey, we're in college now. There's no shortage of guys around campus, that's for sure."

"Are you planning to get any studying done at all?" Erica laughed. "You've not mentioned your class schedule once."

"Oh, come on. Classes don't start until next Monday. I'll cobble something together tonight."

"You guys got plans for tonight?" Eli asked them when they had made it back to the Jeep, as if he had heard Lily's last statement.

"Not really," Lily answered. "Why?"

"We're having a party at the house tonight," Eli said. "It's a back to school kind of thing. We do one every year."

"I see. Get together, have a few beers, check out what kind of fresh meat came in with the new students, huh?"

Erica chuckled at Lily's surprisingly astute observation, and Eli grinned as well, unperturbed.

"You got it. So, you guys gonna come?"

"Sure," Lily shrugged, and then winked at Erica.

"I guess the class schedule can wait another day."

The party was exactly what Erica had expected. Eli and his roommates had rented a large Victorian house, five walking minutes away from campus, and Lily and Erica walked up to loud music blaring from speakers placed in second-floor windows. There were cars parked all along the sidewalk in front of the property, and some people were standing in the yard, holding drinks in plastic cups.

Erica attached herself to Lily, who had absolutely no anxiety about meeting strangers. Within five minutes of their arrival, they were both holding cups of fruit punch in their hands, and the smell of alcohol emanating from the drinks was so strong that it made Erica gag when she tried to take her first sip.

"I think that's a bit strong for me," she said. Lily winked at her and took a sip of her own drink.

"It's meant to knock your ass out and make you all easy," she cautioned. "Just hang on to it and pretend you're sipping. Keep it full, so nobody has an excuse to put a new one in your hand."

"You're wise to the ways of the College Senior," Erica smiled.

"I have a brother who's two years ahead of me, and so full of hormones he gets a hard-on in a gentle autumn breeze," Lily said, and Erica snorted into her cup.

The ratio of females to males was fairly even, but as Lily had correctly predicted, it felt a bit like a cattle show. Most of the guys were seniors, and most of the girls were freshmen. Erica noticed that the two of them drew attention whenever they walked into a new room in the house, the present guys sizing them up with various degrees of subtlety. Boys would come over to them, alone or in pairs, and chat for a while. After a half hour of exchanging banalities with half-drunk guys who invariably commented on her red hair or her height, Erica was already thoroughly tired of the whole affair.

If this is your typical college party, Mom didn't need to worry about me partying instead of learning, she thought. These kids are about as interesting as C-SPAN on a slow day.

At some point, Lily excused herself to visit the bathroom, and when she returned, she shook her head.

"Someone made a spiked watermelon in the living room, and they smashed it on the floor. There's seeds everywhere. Don't go through there, or you'll stick to the flooring."

"I'm actually thinking about heading back to the dorm," Erica said. "I hate to be a party pooper, but I've had more fun getting my braces adjusted at the dentist's office."

"Yeah, it sort of stinks," Lily shrugged. "But hey, it's free booze. I think I'll stay until they run out, or until the cops show up, whichever happens first."

"Don't get yourself busted. I'll see you back at the dorm."

"Leaving already?" Eli asked when Erica passed him at the front door on the way out.

"Yeah, I don't feel so good," she lied. "That time of the month, you know."

"Bummer. Well, I'll see you on campus, I guess."

"Yeah," she said, biting off the addendum she had in her head. Guess it can't be avoided.

She had chosen a college far away from her home town in the hopes that the students there would be different than the ones in Knoxville--more serious, more refined, and less juvenile, perhaps. It was a disappointment to find that most of them seemed to be just like the kids she had avoided all her high school life, and by the time she reached the dorm, Erica felt a little depressed.

So much for an improved social life, she thought. Four more years of the same crap, only with co-ed dorms and alcohol.

She walked into the kitchen, and took a can of soda and some seaweed salad out of her compartment in the fridge. Of all the lockable drawers, only one of them had a lock on it, and it was a sturdy-looking brass model that barely fit through the locking latch. The drawer itself was unique in another respect--the label on it wasn't just a piece of electric tape with a name scrawled on it in permanent marker, but a printed label that had come from an office-grade label maker. It said N.DOBLER on it, in all capital letters. An identical label adorned the flat side of the lock. Erica studied the thusly-secured drawer for a moment in mild irritation.

What the hell does he keep in there--truffles and caviar?

She closed the fridge door again, a little more forcefully than she had intended, and walked back to her room across the hall.

Her laptop was familiar ground, not just for the work environment, but also for the ties to her old life. There was her email, the instant messaging client, and her small group of friends from Tennessee who had established blogs or pages on social networking sites. The PowerBook Uncle Will had given her as a belated birthday gift nearly two years ago still worked fine, although the battery had suffered from Erica's frequent use of the machine away from an outlet. It only gave an hour and a half of life per charge now, a third of its endurance when she had received it, and she had been meaning to buy a replacement for months now.

The wireless network in the dorm worked seamlessly, at least. The new students had been given user IDs for the network, and the whole process involved turning on the PowerBook, selecting the newly available network, and providing her credentials. There were forty-odd new messages in her mailbox, testament to the fact that she hadn't checked her email in three days, and she sifted through them while picking at her seaweed salad.

There was the usual bunch of mail forwards, jokes and cutesy stuff forwarded from her friends, the occasional piece of spam that had made it past the filters, and a handful of personal mail. She deleted everything but the personal messages, and then read those one by one.

There was an email from her now-former boyfriend Josh, a three-sentence update that said he had arrived at Chapel Hill and was doing fine. It wasn't like his usual verbose writing style, and she could have chalked it up to the hectic schedule of a newly arrived freshman, but she chose to be irritated by his brevity. She dumped the message in the trash, and moved on to the next one. This one was better, and a bit of a mood lifter--Uncle Will, checking in to make sure she arrived safe and sound, and attaching a few pictures of himself and Claire for good measure. Claire looked like a million bucks--her belly was already evident, but somehow it added to her flawless appearance. More importantly, she smiled at the camera radiantly as she pulled up her shirt to expose her belly for the shot, and it was pretty clear that she adored the person holding the camera. Erica gazed at the picture for a few moments with a smile, and then reached for her cell phone to dial Uncle Will's number.

"Hello?" her uncle answered.

"Hey, Uncle Will. It's the college-going niece."

"As opposed to all the blue-collar nieces I have," he said, and she chuckled.

"How are things? I just got your pictures. Claire looks great."

"Things are going well. We're finally done with the remodeling, thankfully. It's weird to look outside and not see a contractor's truck out in the courtyard."

"I can't wait to see it," Erica said. "Things aren't so hot over here at Dartmouth right now. I may just hop on a bus and come visit for a few days."

"What's wrong? Does your roommate chain-smoke and listen to Barry Manilow?"

She laughed, and her bad mood lifted just a little.

"No, she's cool. It's just that I expected a little more, you know? This place is Ivy League. It's supposed to be special, and all about academic achievement, and stuff. Most of the kids I've met so far have been just as shallow as the ones I had to deal with back in high school."

"Just give it a few weeks," Will said. "You're in transition right now, and out of your usual element. If by the end of the month you still feel like skipping town, we'll get one of the spare bedrooms ready for you."

"One of the spare bedrooms? How big is that house you bought?"

"Big," Will said. "It used to be a farmhouse and a doctor's practice, and I think they must have raised twenty kids at the same time in here. We have like six bedrooms, and most of them have their own fireplaces. When you guys come over for Christmas, you'll all be able to stay in separate rooms."

"Wait, what now? Are we not doing Christmas at Grandma's place?"

"Nope. She doesn't want Claire to travel while she's pregnant. I told Mom she's only going to be six months along at Christmas, but you know your Grandma. So you're all coming to Serendipity instead."

"Serendipity? Is that what you're calling it?"

"Yeah. It's like a little farm, so we figured it should have its own name, and not just a street number. There's a nice wooden sign by the road and everything. You'll like the way it turned out, I think."

"I can't wait," Erica said. "And that's not just a phrase right now."

In the morning, Erica slept in until ten o'clock, a luxury she hadn't allowed herself since the first week after high school graduation. When she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower, she heard low voices on the other side of the door. Apparently, Lily had brought home some company from the party the night before. Erica locked the bathroom door on Lily's side before stripping off her clothes and turning on the shower.

The walls seem to be thick enough, she thought as she stood under the hot water. They either played Scrabble after they got in from the party, or I sleep more soundly than I thought.

After her shower, she dressed in some comfortable clothes, and decided to get a late breakfast. Lily seemed to be occupied with her party pick-up, and Erica didn't feel like playing third wheel once more, so she didn't bother knocking on Lily's door to invite her along.

The communal kitchen was empty, but having a sandwich at the table involved the risk of someone else walking in--Lily and her date, or perhaps Nelson--and she kept walking past the kitchen and the commons to the main staircase. The building was so new that it still smelled like fresh paint everywhere, and she was glad to get out into the fresh air once more. The trees outside were exploding with bright colors, reds and oranges and yellows so brilliant that the campus looked like an overdone oil painting.

The foliage and the agreeable weather seemed to conspire to rob Erica of the bad mood that had settled on her since she arrived at Dartmouth. The area close to campus was small-town New England at its best, with few of the student-specific venues that tended to concentrate around universities. The college seemed more integrated into the town, instead of merely dropped onto a chunk of real estate in the middle of it, and bending everything on its perimeter to its economic needs. There were bookstores, but they sold more than textbooks. There were restaurants, but they weren't just budget stuff-your-cheeks kind of places designed to offer a quick alternative to cafeteria lunch. Overall, the area around Dartmouth was much more sedate and laid-back than the Strip in Knoxville, where all the shops catering to UT students were clustered.

Erica checked out a few bookstores-she always gravitated to those when scoping out new shopping infrastructures-and then settled in a booth at a nearby diner with a new book. After a large coffee with extra cream and sugar, an apple turnover, and two chapters of the new fantasy novel she had bought at the bookstore, the world looked a little more in balance.

On the walk back to campus, she saw a Beetle parked by the side of the road. It looked exactly like the one she had left at her parents' place, with the same sulphur-yellow factory paint job, and the sight of it made her homesick once more.